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Friday, September 28, 2007

Sarah Jane Adventures: Ep 1

Considering it was squarely aimed at the schoolboy humour segment of society I think Revenge of The Slitheen showed promise for what could be quite an entertaining series that the whole family can site down and watch together (once it's been recorded on your Sky+ box for viewing at a sensible time when mum and dad are home from work!). Lis Sladen was as good as ever as Sarah Jane and the child stars show great promise. The story itself was fairly simple (not seen part two yet...), but it was good to see the Slitheen where they belong, on kid's telly! Maria's mum is going to annoy me, I know she is... Overall I'd give it 7/10

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Visual Previews of External Links

As I'm always looking at ways to improve your news reading experiences I just installed a nice little tool called Snap Shots that enhances links with visual previews of the destination site, interactive excerpts of Wikipedia articles, MySpace profiles, IMDb profiles and Amazon products, display inline videos, RSS, MP3s, photos, and more.

Sometimes Snap Shots bring you the information you need, without your having to leave the site, while other times it lets you "look ahead," before deciding if you want to follow a link or not.

Should you decide this is not for you, just click the Options icon in the upper right corner of the Snap Shot and opt-out.

Enjoy!

Tuesday, September 04, 2007

Series 5 Delayed...

OMG

My first reaction to the BBC's announcement that S5 would be delayed until 2010 and we would only get three "specials" in 2009 was "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

...and then I started to think about it while reading more commentary here on the Kasterborous forum. This blog post of mine is an expansion of my own comments on that thread.

There's a number of considerations and almost certainly at least four factors coming into play with this decision.

1. I think RTD is probably ready to move on soon but wants to make the handover a gradual process.

2. Maybe whoever he wants to hand over to has other commitments until 2009/10? I know Steven Moffat is a busy man and needs to plan well in advance...

3. DT wants to stay on a bit longer but feels the need for a break. Don't we all at some time or other? I enjoy my job but would love to take a month out to do other things and generally chill...

4. Spring 2010? Maybe this is a way for the BBC to move DW to it's rightful place over the winter months whilst not leaving us fans/viewers out in the cold with an enforced sabbatical for over a year? Maybe it will return in January/Feb 2010? I hope so! I'm a fervent believer that DW belongs on cold dark Saturday evenings, when there are no distracting barbecues or other holiday type things around. This would BOOST RATINGS in my opinion.

I do agree that the announcement from the beeb is insulting, though. Treating us like idiots and thinking that telling us we'll be happy will actually make us so. I am disappointed that we won't get a full season in 2009, but at least the beeb are committed to keeping it going with the full S5 returning in 2010. Maybe the specials could be a set of two-parters shown on Sat/Sun evenings. This could keep people in front of BBC1 for two nights in a row instead of just one.

One thing to remember. The announcement says that RTD will be on board as Head Writer - it doesn't say that he will be writing all the specials or even that he will be exec producer. This could be an excellent opportunity for him to gracefully bow out, helping to lay the foundations for the next five years. I think the standout episodes of new-who have been written by others (count the Hugo Awards, for starters...), but there's no denying the huge debt of gratitude we owe to this man. So full of ideas, drive and ambition. You can't please all the people all the time, as they say!

Time will tell...

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