TV

Children in Need 2013
As ever, this is officially everything up to midnight -- including a clip of the Doctor Who 50th! Link below is all the CiN stuff on iPlayer.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Doctor Who
29x09 The Family of Blood [3rd watch]
This is truly excellent. In DWM's Mighty 200 it was voted the sixth greatest story ever, and I reckon it's at least that good, if not better, even with another 50-ish stories having come since that poll.

TV

Doctor Who
33x14a The Night of the Doctor
This seven-minute prequel to The Day of the Doctor was expected on Saturday (when it'll be available on the BBC Red Button), but for some reason got released today. And... I'm not going to say too much, just in case anyone reads this not having seen it, but... wow! That's something I've been wanting from nuWho ever since it materialised. Thank you Steven Moffat, all is forgiven! However good the anniversary special turns out to be (let's hope "very"), I'm not sure it can live up to my pleasure at the existence of this. Best bit of the 50th so far.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Friends
4x22 The One with the Worst Best Man Ever [4th or so watch]

Person of Interest
2x03 Masquerade
[Watch it (again) on Demand 5.]

Films

Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150 A.D (1966)
[3rd watch; #100a in 100 Films in a Year 2013]

As previously mentioned, I'm comparing the two Dalek movies to their TV originals. This sequel is an adaptation of The Dalek Invasion of Earth (which I watched here and here), and while it isn't as good as its TV counterpart, it's the better of the two films.

TV

Castle
3x06 3XK
[Watch it (again) on Demand 5.]


Doctor Who
29x08 Human Nature [3rd watch]

After only reaching the Ninth Doctor on Monday (and concluding him yesterday), it's time for #bbbDW50 to race straight on to the Tenth Doctor. The anniversary's nearly here, lots of episodes to cram in!

What better one for November than this, which is set almost exactly 100 years ago and concerns itself with remembrance? OK, it would've been even better two days ago, but I didn't actually choose it for the neatness of the scheduling -- I chose it because it's a damn fine story, which I haven't seen for a number of years and wanted to watch again. And it really is brilliant, even if the cliffhanger is a little forced -- this is from the "a two-parter is one long story" school of thought, rather than the later "a two-parter is two connected single episodes" style.

I recently read someone assert that Human Nature exists purely to establish the fob watch so it can be used for the Master in the season three finale. I felt a bit sorry for them -- all that they're not seeing in this tale if they think it's just about that. Knowing how RTD writes, I always assumed the fob watch was part of this tale that he then realised could be co-opted for the Master's return, rather than the other way round. Not to mention that the novel this adapts pre-dates the TV version by over a decade.


Friends
4x21 The One with the Invitations [4th or so watch]
More accurately, The One with All the Clips From Previous Episodes. Especially grating when you're watching the whole show at a speedy rate.


The Graham Norton Show
14x05 (8/11/13 edition)
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

TV

Doctor Who
27x13 The Parting of the Ways [season finale; 4th watch]
Here is where all the good bits are: the Dalek Emperor ("they survived through me!"), the Dalek army flying through space (thousands of them!), Lynda's death (poor Lynda!), David Tennant's first few moments (crikey he looks young!), and so on and so on.
Plus, the emotional wringer Rose goes through, brilliantly played by Billie Piper, now brings with it a realisation of how emotionless the Moffat-era companions have been, and how little the actors have been stretched by those roles. Shame.

Friends
4x20 The One with All the Wedding Dresses [4th or so watch]

The Mentalist
6x02 Black-Winged Redbird
[Watch it (again) on Demand 5.]

Films

Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
[#100 in 100 Films in a Year 2013]

Second 'half' (see yesterday).

TV

Doctor Who
27x12 Bad Wolf [4th watch]

With less than a fortnight until the anniversary, #bbbDW50 reaches the revived series. NuWho makes up exactly 20% of my viewing for this. That feels like it's disproportionately large, right? Wrong. From a grand total of 33 seasons of Doctor Who, the seven modern-era ones make up just over 21%. Pretty much bang on, then. The viewing rate will also step up to squeeze all the episodes in: rather than three per week, it'll be 10 episodes over the next 12 days.

First up, then, is the Ninth Doctor (of course). Although he only stuck around for one season -- a total of 10 stories -- there are several classics to choose from. His season finale seems a natural choice to sum up his era -- Daleks, Captain Jack, the regeneration... and Bad Wolf, which looks like it will factor in to the 50th special.

The most remarkable thing, watching this now, is how old it looks. It's only been eight years, but somehow it looks... not dated, necessarily, but not the same as TV drama now. I mean, what the hell cameras were they using to make every single light source glow to three times its size?! And all the Big Brother / Weakest Link stuff has dated terribly. Even at the time we knew it would, but (again) it's only been eight years -- how bad is it going to look in another five, ten, twenty? Future viewers will not just benefit from some contextual notes, they'll need them.

Still, not a bad story. A lot of the biggest bestest stuff is in Part Two though.


Friends
4x19 The One with All the Haste [4th or so watch]


Never Mind the Buzzcocks
27x06 Episode 6

Films

Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
[#100 in 100 Films in a Year 2013]

For the first time in almost 23 months, 100 Films has a #100!

I was going to label this "first half", but that's not true: Lawrence has an intermission, but it cuts the film up as a 139-minute first 'half' and an 83-minute second 'half' -- almost an hour different.

But anyway, I watched everything up to the intermission, and will watch the remainder tomorrow. I was very tempted to watch it all in one go*, but I was watching late at night and another hour-and-a-half was pushing it.


* as I did with Once Upon a Time in America in the end, which is only 7 minutes shorter (and that's only because I have OUaTiA on PAL DVD and Lawrence on Blu-ray)

TV

Doctor Who: The Doctors Revisited
1x07 The Seventh Doctor

Friends
4x17 The One with the Free Porn [4th or so watch]
4x18 The One with Rachel's New Dress [4th or so watch]

The Sarah Millican Slightly Longer Television Programme
3x05 Episode 5

Films

The Falcon's Alibi (1946)
[#99 in 100 Films in a Year 2013]

this week on 100 Films

100 Films in a Year begins its mini-celebration of Doctor Who's 50th anniversary this week...


Make/Remake: Doctor Who and the Daleks

Something about those pepperpot-shaped apparently-robotic villains clicked with the British public, and Dalekmania was born. Toys and merchandise flowed forth. The series soon began to include serials featuring the Daleks on a regular basis. And, naturally, someone snapped up the movie rights.

Rather than an original storyline, the ensuing film was an adaptation of the TV series’ first Dalek serial...

Read more here.


Plus, archive reviews new to the new blog...


Avatar [3D] (2009)

All this is realised through unrelenting CGI. It’s very good, but here Avatar falls victim to its own hype once again, because it’s still not 100% perfect. Perhaps it’s the closest yet seen — it certainly remains consistent throughout — but nothing had me wondering if they’d perhaps used prosthetics in addition to the CGI, as Davy Jones did at several points during Dead Man’s Chest, and I remain convinced that wonderful modelwork, as seen in the likes of Lord of the Rings, is still an unbeatable tool for creating convincing environments.

Read more here.


The Departed (2006)

An all-star cast lead Scorsese’s Oscar-winning remake of Hong Kong action thriller Infernal Affairs. It’s an unusual yet striking mix of elements: cops vs. robbers thriller, gangster drama, relationships of those who protect/threaten us drama, and several more.

Read more here.


No Country for Old Men (2007)

real life: random and lacking closure and satisfaction. But this isn’t real life, it’s a movie; and a movie with a near-fantasy (or, more accurately, horror) aspect too, in its unstoppable villain; so I think I want my proper tied-together plot, thank you very much

Read more here.


Notes on a Scandal (2006)

Judi Dench is brilliant as ever in a rare villainous role (the Oscar would’ve been hers were it not for Helen Mirren’s equally brilliant but more obvious turn in The Queen)

Read more here.


Wanted (2008)

If you don’t mind your action being computer-aided and as realistic as… well, a comic book… then there’s much to enjoy. Except, you already enjoyed most of it in the trailer.

Read more here.


More next Sunday.

TV

This is the 5,000th post on My Cultural Experience!

Atlantis
1x07 The Rules of Engagement
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Doctor Who: The Doctors Revisited
1x06 The Sixth Doctor

Friends
4x16 The One with the Fake Party [4th or so watch]

Collection Count

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

Number of titles in collection: 1,632 [up 2]
Of which DVDs: 1,195 [up 1]
Of which Blu-rays: 437 [up 1]

Number of discs in collection: 4,053 [up 3]
Number of films in collection: 1,739 [up 3]
Number of TV episodes in collection: 6,022 [no change]
Number of short films in collection: 405 [no change]

See you next week, faithful reader.

TV

Doctor Who
The TV Movie [3rd third; 5th watch]

Everything from DVD chapter 14 (with the Doctor and Grace in the Master's ambulance, i.e. before the bike chase) to the end. For those of you who remember the TVM, you'll realise that's an awful lot of its action: the bike chase, all the stuff with the clock, the Eye of Harmony climax, 'temporal orbit', etc etc. Yes, it's a longer part than the other two (remember 25/25/35), but it feels a little less like watching an "extended Part 3 of 3" and more like watching "Parts 3 & 4 of 4".

On the whole, I think the TVM is quite distinctly underrated. It was a shock to the system in 1996, but compared to the new series... well, it's actually very like the new series: the bike chase, kissing/hand-holding, "drezz for the occasion", the humour, everything at the clock, the characterisation of Grace and Chang Lee, everything McGann does -- all could fit comfortably in episodes masterminded by RTD or Moffat.

It's not perfect -- the opening few minutes are a mess of references and infodumpery; bits of the climax don't make a lick of sense -- but, on the whole, I love it.


Friends
4x14 The One with Joey's Dirty Day [4th or so watch]
4x15 The One with All the Rugby [4th or so watch]
Or, The Ones Where Emily Turns Up And Is Intensely Irritating.


The Graham Norton Show
14x04 (1/11/13 edition)
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]


Have I Got News For You
46x04 (25/10/2013 edition)
Although an extended version of this episode is listed, it wasn't shown. Which is one of the reasons I'm so behind on it now.

Audio Drama

Doctor Who [Big Finish]
The Light at the End Part Two (of 2)

Hm. Well. OK.

Obviously the Doctor being completely wiped out of history is a suitably epic story for a Big Anniversary Doctor Team-Up Special, but it feels so... low-key. Like how it would be handled in a short story, rather than a novel or a season finale... or a big anniversary special. I also didn't quite get all of the plan. The weapon the Master uses makes sense, but why put it in that particular human, on that particular date? As the listener the choice of 23rd November 1963 is obvious, but why in the story?

Still, at least the Doctors knocking around together is fun at times. I'm pretty sure Big Finish have teamed up the Sixth and Seventh before -- I've not heard those stories (obviously), but somehow it didn't feel fresh. Maybe the Fifth and Seventh would've been more unusual? The best bits are the Fourth and Eighth together, which are mainly in Part One but make a comeback towards the end of Part Two... though leaving the Fifth, Sixth and Seventh together for the last quarter(-ish) makes it feel like the early days of Big Finish, when they were the only Doctors they had. Or maybe that was the point.

As for the appearances by the First, Second and Third... I get why their audio is obscured, to help hide the impressions that are being done; but they're still obviously impressions, and by making them so quiet in the mix we have to strain to hear them -- which makes the fact they're impressions more obvious because we're listening so hard.

The Light at the End is pleasant enough on the whole, but with some script polishing (I've not even mentioned some of the clunky dialogue) and a splash more of the epic, this could've rivalled the new series for grandiosity. Whether Moffat's come up with something bigger for The Day of the Doctor or not, the TV series has already out-agrandised this audio in the past. Shame.

Non-Fiction

Doctor Who: The Writer's Tale - The Final Chapter by Russell T Davies & Benjamin Cook
Book Two, Chapter 24-25 [the end]

A marvellous conclusion, full of defences for things that don't often get defended but deserve defending -- like RTD's writing style (p.678-9), the quality of Rose (p.681-5); plus spot-on criticism of forum-dwelling 'fans' (p.691-2).

TV

Elementary
2x02 Solve for X
Gotta hand it to Elementary -- they do at least come up with more unusual storylines than detective shows' usual stomping ground. Fundamentally it all works in the same way, of course, but it at least makes it feel fresher.

Friends
4x13 The One with Rachel's Crush [4th or so watch]
Or, The One Where Joey Says "How You Doin'?" For the First Time.

The Newsroom
2x07 Red Team III
Underwhelming title for such a pivotal episode. But have the makers forgotten that sometime between "the past" (which has nearly caught up with the present) and "the present", Maggie has to do that thing to her hair? Shouldn't she have done it more or less immediately after the incident that provoked it? What's going to provoke it?
I was also a little surprised there were two whole episodes left after the events of this one, but it's a two-parter, so that makes more sense.

Was It Something I Said
1x04 Episode 4 (extended repeat)
[Watch only the shorter version on 4oD.]

Audio Drama

Doctor Who [Big Finish]
The Light at the End Part One (of 2)

While Doctor Who's 50th anniversary special seems to mainly focus on the last seven-or-so years of nuWho, and Moffat goes on and on (and on) about how it looks to the future more than the past, here's the other 50th anniversary special: the Big Finish-produced multi-Doctor team-up, featuring all the classic Doctors (because they're not allowed the new ones). Hey, at least between the two stories we get everyone but the Ninth (ah, Christopher Eccleston.)

I think it was designed to be listened to as a whole, because even the cliffhanger is not that cliffhanger-y, and the parts are eight minutes different in length -- if you moved the end of Part 1 forward by about four minutes, you might be in a more cliffhanger-y situation. But I guess I shouldn't judge until I listen to the second almost-half. So far, intriguing, but also surprisingly low-key for a story featuring multiple Doctors, the Master, and the possible destruction of the TARDIS and/or all of time.

TV

Arrow
2x03 Broken Dolls
Ooh, blatant Batman reference is blatant!


Doctor Who
2x07 The End of Tomorrow
2x08 The Waking Ally
2x09 Flashpoint

Parts four to six of The Dalek Invasion of Earth, the second-ever Dalek serial. It's a marvellous story, actually, packed with incident and scale — things lacking from the "trek across the planet for half the story" first Dalek serial. It's also fantastically realised on what must have been the usual tiny budget — epic location filming, numerous (relatively) elaborate studio sets… The final scene, with Susan's departure (the first original regular to leave), is a particular highlight — not because we're glad to be rid of her, but because it's beautifully written and performed, especially by Hartnell.

And also...

Doctor Who
The TV Movie [2nd third; 5th watch]

I forgot to mention last time (in amongst all my other waffle) that the TVM is the 40th episode of #bbbDW50 -- at the end of this week it'll be two-thirds complete! More on giving over 20% of the viewing to the new series when I get there, next week.

So, 'Part 2' of the TVM takes us from "the morning after" (beginning of DVD chapter 8) to the Master and Chang Lee posing as paramedics to collect the Doctor and Grace from her house (end of DVD chapter 13) -- a bit of a cliffhanger, as our heroes happily trot off with a guy we know to be evil. Dun-dun-duuuun! Maybe not quite as effective as 'Part 1', but better than the next option (after the bike chase); and hey, the classic series has its fair share of under-dramatic episode endings.


Friends
4x12 The One with the Embryos [4th or so watch]
I suppose The One Where the Girls Lose Their Apartment to the Boys would've given away the ending rather. But it's that one.


Person of Interest
2x02 Bad Code
[Watch it (again) on Demand 5.]

TV

Doctor Who
2x04 World's End
2x05 The Daleks
2x06 Day of Reckoning

What's this, #bbbDW50 returning to the First Doctor? No, don't be daft — that'd be silly! This is extracurricular viewing, designed to facilitate a companion piece to my Dr Who and the Daleks retrospective/comparison on 100 Films later this month.

That's because, for those who don't know, these are parts one to three of The Dalek Invasion of Earth, which was the basis for the second Peter Cushing Dalek movie. I've never seen the TV version before, but it's a mightily impressive production — some grand sets, and the stuff filmed in a deserted London is astounding. Though, weirdly, the famous shot of the Daleks crossing the bridge isn't here; instead, we just see their tops drifting past from below — I guess while some photographer was grabbing a more iconic image!


Friends
4x11 The One with Phoebe's Uterus [4th or so watch]


The Mentalist
6x01 The Desert Rose
As if Arrow, Castle, Elementary and Person of Interest weren't enough... and I'm still going on The Newsroom... and I've not even started Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., or Ripper Street series 2, or the already-finished Peaky Blinders... and I have loads of other complete series recorded/downloaded from earlier in the year that I've not got to... and I'm years behind on Misfits, which just restarted also... Why is there so much TV right now?!
[Watch it (again) on Demand 5.]


The Wrong Mans
1x06 Running Mans [season finale]
Sounds likely there'll be another series of this -- very much yay.
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]