chesneycat

This should be free of spoilers....
It was quite an interesting strategy on the Beeb's part to only show a single, limited scene in their adverts for this series, and we were a little wary going in.  The opening made good use of the blue filters, and seeing bits of London float across the screen upside-down gave it a nicely atmospheric intro.  Then we meet Alex, and we see (if you hadn't already figured it out from the previously leaked info on the show) that the writers have taken things up a notch in terms of the meta-plot.  Alex Drake is taking her daughter to school, and she's in possession of the notes and ramblings of Sam Tyler. She knows what he believes, and that gives her some knowledge (albeit flawed) of what she's up against when the plot takes its inevitable turn towards the eighties.  Getting her there... well, I won't go into the details, except to say that they chose their Bowie title track very well indeed.  [Jez didn't spot the lyrics when they first appeared by the river, but they're quite glaring if you're more familiar with the song than he is.]
 
What IS immediately clear is that they're not simply retreading the same old ground with this show.  You can believe what you want about how real the past is, and how much is mere subconscious structure.  I'm leaning towards the latter, because the characters come across very differently in some subtle and not-so-subtle ways.  Hunt's charisma has been upped substantially - he never did anything for me as a viewer in Life on Mars, but seen through the lens of Drake's psyche, her fascination with the man and the tropes she sees in him and the others...well. The dynamic between them is oozing, and while I doubt the plausibility I can't fault the acting.  Overall, I'd say the show has got an internal feel like damn good fanfic.  Same characters, same type of plot, but very much observed/scripted/designed/created by a different personality in the form of Alex Drake.

Some complaints - Jez thought that they were trying too hard with all the eighties paraphernalia.  Brash, garish, obvious, stereotyped.  Part of it could just be the opening-episode culture-shock... but it's VERY different to the washed-out feel of seventies Manchester.  Again, this makes me lean further towards the 'it's all in her head!' interpretation.  That's one reason why I don't think this show is going to end happily, except perhaps in the bittersweet, self-recognising end that is as poignant as it is painful.  But maybe not.  All the same, looking at what Drake thinks of why she's there, what she has to do... I don't expect her to rewrite history.  Nuh-uh.

Memorable moments - ooooh... the clown! There'll have been nightmares across Britain last night.  Shame they couldn't get the original voice for George, but Zippy came across as freakily as ever.  Drake realising that she's doing a Tyler and trying to figure out what's going on, and where it leaves her... Spine-tingling!
 
Edit to add - I'm not the only person who made the connection to 'this is LOM fanfic by Alex Drake".

Laser-equipped battling helicopters are NOT boys toys, dammit!

This really winds me up.  I'm fed up of seeing the supermarket toy aisles divided by gender, I'm fed up of everything aimed at girls being pink, and I'm fed up of the lack of anything interesting on offer to both girls and women aside from fashion or shopping.  I hate the advertising stereotypes, I hate the all-smoking, all-boozing pregnant Kerry fucking Katona and her interminable Iceland ads, I hate the emasculation of men (except when they're selling me diet coke or chocolate), and I hate the fact that we're all meant to sit comfortably in our narrow, boring, squalid little lives, thinking of nothing but what we can put on hubby's credit card rather than actually getting out and having a life!

[...and breathe...]

Yeah, this is why I watch a lot of BBC telly.  Less adverts.

But I did see something that initially looked rather refreshing between the two halves of last night's excellent Avatar episode on Nick Toons.  A racing circuit, aimed at girls. Yes, it was pink.  Yes, it was part of the Polly Pocket empire.  Yes, it's shockingly badly made, and wouldn't last five minutes with an average kid. 

And worse, it comes with the following description:

"Wanna go to the mall? I’ll race ya! If anyone understands a girl’s passion for needing to shop immediately, it’s Polly Pocket and her friend Lila. And this racetrack set is just the thing to get them to the mall in record time."

*sigh*

On the plus side, you can get dozens of different cars (purely for accessorising purposes, naturally *rolls eyes*), and it's still a race track.

But what the fuck is wrong with playing with a racetrack that actually looks high-octane?  I got proper cars to play with as a kid, not that pink tat!  Even my sister's Barbie car was a decent shade of RED, a proper car-shaped convertible rather than a frilled pink monstrosity that even Penelope Pitstop wouldn't be seen dead driving.  [Now there was a character that appreciated geeky gadgetry!].  Yeah, I also played with My Little Ponies, and Barbies, and She-ra characters... but at least they didn't spend their time shopping!  The Pony Collective were performing artistes, who put on every west-end musical we'd ever heard the score of (Phantom was a particular favourite... one of my ponies did a fantastic Carlotta).  The Barbies were towering Greek Goddesses, wreaking all kinds of havoc on the LEGO civilisations beneath their lofty Olympian cupboard drawer.  And the She-ra characters?  Well, they got up to all manner of outdoor adventures, exploring the garden wilderness.  Enough to give Action Man a run for his money, and better groomed besides.

And yes, we raced our cars.  We built our own tracks for them out of whatever junk we could find in the garage.  We attached parachutes to them and launched them out of windows.  We never once did anything as lame as visiting the mall.  [Because seriously, who wants to go shopping with mum when you could be at home playing with your kid sister?]

I want my battling helicopter, and I want it armed with a class-4 laser. Then I'm going to send it aloft for as long as its feeble batteries will last, to fry teeny-tiny holes in the next gender-stereotyped toy I see....

• Chesney's doing much better today!  He's still wobbly, but the anti-inflamatories and antibiotics have boosted his appetite enormously.  I think he got through four packs of meat and a bowl of biscuits yesterday... normally, he only manages a couple.  Given how skinny he is, this is a Good Thing.

• Today, astro-ph (the astrophysics pre-print server) has provided me with my first entry for "Incomprehensible sentence of the week".

"Using ab initio cosmological Eulerian adaptive mesh refinement radiation hydrodynamical calculations, we discuss how very massive stars start the process of cosmological reionization."

And no, it doesn't mean much more to me than it does to you.

• Ah, first year undergrads!  Without fail, there's always (at least) one every year who thinks that it's warmer in summer because the Earth is closer to the Sun.  For the umpteenth time, NO!

• In other news, I have a job interview! I'm off to Heidelberg in mid/late November.  Fingers crossed!

• Finally... we went to see Stardust last night. Wow.  Yet another reason to love Neil Gaiman.  Yeah, it was all rather predictable, but that's not the point.  It's a fairy tale, and I know the genre inside out.  Of course you're going to get all the usual traditional elements, but it's the execution of them that makes the story.  What does the tale tell you about human morals, and does it do so in a unique and interesting way? Aside from the quality of the film itself, Jez managed to identify half the cast of Green Wing... Mmm... must watch that again and drool over the delightful love triangles, and giggle at the sheer randomness of the Heron incident...
  

...only this time, it's not mine. But it's so good, I simply had to share it with you all, even if a substantial part of it is effectively just an advert for Dawkins' new output.

The Rant


Oh - if you miss the Professor Yaffle reference, I'm posting an episode of Bagpuss next.

Finally, we reached the season finale.

Spoiler-free comments...

Well.  I have to say, they resolved the ending in exactly the manner I'd been expecting since day one.  So, no surprises for me.  But it's not the destination that counts, it's how you get there, and the getting there was very, very good indeed. To me, it's the depth of characterisation that carries this series, not the powers or effects or any of the usual sci-fi elements. Everyone was utterly awesome in their own unique parts, especially in the concluding episode.  Sylar was more psychotic than ever, the Petrellis more Petrelli, and so on.

I could watch the whole thing again.  And I expect I will.

Wednesday 25th, 9pm, BBC2.  Mark your diaries.

I've been meaning to write something about this for a while, and now that the series has ended, I guess now's as good a time as any.  Really, what I want to talk about is the ending - I'll try and avoid spoilers as best I can, but I doubt I'll manage it, so don't read on if you don't want to guess the ending.

This is a story about what happens when you forget to set your VCR, or you're just too trusting when you read your TV guide.  For the second week this autumn, we forgot to either watch or record "Lost" on sunday night.  I don't know whether Sky repeat it on any of their other extra channels, but we're stuck with Sky One, and thankfully, their listings feature a repeat showing of each week's episode on a wednesday night.


What those listings don't highlight very clearly (if at all) is the fact that this is isn't "Lost", epsiode whatever.  Oh no.  This is "Lost: episode blah [for the visually impaired]".  Which is great and fantastic, really, and I can't argue with sharing this show with people who can't see it clearly themselves.  But in the days of interactive telly, why, Why, WHY can they not give us a little-red-button function option to turn the bloody voiceover off?  And why can't they make these options available at the same press of a button for all programs they show?  I mean, if a blind Lost fanatic forgets to set their video to record the show, what chance do they have to see a repeat?


Okay, I know, I'm just whining.

But I defy anyone to sit through one of these episodes without having a totally different viewing experience to what they'd expect.  Just imagine it, for a brief moment.  Amidst all the drama (such as it is), you have a continuous commentary from a woman speaking in a classic RP accent that even the Beeb would be proud of.  Last time, we had such gems as "Sawyer gazes longingly at Kate's shapely naked back through the bars of his cage", and "Jack slumps down in the corner of his cell, and glares at the CCTV camera."  It's hilarious, yes.  But I'd rather do without.