Doctor Who: 2 - 5: Rise of the Cybermen

When the ninth Doctor encountered the last surviving Dalek in last season’s aptly named “Dalek”, the weight of their previous encounters was impressively tangible. Setting aside any complaints about sensitive Daleks getting in touch with their emotions, the reunion in the early stages of that episode was, for many, an event. The general consensus of opinion seems to be that it didn’t disappoint, either.

Sadly, I can’t help but think that the return of the Cybermen won’t be regarded as such a huge success. That’s not to say that this episode isn’t enjoyable enough but, perhaps in service to its two part nature, it feels terribly flimsy.

The episode starts in much the same way as last season’s “Boom Town”; an evil mastermind with a dastardly scheme eliminates a particularly troublesome scientist who’s intent of jeopardising said scheme by revealing it to the rest of the world. It’s a clichéd, unimpressive opening to an episode that should have had better. Disappointingly, the script doesn’t ever really move beyond such tired clichés.

There are one or two nice touches; the idea that every member of the populace would be equipped with an ear piece which acts as both a telecommunications device and a information link is a pleasing, if terribly heavy handed, dig at today’s mobile phone dependant culture. I just don’t think that they’d look that silly. The alternate universe, in which Zeppelins float above London and Rose’s father still exists is another nice touch, but somehow still doesn’t feel at all original. It does permit the ever impressive BBC techies to show off some more nice visual effects though.

The lack of originality is further demonstrated by Rose’s desire to (once again) reach out and touch her family, and the inclusion of alternate Earth versions of characters whose personalities are polar opposites to the ones we already know - complete with CGI effects to allow the same actor to appear in the same shot twice (just like Jean-Claude Van Damme in the “classic” Double Impact). Even our friendly neighbourhood mastermind is such a deeply hackneyed character that the whole episode feels like it’s just building up to the first dramatic appearance of the Cybermen.

Except, there’s no drama. We’ve already seen them. In this day and age, it’s virtually impossible to keep anything out of the eyes of the media, but when the BBC’s own TV guide Radio Times features a front page picture of the new-look Cybermen, does this episode’s dramatic ending actually have a chance of working?

Dave Matthews - Birmingham - 13/05/06

I had no idea.

No idea just how enthusiastic and adoring the fans are. No idea of the insane distances they’d travel to see him. And no idea just how damn good Dave Matthews is live.

The evening began like many others. We drove to Birmingham, parked the car, and walked over to the venue. Despite the fact that we’d arrived an hour before the doors opened, the line of people queuing to get in stretched further than the eye could see. Despondent, we started to make our way to the end of the line and noticed prominently placed “Jump The Queue” signs. These suggested that if you enter Bar Academy - a diminutive little bar which sits alongside Birmingham Academy, our venue for the night - and buy a drink, they’ll stamp your pass and let you jump the queues. The queue for Bar Academy was approximately one tenth of the length of the main queue and there was a drink at the end of this one. No contest.

We soon entered the bar. The lone barmaid didn’t look terribly happy about the assembled hordes of Dave Matthews fans clamouring for a drink, but I squeezed myself into the crowd in an attempt to get her attention. The bar seemed to be entirely filled with Americans which took me by surprise; it’s not very often you get that when you go to see a band in Birmingham. Indeed, you don’t get that a lot in the UK. While I waited, I did a deal with a couple of local chaps who were at the side of me. “See,” one said to the other, “I told you we weren’t the only people in the UK liked Dave Matthews”. The deal was, whoever gets the attention of the bar staff first buys the other’s drinks and gets their tickets stamped. As luck would have it, I reached the bar first. 5 bottles of water later we had 5 stamped tickets and hurtled into the venue.

I thought we’d done quite well; the main queue hadn’t moved much at all whilst we were getting our tickets stamped, but there were already a significant number of people around the stage. I would later learn that said main queue had formed roughly four hours prior to the doors opening, so in hindsight, I don’t think we did too badly.

Site tweaks

I’ve made a couple of noteworthy changes to the site:

• The Amazon icons have been removed from the sidebar. I quite like them but they were causing the site to take an age to load. I’m not sure why. I might do some experimenting at some point to see if I can figure out what’s wrong, but for now they’ve been removed.
• I’ve added a “notify me” checkbox on comments. This is checked by default, and should mean you’ll get an email if someone replies to a comment you’ve posted. If you don’t want to know, uncheck it.
• I’ve also upgraded to the latest, bleeding-edge version of Wordpress. If anything looks odd, or goes horribly wrong, please contact me via the comments of contact form. So far (and I’ve been running this for a few days now) things appear to be fine.

BBC hosts the first virtual music festival?

Wonderland have posted some very interesting news indeed. As far as I’m aware, this is the first virtual music festival I’ve come across. Regardless, it’s certainly the first virtual festival the BBC have arranged. I can’t seem to find any information on the BBC site, however.

I’ve been meaning to have a look at Second Life for a while now. It’s a fascinating concept and is far more popular than I ever imagined it would become. I might register over the weekend and give this a go. It’s an incredibly intriguing idea, and I can’t help but think that this is something we’ll see more of in the future. I know there have been virtual book signing and other social events hosted within Second Life, but when someone like the BBC starts to host events in there you have to take notice. They’ve even created virtual digital radios for players to take away with them, which can be used to listen to Radio One from within the game.

This whole thing reminds me a little of Tad William’s Otherland books…

Have you tried Second Life? I’d be very interested in hearing your thoughts on the virtual world and this event.

E3 Reaction: Console Monogamy?

E3 is now well underway; each of the three key players have finished their press conference events and revealed their new toys. Sony and Nintendo - and Microsoft, to a certain degree - arguably have a lot riding on E3 this year. Both Nintendo and Sony have new systems on the horizon, and Microsoft faces a challenging holiday season in the face of competition from their two rivals. But the average gamer must ask: Where does that leave me?

With the launch of the Xbox 360, I took a long hard look at my gaming habits and made some changes. I've been an avid gamer ever since I can remember, starting out with a Commodore Vic 20, upgrading to Commodore 64, and then onto an Amiga (with one megabyte memory upgrade, no less). I've owned a SNES, a Megadrive (or Genesis, if you prefer), the ill-fated MegaCD, the even more ill-fated Atari Jaguar and more. I've been playing games long enough to have played  a little game called Karateka, and remember being awestruck by a demo of Jordan Mechner's exciting new game "Prince of Persia" at a gaming conference in London.  I still own a Dreamcast, I've tried and discarded the PSP, DS, and other handheld systems. My insatiable hunger for every gaming system on the face of the planet knew no bounds. Until now. It seems my insatiable hunger is somewhat satiated.

In the past, the prospect of only owning one system seemed ludicrous. There have always been games which are only available on one system, classic titles like Ico that allow you to easily justify ownership of a system. In order to be able to play every single one of these titles, it's necessary to own every system. But these days I find myself with less and less time to play games. Perhaps that's not strictly true; A more accurate description might be that I find myself less inclined to spend what little free time I do have playing games. Some might say I've finally "grown up", but I've never considered gaming to be a childish interest so I wouldn't subscribe to that. Unless by "grown up" they mean "got a job, had a child, and bought my own home". 

Review: Slither

They don't make films like Slither any more. Or perhaps more accurately, they don't make films like the ones that have clearly inspired Slither any more. At a time when every recent horror film seems intent on proving itself to be the most extreme film you'll ever see (a fact which Slither mocks in its trailer) James Gunn has created a bona fide, card-carrying B-movie, and it's more than happy to show you its impressive credentials.

Gunn's directorial debut comes with all your favourite b-movie trimmings and plays out in a style that's very reminiscent of The Blob (amongst others). Fans should have an enormous amount of fun spotting all the tributes to various genre classics; Slither is wall-to-wall with references, from Videodrome, Predator and The Thing, to the more obvious nods in the direction of Shivers and Night of the Creeps. Much like Scream's slasher movie handbook, Slither plays by the rules and stays faithful to it's genre. It's very, very funny in places - thanks to an above average script and the timing and charisma of its actors (particularly Nathan Fillion, who proves once again that he can hold the screen as well as anyone with the right script) - and its inability to take itself too seriously is a tremendous help. And yet for all of the jokes, it still manages to achieve moments of tension and provide some genuinely unsettling and uncomfortable images. Oh, and the whole thing takes great pleasure in being pretty disgusting too. Another item in the b-movie rule book states that some of the effects must be deeply crappy, and Slither is more than happy to oblige here too. Whilst the makeup effects in general are superb, and there are some great cgi assisted kills, there are one or two effects which look dire. I'm fairly sure this is intentional, but even if it's not, the feel of the film is such that you can easily accept a few crap effects.