Haven't Got A Scooby Who...

Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed how the latest series of Dr. Who is wearing a bit thin? I settled down on Saturday evening to watch the first part of the two-part current series finale, anticipating something perhaps a least a rewarding to watch, but OMG - was I disappointed. What a pile of crap.

Ok, ok so I know that Dr. Who is supposed to be for kids (and I guess tank-top wearing middle-aged trainspotters) and has built a reputation on scaring the pants off generations of them with aliens constructed out of nothing but surplus Noel's Houseparty Gunge and used bog rolls - but come on, last nights' episode was really scraping the bottom of the barrel. There were a number of things that I thought were particularly bad about it, here's a bit of rant on a couple of them...

Daleks. God I hate Daleks. You'd really think that the Dr Who team could come up with something at least mildly original for a series finale. Instead, what do they do? They do what they've already done countless times in the new bunch of Dr. Who episodes and "bring back the Daleks". Again. Why? Daleks really are the most ludicrous, least menacing arch-nemesis ever dreamt up in the history of B-rate science fiction. Worse than the Triffids and that's saying something. Do the Dr. Who writing team have any fresh ideas?

Daleks - apparently the most nefarious, evil, human-hating scum in the Universe. A nasty paper-cut would probably be worse than a run-in with one of these mechanical dog-crap receptacles.

To start with, you have the usual objections to the Daleks. They couldn't historically get up stairs without the aid of a Stanna stairlift for starters. For seconds, they move at the pace of a disabled turtle on the ground - you could outrun them in a Lada. Of course, the script writers have "cunningly" got around these things in the more recent series by using CG to provide them with rather naff-looking anti-gravitation devices or something similar, so that they can fly and whizz about looking like rampant arial wheelybins of destruction.

In addition, they're thick and just plain improbable. Thick, because they have an extremely limited vocabulary, ("EXTERMINATE!", "THE DOCTOR" etc...) which to my mind is a sure sign of some form of retardation as opposed to vastly superior technological knowledge as the script writers would have us believe.

Improbable, because they apparently build all this fabulous technology to enslave whole planets with, but just what do they build this stuff with then? Their little sink-plunger attachments? Detailed electronics work with a sink-plunger? That's like getting a horse to cook an omelet. C'mon chaps. Give the viewer some credit.

Early Dr. Who scripts cast the Dalek as an inter-galactic gigolo love-droid, until the writers realised that these metal miscreants actually have no todger, and less sex appeal than a wobbly shopping trolley.

A good portion of the Saturday episode was spent getting "reaction shots" from the various members of the Dr Who harem when they found out that it was actually the Daleks that had shadied the Earth off to some remote corner of time and space. Why? Because it's the only plot device that the writing team could think of to instill at least some modicum of threat and dread into an otherwise flaccid, lame villian character.

I mean, if everyone's telling us they're evil and nasty then they must be, right? A really good, well written and really imaginative baddie would actually convey this to the viewer just through their presence and the plot logic behind their existence. Instead, with the Daleks, all the characters have to tell you how nasty they are, because if you (the viewer) were left to decide this for yourself you would probably be wondering what the big deal with them was. You might actually just find them a bit funny or a bit stupid really.

Dr. "All Your Eggs In One Basket" Who. He's a single point of failure, and an unreliable one at that. He'd have been better off staying behind the counter in the menswear department.

Also, all throughout the Saturday episode it was stressed how omnipotent the Daleks are - and yet, on two separate occasions both Rose and Captain Jack managed to blow the crap out a Dalek using a their spacy-looking guns. The obvious question is: if Rose and Captain Jack can waste a Dalek, then how come no-one else can?

Were all the soldiers in Torchwood with Martha Jones equipped with the hi-tech weaponary capable of taking the top off a Dalek? 'Course not - they had good, old fashioned machine guns and service pistols. How inconsistent is that? If the script writers of Dr. Who and associated spin-offs want us to have any kind of belief in their mythology, then they could at least try and make it a bit more logical and consistent.

I suppose they couldn't do this, because the only real bit of plot in the entire episode centered around the tension formed as a result of the doctors groupies not being able to find him (using a mobile phone of all things - groan) when the "Earth really needed him".

That whole aspect of the show was just laughable, and it's interesting to note how the Doctor has changed with the times as a character - from a bumbling slightly absent minded old man in the 60's, to some kind of Radio 1 super hero who can save the entire Universe from everything in the 00's. Everything that is, except from his haircut and possibly the Daleks.

The latest heinous scheme by the Dalek overlord - Stavros, involves stealing planets in order to recreate the Crucible and from there, the 1978 Embassy World Snooker Championship, won by Ray "I Vant To Bite Your Finger" Reardon, pictured above lining his balls up over the top pocket.

To sum up, here's some of my own tips for the Dr. Who writing team:

1. Read some proper science fiction, so that you at least have some idea of how it's supposed to be done properly.
2. Retire the @#$%ing Daleks, they were probably scary for about thirteen seconds at some point in 1969, but they're just dated nowadays and don't really make any sense whatsoever.
   
3. Try and come up with a consistent mythology upon which to base your scripts.
4. Just because the show's about a time lord - don't overuse the whole messing with time thing as an excuse for flaky, tenuous plot lines that border on the pantomime.
   
5. Put more Bernard Cribbins in the show. He's the only one worth watching. Perhaps you could re-create him as ruler of the Daleks or something.

Coming To A Tesco Near You Soon: Martian Asparagus

Yes, apparently it's official - you could probably grow pretty good asparagus on Mars. See the article on Reuters here.

Phew.

I for one, am greatly relieved now that I know our asparagus stocks are safe well into the next century and beyond. If we can now just crack deploying a sustainable greenhouse on Mars, and of course a small branch of B & Q, we could move on to cucumbers and from there sort out all the worlds food problems.

A Martian War Machine, seen here wielding an asparagus-tip Doomsday device. The prophetic nature of H.G. Wells' writing continues to astonish even today.

Despite the deeply profound implications of discovering both water (in ice form) and alkaline soil - two key scientific finds which greatly increase the probability of indigenous lifeforms existing on our closest neighbouring planet; NASA decide to break the news gently through the use of fruit and veg metaphors.

Early test flights of the Beagle 2 probe gave no hint or indication as to the abject and dismal failure that was to come.

The decision by the NASA publicity department to let some veg-obsessed "wet chemist" (check his department name) to talk to anyone about this makes even the Beagle 2 team look like sophisticated urbanites.

Dr. Colin Pillinger, chief Mekon behind the Beagle 2 mission. Seen here with a giant George Forman grill, bought for him by his team last Chrimbo as a commiseration prize for crashing his brain-child into the Red Planet.

Thank You Orson Scott Card...

...for Enders Game. I've just read this for the second time after nearly twenty years and have to admit that it's an absolutely fantastic, seminal sci-fi work that inspires, is thought provoking and is a genuine joy to read.

I picked up a copy recently for my eleven year old son, who's a voracious reader and who's recently been keen to get into some sci-fi after pretty much reading most of the contemporary "young adult" fiction out there at the moment. Once he'd finished with it (and I have to say that he thought it was completely awesome and has since read the first two sequels Speaker for the Dead and Xenocide) I picked it up and worked my way through it in about a day.

For those of you that have never read it, then the basic plot is centered around the early years of Andrew "Ender" Wiggin as he is taken from his home and put through a military school (Battle School and later Commander School) with the sole objective to turn him into the perfect military leader, to help Earth overcome the forces of the (apparently) nefarious Buggers - an insect like race hailing from some far flung corner of the galaxy.

This book has a number of quite visionary elements to it in my opinion, and brims over with engaging and thought provoking ideas that really good sci-fi should always have. To name but a few of the ones that I found most interesting are:

1. The idea of propagating "remote" war through the medium of simulated reality. Ender and his cohorts are trained over the years using rich simulated environments, not a million miles away from the kind of FPS and RTS games that have been evolving over the past ten years.
2. The idea of a political, questionably democratic movement asserting itself through nothing other than the media networks and news channels. One of the sub-themes within the book is how Ender's brother and sister rise to have real political power as a result of them instigating of social change purely through the expression of their ideas on something very similar to the Internet as we know it today.
3. The notion of homogenisation of nation-states into less granular super-powers and the alignment of these super states against opposing idealogical principles.
4. What it means to be a killer and what it means to separate the consequences of an action from the initial intention of the action.

Meaty stuff eh? Don't get me wrong though, although there are some heavy-weight concepts woven throughout the fabric of this book - the reason why it's so good is that it has a pace and pathos that keeps you engaged throughout, so much so that at the end of the book you really do find yourself empathising with a number of lead characters; in particular Ender himself.

In other words, it strikes precisely the right balance between challenging the reader at the abstract, philosophical level but (if you want to take the whole thing a lot more literally and on face value) also allows even the most casual reader to enjoy a thoroughly good yarn with all the trademarks of strong character development, interesting and intriguing plot twists - the lot.

Thank you Orson Scott Card, for this fantastic and amazing novel.