Friday The 2013th

Another year over. And you know what that means don't you? Tedious "Best Of X" lists. Millions of them, slithering out of the internet and into your disinterested eyes like some kind of ghastly occular leech intent on draining out your ability to feign even the slightest interest in the most hideous fashion possible. Only when it finally heaves it's twisted bulk through the screen it finds that there's not actually anything left to feed on as all mental resources have been depleted in pretending that you don't hate your friends, family and the miserable excuses for presents they gave you, even though you would probably be happier setting them all on fire. Thus, defeated it slinks off to die in a pit of rotting feculence and the twitching corpses of it's decaying brethren.

Happy New Year?

That metaphor rather got away from me there. Still, never mind eh? It's time to trawl the archives and try and work out what things from my past year didn't actually suck. As always actual release dates are less important than when I actually first experienced the item in question. So with the rambling and provisos out of the way, let's get on with it shall we?

And The Kitchen Sink Of Death

Let's be honest here. The Time Of The Doctor was not really what you'd describe as a great episode of Doctor Who. I wouldn't describe it as awful. It's certainly no Fear Her. Hell, I'm not entirely convinced I'd even describe as bad per se. But it's definitely not very good. At best I suppose we could describe it as an uneven end to an uneven year. And of course if we're going to have any hope of getting to the root of WHY this is we're going to have to get into full on spoiler territory.

For example, the 12th Doctor discovers that when a body dies it evacuates its bowels..

So consider yourself warned.

Terminology Velocity

One thing you quickly learn when performing even a cursory review of Dinosaurs in general is that they are possessed of a great variety of long, complicated sounding names. Now, obviously we need to call them SOMETHING, and using latin or pseudo-latin sounding terms allows us to apply some measure of appropriate description so that everybody knows what we're talking about. Even if we're not always sure exactly how to pronounce it.

Of course, one of the other functions of such nomenclature is that it all sounds very clever and official. Which is just as well really. Because if we were to actually set the TARDIS telepathic circuits to translate right down to the root meanings of terms and try to have a conversation about Dinosaurs we would sound, in all honesty, utterly retarded, if only for the number of times you end up saying lizard in a single sentence.

So that's what I'm going to do. Enjoy.

Advent (Geological) Time

It's at times like this, with the festive season well and truly underway, that a mans thoughts inevitably turn towards the one obvious subject of relevance for this time of year:

Dinosaurs.

What did you think I meant?

Don't Mention The War

On reflection, if I had to find a metaphor for my feelings on watching The Day Of The doctor for the first time, I can only equate the experience to watching gay porn. I mean, the 3 guys on screen are clearly enjoying themselves, and there's plenty of fun and action to be had. But somehow, despite all this it doesn't quite work for me. And also much like the question of sexuality I can't help but feel that it's not really a question of what's happening on the screen being particularly wrong in any way, more that it doesn't quite fit with my own particular preferences somehow.

I know what I'm thinking about when somebody says 3 Doctors at the same time.

It's funny, but despite all the reservations I felt after watching the episode, I can't help but feel that the whole package was, in some ways, fairly inevitable. That things were always going to move in this direction eventually.  But I'm not going to be able to get into this in any detail without the obvious spoilers. So if you haven't actually managed to watch it yet, I suggest you sort your priorities out.

The Foe From The Future

Okay, so last time I was banging on about the whole Ultimate Villain poll thing and how utterly ridiculous half the entries were. And I was left wondering why it was that outside of the 2 Steven Moffat created entries there was such a lack of anything from the new era of Dr Who that could be considered even slightly appropriate, let alone a reasonable contender for second place after the Daleks.

Unless we're talking about these Daleks of course, which are different and thus must be feared and hated.

And thus it is I feel compelled to embark on an in depth analysis of original monsters from the 9th, 10th and 11th Doctors run and see if we can come up with anything a bit more iconic. So strap yourselves in, this might take a while....

The Ultimate Foe

Recently the BBC Doctor Who site ran a poll to determine the Series Ultimate Villain™. As a man who has spent an excessive amount of time and a whole series of posts thinking about Dr Who monsters this was obviously of some interest to me. Not that there's ever really any doubt about the outcome of such an exercise.

Spoiler Alert?

But it can be a bit of fun anyway. After all, the Daleks Winner is to be announced as part of some special programme (even if it is on BBC 3), so at least we'll get a cool rundown of classic nasties to watch out of it if nothing else.

Then the list of nominees started getting filled out. And I found myself faced with a question: Is this some kind of joke?

No, REALLY. Is it?

When I Said It Was Time For A Dino Riders Reboot I Didn't Mean Like This

Okay.... So, this happened:

And I have to say, in all honesty, it could have been a lot worse. I mean, it should give you some idea of just how awful supernatural romance in general actually gets that this is probably the least headache inducing thing that I've actually read.

And it's about a HORNY PSYCHIC T-REX.

Seriously, I barely made this face at all.

Ham And Pineapple

The history of progress is, in many ways, a history of utterly implausible combinations. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in the example of the ham and pineapple pizza.

What is this I don't even...