I’m not dead! Honestly!

I’ve been meaning to update this for weeks, but things keep getting in the way. And by “things keep getting in the way,” I mean I’ve been playing The Sims 3 to an unhealthy degree and spending my remaining free hours watching episodes of House. But now I’ve gotten to the end of House, so that’s freed up my schedule a little. So now, catch up time:

My final exams went very well. I’m sure I passed them all anyway. And I gave the greatest presentation of my life for my Final Year Project. Provided I don’t lose too much on a certain “not-very-well-done” continuous assessment, I should have no problem getting a good degree and, as a result, a place in the Master’s course I applied for.

Getting back to The Sims 3, though, it’s one of the best games I’ve played in a long time. I’ve been playing for two weeks and my family is already seven generations in. The whole open town thing really adds to it and I love the little collection-objects and things. I kinda wish there were more hair choices and a little more control over shaping faces (Mine is actually impossible to make. There’s no slider for general head-roundedness unfortunately so I end up looking very squashed.) The traits system is brilliant. I think my favourite one has to be the Evil trait, which gives them the ability to declare someone their arch-nemesis in a dramatic supervillain style.

Also, watched The Butterfly Effect 2 yesterday. I loved the first one, but the sequel is awful. He only time-travels THREE TIMES! And then, it just ends out of nowhere. It’s the middle of a dramatic scene, you’re waiting for him to go fuck up history again somehow and BAM, the film is over. It’s like someone lost the second half of the script and, rather than rewrite it, they just tacked on a random ending halfway through. I hear there’s a third one too. Can’t imagine what that could be like…

A new post! Clearly I have assignments to do!

Yes, there’s nothing like good old procrastination to get me updating the old blog. It’s easter weekend, and I’ve actually got a few things to talk about. I guess I’ll proceed chronologically.

First of all, Saturday’s Doctor Who episode. wow. Not “Wow!” with a capital W and an exclamation mark mind, but still, wow. Honestly, going by the trailer, I wasn’t expecting much, and the fact that the episode was co-written by Russell T Davies (Quite possibly the worst writer in Doctor Who history. Thankfully retiring at the end of the year) did nothing to build my confidence, but somehow it worked. The story was a bit filler-ish, but had enough going on to keep me interested and Davies for once managed to keep his blatant gay agenda to a minimum (We get it Russell, you like men. Nobody has any problem with that. Now stop making EVERY DAMN CHARACTER a homosexual.) Michelle Ryan made an excellent companion, and I was a little sorry that she won’t be staying on. Also, it was hinted at (with the subtlety of a hammer) that the Master will be making a return, which should be an interesting plot twist.

So, after watching Doctor Who I planned to go to a party at my friend Susan’s house. I called her for directions (having not been to her house before), got a train out to the nearest station and proceeded to get horribly lost. My first mistake was to take a wrong turn out of the train station. From that point on, my directions made little or no sense so I ad-libbed a little: “By cafe, she must have meant that pub”, “By church, she must have meant that bank”, “By turn left, she must have meant go straight ahead for 2 miles”, etc. Anyway, following my now fictional set of directions I eventually found myself in a cemetery at half ten at night. It was then I decided to give Susan a call and ask for the directions again. Fortunately, I was able to figure out where I went wrong and eventually find my way back to the house (which was VERY far away from where I had ended up). Seems everyone else got lost too though, because I was first at the party. People showed up eventually though and good times were had by all.

Finally, today I went to see The Boat that Rocked with some friends. It’s quite a good film, if a bit long. Bill Nighy was hilarious as always and pretty much everyone gave a solid performance. The girl playing Marianne was really good looking, though her character was a bit of a ho bag. Still, I’d give her one. Also, the soundtrack was excellent, a real example of good music used well.

Now I guess I’ve procrastinated long enough. Time to get down to some project work… maybe.

Saturday Morning Cartoons

This is probably the best video I’ve seen on youtube in ages:

Love the Ninja Turtle references. Is it odd that I kind of wish that cartoon was real, just to see what it would be like?

On a more optimistic note…

I’ve just realised I tend to be very negative. I only seem to write when I feel there’s been some sort of injustice done, which is why I’m always on here moaning about Watchmen or Stargate or Steam updates or the uneven quality of Skins episodes. Well, I’ve decided for once to write about something that I really like:

The Inbetweeners!
In case you’re not familiar with it, the Inbetweeners is a sitcom on E4 about a bunch of teenage boys and their teenage antics. So far, so unoriginal. The thing is though, the Inbetweeners is actually realistic!

Yes, unlike Skins with it’s “Everyone’s on drugs and having sex and breaking shit!” teenagers, the characters in the Inbetweeners are pretty much exactly like the kind of people I used to go to school with. They’re awkward, childish, and lie constantly about how much sex they’ve had (usually none).

There’s even a hilariously scene, reminiscent of my own school-days, where they’re all absolutely smitten with a female teacher just because she’s the youngest adult woman who pays them any attention. It’s so good, I’m even prepared to overlook the fact that none of the cast look under 25.

So, in conclusion, to the cast of the Inbetweeners: Keep up the good work!

Skins is starting to get good again.

When the latest series of Skins started, I tried to approach it with an open mind. I wanted it to be good, but at the same time I knew that when an entire show gets recast it’s usually the beginning of the end.

The series opened with a middle-of-the-road episode, followed by two not-so-great ones. I was about to give up on the series, but this week’s episode really reminded me why I started watching.

The episode focused on Pandora (pictured above, by far my favourite character), who seems to live in a sort of Enid Blyton style cheery middle-class world of her own. This week Pandora tried to have a girly sleep over with pink pyjamas, brownies and twister. Naturally, things didn’t go as she planned as first the brownies were drugged and then the party was gate crashed by a crowd of strangers.

We were also introduced to Pandora’s mother, a very strict and moral woman who we later learn enjoys making amateur porn with the man next door.

The whole thing was very well written, and the crude fart jokes and general “Oooh, look at us having sex everywhere. Aren’t we mad?!” tone that have plagued this series were kept to a minimum.

I was very pleasantly surprised by this episode and hope that the rest of the series can keep up this standard.

Theme tune troubles…

Got my Graphics exam tomorrow. It’s the last one for this semester, and is looking to be pretty difficult. I spent all day studying from about 11am to 6pm, so hopefully I’ll do okay. Seven hours has to be worth something, right?

I’ve also been trying to track down a cartoon theme tune I’ve got stuck in my head. I’ve watched practically every 80s cartoon intro compilation on youtube and found nothing. I don’t remember the name of it, but I think it was Japanese, or maybe French. The tune itself was a kid singing what sounded like “Ballix and Wallix, Ballix and Coco Pops,” or something like that. The cartoon was about two guys, one dressed in red, one in blue. If anyone can help me with this I’ll be forever in your debt.

On the plus side, while searching for it I discovered some episodes of Spartakus and the Sun Beneath the Sea. It used to scare me as a kid and I still think it’s pretty creepy (though extremely poorly voice-acted). Some of it is very trippy. Here’s a clip of it’s intro:

The problem with Stargate Atlantis…

Well, I just got round to watching the very last episode of Stargate Atlantis and, while I have to say it contained some very good ideas, the execution of some of them was just terrible. But then, thinking about it, I don’t think there’s been a really good episode of Atlantis since the first series.

When Stargate Atlantis started five years ago, it was a refreshing change from the old Stargate SG-1 series. Rather than being safely on earth, the characters were stranded in a distant galaxy with no weapons and an impending attack from a seemingly unstoppable horde of hostile aliens. The entire first series formed a complex 20-part story arc. Even episodes that seemed like filler at the time ended up being tied into important events. But the real appeal of the show was the sense of isolation. Without any contact with earth there was literally nowhere to run to.

Then season 2 came along and everyone started running back and forward between Atlantis and Earth willy-nilly, and the isolation went out the window, as did anything that separated the show from SG-1. Gone were the complex story-arcs, and in came the filler episodes by the bucketload. The show was still entertaining, but it had really lost that spark that made me feel I had to watch it every week. Overall, season 2 was average.

Season 3, though. Season 3 is where it all went wrong. I’m not sure what exactly was going through the heads of the production team when they thought that it would be a good idea to reintroduce the Replicators to the show. I presume they were off their heads on coke or something. The Replicators, for those of you who don’t know, were a race of robotic spiders in Stargate SG-1 who roamed the galaxy like a swarm of locusts, using any resources they could find to make copies of themselves. Then, one day, some obviously mentally impaired writer decided that it would be more fun if replicators started building themselves to look like humans and, instead of replicating, killed things. Thankfully these new replicators were killed off quite quickly and I thought we would be spared any more intrusion by them.

But no. Rather than think up a new and original villain to pit the Atlantis team against, the writers decided that they’d have them find a planet full of Replicators. How bloody original is that?! They even conveniently ignore the (far superior) origin story for the Replicators as was established in SG-1. No, apparently they were no longer built by a lonely little girl who was too emotional to stop them doing harm, they were built as weapons by the Ancients (the stock background story for any sort of plot device in Atlantis).

Series 3 also introduced that oh-so-overused Atlantis plot element, the reset button. In one episode it turns out the Ancients weren’t extinct at all, they were just flying about in a damaged spaceship. The team rescued them and they came to take back Atlantis. Now, an event like this should have been some sort of massive, universe shattering revelation with repercussions lasting entire series. After all, it was established back in the first series of SG-1 that the Ancients were long gone. But no, the writers decided that rather than deal with such an important event, they’d have all the Ancients die… OFFSCREEN… before the end of the episode. Two episodes later, everyone was back to acting completely normal as if nothing had ever happened.

Not only that, season 3 is the season when they killed off Carson Beckett… WITH AN EXPLODING TUMOUR. Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? You’re probably wondering how they could justify killing off such a beloved character in such a ridiculous way. I’m wondering the same thing. It was, by far, the worst episode in the history of all of Stargate. I suppose it doesn’t matter too much though. They reset-buttoned the whole thing in season 4 and brought him back as a clone.

Don’t get me started on Season 4, just imagine that big reset button being pushed over and over again and a clichéd plotline about Teyla being pregnant with some magical baby and you’ll get an idea what it was like. Nothing of particular importance happens, so I’ll skip to Season 5.

Season 5, the final series. A final chance to see all our favourite characters in action. But what’s this? No, we’re not going to focus on your favourite, well established, galaxy wandering team. We’re going to do a big drawn out plot about some doctor character who nobody cares about and who’s inexplicably attracted to Rodney McKay. Now, I think Rodney McKay is a brilliant character, and can be very funny IN MODERATION, but devoting practically an entire series to him is just ridiculous! Sure, Sheppard still had a relatively big part in events, but Teyla and Ronin seemed to just sit in the background in cafeteria scenes and then disappear for the rest of the episode. Presumably they were off on far more exciting adventures than the rom-com we were being forced to put up with.

Then it came to the last episode. It was by no means the worst episode I’ve seen. It was probably one of the best of the last three seasons. For those of you who don’t want the plot spoiled, this is your chance to stop reading. So, anyway, the team discover that a gigantic Wraith ship is heading for earth and decide to power up the city’s engines and fly after it. So far, so good. “But wait!” you say, “Doesn’t earth have that big underground chair thing that launches yellow explodey balls? Why don’t they use that?” Well, the writers decided to close that little loophole by blowing it up…. in possibly the most under-dramatic scene ever. There’s an unstoppable battleship attacking the planet and their only defense has been destroyed and the most you get from the actors is “Oh fiddlesticks, at least we tried out best!” followed by one of those half-assed, “John Sheppard does a suicide run at a Wraith ship with a nuke but is rescued just in time” plots that they stick in every three episodes. In fact, I can’t think of another way they’ve ever destroyed a Wraith ship.

But the biggest sin of the final episode was probably the worst use of the reset button I have ever seen. Let me set the scene. The team are pinned down by the Wraith. One of them has grabbed Rodney. Within seconds he’ll be history. Ronin is engaged in a fight with another wraith. Seeing his friend in trouble, he momentarily ignores his opponent to save him and gets stabbed in the lung as a consequence. He lies on the floor coughing up blood as the rest of the team realise there’s no way they can save him. With his last breath, he tells them to go on and finish the mission. Emotional stuff….. Two scenes later he’s back on his feet.

Yes, it seems that the wraith decided to bring him back to life for questioning, but decided it would be best not to place guards on the doors or anything. That would just prevent the inevitable rescue scene, after which everything is back to normal.

Well, back to normal except that Atlantis is now on earth, but I’m sure they’ll reset that in the inevitable DVD movie. Personally, I think Atlantis should have ended as a series as soon as they re-established contact with earth, but I guess I’m not writing it so my opinion counts for squat. I just hope they do a better job with this new Stargate Universe show. Or even better, bring back SG-1!