15 posts tagged “doctor who”

I know most of you don't actually care, but I love Doctor Who. So last week it was announced that Stephen Moffatt will take over as Exec Producer and showrunner for the New Who. I think this is potentially good news as Moffatt has written consistently good episodes. The thing I'm finding most disturbing about this change is the complete radio silence about the status of David Tennant as the Doctor. There are so many rumors flying around about whether he'll come back or not. He's off being all Mr. Shakespeare right now and will be allegedly be back to film the specials planned for next year, but will they be his last? Inquiring minds want to know.

So now a little multimedia for you. First, a picture of Mr. Tennant as Hamlet. The first promo picture from the RSC. I've never wanted to see Shakespeare more.

Second, someone brilliant out there did the same for the tenth Doctor and his penchant for saying "Weeeelllll" a lot as the Lost video I posted a while back. Made me chuckle.

Well, so remember a while back when I said I'd put up a post about the season finales? It would appear that I lied. Most of the shows have had their finales already and I neglected to say anything about it. As I type this, I'm watching the season (and now we know it's the series) finale of Moonlight. I'm not entirely sure why I'm bothering since there's no point in getting invested in these characters, but I liked this show. So I guess I'll see it out. The thing that's amusing me the most right now is that the episode starts with an incident at a dedication of a gym at "Hearst College". The gym is being named for the character Josef Kostan (a vampire), who is played by Jason Dohring, who was on Veronica Mars which took place at...Hearst College. Nice homage. Somebody asks Josef what his connection to the college is, and he replies that he founded it. Ha.

Aaaaanyway, finales this week include How I Met Your Mother, House, Reaper, Law & Order and CSI:NY. Last week was more-or-less everything else including CSI, Smallville, The Simpsons, SNL and My Name is Earl. And two weeks ago was the finales of 30 Rock and Scrubs. Oops. Sorry about that, but now at least when you're wondering where the heck your show is, you'll know.

So how about the ongoing shows in our world, eh? I'm several weeks behind in my Lost watching, but you should know that there is no Lost this week while we take a quick breather and get ready for next week's two hour finale. ABC is showing the last two weeks' episodes on Wednesday this week in case you missed anything.

I am caught up on Battlestar Galactica. The cliffhanger at the end of Friday's episode was so good. I could have done without the singing at the very very end, but the bit with the hybrid? Finally an Oh, Snap! moment to end an episode. I feel like we'd been missing these.

Doctor Who continues apace as well. I feel like I'm not enjoying this season as much as the previous one, but I also realize that I felt this way about the first half of last season as well. Then the season seriously picked up with the second half. This season looks to be similar with a two parter by the same guy who wrote the Human Nature/Family of Blood two-parter and then just killed with the season ending three-parter. So I'm really looking forward to the last six episodes of this season. I still don't really understand the way the BBC works with its withholding of some info and what seems to be over disclosing other info. So I find it curious that for all the info and teasing of future episodes, they're still holding on to the title of the second to last episode. Fan conjecture seems to have reached a consensus, but I won't write it here in case anybody actually cares.

The other show I'm loving right now is my current "reality" show. Or at least it's unscripted, more or less. It's a British import on BBC America called Top Gear. It is allegedly a car show, but it's a riot. And it's so much more than cars. The one I just watched had the three hosts trying to cross the English Channel in amphibious cars. One crashed, one almost sank after it blew part of its engine, and the other tried to break the speed record set by Richard Branson. It's just genius. They're apparently in their 10th series, and I'm just getting started watching it. Once again, American TV is trying to remake this show. Jay Leno is apparently such a fan that they asked him to host the US version. He has such love for the BBC version that he actually refused! The show is totally made by the hosts. I can't imagine who'd they get to host here that could even hold a candle to James, Richard and Jeremy.

Time to go to bed, I suppose. Real news update coming soon, I promise.

So now I've seen the third part of my geek weekend trilogy, the series four premiere of Doctor Who. Today, I love the internet. And I thank goodness for all the kind people out there who put this stuff online for those of us not living in the UK. The full episode and Confidential was online within an hour of each finishing as well as the commentary track on iTunes. Brilliant. Great opening episode. Good "monster" to start the season. Some excellent mime and some very physical comedy to liven it up a bit. And there was a bit at the end that all of the spoiler people somehow managed to miss. They actually left that bit out of the show that screened for the press earlier this week so it would be a surprise to everyone. Great job of that. Seriously. I actually said something unprintable out loud when I saw it.

I was one of the many that were a little worried about an entire season of Catherine Tate after seeing her in The Runaway Bride. She was a little hard to take. But they've ratcheted her back a notch and she's actually really good. I know I'm going to enjoy the fact that there's no romantic interest with the two of them at all. It's been a bit much with Martha and Rose for the last two series. Someone who actually puts the Doctor in his place is going to be pretty entertaining.

Anyway, great start. I'm looking forward to the next 12 weeks of Who.

I've fallen behind again. There are a lot of things going on this week, but I feel as if I've failed you by not telling you to watch the two BSG specials that were on on Friday. Battlestar Galactica: The Phenomenon and Battlestar Galactica: Revealed. My Tivo schedule is showing seven more airings of each before the premiere of BSG on Friday night.

Did I mention that already? BSG RETURNS FRIDAY NIGHT.

Also on Friday night, the last Torchwood airs in the UK followed on Saturday night by the start of Series 4 of Doctor Who.

Another random bits and pieces catch up post.

Jesse L. Martin is leaving Law & Order. This is too bad because this is the first year since we lost Jerry Orbach that he's got a partner that's working well. The whole cast is quite good this year. NBC is planning on doing 5 new post strike episodes that will air starting in April.

HD-DVD is dead. Long live Blu-Ray. Toshiba finally waved the white flag and gave up. All the major studios are moving to Blu-Ray. Looks like there's a PS3 in my future.

The J.J. Abrams Star Trek movie has been moved from a Christmas 2008 release to summer of 2009.

FX has confirmed that rather than produce any post-strike episodes, the season of The Riches will just be seven episodes long.

Craig Ferguson will host the White House Correspondents Dinner. I can't imagine he'll be as offensive to the President as Stephen Colbert was, but he's a funny guy and I'm sure he'll get his digs in.

The deal isn't done yet, but it looks like NBC will let Scrubs finish in the way it intended.

Lots of announcements about the upcoming Wolverine movie, but the only one I'm going to mention is that Dominic Monaghan has joined the cast.

CBS is moving How I Met Your Mother to 8:30 on Monday. Shows what I remember from before the strike, I thought it was there already. It also wasn't in the list of renewals that CBS put out earlier this week, but it seems most people think it will be back. I'll be disappointed if it isn't. They're expecting to shoot nine new episodes this season that will start airing March 17.

Leonardo DiCaprio is producing a live action version of Akira.

Bionic Woman was officially canned. I deleted the unwatched shows off my Tivo a long time ago.

Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell have all signed on to take over Heath Ledger's part in The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus. Since it's a Terry Gilliam movie we already knew it was going to be strange, this just makes it odder.

There's a special Aerosmith only Guitar Hero coming in May. It also looks like I'll be able to get a stand-alone guitar for the Wii in a couple weeks.

The first official trailer for the new Indiana Jones movie is out. It looks ok.

Apparently, there's a vampire movie in production called Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Undead. With a title like that you shouldn't need Sean Lennon doing the score, but it's got him.

Molly Ringwald recently turned 40. I feel very very old.

An Arrested Development movie might be in the works. For me, this show rode right up to my threshold of embarrassment humor and occasionally crossed it, so I'm not dying for a feature-length episode.

Among many other names added to the cast of G.I. Joe, including Dennis Quaid, Doctor Who number nine, or Claude the invisible man from Heroes depending on who you are, Christopher Eccelston has signed on.

We're getting reissues of three Replacements CDs and one EP in April. The rest of their catalog should be available by the end of the year. I may have to check these out. I love these guys.

In other music news, Thriller celebrated its 25th anniversary while I wasn't looking.

Harold and Maude finally got an official soundtrack. Seems a little silly since you can just pick up Cat Steven's greatest hits, but I guess there was never a proper soundtrack. Don't tell Jim, but I love this movie. He made me watch it one too many times before I was old enough to appreciate it, I think. But it's brilliant.

This is a great list of 48 unanswered questions on Lost. Speaking of Lost, it will produce five more episodes this season, bringing the total to 13 of the 16 they were supposed to do, and when it returns for those episodes it will be at 10 on Thursdays following Grey's Anatomy.

BSG tidbits: Season 3 will be out on DVD March 18th. Season four will premiere on April 4th, with two catch-up specials showing March 28th. The writers are back at work on the show and it looks like they'll actually get to finish it. We'll get everything they shot starting in April, and then we might not get the second half of the final season until 2009. Yikes.

I don't understand the Jane Fonda on the Today Show controversy at all. She said a naughty word, but in fairness, it was the title of one of the Vagina Monologues, so I don't get how that's so bad.

Mitch Peleggi, aka Walter Skinner, will be in the new X-Files movie. Yay! I thought he was great on the series.

The Smurfs in 3d? I just...have no words.

Looks like the Justice League movie is moving forward without Batman or Superman, since they're both currently engaged in their own movie franchise. But I ask you, is it worth seeing a Justice League movie without them?

Transformers 2 is a go. Hm. I think maybe one was enough.

Turns out we'll be getting *both* Coreys in Lost Boys 2. Thank god for that. For a while it looked like we'd have to survive with only one, and that just won't do.

J.J. Abrams new show on Fox, Fringe, has added Joshua Jackson to the cast. OMG Pacey's back on TV!

Disney Interactive has announced Discs of Tron for the XBox.

I think I might have mentioned this earlier, but SciFi announced they're going to show The Sarah Jane Adventures and the new season of Doctor Who starting in April. In fact, they're going to be on Friday night right before BSG. Sounds like we're going to get the good Doctor in a similar fashion to the way BBC America is airing Torchwood, with only a small lag between airing in the UK and airing here. The Beeb hasn't actually announced when this show is starting in the UK, a peculiarity of UK TV that they do that a lot, but it's starting on SciFi on April 18th, so one would assume it's starting sooner than that in the UK.

The Knight Rider movie did well enough that NBC is considering making it a series. Ugh.

The new Clone Wars animated series got picked up by Cartoon Network. I like the look of it. I wonder if the stories will be any good.

Ok, enough of that. I'll put all the returning show info I can find in the next post.

I think I'm a bigger Doctor Who fan now than when I was when I was thirteen. What a dork. The point is I just finished watching the Christmas special Voyage of the Damned. The guest star this year was Kylie Minogue. She did a great job. It was a very fun Titanic/Poseidon Adventure combo in space.

At the end of the show was a teaser for season four. The BBC is odd in the fact that they'll tease a show like that with nothing more than "Coming Soon". So sometime in the next few months we should at least know when it's going to air.

I also wanted to share that I totally scored when my parents bought me a Slingbox for Christmas! I'm a little technologically overwhelmed at the moment, so I'm not going to hook it up right away, but I'm super excited about having this thing. It looks like I might have to run a network line to the corner of the living room with the Tivo to get acceptable speeds, but that's a problem for another day. It's also going to trigger another reorganization of my entertainment center because I don't have room for it right now. I've got two components I think I can send to the consumer electronics graveyard, the 5 CD changer (who uses CDs anymore?) and the Laserdisc player. I can always play single CDs in the dvd player if I need to, but if I get the Roku Soundbridge hooked back up in there it won't be necessary. Toys toys toys.

Why is it so cold in here? It's freezing in my house for some unknown reason. I hope I'm not getting sick because the thermostat seems to be working just fine. Hmmm. It also looks like a CompUSA blew up in my study. I should probably do something about that before somebody (me) trips over a motherboard.

Anyway, only six or so months behind the rest of the world, I just finished watching The Sopranos. Now at least I finally understand all the comments people have been making about the finale over the months. I didn't get it. Those final scenes were shot so strangely. Such an impending sense of doom. Weird. Certainly an odd way to end a great show.

Now I've got a very creepy and fun episode of Doctor Who on, The Girl in the Fireplace, from series two. You can totally tell David Tennant is smitten with Sophia Myles. I don't know if they're still together, but this is when they met. Reminds me that the Christmas special of Doctor Who is on in just three days. I hope the torrent will be up shortly thereafter. I'm really looking forward to seeing it. BBC America is also showing promos of the new season of Torchwood which looks fun. The promos show James Marsters from Buffy, who is guest starring in a few episodes this season. The promo is well edited and it looks like fun. I'll probably still try to watch the BBC version since the US version is edited. I'd rather see it how it was meant to be seen.

BBC America and Sci-Fi have this whole Doctor Who/Torchwood thing all messed up. Sci-Fi gets the newest Doctor Who and BBC America runs the new Torchwoods. While BBC America is advertising season two of Torchwood, they're going to run season three of Doctor Who (which ran last summer on Sci-Fi) at the same time. It's funny that a show about messing about with time is getting it wrong. season one of Torchwood feeds in to season three of Doctor Who. So running season two of Torchwood before season three of Doctor Who is messing with the streams. Whatever, I just want the next season of Doctor Who as soon as possible. I think they're finished shooting, so it should start in a few months, I hope.

It's now pitch black at 5:30. Happy solstice everyone.

Apologies up front for the complete lack of updates lately. I was busy and then I was lazy. There's so much to write about I don't exactly know where to start, so I'll start with British TV since there's no good news about American TV at all.

Series two of Life on Mars starts on the 11th. Rent season one if you missed it, but don't miss season two. This show is so great I have no words. And in typical British fashion, the entire show is two series of eight episodes each. Fantastic. My Life on Mars DVDs from the UK are at a friend's house at the moment. I'm looking forward to seeing the special features and whatnot. Ah, the joys of a region free DVD player.

Series two of Torchwood will air in the US at roughly the same time as in the UK, starting in mid January. Of course, we'll still get the edited for time and content version, so I'll probably watch the downloads anyway. Some special guests appear in series two including James Marsters (Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer) and Freema Agyeman who reprises her role as Martha Jones from Doctor Who. Torchwood starts on BBC America on January 26th. Torchwood series one comes out on DVD in the US January 22nd.

Speaking of Doctor Who, there's lots of new Who news out there. The Christmas special Voyage of the Damned is set to air on Christmas day in the UK and co-stars Kylie Minogue. Remember at the end of the last season when the Titanic crashed in to the TARDIS? That's where it picks up. Series four begins sometime in 2008 and will be loaded with companions for the Doctor. Catherine Tate will reprise her role as Donna from the Christmas special last year and will be the Doctor's full time companion. Also making appearances this season will be Billie Piper and Freema Agyeman as Rose and Martha. John Barrowman has also said that Captain Jack will show up at some point.

And since we're talking about David Tennant anyway, I just got a copy of Blackpool on DVD from amazon.co.uk. Hooray. No more crap video rips for me! Now I can rip them myself and put them on the phone. It would make for a great paper on US versus UK TV to break down why this works and the US version was so completely crap. I can't put my finger on it at all, but I love Blackpool and Viva Laughlin was just plain unwatchable.

The Emmy Awards are this Sunday. I've watched so little tv this summer that I almost forgot. I've got some turbo Tivo maintenance to do in the next week or so to get ready for the season to start. Anyway, I'll be watching. Probably. Well, I'll be timeshifting it anyway.

Also, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia started tonight. I think it's on FX. There are several repeats before next week's episodes air, so check it out if you want to watch something so politically incorrect sometimes it hurts.

I really have to stop watching so much downloaded British tv. I think I've only got a few episodes of season 3 Confidential to go, so I feel compelled to follow through and finish the suckers. Then maybe, just maybe, I can start dealing with my Tivo.

Last thing today, I finished another audiobook. I finished a few since I last posted about it, but most of them were inconsequential. Or, at least, nothing y'all would care about even a little. This one was quite enjoyable. I was really surprised. It was called The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime by Mark Haddon. One thing that struck me is that I'm not sure I would have enjoyed reading this one, but listening to it was very satisfying. The writing is very simple, sometimes almost Hemmingway-esque, because the story is told from the perspective of a 15 year old autistic boy from Swindon, England. I'm wondering what it says about me that I could relate to a lot of what he was talking about. Even trying to describe what the story is about makes it sound way less interesting than it was. Firstly, never in the book does it actually say he's autistic. From the writing you can infer that he's autistic and somewhat of a savant. He's great at maths and there's a complete internal logic to the way he operates. The incident cited in the title is right up front and wouldn't really ruin anything if I tell you that it involves a fairly grisly death of a dog. Our protagonist then takes it upon himself to solve the mystery of the death of the dog. His perspective on the world and the way he processes the information coming at him is fascinating. Who knows how accurate a representation of what it's like to be inside an autistic mind is, but it's really a well crafted story from that perspective. It's a sad book, but also kind of uplifting. The mystery is solved, and life moves on. C says two thumbs up.

Lastly lastly just because I need to whine a little, I got stung by a bee on Tuesday morning. On my foot. In my house. Just before I left for work. When I put my sandals on the bastard was hiding under the toe strap. What lesson can I take away from this? I dunno. Check your shoes before you put them on, I guess. Never would have thought I had to check for bees in my house before I put my shoes on, so I guess I'll just add that to my paranoia. I have no idea were he came from or how he got there. Well, I mean, he came from outside, obviously, but I don't recall bringing one inside. I half expected Maurice to pop out of my closet, do his little dance and declare "That shit just happened!" And with that I bid you goodnight.

Torchwood starts on BBC America this weekend. In my fiesta of British tv that's happened in the last few months I watched the whole thing already. It's...okay. Not great. Not horrible. Lags a little in the middle. It's supposed to be the more "adult" Doctor Who, so in the UK it airs after the Doctor at night. BBC America has it at 9pm here, but that just means I get it at 6, which seems a little early for this sort of thing. Anyway, it's entertaining and there's a fair amount of sci-fi eye candy. I enjoyed it.

In other BBC news, BBC America has caught up with me for season 3 of Doctor Who. I had been slacking and not watching for a while when my tivo picked up the episode I was about to watch. I bounced back and forth between my laptop and the tivo as I cooked the chili for Burning Man. Turns out I've been right all along. I watched a bit on my laptop and then fast forwarded through the tivo to where I was. There were scenes missing on my tivo. Edited for time. Bleah. That said, season 3 of Doctor Who thus far is pretty much rocking the house. I'm really enjoying David Tennant as the Doctor. He was starting to get on my nerves for a while when every other line was "RUN!" shouted at the top of his lungs, but there was a great two-parter around mid season that really showed off his chops and had very little shouting. I could probably tolerate it better if he was shouting in his native Scottish accent instead of his well trained London accent. Maybe I'll finally finish watching season 3 this weekend. I've only got a handful of episodes left.

And since I'm rambling about British tv, a few weeks ago my David Tennant obsession bloomed in full when I watched a miniseries from 2004 called Blackpool. This is either a love it or hate it type show. It's a six hour dark crime noir musical. Yes, musical. It's really quite brilliant. They don't use original music, and the actors are actually singing along with the recordings instead of re-recording the songs themselves. It works. It doesn't even have a dvd release date here in the US, so I've asked my UK connection to bring me the dvds next time he's back in the states. I'm really looking forward to having these as the videos I watched were of not so hot video quality.

I'm supposed to have the Entertainment Weekly Fall TV Guide in my mailbox today. My guess is that I won't get it until next week (thanks Berkeley Post Office), but once I do, you'll get my second annual completely biased tv preview. I think I'm just going to have to let go of the backlog and start fresh here with the fall season.