Kenny Evil

I liked Ron Moore's version of Voyager (aka Galactica) much better. Voyager isn't totally irredeemable (Robert Picardo's Doctor was always fun and Jeri Ryan... sorry, got distracted for a moment there, Jeri Ryan could do deadpan tremendously well, and there were a fair few good episodes here and there) but overall it was really let down by writers and executives who wouldn't fully commit to the premise and just wanted to do TNG with a different set of aliens. The cast was often better than the material they were given, and this is especially true of Kate Mulgrew and Ethan Phillips. Also, I will never forgive the Voyager team for ruining the Borg and the Q.

So Steam has announced their own OS which will be a fork of Linux and is presumably going to be the OS of the SteamBox. The Xbone and the PS4 didn't really enthuse me a whole lot but the SteamBox, especially with this OS, really does. This really has a chance to make Linux the target OS for PC game developers rather than an afterthought.

This arrived today. Glorious hardback edition from Dark Horse. Really looking forward to this. I've been trying to get a hold of Skin for years, but it's unbelievably rare (even though it doesn't usually sell for much.)

Face/Off is mildly stupider than Gone in 60 Seconds solely because the face swapping technique doesn't account for the very different builds of the two men. Nicholas Cage's face spread across John Travolta's skull would be a horrifying visual.

Okay, you're too far gone to get you back on good films immediately. The shock would kill you. I suggest a nice diet of Nicholas Cage films starting with the first Ghost Rider, then the second, then National Treasure, Face/Off, Gone in 60 Seconds, Bad Lieutenant and finally Matchstick Men.

JMS wants someone to reshow Babylon 5 to stop it from fading into obscurity. He wants a network to do this rather than Netflix, which would be the perfect fucking option for it! Seriously, I got through a weeks long Buffy marathon thanks to Netflix and could easily do the same with Babylon 5 rather than having to wait for it day by day.

I honestly thought he was Australian playing British when I saw him in undeclared. His accent in that is weird and he definitely doesn't sound like he's from Newcastle.

I actually passed by it today on the bus. Didn't get a chance to pop in.

The Big Finish Eight Doctor Adventure Blood of the Daleks is exceptionally cheap at the moment. You can get both parts for less than six quid.

New Monday night routine: Grillstock and Breaking Bad. Goes without saying but this week's Breaking bad was fantastic.

Finished the mass rewatch of Buffy yesterday. Overall, Season 2 works the best. Angelus was the best villain the show had, the sword fight at the end was truly epic (even if it was obvious that they were using stunt doubles at several points) and the build was fantastic. Christophe Beck and Jeff Pruitt are truly the unsung heroes of the entire series. Beck came in in season 2 and immediately the music improved tenfold. Most of the memorable pieces were developed in the second series and, after he left full time, he came back for some of the more important episodes like "The Gift" and especially "Once More With Feeling". Jeff Pruitt, meanwhile, really helped develop the fight scenes and put them so far above what other weekly TV series were doing, it defies belief. Even now few weekly TV shows can touch Buffy's action scenes. Season 4 and 5 were a lot better than I remember them, with 4 having some of the best episodes of the series and 5 having a much stronger structure than I remembered. Adam was an incredibly boring villain though. Glory on the other hand was remarkable from the beginning where she was comically sneaking up on Buffy to the end where Buffy smashed her into a fine paste with her Troll hammer. Season 6... As depressing as I remember it, but with some fine work mixed in as well. The magic as drugs metaphor was far too unsubtle, and went a bit Reefer Madness when Willow was driving the car while high. With the benefit of age, I understand better why Buffy was the way she was during that season and they did some great work depicting someone who's chronically depressed. Unfortunately there's a fine balance with doing that because, one of the things about dealing with a friend who is depressed is that they can be very hard to stick by. If at least one of Willow or Xander wasn't acting like a complete arsehole through season 6 maybe it would have been better. Speaking of Willow: rant time! Had she been unable to resurrect Buffy or had she been forced to kill her if she came back wrong, what the fuck was her plan? She basically moved into Buffy's house rent free, took the biggest bedroom and took over the dining room as her office. Meanwhile she was still attending UC Sunnydale, so had no visible source of income. After bringing Buffy back from the dead (which even if she had been in Hell, would have been an incredibly traumatic experience) and went "welp, we've run out of money. Time for you to get a job." And all of this is before she starts getting mega hooked on the magics. What a complete shit of a friend! Season 7 got a bit too heavy on the speeches at times, but I like that they recognised that with Andrew in storyteller. Caleb should have gotten involved a lot sooner than he did and it's pretty obvious that evil only lost because it's stupid. There were a couple of points where Caleb could have outright killed Buffy but chose not to for... some reason... despite the fact that her death wouldn't activate another Slayer (as Faith seemed to be the only active slayer between her death and resurrection). The final episode was great, though I think they should have added a line about the Ubervamps being weaker in their own realm to explain why the potentials could harm them before they gained powers and why attacking them in there made sense in the first place. One of the things I did love about the series is that, even at its darkest and most depressing, they took the time to add some humour in there. It's not stated enough but it really was a very funny show. Here's to the next rewatch in 5 years time!

Big finish have permanently reduced the price of the first 50 monthly doctor who adventures to £2.99. Finally got around to getting spare parts and it's great. It's pretty much an origin story for the mondassian cybermen and has done cracking stuff from the fifth doctor.

Right. I will never understand the insanity of having Deadpool in a film and sewing his mouth shut. It's the equivalent of having an Iron man film where Tony Stark has no access to high tech.

The backlash against Smith at the time he was cast was that he was too young and clearly was only cast to appeal to younger audiences. The backlash against Capaldi seems to be that he is too old and won't appeal to the younger audiences. Personally, I love this choice. I can actually see him being a calmer, less erratic version of the Doctor compared to Smith. This is the audition script and I can hear both Capaldi and Smith reading it in very different ways.

Same here. Here's to twelve.

The bbc accidentally let the identity of the twelfth doctor slip on their website. Edit: wrong, sorry. Apparently it was a prank by a radio times journalist.Edit2: apparently there's a load of placeholder pages with urls that say <random actor >-is-the-twelfth-doctor

I'm expecting the following reactions: most people going "who the fuck are they?", a couple of people saying "oh, they're a good choice" and a large contingent saying "nah, they'll never be as good as Matt Smith". Within the first few episodes people will agree they were the right choice. Doubt it'll be Peter capaldi, though I think he'd make an excellent doctor. I'm still hoping for Natalia tena myself, but not holding out too much hope on that one.

There was a lot more of the Russian and Chinese teams but it was cut for pacing.

Apparently 12 is being revealed on Sunday.

I wonder if they left in more footage of crimson tornado for the Chinese version?

Just hire Maurice LaMarche. His version of Orson Welles has become the go-to version anyway to the point that Orson Welles doesn't sound like Orson Welles any more.

I like the books. Katniss is a great lead character and I like the fact that she isn't just naturally talented with a bow and arrow, it's something she had to pick up to survive. While they are written for teenagers, the characters are fantastically complex and occasionally do things you might not like without ever thinking "wait, why are they doing that? It makes no sense." I'd definitely recommend them. The first film was a really good adaptation of the first book but I think it helps that Suzanne Collins wrote a set of books that lend themselves to cinematic shots. Some parts were cut or condensed (for instance the giant dogs that chased them at the end were supposed to have traits of all of the other pledges that had been killed in the Games. I can't remember if they ever made it clear if they had grown the dogs from the genetic material of the other pledges or if they were just designed that way to psychologically fuck with the Katniss, Peeta and Cato. In either case, it probably wouldn't have come across so well on screen.) I'm quite looking forward to this film as well. Well, so long as they don't bother with the shaky cam in District 12.

Karen Gillan shaved her head for the film.

idw's cover layout for their series

Fucking hell, this is going to be Dredd all over again isn't it?