The best drink in existence is the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster: the drink's effect is like having your brains smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick - or watching a Doctor Who season finale by Russell T Davies
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Stephen Fry recently gave a speech at the BBC about the importance of the licence fee (you can listen to him retell it for his latest podgram). In it, he recalls tuning in to watch the very first episode of Doctor Who. It was the most exciting thing he'd ever seen and the seven days until the next episode were almost unbearable.
The 1970s. A lot of people get all nostalgic about them, forgetting the constant strikes, power cuts, massive inflation and white dog poo that came with the era.
One good reason to get nostalgic is the TV. Ignore fluffy stuff like The Good Life or jaw-dropping programmes like The Black and White Minstrels Show – the essence of 70s TV was bleak, miserable and pessimistic despair, whether it was in sci-fi like Doomwatch, The Survivors, Blake's 7 or The Changes or dramas like Callan, The Sandbaggers, Special Branch or Law and Order.
Fan-bloody-tastic TV, in other words. This is what we want.
And praise the Lord, Rusty gave us misery in spades with tonight's episode.
Posted on November 30, 2007 at 10:50 | 9 comments |
Hot on today's/yesterday's news that Grange Hill is going to be revamped (free registration required) to focus on younger kids and return to the original comic strip titles and theme tune, I thought I'd focus a little on the misery of old age.
As you may – or may not – know, I've got one of those door stops aka Apple TVs that sits connected to my now somewhat senile television and serves up, among other things, all manner of goodies from Bastard, my Mac-based PVR.
I say “among other things†because it also has an Internet connection that allows it to stream YouTube videos directly to the TV as well.
Initially, I thought this was about as useful as a Marxist analysis of Katie and Peter Unleashed. But it's actually turning out to be quite fun, now that YouTube is slowly digitising all its old vids into an Apple TV-compatible format – assuming you can get over having to use one of those old arcade game-style on-screen keyboards to type out “prestidigitation†or whatever you happen to be looking for. Much better than crouching over a computer typing stuff into a web browser anyway. And some of the vids are almost crystal clear.
Being of a certain age, once I'd got over the excitement of the “Will it Blend?†guy, immediately started looking for clips from old kids' TV shows.
Tell you what - not only have times change, everything was a lot more sinister then.
I haven't watched it yet (shame on me), but did you spot any references to Doctor Who in yesterday's episode of TheSarahJaneAdventures?
And since it was the last episode of the series, what did you think of it overall, those brave few of you who made it through to the end. Dare I suggest it was more consistent and in some ways better than Doctor Who itself (DT lovers can pretend it's a solar eclipse or something and stick their thumb over his head on the TV screen to be able to judge it fairly)?
Read more on What if Fry and Laurie had created their own sci-fi show?