Using Antarctica as a location for science-fiction

In the conclusion of my Book of the Month review this month, I mentioned how HP Lovecraft pioneered several ideas in his story-telling. One that really struck me was his use of Antarctica as a location for a relict alien presence on Earth. (Please note, spoilers follow.)

Antarctica was still relatively unexplored when Lovecraft was writing his stories in the 1930s. A couple of decades earlier there was the much-publicised race to the South Pole but the rest of the continent was still mysterious and unsurveyed, making it the perfect place to set a story of scientists discovering a former home of the 'Great Old Ones'. 

In his story called At the Mountains of Madness, an Antarctic expedition discovers a range of almost impossibly high mountains that would rival the Himalayas in height. Beyond the mountains is a secluded plateau. On the coastal side of the mountains, some of expedition encounter ancient beings frozen in the ice. They thaw them out and then contact is lost with the explorers. The rest of the expedition arrive and discover carnage and non-human tracks leading over the mountain to the plateau. 

On the plateau they discover the massive ruins of a truly ancient city. The revived aliens they are tracking have gone inside, so they follow them. There are even worse things lurking inside the city, though. And there the story ends with the usual Lovecraft approach of dire warnings not to go exploring in the mountains of madness.

The notes on this story included how devastated Lovecraft felt when his story was rejected by the magazine where he normally submitted stories. He apparently felt this rejection marked the end of his writing career. However, another friend was able to sell the story on his behalf to a new magazine called Astounding Stories. 

And this is where we enter a game of connections. A later editor of Astounding Stories was John W Campbell, who wrote a story that feels inspired by Lovecraft's tale, called Who Goes There? It was published in 1938, seven years after Lovecraft wrote At the Mountains of Madness. I read Campell's story a few years ago in an anthology of science-fiction short novels. 

In Who Goes There?, members of an Antarctic expedition find an alien spaceship buried and frozen in the ice. They retrieve a frozen occupant and proceed to thaw it out. However, the alien turns out to be a shape-changing being that can absorb and replicate other biological life-forms on the research base. This is a similar ability to the entities that Lovecraft calls shoggoths, one of which is implied to be lurking in the foundational depths of the ruined city.

If Campbell's story sounds familiar, it's because it formed the basis for the 1982 film directed by John Carpenter and starring Kurt Russell, called The Thing. The movie is a fairly faithful representation of the novella's story and the basic premise of an alien that absorbs other creatures and then extrudes replicas of them. The Thing is also notable for gory special effects which bring to life the horror element of Campbell's story.  

But The Thing wasn't the first film based on Who Goes There? In 1951 a film called The Thing From Another World was released, based loosely on the story. I haven't seen this, but apparently there were some major divergences from the story. Firstly, it was sent in the Arctic, not the Antarctic. Secondly, the alien wasn't a shape-shifter, but a blood-drinking plant-creature that is the only survivor from a crashed flying saucer. 

This version of Campbell's story seems to have influenced the Doctor Who story, The Seeds of Doom, filmed in 1976. This returns the action to Antarctica, where scientific researchers discover alien seeds buried in the ice that sprout tendrils which attack humans and turn people into plant-creatures called krynoids. In a weird coincidence I watched The Seeds of Doom a few months back as I have been working my through classic Doctor Who on the BBC iPlayer. 

And the story doesn't finish with The Thing. There was a remake released in 2011, and a sequel in the form of a video game in 2002. Meanwhile, the discovery of a prehistoric pyramid in Antarctica is the opening sequence for Alien Versus Predator released in 2004. One aspect of AvP that mirrors At the Mountains of Madness is the interpretation of carved hieroglyphics to explain the history of the pyramid, which is similar to how the explorers of the ruined city learn about its history from large carved wall friezes. 

So, while HP Lovecraft felt that the rejection of his story probably marked the end of his career, he had no way of knowing that he was sparking what would become a long science-fiction tradition of hostile alien beings frozen in the ice of Antarctica. 

2024 telly round up

Here is a round up of very short reviews of the more memorable telly I watched in 2024.

Bluey - The Sign / minisodes

I love Bluey. It's one of my favourite TV shows. The big thing this year was the release of a half hour episode called 'The Sign'. The big plot point is the impending sale of Bluey's family's house and the family moving to another city. Meanwhile Bluey and Bingo and their cousins Muffin and Socks are preparing to be flower girls at their uncle's wedding. Things go slightly awry and the four flower girls become part of a last ditch attempt to make sure the wedding goes ahead. 

There is a big emotional ending that I'm willing to admit made me cry, and the overall message - that you don't know how things will work out in the end until you reach the end - was positive without being wishfully optimistic. There was also an interesting sub-theme of parents trying to do what is best for their children, but not really knowing the best way forward and reconsidering decisions.

This year there have also been several 'minisodes', very short tales from the Blueniverse. I've found them very entertaining. 'Burger Dog' is probably my favourite. (The way Bandit's eye twitches as he is forced to listen to a terrible song makes me laugh every time.)

Wallace & Gromit ~ Vengeance Most Fowl

We watched this on Christmas Day and laughed a lot. It was packed full of jokes, saw the return of the evil penguin, Feathers McGraw, and managed to find a suitable replacement for the vocal talents of the late Peter Sallis, the original voice of Wallace. I think this is the best one off programme I saw in 2024. 

Ludwig

David Mitchell stars as a puzzle-setter who takes on his twin brother's identity as a police officer when his brother goes missing. Of course, he soon proves himself rather good at solving murders. I found this highly enjoyable and some of Mitchell's lines really made me laugh.

A Man on the Inside

This Netflix comedy starring Ted Danson was written by Michael Schur, whose previous credits include Parks & Recreation, Brooklyn Nine Nine and The Good Place. Those are all shows I enjoyed and I enjoyed this too. Ted Danson is a retired college professors hired by a private detective to go undercover in an elderly care community to try and solve a theft. Stephanie Beatriz, one of my favourite actresses, is the manager of said care home who suspects something is up. There is a deeper theme about loss and continuing to love those we have lost, and learning to live without them, that elevated this above other comedies. 

Nobody Wants This

Another Netflix comedy, this time starring Kristin Bell (who was in The Good Place) and Adam Brody. She's a sex and relationships podcaster, he's a rabbi. They meet. They fall in love. Worlds collide. There are some very funny moments, particularly from their supporting cast. One thing I noticed was the cinematic way of filming, especially in some scenes set at a youth camp. The series ended on a cliffhanger and there was a reassurance that a second season was coming. 

Star Wars: The Acolyte

This was supposed to be the big 2024 reboot of Star Wars. I found it boring. Some Jedi are being held to account for something they did by someone who feels wronged. I found it hard to care. I gave up watching. 

Star Wars: Skeleton Crew

This has been dubbed 'The Goonies in space' and so far it has been brill! (Half the episodes were released in 2024, there are still a couple yet to drop.) A bunch of kids find a crashed starship and accidentally fire it up. They end up on the run from murderous pirates searching for lost treasure. It's silly and goofy and fun and what Star Wars is meant to be! (In my opinion as someone who has been a fan for over 40 years now!)

Doctor Who

I watched the series with Ncuti Gatwa as the Doctor. It was okay. I feel like I say that a lot about Doctor Who these days. 'Dot and Bubble' was the most interesting episode. The overall story arc for the series seemed to be a whole lot of nothing. Literally. The Doctor's companion, Ruby, was 'special' because she was so ordinary, seemed to be the big reveal. It felt like a cop out. I suspect the showrunner Russell T Davies wrote himself into a corner and then couldn't come up with a satisfactory way out. I haven't watched the Christmas special but haven't heard much positive about it. 

Old stuff...

In addition to the series released this year, I've watched a lot of older stuff. This included:

Both seasons of Gravity Falls - a cartoon about two kids who go to stay with their great uncle (grunkle) who runs a 'Mystery Shack' roadside attraction in Oregon. Started out very funny, then became a story about averting an apocalypse.

All three seasons of Amphibia - a cartoon about some tweens who accidentally get transported to a world of talking frogs, called Amphibia. Again very funny, but the final season was about a war to free Amphibia from an evil hive mind.

The four seasons of Never Have I Ever - a Netflix series set in high school about a girl who is terrified she might never lose her virginity. This actually became quite a sweet story of finding love and growing up. 

All 6 seasons of Spin City - a comedy from the 90s that hasn't aged well and had to go through a hard re-casting when the star, Michael J Fox, had to leave due to health reasons. He was replaced by Charlie Sheen and the show went rapidly downhill. 

All 8 seasons of Psych - a comedy-drama about a guy who pretends to be psychic and help his local police force solve crimes. The pilot for this played it fairly straight, but it quickly became very silly indeed. 

Several seasons of vintage Doctor Who. These are now all available on iPlayer. I started watching them semi-accidentally, and watched a series with the Daleks in the era when Jon Pertwee was the doctor. I then carried on watching Pertwee's final season, then into the Tom Baker era. It's actually great fun seeing actors and trying to work out where I know them from. I spotted Camp Freddy from The Italian Job, but I had to look up the guy who played Chief Bast in Star Wars. (I could have kicked myself for not working out who he was before I googled him.)

Scary angel and pregnant Mary

I went to Tewkesbury Abbey today and saw a Nativity scene with a scary angel - it looked like one of the Weeping Angels from the most terrifying Doctor Who episode this century.

You may notice that Mary is pregnant and the manger only has a lamb in it. Well it's not Christmas Day yet, so Baby Jesus hasn't arrived!

Meanwhile, the Wise Men were halfway down the church, making their way to the holy crib.  I suspect they won't arrive until 6th January - which is still a decent pace for mannequins. 

USA & Canada 2016 - To Canada! Exploring Kingston, Ontario.

We left Cooperstown in the rain. I think this was the first time I had driven in America while it was raining. A short while into our trip we discovered that the bottle of lemonade we had put in the fridge of our hotel room had semi-frozen. We discovered this the explosive way, when Cathy opened it and the remaining unfrozen liquid rapidly left the bottle. We pulled over to clean up. I thought the bottle had become over-pressurised somehow and didn't realise it was frozen. So as Cathy had dried off and settled down, I thought I could open it gently and we'd be OK.

This didn't work and I managed to soak Cathy with lemonade all over again.

After 'The Lemonade Incident' the journey was without much incident. We stopped at a services plaza as we headed North. It was called Mapleview. It didn't look like much from the outside. Inside it was classic American diner with great food.

We carried on North. The landscape got quite wild and eerie towards the border. There were still farms, but they were more spread out. We were heading for the border crossing in the Thousand Islands, a scenic region in the St Lawrence river, that, yes, did provide the name for Thousand Island Dressing.

It's become customary on Facebook for people returning to Wales to post their pictures of the Severn Crossing. But there are bridges and there are bridges.

This one went on and on.

After the border checkpoint we passed the 1000 Islands Tower, where you can apparently get amazing views up and down the river.

And then another bridge and we were in mainland Canada.

Next stop was Kingston, Ontario, where we were staying for the next couple of nights. After a very brief stop to take some photos downtown (more on that later), we found our motel. It looked like a motel in a movie.

When we checked in the guy on the desk was very excited to hear we were from Cardiff because he was a huge Doctor Who fan. He even rolled up his sleeve to show us his TARDIS tattoo.

Kingston was the first capital of the united Canada, but people were afraid it was too close to those rebellious Americans to the South, so they moved the parliament to Ottawa. They'd already built the parliament building in Kingston, so the town has ended up with this massive municipal building right in the centre.

The town is on the shore of Lake Ontario, which looks like the sea. Cathy got to pretend she was on a boat.

Meanwhile I found a massive train to look at.

There is a real mix of interesting buildings.

And, of course, very different flags everywhere.

Kingston has lots of museums. I felt we should go to at least one while we were there. We chose one of the smallest - the old pumping station.

Mainly because I heard it had a big model railway display. It did.

At Harper's Burger Bar we had another encounter with fried pickles. I'm not sure why I look so startled by it.

We also got the opportunity to try a fabled Tim Horton's doughnut. Tim Horton was an ice hockey player who set up a coffee and doughnut shop after he retired from hockey. We saw Tim Horton's everywhere we went in Canada. They do good doughnuts. I recommend the Maple Dip.

Next up: the real reason we went to Kingston.

My review of 2014 (movies, TV, music, books)

I didn’t blog much in 2014, but a lot happened and I want to post some kind of review of various ‘art’ highlights. So, here goes, my ‘Review of 2014’ blog post. First up, movies:

Best movie

Easily, Guardians of the Galaxy. It was unexpectedly funny. It was action-packed. It had a cracking musical soundtrack. The film was so good it even got me into buying comics for the first time since I was about 11. I like Rocket Racoon. Cathy likes Groot. It about sums us up.

Most unexpectedly good movie

The Book of Life. This was gorgeous animation, exploring themes of love and death and conquering your fears and atoning for wrongs. Easily the best animated film I’ve seen for ages, made with sumptuous rich colours that made it lovely.

Most disappointing movie

The Boxtrolls. Not enough about the trolls and a bit too much time spent with ghastly humans. The film was called the Boxtrolls and they were barely in it.  If I wanted a film with ghastly humans I’m sure I could find a better one.

Best scene in a movie

I’m going for Jennifer Lawrence’s meltdown in American Hustle when she screamed at Christian Bale that all she wanted was for him to love her. My heart ached at that scene. It’s just fantastic.

Now we’ve wrapped movies up, how about TV?

Best TV viewing of 2014

Brooklyn Nine Nine. I laughed out loud (literally out loud) at every single episode. Even Modern Family hasn’t managed that. The Thanksgiving episode just kept on getting funnier and funnier although my absolute favourite scene was when Jake Peralta was looking for a flat and saw one that was just a toilet in the middle of a bare expanse of concrete. And that wasn’t the worst thing about the flat.

Running Brooklyn Nine Nine a close second was Elementary. Johnny Lee Miller is just captivating. There was one episode where all he did was lean against a wall, but it was a lean of menace and disappointment and ennui and pensiveness. The man exudes the character just when he is leaning. The show is a belter too and it’s great fun trying to predict which of the people who have innocuously been presented to the viewer in the first ten minutes will turn out to be the murderer.

Most disappointing TV of 2014

Dr Who. The first episode had the Doctor claim he could “speak dinosaur” and somehow appear in a locked and sealed room. He is basically magic now. The second episode contained one of the most callous scenes I’ve ever seen in any TV show. The third episode was a dire spoof of Robin Hood films. I gave up then. I did see two episodes later on, but frankly the gubbins of the relationship triangle between the Doctor, Clara and whoever her boyfriend was, just got in the way of both the story and my will to live. I didn’t bother with the Christmas episode. My love for the show has waned that far.

Ok, so that’s TV, now for some music.

Best new sounds of 2014

Ward Thomas – From Where We Stand. The idea of Country music-singing twins from Hampshire sounds like a disaster but their music is great. I heard the single ‘Push for the Stride’ on Radio 2 and had to look it up straight away when I got home. Even better they are coming to Cardiff next year, playing The Globe on my birthday and we have tickets!

Best gig

Hard to choose this as we made it to six gigs this year, including Tony Wright at the cleanest rock club I have ever been to. (A guy came round putting people’s drinks on beermats as if they were coasters!) But probably the best gig was Darius Rucker on Cathy’s birthday. We travelled to Wolverhampton to see him and he was excellent, playing several old Hootie & the Blowfish tunes as well as his solo material. He finished with a cover of Champagne Supernova that was simply epic.

Best support act

I’m going to give this to Ariana and the Rose, who supported the Hoosiers at The Globe in Cardiff back in April. It’s a tough gig being a support act, but they were great, sounding a little bit like Garbage although not as grungy.

Best album I discovered in 2014

Bad Blood by Bastille. I kept hearing Pompeii on the music channels so put the album on my Amazon wish-list. Someone got it me for my birthday and I really liked the whole album. I was surprised to find Cathy did too. I came home one day and found she had put it on while washing up. It’s great driving music too. They are songs you can belt out at the top of your lungs if you want to.

One thing left, books...

Best fiction read this year

Eleanor Rigby by Douglas Coupland. It’s a toss up between this and Microserfs, also by Coupland, which actually made me cry at the end. But Eleanor Rigby edges it simply because it’s the only book I’ve ever read that is searingly honest about loneliness and how no one ever warns you how hard it is to live with feeling lonely. I love Douglas Coupland’s books. I have to put them down every few pages to let the ideas sink in.

Best non-fiction read this year

Soccernomics by Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski. This is a ‘freakonomics’ style exploration of footballs looking at certain assumptions, like do managers make much of a difference and do England under-achieve at World Cups. The exploration of how poverty prevents developing nations from being genuine global competitors is fascinating.

Ok, there you go, that was my year. How was yours.

If you aren’t going to take your work seriously then don’t expect me to take you seriously

This post could also have been titled: Why I didn’t like the film Happy Feet.

I have had a few conversations with people lately that have run something like this: “I know it’s only a cartoon / trashy action movie / Doctor Who, but it annoyed me how unrealistic it was...”

I realise that may make me sound nuts, but my point is this: I can accept implausible plots (e.g. a time travelling alien that looks just like a human traversing the multiverse in a little blue box), but any story, no matter how far-fetched has to abide by its own internal logic. And however fantastic and unbelievable the story, holes in the plot come down to one thing: shoddy writing.

For example, my main objection to Happy Feet was that the main penguin (whose name I forget and can’t be bothered to look up on IMDB) didn’t grow up and all his contemporaries did. So at the end of the film he was still a little grey chick, but the girl penguin he liked was in her proper plumage and everything. There was no reference to why this should be the case, or any explanation at all for it.

I think sometimes people think ‘oh, it’s only a cartoon, it doesn’t matter’, but whatever film it is, I feel cheated if people don’t do their job properly with a script etc. That, for me, was an irksome plot-hole that made me quite annoyed at the film-makers and sucked all the joy out of the film.

Also – as an aside – I really didn’t like the zoo scene where he was quite clearly suffering post traumatic stress disorder due to being confined. I’m not sure how I feel about zoos generally (some seem quite good; some are awful), and it kind of glossed over the distress that can be caused to animals in the name of entertaining humans.

I suppose there is something good any film showing how exhibiting animals can be bad for them, but whether a cartoon where it all came good in the end was really the place for effective social commentary is debatable.

There are other examples of films / TV shows where stuff just doesn’t add up, like the ‘pirates’ episode of Doctor Who last year where one character just disappeared with no explanation, or any film that relies on people changing their mind and crossing a huge distance in an unfeasibly short time to turn up in the right place at just the point where they can save the hero(es) when all hope seems lost.

Script-writers can get away with it sometimes – recently in The Muppets they made a joke out of that corny plot device (‘How did you get back here so quickly?’ ‘We travelled by map!’), which worked within the internal logic of the film.

I wish all script-writers were as good at closing plot-holes.

Torchwood goes west (big mistake)

Although other people have said some favourable things about the new Torchwood series that started last Thursday, I was less impressed.

First off, this was an 'establishing' episode that only really existed to take you to the next episode and explain how Captain Jack, Gwen et al end up in America. As that kind of episode it was done to an okay level. Quite why a black ops helicopter was trying to blow the crap out of a house on a beach in Wales where Gwen and Rhys were holed up was never adequately explained, but presumably it will be. Also the casting of Bill Pullman (who has aged significantly it seems) as a creepy child-murderer could well be inspired (and is a bold role for anyone to take on).

But - and it's a big but - nothing actually happened or got resolved in the episode. There was one exceptionally gross scene where they detached a head from a barely living charred corpse, and the head remained alive. But no answers. Only a very long teaser for the rest of the season.

I don't mind TV series having story arcs, although too-rigid story arcs killed The X-Files, Alias, even The West Wing in the end. The problem an episode that is all about the arc and nothing else really happens is boring in the extreme. Exhibit A: those X-Files episodes that just seemed to be mysterious characters sitting round tables smoking cigarettes talking about codenamed projects. Snore off! You want to see some kind of conclusion in an episode, even if the conclusion is open-ended so the bad guy can return to wreak havoc later.

For me, the emphasis on a story arc instead of having a story is a minus for the new Torchwood.

So is the relocation of the series to the USA. I recognise why they're doing this - the American TV audience. It's the same reason the news series of Doctor Who unnecessarily kicked off in Monument Valley in Utah instead of the Rhondda. But it misses the point of what made Torchwood interesting to start with.

If I wanted to watch overblown science fiction in an American setting I could tune in to repeats of the X-Files, or watch more of the new series of V. There are enough good programmes made in America already to satisfy my lust for all things American - Castle, Chuck, The Big Bang Theory, to name a few.

What made Torchwood fun was that it was set in Cardiff, and, okay, that might be because I live in Cardiff and location-spotting was amusing. But it also set it apart from just about anything else in the schedule. Turning it into an American-based drama removes the one thing that made it a must watch for me. It will be hard now to pick it out from a line-up of similar, high-end, slickly-produced, drama serials.

I think trading the dorkiness of being based in a little big city that few people have ever heard of for trans-Atlantic bright lights is a big mistake. So far no amount of aliens, government duplicity, mysterious time travellers, or poor TV scheduling have managed to kill Torchwood off.

But this decision might.

Best bits of 2010, part 2 - TV

I always say that I don't watch a lot of telly, but thinking about this haas made me realise that maybe I watch more than I think I do.

So what were the highlights of 2010? Well in no particular order, they would have to be:

Camo Daleks with Union flags beneath the eyepieces in Doctor Who - the best Daleks ever. Although then they were blown up at the end of the episode by "proper" Daleks in primary colours that looked crap. Still, a Dalek asking if the Doctor would like a cup of tea was awesome.

In fact the series of Dr Who with Matt Smith replacing David Tennant was really quite good, although I wasn't too fussed about the over-arching storyline.

Season 3 of Chuck had some good moments too. The first half of the season was fairly awkward, but the last few episodes were gripping. I watched the series on DVD (thanks, Connor, for lending it to me) as it was shown on Monday nights when I was on youth. There is a danger with series like Chuck that it will get overwhelmingly silly after a while, yet so far it has managed to avoid that.

Season 3 of Outnumbered was very good, as to be expected. This is the one comedy show that has me biting my knuckles with embarrassment on a regular basis. The stand-out episode for me was one where Sue's incredibly annoying, flighty sister brought her American self-help guru husband over to meet the family. Karen, the little girl in the show, mercilessly questioned him until he cracked. It was awesome and painful to watch at the same time.

There was also a brilliant joke that was trailed extensively before the season - when Karen is told that a woman can be any shape or size she wants to be. Karen turns her head on one side and says 'What about a hexagon?'

Two new shows from America that are airing on Sky 1 seem to be producing the goods. I haven't seen too many episodes of The Middle, but what I have seen has made me laugh. And then there is Raising Hope, made by the same team who produced My Name is Earl, and very funny. Like MNIE, the central cast of misfits and losers are cringe-inducing, yet loveable. They have good hearts and that's what makes them work as character.

Raising Hope is also one of the best stories of unrequited love I've seen in a while. Jimmy's attempts to woo Sabrina capture that sense of desperation about not trying to look too desperate; of wanting someone but trying so hard not to scare them off. It is poetry.

A love story of a different kind has shown up in the latest series of The Big Bang Theory. Sheldon has a girlfriend, possessing equal brainiac weirdness as him. I quite like 'Big Bang' (especially as the Barenaked Ladies composed the theme song!), and it seems to be maturing quite nicely as a sitcom, with no signs of flagging yet.

But there is one stand-out TV moment of the year for me - from the second series of Castle, itself a great show despite being a detective series. I normally avoid detective shows, but this has enough quirky charm to keep me interested.

It stars Nathan Fillion, one-time star of the great Firefly. One episode of Castle begins with Fillion, as Rick Castle, dressed in his old Firefly garb for Hallowe'en. His daughter Alexis asks him what he is meant to be.

"Space Cowboy," he says.

"Didn't you wear that outfit, like, five years ago," she asks condescendingly.

"Yeah," he admits, before saying in a small voice, "but I really liked it."

That is probably the best TV crossover inside joke I have ever seen. It was brilliant. Definitely my highlight of the year.

Earthshock...ing

I'd heard a lot about classic Doctor Who stories, and Earthshock always comes up as one. So I borrowed this DVD expecting to be mildly entertained.

I was... but not in a good way.

Frankly, this was dross. Okay, it was TV science fiction filmed in 1982. What was I expecting?

Weeeellllll.... a bit more than this. It dated from the days when a Who story had to be at least four episodes long. Which is fine if you have enough material to fill just under two hours. If you don't, then you get a lot of filler.

I think the script meetings must have gone like this:
"Quick, we have another 19 minutes to fill in this episode."
"Right. Er, let's have them walking down some more tunnels..."
"Okay, but why would they do that?"
"Er... because they heard someone else walking down the tunnels?"
"Good idea. Then we can film the baddies walking down the tunnels too!"

At one point one of the characters says 'It feels like we've been walking for hours.' I know, love. It felt like I'd been watching you walking for hours, with no discernible progress.

Then there was the Doctor getting captured and being held prisoner on the bridge, where he could walk around at his leisure and poke things on the control panel. I know saying that a science fiction show was unrealistic sounds stupid, but this was people acting in a way contrary to how people would act. No matter how ludicrous the situation (and Doctor Who has had some ridiculous situations in the past), the thing that was most unbelievable about this show was the way people were portrayed.

And Cybermen are meant to be scary, emotionless, resolute killers. They aren't meant to stand around chatting like night watchmen talking about the football. Villains who aren't in any way villainous are a waste of space.

Apparently a sedentary lifestyle can lead to you developing a venous thrombosis. Watching this would make you wish for one, just so you'd have something exciting happen.

The thing is, I know next time someone offers to lend me some 'classic' Who, I will probably find it hard to turn it down. There must be somewhere I can get help.

Oh, there's really a lot of work going on here...

I overheard this 'corridor conversation' the other day. I walked into the corridor and both dialoguing parties paused as if they were sharing some proprietary information, then after I walked past the conversation started up again like this:

"I think you'll find that often when a doctor regenerates..."

TV highlights of 2009

The reason for doing this a couple of days into 2010 is that I can talk about David Tennant's last foray as Doctor Who, which occurred on New Year's Day.

Overall I thought the 'double episode' was a bit disappointing. The first half saw a resurrected Master, brought back to life for reasons that were never very clearly explained, and who was some kind of flesh-eating creature to boot, and the plot seemed to build to one joke: the establishment of the "Master Race" as humanity was turned into 6 billion copies of the Master.

The second bit was better, with some more humour, Timothy Dalton as the psychopathic Time Lord leader Rassilon (nice nod to Dr Who lore there), and a bit of pathos. I personally thought the ending was too drawn out, as the Doctor toured time to say goodbye to old friends. And they blatatly ripped off the cantina scene in Star Wars at one point. Still, it was nice to see a Sontaran for a few brief seconds, although how Mickey and Martha became married freelance alien hunters opened up a whole new can of worms.

It's hard to know where Dr Who, with a new Doctor, will go from here, and I have to admit the past year's offerings haven't impressed me much. So what, TV-wise would I say was great about 2009?

I really liked the adaptation of Day Of The Triffids shown just after Christmas. I'm always a bit wary when I watch an adaptation of a book I love. But this one worked for me. True, some bits changed - the convent scene was different, Eddie Izzard's character Torrance was more developed, the tribal mask back story was grafted in along with the hero's Dad. But overall, I think the update worked well.

The thing about Triffids the book is that it's a slow build. Triffids kill people and then wait for the flesh to rot before they eat them. In the TV show dead bodies were absorbed rapidly through rooty tendrils, but I guess that made more effective TV. Also, and a huge bonus point in my book, the Triffids were never aliens originally, so their discovery in darkest Zaire and subsequent breeding for Triffid oil was much more in line with the original story.

So, I thought it worked, although the critics lashed out at it. But as a fan of John Wyndham, it caught the sense of much of his work - that actually we have the capacity as humans to be the architects of our own downfall. That message was nicely played out in this most recent TV work.

I also loved the second series of The Big Bang Theory (the third series has just started too). This is the most recent comedy from creative genius Chuck Lorre (responsible for Dharma and Greg and Two and a Half Men), and ticks the boxes for me of nerdy cultural references and some genuinely funny moments.

I liked the episode where the four geeks met Summer Glau (the girl Terminator from The Sarah Connor Chronicles) on a train and conspired to talk to her. The show has set a high standard for itself, but the episodes of series 3 I've seen so far seem to show a show that is improving with time.

But my favourite telly show of 2009 has to be the second series of Chuck. If you haven't seen Chuck the premise is very silly - Chuck, played by Zachary Levy, is a computer nerd who has a top secret military computer ('the Intersect') downloaded into his brain. He subsequently needs protecting from various bad guys by two federal agents, one of whom is the very lovely Yvonne Strahovski, and the other the snarly Adam Baldwin. And every week something implausibly ridiculous happens that causes chaos in Chuck's life.

The first series of Chuck was cut short by the Hollywood writer's strike, so series 2 is the first full-length one. It got a little bit dafter as it went on, with a huge undercover evil operation (headed up by Chevy Chase no less!) that reminded me of Alias. But it was entertaining every week and series 3 is coming down the track. Yipee.

Other stuff I've enjoyed this year:
The QI Christmas special, and QI generally
Mock the Week, even after Frankie left
Rules of Engagement (import on Comedy Central) has had it's moments
'2 Good, 2 Bad' on Match of the Day 2 - possibly the funniest regular bit on any regular sports programme
Major League Baseball coverage on ESPN America (after the demise of Setanta Sports)

I didn't bother with Big Brother this year (who did?) and I tried to tune out the X Factor after the first couple of weeks. And, frankly, I was too busy having a life to get into any of the 'reality' shows.

Dashboard Dalek

My friend Matt has given me a car air freshener in the shape of a Dalek (apparently because his wife didn't like the smell). So now I have a little Dalek on my dashboard, who swings left and right depending on whether I'm going round a corner*.

The only drawback is that he is a bit smelly. I had to apologise to my car-pool companion the other day for the overwhelming 'fresh' scent when we got in the car to go home. Cathy has also remarked that "Daleks smell much fruitier than you'd have thought they would..."

*And, mysteriously, he sometimes just moves round eerily slowly when I'm stationary at a traffic light... Not quite sure what's happening there.

My worst Hallowe'en ever

As it's that spooky time of year (when did Hollowe'en become such a commercial affair? Do pagans complain that it's obscuring the real meaning of Hallowe'en?) I thought I'd tell you my personal worst Hallowe'en story.

T'was a few years ago. I'm not sure how many now. I think it may even have been before me and Cath got married. Anyway, t'was Hallowe'en. I was very tired and so decided to go to bed. Shortly after I'd gone to bed, but before I'd gone to sleep, I was called back downstairs by Cathy, who was using her 'er, I think this might be serious' voice.

She had somehow fallen into a door and bashed her hand which was now incredibly painful. A trip to Casualty was called for. This was back in the day when the old Cardiff Royal Infirmary operated a casualty department, so we headed off there.

The CRI is a Victorian Gothic pile in an insalubrious part of town. It has seen better days... one would assume. To give you an idea of how sinister it is, in the past few years there have been a few episodes of Dr Who filmed there - using both the outside facade, and the interior institutional green hallways and waiting rooms. However the good folks in the BBC location department barely needed to do anything to grim it up ready for an invasion of gasmask-wearing child zombies or the like.

Anyway, so we were there in the institutional-green waiting room, waiting to be seen to. It was a Friday night as well as being Hallowe'en, so the main clientele were violent drunks or the victims of violent drunks with various bloody assault wounds. There was shouting and yelling from the drunks who had been brought in by police officers, and miserable sobs and moans from the bleeding and bruised. And it being the kind of building it was, every shout was magnified and echoed down the long hallways.

To compound the atmosphere, in the middle of the waiting room was one TV; an ancient machine mounted on one of those anti-theft brackets which look like they could double up as a torture device. As it was Hallowe'en the selected channel was showing a horror film, which was set for the most part, it seemed, in a creepy gothic hospital/asylum. All I really remember of it was that it starred Mark Hamill, and it ended rather abruptly after he chose to stab himself in the eye for some reason.

So we sat there, watching the blood ooze from Mark Hamill's eye socket, waiting for the X-Ray results to come back, and hoping we could get out of this creepy hospital, before anything worse happened to us...