As always tonight I watched Doctor Who and as always it was a cracking episode. Also as always I went to read the comments on the internet and not as always I found myself incensed by what I read. Not because I disagreed with what people thought of the episode or whether it was good or bad. No I was disgusted by people who complained because the BBC aired one of those “If you have been affected by the events of this show” pieces at the end. People are actually complaining that the BBC took the opportunity to reach out to people who might be suffering with depression.

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.

Last night had the pilot of BBC3′s new show Pulse. Sci-fi geek websites and TV critics led me to believe Pulse would be awesome. It was to be an intelligent, shocking and gory science fiction horror tour de force. It fucking wasn’t. Either someone paid them to promote this trash or certain critics shouldn’t be allowed to watch TV ever again, ever.

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 what actually happened in Lost? A lot of people seem either genuinely confused, maliciously confused because they didn’t like the ending or too lazy to watch the last season to find out what happened. So what did happen? Well I’m pretty much going to save you 100s of hours of TV and sum it up for you. For this summary to make any sense you will have had to at least watched a fair bit of the show. Read the rest of this entry »

I have just watched the final episode of Ashes to Ashes and the whole Life on Mars universe has finally come together and the story ended. So what the hell was it all about? Well it wasn’t about Sam Tyler or Alex Drake, not really. Like Star Wars is actually about Anakin rather than Luke and Leia the two shows were about Gene Hunt.

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.

That short answer is because people are a bunch of selfish jerks but I fancy a rant so I am going to expand on this. Aren’t you lucky? The BBC is in the unenviable position of needing to please all of the people all of the time. Which is we all know is simply not possible. They can’t win. No matter what they do a bunch of loud licence fee payers with too much time on their hands will be at their throats demanding their heads. Forgive my mixed metaphors but I like them. Naturally these loud mouth cretins who frankly should have jobs to do or a blog to write will be egged on by commercial media.

You see if the BBC do popularist programming like shitty reality TV then they get accused of dumbing down by Guardian reading wombats. However, if they do intelligent programmes then the unwashed masses don’t watch them and they BBC get accused of being elitist by Chimps carrying copies of The Sun. It’s not like the can balance the books either because if they do then both groups complain their needs are not being fully met. This applies to politics too. Do a piece critical of the BNP they are out of touch left-wing academics but if they put the BNP on TV they are evil fascists. Anything they do gets them accused of bias by ‘the other side’. I’m also kind of fed up hearing God-botherers, like that twat Simon Mayo, whining about the declining level of Christian focused content on the BBC despite it still being vastly more than any other religious group let alone for atheists or agnostics. But see them flip out if the BBC dares show a 6 part series totalling just a handful of hours starring Richard Dawkins and his philosophy. Read the rest of this entry »

That was like some kind of weird anti-RTD episode of Doctor Who. Instead of getting a good first part and then getting a big pile of poop of a let down in part 2 RTD did it the other way around.He also skipped most of his usually end of series sillyness and gave us one of better ends he has done. Perhaps he used up all his quota of silly in the first part shown on Xmas day. Though he did reuse the old ‘planet in the sky’ idea from the end of last series. Everything just seemed toned down and the actors seemed to be left alone to tell the story. Which is good because the cast is made up of some really fine actors. We also got to find out why The Doctor was okay with sealing up the Timelords along with the Daleks, they had become just as bad as their enemy. Their final solution to a war they couldn’t win was to destroy all of time which they seemed to have borrowed from Davros in the last finale of the last series.

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!