A blast from the past: John Cleese as an art critic, commenting to an art collector about the Tardis. Suddenly Tom Baker’s Doctor runs up and jumps in, along with two Companions, one of whom is the second Ramana. Just a small throw-away moment from original series that brought two quintessential British icons together for the first time. There is also a wonderful behind the scenes outtake from that episode where John asks Tom for an autograph for his kid, but neither has a pen.
In honor of the 5oth anniversary, the folks at Future Publishing are hosting a competition for AudioGO, formerly BBC Audiobooks, and they are giving away 50 Doctor Who audio presentations, 25 CDs and 25 digital downloads. These are actually Audiobooks, with a single person reading a novelization, Radio Plays, with a full cast, sound effects, interlude music, and the whole nine yards, Soundtracks from the original TV series with narration to fill in the missing visuals, and several other formats. Some of the soundtracks are from episodes that have only survived in audio form, with the full original cast. They have literally hundreds of them, they have been doing Doctor Who audio stories from the beginning and are still cranking them out. To get and idea what kind of things they involve, you can download the free sampler and listen to 45 minutes worth of excerpts from all the different kinds of programs they produce. The only bad news for this contest is it is only open to residents of the UK (if I was reading the rules correctly), but even if you don’t live there you should grab the free sampler and check out some of the amazing stories you can collect.
This Kickstart project will do exactly that: Put a Tardis in Orbit! It is on a par with an AM-SAT or OSCAR launch in that it is an amateur satellite launch, except without the radio relay functions. It does include a computer to operate the passive positioning system that will allow the camera to take pictures of Earth, and a low power transmitter to send those images back to earth. I like the project, and I like that attitude of the father/daughter team who put it together, so I have to contribute to this one. Check out the video to see what I mean about attitude.
Not much in genre movies this time beyond AE: Apocalypse Earth and Battle Earth, both direct to DVD. The first at least has actors I like and an actual web page.
We do much better in TV, with Doctor Who: Series Seven, Part Two coming out. Looking around Amazon I found a listing for the complete Series 7 costing twice as much as the first two parts combined, and with no release date listed. That tends to make me wonder if they have plans to bundle it together with all the different 50th anniversary specials and bring it out in November for the anniversary itself, or possibly Christmas. Speaking of Christmas, Doctor Who: The Snowmen is also out on disk this week.
In Anime only one entry this time around: Phi-Brain: Puzzle of God: Season 1 Collection 2, bringing still more deadly puzzles along for our protagonist to resolve. Kaito doesn’t really want to solve these puzzles, but they are all deathtraps which will kill him and his friends if he fails to figure them out. This series is different in that the person with the brain is the hero, rather than the one with the biggest muscles or best school of Kung Fu, and I quite enjoy it. If you don’t know it already, bop over to Crunchyroll and watch some episodes (the link takes you to the start of the first season, so you don’t drop into the middle of the series).
If you are not already watching the made-for-BBC America series Orphan Black, you need to correct that right away! One of the twistiest new shows on TV, they uplevel their game with every episode. And it is easy to find yourself there; they are part of the BBC America Supernatural Saturday lineup, airing immediately after Doctor Who and just before The Nerdist. So odds are good you have been watching all along, since it is just easier to leave your TV on the same channel. But if you haven’t been, most carriers who provide BBC America have a Video On Demand service for your set top boxes through the remote, or an online streaming service like Comcast’s Xfinity (tablet/smartphone app or web page for your computer) where you can start with the first episode and work your way through the entire series. If you don’t have a cable/satellite system that supplies VOD oriented services as part of a Value Added package (it lets you watch more channels and programs more ways for no additional money just to make staying their customer more valuable to you), you can buy the episodes from places like iTunes and Amazon Instant Video. This one is really good, you should at least watch the first episode and get a feel for the show.
Movies this week include a ton of things released previously on DVD and now coming out on Blue Ray, like Hitchcock, but they have been available in some format for a while, so not new as such. The best of the new releases looks to be The Assassin’s Blade, the Jingle Ma 2008 film out of China. There is also Shifter about a kid who gains the power to shift into the body of a wolf and goes to save his parents, but I couldn’t find a proper link to it.
We do better in TV, with Fringe releasing both season 5 and the entire series as two different box sets. May I just mention how shocked and surprised I was that Fox actually let a high quality TV show run all the way to the end, without canceling it 6 episodes in after playing it in the wrong order and changing what time/day it airs each week? We also have K-9: The Complete Series, an Australian Doctor Who spin off that they made appear to take place in London by use of some London production input. Some of that London production input is from Bob Baker, who took a break from co-creating all those wonderful Wallace & Gromit projects to help out with the series. There is a rumor that they have a second series in the works, but I will remind everyone that when you look at the quality you need to keep in mind it is a children’s program, just like the Sarah Jane Smith series.
In western animation we have Superman: Unbound, where Superman goes up against Brainiac to try to save his home town of Kandor, miniaturized along with all of its inhabitants and held captive by the arch villein.
In Anime, Natsuyuki Rendezvous: Complete Collection is about a still grieving widow, the man who wants to woo her, and the ghost who comes between them, making for one of the stranger romantic triangle stories I have ever followed. Since they only have 2 bodies between the three of them, it can occasionally get a bit confusing as to who is doing what to whom. As you might suspect from the subject matter, this one is a bit melancholy. Toriko: Part 4 continues the combat gourmet saga through episodes 39 to 50, which are every bit as funny as the food fights that went before.
While not quite genre, both Sound Of The Sky and Kids on the Slope are music based series with a positive attitude, and look like a lot of fun. Finally this week, Sekirei: Complete Series puts both seasons into a single box set for the first time, making it a more cost effective buy.