Articles

The Best And Worst TV Episode Titles by Dave Golder
(from SFX)
The list of worst titles (on a second page) includes a variety of puns that, really, fall into the "so bad they're good" category.

The Birth of the Babylon 5 Story by J. Michael Straczynski
(from TheJoeStore)
"In 1999, J. Michael Straczynski allowed his original notes on Babylon 5 to be released via his Last Word column in the Babylon 5 Magazine (Vol. 2, Issue 9). These notes were the first written record of Babylon 5, made moments after he had his inspiration for the series while taking a shower. Though the magazine is long gone, on this, the 10th anniversary of this column's publication, he wanted to share the origins of Babylon 5 again."

TV

Babylon 5
1x04 Infection

This is a back-dated post, designed to completely list the dates I watched Babylon 5. For an introduction to this blog, please see here.

TV

Babylon 5
1x05 The Parliament of Dreams
1x06 Mind War

This is a back-dated post, designed to completely list the dates I watched Babylon 5. For an introduction to this blog, please see here.

TV

Babylon 5
1x02 Soul Hunter

This is a back-dated post, designed to completely list the dates I watched Babylon 5. For an introduction to this blog, please see here.

TV

Babylon 5
1x10 Believers
1x11 Survivors
My slow progression through the first season of Babylon 5 (if I were watching weekly I'd be at episode 14 by now) finally reaches halfway.

Doctor Who [new]
4x10 Midnight
See here for my thoughts on this story.

Gilmore Girls
4x13 Nag Hammadi is Where They Found the Gnostic Gospels
The bizarre title merely explains a throwaway joke in the episode.

House
4x16 Wilson's Heart [season finale]
A surprising, moving episode to round off House's fourth season. As with previous House season finales, there's no direct cliffhanger, but they leave the ongoing plotlines in such a position that I'm desperate for season five to find out what happens next. All in, one of the best ever episodes.

The Kids Are All Right
1x08 (14/6/08 edition)
The kids aren't alright, they're bloody annoying little brats. But in this final episode, the four adults facing them could possibly win the largest amount of cash yet... (They didn't.)

Red Dwarf
2x05 Queeg [2nd watch]

The Weakest Link
Blue Peter Special
Never mind the programme, the website hasn't been updated for two years!

TV

Babylon 5
1x03 Born to the Purple

This is a back-dated post, designed to completely list the dates I watched Babylon 5. For an introduction to this blog, please see here.

TV

Babylon 5
Pilot The Gathering

This is a back-dated post, designed to completely list the dates I watched Babylon 5. For an introduction to this blog, please see here.

TV

Babylon 5
1x01 Midnight on the Firing Line

This is a back-dated post, designed to completely list the dates I watched Babylon 5. For an introduction to this blog, please see here.

TV

Babylon 5
1x21 The Quality of Mercy
1x22 Chrysalis [season finale]
Long-time readers may remember that I tried to finish the first season of Babylon 5 before I went to New York last summer -- five months ago. Ha! Well, anyway, I've finally done it.
The Quality of Mercy is one of the series' best stand-alone episodes so far; Chrysalis is overrated, one of those season finales that confuses complications and "not resolving anything" with events of importance and cliffhangers -- thankfully, a style that's now mostly out of fashion. And where Mercy is all very well written and performed, Chrysalis has some dreadful daytime-soap-level relationship scenes. Ouch.

The Devil's Whore
Part 3 (of 4)

Heroes
3x09 It's Coming

Little Dorrit
Part 11 (of 14)

The Sarah Jane Adventures
2x09 The Temptation of Sarah Jane Smith Part One

TV

Babylon 5
1x14 TKO

Criminal Justice
Part 3 (of 5)
Some glimmers of hope as BBC One's super-depressing murder/prison/legal drama enters the trial phase.

Derren Brown: Trick or Treat
2x03 Time
David Tennant is the 'ordinary member of the public' in this episode from the last series of Derren Brown's trickery show. The first two stunts are almost mundane, as they're pretty standard Brown fare, but the third defies belief and reason -- exactly why I love this man's programmes.

Mine All Mine
Part 3 (of 6) [2nd watch]

Wimbledon 2008
Unsurprisingly, some bits of Andy Murray vs Rafael Nadal -- with it's equally unsurprising result -- and most of the second (and final) set of Jamie Murray & Liezel Huber vs Daniel Nestor & Chia-Jung Chuang, which went the way of the more likable of the two Murray brothers.

Collection Count

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

This week, I tip over 1,500 titles in my collection -- again. I barely noted it last time, but what I meant to do was compare it to this, a record of my DVD collection at 750 titles, four years and eight months ago. After the regular stats, then, there's a replica of that post with new stats.

Number of titles in collection: 1,501 [up 4]
Of which DVDs: 1,144 [up 2]
Of which Blu-rays: 357 [up 2]

Number of discs in collection: 3,743 [up 4]
Number of films in collection: 1,544 [up 6]
Number of TV episodes in collection: 5,689 [no change]
Number of short films in collection: 370 [no change]

So, as mentioned, here are those new numbers.

We begin with ones you know: that I now own 1,501 titles with a grand total of 3,743 discs. That's an average of 2.494 discs per title -- slightly higher than last time's 2.367, but not by much. Box sets and multiple-discs-for-single-films are only slightly more prevalent, then.

Last time I listed my eight largest individual sets. This time it will be nine, because there are three tied at seventh place; plus one drops out, so there's only two new ones here: the complete Lost on Blu-ray (36) and The Sopranos (30). The others remain Angel (30), Babylon 5 with Crusade and TV movies (41), The Bergman Collection (30), Buffy the Vampire Slayer (39), Farscape (42), The West Wing (44) and The X-Files (59). If we take eight of them (ignoring one of the three 30s), these 0.53% of my titles make up 8.58% of my discs -- it might sound a lot, but it's nothing like as big as last time.

A fairer way to look at it might be to again take the top 1%-ish of titles and see how many discs they contribute -- I imagine that's what I was going for last time, and why I did the top eight sets rather than ten. Last time that single percentile accounted for 17.5% of my discs; now it's 13.2%. Clearly I've not bought so many huge box sets in the past few years... though come Christmas the ginormous Harry Potter set will kick things up a little further.

What about the spread of decades -- do I own many films? Last time the largest part of my collection was the then-present '00s, at a massive 52%; now, it's 46.8%. It's nice that I've spread things around a bit more, but then since then we've changed decade -- the last three years are the '10s (obviously). They've already contributed 7.3%, which together with the '00s makes 54.1%... but that's covering 13 years, not last time's 10, so it's all a bit scruffy. Either way, the '00s are already in fifth place -- ahead are the '90s at 13.99% (formerly 20.6%), the '80s at 9.2% (formerly 10.2%), and the '70s at 7.9% (formerly 7%). It's interesting that the proportion of '70s films has grown as my collection doubled -- wouldn't've called that one.

I imagine some of the other slides are due to the '00s diluting the waters, and maybe earlier decades bulking up. The 1890s and 1900s weren't present last time, though they account for a grand total of 0.1998%; the '10s increase marginally, from 0.2% to 0.3%, while the '20s are more significant, up from 0.6% to 1.67%. The remaining decades all see their percentage share increase too: the '30s up to 1.87% (from 1.3%), the '40s to 2.07% (from 1.6%), the '50s to 2.47% (from 1.3%), and the '60s to 5.66% (from 5%). I guess this general spread of increases accounts for the drops elsewhere -- I've clearly bought primarily new releases and a lot of older titles, and not so many from the '90s and '80s. So there you have it.

I've at this point noted how arbitrary many of the remaining stats are -- even more so than those decades. Maybe that's why I skipped them last time.

I will take a look at the ever-popular running time, though. Last time that came to 118 days, 18 hours and 55 minutes. Now, it's 271 days, 23 hours and 41 minutes. the number of titles has (just over) doubled, but the running time has clearly much more than -- closer to two-and-a-half times as big, actually. Box sets, I guess.

So that's that then. See you next week, faithful reader.

TV

Babylon 5
1x13 Signs and Portents

Criminal Justice
Part 1 (of 5)
BBC One's grim new drama, showing nightly this week, about a 20-something accused of a murder he may or may not have committed. Sounds like standard police drama fare, but this is more than that -- possibly a damning indictment of our legal system, or possibly just a depressing miscarriage-of-justice/prison-is-hard drama. It'll take an episode or two more to find out; so far, however, it's grim and depressing, and set to get worse.

Wimbledon 2008
Bits here and there, as usual, mainly from Andy Murray vs Richard Gasquet, which really pushed the light at five sets ending at 9:30 (and delaying Criminal Justice! On the other hand, if the BBC hadn't moved the tennis to One and delayed their schedule, I'd be stuck trying to find time to watch it on iPlayer before tomorrow's second part). Murray was bloody lucky to get that far, of course, losing the first two sets and only winning the third with an impressive -- though lucky rather than skillful -- final shot in a tiebreak. That boy knows how to work a crowd though (a British one, at any rate). I doubt he'll be so lucky in his quarter final against Nadal.

TV

Babylon 5
1x15 Grail
1x16 Eyes

Criminal Justice
Part 4 (of 5)

Derren Brown: Trick or Treat
2x04 Escape
2x05 Confidence
2x06 Superstition [season finale]

Mine All Mine
Part 4 (of 6) [2nd watch]

Shark
2x11 Shaun of the Dead

Spaced
1x05 Chaos

This Morning
(3/7/08 edition)
Normally I wouldn't even mention this, but I saw a bit of Paul Ross previewing next week's TV and wanted to state what an idiot he is. "For the second series Dexter has moved to FX" -- no, it hasn't, it started there -- "so it's not on ITV1 any more" -- yes, it is, at a later date... just like the first series was! How can a man whose job is to be a TV critic know so little about TV?! (Incidentally, Dexter is fantastic, and if you haven't seen it you should. And Russell T Davies -- job: 'Who supremo' -- is going to be on tomorrow's This Morning, undoubtedly saying nothing at all about the season finale, the Christmas special, or next year's specials, thanks to that last cliffhanger meaning anything he could say is a spoiler. Tsk.)

Wimbledon 2008
The end (as always) of Serena Williams vs Jie Zheng. There are two things Serena Williams make me think of: 1) a man in drag; and 2) the Incredible Hulk -- "you wouldn't like me when I'm angry!" I don't like Venus any more, mind, so I certainly won't be bothering with the fourth all-Williams final this Saturday. Also, the end of the Bob & Mike Bryan / Jonas Bjorkman & Kevin Ullyett men's doubles semi-final, which saw the two 36-year-olds beat the first seeds to make it to the final. Especially nice for Bjorkman as it's his last Wimbledon.

TV

Babylon 5
1x20 Babylon Squared

Gilmore Girls
4x17 Girls in Bikinis, Boys Doin' the Twist (aka Gilmore Girls Gone Wild)

Shark
2x16 Wayne's World 3: Killer Shark [series finale]

Spooks
5x03 The Cell

TV

8 Out of 10 Cats
6x03 (27/6/08 edition)

Babylon 5
1x18 A Voice in the Wilderness Part I
1x19 A Voice in the Wilderness Part II

Spaced
1x06 Epiphanies

Spooks
5x02 Gas and Oil Part 2
While a lot of this story pushes believability to the limit, the 'emergency measures' plot strand scenes of police attacking protestors are all too believable.

Wimbledon 2008
The longest -- and surely most tense -- men's singles final in Wimbledon history, Federer vs Nadal (for the third time) ended with the Spaniard winning. In the process he's put a stop to both Federer's near-record-breaking run of consecutive Wimbledon wins, and halted his near-five-year run of unbeaten matches on grass. Who'd've thought Federer would end up looking like the underdog too?!

Days til New York...

21

On July 12th I'm going off to New York for about five weeks. While the blog will still be updated, expect the odd gap while I'm travelling (and possibly while away too). As I won't have access to most/all of things like my DVD collection, I intend to finish many ongoing 'tasks' by then, such as watching season one of Babylon 5. This daily countdown is an aid to both you and me in seeing how long there is to go...

Doctor Who: The TV Movie

First broadcast on the second May Bank Holiday weekend of 1996 -- six and a half years since new Doctor Who has last graced British TV sets (it sounds hardly any time at all now, but it seemed like forever back then) -- the American-produced Doctor Who TV movie (or TVM for handy abbreviation, or The Movie as the DVD would have it, or The Enemy Within as executive producer Philip Segal would have it) was a ratings success in the UK, but flopped in the US where it was scheduled against the final episode of popular sitcom Roseanne. In many ways, retrospectively, this is a good thing -- if it had been a success it would've led to a US-produced new series, which would probably have lasted seven years at the absolute best, at variable quality, and then disappeared again. Instead, we've had a hugely successful and artistically sound revival, which has so far lasted four years, will definitely do two more, and most likely more beyond. For many Who fans, who view the TVM as an Americanised aberration, this can only be a good thing. But they're wrong, you know, because the TVM is actually a lot of fun.

Let's start with the point nearly everyone can agree is good: Paul McGann. Right from the off, he's a brilliant incarnation of the Doctor, arguably the only actor to have nailed the part so confidently in their initial performance. The greatest loss is that we didn't get further TV adventures with him, though thanks to the Big Finish audios those with a decent disposable income can enjoy a raft of stories with the eighth Doctor. The rest of the cast are great too, right down to the supporting artists (having been watching Babylon 5 lately, I've seen how bad minor-role actors can be). Daphne Ashbrook's Grace would make a great companion, as would Lee, played by Yee Jee Tso. Eric Roberts' version of the Master is often highly criticised, but there's nothing wrong with his camp panto villain portrayal, which seems to suit the character rather well. John Simm's turn in the new series could be seen to be developed from this as much as any other variation on the part. Several other highly criticised elements have also emerged in the new revival -- the kiss(es), hand-holding, fast pace, action-packed, etc etc. The revelation that the Doctor is half human may still cause debate among fans, but, really, it's not that bad -- it can be see to add to the mythology, or written off as a quirk of his eighth life, or any other number of sci-fi explanations.

The same can be said for the climax of the plot. Bringing Grace and Lee back to life may be somewhat dubious, and "temporal orbit" barely makes sense either, but if you care enough for them to bother you you should be able to come with some explanation or another (I'll make some up for you, if you really want). Otherwise, Matthew Jacobs' much criticised script is actually a joy. Yes, the opening is exposition heavy, and is awkward enough to follow even for knowledgeable fans, but if you can sidestep that the rest is pretty straightforward, packed with exciting sequences and great dialogue. There are laughs aplenty, especially from the Doctor, and for once they're not at poor production design. Even jokes that some call nonsensical -- the Doctor saying he's English, for example -- make sense -- in that example, he's speaking with an English accent, so why wouldn't he say "I suppose I am" when called English! The 'car chase' is brief, not executed out of character, and helps keep the plot moving. Geoffrey Sax's direction serves the same job. It's exemplary, in fact, with some great shots and fantastic editing -- look at sequences like the Doctor choosing his outfit while Lee searches through his items; the Genghis Khan moment; the furiously-edited climax... It's great to watch.

Despite the low opinion many fans hold of the TVM, it's one of my most-seen Who stories. It's fantastic fun, especially once you get past the rather leaden first half hour. McGann is great, the script is exciting and witty, the direction glorious to watch. It's not perfect, but it boldly dragged Who into the '90s and had a great time doing it. Really, I don't think I'd've minded some more.

TV

Babylon 5
1x17 Legacies

Doctor Who [classic]
The TV Movie (aka The Enemy Within) [4th watch]
See here for my thoughts on this story.

Doctor Who [new]
4x13 Journey's End [season finale]
See here for my thoughts on this story. [coming soon]

Shark
2x12 Partners in Crime

Wimbledon 2008
A fair bit of 14-year-old Brit Laura Robson beating Noppawan Lertcheewakarn to the girls' singles title. Hurray for the British! Also, the Incredible Hulk had two matches. I didn't watch either.

Near the end of Wimbledon they had a bank of four trailers... all for Olympics-related programmes. Dear God, it's going to be a bad summer. At least the football's over.

Magazines

SFX #182
So packed with interesting things that I actually read most of it! Shocking, I know. Amongst the goodness in this Star Trek-bedecked issue there's...

a good interview with Alan Moore, as the new League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is out in the next week or two;

a retrospective on Babylon 5 (I wonder if Straczynski still hates SFX?);

a decent feature on Ashes to Ashes series two, complete with hints at series three and an exclusive, amusing comic;

a look back at the acclaimed 1981 BBC radio adaptation of Lord of the Rings, which I keep meaning to listen to;

a fairly large feature on sci-fi-related computer games, which includes The Secret of Monkey Island at a very respectable #6 in a Top 20 count-up, plus a look at worthwhile forthcomers;

a reviews section that means I now have a whole lot more stuff I want toread/watch/hear;

plus a very good news section. I'm not going to go summarising it here, but it took ages to get through so it must've been interesting.

Oh, and some big exclusive feature on that Star Trek thing, if you're interested.

TV

Babylon 5
1x07 The War Prayer
1x08 And the Sky Full of Stars

Doctor Who [classic]
1x01 An Unearthly Child
1x02 The Cave of Skulls
1x03 The Forest of Fear
1x04 The Firemaker
See here for my thoughts on this story.