TV

Age of Umbra
1x06 The Unforgiving City [1st half]
[Watch it (again) on YouTube or Beacon.]

But before that...

Critical Role Cooldown
Age of Umbra Episode 5
[Watch it (again) on Beacon.]

Fiction

The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
7 The Adventure of the Three Gables

And here is the other single-star Holmes story, and the one that also comes bottom of the poll-of-polls I've referenced in the past. They're both late-era tales, collected in the final volume of short stories — that volume seems to be regarded as the weakest overall, although the Pocket Essentials guide still gives half its stories 4+ stars.

But this is entirely deserving of its low standing. It's not entirely without merit — there's the odd good line — but it's also pretty racist (not in a cruel way, but horrendously casually); and even if you're someone who can accept that as being "of its time", much of the writing is weak or outright poor (I can't quite tell if Holmes is behaving out of character, or if Doyle's conception of Holmes's behaviour just changed a lot down the decades).

The villain's convoluted plot is also thoroughly daft considering the goal they were trying to achieve. That said, it's the kind of dumb decision people make in real-life that comes across as dumb in fiction because we're not making ill-informed decisions in the heat of the moment. But really, as Holmes seems to think highly of the mastermind's intellect, you'd expect them to have come up with a sensible course of action.

As for my goals, that's the two very worst canon stories out of the way. I'll have to think about where to go next — possibly to divisive stories: there are a couple that came at the bottom of the poll-of-polls but Pocket Essentials gives four stars; and, vice versa, one they give two stars is =13th in the poll, and was also in Conan Doyle's personal top ten. Intriguing.

Games

Dungeons of Hinterberg

Sat down to play this thinking I was resuming outside a dungeon, would complete that, maybe play for half-an-hour or so (that's how long they mostly take, people say), and then I'd do other stuff. Well, I was wrong about the resumption point, which led to decision-making and exploring, which meant it was almost an hour before I was at the entrance to a dungeon. After almost two-and-a-half hours, I finally decided I should do something else. This is getting to be a pattern.

I am not knowledgeable or experienced enough to know if this is a "great game", but I'm certainly enjoying the heck out of it.

Collection Count

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

Just one new addition this week, which turned up today ahead of its release on Monday. There's a bunch of other stuff coming out around about now that I'm interested in, but I haven't got round to ordering it yet — I've been spending too much time (and money) on computer games. More on why that is... soon.*

Number of titles in collection: 3,594 [up 1]
Of which DVDs: 986 [no change]
Of which Blu-rays: 2,608 [up 1]
— of which Ultra HD Blu-rays: 452 [up 1]

Number of discs in collection: 8,635 [up 2]
Number of films: 4,558 [up 1]
Number of additional cuts: 454 [no change]
Number of TV episodes: 10,172 [no change]
Number of short films: 1,266 [no change]

See you next week, faithful reader.

* Not that I think anyone (a) reads this, or (b) cares, but hey, maybe future-me will stumble across these in five, ten, twenty, or more years and get a kick out of re-reading it.