TV Show Chatter Thread

[cmdrajd]

WTF to what exactly? The season 2 finale? That was a bit interesting. Just a warning, the beginning of season three will require a pause button. You'll see why when you get there.

[Mad Lensman]

Red Dwarf Indeedy.....!

Season II - III - IV are the best in british sci-fi comedy - after that things get... well, weird....! (And not in a traksy way either),.... Enjoy!

[borgcrazy]

Well, since we're on the subject of British comedies, I just finished watching Spaced on DVD last night.
All I can say is, Simon Pegg is a freaking genius. I know, I know, he wasn't the only one involved in the creation of Spaced, but he's the only reason I plugged the first disc in. I loved it, and there were even times I forgot it was a British sitcom. My only problem was I had a Firefly moment at the end; I found myself fervently wishing it lasted longer...
Still, for the two seasons it DID last, it was great.

[b-guy]

I meant WTF in general. The whole show is just...wacked!

[Mad Lensman]

Try "The IT Crowd".....

Then you too will understand just how seriously f'ed up the british comedy scene is.....

[b-guy]

I recently started watching Lexx again during my study hours. I'd forgotten how strange that show was. On the other hand, there were some really good moments. How many series managed to destroy an entire universe, followed by two planets that turned out to be the afterlife and then finishing off by blowing Earth to pieces? Given their current bullshit, seeing the CRTC building in Ottawa destroyed was a highlight. The principle villians of seasons 3 and 4, Prince (Nigel Bennett), was especially entertaining. He was evil, but in such a fun way.

I especially love the series finale, 'Yo Way Yo', even if it's not exactly a happy ending.

[cmdrajd]

Doctor Who - The End of Time

I'll warn all of you in advance that this is more of a rant than a review. Also, if you're not familiar with Doctor Who, particularly the current David Tennant incarnation of the Doctor, most of this will be meaningless to you.

Now then...

I already posted a long post in my blog lamenting the departure of David Tennant from Doctor Who, so I'm not going to rehash that here. I loved his version of the character, and I thought the last 10-15 minutes of Part Two of The End of Time was a touching goodbye to the Tenth Doctor.

It's the almost two hours leading up to it that I have a problem with. You are writing the final adventure of a Doctor who now rivals and often beats Tom Baker's Fourth Doctor in terms of popularity and this is all you can come up with? Really, Russell T. Davies? REALLY? I have the greatest appreciation to RTD for bringing the show back in 2005 and producing several years of fantastic episodes. Also, he was the one who cast Tennant and worked to create the Tenth Doctor's personality that I have enjoyed so much.

Why then is Ten's last story (which is also RTD's last story, since he's handing the show running over to Steven Moffat) an adventure where the Doctor's involvement has almost no bearing on what happens? What does the Doctor actually do in this story? He finds out that the Master is coming back, so he races back to Earth. He's too late to stop the return and is really just a bystander as the Master is taken into custody by the rich guy's goons (Sorry. His character name is escaping me.). Ten goes on to have some very nice scenes with Wilf and then break into the rich guy's house, but he's too late to stop the Master from putting his plan into action and only ends up getting captured. The escape to the cactus alien's (as Wilf calls them) ship and the subsequent battle to get back to the rich guy's house is just so much noise. It means nothing.

The only possible impact Ten has is in this next sequence where the Time Lords, led by the Lord President James Bond (Timothy Dalton), show up through the conduit they've established with the help of the Master to escape the time lock. They undo the Master's plan in a matter of seconds. Again, Ten has no role in any of this. The only thing Ten accomplishes is getting the Time Lords and the Master talking long enough for the Master to realize that he's been used, but I have no reason to believe that the Master couldn't have figured this out on his own. Even if we say that the Master wouldn't have figured it out, we are left the sum total of Ten's useful actions in his final story boiling down to talking somebody else into doing something (I'm skipping his sacrifice to save Wilf, since that happens after the main plot of the story is over). It's a fairly pointless storyline that wastes excellent performances from Tennant, John Simm, and Bernard Cribbins.

What makes this even worse is that The End of Time comes directly after The Waters of Mars, another story where the Doctor stands around not doing much of anything until the very end, and even then his involvement changes almost nothing. He spends most of that episode saying he can't get involved in this historical event and generally being no help at all. I get the lesson he's supposed to learn about the danger of thinking he's all-powerful, but it's a long and annoying way to go to get there. And in the end, the lesson is meaningless and has no bearing on The End of Time. All the more frustrating is the fact that they didn't even do a full season in 2009. There were a grand total of four episodes including the second part of The End of Time, which aired on New Year's Day 2010. Four episodes and in three of them the Doctor is practically a useless bystander.

Ten and David Tennant deserved a far better send-off.

[Mad Lensman]

I'm just waiting to see what happens when they get to 12..... (For the uninitiated a Timelord can only regenerate 12 times.....! Or so original canon Dr. Who has us believe!) So..... I think they're running out of incarnations rapidly!

[b-guy]

Caprica

Took a while for me to sit down and watch this. The pilot came out months ago, episode two more recently.

From the creator of the re-imaged Battlestar Galactica, Caprica details the events leading to the creation of the first Cylons. But the story is more of a family drama than a sci-fi show. You've got the Adama's on one side (William is a little kid) and the Greysons (Greystones?) on the ohter. Both lost loved ones to a terrorist attack. The interesting stuff comes up when Greyson discovers that his daughter created a computerized version of herself. The debate and ehtics over the creation of AI, especially with respect to once-living people comes up late in the pilot, and I suspect it's gonna come up a lot more.

I don't want to give away many spoilers. But I will say that this show gives a really interesting look at the human civilization of BSG. You've got religious conflict, some big ethical dilemmas, and of couse all the behaviours that led to the Cylon war. The way some of the humans treat technology, with an arrogant master/slave relationship, is showing even though Cylons have barely been created. We also see many concepts that foreshadow the way the human Cylons behave in BSG. Their belief in one God, for example.

I was skeptical of Caprica when I first heard of the concept behind it, but I've got to say that the first two episodes have me very, very intrigued.

[Mad Lensman]

I'm pretty much the same about Caprica - Just finished episode 2. I'm not sure about the whole 50 years before the holocaust thing, I get the feeling from both BSG (TOS) and BSG(NEW) that the Cylon war with humanity had been raging for longer than 50 years - Also, although there was a single shot in Ep2 with a large space going vessel lifting off in the background of the main shot, I get the feeling we're supposed to believe that the colonies are not as technologically advanced in thtime frame of Caprica as they are in the BSG series (BOTH), so I think the whole series may feel rushed and thrown together. Just my personal opinion.

Other than that, I'm looking forward to the series expanding on the basic premise of the cylon creation. Looks interesting.