It is not something I generally broadcast but in my 20s I was diagnosed with depression and had chats with head doctors and a period of time on anti-depressants. It wasn’t the best time of my life but I got better. I’ve been a might too cheerful for my own good for a while now. Having suffered like Van Gogh (though certainly not to the same extent) I can say what the BBC did was actually very important and incredibly sensitive. Anyone who has been or is depressed (diagnosed or otherwise) will have seen bits of themselves in that portrayal of Van Gogh. People with depression often don’t realise they need help or those that do often don’t believe they deserve it. Depression is an illness that sabotages a person ability to get help. Indeed had my mother had not told me I need to go see a doctor I wouldn’t have sort out treatment. Those not being treated might be prompted by that message to see a doctor.

Those who have been depressed will have found that ending will have affected them a great deal. Fuck, it made me cry. Unless you have been there and felt so utterly worthless and have been unable to see any future that is not pure misery you cannot begin to understand being shown you are not in such a definitive way would mean. Unless suicide has felt like an (or even the only) option you won’t understand. Airing that message might help those who have been depressed deal with their emotions. Indeed it might also have prevented some from having a relapse.

However not every one is Van Gogh. Not everyone gets to be great some of us are just normal. So while this episode would have resonated in a good way to people who have recovered from depression it would have an entirely the opposite effect on people who are depressed. Especially if they are undiagnosed or untreated. The message someone who is depressed could take from watching that episode is “You are actually worthless because you are not awesome like Van Gogh. There is no hope for you”. You don’t need to be a psychiatrist to understand that kind of thinking isn’t a good thing to reinforce in the minds of people who are depressed. Indeed for someone who is already far gone that could be the straw that break the camels back. That message by the BBC at the end could have saved lives.

So that simple little message that didn’t affect your lives at all, took you 10 seconds to hear and that you are now bitching about on the internet could have changed or saved someone’s life. Think about that. It seems to be the general public’s attitude to mental illness hasn’t moved on a great deal since Van Gogh’s time. Why not think for a moment instead of being so petulant and selfish.

Pulse was boring and tediously predictable. Slow, plodding and unimpressive. An episode of Causality is more riveting. I actually took to reading Fark.com half way through it was that dull. Thankfully I had my iPad to hand. There is nothing remotely surprising let alone shocking in Pulse at all. Nothing. Even the final reveal was telegraphed to high heaven. I’ve seen gorier cartoons too. Call me cynical but I don’t consider people being squirted with a turkey-baster full of fake blood to be that gory. Supposedly this was a tense and dark show. It was certainly dark (the lights kept going out) but it was about as tense as my pectoral muscles.

And the characters? I wanted to reach into the screen and slap the characters senseless. Now I like a cast of unlike-able characters that do dumb stuff, I watch ‘Stargate: Universe’ after all but this was beyond the pail. For Doctors they all seemed to behave like the idiotic teens you see in 80s slasher flicks. Naturally everyone is gorgeous and is sleeping with everyone else. Is my annoyance of this a sign I am getting old or something? If you spot inconsistency in a patients chart and witness unrecorded treatments do you give the culprit time to fake the paperwork and corresponding computer data before you try to do anything? Really? Can junior doctors not use photocopiers? Naturally the somewhat petite female lead decides to investigate the goings on all by herself. And, oh my god, how funny is a trainee doctor with a blood phobia? Hilarious! Oh, how I laughed. Believable characters my sweaty arse.

It completely lacked any subtly at all. A section from my thought processes last night: Into the morgue we go. That medical circular saw seems conveniently placed on that table, doesn’t it? Oh no! A zombie! And he is attacking handsome-male-doctor-number-1. Oh no! Look an extreme close up of that medical saw and a mallet to the back of my head in case I missed it. Gee I wonder what it is going to happen when the whiny was-much-better-in-going-postal-on-sky doctor stops screaming…

This whole episode would have been the bit before the opening titles of a Fringe episode. But of then it would have had better acting, a more eventful plot, tension and some nice intro credits after it. Fringe would probably also have special effects that went beyond splashing red paint around, someone poking the underside of some stretched skin coloured latex and the occasional use of a butchers leftovers.

The cast is an inexplicably pretty bunch, as if this was some kind of US TV show. Why the pointless female nudity? Now I’m not usually one to complain about pointless female nudity and the actress involved was worth seeing in the buff but come on! Why the sex scene at all? Because it is BBC3 and we have to be edgy? Christ I hate it when people force me to take the same side as feminists and the Daily Mail. Not only that I would rather have seen Claire Foy in the nude (or that black dress from Going Postal mmmmm)  anyway. I guess she is a proper actress and above flashing her norks for my amusement. A flaw I find prevalent in so many women. Well I guess that takes care of any accusations that I’m not a chauvinist.

This is one of those TV shows that has been deemed good before anyone has seen it and this promptly exclaimed to be so once the critics got hold of it. It ain’t. Not unlike everyone decided Avatar was awesome before they even saw it. They should have spent the money on more ‘Being Human’ instead.

Twas utter crap. You will notice I didn’t cover the plot much. Well it is basically somebody is using a hospital to do unapproved medical testing. That about sums it up. I refuse to even give it the customary out of 5 rating. This is the last time I watch anything based on the opinions of TV critics and the last episode of Pulse I will watch. The fuckers made me waste time I could have used playing Red Dead Redemption.

So 2000+ years ago a ship wrecks off the cost of the island. Lots of people make it to shore but a heavily pregnant woman is separated from the group. She is promptly rescued by a crazy woman who helps deliver her twins before caving her head in with a rock. The two kids grow up to be Jacob and the Smoke Monster. The crazy woman is the guardian of the source of life and is looking to have one of the twins replace her as the guardian. Anyway Jacob is a good boy and his brother a bad boy. When he discovers he can never leave Jacob’s brother joins the other people who wrecked on the island, creates a mechanism to use the source as a means to get off the island (a big wheel underground)  and ultimately kills crazy woman. Jacob becomes the guardian and accidentally kills his brother and feeds him to the source. Source retaliates by spitting out the smoke monster and his brother’s dead body. Jacob places crazy woman and his brother’s bodies in a cave.

For the next 2000 years Jacob and his brother play a very long and dull game of chess. Jacob brings people to the island to see if they are worthy of being his replacement and Smokey tries to convince them to kill Jacob. Smokey is able to appear as either the smoke monster or as people who are dead. The people on the island essentially become ‘The Others’. As long as their is a guardian Smokey cannot leave. And if he does leave well that won’t be good for life on Earth. One of the people who comes to the island is Richard who is a prisoner on the ship. Jacob gives him eternal life in exchange for working as his number two.

Over the years many others including the Dharma Initiative come to the island to research its unique properties. They accidentally set off the sources defence mechanism while digging for one of their stations. To keep the station active to study the source they have to release the energy every 180 minutes else a massive electromagnetic discharge will take place. Basically inputting the numbers into the computer is the same as hitting the degauss button on an old CRT monitor. They also add the fail safe (which Desmond will ultimately trigger) of destroying the station to prevent the need for the degauss. It should also be noted that the presence of the station so close to the source almost certainly is what causes unborn children and their mother’s to die. Seems self-evident to me that fudging around with the source of life might have negative effects like this but some people don’t get it.

During the 70s Ben comes to the island as a child. He eventually comes under the influence of Smokey (thanks to being shot by a time travelling Sayid) but thinks he is doing the work of Jacob. At the same time many of the survivors of Oceanic 815 get trapped in the 70s when they manage to stop the island from doing its Quantum Leap impressions. They eventually detonate a nuke that was left on the island in the 50s in an attempt to get back to the present. They succeed.

Skip forward a few years and Jacob goes out into the world (he can leave, just not smokey) to source some suitable candidates for his replacement. I’d imagine living on a secluded island with a half insane smoke monster who keeps trying to get other people to kill you can get old real fast never mind after a couple of 1000 years. Rather than doing the traditional job interview Jacob contrives to get them all on Oceanic 815 and get Desmond to be late inputting the numbers causing the plane to crash on the island. Jacob, having more plans the Ben Linus, also arranges for a backup team to be ready to hitch a lift with the Oceanic 6 when they return.

On September 22nd 2004 Oceanic Flight 815 is hit by a massive electromagnetic disturbance after making a detour. While Desmond being late to input the numbers is what directly causes the discharge that causes the crash this all part of Jacobs plan. 815 promptly crashes on the island with all the candidates for Jacobs job surviving the crash. The candidates are eventually whittled down to 6 individuals whose seat numbers on 815 happen to be 4, 8, 15, 16, 24 and 42. And yes the numbers keep showing up because Jacob keeps putting them into things having foreknowledge of them thanks to the islands time jumping shenanigans. He has a wacky sense of humour that guy.

For a while their is a period of time when the bigger picture takes a back seat to Ben Linus and Charles Widmore’s battle for control of the island. Mirroring somewhat the longer rivalry between Jacob and Smokey (with Ben taking the Jacob role despite being directly influenced by Smokey) it evens has its own rules. While costing many people their lives it does however does allow 6 people to get off the island and trap the rest in a time leaping island that is slowly killing them. Unfortunately most of those that do get off the island are the prime candidates to take over from Jacob. Eventually with the help of Locke and Ben, Jack is able to get them back to the island to continue the candidate process. Locke dies in the process but by bringing his body back to the island they give Smokey a new form to take.

Smokey uses his new form to con Ben into killing Jacob. However because 6 candidates for the job are still on the island Smokey needs to kill them too. Jacob returns as a ghost an continues to manipulate events, as does Smokey, to get someone to take his job. In the end Jack steps up to the plate and takes the job. Jack now continues the battle against Smokey and with Desmond and Kate’s help manages to kill him. However in he process both he and the island are mortally wounded. Jack who is now dying passes on the guardianship to Hurley and fixes the islands before dying. While this is going on some of the remaining survivors of Oceanic 815 escape the island with the remains of Jacobs backup team. Hurley gives Ben the job of his number two. The last things we see of this story is Jack’s one eye closing in exact opposite to how the whole story started with his one eye opening.

After all those who had been on the island (or at least the main characters who didn’t fall out with the production team) meet up one last time in the waiting room for heaven. They create an elaborate alternate reality that takes place in a world where they had not crashed on the island. Eventually they all come together and with Desmond’s help they meet up with those they loved. They all eventually realise they have snuffed it and are able to let go of their past lives and move on together.  The end.

There are a few dead ends I have not discussed because they turned out not to be part of the over arching plot. For example the experiments that the Dharma Initiative were doing are largely irrelevant and do little more than touch on the mythology of the show. The numbers being part of a doomsday equation make sense consider that those who the number represent don’t succeed would potentially mean the end of life. The Others and their interest in Walt can be simply put down to Walt’s psychic nature being a threat to Smokey and thus him wanting him gone. Echo’s sub-plot was aborted because the actor fell out of favour as was Libby’s. In the end they probably would have been little to do with the main plot so little was lost by them being cut short.

Was Lost and its ending any good? I thought so but many beg to differ. Opinions are like arseholes. Everyone has one and they’re all full of shit.

DCI Gene Hunt is the unwitting (or is he?) guardian of a coppers limbo. Where police officers who die with unfinished business go to resolve their issues. Gene helps them with this but being only a young copper when he died he selfishly keeps a few souls (namely Ray, Chris, Shaz and previously Annie) with him. This probably isn’t conscious decision on his behalf, just a desire to not be alone. As souls are delivered to him he attempts to help them on to heaven. Gene constructs the world around him from the memories of the people in his world and picks himself a car that he likes.

Sam Tyler was a metaphysical cock-up. He wasn’t properly dead when he arrived and so couldn’t let go of his past life. When he returned to the land of the living he told his shrink about what happened and gave Alex Drake knowledge of what lay beyond so when she ‘died’ she too recognised Gene’s fabricated world for what it was. This shouldn’t have happened as people forget their real lives after a short while of being there. What Sam realised in the real world was not only that he preferred Gene’s 70s reality but also that Ray, Chris and Annie’s souls were on the line and he had to go back to help them. Also that with what he knew he shouldn’t be alive, hence his suicidal leap off the roof. After he had made peace with that decision Gene helped him move on and let him take Annie with him. Annie it should be noticed probably did die in a botched sting operation in the 70s as witnessed by Sam Tyler. To do this and not alert his team he faked Sam’s death. It was probably at this point he added Shaz to his ‘team’.

Alex came to this police purgatory because her death left her daughter without a mother. Until she accepted that she couldn’t go back she couldn’t move on. Gene kept her from doing this because he loved her and wanted her to stay. There was also an element of him knowing she was dead and wanting to protect her from the knowledge she wouldn’t get back to see her daughter. He also loved Sam but eventually enough to let him go.

It is pretty clear that DCI Jim Keats is either the Devil or his agent while Gene is like an unofficial guardian angel. No doubt DCI Frank Morgan who took on the mantel of Sam’s doctor in Life on Mars was a similar manifestation of the Dark Side. Gene’s career was cut short in his first week he never got to protect people like he wanted to nor have much of a life. So he won’t leave and uses his little world to do both. How much he does this on a conscious level is open to discussion. He gets the recently departed to make the decision of which way they go. Up or down? He guides them to the right choice but doesn’t force it on them. Naturally doing the right thing is more difficult but the rewards infinitely greater. Following Keats is easier and thus a short cut to damnation.

In the end everyone gets to go to heaven (which unsurprisingly is a pub) except Gene and Keats. Gene remains as the guide and Keats promises to return as the tempter. Gene gets to pick a new motor and have a word in the ‘shell-like’ of someone who has just burst into his department demanding the return of his iPhone.

Was Dixon of Dock Green the first television version of this story? After all he was shot and died in the film ‘The Blue Lamp’ before being resurrected older and with a promotion for his later TV series. Nice little touch by the programme makers I think.

The who Avatar hype machine is beyond insane. When it was people claiming how awesome it would be because James Cameron was Directing it was silly. When critics and other in the industry started buying into the hype it was surprising. When reviews started saying how awesome it was despite critics usually flaying alive any film with such a heavy focus on special effects over plot it was stupid. When people got abused by Avatards on internet forums for saying they enjoyed it but it wasn’t ‘all that’ it was pathetic fanboyism. When Avatar’s initially didn’t blow the box office away and we got headlines like “Avatar almost breaks records” it was ridiculous. And when people started naming their kids Pandora (presumably they will have a stalker named Adrian when they get older) and getting depressed because they couldn’t live in the CGI world Avatar had created it was simply sad. Now I am beginning to think money is involved.

Avatar is in the race for the Academy Award for Best Picture. Yes it should be a sure thing for just about every technical award going but best picture? Come on! I like Avatar, it is an amazing film to look at and it is entertaining in a superficial way but that in no way means it deserves to be recognised in this fashion. I’m no movie critic, I only watch films that I expect to enjoy. That is my prime reason for watching films but it does help when they are well written, acted and directed. However I am under no illusion that some of the films I enjoy are not great works of art and I don’t expect them to be recognised as such. Avatar is no great work of cinematic art. It isn’t the best Science Fiction film of the last year. It wasn’t even the best film for its month of release. How can it possibly be recognised as Best Picture? The upside of course is that should it win a high profile award then the Academy might get over its prejudice against genre films.

My theory is that this is about mass rationalisation. So many people have gone along with the hype and hysteria that the whole industry now feels Avatar needs a worthy accolade to justify said hype and hysteria. Technical awards and viewer voted awards are a given and expected so it has to be given an award of note. Otherwise too many people who pride themselves as being cinema connoisseurs will be outed as little more than simpletons impressed by anything shiny or whatever is cool.

Still it wouldn’t be the first time James Cameron got himself a bag load of Oscars for a tedious love story wrapped up in fancy special effects.

And here is everybody’s favourite Star Wars Prequel reviewer to highlight the good and the bad of Avatar:

Part 1:

Part 2

Not really! It was created by some cad called Matt Bateman. Oddly close to the truth though, if you ask me. And before anyone complains that no work of fiction is ever truly original I’d like to point out there is retelling a story and then there is just repeating a story.

I love who it was who knocked four times.

The build up to the regeneration was fantastic. I liked how even as he was effectively dying he searched out his companions and gave them each that a little bit of help one last time. I didn’t even mind that he went to see Rose either. I really felt for the Doctor as he struggled against his regeneration because he didn’t want to go. Who would? Regeneration is not quite dying but it isn’t far off really. Most of the Doctor’s incarnations have simple accepted it or not had time to think about. This incarnation didn’t want to go. Which is the 10th Doctor all over, lovable, friendly, helpful, courageous but ultimately selfish. Even his self-sacrifice for Wilf wasn’t without a tantrum. This Doctor learn’t to love what he did again after his previous incarnation had struggled to come to terms with what he did in the Time War. Probably ended up loving it a little too much, which is why everything went a little caca. Ah mixing my time travel show terminology will get me in trouble one day.

It looks like holding back his regeneration has dire consequences for the Tardis and he still isn’t ginger! I liked the sly dig that the PC meddling brigade as he checked he wasn’t a woman after discovering he had long hair. Watch the regeneration:

No doubt the various Doctor Who internet discussion forums are already sharpening their knives to stick into Matt Smith’s back. They have already do doubt labelled him the worst Doctor ever based on his few seconds in this special. And when they see him punch a guy in the advert for the new series they will have a damned fit. Still onwards into the Moffat era and here’s to new catchphrases!

Geronimo!

I thought it showed promise at first. The characters where well acted and motivations and behavior was initially sound and consistent. Not that you end up caring as by the end of the story they have flushed all that away. I felt like the producers were laughing at me after conning me into thinking it was going to be good. Eddie Izzard is actually really good as the opportunistic survivor of a plane crash (we won’t go into the utterly ridiculous method he uses to survive the crash) who rises to power by making good use of his time. He collects guns, supplies and followers while every other sighted person is lamenting what has happened or wandering around with a sad face. He should play bad guys more often. At least they didn’t pick a cast of youngsters to make the story appeal to a younger audience. Which is probably good as it would just meant more pissed off people.

They deviated from Wyndham’s original plot more and more as they went along, until it got to the point the 2nd part of the story just made no sense. The whole we shouldn’t play god morality tale got a bit obvious and repetitive, especially the throw away scenes at the Nunnery. Talking of repetitive there is a series of flashbacks involving a tribal mask. Every 15 minutes we see the flashback with a little more detail each time. Yes we get it the mask is going to turn out to be important quit it with the flashbacks about it. Naturally it does end up being important but not in anyway that you might understand. They drip the Triffid venom through the eye slits in the mask and this makes eyes weep black and tears which has the side effect of making the Triffids ignore humans. What!? Why is that exactly? The protagonist Bill wonders aloud at one point on why the Triffids aim for the eyes but that is all we get. Why does this work? Is it because it changes the shape of the eyes and Triffids no longer recognise them as human? Do Triffids actually really like pandas? Why!? No explanation is given and the main characters happily fuck off to the Isle of Wight to fill a glass lighthouse with coloured sand, or something.

What is it lately with film and TV sacrificing coherent plot for action sequences? Not to mention really hammering home their messages like we are to simple to pick up on subtle parallels or decode metaphors. Am I just getting old a crotchety or am I just way smarter than the average TV/film producer thinks their audience is? Also the book and the original BBC version takes place over months but the events of this story seems to take place over a weekend. Everything is rushed and with Bill at one point seeming to recover from a bullet wound overnight.

They kept the Triffid mostly hidden at first preparing for a big reveal which didn’t happen because instead they just slowly showed us slightly more and more of the plant. Which is good because they looked totally shit and a big reveal would have been unintentionally hilarious. The new Triffids look like a giant Aloe Vera plant with a big purple knob-end on the top and are not at all scary or awe-inspiring. I mean in the 80s the BBC came up with this design:

Sure it takes a few liberties on Wyndham’s descriptions but it does look like a giant, tropical, meat-eating plant. They created those without a massive budget or CGI. For some reason these new modern triffids not only get up and walk they have roots that act like tentacles and allow them access to anywhere and to grab anyone from several metres away. And instead of the creepy and nerve shredding knocking of root on tuber the new Triffids squeak and squawk a whole language. They sound like a mix of Sweep and Joe Pasquallie put through an electronic voice synthesiser like Lilly Allen uses to sing in tune. And now the Triffids eat people with their roots in minutes rather than killing them and then hagging around to eat them slowly as they rot. Just like the modern fast moving Zombies these new Triffids sacrifice ominous presence for new action-friendly abilities.

Lets start off with the positive stuff shall we. The CGI is phenomenal and the film is visually beautiful. It is virtually impossible to spot where the CGI ends and the real life actors begin, if not for the fantastical alien creatures anyway. Sometimes I became convinced some of the live action was actually CGI, weird. The plot is straight forward but generally well executed and the characters behave in realistically and consistently. The acting ranges from pretty good to adequate. Worthington’s CGI Avatar has twice the emotional range as its real life counterpart. Weaver is as ever spot on despite being in the film mostly for exposition. The characters resonate well and they are easy to identify with, even if you can’t quite accept Phoebe’s half-brother being in charge of a planetary scale mining operation. The Na’vi are likable and well fleshed out alien species despite looking like shaved Thundercats. The action sequences are all fantastic but this should go without saying as they are all done in the fantastic CGI.

Now the bad. Despite being solidly done the plot is clinched to high heaven. This same film has been made so many times it isn’t even funny. It has also been done better. This was particularly hammered home by the fact the coming attractions included a trailer for a CGI animated film with a virtually identical plot. The dialog regularly wanders way too close to George Lucas and Chris Claremont territory for my liking. At times it skips foreshadowing and goes straight to flat out telegraphing what is going to happen next. As soon as the mention ***ing the big **** thing you know the protagonist will ending up doing it. The film isn’t shy on delivering its morality like Hacksaw Jim Duggan either .i.e with a 2×4. The anti-war and pro-environment messages are so obvious they are more than a little bit preachy. At times the who noble savage cliche threatens to turn the film into an anthropological (Whats the alien equivalent? Anyone?) mockumentary. Which brings me to the films biggest failing, the middle of the film drags badly. I actually got bored half way into the film.

It is a decent enough film but other than setting the standard for CGI it isn’t the cinema revolution people are claiming it is. I’d give it 7/10. It was enjoyable enough but simply doesn’t live up to the hype nor its budget. The film is best seen in the nausea inducing 3D unless you wear spectacles with large frames. No doubt it is even better on an iMax screen. I’ll get it on DVD but I have no pressing need to go see it at the cinema again.

It starts off at such a pace it makes you think “Wow a lots going to happen in this special, this should be good” and then very little actually happens. They get straight into the running almost immediately so it seems initially like their is some urgency. The Doctor sits with the Ood for a couple of minutes (I’m guessing exposed brain patterns are the special effects guys’ trademark in Doctor Who) then off he goes running to get back to Earth. And then we have the resurrection of The Master who for some inexplicable reason gains superpowers and taste for human flesh (and turkey) when said resurrection gets botched. Then we spend the next half an hour following around Wilf and get to watch the Doctor be all whiny. Then after all the piffling about we get to end of the episode which includes some incredibly convenient super-tech, the addition of some pointless and stupid look aliens, everyone under-estimating The Master (again) and some kind of weird play on the fortress of solitude scene at the end of Superman 2. Finally we have the cliffhanger which has to be the most unintentionally hilarious piece of TV (The Matrix meets The Master) I have seen this year followed by a massive and pointless spoiler for the next special on New Year’s day.

It’s like Russell T. Davies has come over all George Lucas with this special and those around him have let him because this and the New Year special make up his final story. Nothing anybody does in this special makes a lick of sense and half the plot seems purely so special effects can be used. The other half of the plot seems to cater for poor bad jokes and pretty low brow humour. Are old people really all so bored they would spend their time looking for a Doctor because one of their ilk said it would be a good idea? Why has the TARDIS even got a chameleon circuit if the Doctor can make it invisible? Does nobody on TV actually partake in any fiction whatsoever so they can see these ‘sudden but inevitable betrayals’ coming? When does Steve Moffat take over?

And through all this crap Bernard Cribbins, David Tennant and John Simms (even if he was chewing the scenery) act their socks off to save this special from being another ‘Planet of the Dead’. Even Catherine Tate in Donna Noble’s few scenes oozes class. Which in a way makes it all much worse as they stick out like brand new Blu-ray players in a manure pile. Lets hope the 2nd part of this tale is much better and that this special looks better in hindsight because of it. However I predict that it will just be another typical ridiculously-over-the-top Davies end of season story.