TV

Doctor Who
33x13 Nightmare in Silver

Author Neil Gaiman returns (after the good-but-overrated The Doctor's Wife) for a second pop at Who, this time attempting to increase the scariness of the Cybermen. And I really liked this episode. It's imperfect, a bit rough round the edges, in need of some polishing of both the script and direction... but, overall, likeable.

Reaction online seems more mixed. I saw a lot of positive comments on twitter, but the Radio Times' Who guy hated it. Unduly, I thought, and a lot of the plot holes his article picked up on were either explained in the episode or easily explicable via things that happened in the episode. It's a double shame the extra polishing I mentioned didn't happen, then, because it would've also led to a more positive reception from critics like that.

[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]


How I Met Your Mother
8x15 P.S. I Love You
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]


Star Trek: The Next Generation
3x26 The Best of Both Worlds Part 1 [season finale]
4x01 The Best of Both Worlds Part 2

The two-parter from TNG, with that cliffhanger. And it's great! I mean, it's a little dated now (it is 23 years old), but in kind of a nice way -- its pace is brilliant, neither too slow nor as mad-dash-frantic as a lot of current genre telly.

I watched the recently released Blu-ray, which edits it all together into a movie (ironically thereby losing the famous cliffhanger), and it looks bloody stunning in HD. It's not just an image quality thing, it's the quality of the sets, the lighting, and the wonderful model effects... This stuff, made for TV nearly a quarter of a century ago, is still better than lot of today's big-budget movie CGI.


The Voice UK
2x07 The Battle Rounds 1
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

DVD Extras

Regeneration: Engaging the Borg

Half-hour making of about The Best of Both Worlds, found exclusively on its standalone Blu-ray (i.e. not on the Season 3 set, though I suppose they could yet put it on the Season 4 set). It's got interesting information, but it feels poorly constructed: a selection of interview snippets, behind-the-scenes footage and episode clips strung together almost at random, rather than a properly considered documentary.

Still, seeing how else it could be done makes you all the more appreciative of the skill that goes into the classic Doctor Who DVDs.

Collection Count

Collection Count tracks my DVD/Blu-ray collection via a number of statistics every week.

A selection of imported BDs account for this week's boosts -- including a six-disc set for a single film. Madness.

Number of titles in collection: 1,561 [up 4]
Of which DVDs: 1,162 [no change]
Of which Blu-rays: 399 [up 4]

Number of discs in collection: 3,904 [up 13]
Number of films in collection: 1,677 [up 4]
Number of TV episodes in collection: 5,761 [no change]
Number of short films in collection: 380 [no change]

See you next week, faithful reader.