Return of Tom Baker to Doctor Who

No Tom's not going to appear in the TV show in some kind of Time Crash event as he told Doctor Who Magazine he would not want to do that. Instead he is starring in a new series of Doctor Who audios, called Hornet's Nest, featuring his doctor post-Invasion of Time, travelling to 2009 and renting a cottage on the south coast of England and getting into all sorts of whacky adventures.

These are made by the BBC, not Big Finish, which is a little bit of a kick in the teeth to that company, but sadly Tom Baker seems to do things his own way, rather than associating with anything involving the other doctors. His reason for doing these audios is (very Tom Bakerish) that he was sick of saying no to the various reprisal offers he gets, and because he wanted to work with Nicholas Courtney (or more likely go down the pub with him after recording).

Interestingly his companion is Mike Yates, a Pertwee-era companion. Sadly it was originally intended to be a very old Brigadier, but poor Nicholas Courtney is not very well. I hope he has a speedy recovery and gets involved in a 2nd series of Tom Baker audios. I also hope people's bank balance can afford all these radio plays from Big Finish and the BBC.

A dedicated website is being setup by the BBC and it looks like just the thing before the next season of McGann audios start up in December again!

Ultima: My New Project (2)

Posted a youtube video of the game.

Highlander Audios

Big Finish, the guys who make Doctor Who audios, Stargate audios, Sapphire and Steel audios, 2000 AD audios and even audios for the recently cancelled Robin Hood have started making Highlander audios. Yay!

I recently purchased the first one with a view to listening to it on holiday it looks very cool and is explicitly set during Highlander: Endgame and Highlander: The Source, even explicitly referencing significant events in Endgame (no - not that one - they reference the villain!) It's narrated by Adrian Paul, who has a bit of an accent, but with a 2nd voice typically as the villain of the piece.

I've bought the other 2 audios as well and hope to have the last one when it is released. Sadly given the dismal activity on their forums and the other Highlander forums I don't imagine a 2nd season being commissioned - I never thought of Highlander the TV Series as that popular in the UK - which is Big Finish's main market. However if I'm wrong I'll be queueing up to buy more.

Ultima: My New Project

For the last month or so I've been experimenting with XNA and C# to see how difficult it is to write a complex game. I've decided to remake Ultima 1 - the old RPG that launched my favourite series of games.



Ultima 1 was programmed by Lord British, the cool yet eccentric game-pioneer who is now so rich he is one of the first space-tourists and lives in a castle full of secret doors and medieval memorabilia. (Who wouldn't given the option?)

He had a bit of a kitchen sink approach to Ultima 1 - it was a learning exercise in programming rather than a commercial product. While ostensibly a fantasy game there are definite sci-fi elements. You can pick up a pistol or a laser gun, at one point you must enter a space-ship and shoot down 20 enemy craft and so on. I probably won't remake the space portion or include the 'sci-fi' elements - except as an easter egg - rather I will try to reconcile it with later Ultimas which became much more fantasy and less sci-fi.

I've stuck to using a 2D tile engine, even going so far as to use the original map bin files as a basis of recreating a detailed map of Sosaria.



This was relatively challenging as the information in the original map files was so crammed (2 tiles per byte) that the C# libraries were relatively poorly equipped to hanlde them. They can read bytes, but I found it difficult to read in a 4 bit number. I can't remember how I got round this, but I did.

Character generation is almost finished.



You can create a fighter, druid (who used to be clerics in Ultima 1 but changed as there are no clerics in later Ultimas but plenty of druids), thief (who'll be good at stealing things) and wizards (who'll be pretty powerful spellcasters but weak at everything). I won't include the option for changing races, except possibly as an easter egg. So there will be no playing elves, dwarves or bobbits (hmm!) as the protagonist in later Ultimas is revealed to be a human from Earth.

Currently you can wander around all of Sosaria (though I plan on doing a major inclusion of details to make it a little more interesting) and both towns and dungeons are awaiting placement.



Limited combat is possible, as is the inclusion of wandering monsters.


However this will not be a 1:1 remake - the plot will be different. In the original you had to collect 4 gems to use in a time machine. In this plot you will have to find the gems and summon a silver moongate. There will be subplots and the hero will initially be confined to Lord British's lands.

I still have to build towns from scratch, implement some sort of dialog system and ideally have guards patrolling 'civilized' areas. I also really need to find some way of getting my own tiles - the ones here are modified from Ultima 6 and really need replacing to take advantage of the higher resolution XNA offers. Sadly, not being an artist myself (obvious by some of the screenshots) that could be a while.

Guess Who Avoids B&W Films?

Oscar Meme

Films that have been nominated for the Best Film Oscar. How many have you seen?



1920s

1927-1928: Wings; The Racket; Seventh Heaven

1928-1929: The Broadway Melody; Alibi; The Hollywood Revue of 1929; In Old Arizona; The Patriot

1929-1930: All Quiet on the Western Front; The Big House; Disraeli; The Divorcee; The Love Parade

1930s

1930-1931: Cimarron; East Lynne; The Front Page; Skippy; Trader Horn

1931-1932: Grand Hotel; Arrowsmith; Bad Girl; The Champ; Five Star Final; One Hour with You; Shanghai Express; The Smiling Lieutenant

1932-1933 Cavalcade; 42nd Street; A Farewell to Arms; I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang; Lady for a Day; Little Women; The Private Life of Henry VIII; She Done Him Wrong; Smilin' Through; State Fair

1934: It Happened One Night; The Barretts of Wimpole Street; Cleopatra; Flirtation Walk; The Gay Divorcee; Here Comes the Navy; The House of Rothschild; Imitation of Life; One Night of Love; The Thin Man; Viva Villa!; The White Parade

1935: Mutiny on the Bounty; Alice Adams; Broadway Melody of 1936; Captain Blood; David Copperfield; The Informer; The Lives of a Bengal Lancer; A Midsummer Night's Dream; Les Misérables; Naughty Marietta; Ruggles of Red Gap; Top Hat

1936: The Great Ziegfeld; Anthony Adverse; Dodsworth; Libeled Lady; Mr. Deeds Goes to Town; Romeo and Juliet; San Francisco; The Story of Louis Pasteur; A Tale of Two Cities; Three Smart Girls

1937: The Life of Emile Zola; The Awful Truth; Captains Courageous; Dead End; The Good Earth; In Old Chicago; Lost Horizon; One Hundred Men and a Girl; Stage Door; A Star Is Born

1938: You Can't Take It with You; The Adventures of Robin Hood; Alexander's Ragtime Band; Boys Town; The Citadel; Four Daughters; Grand Illusion (La Grande illusion); Jezebel; Pygmalion; Test Pilot

1939: Gone with the Wind; Dark Victory; Goodbye, Mr. Chips; Love Affair; Mr. Smith Goes to Washington; Ninotchka; Of Mice and Men; Stagecoach; The Wizard of Oz; Wuthering Heights

1940s

1940: Rebecca; All This, and Heaven Too; Foreign Correspondent; The Grapes of Wrath; The Great Dictator; Kitty Foyle; The Letter; The Long Voyage Home; Our Town; The Philadelphia Story

1941: How Green Was My Valley; Blossoms in the Dust; Citizen Kane; Here Comes Mr. Jordan; Hold Back the Dawn; The Little Foxes; The Maltese Falcon; One Foot In Heaven; Sergeant York; Suspicion

1942: Mrs. Miniver; 49th Parallel; King's Row; The Magnificent Ambersons; The Pied Piper; The Pride of the Yankees; Random Harvest; The Talk of the Town; Wake Island; Yankee Doodle Dandy

1943: Casablanca; For Whom the Bell Tolls; Heaven Can Wait; The Human Comedy; In Which We Serve; Madame Curie; The More the Merrier; The Ox-Bow Incident; The Song of Bernadette; Watch on the Rhine

(at this point, sanity prevails and the Academy only accepts five nominations each year)

1944: Going My Way; Double Indemnity; Gaslight; Since You Went Away; Wilson

1945: The Lost Weekend; Anchors Aweigh; The Bells of St. Mary's; Mildred Pierce; Spellbound

1946: The Best Years of Our Lives; Henry V; It's a Wonderful Life; The Razor's Edge; The Yearling

1947: Gentleman's Agreement; The Bishop's Wife; Crossfire; Great Expectations; Miracle on 34th Street

1948: Hamlet; Johnny Belinda; The Red Shoes; The Snake Pit; The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

1949: All the King's Men; Battleground; The Heiress; A Letter to Three Wives; Twelve O'Clock High

1950s

1950: All About Eve; Born Yesterday; Father of the Bride; King Solomon's Mines; Sunset Boulevard

1951: An American in Paris; Decision Before Dawn; A Place in the Sun; Quo Vadis; A Streetcar Named Desire

1952: The Greatest Show on Earth; High Noon; Ivanhoe; Moulin Rouge; The Quiet Man

1953: From Here to Eternity; Julius Caesar; The Robe; Roman Holiday; Shane

1954: On the Waterfront; The Caine Mutiny; The Country Girl; Seven Brides for Seven Brothers; Three Coins in the Fountain

1955: Marty; Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing; Mister Roberts; Picnic; The Rose Tattoo

1956: Around the World in 80 Days; Friendly Persuasion; Giant; The King and I; The Ten Commandments

1957: The Bridge on the River Kwai; Peyton Place; Sayonara; 12 Angry Men; Witness for the Prosecution

1958: Gigi; Auntie Mame; Cat on a Hot Tin Roof; The Defiant Ones; Separate Tables

1959: Ben-Hur; Anatomy of a Murder; The Diary of Anne Frank; The Nun's Story; Room at the Top

1960s

1960: The Apartment; The Alamo; Elmer Gantry; Sons and Lovers; The Sundowners

1961: West Side Story; Fanny; The Guns of Navarone; The Hustler; Judgment at Nuremberg

1962: Lawrence of Arabia; The Longest Day; The Music Man; Mutiny on the Bounty; To Kill a Mockingbird

1963: Tom Jones; America, America; Cleopatra; How the West Was Won; Lilies of the Field

1964: My Fair Lady; Becket; Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb; Mary Poppins; Zorba the Greek

1965: The Sound of Music; Darling; Doctor Zhivago; Ship of Fools; A Thousand Clowns

1966: A Man for All Seasons; Alfie; The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming; The Sand Pebbles; Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

1967: In the Heat of the Night; Bonnie and Clyde; Doctor Dolittle; The Graduate; Guess Who's Coming to Dinner

1968: Oliver!; Funny Girl; The Lion in Winter; Rachel, Rachel; Romeo and Juliet

1969: Midnight Cowboy; Anne of the Thousand Days; Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid; Hello, Dolly!; Z

1970s

1970: Patton; Airport; Five Easy Pieces; Love Story; MASH

1971: The French Connection; A Clockwork Orange; Fiddler on the Roof; The Last Picture Show; Nicholas and Alexandra

1972: The Godfather; Cabaret; Deliverance; Sounder; The Emigrants

1973: The Sting; American Graffiti; The Exorcist; A Touch of Class; Cries and Whispers

1974: The Godfather Part II; Chinatown; The Conversation; Lenny; The Towering Inferno

1975: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest; Barry Lyndon; Dog Day Afternoon; Jaws; Nashville

1976: Rocky; All the President's Men; Bound for Glory; Network; Taxi Driver

1977: Annie Hall; The Goodbye Girl; Julia; Star Wars; The Turning Point

1978: The Deer Hunter; Coming Home; Heaven Can Wait; Midnight Express; An Unmarried Woman

1979: Kramer vs. Kramer; Apocalypse Now; All That Jazz; Breaking Away; Norma Rae

1980s (where I was born and thus might have a chance?)

1980: Ordinary People; Coal Miner's Daughter; The Elephant Man; Raging Bull; Tess

1981: Chariots of Fire; Reds; Atlantic City; On Golden Pond; Raiders of the Lost Ark

1982: Gandhi; E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial; Missing; Tootsie; The Verdict

1983: Terms of Endearment; The Big Chill; The Dresser; The Right Stuff; Tender Mercies

1984: Amadeus; The Killing Fields; A Passage to India; Places in the Heart; A Soldier's Story

1985: Out of Africa; The Color Purple; Kiss of the Spider Woman; Prizzi's Honor; Witness

1986: Platoon; Children of a Lesser God; Hannah and Her Sisters; The Mission; A Room with a View

1987: The Last Emperor; Broadcast News; Fatal Attraction; Hope and Glory; Moonstruck

1988: Rain Man; The Accidental Tourist; Dangerous Liaisons; Mississippi Burning; Working Girl

1989: Driving Miss Daisy; Born on the Fourth of July; Dead Poets Society; Field of Dreams; My Left Foot

1990s

1990: Dances with Wolves; Awakenings; Ghost; The Godfather Part III; Goodfellas

1991: The Silence of the Lambs; Beauty and the Beast; Bugsy; JFK; The Prince of Tides

1992: Unforgiven; The Crying Game; A Few Good Men; Howards End; Scent of a Woman

1993: Schindler's List; The Fugitive; In the Name of the Father; The Piano; The Remains of the Day

1994: Forrest Gump; Four Weddings and a Funeral; Pulp Fiction; Quiz Show; The Shawshank Redemption

1995: Braveheart; Apollo 13; Babe; Il Postino (The Postman); Sense and Sensibility

1996: The English Patient; Fargo; Jerry Maguire; Secrets & Lies; Shine

1997: Titanic; As Good as It Gets; The Full Monty; Good Will Hunting; L.A. Confidential

1998: Shakespeare in Love; Elizabeth; Life Is Beautiful (La vita è bella); Saving Private Ryan; The Thin Red Line

1999: American Beauty; The Cider House Rules; The Green Mile; The Insider; The Sixth Sense

2000s

2000: Gladiator; Chocolat; Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon; Erin Brockovich; Traffic

2001: A Beautiful Mind; Gosford Park; In the Bedroom; The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring; Moulin Rouge

2002: Chicago; Gangs of New York; The Hours; The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers; The Pianist

2003: The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King; Lost in Translation; Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World; Mystic River; Seabiscuit

2004: Million Dollar Baby; The Aviator; Finding Neverland; Ray; Sideways

2005: Crash; Brokeback Mountain; Capote; Good Night and Good Luck; Munich

2006: The Departed; Babel; Letters from Iwo Jima; Little Miss Sunshine; The Queen

2007: No Country for Old Men; Atonement; Juno; Michael Clayton; There Will Be Blood

2008: Slumdog Millionaire; The Curious Case of Benjamin Button; Frost/Nixon; Milk; The Reader

Stuff I've Been Reading 2: Chaosium Cycles

These books, published by Chaosium - the ones who brought you my favourite RPGs Call of Cthulhu and Pendragon - are a series of tie-in fiction for the Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game. I originally bought the Klarkash-Ton cycle and the Tsathoggua cycle as they seemed to be the only reasonably priced Clark Ashton mythos fiction collections on the market. The Tsathoggua Cycle had quite a lot of other authors writing about the frog-faced Old One and the standard veered from okay to pretty good.

However reading the adverts in the back made me desperate to buy the the Antarktos Cycle, a rather weighty tome consisting of fiction relating to HP Lovecraft's novel At the Mountain of Madness.

The idea behind each of the Cycle books is that they show the evolution of a theme or character used in Lovecraft's fiction. They typically start with the precusors to Lovecraft (such as Machen, Poe or so on), reprint one or two stories by Lovecraft and move on to the better pastiches. Each story has a short introduction by the editor explaining its reason for inclusion (and giving the end away in one of them dammit!)

The Antarktos Cycle starts with stories such as Edgar Allen Poe's Narrative of Gordon Pym and The Thing From Another World (or rather Who Goes There?). Neither are Cthulhu stories but they are linked by a common theme of alien evil in the Antarctic. I was especially keen to devour The Thing and was surprised to find how close to the John Carpenter movie it was, even explaining more of the Thing's nature and psychic powers.

Over the course of my holiday in York I devoured the Innsmouth Cycle - which contains precursors to Shadows over Innsmouth like "The Harbour Master" by Robert W. Chambers and Fishhead. The Harbour Master is about a fishman menacing a small cove with unique wildlife while Fishhead is about a mutated fishlike fellow who is murdered by a group of hicks and gets revenge from beyond the grave. The later pastiches that follow Shadow over Innsmouth are pretty good. The Deep Ones was a bit 60s for me, while Live Bait was full of twists and turns.

Another good collection is the Hastur Cycle which reprints classic Chambers stories like The Yellow Sign and the barmy Repairer of Reputations as well as a rather freaky story called The River of Night's Dreaming.

Sadly it seems to be a bit of a trek to track down these books. I assume they had limited print runs but there are quite a few I fancy. Bizarrely the Cthulhu Cycle is near-impossible to find for less than £60, as is the Ithaqua Cycle, the Book of Eibon (the third Clark Ashton collection, though to be fair it only has 2 of his stories in it), the Mysteries of the Worm, the Sub-Niggurath Cycle, the Azathoth Cycle, Robert E. Howard's Nameless Cults and other collections. There is over 20 titles here - yet only about 5-10 seem to be readily available.

There are also some "new" collections from Chaosium like Frontier Cthulhu, High Seas Cthulhu and so on. However I suspect these will not be quite so good - besides I really want a copy of the older material first!

York

I've been away to York with the Lady over the bank holiday weekend, finally making use of the arbitary holiday I am forced to take. In this time I managed:-

• To board a Tour Bus of the City


• Walk the Walls


• Visit the Jorvik Viking Centre - which sadly loses steam after the rides


• Undertake the seemingly obligatory ghost walk in the evening with a theatrical fellow in a frock coat and top hat


• Overheat on a boat cruise


• Eat too much nice and expensive Italian food


• Walk so much I got a little sunburned while da south was drenched in rain.

The last time I was in York was with my primary school in 1990 or so. Thankfully this time there was no weirdness with closets. I was sharing with Hoppy in 1990 - if you know him you'll not be surprised by this revelation.

Pictures to follow.

Lovecraft on YouTube

Here are some of the best Lovecraft movies on YouTube IMHO... Shadows over Innsmouth - The Musical



The Terrible Old Man - the Cartoon



Shadows over Innsmouth - The Radio Theatre Version



Shadow out of Time



The last two are radio shows I really want from here.

New Lord of the Rings Movie Online!

Honestly - this is very impressive for a $5,000 movie - the Hunt for Gollum is based on some of Tolkien's notes on how Aragorn and the elves of Lothlorien captured Gollum and learned that he had told the forces of Mordor about the name of Baggins.

Visit the site and see the movie now!

Stuff I've Been Reading 1: Robert E. Howard's Horror

Reading the works of Robert Howard and HP Lovecraft has reawoken my mythos obsession to such an extent that lately I have come to the realisation that there is an extensive amount of Cthulhu mythos stories not penned by the gentlemen of Providence himself. As a learned fellow with a thirst for knowledge I have been dipping in and out of collections of these works for a while. Conan stories on their own can be repetitive.

Firstly I obtained a Wordsowrth edition of Robert E. Howard's horror stories. Many of the stories therein are part of Howard's contribution to the Cthulhu mythos. However Howard differs from Lovecraft in that his hardbitten main characters do not go insane
but rather tend to go beserk and rip the tentacles of the evil critters to pieces. Also a lot of these heroes seemed to be named Steve for some reason. Another recurring trend, which I must confess I was getting a tiny bit tired of, was that in a REH horror story the hero bangs his head and remembers a previous life experience, such as becoming a raider named 'Conan of the Reavers', that relates to the
catacombs he is exploring, or the cairn he is excavating. Thoth-Amon, a villain from Conan, is mentioned in a few of REH's stories. Thankfully the reincarnation stories have varied resolutions and one of them, "The Cairn on the Headland" is excellent in its use of Norse mythology.

Howard has also written more conventional horror stories featuring Hitchcock-like bird (""Pigeons from Hell"), vampires ("The Horror from the Mound") and Werewolves ("In the Forest of Villefere" "Wolfshead"). Annoyingly the book points out that Villefere and Wolfshead are part of a trilogy of stories Howard wrote. The third story, aptly named Wolfdung, is not included - why is never quite explained. I suspect Wordsworth editions only republish work that is now in the public domain and I believe Wolfdung is not in the public domain.

Overall any of Howard's horror work is well worth a read. Just do not read three 'bump, oh I was a Viking raider in a past life and now know that Ianto Davies is descended from my hated enemies the Welsh and must now I must murder my friend" in one go.

Inalienable

I finally got round to seeing Inalienable on DVD. This is a film written by Walter Koenig and stars a virtual who-is-who of science fiction. The main character is played by Richard Hatch who is most famous Apollo from old Battlestar Galactica. Hatch is a research scientist who is infected by an alien parasite that forces him to give birth to a child.

Now you'd think that the parasite would be evil - mutating Hatch's character or turning into a Godzilla type monster. It actually protects Hatch while it is gestating and after the kid is born Hatch actually bonds with the child when the US government then takes that child away and separates Hatch and the alien-child. It becomes obvious that Hatch and the alien need each other for their physical and emotional well-being.

Hatch's lover starts a massive campaign to free and reunite the 'father' and 'son' which, with the aid of some leaked footage on the internet, culminates in a massive legal battle between Hatch and the US Government. Sadly the entire story is rended moot by a hasty ending that neatly resolves everything in far to neat a manner - which is sad as being a single standalone movie it could end however its author sees fit.

The first third of this film feels like an episode of the Twilight Zone, the second third is definitely ET and the end is a legal drama with a sci-fi twist. It actually works quite well - the lousy ending aside and is thought-provoking, if the morality is perhaps a little too "thump on the head", and a little black and white.

For example - Koenig plays Hatch's hateful boss, who inexplicably is put in charge of separating Hatch and his kid by the US government. Koenig relishes this role as it is in the vein of Bester from Babylon 5. While this relationship is explained in the third act he is portrayed as evil with a capital E. Amusingly Patricia Tallman, Walter Koenig and Marina Sirtis all play various bad guys working for the government. Which struck me as odd as they all played telepaths in their various sci-fi incarnations.

There is little moral ambiguity in the 2nd and 3rd acts - the Feds are evil. In particular the government prosecutor in the trial does not seem to have to rely on any facts, making claims like "There might be hundreds of these parasites out there!" without any evidence. They also cheat - wheeling in last minute evidence on two occasions.

The film is well worth checking out! 7/10.

Site Migration... Sometime Soon!

Finally got round to launching my personal domain http://www.skerrigan.co.uk and a hosted site archiving all the Onnwal material from the Living Greyhawk campaign. It's hosted by http://www.byethost.com who actually seem to be providing a pretty good free hosting package - you get FTP accounts, php and MySQL thrown in for free!

As soon as I figure how I will be migrating this blog over to http://blog.skerrigan.co.uk - don't hold your breath though, that might be a while.

Doctor Stu on Doctor Who

This year is apparently going to be the year of the McGann. As David Tennant is taking the year off and there's hardly any shows on TV Big Finish have ramped up production of the 3rd season of Doctor Who starring Paul McGann.

There are 9 episodes as part of the regular season - Orbis, Hothous, The Beast of Orlok (which sounds interestinh), Wirrn Dawn, The Scapegoat, The Cannibalists, The Eight Truths, Worldwide Web and a Christmas special called Death in Blackpool (which I hope will write Lucie out, not because I hate her but I'd rather she left before the doctor-companion relationship gets stale like with Charley).

As if 9 audio plays is not enough there are two more releases - Company of Friends is a series of audio adventures featuring the 8th doctor and a non-audio companion. The first one features Izzy, the 90s sci-fi geek he hung out with in the comics (which aren't half bad!). The second stars a guy called Fitz from the Eighth Doctor novels that never really concluded because of the new series (though to be fair with over 73 novels in that series they could've wound it up I'm sure). The third features Bernice Summerfield who appeared in other novels I've not read and really can't be botherred to. The last one however team McGann's doctor up with Mary Shelley, a story that has been referenced a lot in the Eighth Doctor audios.

I must admit I am quite meh about Company of Friends. It sounds interesting but in terms of Eighth Doctor continuity it's a cluster-frak. The novels and comics completely contradict the audios and TV show (Ace dies, the 7th Doctor and Sarah-Jane hang out, Rassilon is a good guy, Romana regenerates again and this time becomes evil) and at times are completely bizarre (the Doctor and Izzy meet the actor Tom Baker in one comic). I'm not so sure why they feel the need to do link the disparate continuities - I'd like a series of audios with new companions rather than ones taken from various spinoff sources.

An Earthly Child - this could be interesting. It's the subscriber special and it looks damn tempting. The 8th Doctor returns to Earth to check on his granddaughter Susan. Except she has had a son, played by Jake McGann, Paul McGann's son.

Orbis

Finally listened to the Eight Doctor audio Orbis. Despite some negative reviews I found this story to be quite fun and yet has the underlying darkness of the Vengeance of Morbius.

Basically after Morbius the Doctor was marooned for 600 years on the planet Orbis which is inhabited by peaceful jellyfish who are under attack by a race of evil oysters.

It does have some really nice bits like the Doctor being more pleased to see his companion is wearing tights than actually seeing her for the first time in centuries. The quote "Tonight we bury our dead, tomorrow we build stilts" is awesome BTW. Also it looks like an arc may be in store for this season which is good as season 2 really suffered from a lack of a coherent storyline.

xkcd is real!

I have to admit this cartoon struck a chord with me as it literally happened to me the other fortnight. I had this bizarre dream I was in an English exam and was suffering extreme writers cramp as it's been far too long since anyone made me write an essay by hand. Then for some bizarre reason I decided to ask the invigilator if I could use the bathroom (feeling especially ashamed as never once in an exam have I had to bother the invigilators).

Then things got a bit more bizarre...



Rather than going to the bathroom I discovered I was in fact in the little woods near my home in Monifieth, trapped down a steep slope by the riverbanks and struggling to climb back up due to the writer's cramp. Somehow I managed to get back to the exam room and write my essay, which I just knew was really rubbish and didn't answer the question at all.

Then I woke up, remembering I'd graduated. Twice. Not in English.

I'm sure you really needed to know this.

It is Happening Again...

or for those on facebook

They Bleed Me Dry...

As I noted earlier I'd bought the Centenary Edition of Robert E. Howard's Conan short stories. It's a beautiful black hardback volume. True to form I've discovered there are at least two companions volumes I'd like to get my hands on.

Firstly there is Conan's Brethren - a forthcoming volume collecting Howard's other creations including Solomon Kane and other characters I know nothing of. However I have heard of Kull - another barbarian who used to act as a backup feature in Savage Sword of Conan.

Kull I am reasonably familiar with -- I've plopped the kingly sum of £3 (inc. p&p) to buy the 'awesome' Kull the Conqueror movie on DVD. It stars Kevin Sorbo of Hercules fame stretching his acting range as a barbarian in a mythical world. Originally intended to be the third Conan movie (King Conan or some such) it was turned down by Arnold Schwarzenegger and rewritten to be a Kull movie. It's genuinely held as a bad movie and airs on sci-fi but it certainly isn't Uwe Boll.

Apparently Red Sonja was not a creation of Howard's but rather an addition from the comics in the 70s. This is interesting as the character went on to spawn a dreadful movie starring Briget Neilsen and Arnie (not playing Conan in name due to some bizarre movie rights thing). She nows stars in her own comic series and there is a new movie in the works by Robert Rodriguez with his missus in the titular role.

Second up is this amazingly neat volume collecting some of Lovecraft's best stories. I probably already probably have all these in some scruffy paperbacks back in Scotland but a volume like this is beautiful and apparently comes with a map of Arkham.

It does worry me though that most of my current reading interests are more at home in magazines than books, but hey ho!

Literally Raising the Dead

So, new Red Dwarf in less than a month's time. Not bad since it's been nearly 10 years since the last episode ended on yet another cliffhanger. Given the delay between Red Dwarf VI and VII due to rape trials and so forth I was always surprised Red Dwarf VIII ended on a cliffhanger. This cliffhanger was of course like the last one resolved in a deleted scene which could easily be tagged on to explain it. In case you have no idea what I'm gibbering about here's the cliffhanger and deleted scene...



Not sold on the need to resurrect Red Dwarf. I personally liked Red Dward VII (Stoke Me A Clipper was my favourite ever episode of RD) but when I hear about things like :-

• No Kochanski - she has apparently died... again


• Rimmer is a hologram. He died... again.


• No Holly... again. Apparently Lister left the taps on. In real life Norman Lovett reckons they were too cheap to bring him back


• Some sort of bizarre Coronation Street crossover.

I don't exactly overflow with confidence. Add to the fact the cast look ancient, as evidence by the following:-



Hmmm...

The Actor We Need Right Now...

You need to have seen Dark Knight and be up on Bale's T4 rant to appreciate this:-

A Rant About Drizzt

In addition to enhancing my literary collection I've recently purchase graphic novels of Dragonlance and 'the Legend of Drizzt' off Amazon. I have to admit that I only bought the first book, the Crystal Shard because it was so unbelievably cheap, but I enjoyed it enough to buy all but the Halfling's Gem in graphic novel form (because it's a bit more expensive).

I'm not a big fan of the novels. I read 'The Crystal Shard' a few years ago when a friend lent it to me (and now I think on it I need to return it). I believe it was R.A. Salvatore's first book and dear god I hope so, it was dreadful. It doesn't help that I loathe Forgotten Realms, viewing it as a rip-off of Greyhawk (where drow, duergar etc. originate from) and Lord of the Rings (meddling pipe smoking wizards anyone) with a smorgasboard of whatever else people were working on for TSR at the time. So I am a tough audience. You may wish to avert your eyes from spoilers....

The part that really sold me on the dreadfulness of the Crystal Shard was the start of a chapter that went something like, "Drizzt readied himself to attack the crystal fortress armed with his scimitars, magical panther and the flour he had stolen off the giants he had just slain and decided on a whim to take as a souvenir."

Can you guess which item Drizzt uses to save the day? Well it is the clearly telegraphed souvenir flour - used to cover a magical solar-powered crystal that receives its energy from the sun and weaken it. Now Drizzt isn't portrayed as a kleptomaniac who insists on stealing something from every fight, nor is he ever shown to be a baking enthusiast, so this smacks of very, very lazy writing. Especially when the drow can magically by will create magical darkness - though having Drizzt's racial abilities save the day is only marginally above John Barrowman's Captain Jack's immortality being the only thing that can stop a massive demon from destroying Cardiff in terms of sheer cringe factorness. But better than inexplicably stealing flour to use later.

Thankfully the graphic novel does not include the awful flour scene, which gives it bonus points in my book. I even had to reread the Crystal Shard in Waterstones to make sure I didn't imagine the flour incident.

Overall though the series still lacks any real characterization. Drizzt and his chums are all invincible at the start of each book and never really seem to develop. Drizzt's development in his prequel trilogy is as follows:-

Book 1 - Drizzt is well hard but unhappy because all the drow are evil.
Book 2 - Drizzt is well hard but unhappy because he's living underground and having to fight monsters and his own people.
Book 3 - Drizzt is well hard but unhappy because everyone on the surface judges him by his dark skin (gee, there's a subtle metaphor).
Book 4 - see Book 3 for details, except now he has some invincible friends.

Bruenor - a gruff but secretly caring dwarf (gee!) who remains gruff for the two books he is in before, in an underground dwarven city lost to a great shadowy evil, he appears to die falling to his death with said shadowy evil. He gets better and comes back to life in later books. I think he is then called Bruenor the White but I could be confusing this with a better book. He also finds some magical armour his dad owned in the Mines of Moria... I mean Mithril Hall.

Wulfgar - a barbarian eventually raised by dwarves he starts off not very hard. Then Bruenor gives him a magical warhammer. This makes him as hard as nails.

Cattie-Brie - raised by dwarfs and inexplicably a hard-as-nails fighter. Her character development is that she finds a magic bow in a dwarven fortress (why dwarves have magic bows I dunno) and kills a human being (which is apparently a lot harder to do than killing evil dwarves and makes me wonder how in D&D terms she could be as hard as nails and yet still).

Anyroads, it's the lack of any depth or character development that make me feel these stories work best as comics rather than as novels in themselves.