From what the BBC has said, these are not video games as much as they are “interactive episodes” something which is not unheard of in Who-fandom since David Tennant presented the 2005 Red-Button game Attack of the Graske. The classic series also felt the lure of the polygon with their attempt to reignite interest in the show ahead of the TV Movie in the video game Destiny of the Doctors. By the sounds of it, however, the Beeb is keen to mention how this is to promote computer literacy among young children because, you know, once you’ve shot a Dalek with a Sonic Screwdriver using a keyboard, programming’s a snap.

Details of the game themselves, written by current Who-writers Phil Ford (co-writer of The Waters of Mars) and James Moran (The Fires of Pompeii and various work on Torchwood) and developed by Sumo Digital and Broken Sword creator Charles Cecil, are relatively lacking. The nature of the games remains a complete mystery save a few choice action-shots of the CGI Doctor and Amy peering around a war-torn city and missing the point of black cabs…

…Here’s hoping that they’ll be on the same video-game worthy level as modern console releases rather than tedious puzzle games, though the indication that they’ll be downloadable (and most likely free) suggests that these will be far from big-bugdet productions.

If they’re just piss-easy puzzle games with a few seconds of flashy CGI – I want my license fee back.

Just to clarify, I won’t be posting a review of every episode of the Doctor Who series currently airing, unless there’s a really awesome episode, though I will likely write a series review once it’s over and I will, of course, review these games.

Opening scene, always good to see a TARDIS crashing sequence, I’m glad that just because so much is changing they haven’t just cut off from the previous episode and continued straight on with the old interior exploding and back-references. I thought too much was made of The Doctor’s meeting with Amy as a child – that sequence could’ve been cut down a bit, allowing more time for action. The Doctor has a tendency to be inactive for a while after his regeneration, usually through him sleeping for most of an episode before having a heroic reappearance at the end, though this was not the case here, it was almost worse that our first real look at the Eleventh Doctor was of him sitting in a dowdy kitchen with a child trying different foods, I’d rather he were unconcious.

Opening sequence wasn’t what I expected, the thunder cuts into the theme tune which I dislike, it’s quite dark (which I suppose fits in with Moffat’s reimagining of the show but still) and I’d heard abundant rumours that we were going to see Smith’s face in the titles like in the days of old, but no. In all honesty, it really isn’t that different, which was a bit disappointing but only a minor detail so not a massive fault. Most of the first half hour was a bit boring really, it was quite predictable what was going to happen during that time, like The Doctor overshooting his return, the “policewoman” turning out to be Amy, etc. etc. What was up with that weird eye thing The Doctor did, good for the plot I suppose but I really hope it doesn’t become a staple feature, the sheer noise of it makes my ears ache.

Characters were a mixed bag, I don’t like that we’ve got yet another Mickey, in the form of Rory, playing the hapless comic relief boyfriend of the companion. Amy, perhaps the first character with father issues projected onto The Doctor, is a good change of pace from “fiesty Londoner” that every main companion since the revival has been. Other than that, a delightful cameo by Patrick Moore, a lot of funny characters but none that appear as though they will be influential to the show in any way. Matt Smith, as The Doctor, was absolutely sublime. He was a bit haggard at first by the slow-moving plot dealing with Amy’s issues, settling into his new body and so on, but when the “20 minutes” thing started, The Doctor, and I think Smith as an actor, was in his element and became a charismatic, witty blur of plan-making machine. There was something very Doctor about this sequence but also something different that Smith has bought to the role, I can’t quite put my finger on it (which is why I don’t try to make a career out of TV reviews), it was definetely The Doctor, just not as we know him.

I wish we’d seen more of the new Sonic Screwdriver, there was a lot of old Sonic action and we saw it blow up, but I wish we’d seen more of it. I’m also a bit annoyed that the TARDIS rebuilt itself rather than The Doctor repairing it, mostly because I would’ve loved to see a montage sequence of The Doctor building a new Sonic and then using it to repair the TARDIS. The interior was definitely NOT what I was expecting – it’s so much biggger and the console itself is quite a distance from the door that, compared to all previous interiors it was odd. I like that they’ve bought back the screen hanging from the ceiling of the TV Movie and just how intricate the console is, plus the layers and the prospect of seeing different rooms with the cavernous doors is appealing. My earlier mention of expecting it to be fairly similar, owing to how relatively seldom the set is used per episode has been completely thrown out judging by just how much money they must’ve spent on that (half of it looks CGI as it is) so I expect (and really hope) that there’s a lot of inner-TARDIS action.

The alien antagonist was a nifty, but I think a little bit underplayed villain. I suppose the focus of the episode really isn’t the villain during a story like this so I got the feeling that Moffat avoided putting in an alien that would take up too much of the plot. The CG was…interesting… and, particularly during shots where Amy came face to face with the snake thing, looked a bit poorly done – I know there were budget issues so that’s probably why the villain spent most of it’s time inhabiting other bodies. The teeth of this alien are a testament to the rest of the series, Moffat’s known for writing seemingly-standard “scary” stuff and making it actually chilling – sharp teeth on a vicious alien is nothing new, but only Steven Moffat can do it in a way that could unnerve even a very masculine 19-year-old man such as myself *cough*. Also, twins from The Shining………….WHAT?

There was the obligatory scene where The Doctor, now fully stabilised after his regeneration, having picked out a new costume (hospital locker room again, love it!) and saved the day, confronts the alien and scares them off. A projection showed previous monsters and clips from the new and classic series, and there was the shot of each incarnation of The Doctor, which Smith steps through after we see David Tennant and says “Hello, I’m The Doctor” undoubtedly more to the audience than the giant eyeball he’s facing. I’m pretty sure we saw something like that quite recentely and it screws up Moffat’s proclamation that this series wouldn’t be mythology-heavy, but for a regeneration episode it’s pretty permissable.

Overall, an up and down episode, but the up parts were a fantastic introduction for The Eleventh Doctor and, for the down parts, even Smith looked a little bit bored during those scenes so he was forgiven. It’s hard not to love this Doctor, he reminds me of Sylvester McCoy in an odd way, but hopefully without the sharp decline in ratings and eventual cancellation this time.

Yesterday evening saw the return of Hustle, written by Eastenders-cliché-machine Tony Jordan who, despite my mockery, actually doesn’t do too badly from time to time. The show, now in it’s sixth series, wasted no time in settling back into it’s usual display of surreal situations, brilliant acting-in-acting, plot twists and a setting apparentely so small they seem to always be able to pop off to have a contemplative stare into the Thames (pseudo-deep pricks), but no bizarre use of “bullet-time” in this episode; which I’m slightly disappointed about.

I’ve been a fan of Hustle from, literally, the very beginning and was immediately enthralled as the show grabbed me by the vernacticules for the entire first and second series. I never managed to anticipate what seemingly irrelevant movement or action would be the thing that saved the team from (as Ash says in this episode, “it’s all about misdirection”)

It’s beautifully acted, Robert Vaughn as Albert is hollywood royalty playing hollywood royalty playing anything else. Like all the performers, Vaughn has to switch between several different personas, usually in the same episode. For example, last night he was playing the good-old wise, kind yet powerful Albert everyone loves, switching to Albert playing a man with his nose so far up his arse he could smell his own earwax, switching to Albert-mentor, to Albert playing a soft-spoken art professor, to Albert playing a bumbling gold expert (I’m borrowing from other episodes now but you get the idea). Adrian Lester, too, as Mickey, had to alternate between American-throated businessman and Londoner(ish)-voiced bruiser several times, which was superb on his part. Stellar performance, as we always expect, from Robert Glenister as Ash and Kelly Adams as Emma, topped off with a passable performance by Eastenders-baby Matt Di Angelo as Sean. No matter how many prepubescent stubble-beards you grow, Matt, you’ll still be Deano Wicks and look about twelve. That aside, it’d be perfect if they weren’t given such wooden and stale lines from writer Tony Jordan, a man who clearly doesn’t get enough misery at home so decides to chuck it in front of every television in the country on Eastenders. Besides Hustle and Eastenders, one of Jordan’s best known works is Life on Mars, starring Philip Glenister (whose brother plays Ash in Hustle, Jordan likes his Glenisters and, frankly, who can blame him), showing how Jordan has just enough imagination to write a intensely intruiging concept and generally follow through with action and ideas but fails piteously with dialogue and evidentely runs out of ideas pretty fast so reuses old formats, like so…

It’s getting a tad repetitive, at least once a series there seems to be someone trying to catch the team who has, apparentely, outwitted the best grifters in London. They have some sort of informal meet with Mickey, wherein they smile smugly and bask in their deluded confidence, there’s another Thames-adjacent discussion with Albert when the supposed Grifter-Yoda warns Mickey not to do anything, knowing that Mickey will be spurred on by his pride. Mickey will have a sudden burst of inspiration, grin inanely at the camera for a second, then wipe-cut to the team gathered in a hotel room, where Mickey says something unexpected. The con apparentely continues precisely as expected, on the teams part, often interspliced with some apparent scheming of this year’s newcomer-conman-catcher. Something will go wrong and you think the team have lost the money, or the mark, or (more often) their very liberty, before Mickey makes a big reveal of something that happened off-camera to demonstrate that they’ve got the money and tied up all the loose ends. Job Done.

In case you didn’t see it, that’s basically how last night’s episode played out.

The dialogue is so bland and ineffectual that I genuinely believe that in episodes of this format, you could watch the episode entirely on mute, turn the sound back on for the last five minutes and gain a palpable comprehension of what’s happened and how it was resolved.

When they aren’t doing this tired format, however, there are some generally original ideas for cons. Perhaps my favourite episode showed the team convincing a London newsrag that they have found the Queen Mother’s long-lost son, with a genuinely tense episode and one of the best plot twists of the show. Alas, that may’ve been one of the last times that the show has genuinely suprised me. Tony Jordan is clearly more of an ideas man, shame he decides to make them talk as well…

It’s also losing it’s signature characteristics that made it such a hit originally – there’s the bullet-time stuff that I’ve already mentioned, that recognisable theme tune from the first four series, breaking the fourth wall and bollocks-on-the-table surrealism. In the second episode of the first series, Mickey and Danny convinced the mark to part with his hard-swindled cash with a dance number, obviously it was meant to be symbolic of how they dazzled the mark and was undoubtedly more interesting than any dialogue that Jordan had prepared from his post-it note line bible, but the level of genius from early episodes is unmatched these days. If the second episode doesn’t involve naked hula-hoops and woodland creatures playing Scrabble in space, I’m switching off. I kid, of course, because shows have to change and develop, look at Doctor Who, but in the old days the weekly mindfuck of the episode would make up, indeed disguise, the terrible conversational writings of Tony Jordan – now it’s unashamedly obvious.

The problem is that, over the years, the plot twists have become more and more predictable; at least they have to me. Over the years I’ve watched episodes with a beady eye and thought to myself “that’s the hint at the ending” and, more often that not in the last two series, I’ve been correct, I even half-guessed last night’s twist. BUT when I spoke to someone else about this, someone who had only just started watching it, he disagreed with me. So, I’m more attentive or I’m obsessive enough to have watched the show long enough to spot an unusual camera shot, either I’m getting smarter or the show’s getting more predictable (I’m torn here between my own arrogance and my poignant skill at self-deprecation so I’ll leave you to make up your own joke there). The shows technical “re-boot” last year started on a high, admitedly, and did take me by suprise, but (lately) seldom does Tony Jordan manage a consistent run of genuine twists; Agatha Christie he ain’t.

Ok, it seems odd to criticise a show that I love so much, both now and before, and long may it remain on our screens. Pains me to say it, but I actually think that Tony Jordan makes the show, metaphorically as well as literally, to the extent that no plot twist would be quite so delicious in the hands of someone else, nor the ideas quite so ludicrously brilliant, it’s a fantastic show and I hope it keeps getting made. Shame the all-dialogue scenes are just like Twitter – you know they’re there and that they’re talking, but you can anticipate the point of it and you really just….don’t…..care.

LONG LIVE HUSTLE!

I read a news story not one hour ago, regarding Channel 4 (a broadcasting company in the UK) and their deal with Google to provide full television shows and content on YouTube, probably ad-supported (much like the channel itself). Like all the major broadcasters in the UK, they have their own Video-on-Demand (VoD) service online with which they stream full shows (with interspliced short ad-breaks). The big difference between this channel’s VoD and the one run by the BBC, the iPlayer, is that television shows are available from the time they were broadcast and remain (supposedly) available indefinetely, whereas the iPlayer streams programmes for a limited time after initial broadcast, most of the time one week.

For a bit more background, there was a recent project between the aforementioned British broadcasters to provide a single, universal VoD service that would stream all the broadcaster’s content (details are sketchy) in one place. The project was codenamed Project Kangaroo and came to an untimely end when the Competition Commission deemed that a universal service run by all the broadcasters could be “too powerful” and expressed fears that the service could “hurt competition”. The project was ended but subsequently bought by another company in July who said they would launch in the coming months, no such development appeared and there was no indication of how the formal blocks imposed on the project by the CC would be dealt with.

Do you see where I’m going with this?

I heard about Kangaroo when it was in it’s initial stages and was excited by it, as a teenager I watch a lot of TV but socialise, meaning that it’s a pain to have to keep switching between websites and services to get the show I’m looking for when I miss something. The idea of a universal service was delicious and it was disappointing to hear of it’s blockage. But if Channel 4 are willing, and (thanks to Google, only time you’ll hear me say that) able, to put their entire back-catalogue on YouTube, and will run in parallel with 4oD (their own catch-up website) to put new shows online shortly after broadcast, then doesn’t it follow that other broadcasters can to? What do we get then? Why, my friend, we have a universal platform for VoD!

Of course, there are problems to overcome. First, and foremost, the BBC will have to get off their license-fee-funded high horse and put their content on indefinetely (and backlog their old shows if they so choose), which will probably never happen, and then they have nothing to lose from putting the same content on YouTube as well. It wasn’t clear, while Project Kangaroo was still somewhere in the mist, how the Beeb were to run their online content with Kangaroo, given that Channel 4 would undoubtedly have their content on there permanentely and the BBC may not have agreed to do this also, but there is certainly the scope for them to do so which would be the way for the BBC to get full shows on YouTube. Once they’re on-board, it’s quite likely that the other main broadcasters (ITV, Five and Sky) would follow suit, and if they didn’t it wouldn’t really matter (all you’d really miss is Corrie, Neighbours, Gadget Show, Fifth Gear and Futurama). But if they did.

There you have it, a Video-on-Demand service on one univeral platform, which most internet users are familiar with and already know and love. This could be easily acheived without any discussion or deals between the main broadcasters themselves and all they would need is the go-ahead from YouTube (arguably a broadcaster in their own right). This would also avoid all the crap and red-tape from the Competition Commission as long as it’s only ever seen as several individual deals between the broadcasters and Google and never as a joint venture and be far easier to manage if it’s each channel working their own account on the Tube.

This would be the ultimate makeshift Project Kangaroo, and far more convenient than the travesty of watching the universal VoD service in the USA, Hulu, attempting to get it’s act together for a UK service (they were allowed in the US so presumebly avoid the bureaucracy here). It would be far more adaptable and keep up to date with changes on YouTube and with online video content delivery technology in general, without the BBC or any other channel having to shell out to beef up their technology.

Now I think about it, the BBC might as well opt to put their shows on YouTube, it’s mostly already pirated anyhow! Plus, if you don’t pay your license fee, though you can’t watch live tv, you are still allowed to watch BBC iPlayer, so there’s no loss of income by joining this than there is with just iPlayer on it’s own, in fact it’ll probably break up or share out the server demands on the BBC that ISPs are so pissed off about (yes, I know iPlayer is peer-to-peer but the point still stands) and reduce the BBC’s bandwidth cost considerably, so the Beeb could actually save money by doing this.

This is staring them in the face, why don’t they do it!

In other news, I finished The God Delusion the other day and have made a sizeable dent in The Great Gatsby. In any other context you probably wouldn’t consider 30 pages sizeable but given that Gatsby is only about 200 pages, small by most standards, it’s a respectable chunk. I’m hoping to finish it at the weekend to free up shelf space in my flat and add it to my shelf at home – I’m proud of that collection.

Speaking of awesome things, namely me, I was saved £30 today. When I was on the verge, indeed the very pinnacle, of buying Windows 7 Home Premium edition online using my Student Discount to get it cheap. I realised I had to go to my lecture where, talking to someone, I discovered that the University had an educational license to distribute Windows software for FREE. Better yet, it’s available now, so when I’m home for the weekend I will take advantage of the fast internet connection in comparison to here to download the installation file and upgrade my laptop (so I call it because I can upgrade without it deleting my files/programs). At home it will take hours, here it will take days, to download. Now all I need to do is work out how to uninstall my Windows 7 RC dual-boot install, presumebly I can delete the partition that has the OS installed on it but I’m worried it’ll screw up my boot menu that appears when i start up my laptop with which I select an OS installed on the hard drive (7/Vista). If anyone can help, let me know.

Oh and also does anyone know a good image host, I currently use turboimagehost to quickly put my images online so that I can embed or link them into blog posts but the one I use now is pretty unreliable (if you can’t see the picture of John Barrowman on my last post then it’s down again and my point is proven) so if anyone knows a similar but more efficient image host comment and let me know (I have flickr but it takes too long to sign in and I’d rather have a quick and easy one).

I’ve run out of sign off ideas! Goodbye!