Posts Tagged ‘Sci-Fi’

How to enrage the Internet Pt.1: Re-design a Dalek

This Dalek appears with its ‘election special’ counterparts  in this week’s edition of the Radio Times. There has been no official confirmation that this new ’2010 Dalek’ is the genuine article but already the Internet is hailing this new design as the worst thing to happen in the world, ever! We’ll just have to wait until the broadcast of this week’s episode, Victory of The Daleks, to find out if the world does actually come to an end or not.

Unlike the rest of the Internet, I quite like the new-look Dalek.

I thought that I would wait for the second episode of the new series of Doctor Who to air before I passed any judgment. The first episode of a new series Doctor Who always focuses on introducing the new characters rather than entertaining the viewer with a good story; it isn’t until the second episode of the series that the we get the exposition out of the way and learn how event through the series may unfold.

I needn’t have waited. The series opener was fantastic!

In this fifth (or thirty-first to be precise) series Matt Smith is the eleventh Doctor, Karen Gillan is the companion, the TARDIS has been redecorated, the theme tune has been updated and the show has a new head writer/producer in the form of Steven Moffat. That’s all you need to know, that and the fact that it is bloody brilliant!

Matt Smith’s doctor looks too young for the role, looks too weird, acts and dresses as an old physics teacher (one that can run and jump around), pulls silly faces, is clumsy, doesn’t like apples and is possibly channelling Patrick Troughton. Everything that the Doctor (who is an alien after all) should be.

Karen Gillan’s companion, Amy Pond, is Scottish, a kiss-o-gram, sassy, sexy and possibly as mad as a sackful of snakes – everything a Doctor’s companion should be.

The TARDIS has regenerated into a time-spanning amalgamation of useful junk and bric-brac, like a high-tech antique shop powered by a nuclear reactor with see-through floors. Everything a… you get it by now.

So everything has changed. Or has it? It’s still modern Who yet somehow more like a fairytale, possibly due to the bright colours of the show’s appearance on BBC HD. In recent interviews head writer Steven Moffat admits that Doctor Who IS made for children and is nothing but a fairytale. He adds that although a fairytale sounds weak and insipid, fairytales are actually scary, dark and terrifying, and everybody loves those. As someone who grew-up watching Tom Baker’s Doctor I can agree with this, but I’ll admit that in my young childish mind I was more scared of Baker’s face looming out of the time vortex in the title sequence than I was of the Daleks!

Speaking of title sequences, I seem to be the only person on the Internet who likes the new version of the theme music.

Doctor Who is back, and better than ever!

The new series of Doctor Who starts this weekend on BBC1. I think there may be some sort of religious festival taking place too.

It was back in the mid-nineties that I discovered I was short-sighted. It was when I was at a Star Trek convention with my cousin Samantha.

That’s right, you read correctly, a Star Trek convention.

I discovered that I had poor vision when we were sat in a hot, sweaty conference room with a few hundred fellow Trekkies at the Leicester Holiday Inn. We were sat listening to various luminaries giving entertaining talks about their time in the Star Trek universe. The charming George ‘Mr. Sulu’ Takei was present, as was the rather witty Max Grodénchik (Deep Space Nine’s half-wit Ferengi ‘Rom’) who had managed to win the audience’s adulation with a comedic re-enactment of Ferengi mating rituals.

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If you haven’t seen the new Star Trek movie I suggest you do so immediately. If you have seen the new Star Trek movie, read on…

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