Doctor Who - the End of Time figures

Just announced new Doctor Who action figures based on the final two part tale that saw the end of David Tennant's tenure as the Doctor, there's a set of End of Time figures coming soon, with the injured Tennant Doctor, the blonde Master, Timothy Dalton's impessive, be-robed Time Lord and - wait for it! - the first Matt Smith Doctor Who action figure, with him right after the regeneration, still in the previous incarnation's clothes.







And on the fun side there's also a new Time Squad set of Doctor Who figures coming, with the collection coming together to assemble a Master figure. Funky!

Doctor Poo

Viz offers up a scatalogical take on our favourite Time Lord with Doctor Poo, traversing time and space desperately trying to find a quiet loo to take a dump, thwarted at every turn by Cybermen, Sea Devils and Daleks. I especially like the 'handicapped' symbol on Davros' personal loo. Vulgar and crude (it begins with a farting version of the classic Baker-era Doctor Who theme) but funny (via SF Crowsnest):

Chief Scout

Bear Grylls has become the new Chief Scout for the UK. Presumably he will be able to instruct kids on how to fake television shows and pretend you're sleeping the night in that desert you've been crossing with only a rattlesnake for a pillow while actually you and the crew are straight off to an air conditioned motel as soon as the camera's off. And is a man who kills animals just for the sake of making a TV programme really a good role model for kids? Seriously, the fact that he kills animals as part of this show disgusts me. You want to show survival skills, stop biting the heads off live frogs, you bastard, drop your white ass down into Compton and live on the street there for a week without being shot or knived. Oh well, the kids can at least enjoy making fun of his name, I suppose. Distract them from how silly their uniform looks.

Gaza, Gazza

Given the awful events as Hamas fires rockets as Israeli towns and Israelis shoot the hell out of towns in the Gaza strip I can't help but think it was perhaps not the best time for a TV channel to air a programme called 'Surviving Gazza'. Of course, it was about the troubled former England football player Paul 'Gazza' Gascoine and not the plight of Palestinian refugees squeezed into a small sliver of land, but even so the timing was rather unfortunate.

Oliver Postgate

Very sad to hear about the passing of Oliver Postgate; Noggin the Nog, Ivor the Engine, the Clangers, Bagpuss, all wonderful pieces of hand-made animation put together in an old cowshed in the finest tradition of the great British eccentric. And all lovely parts of that half imagined, half remembered childhood memory, part of the good childhood memories along with other rose tinted nostalgic memories which tell you that when you were young summers were always long and sunny, winters always came with deep snow to sledge on. Basic animation to be sure, but in the long ago time before multi channeled TV, the web or digital animation these were as essential to generations of British kids as their copy of the Beano. Another little piece of my childhood tumbles away...

Cool Doctor Who figures

I'm seriously liking the latest Doctor Who action figures range. You have no idea how hard it is to resist the urge to buy more of them when I see them at work! I couldn't resist adding a Tom Baker figure (complete with his manic grin) from the Classic Who range to stand next to my David Tennant figure on my desk though. Yes, I know, I'm a big kid, so what? One of the best things about being grown up is being able to buy yourself some fun toys from time to time. And I know my friend's wee boys will go mad for these too, think I know what to buy for at least two of my Christmas presents this year...

Magnum, PI

Can anyone enlighten me as to why I imagined a thrash metal version of the theme to old heavily moustached cult show Magnum PI? Its not like I've seen it anywhere recently, I don't know where it came from, but for some reason when one of my colleagues shoved on some very loud rock after closing time while they were tidying the store I suddenly imagined the growling singer and thrash rock they had on covering the theme from Magnum PI.

Primeval

The penultimate episode of ITV's Primeval comes up this Saturday and its penned by the very fine novelist, screenwriter and comics scribe Paul Cornell, who was also responsible for some of the finest episodes of the new Doctor Who - "Father's Day" and "Human Nature". We were lacking time for a full-length interview but I couldn't let it go past without marking it and Paul kindly took some time out to answer a few questions for the Forbidden Planet blog, should you fancy a read before the episode airs on Saturday evening.

New Mythbusters!!

Yay, new series of Mythbusters on Discovery!!! BBC2 showed a cut down version for a while but it never seemed to get going there, which is a shame as Beeb 2 is usually good with cult shows, but luckily it is available in the UK on Discovery. It has to be one of the best geek-friendly shows around, its fun, interesting, main presenters Jamie and Adam are a great straight guy/funny guy double act and as a bonus we get Kari Byron, the thinking geek's pinup. Everything from rude myths like does a lit match get rid of the fart smell (leading Adam to have to build a rig to capture his bottom trumpets) to refloating a sunken boat using ping pong balls or trying out Archimede's infamous 'death ray'. Brilliant stuff. The only thing that could be better is if they did a motor myths special in conjunction with Top Gear.

Rockford

Can anyone tell me why I spent all day yesterday with the theme from the Rockford Files stuck in my head? I was humming in the shower first thing and realised it was the Rockford Files; thereafter it was in my head all day long. I haven't seen it repeated anywhere recently or seen any old film on TV with James Garner, so gods know why it suddenly leapt out of the murky depths of my brain (I don't care to look down into the recesses too much, I'm not sure what I'd find in there).

Heroes

If like me you've been following Heroes and thinking it is one of the best things on TV right now (whether you are a comics fan or not) you've probably been wondering when they might start creating some tie-in material to go with it. Well, DC has a graphic novel collection coming up soon which collects the comics material created online to go along with the series, available in two different cover editions, one by Jim Lee and one by Alex Ross, so if you're trying to think on something for a Heroes fan for a present, here's a big, fat, superpowered hint!

Comics Britannia

Next Monday (the tenth) sees the start of a season of programmes on BBC4 about comics, with the centrepiece being three one-hour programmes on British comics, from the launch of the Dandy and Beano in the late 1930s through to the present day, with a nice array of contributors from Leo Baxendale (creator of Minnie the Minx and the Bash Street Kids among others) to Bryan Talbot and Alan Moore, with the three programmes comprising The Fun Factory (which looks at the kid's comics), Boy and Girls (which looks at - well, comics for boys and girls like the Eagle, Bunty etc) and Anarchy in the UK where comics get nastier and grittier (and often ruder!) with 2000AD, Deadline, V For Vendetta and Viz.


(a panel of Leo Baxendale's Bash Street Kids, (c) DC Thomson)

I first heard about this last year when they were looking for suggestions for comics, characters and creators to try and include and in a stoke of luck I was offered preview discs of the series by the Beeb (and obviously I wasn't going to say no!). I've been looking forward to this for a fair while and was delighted to see that it was indeed excellent - and before you think oh, I'm not really a comics fan, you might want to take a look because it has been made to be accessible and enjoyable to anyone, not just comics geeks like me and there is also a nice wave of nostalgic pleasure to be had from it; after all just about everyone over the age of 30 in the UK would have read comics at some point growing up. I've posted a review (or preview, I suppose) up on the Forbidden Planet blog, along with a Q&A with Alastair Laurence, the series producer and director about the making of the series (Alastair also worked on the brilliant Animation Nation a couple of years back).

The ads I'd like to see

Adverts - some are funny, some are stupid, rarely do they make me want to buy something but boy, how often do some of them grate so much you dive for the remote to change channels? Except when you're in the cinema and stuck with them. When I can't get away from them in situations like that I stay sane by amusing myself with the version I'd like to see. Top of the annoying list has to be that little shouting twat Barry Arsehead who does the Cillit Bang ads. Cleaning product ads are often the lamest of all (especially since they often use the same footage across Europe and dub in appropriate language voice over which doesn't match mouth movements), but the Cillit one is made even more annoying as this wee arse struts onto camera and bellows. It's TV, you twonk, we can hear you perfectly alright without shouting. Quite why a short man shouting is supposed to make a product attractive to us is beyond me. I long to see a Cillit Bang ad where they strap that eejit down, force feed him five bottle of Cillit Bang, insert a fuse down his throat, light and run away - Bang! And the dirt is gone! Now there's an ad I'd watch.

The mobile phone 'flex' adverts too bug me, especially the one that starts with the guy chattering away on his cell phone as he gets ready to go out, then gee, take the stairs or lift, no he goes out the balcony of his block and drops to the plaza below which becomes like a trampoline, flexing to allow him to land safely. I understand the ad is trying to say, look, we make our service flexible to suit you (which is bollocks, as we all know) but I can't help but see it as a sign of the lazy and selfish attitude of many today: get everything out of my way, I want it my way, right now, sod off, me, me, me (the other phone ad where buildings and vehicles are all folded down flat to get out of the way of the hip young things illustrates this perfectly too - visually funny image, but if you think about it what happens to the people in those buildings???). The oh-so-cool guy doesn't even look before he leaps; what if he landed on someone? Or even if he missed them what if someone was walking nearby when he makes the ground ripple, causing them to fall over and get hurt?

Yeah, I know, you're thinking, Joe, don't take is so seriously, its just an ad, which is true on one level but how often have you been bumped into by some twonk who is constantly talking on their phone and ignoring everything and everyone around them as they do, walking into them, knocking things over, not even pausing in their conversation even when dealing with someone like a sales assistant in a shop or the driver when boarding a bus (so bloody ignorant). A general symptom of the increasing selfishness and rudeness we see everyday in society. So I want to see this ad where the numpty jumps out of his window, plummets earthwards and suddenly he runs out of credit and hits the hard, stone plaza and does an impression of a giant pizza. Or he loses signal as he falls with a similar result. Or he lands safely again but the rippling, elastic flex of he ground as he lands caused someone to fall over and get hurt, then they sue him and the cell phone company for damages. And I have to admit there is a perverse part of me that almost wants to see some stupid idiot trying to replicate this ad in real life, be a great one for the Darwin Awards.

And while we're at it, what the hell is with the constant use of faded-out colours and clothes styles which are used to try and create a 1970s film footage effect in so many ads? Cell phone ads are the worst for this. Once or twice is fine, but so many now do it I find I hate even the appearance of this stylistic.

Citroen, alive with technology as the French car suddenly becomes a Transformer robot and runs down the street. What happened to the driver when this happened? Don't you just want to see this ad where the car transforms and there's a wet scrunching sound as the driver find out what its like to become pate? Actually I don't mind the Citroen ad too much, it looks quite cool, but what does annoy me is that lack of internal logic to the idea: I can suspend disbelief and go with a car which transforms into a robot for an ad, but really, what do the ad makers think happens to the occupants of the vehicle? If they ain't horribly crushed they will at least be terrified and probably terrified of all motor vehicles for life after that.

And then there's the ads that do what ads do best, try and pray on our fears of things not being quite right with our bodies. Don't let diarrhoea ruin your day, take these pills. Then the other way round, don't feel constipated, take this! Talk about being full of shit... Tell ya what, instead of popping an instant-fix pill as our modern, super-fast society demands and try actually eating right you stupid bastard! Got the runs? Eat decent, balanced foods and wash your hands before cooking rather than pop pills. Bound up? Again eat some decent food you numpty. Decent fibre or if all else fails a good curry and Guinness.

Truth and lies and videotape

The BBC admits a trailer for a programme on the queen was re-edited to give the wrong impression, TV phone in quizzes turn out to be falsified and fraudulent, Discovery has admitted that Bear Grylls' survival programmes aren't as authentic as they seem, he often sleeps in a nice motel and not under some desert rock with a lizard as we thought (personally I was more pissed off with seeing him killing a frog by biting its head off to then eat it. Survival trick maybe, but killing an animal like that isn't necessary for a bloody TV programme, is it?)

... Gee, guess what? TV isn't real! Even reality shows aren't real. So why are we surprised? Yes, they were attempted to create a misleading impression, but all texts, every single text any person creates, from a simple photograph to a TV programme or film is informed by choices about how it is structured to give a particular impression, consciously or unconsciously; in media studies it is referred to as the paradigmatic and syntagmatic elements of the text, the selection and combination of elements desired to give a certain effect. The big surprise here is that anyone is really surprised that even factual programmes aren't the solid, objective, truthful beam of light we might like to think. Everything is edited, everything even before being edited was decided to be shot in a certain way with certain light with certain people, places... What you see is only half the story at best and if a lot of folks have forgotten that - as it seems from the surprise - then it is a good lesson to relearn. Mind you, it does make you think about how we decide to base our opinions on anything and also consider just what is truth and what is real?

Blue Peter

What is the world coming to when you can't even trust Blue Peter to play straight and true with viewers? With the other recent scandals over TV premium rate phone-in shows I've mostly been of the opinion that, yeah, TV companies are blatantly ripping off viewers, but anyone stupid enough to keep calling at those rates frankly is a fecking idiot and deserves to be ripped off. But Blue Peter? Okay, they weren't making tons of money from a premium rate number, but they did lie to millions of kids. They have now apologised for an 'error of judgement' but I think the fact they kept quiet about this since November until a member of the public exposed it means an apology is pretty weak and rather insincere - only apologising after not only lying to kids but keeping your mouth shut about it like it never happened for months until you are caught out is something else again and an apology doesn't cut it. I think the only way Blue Peter can make it up to a traumatised nation is to have presenter Konnie Huq in the tiniest bikini in the world doing an episode on jello-wrestling.