Monday, June 27, 2011

7Seas New London Staff Fishes!


There's 3 new fish in the waters that bear some resemblence to staff members and more to come :

The Lowtune Bass
(Allready making a splash in 7Sea Fish Tanks around the Grid)
Doctor Mayan
(keeping the Waters of Tardis clean and in good shape)
Horned Goldfish
(Allways on point looking for Litterbugs and those in need of help)

- Geoffrey Xenobuilder
7Seas Manager

KONG IN LONDON!








Friday, June 24, 2011

What more needs to be said?

New London Systems

Sunday, June 19, 2011

Jayne Gudkov Review: Series 6 Overview!


Wow, where to begin? Do I go on about how the whole “Doctor inserting himself in history to get our attention” thing made no sense? Why is a couple of relatively newlyweds catching up on history anyway as opposed to what newlyweds usually do, silently cursing each other's relatives for the goofy and somewhat useless wedding presents they were given and, of course, making babies. Was there no pub darts championship on the telly to keep them occupied?

Doctor inserting himself in history. He wishes.

Do I ask when the Doctor dropped Rory and Amy off after their wedding night on the Tardis and how they got on to their honeymoon on the Spaceliner – and what was up with the costumes?? (a little “Good Cop/Bad Centurion” anyone? Sounds like fun. “Where were you on the Ides of March big boy, while Caesar was being made a pin cushion of? Tell me before I . . . . . ”) We'll leave that scene for your imagination.

The real question here is when did Madam Kovarian lose that eye? Kidding, the real question is when did Madam K swap Amy out for her 'ganger? Hopefully the second half of this season will answer that.

All of that covers the time before we even get into the events of this season. And here we get into why I am really wondering about why I am still watching this show (an earth shattering thought since I have seen every episode available out there.

It seems as if Mr Moffat, etal, have been infected with what I call the “Lost Virus”. The “Lost Virus” being a malady where writers of TV series have to have a season long “mystery” or story arc that just has to be part of the production. While I applaud Mr Moffat, and Mr Davies before him, for lifting Doctor Who above the muck and mire of regular TV offerings, I think that Moffat has gone a little too far. Doctor Who under Steven Moffat has become a show that requires too much thought about the overall mysteries. I like a show that you can chat about what happened and I wish there was a little more of that at New London, but Doctor Who is not a show that should require a great deal of thought.

It's become that.

Under Mr Davies tutelage we haven't really had, outside of the Bad Wolf references of the 1st season and the references to the thing on Donna's back in Season 4, season long arcs where we had to keep track of everything that was going on. From the second that Prisoner 0 carried on about “The Silence will fall” we were all looking for clues, and then nothing happened. OK right at the end of “Vampires of Venice” everything went quiet, but it had nothing, as far as we know, to do with Prisoner 0. That all came to fruition in this season and I'm not all that sure that The Silents have fallen totally.


River? Water of a Doc's back.

River did a number on them when they rescued Amy, but did they really “fall”? Something tells me they will be back despite their death sentence at the hands of the Doctor. Yeah the Silents fell on the floor after she shot them, but the way it was said it made it sound more like an empire or a civilization would fall.

My point in all of this is that Doctor Who is supposed to be simple and escapist, there was almost no mythology involved in the show as there is with a lot of today's shows. You could plop down, watch an episode and be entertained without needing to know why the Master has drums going on in his head or that Time Lords could turn themselves into humans, or that there were cracks in the Space/Time Continuum following the Doctor around.

OK, there were the Time Lords and The Master and the whole Dalek and Cyberman histories, but other than those, pretty much every “Dr Who” story could stand on its own (OK except the “Key to Time” series and maybe the whole “Trial of a Time Lord” silliness with the Valeyard turning out to be a future evil incarnation of the Doctor).

Even at the beginning of 9's series, there were hints of the Time War with the Daleks and what he had had to do to save the Universe from both the Daleks and his own people, where I took it to mean that he was a much darker and more introspective and brooding time traveller (even his wardrobe seemed to reflect that), but there wasn't supposed to be anything to actually think about. It was just background information that, to be honest, made the character of The Doctor more appealing.

Don't get me wrong, I have been looking for a replacement for “Lost” and there is part of me that likes the “mythology” that has been built up since Mr Moffat has taken over, but when it comes to “Doctor Who” this really is not Saturday night television, not any more.

Score one to me Smithy boy.

Saturday night television, if you're even home watching it, is meant to be light and something you just enjoy, not something you have to watch every frame of to see who might have actually stolen Amy's baby or where she was swapped for her 'Ganger.

Mr Moffat has come out to say that kids watch every frame and get it. I seriously doubt that. Maybe we are looking too deeply into it, maybe this is a game between us, the viewers and Mr Moffat to see who lasts the longest. I hope not because I love this show and I would hate to see it become a “Lost” where it ended lamely after such a great beginning, middle and almost the end.

That's my commentary on the 1st half of Season 6 other than to say that I, like most, am not happy with the games that the BBC is playing with splitting the season (another game “Lost” played), or do I like the rumored extension of Season 7 into 2013 so they can celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the show.

I get the celebration and it should be celebrated, but there is a more “organic” way that it can be done without stretching Season 7 over 2 years, like having a Season 8 (in 2012) and a season 9 in 2013 that ends on November 23rd (A Saturday Night – Woo Hoo)

OK – no more rantings, next week we get into the real muck and mire of Season 6.

Jayne :)

Monday, June 13, 2011

Jayne Gudkov Review: A Good Man Goes To War

Demons run when a good man goes to war,
Night will fall and drown the sun,
When a good man goes to war,
Friendship dies and true love lies,
Night will fall and the dark will rise,
When a good man goes to war.

Wow, where to start with this mid-season finale? This episode had all kinds of craziness, from the physical manifestation of the Headless Monks, what I (and I am sure most everyone else) thought was a quite funny throw away line at the beginning of “Time of the Angels” about their final resting place being the Delerium Archives, to the Doctor basically destroying the 12th Cyber Legion (lots of death and destruction there – even if it's cybernetic – unless all of those exploding ships were empty) to Sontaran nurses with breast feeding capabilities to the solution of the mystery of why Jack the Ripper stopped killing the prostitutes of White Chapel in 1888 (who would have known there was a Silurian stalking the streets of Ye Olde London Towne?) to both an in your face gay couple (one member of which was sacrificed to the Headless Monks – some sort of statement Mr Moffat????) and a suggestively lesbian inter-species relationship between human and Silurian (OK – maybe not so suggestive).

Which is where we'll start this week - with what I liked:

Vash “Was I being insensitive again? I don't know why you put up with me?” (tongue flick knocking out cleric). Jenny just (suggestively?) smiles. That and there is just something hot about a woman dressed in a Victorian shirt, tie and vest. For more on that check out H G Wells in an American show "Warehouse 13" (purrrrrrr)

The Papal Mainframe of the Headless Monks is a chick.

Pirates! And Spitfires!!!!

The sound of the Tardis in Vash's drawing room harkened back to the old series sound of the Tardis console room. That good old console room hummmmmmmm.

Rory to the Cybermen - “Don't give me those blank looks!” Sorry, but that totally cracked me up.

Stevie Wonder singing under London Bridge in 1814. “But don't tell him.” I guess he was singing his version of “Happy Birthday” - a very cool version.

River calling the guards to tell them she was breaking back in.

Now onto what I didn't like:

The Doctor participating in mass murder (of the Cybermen) then making a point of defeating those who were holding Amy without bloodshed using simple logic.

That the reveal of who River Song was – it was such a non-surprise – I think most of us had it figured out just based on putting 2 and 2 together at the end of “The Day of the Moon”.

The Doctor takes off to go after the baby, leaving everyone else to be dropped off in their own time zones by River, my point being that he knows how River turns out, to the point that he knows how she dies, but he still goes off after her. What's the point??? Granted, he doesn't know that this kid supposedly kills him in the future, but still, as I said, he knows what will happen to River, so why fly off to save her? (More on the basic “essence” of River later in my “Halftime Report”)

The whole description to the baby by Amy who her father was, the misdirection making it sound like she was talking about The Doctor – when it was really Rory - that was silly.

Silly

Calling a baby crib a “cot”. A cot is barely a bed – basically a bunch of sticks with some material stretched over it that boy scouts sleep on in a tent out in the woods. What the Doctor provided for baby Melody was a proper crib (yeah – I know it's a battle between the Queen's English and the language now known as American) which brings me to . .

That whole Tardis Translation Matrix thing. Evidently either the baby's name or the Doctor's (which River has said she knows) had been inscribed on the sides of the crib. I get that the Tardis won't translate Gallifreyan into English (actually it's a bit of a stretch since it translates every other bloody language in the known universe into English – but I guess they need an excuse to either not give away the Doctor's name or the fact that it would have said “Melody Pond”). Anyway, the whole scene didn't really make any sense. If the viewer of said Gallifreyan language's normal language was English it should have shown itself in English.

Maybe, since River knows that the bunch of circles inscribed in the sides of the crib are Gallifreyan script, that's how she found out the Doctor's real name.

Granted, this is a season long arc, but I guess it would have been nice to have had a bit of an ending instead of having it drag out over the summer.

Anyway, To Be Continued in “Jayne's Season 6 Halftime Report”. What, you thought it would be titled “Let's Kill Lowtide”???? Actually . . . . . . . [Well I wouldn't have been that surprised - Editor Lowtide]

Out today from New London Systems! T50 Galaxy Explorer!


Saturday, June 11, 2011

Aliens ahoy at The Maldovarium!

More aliens than you can shake a probe at! Wellzy Horngold DJing, two T50 Celestial Pods up for grabs and some very sexy aliens and humans indeed, but with the theme being Best Non-Human/Alien, the humans didn't have a chance!





Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Jayne Gudkov Review: The Almost People

The Jayne Review - “The Almost People”

Well, now it all makes sense, and yet, it doesn't. I am just going to get into this weeks likes and dislikes (even some hates) – starting with . . . . .

What I hated:

That it took 2 episodes to explain that the Amy we've seen since “Day of the Moon” was not our Amy, but a doppelganger swapped for the real Amy by the Crazy Eye Patch woman and possibly other unknown entities.

This is not to say that I didn't enjoy the episodes, I did, but I just got the feeling at the end that we could have just had that scene with Amy at the end of “The Curse of the Black Spot”. I know that's nit picking , but hindsight, that's how I feel.

Added to that, as much as we all loved “The Doctor's Wife”, in this season of Amy's pregnancy/The Crazy Eye Patch Lady, it sticks out like a sore thumb. You can tell that it was thrown into this season's schedule where it was for some unknowable reason. This is a one-off episode, so to speak, that would have been better served if it had been rolled out as a Valentine's Day special (in keeping with the BBC's penchant for holiday episodes), for if nothing else it was a love letter to the series by Neil Gaimon, and a love letter from the Doctor to the Tardis (that I still get teary eyed at while re-watching – it's my second favorite episode ever after “Blink”).

What I didn't like:

Seems like there are sonic screwdrivers all over the place. The Doctor throws his to his 'ganger before taking off, yet he has another with which to undo Amy-ganger's physical being. Does Sexy just spit them out when needed from the Tardis console?
There really was no reason for Cleaves' and the Doctor's 'gangers to stay there – they could have made it to the Tardis well before The Flesh would make it through the door. I mean I get that they really needed to make sure that The Flesh never made it off the island, but the company they worked for could have done that.

The 'gangers on the Tardis are “stabilized for good, they're people now.” So why doesn't this apply to Amy's???? And for all that the Doctor carried on about the 'gangers being people too, he just kills her??? Not to mention leaving Cleaves' and his own to perish, a little more on that later. Was he just BSing them???

OK – What I liked:

That we finally have an explanation of Amy's lack of wardrobe changes. Evidently, as we saw with The Flesh, it just copies everything about its original, including its clothes, and here we all thought the BBC costume budget was low (kidding).

That we have an explanation as to why The Crazy Eye Patch Lady has been appearing. Seems that the Amy-ganger has been having some sort of a psychic overflow from Amy proper, she seeing the Crazy Eye Patch Lady peering in on Amy while in her incubator/delivery room/really white place, for lack of a better way to explain?
The Eyes Have It! That wall full of eyes was too funny.

On a personal note, I used to chat with a couple of Welsh lads on a “LOST” message board and they hailed from Caerphilly, it was nice to see Caerphilly Castle used as the main setting for this episode.

Thanks for reading,

Jayne :)

Sunday, June 5, 2011

The Maldovarium comes to Second Life!

Based on the Maldovarium from the latest episode of Doctor Who (and its previous appearances) in "A Good Man Goes To War".

THE TRIUMPHANT RETURN!


DJ Archangel Mortenwold made a barnstorming return to Second Life action tonight, spinning the tunes at the Travellers Rest beachwear party, in Second Life's most popular Doctor Who region!

A large crowd filled the pub to enjoy the music, and show off their bikinis, shorts and sun hats.

Busy, vibrant, excited and a great end to this mid-season finale weekend!