at the end of the universe

I spent Saturday evening watching television, right from the excellent tea-time frolics of Doctor Who all the way through to the alien adventures of Eurovision.

One of the shows was set in a kind of space station at the end of the universe. It resembled a late 20th Century dance club. The other show moved it on into something a little more 21st Century.

In the case of Doctor Who, there were plenty of references to other space and sci-fi series in the script as well as self references to old-school Doctor Who. Even a retro control room.

Pleasingly, the characters had a kind of Amanda Palmer meets Danger Ensemble look about them. Not surprising with Neil Gaiman as the writer of the episode.

Gaiman took the Doctor to a Neverwhere outside of the Universe. The Doctor even commented that it was somewhere he'd never been, which is fairly unusual nowadays.

It gave a chance for the plot to move up a level, presumably breaking through a few sealed doors along the way. Once a new piece of fundamental Who-history gets written there is no turning back because the fan-base will have it recorded for all time.

So the Star Whale type construct of riding on a bubble on the edge of the Universe permitted the humanisation of a slightly delirious TARDIS. She (The TARDIS, excellently played by Suranne Jones) then had to rapidly make up for 'lost time' whilst hurling some great one-liners into the script. She simultaneously channeled Queenie from Blackadder whilst stating "Biting's like kissing only with a winner."

And we got a good backstory about the theft by the TARDIS of the Doctor "Back in the Day". I'm a great believer in Time stopping everything happening at once, so it's probably fortunate that most of this happened outside of the main Universe.

That way we didn't all suffer from a catastrophe that would create tears before bedtime. Although, it has to be said that the end of the episode created a tear-jerking morph of TARDIS back to being the soul of the machine.

The tears in the following programme were somewhat different as we watched the transition of Europop to европоп.

Yes, the Russian bloc have it.

My own more trippy tastes were towards Moldova's Zdob şi Zdub or even the Irish Jedward entry, both of which featured Pop, strange headgear and whirly lights. Instead, after hours of sonics and two many Screwdrivers, we had a largely forgettable win from that epicentre of pop culture Azerbaijan. At least they dressed up.

I decided to clear my mind of all of this today and took out on my bicycle, finding myself in a Forest by a River. There was a Pond as well.

I may need help.

blue is the colour of four knocks

I've been chained to my desk again today and I'm just about to start my evening shift. I did take a short break for food and watched the Bowie base on Mars being attacked in Doctor Who.

But not by spiders. The Waters of Mars.

There were water based organisms that made people into smiling cracked faced Zombies.

The Thing meets Shaun of the Dead.

It was quite an enjoyable episode, with plenty of references to other movies. Silent Running's hydroponic garden, a rather cranky Meccano robot that could have been from Short Circuit or Wall-E. A joke about dog robots.

A colony with a chain of modules that looked like the main space ship from 2001 dug into the dirt.

Some blippiness in the soundtrack from 2001. Come to think of it, an 'open the pod bay door' kind of moment.

Some pulled back scenes that could have come from Thunderbirds.

Running through lots of empty hangers whilst talking about the cost of shipping bicycles to the planet. I was wondering how much metal there was in the apparently wasted space they had to run through. It would have made a lot of bikes. And shorter corridors.

There was also some good ensemble wobbliness in the first part. Kind of ancient Doctor Who acting. Wooden handshakes and a few long pauses. Like a live show where someone has almost forgotten their lines. I'm sure it was some kind of homage.
And the really cool ray guns and walky talkies, like something from Mars Attacks. Water pistols that fire death rays.

Of course, it turned into a proper story about moments in time. Fortunately, the Doctor has a perfect memory and could recall the exact web pages describing the doomed fate of the fledgling space colony.

Boom.

And he knew it was one of those moments, like Pompeii, that you are not supposed to change. Not even as a Time Lord.

So we moved from 'base under attack' to 'fatalistic ending - it has to explode'.

The Doctor should leave. But he hesitated in his special crash helmet and came back.

Maybe he could be a god and change everything? Even when he wasn't supposed to. Could he rule time?

Then we saw the countdown of the space station's inbuilt bomb. And how cool were those graphics? Someone had a lot of time on their hands to make the numbers look so interesting for people about to be blown up.

Of course, with a single leap, they escaped.

Kind of. We see a blue flash as the base captain kills herself (we assume!?) to reset time. The Doctor is clearly on the edge of going dark.

What finer than a snow bedecked setting for a few ghosts to appear and four knocks to sound the end of this particular Doctor?

We shall see.

At Christmas.

Doctor Who meets Star Trek

With all this talk about the 'new' Doctor Who, I'm pleased to have seen the Kelvington mashup of Doctor Who meets Star Trek, via Miss Cellania

why am I who?

"Aeon Flux Guy" as the next Doctor Who after the imposter doctor has been trounced?

I still prefer the "Dylan Moran for Doctor Who" campaign and notice rashbre central started to get a lot of hits about it again.