“Every episode on Playboy TV does just fine without a series arc” - Anonymous, 2011

I have been scratching my head trying to think of the last time I got moist and happy from a TV Series with a Story Arc. The latest Series story arc for BIGFINISH’s 8th Doctor range was akin to something you’d find under an elderly gentleman’s unwashed foreskin. Certainly in New Who I am still sitting here and waiting for the satisfaction to enter my brain from Bad Wolf, the Pandorica and Bernard Cribbins knocking. In Smith 2.2 we drown in a sea of questions revolving around the Story Arc. Every two minutes another question presents itself which, based on previous NuWho arcs will probably never get a satisfactory answer…….

Why are the Silence wearing suits and dressed like the CIA?
I know the Silence can’t wear sunglasses like the CIA because of their heads, that’s one answer down.

Why does Amy appear pregnant one moment and not the next?
Dodgy baby, dodgy pregnancy test, dodgy urine?

Who does River Song kill? Who is the little girl at the end? Why is somebody in an astronaut’s suit coming out of a lake? Whose the woman with the eye patch and why does she dissappear? Why is Rory such a doormat? Why can’t a man marry another man?
How do you keep score perfectly on your own forehead?

Other things we’ll very likely see again during this series will be the Silence, the in-palm nano recorders and unfortunately Karen Gillan.

Once again I think Moff has just made it too complicated for the mainstream. For me it’s fine, a bit too much arc and not enough story but I liked the episode. I am sure most kids and the casual fan will be wondering what the fuck is going on.  I read today that Moffat has said he finds it exhausting writing Who because he is writing for a brilliant mind. That makes sense. He clearly isn’t writing for a family audience for me in this episode. Without a family audience I worry about the future of NuWho.

Talk of writing for a family audience brings me to my second scrotal sprain about the episode…”I want to marry another man who is black”. Why did we need to have that line? Why? I don’t understand. It was totally unncessary.I was watching Dr Who wasn’t I? This wasn’t Torchwood. We already have an adult version of Doctor Who called Torchwood that deals with Sex and adult themes. Let kids be kids, scare them and entertain them and let them discover sex and sexuality when they are old enough, do we really need to ram it down the throats of kids (no pun intended)?

As always with the Smith era my other episode stain was Karen Gillan. “It was a figure of speech, moron” she said lovingly and condescendingly to her husband. I detest the character of Amy, I really do. I’m starting to be uncertain about the character of Rory too now as he is such a doormat.

OK, now I have wiped away all the bad stuff from my mind’s arse I can now fill my bowels again with all the good stuff about this episode and the series opener.  I said I liked this episode and I did…..  

My No.1 like? Matt Smith. I burst out laughing with his lines after being discovered fiddling about with Apollo 11. He is funny, eccentric and full of energy and may need to carry the rest of the characters through a series again. Another thing I liked about the past two episodes? They were iDalek free. The Silence are very scary for kids and a great new enemy and I am so pleased to be iDalek free. Throw in a spooky house, Area 51 and filming in America. For me it’s a 8/10. I also liked the Time child as I miss the Timelords, well the classic Who Timelords. Who was the woman in End of Time? Who?

(Source: cybertesticle.org.uk)

So New Who Series 6 is here. The Dr has been running all his life apparently and now he’s running faster than he’s ever run before. Well done on beating your personal best but is it relevant? The London Marathon was last week.

 Have you ever driven through a desert? I can tell you from being in Egypt that anything on the horizon that wasn’t sand you spot 10 miles away as you’ve been watching nothing but sand for 3 hours. I find it hard to believe that you fail to spot your mate whose waiting for you in the middle of the desert only AFTER you’ve got out of a bus especially when you don’t blink and you permanently stare.  I didn’t know American bus drivers will stop at the correct longtitude and latitude if you ask them. I also think they’d be reluctant to drop tourists off in the middle of the desert for their own safety. If you asked a London Bus Driver to stop at a certain longitude and latitude he’d tell you to off yourself with some fuck but he would be pleased to drop you in the middle of nowhere.

In Series 5 Moffat  got rid of the sexualisation of the Dr only to bring it back in this first episode of Series 6. The Dr hiding naked under a dress, River Song being a screamer, the Dr being fancied by men. If the Dr is sexually active then in the words of Mr Richard Keys, why would you want to smash or hang out the back of Amy Pond or River Song when you could shag Marilyn Monroe? Come on would Dr Who really miss out if we just avoided talking about sex? We are British for goodness sake.

One failing of Series 5 for me was it wasn’t scary enough. The Aliens are scary this time. The Aliens are also very strict toilet attendants. If you forget to flush they will make you explode.  I did like the smart suited aliens although I’d have to say it doesn’t really detract from the fact of the horribly disfigured head. Maybe a more colourful tie I don’t know. If I skulked about in the sewers I’d probably just wear something baggy and an old t-shirt but fair play to you stylish horribly disfigured aliens.  

The episode ends with Amy shooting a child as the cliffhanger. We aren’t on the cliff edge for long though as the next episode trailer shows Amy apologise to the same unharmed child for shooting them.

So to the acting…..

Karen Gillan continues to stare wide eyed, startled like somebody undergoing a prostate examination by a Dr with gigantic hands. Rory doesn’t do much, I had to remember just then he was in it. Matt Smith’s Dr doesn’t know whether he is taking a biplane lesson or knitting in 1911, brilliant and as eccentic as ever. The kid phoning Nixon doesn’t have a convincing American accent to me.

All in all 9/10 if there is a decent pay off , 7/10 if there isn’t.

(Source: sexdalek.org)

After weeks of working with the TWITTER API for a work project and weeks of reading books about the TWITTER culture I decided the best thing to do was to delete my main twitter account. Why? My main twitter account ( @cybertesticle ) had become useless. It wasn’t fit for purpose. Like Katy Manning it had gone from something full of fun and nice to look at, to being something with fun in there somewhere.

I set up the @Cybertesticle account to promote my podcast, to meet fellow Doctor Who fans and to keep up to date with breaking news, particularly BIGFINISH breaking news.

I fell into a big trap though. Everytime somebody followed me on TWITTER I followed them back.

By being naive and reciprocating the love I went from having a twitter account that was keeping me up to date with the world of Doctor Who to struggling to find news on my feed, I know the question TWITTER asks you is “What are you doing right now?” but does it really mean “Sitting down to lunch”, “eating a biscuit”, “masturbating to an episode of the Cosby Show”. I now had to look at my twitter feed constantly to try and extract something I was interested in.

As far as I could see I had a choice. Do I start unfollowing the frequent twitterers (I presume there is a nickname for these, is it twammers?) and upset them or do I start unfollowing the frequent twitterers and upset them?  I decided I couldn’t upset people. So I invented another choice. I chose to kill the @cybertesticle account. I then created an account @sexdalek and added people who I have chatted with and know and people who don’t tweet everytime they pass urine or eat a sandwich or both.

On my other four twitter accounts I just unfollowed on mass. I was  inundated with automated tweets mentioning me as an “unfollower”. These unfollower tweets publicly told the world what an utter bastard I was, no better than a criminal, a scoundrel, a suspected rapist, a fan of Bonnie Langford’s work.

With the big Doctor Who convention Gallifrey or #gally as it’s hashed about to kick off I am currently being bombarded with tweets about Daphne Ashbrook’s thighs and the chicken wing prices in the hotel. I don’t mind. Despite me seeming to contradict myself and seeming to disagree with every paragraph above this one. I don’t mind. I will feel there. I will feel the excitement of the convention, it’s buzz. Sometimes Twitter works with the frequent updating, sometimes it doesn’t.

From my Twitter journey and from reading the books about Twitter my use of Twitter will change. I will not to become intimidated by being held up as a Social Media Leper when I unfollow someone. I will block or unfollow people who want to take me through the action of brushing their teeth in exquisite detail or who post pictures of the food they may or may not eat that lunchtime.

The most important change in my Twitter life is that I am not going to reciprocate the love, no longer will I be a twitter slut. Anybody who follows me I will now think very hard about following back. I’ll check out my new followers feed and if I do follow them I will block them if our relationship isn’t going anywhere. The one caveat is that I’m unlikely to meet new friends on Twitter like the ones I have BUT I will have a Twitter feed showing me what I want to see.  Since culling my various Twitter accounts I barely need to look at my phone as I no longer miss interesting news or blogs or witticisms.  This new found spare time leaves me more time to watch my .avi copy of the Cosby show…..

(Source: cybertesticle.org.uk)