Come along, Ponds

- festivids approaches! I'm quite excited cause I'm a bit keen on talking myself into signing up. I think I've done pretty well with vids this year. Eight of em! And I only actually hate one. And I feel I can say with Some Confidence that they've improved a bit since 2006. (I still use WMM though - cause while I like to pretend they'd clearly be So Much Better on any other program, everything else gives me headache with the computer getting all tetchy at tech stuff and I can't just dump any old avi file in and cut it up. And since my aims are restricted to Fun and Not Making Viewers Curse At The Three Minutes Or So They've Just Lost, WMM works out just fine. I ASSUME. I've had some v odd comments on YouTube though.)

- Gamingwise, I'm filled with both DREAD and OMG for there is now a release date for Star Wars: The Old Republic that one dark, insomniac-y night I may have preordered. Tis an MMORPG. And a sequel of sorts to KOTOR (beloved, KOTOR, that I adore and is perfect and Revan is a woman ffs) and KOTOR II (WTF? What kind of people think it is TOTALLY FINE to release a game when you haven't even FINISHED MAKING IT?!) Mostly I will probably get absurdly emo over any mention the new game has of KOTOR characters (it's set three hundred years after KOTOR and several thousand before the original movies, IIRC) because THEY'RE ALL DEAD, and I'm a bit scared it'll be really good, cause I don't do well with really good MMORPGs. By which I mean I forget about sleep and food and the non-pixellated world. Which is why slightly dull MMORPGs are best.

- The other game thing that would be awesome, were it not rubbish, is a Mass Effect movie. If you're going to make a ME movie, obviously it should be about femShep, for she is amazing. NOBODY wants to see a movie about maleShep* aka Yet Another Dude Saves The Universe. Dullnesses. Also although I'm told people do play maleShep in the game, I pretend not to believe it because I tried that once and lasted twenty minutes before I was bored of him. Partly that's because Male Space Captain is just not as interesting as Female Space Captain, and partly because Jennifer Hale's voiceover work is brilliant, whereas Mark Meer's is not.

*this may not be factually accurate.

- DOCTOR WHO. Would like to start an urban fannish myth that Moff was stuck for what to write about in the finale, put Inferno on and decided that the whole episode should be based on Nicholas Courtney's "and they were all wearing eyepatches" anecdote.

- Am very unbothered at the cancellation of Confidential (though I will miss the behind-the-scenes shenanigans gifs). And while I sympathise with people who did watch and enjoy it (there was a lovely anecdote in doctoreleven about one person who watched it with their kid afterwards, so that they wouldn't be scared of the monsters), some of the vitriol directed at the BBC because of its cancellation is a bit disturbing. PERSPECTIVE, DAMMIT. I mean, a good chunk of The Doctor's Wife one was spent telling us about what people were having for lunch. WHAT? There is no way to spin that as quality programming.

- Anyone remember Totally Doctor Who? No? Me neither.

- All BBC cuts should be blamed on the Tories. They're the ones freezing the licence fee (which is effectively a cut, since it's being kept at the same level while inflation rises.) The lesson is, don't vote for Tories: they trample on nice things, like the Beeb and NHS and affordable university education.

- Telly shows me Merlin is coming back on tomorrow. I'm not watching it partly cause I still haven't seen the end of the last season but mostly cause I suspect I'll get really annoyed and I'd quite like to be in a good mood for LOVELY DOCTOR WHO. Yes. Good.

-The Office came back too. And I'm watching it again cause James Spader has joined that cast and I'm easy like that. He isn't even attractive in it and yet my reaction is still "yay, James Spader!" Must work on making shallowness more shallow.

Well, that was an episode of Merlin that seemed to exist purely to test how many times I can roll my eyes in forty-five minutes.

A list:

( all the things that were rub about Love in the Time of Dragons )

On the bright side, next week's can't possibly be this bad, oh yay.

Merlin decided to have an episode I LOVE UNEQUIVOCABLY, hurrah! Helped in no small part by being a HORRID BROKEN VERSION of my favourite episode, The Moment of Truth, the plot took second place to some immensely satisfying character stuff. I wasn't even judgey at Merlin! For this week his motivation was perfectly sensible ( The Castle of Fyrion )

Elsewise, I watched a lot of Sarah Jane. First, there was The Eternity Trap which decided plot was for losers and it should rely on Atmosphere and Cheap Scares instead. Happily, having a bunch of characters I love wander around a haunted manor for an hour is the sort of non-story I can totally get behind. ( The Eternity Trap )

Then there was Mona Lisa's Revenge. I assumed her revenge would be mostly about being bloody annoyed that some eejit had written This Is A Fake on her canvas in felt tip, but noooooo. (There was, however, a Chinese puzzle box, thus yayfulness at City of Death shout-out.) ( Mona Lisa's Revenge )

On to the finale, ( The Gift! )

In conclusion, a none-too-shabby season at all, with two stories I loved madly (Wedding of SJ, for sheer fannish glee, and Madwoman in the Attic, for being bloody good), one story I enjoyed immensely (The Eternity Trap, for shiny atmospheres), two stories that entertained pretty well (Mona Lisa's Revenge, The Gift), and one that was pretty rub, but I failed to properly dislike (Prisoner of the Judoon). Also, K-9 was back! Which was awfully nice. To season four!

Apparently Doing Things gets in the way of Telly, who knew. Anyway, I'm determined to see the RTD SJA ep properly on the telly, so I must watch quickety. Also, there is Merlin, which I missed last week due to cunningly being at shiny Connotations.

So, yes, telly:

( SJA: The Mad Woman in the Attic )

( Merlin: The Crystal Cave )

Have just watched A Special Relationship where Micheal Sheen gets to play Tony Blair again and Helen McCrory is Cherie Blair and Denis Quaid is Bill Clinton if Clinton was pretty fugly in '96 which, no, he wasn't and that distracted me kind of a lot. Anyway, mostly what I learned was that Tony Blair was a bright-eyed young go-getter who became Prime Minister and fell in love with the President of the United States, built him a massive great pedestal, stuck him on top of it and polished him every day. And then the President decided to take a piss on the pedestal, several times, and made Tony cry.

But that was okay because then there was a new President called George and Tony started being a total tosspot and everyone lived happily ever after. Which is exactly what happened, probably.

Also, Merlin! That was pretty good. Generally I liked it and I was pretty impressed with how they managed to convey Epic Battle given they obviously had budget limitations. However ( 302 The Tears of Uther Pendragon part II )

LOVELY MERLIN TIME YAY.

( the lady in the lake )

Yeah, still well judgey at whoever's making the titles up. Also SJA spoiler, cause a trailer ran straight after.

( Beauty and the Beast )

I love ma multishippy happy-making show, but please please let them find someone to make titles that are not of the tedious and banal variety kthxbi.

( Guinevere and Lancelot )

No Merlin for two weeks?! Boo! IHU BBC zomg.