Science fiction triple feature

I've been away from this blog for some time. I'll explain later.

The bad news is that I had written this post just before Blogger died for a couple of days. I know I saved the whole thing as a draft. I mean, I know I did, because I hadn't finished the post and besides that, I wanted to come back and edit it.

Well, it's gone. All of it. As they say in America, sonofabitch.

Never mind. Writing is re-writing.

DOUGLAS ADAMS

is dead. He has been dead for ten years, more or less exactly.

He died young, he left the world much poorer for his passing and it has had to struggle on without him ever since.

I did not know Douglas Adams. I think I might once have communicated with him on a forum - possibly the Digital Village - once. But that was it.

Just as well, too. The horrible teetering thing about being a fan is you might meet the person you idolize and find out they aren't the person you imagine them to be. That might be crushingly awful. Of course they might be wonderful, but people tend to be people no matter the height of esteem you hold them in.

So, the Douglas Adams I knew was constructed from his work. This is the nice thing about writers; they let you into their heads - or limited bits of their heads - and show you what they're thinking. Of course the craft of writing means this is artifice and you have to be wary of that, because this is where the whole fallacy that you know the artist comes from. It's much saner to say that I knew the work of Douglas Adams and was profoundly pleased to have discovered it.

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy was the place where my sense of humour lived. I damn near memorized several versions of the story. I can still bore people with quotes, although these days I very nearly have the maturity not to. To put this in context, there have been shows - The Goon Show, Monty Python's Flying Circus, Hancock's Half Hour - which define a sense of humour. These shows provide a home, a place where those who share that sense of humour, belong.

I came late to the Goons and Python. I was obsessing about towels long before I understood about pining for the fjords.

With typical Geek appetite, once I had discovered Douglas Adams I wanted to read everything he'd ever written and consequently discovered his love for technology and his concern for the environment. I also discovered that he wasn't a novelist at heart (but had managed to write some good ones anyway) and, essentially, wanted to be given the chance to tinker with stuff and then enthuse about it to people who had receptive minds.

I'm glad that he had the chance to do this. I'm delighted by his imagination, because things he wrote are still with us to be enjoyed, and I'm grateful to him for giving my sense of humour a place to call home.

Moffat Slams Spoilers

There's a really odd relationship between fans and spoilers.

Some of us love them. I think it's the thrill of secret knowledge. Other people love the tang of the illicit.

Like any piece of art - yes, television is art and if you disagree then sorry but you're wrong (at least for the purposes of this blog) - people form relationships with a TV show. Most of us have a pretty normal, healthy relationship with the show and are satisfied with that. Some want more. They want clandestine meetings in seedy hotels, they want to explore relationship elements which, to others, would seem transgressive.

I think that's part of the thrill of spoilers.

My own relationship with spoilers is similar to a Lovecraftian protagonist's relationship with the Mythos. Sure, I want the knowledge. Crave it, even. But I know having the knowledge will drive me mad and result in my face being bitten off by something with too many mouths.

Generally, I try to be Spoiler free.

However, for those who want to be Spoiled and who consent to be Spoiled...well, I can't really tell them they're wrong. Any sensible fan, and any sensible forum, has a special place reserved where people who want to engage in a little harmless Spoilering...can. Behind closed doors, so to speak. If you're a consenting fan, there's no harm in this.

The Moff has vilified the other type of fan. The one for whom blurting spoiler information where any unsuspecting person might see it is cruise control for cool.

I always assume this person is either looking desperately for validation, or else has a staggering lack of empathy, but either way it's a cry for help.

If Doctor Who is art, and if people form relationships with it, then the senseless spoiler is rather like the graceless idiot who sidles up to someone in the first blush of first love and, in an oleaginous whisper, says 'oh yeah...goes like a bunny, they say'.

Neil Gaiman Writes Doctor Who

I saw something in a facebook post. Someone said that the episode written by Neil Gaiman is superb - something I agree with wholeheartedly - and is much the better for the fact that it's written by someone who isn't one of The Moff's inner circle of friends.

I had a chuckle about this.

Because it's wrong.

Well, it's mostly wrong.

I don't want to comment on the relationship between Neil Gaiman and The Moff. I have no idea what it is, beyond the comments made by the men themselves on Doctor Who Confidential. I also have no desire to know. It doesn't matter.

Well, it doesn't matter beyond this: Neil Gaiman is a talented author and all round generally capable writer who wanted to write for Doctor Who and, after having met Steven Moffat, wrote to him to ask if he could.

It helps, of course, that Neil Gaiman has several novels to his name. And some screenplays. And some comics. And quite a lot of other things. Frankly, if Neil Gaiman wrote to you and said that he'd like to try writing an episode of your show, you'd be mental to dismiss the prospect out of hand.

Be that as it may, the author of the original facebook comment may have misunderstood the nature of writers and script editors. To an extent, there's a lot of social networking that goes on. It happens in every walk of life. If we're in a position to be handing out work, we will give it first to people we know and trust. These will, in all probability, be people we also find it easy to like. Before you know it, you've got yourself an inner circle of friends.

Being outside the whole process of Doctor Who, we do not see it and we do not understand it properly. My time as an amateur parapsychologist taught me that when people half see something, they will make shit up to explain what they believe is happening, and that this shit is worryingly difficult to dislodge.

We have to be really careful if we're trying to be critical, careful not to equate "this doesn't work for me" with "I totally understand how this happened, and it's a bizarre conspiracy".

Especially when we're looking at a social network which we're not a part of and which we have no chance of being a part of. It's hard to see what's really there when the shadowplay that hints at how we only think the world works is so much more comforting.

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Series Cancellations, TV Conservatism and The BBC

Yes, I'm returning to a current bugbear. The thing is, many folks in the UK have no idea what they would be letting themselves in for if the UK's television landscape became like the USA's.

A quick reminder of How Things Are in the land of the free: Television programs exist to create a reason for you to watch adverts. Their primary purpose is to sell advertising space. This is how the networks make most of their money. A TV show that doesn't get an audience is taking up valuable space which could be better used by a TV show that people actually watch.

It's not about art. It's not about good. It's about "watched".

Our case in point is the ABC series Defying Gravity. This was a brave attempt to write some interesting sci-fi coupled with the proven-popular mechanics of relationships and angst as seen on Gray's Anatomy. Add to this the now-popular "every episode contains flashbacks" thing, as popularized by Lost and we have a patent way to get to know the characters and their inter-relationships while we advance the plot.

The plot is a goodie: after a tragic Mars mission, NASA decides to take a Grand Tour of the solar system. In flashback, we follow the crew of the ship through training and selection. In "realtime" we follow the progress of the mission and the challenges they face. The production design is nice - very "20 minutes into the future" - and the characters are engaging and interesting. They're all sympathetic to a greater or lesser degree, so the ensemble cast works really well, and we have only one real standout villain - the control freak Mission Director back on Earth.

We also have a problem: a mysterious entity known only as "Beta" is with the crew. We know it's alien and very powerful, but nothing else. In Episode 8, after all hell has broken loose, Beta decides to reveal itself to the crew. They stand in front of an open door - some are awestruck, some disquieted, and one is wondering what the hell is going on...and we only have to wait a week to find out for ourselves.

Except that episode 8 is the last we will ever see on broadcast TV. The show was quietly - and I had to Google "defying gravity cancelled" in order to find the news - canceled with the remainder of the 13 episodes to be seen. They won't be broadcast, so when ABC releases the DVD we can buy them and watch them that way.

I was watching the show on the Hulu website, since I don't have a TV, and was therefore contributing to the ratings. However, the show is gone. The stated reason for the cancellation was that the show was "having trouble finding an audience". This means that the ratings were not where they needed to be in order for the show to be worth broadcasting. Not that it failed, or was bad, but it just didn't get watched by enough people. It may not have been watched by enough people as it was shown, so they might not have included the online viewers. I don't have the figures, so I don't know.

However, it's my case in point: in a commercial environment the success and failure of a TV show, the drivers for every decision made about it, are economic. Let's use a more familiar example: Doctor Who would have been canceled in 1963 after the first story: BBC Execs were not happy with the show, it seemed to be having trouble finding an audience too - and if they'd been looking at advertising revenue, we would never have seen "The Dead Planet" let alone an actual Dalek.

If this sounds like sour grapes because a show I was watching got canned, you'd be wrong: I was far more invested in Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles which was just as interesting and well written, but also didn't get an audience. Primarily, I think, because not enough things exploded.

It's possible that Defying Gravity was too scifi for the Not We and not Scifi enough for the We. It's possible that the We decided there were too many squishy organic relationship things going on and this show was clearly for [edit: Not We], while the Not We were having a hard time reconciling the presence of people in space and an alien with romance and angst. These things are not mutually exclusive, but the audience was having a hard time deciding whether it liked the combination and ABC weren't really helping with the marketing. This show should have been perfect: it should have been a show that the Scifi Nerds with Normal Partners could have watched together, but for some reason that didn't happen. It's a shame, since I think it could have happened, but the show wasn't allowed time to develop. It was on the air for two months, and I found it on Hulu totally by accident whilst trying to find Better Off Ted.

Now imagine if this were to happen to the BBC. The typical BBC season is six episodes. If the BBC were dependent on ads it might kill a show after three. ITV axed Primeval because it was too expensive, and this means that we end up in an environment where if a show is going to succeed it has to be cheap. So you can kiss Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures, a third season of Being Human, another season of Survivors and almost anything else not guaranteed high viewing figures goodbye. The TV landscape doesn't have space for anything that isn't able to justify the production costs, which is why we have seen so much reality TV over the years and why so much if it is awful.

It also means that TV becomes formulaic, that there is little or no risk taking in story or script, that you simply don't take chances. Look at the output of the BBC over the last few years and compare it to ITV and Channel 4. Look at the output of NBC, CBS, ABC and compare them with HBO.

If we end up parceling out the license fee or making the BBC accept adverts, we will end up with conservative, dull, ugly TV where nothing interesting or dangerous ever happens.

The alternative to the BBC is not something we want to see, because the alternative is shit.

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Top 25 Who Stories

Fandom, as a wise man noted, loves lists. I do not love lists, so here is one. It's in no particular order either.

- note: 2005 onwards, any multipart story counts as one choice!

Edge of Destruction
- an intense two parter, in which the nascent Tardis crew almost fall apart (and stab each other). It's full of 60s dramatic acting, but extremely effective and still compelling, and it contains a turning point for the character of The Doctor - in which Barbara Wright proves herself to be perhaps the most important companion The Doctor has ever listened to, and in which she sets up a situation which Russell T Davies will use again later.

Thinking about it, some current fans might think of Barbara as a sort of proto-Rose. But in fact, Rose is a Neo-Barbara.

The Wargames
- one of the few Troughton stories I've seen without recourse to recons, it's surprising how brave this is and how it manages to keep the attention over 10 episodes. It's worth the effort for the presence of the iconic Troughton era team: Zoe, Jamie, The Doctor plus assorted interesting
supporting characters and the introduction of The Time Lords themselves. This beats out Tomb because of the range of ideas and the performances.

Ghost Light
- an episode shorter than it should have been and occasionally quite baffling, but it's also a tour de force for Sylvester and Sophie, it's atmospheric and creepy, it's strange and it could only have been made as a Doctor Who story.

And don't worry, according to the DVD extras, most of the cast (and the director) didn't understand it either.

Silurians
- one of the best Who stories ever. It's a brilliant dilemma, it showcases The Doctor as a scientist and the Brigadier as a soldier. We get germ warfare, a tense race to find a cure and the unexpected deaths of quite a few civilians which really does raise the profile of the Silurians. After that, you have to wonder whether The Doctor's stance on the reptiles is quite the right one to take.

Spearhead from Space
- a genuinely frightening Doctor Who story, doing what the show does so very well: taking the mundane and making it uncanny. It's interesting to see The Doctor out of action for a comparatively long time, so we get to spend a while with the supporting cast and UNIT, which is important considering how large a part they will play in the coming years.

It's also got a genuinely creepy villain and while the Nestene intelligence is a not particularly good special effect (although the plastic thing in the tank is rather nice and understated), so much of the story is grounded in something approaching reality that you get a sense of The Doctor being a part of the Real World.

Three Doctors
- for me, this is the only multi-Doctor story that has ever worked. The Two Doctors comes close, because watching the contrast between Colin Baker and Pat Troughton brings to mind this initial outing with Pertwee, Troughton and Hartnell. It's not that good a story, really, but the
performances lift it from being an oddity to being something rather special.

Horror of Fang Rock
- this is the first time I realised that the endings of Doctor Who stories are not necessarily connected to the plot resolution. This is as much about the Doctor and Leela as it is about a trapped Rutan. It is chock full of atmosphere and a creeping dread, the supporting cast are fun, the resolution is exceptionally dodgy science, but it's such a Hinchcliffe/Holmes era story (and stands in for all of the stories that I couldn't put here, because it turns out I am a Hinchcliffe/Holmes Fanboy - and proud of it) that it's hard not to like.

State of Decay
- more Gothic horror, but one that features three awesome things. One is Tom Baker really getting into the feel of the story. One is Lalla Ward, and the chemistry she creates alongside Tom. And the third is the only good performance Matthew Waterhouse got out of Adric. Or do I have that backwards?

It's also got camp vampires, who nevertheless contrive to be a great deal more vampiric than Edward Cullen, and while there's very little in the way of scares, there's menace. Oh, and a wodge of Time Lord prehistory to keep the inner fanboy going squee into the night.

Logopolis
- Tom's swansong, and he plays it perfectly. I think it's the strongest performance from Baker, T. we get in at least the last two seasons; you can feel the loathing he has for the Master, the sense of doom he feels once he spots The Watcher and the fact that this is once more The Doctor as a hero: he does what he does knowing that he'll die, and does it anyway.

As exits go, I think this was the right way for the 4th Doctor to go out. Tom Baker was My Doctor, and Logopolis - even with the associated oddness that surrounds the story - underscored that I was going to miss him terribly. I did, too.

Black Orchid
- a BBC specialty and a thing of quiet and unassuming joy; it's the 1920s, the Doctor gets to play cricket, there are no monsters in it and we get to see two lots of Sarah Sutton - one half of which is not Nyssa. Hurrah!

Doctor Who does not need monsters. There are some stories where you can tell that the monster is integral and there are others where it's just been tacked on to fulfill the "hiding behind the sofa" criteria. Here, the monsters are people and vice versa. I find this rather satisfying.

Caves of Androzani
- A case in point. Ignore the stupid mud lava beast thingy, which definitely doesn't belong to any kind of ecosystem and has no place except to go "Raaah!" and claw at things, and concentrate instead on The Doctor and Peri in a great example of the thing only Doctor Who can do: a regeneration story.

It's interesting that the last 5th Doctor story is, in a way, the one that best defines him. Ignoring the supporting characters and subplots, we see The Doctor give up everything to save the life of a friend, and then draw on all of his friends for support as he dies.

Revelation of the Daleks
- Colin Baker really suffered during his tenure, but even in two seasons of very uneven stories there are gems and this is the brightest of them. If you ignore the Daleks, and you put the inevitable Davros appearance to once side there's the friendship between Peri and the 6th Doctor to watch. There's an...interesting...role for Alexi Sayle. There's the plotting and scheming among the staff of Tranquil Repose, which frankly does make all the shenanigans with Daleks worth while, and there's the redemption story for Orsini and his squire. The whole thing jumps and crackles with character and dialog that more or less render the presence of the Daleks pointless.

The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances
- It has the scariest monster of the new run, the introduction of Captain Jack Harkness, some wonderful lines for all of the cast, The Doctor being extremely Doctorish, and possibly my favourite performance from Christopher Eccelston. Plus, everybody lives. It's a winner. If you flick through the number of cool moments, or fun lines, or interesting character moments, you can see why it had to be a two parter.

Boomtown
- It's very cool, this story. The concept of a defeated enemy sitting down face to face with The Doctor and asking him to justify his actions, is interesting. Where does The Doctor, who has been judge and jury for so many, get his right to condemn others? We don't want that question answered, so this becomes a classical Greek play with a deus ex machina at the end to sort things out. Alongside that, there's the tale of Mickey and Rose. Potentially this is the start of Mickey Smith's rise to greatness, so it's good to see him confront Rose about how her decisions have affected him. In a very short space of time, we learn a great deal about our two central characters, and we're reminded - not for the first time since The Edge of Destruction, and not for the last this series - that the TARDIS has some character of it's own.

Dalek
- There was a time, back in the days of William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton, when the Daleks were badass. They got slightly watered down in the Pertwee years, saddled with Davros during Tom's run and stayed Davros's pet goons down the years that followed. Even with a brief return to being badass in Remembrance, it's pretty much All Davros All The Time. When the 7th Doctor blows up Skaro, it's almost a mercy killing.

This story puts the Daleks back where they belong: intelligent, scary, ruthlessly efficient. Evil.

Some people have commented that the dubious flirtation with Rose Tyler emotions was a bit "Exterminate! Exterminate! What! Is! Love?" but they ignore the fact that the Dalek is not at all happy with the situation and finds itself repellent. It latches on to Rose because it is a Dalek and it needs orders, not because it feels anything for her. Right up to the end, the Dalek is manipulative and determined. It also manages to pwn The Doctor, which isn't bad at all for a lone pepperpot.

Love & Monsters
- People have described this as RTD's letter to fandom. I think of it as a mirror. Fandom has always been something that people come together over, something that gives people common ground and something to tussle over. Fandom is very much L.I'n'D.A. and although we meet them but briefly we can see elements of fans we have known in those characters. And together, via their various conventions and oddities, they actually become something more than just fans. RTD enjoys fandom just as much as we do, and just as we do sees that it also has flaws.

The story works, too. As does the Monster, and particularly well because it was designed by a Blue Peter viewer (something which has to have been the cause of a few sleepless nights for the production team). But inspiration comes in strange places, because the critter turns out to be a rather useful allegory for either superfans or internet fandom. It's perhaps the quintessential RTD story because it's working away on a number of levels, and because RTD can't resist throwing in a few laughs and a sly comment on The Doctor's character. It also develops Jackie Tyler in interesting directions, all of which is unusual and new for the show. There had never been a story like Love & Monsters - at least in Who's canon - and quite apart from introducing us to Doctor Lite stories it does something else equally important: it gives the fans something else to argue over.

Tooth & Claw
- Scottish werewolves! Scottish Kung Fu Monks! Queen Victoria, armed and dangerous! Every fanboy button I own - and note that I am not a particular fan of Scotland, Kung Fu Monks or werewolves by themselves - pushed in very short order. So how could I not include it?

The Shakespeare Code
- I am a sucker for Shakespeare. I am also a sucker for the likes of Shakespeare In Love, so I was always going to enjoy this. Plus, Martha Jones in Shakespeare's London, a bit of location work at the Globe, some local temporal colour and the Carrionites, whom I rather enjoyed - add up to a fun story. Plus, of course, there's the subtle hint to the kids watching: William Shakespeare was the JK Rowling of his day. Interesting approach.

The other thing is, since The Unquiet Dead, it's become obvious that The Doctor likes writers. Dickens, Shakespeare, Agatha Christie...

Of course, being meta about it one realises that this is writers trying to pimp their craft. And long may they do so! Bloody good idea! As long as he never meets L Ron Hubbard, we're good.

Utopia/The Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords
- If I wanted to be grumpy about it, this is technically not a three parter. But sod that, it's my list. I enjoy everything about this trilogy. The presence of Derek Jacobi is a treat, the arrival of John Sim is another, the presence of Captain Jack (and the resumption of various running gags about Jack) is a third. We get The Master back, we get cannibal hordes, a stolen TARDIS, the Master wins by becoming Prime Minister, marries, conquers The Earth, kills millions of people, beats The Doctor (griefly) AND does a song and dance number on the way past. There's almost too much to cover, too many reasons why this trilogy leads the others for sheer spectacle and awe.

Oh. For the record. Floaty Jesus Doctor? Totally based on scientific study (if not actual results) so, you know, all y'all and the horse you rode in on if you don't like it.

Partners in Crime
- It's a romp. It's fun, slightly silly, so sit back and watch the cast. It works, it's a great way to remind us who Donna is and why we should like her. Catherine Tate is ace, and a good match for David Tennant. Donna, over the course of this story, is almost in SJS territory and that's instantly endearing.

Plus, I just like the lighter touch.

Midnight
- A Donna Light story. Cramped, unnerving, RTD firing on all cylinders, excellent work from the cast in a Night of the Living Dead situation...

It's a relief when it's over. But you can't take your eyes off it when it's on.

Turn Left
- Way, way back in The Edge of Destruction we see an important moment in The Doctor's character development: his decision that his companions are worth trusting. After that, we sort of forget how important they are to him.

This is the story of what happens if The Doctor doesn't have a companion for one dark moment. Oh, we've seen it before (Rose in "Dalek", Sarah Jane in "School Reunion") but this takes us to a pivotal moment and shows us what would have happened if the Doctor and Donna had never met.

What's most interesting is that, in the end, Donna does the typically Doctor Who thing: she redeems herself totally with an act of self sacrifice. It's a powerful and quite moving story, very human, as we rattle through the last couple of years listening as familiar characters fall (we hear the end of Torchwood, the fall of Sarah Jane Smith and the death of Martha Jones in passing) and events take place which would otherwise have not, and we're left with the understanding that Donna's a lot more important than she thinks.

Of course, this is rather undercut by the reappearance of Rose Tyler. Bah.

Remebrance of the Daleks

Back to the start in so many ways: the Doctor vs the Daleks. But this is the 7th Doctor embarking on what is occasionally referred to as the "unfinished business" arc or the equally portentous "Cartmel Masterplan".

I like it because new companion Ace takes center stage and her relationship with a darker, slightly more dangerous Doctor appears. There's a lot to like in this story, particularly the Doctor's cafe chat and the gleeful demolition of a Dalek by Ace wielding a baseball bat.

The ending is weak - The Doctor Kirks a Dalek - and it's got Davros in it, but that's OK for the rant the Doctor goes off on. It's also nice to see the Daleks making an attempt to get back on form.

The Robots of Death
I had to toss a coin between this and Talons of Weng Chiang, and Robots won.

It's a base under siege story, with the twist that the base has already been infiltrated. The 4th Doctor and Leela feature, with some interesting character points from both, but my attention is largely on the crew of the sandminer - who begin to crack up almost before the killings start - and the robots themselves.

There's even a good reason for the villain to be a nutter - and he is, a quality nutter - which helps round out the whole story.

The "D'you want to come with me?" trailer
Listen, it's my list and I can have this in it if I want.
It's the full pre-season trailer with Eccleston and our first look at the Tardis, and that litany of what was to come. It's the single best trailer I have ever seen, for anything, ever, and it sent - and still sends- chills down my spine. It gives me goosebumps. It causes me to say "now what have we here?" and feel like a tiny child on Xmas eve.

It's pure, distilled many times, Doctor Who. If I was ever in a position to give Who writers advice (ha!) then I would point them at that trailer and say "write like it's going to be ushered in by that trailer".

So, technically, not an episode as such but oh lor, what a trailer!

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Insomnia TV

In the last week or so, I haven't been sleeping much and while not sleeping I have been watching TV and catching up on shows I have missed on Hulu.

So. Some reviews.

Heroes is all a bit complicated.

So...the Petrelli family continues with it's twisty ways, totally unable to be in the same place without hating one another. Angela's paralysis is cured in a dreamscape sequence engineered by Matt Parkman; we get the usual stuff about psychosomatic injuries becoming real, and Matt's new girl attempts to save him, and then Arthur "Call me Q" Petrelli shows up. Angela reminds him that deep down inside he still loves her, so Arthur cures her.

Wow. OK, Angela, now remind him that his insane quest to destroy the world is also because you two have had a tiff and...Angela? Angela!! Crap. The show goes on.

So anyway, Ando has been saddled with a Hiro that believes himself to be ten years old (Thanks to Arthur "Magneto's a lass" Petrelli).

And then at the end of the episode, everyone picks sides. The teams are:

Team Arthur
Sylar
Flint Gordon, the big dumb lunk that hurls fire.
Mohinder
Ellie Bishop
Knox
Tracy Strauss

Team Angela
- just about everyone else.

Except Hiro and Ando. So far. They used to work for Arthur, but quit.

And then in the next episode, things get stranger. An Eclipse happens and suddenly everyone loses their powers. Oh noes! This provides one really decent scene, in which Matt Parkman refuses to believe he can win his girl back without his powers and Hiro pelts him with corncobs until he smartens up.

The other thing that happens here is Sylar changes sides roughly eighty-seven times. Is he playing a complex game of his own? Is he really this easy to manipulate? Is he just a mass of conflicted broodingness? I think he's up to something, and it's amusing to see him turn into a badass (with the line "I hate heroes") just before the eclipse happens - during which Noah, the man with the Horn Rimmed Glasses and real tough guy, dislocates Sylar's shoulder and makes the badass cry like a little girl.

Claire gets shot, Arthur "Omnipotent" Petrelli makes an elementary deductive mistake based on more prescient art, and the Petrelli boys end up on Haiti arguing with each other about who the bigger jerk is. Right now, lads, I would have someone Zombie you and be done with the pair of you.

Onward to

Fringe

The premise for this show is not simple.

FBI Agent Olivia Dunham is recruited to investigate odd events that seem to form part of something called The Pattern - which suggest that someone is performing experiments on the world using rather extreme fringe science.

Olivia is pretty good stuff, actually. She's sensible, rational, passionate and clever. She's played by Anna Torv.

Olivia's team consists of a Mad Scientist, Walter Bishop. Walter (played by John Noble) has been in a lunatic asylum for the last 17 years.

If you watch this show for now other reason, do watch it for John Noble's performance. He's fab. I love Walter Bishop, who can segue from bewildered non-sequiters to towering rage in moments, and who's dialog you have to pay close attention to. The rest of the cast are more or less forgetable (apart from Astrid Fenyman, the assistant, who is a background character that needs more lines and more of a part in the show).

The ideas presented are firmly in the X-Files territory, but instead of having a spooky explanation, everything here is rooted in Science. Although there are nods to things being Odd, like the rather well done Classic MiB who shows up in the epsiode The Arrival. This is no Will Smith MiB, this is one from the annals of the Mothman reports, and the early days of UFology, and it made me rejoice to see it.

I love the show. There, I said it, and recommend it to you.

Next?

The Sarah Connor Chronicles

I wouldn't have watched this at all, but Summer Glau is in it.
Anyway.
It turns out to be pretty good.

Summer Glau, "River" from Firefly, is a Terminator programmed by John Connor to protect his younger self. The show talks about Emergent Behaviour - which is when a machine that is programmed to learn does something outside the normal range of what it should do - and then uses Cameron to demonstrate this.

There is a moment where Sarah Connor sees a tortoise on it's back. She turns it over. Later, Cameron asks John why she did this and John tells her that good humans like to help when they can, and that it would have been cruel to leave the tortoise to die. Shortly thereafter, Cameron beats the pogies out of a former FBI agent while John interrogates him. Once the beating is done, Cameron looks at the agent, who is on his back in the remains of a table, and turns him onto his front before walking away.

The show is full of little moments like this, and Summer Glau is very good at them. The rest of the cast are...more or less what you'd expect.

Lena Headey has the unenviable task of playing Sarah Connor; the character is basically nuts anyway, tortured by what she believes the future holds, and has forced herself to become a steely killer. This conflicts with what the character really wants to be, which is a mother to John. It's not an easy role, especially since Sarah Connor is what you get when a woman tries to be a man - or in this case, as we saw in Terminator 2, a Terminator.

Thomas Dekker plays John Connor, and it's another one of those difficult roles to carry off; the initials JC are not a coincidence. He's going to be mankind's last hope, but when we meet him he's fifteen and already has the attitude of a combat veteran. John's character is very much darker and more troubled than the John Connor we have seen in movies, but again this seems to work well.

Watching John and Sarah in conflict about how life is to be lived is interesting, and forms part of the show's emotional conflict. There are other characters, some from the future and some not, and an interesting sideline: Shirely Manson is apparently playing a T-1001, that happens to be running a company which looks like it might want to create Skynet.

It's worth picking an episode or two to watch, simply to work out whether the show's mix of sly commentary about the future and explosions is for you. Again, I like it enough to have caught up on Season 2, but I'm not quite sure if I like the show as a whole. I shall watch more.

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Heroes, Season 3

I have to admit, I want to like Heroes simply because it's a show about superheroes and, for at least a season, seemed to be doing it properly.

I think it probably says a great deal that my favourite comic books were V for Vendetta, Watchmen, The Dark Knight Returns et al - fundamentally, stories about someone very unusual in a fairly ordinary world.

Heroes had that going for it, but as the population of people with powers multiplies you run into the issue of spending too little time with the characters that matter.

For example, Season three now has storylines running about Suresh, Hiro and Ando, Matt Parkman and a new female character that Hiro believes is his nemesis, about three escapeess from Level 5, HRG, the Petrelli brothers, Sylar, Mama Petrelli, Claire's adoptive mother, Claire's biological mother, another prescient painter (and Matt, and Hiro), the character played by Malcolm MacDowell, whom I have probably spelled all wrong, and a bunch of other stuff that I'm having difficulty wrapping my head around let alone caring about.

The individual stories are interesting - Sylar appears to be on a redemption arc, which could be an exceptional story, and Peter has learned Sylar's ability so now he also shares Sylar's twisted hunger. This, in itself, is cool. At last, we get to see something of what it must be like to be Sylar, but from inside the head of someone we already know. How will Sylar's demonic need to feed affect Peter? Well...

...it gets him put in a medical coma while we trot off to find out what the other eleventy plot threads are doing. This is infuriating.

Likewise, the early promise of Hiro and Ando's tale - which stems from one of those "the character has to be a moron for the next five minutes in order for this to work" situations - is on rough ground because so little time is spent with them. If you missed it, basically a time travelling Hiro sees his own apparent death at the hands of Ando. This is a wonderful idea, because the two had been inseperable and worked well together. Instead of drawing this out, teasing the breakdown in their friendship or leading us down the path that leads to either Hiro going bad and Ando taking him out, or Ando going bad, it seems to have been taken care of in about three episodes.

Damn!

There was even room for a twist there, which might have already been foreshadowed.

So, having gone from something approaching Marvel's "New Universe" experiment, we're almost in X-Men territory where everyone appears to have some superpower and no one therefore appears all that special or interesting.

It could be better. It should be better. I watch the online reruns instead of kicking the kids off the sofa and making it Monday night viewing, which should in itself be telling.

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