Puzzling

Jigsaw puzzles need to cover a few bases in order for them to really work well. First of all, the image chosen needs to have areas of similarity - making it challenging to work out which pieces go where - and also areas of distinction so that you have a chance of sorting out the obvious pieces and placing them first. Ravensburger, who currently produce the Doctor Who jigsaws, seem to have these elements down to a tee in the designs they choose for their releases.

The latest two jigsaws in their range feature imagery from Season 6, and as usual their designers have done a sterling job in coming up with some superb pictures.

The 60 piece jigsaw features a great image of the 11th Doctor with his Sonic Screwdriver, flanked on one side by two Silent, and on the other by River, Rory and Amy. The bottom of the image is mostly dark and the top is a similar sky all the way across, making for some challenge in those areas. There are two Silent ... so if you have a Silent piece, then where does it go?  Brilliant stuff.

The other jigsaw is slightly larger at 100 pieces, and the image here really deserves to be released as a poster it's so good. It's a collage (again) of monsters, and there are tons crammed in here ... from left to right we have a Silent, two Weeping Angels, the Siren, Gangers, an Ood, a Sontaran, Madame Vastra, three Daleks, two Cybermen and a CyberController ... trying to sort out which pieces are which from that lot would be quite challenging!  However as every part of the image is different, it shouldn't be too impossible ... in fact I can see that the 60 piece one might even be harder to do than the 100 piece.

There have been calls for Ravensburger to produce a larger-still jigsaw. Maybe a 1000 piece one which fans could really get their teeth into. From the design prowess available in the company, I'm sure that whatever imagery they chose to use, it would be spectacular and impressive.

Filmwatch

We watch a lot of films ... most evenings are spent enjoying something on the DVD or Blu-Ray, and sometimes we'll go back and revisit old favourites, or films we've not seen in an age, as well as picking up some new fare from Blockbusters, or buying them when we know they are things we'll want to add to the collection to watch again.

So recently we rewatched the 2002 version of The Time Machine - the one with Guy Pearce and Samantha Mumba as the female Eloi. To my surprise this was much better than I had remembered it. The acting was pretty good, and the effects nicely done. Mumba was OK, and Jeremy Irons as the lead, intelligent, Morlock was chilling and convincing. I remember that the film was panned when it came out, and it's hard to see why as there's not much wrong with it. I wondered what had happened to former popstrell Samantha Mumba ... a quick check on Wikipedia reveals that she seems to have been doing mostly TV reality shows, guesting on daytime TV and concentrating on 'acting'.

This week we pulled three films from Blockbusters to check out. First of all we watched The Green Lantern.  Oh dear. What a two hour something something borefest. It's hard to believe that a film with such amazing visual effects could be so slow and boring. But it is. The plot really stretches the imagination too ... there's an intergalactic consortium of superheroes called 'the Green Lantern' apparently because their power derives from will, which is green. So they can do anything they can imagine they can do - so pretty much limitless power. Except that the human representative who ends up with the power (Ryan Reynolds) has the imagination of a damp sponge. When a helecopter is crashing, all he can think to do is to turn it into a giant Hotwheels car and track and let it go all over the place like that. When bad guys attack, what does he do? Open a black hole and suck them in? No. Create an impenetrable barrier and enclose them in it? No. He gets pushed and battered and bruised and eventually uses the gravity of the Sun to drag the baddie to its doom ... so not much imagination at all. It was a chore to finish the film to be honest.

Next up was I Am Number Four ... which I was hesitant about, but apparently the book is good ... but unfortunately the film isn't.  It's unfortunately from the Twilight stable of teen romantic stylings and concentrates on how the alien 'Number Four' (Alex Pettyfer) falls in love with a girl at high school (Dianna Agron, who is quite cute) and who then jepordises his future, race and whatever else these mysterious nine kids need to do, by mooching and fawing over her rather than battling the evil bad guys who are out to kill him. In this film the power of good is blue, and the power of bad is red, by the way ... and his hands glow like torches for some reason.

The film sort of struggles along until the last half hour when a kick-ass girl in the form of Number Six (Teresa Palmer) appears. She has the usual teenage girl croaky-voice, but Australian this time rather than the usual American croaky-voice which every female in every film has to have. So annoying. But she is cool, wears leather, rides a motorbike and can sort of dematerialise, move at lightning speed and kill the bad guys with a short sword/dagger thing ... so she's OK. It reminded me a lot of the character Nightcrawler from the X-Men films ... but that's good as he was an excellent character too.  The last half hour is actionpacked fighting with guns and explosions and everything ... and then it slows to a dead stop for the last five minutes as our hero has to say farewell to his love, and the evil bully from school turns good guy ... sheesh.

So onto the last film of the week, and after those two I was feeling a bit down. Thank God for Luc Besson! The final film was the French offering The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec, and this has gone straight on my to-buy list as it was awesome. I am a big fan of The Fifth Element, a brilliant, rollicking science fiction film from Besson, and this one matches it for sheer audacity and imagination. The effects and acting are superb, and the plot ... oh the plot ...

What I really liked about it is that it's unpredictable and above all original. I've never seen anything quite like this before. A scientist, Espérandieu (Jacky Nercessian) puts his mind into that of an ancient pterodactyl and hatches it from an egg at the museum. While the creature causes havok in Paris, an incompetant policeman, Albert Caponi (Gilles Lellouche) is assigned to sort it all out ... thus Espérandieu is discovered and arrested. Meanwhile our hero Adele Blanc-Sec (Louise Bourgoin), is in Egypt, raiding a pyramid to try and obtain the body of the Pharoah's doctor as her sister has been badly injured and brain-damaged, and she wants Espérandieu to revive the mummified doctor to see if he can help her sister ... so the film moves from Egypt back to Paris, and Adele has to try and spring Espérandieu  from jail to help her. We end up with all the mummies in the Louvre coming to life, and going on a sightseeing tour of Paris, and Adele riding the pterodactyl bareback across the city!  Honestly, you couldn't make this up ... and it's brilliant brilliant brilliant.

All the actors bring a superb French/Parisien sensibility to it all, and some are quite comic-strip in their characterisation, all wearing bowler hats, and Caponi constantly trying to have something to eat - and being interrupted every time. Everyone is polite and nice, and Adele is the icing on the cake. Louise Bourgeon is simply superb - she is feisty, kick-ass, go getting and sassy, but at the same time polite, gentile and mannered. A brilliant creation indeed.

Personally I have no problems with subtitled films, though I appreciate that they are not everyone's cup of tea, and here the film is in French with English subtitles. So be aware of that if you decide to give it a go.  And I strongly recommend that you do.

Where's David?

Not one but two places to come and chat to Sam and myself this weekend ...

WATERSTONES, Bolton, Lancashire. 29th Oct 2011Sam Stone will be signing her new book, Hateful Heart, Book 4 The Vampire Gene Series, at this store. David J Howe will also be there with his new collection talespinning.

Time: 12-4pm Date: Saturday 29th October.
Address:Waterstones, 32-36 Deansgate, Bolton, BL1 1BL

WATERSTONES, Wrexham, 30th Oct 2011
Sam Stone will be signing her new book, Hateful Heart, Book 4 The Vampire Gene Series, at this store. David J Howe will also be there with his new collection talespinning.

Time: 10am-1pm Date: Sunday 30th October.
Address: Waterstones, 9/11 Regent Street, Wrexham, LL11 1SG.

100 Scariest Monsters

Another book from the Penguin arm of BBC Children's Books, and this time a small hardbacked tome which purports to be the '100 Scariest Monsters' from Doctor Who ... but it's a strange beast indeed.

It contains double page spreads on 100 monsters, but they are not in alphabetical order (possibly because then that would be too much like the Encyclopedia) nor are they in order of appearance, nor are they even in order of scariness ... perhaps the order is that which author Justin Richards thought of them? There's a mix of Classic and New series creatures here too, so Zygons and Zarbi and Krynoids rub shoulders with Cassandra, the Flood and Vashta Nerada, and each entry has a couple of photographs, some slim text, and a 'Fear Factor' chart showing how scary they were.

This 'Fear Factor' seems to have been pulled from the air, bearing no basis in really how scary the things are. For example the Vashta Nerada get 9/10, while the Daleks are 10/10 ... the Werewolf (from 'Tooth and Claw' gets 8/10 as does Prisoner Zero, the Mummies (from 'Pyramids of Mars') and the Ogri (from 'The Stones of Blood') while the Haemovores get 7/10 along with Aggedor, Axons, Quarks and the Time Beetle! Maybe this is why the book is not in order of scariness - it would all fall apart!

It's a nicely produced little hardback, though the designer needs shooting for the text on pages 6/7 which is dark blue against black and barely readable! However I can see this ending up in the bargain bins after Christmas as it is too similar to Justin's The Ultimate Monster Guide from last year, and it's also like the little Top Trumps books from previous years. It's a book without any point or reason to exist, doing nothing, and produced purely because someone thought it would be a good book for Christmas. A shame.

Where's David?

The signing tour for talespinning rolls on, and tomorrow I'll be at Waterstones in Wigan, along with Sam Stone, signing copies of the book and chatting to anyone who wants to chat ... so please pop in if you're in the area.

WATERSTONES, Wigan. 22nd October, 2011
Sam Stone will be signing her new book, Hateful Heart, Book 4 The Vampire Gene Series, at this very popular store. David J Howe will also be there with his new collection talespinning.

Time: 12pm-4pm Date: 22nd Oct
Address: 61 The Grand Arcade, Wigan, WN1 1BH

Head Case

Amidst all the furore about the Character Options figures and what people want to see next, some gems get released from other companies and these can go unreported. Which is a great shame as sometimes these are far more interesting than a simple set of figures. Take Trends UK's current range of science kits. When I was a kid, I loved this sort of thing, and to have a range which also tied into my love of Doctor Who would have been simply awesome.

The company has three products out at the moment. All are science-based toys and some might say are more traditional than perhaps some of the guns and gadgets which are released - how many Sonic Screwdrivers can one actually play with anyway? - but they are all well produced and well thought through, providing a springboard for further thought and investigation into the subject.

First up is a 'Dalek Enemy Identifier' ... or in common parlance, a 20x microscope with some specimen slides and stickers. The toy is nicely designed and can be enhanced with some 'Dalek bump' stickers. The booklet encourages the user to investigate all around them, everyday items from the house, kitchen, garden and so on look different when magnified, so the idea is to find things, look at them, prepare specimen slides, and then to see if you can identify the close-up photographs in the manual.  I can see this as being fascinating for anyone interested in the world around them and with an inquisitive mind.

Next is something called 'Silurian Crystal Lab', and this is a beautifully designed item: for once not an 11th Doctor, Dalek or Cyberman item. Here, the kit contains some play dough and some chemicals. The manual talks about crystalline structures (and I wondered if in an alternate dimension we had such a kit but with Krotons on the front - a 'grow your own Kroton' kit!) and then goes on to describe the process of dissolving the chemical salt in water, and then suspending a small pebble in the water so that crystals can form on its surface. Fascinating stuff. The kit then has some 'Silurian Sludge', or play dough, to pop the formed crystals on in order to display them in a glow in the dark dome. I always found this sort of basic crystallography a little boring as it's lots of waiting for things to happen ... you need patience to grow decent crystals! But if you have the patience, then the results can be rather good.

Finally, and probably my personal favourite of the three toys, is something called 'Cybernetics'. This contains all the parts needed to build a half-size Cyberman head from the Pandorica Underhenge which will then react in different ways depending on the circuit board chosen. The kit is nicely designed such that each part will only fit in one place, and the manual is clear enough about how to connect up all the wires - basically same colours go together, connected via little springs which is a simple and effective solution, rather than messing about with little screws.

The three circuit boards provided are: Infra Red - where by using a television or DVD remote, you can make the head move across the floor for three seconds or so before it stops; Light Activated - where any light will make the head move - so best used in the dark with a torch, and then when the torch hits the head it moves; and Object Detection - where the head will move until it detects an obstruction, when it will go into reverse.

Of the three circuits, I didn't try the Light Activated one as it was daylight and I couldn't see the point. The Object Detection one didn't seem to work - the head moved and then just stopped. I think with this, the field of operation is too limited perhaps, and of course the detector is only in one place on the head. So the one which I managed to get working was the Infra Red one, and indeed my TV remote would activate the head - but only if used about a foot away ... again the range didn't seem very strong. However each circuit also has a little dial to change the range, fiddling with that increased it to about two feet ... still not quite strong enough ... and of course the television was also switching off and on and the volume going up and down all the time.

The head itself is lovely, and makes a really nice display piece once the fun of making it move and changing it around is done. In a perfect world, the head would have been full size, and the circuits a little more sophisticated ... maybe one to make it talk, another to light it up (it's a shame that the eyes and head don't light up when it's activated), but all this would add cost, and as it is, the product is very nicely priced indeed. I guess that the next step might be for Junior to pay a visit to Maplins or Radio Shack to see what circuits and lights they have which could be used to enhance the toy ... and from there we have the development of future visual effects designers.

In larger Boots stores in the UK, the Cybernetics toy is in their 3 for 2 offer, which makes this one at least very affordable for the family of kids who love Who and who have all the figures. Hearty congratulations to Trends UK for producing the range, and I hope it does well enough that they decide to do more. The 'Dalek Enemy Identifier' sells for £20, the 'Silurian Crystal Lab' for £23 and the 'Cybernetics' kit for £25.

Shops stocking them are:
Toys R Us
Entertainer
Amazon
Argos – on line only
Forbidden Planet
Forbidden Planet International
Boots – Cybernetics
Play.Com

The Brilliant Book

Received a copy of the Brilliant Book 2012 the other week, and to be honest, this is probably the best thing to have come along in recent years. Editor Clayton Hickman knows his Who (well he should do, he edited the official Doctor Who Magazine for many years) and the book collects together facts and figures, pictures and interviews from the most recent series. In a way, it strangely reminds me of my own book Timeframe - which people keep asking if there will be another volume of: at the moment unfortunately not as the BBC don't wish to commission 'outsiders' to do the books for them, preferring to rely on staff and 'known' writers to do the work.

The Brilliant Book sort of falls outside this remit as Clayton does not work for the BBC or Ebury as far as I know ... but anyway ... the content follows the most recent season and there are four or so spreads from each of the tales, peppered with additional interviews with Matt Smith, Karen Gillan, Arthur Darvill and Alex Kingston, plus interview comments from the writers and from Steven Moffat, and even pieces from the effects team on how they created some of the monsters along the way. For me this is wonderful - I've always loved these behind the scenes pieces - and the book blends all this material together along with nice tongue-in-cheek elements like a 'Welcome to Sardicktown' brochure, a flier from the theatre where Henry Gordon Jago presents a 'monstre gathering' culminating in Madame Vastra, a Handroid advertising pack, and 'facebook' updates from Cleopatra and Charles Dickens.  It's superb stuff, written with wit and presented superbly thanks, I guess, to the talents of designer Paul Lang who gets a co-credit with Clayton for the book.

For each story there are also some simply superb pieces of photo art from Lee Johnson. These are some of the very best I have seen in terms of composition and picture selection, and are presented as full page pieces - another perhaps-nod to Timeframe where we presented all the Target cover art throughout the book.  These would make a wonderful series of posters, and Johnson should perhaps be snapped up to work on some of the other licensed merchandise out there to create Jigsaws and covers and designs.

The book is something of a bargain at £12.99 for 164 pages all in full colour, and it complements the other Doctor Who releases admirably - there are some for the younger kids (like Where's The Doctor and the Annual), some for the readers (Dan Abnett's Ice Warrior novel The Silent Stars Go By), and some for the fact-heads (Gary Russell's The Encyclopedia, and of course Andrew Pixley's special magazines from Panini). And of course taking up any slack are companies like my own Telos Publishing with our books on the missing episodes (Wiped) and the more specialist season and story guides.

All you need are bottomless pockets to be able to afford all this stuff!

Where's The Doctor?

It's funny how sometimes things that you think of then become a reality. I was thinking maybe 5 years ago about how it would be really cool to have a Where's Wally type book for Doctor Who, with spreads featuring different monsters and settings ... and then they publish one!

Where's The Doctor? (BBC Children's Books, £8.99) is a large format hardbacked compilation of some of the 'find the Doctor' images from the pages of Doctor Who Monster Invasion Magazine by artist Jamie Smart. I was actually a little disappointed when I realised that they were all from the magazine, but pleased too, as I'm not collecting the magazine - too expensive and something had to give!

We have a selection of scenes: Judoon on the Moon; Dalek ship; Adipose nursery ship, Cyberfactory, Ood-Sphere and so on, and in each image you have to locate four elements: the Doctor, Amy, Rory and the TARDIS; while there are three random items which can be found in some of the images: Fido the dog; Fido's dinner and Fido's ball.

I love the humour inherent in the images. In the Judoon one there are some of the creatures using each other as target practice, there are Judoon in police helmets in a car, one riding a rocket, and lots and lots just standing around. The image of the Underhenge is especially wonderful, with all the different monsters featured. We have Judoon trampolining, Roman soldiers aplenty, Sontarans marching, and Silurians and Cybermen enjoying a slide.

The Silence image is also great, with thousands of the creepy creatures packed into an old house on the landings and stairs. Finding the Doctor here is very challenging, but I managed it :)

Overall the book is a great Christmas gift, diverting and entertaining for kids of all ages, and if you shop around, then you can get it for less than the cover price (Waterstones have it for 25% off for example).

The Fall

I am loving this new song and video by Gary Numan right now. The video is something of a mini-masterpiece - I love them when they have a story and visuals which make you think 'what is happening here' ...

The Power of If

There's an old Doctor Who story where Tegan, the Doctor's companion, talks about the power of 'if' ... indeed she is looking for the TARDIS' Index File, but the deeper connotation of what she is saying is for me one of the things at the very heart of good storytelling.

Sam and I were at Preston Waterstones yesterday, and one of the lovely things about doing store events is that you get to meet all manner of people ... some of them want to chat about the books and might even buy a copy, while others are not interested in horror (they turn away with a shudder) but if you smile and ask them what they do like to read, then you can get a better insight into what people like and why ... and that can be important.

At the store yesterday, a lady came up to us with a young boy of maybe 8 years old ... she wanted to know if we had any tips on writing for her son, as he had been asked by school to write a 'blurb' on something he liked, and also to write some sort of story (I think). It's hard to get ideas and concepts over to an 8 year old, and so I decided to focus on the power of 'what if'.  The way it goes is that anything in life - absolutely anything - can be transformed into the fantastique through the power of 'what if'.  So. We're standing in the bookshop talking ... what if a hole opened up in the floor and swallowed your mum?  What would you think, what would you do next? Where does the hole go? And why is it there?  Instantly you have a story. Another example was 'What if you woke up and your bed, instead of being in your bedroom, was on a cloud ...'  And so on.

The lad got it immediately and seemed quite thoughtful that this making up of stories - something he said he did anyway (probably in a form like 'my homework was eaten by dinosaurs in the back garden' or 'I didn't eat that cake, it was a hungry fridge-mouse') - was a basis for writing fiction, and he wandered off to pillage in the childrens' section of the store.

I love that 'what if' approach ... it's even something that seasoned writer and friend Terrance Dicks has mentioned on more than one occasion ... if you're writing something, anything, and you get stuck, then just have two men enter the room with a gun ... that then gets the story moving again. It's the same basic premise ...

So next time you're out and about, try employing the 'what if' ... what if that man at the bus stop is waiting for a spacecraft to arrive rather than a bus ... what if the greengrocers suddenly vanished ... what if that group of children in the park weren't actually from this dimension at all ...

The Reviews are In

Just wanted to take a moment to pass on a few reviews of my new collection, talespinning. As some will know, this collects just about every piece of fiction I have written over the last 30 years - I'm not prolific at fiction - and I really wasn't sure if people would like it. 

First off, the first big review I got, from http://www.geekmom.com/2011/09/talespinning-by-david-j-howe-who-horror-and-more/

'These stories made me want to read more horror and I don’t think I can conjure up a greater compliment.'

'As a whole, this is a great collection with something for most horror and fantasy fans. Doctor Who fans, especially those from the classic pre-2005 era, will doubtless find the Who-verse tales of great interest but there is more to this book than just the Doctor’s world, and the other short stories are all worthy of your time and attention. As a horror story novice I found this a great introduction to a variety of styles, allowing me to get a bit more understanding of the genres I am drawn to and as such talespinning will sit well on the shelves of horror, fantasy and science fiction fans alike.'

Then the book was perused by OneMetal.com at http://www.onemetal.com/2011/10/06/talespinning-by-david-j-howe/

'The two excerpts from David’s novels were fantastically written, but frustrating to read because I wanted more! The excerpts conclude at a point where plot-threads naturally remain unresolved. The fact that these can stand alone should be considered as testament to the quality of David’s writing.'

'David J Howe's talespinning is a great collection of short stories, scripts, and excerpts, and will be particularly enjoyed by anyone interested in Dr. Who.'

And finally, an 8/10 piece from SciFiOnline at http://www.sci-fi-online.com/00_revs/r2011/book/11-09-30_talespinning.html

'The pieces which I thought worked the best was Moonlighting and Blackfriars, both of which are deliciously macabre.'

'As a collection of shorter fiction this collection is eminently readable with a nice range of stories in differing forms.'

Needless to say I'm pretty delighted with the initial reaction, and Sam is now nagging me to finish the novels ...

Stake Land

We found ourselves without new films to watch last night, and so one quick trip to Blockbusters later, and we were furnished with a new vampire film which I'd not heard of.

Stake Land seems to build on the premise of the adorable Zombieland - one of my favourite films of recent years - except that instead of zombies having taken over the world, it's vampires. I always smile at the taglines they put on these films: 'Forget what you know about horror, this one's a game changer' said something/someone called The Skinny; and 'See this film at any cost' urges Gorepress ... hmmm ...

It's not a bad film at all. The production values seem very high, and while it's obviously low budget, they do a good job of not making that element show. Thus the vampires have fairly decent make-up and there's a whole heap of corpses which get strewn about in every location the heroes end up in.  It's a sort of road movie of sorts, but one where the lead characters don't really show any development. It's also very bleak.

The world has gone to pot since the vampires came to town, and everywhere is destroyed. Small pockets of humanity exist: from the nice and friendly, 'come to our town and we'll give you all you need' to the distinctly unfriendly: 'vampires have been sent by God to serve us ... so we'll feed you to them ...'

Our heroes are Mister - a sort of loner vampire killer - and a boy called Martin, and along the way they travel with a pregnant girl (Belle), a Nun (Sister) and another man (Willie), coming up against the loopy Jebedia who runs a vampire-worshipping group.  The problem with the film is that it just drifts from one location to another, the characters come and go, and as I say, there doesn't seem to be any development.  The most random thing in the film is when unknown people in helecopters drop live vampires onto a town which is holding a party celebration ... no explanation, but the party ends thereafter.

The film also doesn't really end. Mister heads off into the proverbial sunset, leaving Martin and new girl Peggy to continue to drive to Canada where, supposedly, safety from the vampire hoard awaits them. The film ends as they reach the Canadian border.

It was an enjoyable watch, but it lacks the humour and self-awareness of Zombieland. Everything is bleak and uncompromising, and at times it's quite challenging as babies get killed, and the vampires destroy everything in sight. The vamps though are far more like zombies than vampires - they don't seem to think and just attack and eat ... and this also generates a credibility problem for the final battle with Jebedia.

Better than some lower budget offerings I've seen, I'd maybe give Stake Land a 6/10.

Lost Girl vs Terra-Nova

I like to dip into and try episodes of any new FSFH shows which come along on telly. Recent misses for me have been Tru Blood - saw a couple of episodes, had no idea whatsoever what was going on and so passed on it; Warehouse 13 - which I actually enjoyed, but have managed not to see very much of as it didn't grip me; Doctor Who - which Facebook Friends will know I've not thought much of this year (for the first time in 48 years!); and the new Torchwood: Miracle Day - which was about 6 or 7 episodes too long, and ultimately seemed to be about nothing whatsoever.

There's a couple of new shows started recently. First is Lost Girl. We missed the first episode, but came in on part 2, and this had me hooked immediately. The premise of the show is that there's Fey creatures all around. As in Angel they have their own bar, and everyone tries to get along with everyone else. Lead protagonist is Bo, who is a succubus - if she doesn't get a regular dose of love-energy then she will die. Problem is that taking the energy kills a human. So she is hooked up with a werewolf chap called Dyson who doesn't die when she feeds. She has a human sidekick in the intensely quirky and likable Kenzie, and there's a sort of backstory where she's trying to find out who her parents were ...

So we have tales of leprechauns, human corpse-eating creatures, sirens and just about every other sort of fantastical creature you can imagine. But it all works. Anna Silk as Bo is very good in the lead, and Ksenia Solo as Kenzie is simply brilliant - I'm not sure if it's the actress or the scripting, but whatever it is, it really works.

We have Lost Girl on Sky Repeat Record now so as not to miss an episode ...

I wish we could say the same for the new Spielberg TV series Terra-Nova ... We caught the first episode and thought, hmmm ... we've seen all this before. A family in a dystopian future takes some sort of government initiative to travel to a new world where they can establish humanity all over again (or something). But the new world is 50 million something years in the past, and there are dinosaurs there, and a compound like out of Jurrassic Park, and it's just so so slow and boring.
We watched the second episode to see if it improved, but no. All about the kids getting caught outside the compound and trapped by raptor-like dinosaurs while some breakaway group of dissidents called 'Six' are sparring with the leaders of the compound group.

It's like every sort of after-the-disaster film and TV series ever made ... human factions warring between themselves, some Primeval-like dinosaurs thrown in to provide a backdrop, and just angst and angst and angst from all the characters all the time. Tedius.

So that has now been deleted from the Sky box ... we won't be watching any more.

Vindicated

http://www.britishfantasysociety.co.uk/news/official-bfs-statement-concerning-awards/