James

Well, Harry was in in all three films. But that was an ongoing subplot, not lazy repetition.

And not as an antagonist until the third one.

Whuh? Spider-Man had different antagonists each time.

I'm really hoping they don't kill off The Joker.

the guy that got shot but still managed to stay alive for the entire episode

To be fair, he was clipped in the side by a poxy-looking old revolver. And since most of the episode ran in real time, he only had to survive for 40 minutes or so while The Doctor turned up.

On an entirely-unrelated note: he's not fucking 903 years old, you bastards! He must be going on 1,400 by now! GAH! STOP GETTING DOCTOR WHO WRONG!

Obviously The Doctor's lying about his age to impress all these gorgeous young girls that keep throwing themselves at him. There's precedent, after all...

Too long and not long enough. There wasn't really enough plot to warrant an hour and ten minutes, but if it were a proper disaster movie that wouldn't be an issue, because those movies pad out their running time with character work, so that the viewers care what happens to the various protagonists.

Voyage of the Damned sat uncomfortably between the two. I know I was changing my opinion about Davies being behind the show after season three, but I really do want him to fuck off now, because he's blatantly got to the point where he can turn out any old shit and nobody will pick him up on it.

Like Mina and Allan's encounter with their landlady - that's a lot of pages devoted to an inconsequential scene that means nothing to anyone who hasn't read the Jerry Cornelius books.

Miss Brunner?

Jerry Cornelius's mum.

Quick thoughts on Voyage of the Damned, SPOILERS AHEAD!

THE GOOD:

* Kylie better than expected. Rather good, actually. Didn't sit there going "that's Kylie Minogue" at all, which is about the most that I could have asked for. That she put in a mostly solid performance helped.

* Bernard Cribbins showing that he's still got comedy chops. In fact, the whole cast was marvellous, though the crying monkey boy out of Eastenders wobbled a bit on occasion.

* Special effects genuinely special for the most part.

* Plenty of clever lines, very much liked the gags about the amateur Earthologist not understanding Christmas at all.

* They actually did pull some surprises out of the hat in terms of who died and who survived.

* Good gag about everyone abandoning London every Christmas. Nice to have Davies treat the constant threats to the Earth with a bit more logic than having people claim it was down to terrorists slipping drugs in the water supply.

* Davies claimed that sticking that girl's head in a concrete block in "Love & Monsters" was beautiful, bittersweet and Roald Dahl-esque. He was talking shit. However, Astrid's fate manages to tick all three boxes, so at least he got there in the end.

THE BAD

* The plot felt a bit thin - it's hard to do The Poseidon Adventure when you only have an hour and ten minutes to set up the characters and knock them off. Something like this needs a little more space to breathe.

* The sound mixer's gone back to having the music SOUND LIKE THIS and the dialogue sound like this.

* Bit daft to give your heroine a self-sacrificing fall into a roaring inferno and justifying it in the Confidential as being the only way to dramatically kill someone when you did exactly that with another female character (and, in a less heroic way, her husband).

* Killer robots, eh? Shame The Doctor doesn't have that glowing blue doohickey that he used to zap the killer robots last year (NB. they might have been "deadlock sealed" but I can't quite remember).

* Why can't one of the richest men in the universe afford a better robot body? Or, in fact, a robot body at all?

* The whole thing was generally too much of a downer for a Christmas episode, what with having a body count in the thousands and killing off most of the likeable characters and saving the rich arsehole and killing the heroine and having The Doctor moping about for the billionth episode in a row.

OVERALL:

Somewhere around 6/10. Unlike The Christmas Invasion it wasn't meaty enough to justify the running time. Unlike The Runaway Bride, it wasn't funny and lighthearted enough to stop me from caring. Still, looking forward to season four.

If her whole 12-issue uber-arc had been chopped down to six issues then it would have been pretty good. I think that shaggy dog ending would always be a problem, though.

Still - I blame the editor, not the writer.

I don't believe it was important to recognize quite every character reference, but moreso just to know the archetype being represented by a character, like with Uncle Hugo.

I'd say that applies to the first two books, but there's definitely a load of scenes in Black Dossier that do nothing for the story and would mean nothing to anyone who isn't up on the references. Like Mina and Allan's encounter with their landlady - that's a lot of pages devoted to an inconsequential scene that means nothing to anyone who hasn't read the Jerry Cornelius books.

Although to be fair, the comic sections are really just there to string together the historical League prose stuff.

It certainly is Ledger, but he looks too large for his surroundings.

He is, and I don't think it's even a perspective thing. Some of the cars in the distance also look to be pointing straight at the camera instead of slightly to the side, but I still think (or at least hope) that it's genuine. The fact that it mirrors a scene from the trailer helps.

That video is not available if I try to look at it. The only trailers I can find on YouTube are fan-made ones.

Quick! Quick! Go go go before it gets taken down!

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=mkSUvuDYe9A

New trailer: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=lwT8GyLxIhk

Still, it's got Emma Peel (er, Emma "Night") in it. So that's all right by me.

Copyright laws prevented them from even using the "K"?

Looks like it. There's a cute bit where it's implied that Emma's dad build Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang, the living car from the children's movie, then went on to found the company that built KITT - one "Knight Industries".

Question: Why do the spambots all go for the "Culture Bunker"?

I'm guessing the ad software automatically targets the forum with the largest number of threads or posts, to make sure that the maximum number of people read the spam before it gets nuked.

And the editorial suggestion about making The First a seperate character from Lucifer is completely defensible as far as I'm concerned. It stops confusion between two continuity-sharing*, contemporaneous books and allows for consistent characterisation of the Lucifer character, something which would have lead to far more online explaining than what we actually got.

 

 

 

* see appearances/references in The Sandman of Agony and Ecstacy, Piggy Huntoon, the Family Man, the Constantine lineage, etc.

 

 

I disagree, and Kejoxen's post here explains why rather neatly. Really, that was all the explanation any of this ever needed.

Except that it runs completely counter to the accepted rules of comic book continuity, which means that we'd have to trot that fucking phrase out every other week on this forum, because there's no way most people are going to come to that conclusion by themselves.

And I like the continuity-wrangling.

I loved, loved loved the first League volume, but thought that the second was perhaps a little disappointing in comparison - it wasn't bad, by any means, but it felt a bit too much like a typical more-of-the-same-but-on-a-bigger-scale sequel, which isn't what I'd usually expect from Moore.

I had a couple of problems with it, the biggest of which was that the Martians' defeat was a foregone conclusion. Okay, so Moore put a clever twist on it, but still - for the majority of the book, I was sat there thinking "yes, yes, I know". It's also bloody decompressed compared to the first volume. The thinness of the Martian plot wasn't helped by the fact that the League aren't actually sent out to do anything until issue three anyway (and I know that it's really more about the characters than the story compared to the first volume, but you still don't get much of them in the first couple of issues either).

It's still a great comic and I do enjoy re-reading it, but it's a bit disappointing when compared with the first volume.

The comic bits in The Black Dossier also worry me a little, specifically the number of times Moore has someone wander on, allude cryptically to the book that they're from and then wander of without contributing to the story. But I suppose the point of the Dossier is the prose rather than the comic bits, so I can understand Moore feeling the need to pad out some of the sections a bit.

Still, it's got Emma Peel (er, Emma "Night") in it. So that's all right by me.

Yeah, but almost all US sitcom characters are smug. At least, unlike Friends, their lives aren't supposed to be aspirational.

When I got to the point where you had Jason Alexander/The Doctor say "Ah, what kind of a friend are you".

 

I thought, "hey, maybe James didn't write this, maybe Sinfield wrote it?", because it was so apt I heard it as if the character had spoken it himself. So there you go, either you have watched so much Sienfield that tiny little Elaine and Jerry and Georges live and speak in your head, or you have a pretty good idea of how to write a witty pastiche.

 

James. Please don't tell me if it is the first of those scenarios, ok?. I have enough things in my life that depress me, I don't need to know you have been driven mad by a sitcom.

Better than being driven mad by Family Guy. Thanks Avaunt, my ego has fully healed. :)

You do that all the time, so it's not really noteworthy or anything. I'll disreagard that one.

I'm always surprised by people actually hating the characters from Seinfeld. I always find them likeable despite their flaws.

"Spaced"? You mean thrown into space? Are you not a fan of Seinfeld? :o

It means you are an absolute gem of a human being and have made me very grateful.

Everyone else is a bastard.

Man, I'd kill to see the episode of Who where the Doctor's companions were George, Elaine and Kramer!

I'd like to see Jason Alexander as The Doctor.

INT. THE TARDIS

The Doctor is looking flustered and pacing back and forth; Jerry is casually eating peanuts from a bowl on the TARDIS console.

THE DOCTOR

I can't believe I left my cellphone on the Planet of the Thargs!

JERRY

Well ya know, those guys really hate cellphones. They're not gonna like that one bit.

THE DOCTOR

I know! I know! And after I destroyed their Empire, too!

JERRY

Well, that's just adding insult to injury.

(The Doctor stops and snaps his fingers)

THE DOCTOR

Okay, I got it! Jerry - you gotta kill me!

JERRY

What? Get outta here.

THE DOCTOR

No, do it! Then I can regenerate and go back without them recognising me. I might even get hair again! Strangle me! Stab me! Do it, Jerry, do it!

JERRY

I'm not gonna kill ya!

THE DOCTOR

Ah, what kind of a friend are you?

(The Doctor goes back to pacing as Kramer slides into the TARDIS)

KRAMER

Hey Doc, can I borrow your sonic screwdriver? I'm opening up my own Sontaran factory. It's gonna be FA-ZOW! (he gesticulates wildly)

THE DOCTOR

(absentmindedly rummaging in his coat pocket)

Sure, sure.

(Suddenly The Doctor has a brainwave. He darts over to Kramer, puts a friendly arm around his shoulder and holds out the screwdriver; Kramer reaches out for it and The Doctor pulls it slightly out of reach at the last second)

THE DOCTOR

Tell me Kramer, have you ever been to the Planet of the Thargs?

(Slap-bass sting, fade to black; ad break)

That's only five minutes shorter than Bee Movie.

and, despite what you might read in books like Sandman and Lucifer (in which the post-Lucifer version of Hell is completely different) took over the place again once Lucifer quit. Or something.

To be fair, the Ennis and Gaiman politics of Hell mesh up pretty well. The First even makes a comment about how god left two angel in charge of Hell, but he's the real power there, which actually works perfectly fine for both series, especially in Lucifer, where it's clear that they don't have any genuine

And the editorial suggestion about making The First a seperate character from Lucifer is completely defensible as far as I'm concerned. It stops confusion between two continuity-sharing*, contemporaneous books and allows for consistent characterisation of the Lucifer character, something which would have lead to far more online explaining than what we actually got.

* see appearances/references in The Sandman of Agony and Ecstacy, Piggy Huntoon, the Family Man, the Constantine lineage, etc.

But then, who wouldn't be Irish if given the choice?

Dare you to say that in Belfast.