New Blog

This blog was a nice idea, and I've learnt a lot from doing it, but I need to write about something I'm passionate about, not just kind of interested in. Something I can write about and have interesting things to say about on a weekly basis. This blog will soon be deleted. Please visit my new one:

http://armchairtimetravel.blogspot.com/

[PilotQuest] Doctor Who: "Rose"

In order to understand television better, we have to learn how it works and how it's put together. The best place to start seems to be the pilot. The television pilot is a unique form in itself. Its closest relative is probably the film that hopes to be the first of a series, but even a film like that needs to be primarily a discrete, beginning-middle-and-end story, whereas a TV pilot is necessarily open and intriguing more than it is conclusive. It's in introduction machine, and its job is to optimize our introduction to an unfamiliar world, people we've never met, and questions and concerns we don't yet care about. It has to give us a taste of what kind of story we can expect, while also beginning a series/season-long storylines. Not easy. So I'm going to watch a bunch of pilots of various TV series - some I've seen before and some I haven't, old ones and new ones, and (hopefully) good ones and bad ones. Join me, and let's see what we can learn about the anatomy the pilot.

My Top 10 Albums of the '00s

The A.V. Club is doing it, and it was a bit of a shock to find that I only know two of their top 50 albums. So here is my Top 10, in chronological order. I limited it to one album per artist, otherwise it would be all Something for Kate and the Finn family. If your beloved album is not on the list, it may well be because I don't know it. Don't get angry, post your top 10 in the comments.


Powderfinger - Odyssey Number Five
Universal, 2000

How a band from the jungly wilderness that is Brisbane could come up with an album so beautifully grey and urban is astounding.

Buffy: Season 3

It's the one with the Mayor, Dad.

My girlfriend had never seen Buffy, so earlier this year (I'd already introduced her to Doctor Who in December) we started watching. Of late we hadn't watched much, but in the last few weeks we built up a good momentum and finished Season 3, and now we're powering through Buffy 4/Angel 1.

The thing about Buffy is that if you've never seen it, it can easily be mistaken for a silly teen drama (with monsters but whatever) for girls and silly people.

Lost: Season 1

I was getting a bit sick of watching movies, so I turned my attention to finally maybe getting through Lost: Season 1, which I’d been struggling to get engaged with since January. Surprisingly, it became engaging only once I started watching more than one episode a day.

I also finally finished rewatching Monty Python’s Flying Circus: Series 1, which I used to know by heart but hadn’t seen in many years, but I’m darned if I know what to say about that.

Lost, in which Mira Furlann once again demonstrates her uncanny ability to make mundane words creepy (Shadows, Others…what, no Babylon 5 fans in the house?). Lost sets up a lot of mysteries, but more baffling than any other question in the show is WHY COULD THEY NOT FIND ANY AUSTRALIAN ACTORS TO PLAY AUSTRALIANS?

How I Met Your Mother: Season 5 - "Definitions"

For me, the transition from watching a show five episodes at a time on DVD to watching weekly as it is screened has rarely done the show any favours. Which obviously isn't the show's fault, and yet I can't help but be biased against any new seasons, as I realised when I watched this episode. It's not hard to see where this bias comes from. Firstly, watching a show weekly is a very different experience.

Flashforward: "No More Good Days"

Now that, class, is how you make a pilot. The premise, that for 2 minutes and 17 seconds everyone on the planet blacked out and saw a vision of themselves in six months' time, is one that could go either way. The series could be a collection of heartfelt monologues the meaning of life and angels and whatnot, centred around a plot in which in each episode someone is helped by the "flashforwards." And it could still lapse into that, but it looks like this show is far more interested in being a political thriller with a sci-fi twist.