Well, we've certainly come the long way round, but today we finish our review of Red Dwarf season 1 with a two-for-one; partly because the final two episodes cover similar subjects, and partly because neither of them are among my favourites. Confidence and Paranoia We start with episode 5, Confidence and Paranoia, which opens with Lister snooping around, wallowing in his unrequited love for Kochanski again; wondering how often she dreamt about him, and what Rimmer has done with her hologram disc. However, due to a tragic misunderstanding, Lister soon discovers that he has been snooping around in a part of the ship which has not been decontaminated, and from which he contracts the central premise of the episode: a mutated pneumonia that gives him very real hallucinations. This results in the manifestation of two aspects of Lister’s sub-conscious, bringing the inner struggle between his confidence and his paranoia to life. Unfortunately this premise doesn’t entirely wor...

Once again it’s been far too long since we dipped our toes in the goldfish shoals of Red Dwarf, so to avoid any glaring continuity errors, today I’m taking a look at Bodysnatcher, the ‘lost episode’ from Red Dwarf season 1. For the tenth anniversary of Red Dwarf the Bodysnatcher script was finished, recorded as an audio storyboard by Chris Barrie, and made the headline act when Red Dwarf Re-mastered was released on DVD as ‘The Bodysnatcher Collection’. The title of the story comes from Rimmer’s slightly unhinged attempt to create (with the help of the skutters and their sonic screwdrivers – is that the only mention of such a tool in Red Dwarf?) a solid body for himself from Lister’s eyebrows. Lister, having also lost his beloved dreads to this project, gets a little annoyed and switches Rimmer’s hologram off, planning to replace him with someone less psychotic. Unfortunately Rimmer is one step ahead and has already hidden all the holodisks, leaving Lister with a choice of eith...

In the UK we Dwarfers are eagerly awaiting the start of Red Dwarf XI (which I will be reviewing over on my blog ), but here in CGC land we continue our leisurely re-watch of the first series with Waiting For God. This is where things get really philosophical for the crew of Red Dwarf: Lister is busy learning to read cat books – specifically the Holy Book, which tells of Cloister the Stupid – when Holly detects an unidentified object crossing their path, which Rimmer believes will contain an advanced alien being able to give him back a physical body. During the course of the story Rimmer questions the point of existence; Cat hangs out with an aging Cat priest; even Talkie Toaster goes from an ‘I toast, therefore I am’ view of life to believing there must be more to life. Lister, meanwhile, is coming to terms with what the Cat people have made him; yet his revelation: I am your God! meets with only mockery from Cat. This could easily have been a Cat story, but somehow wasn’t; C...

Episode three of Red Dwarf's first season, Balance of Power is a change of pace from the gag-laden sci-fi of the first two episodes to more of a traditional sitcom set-up. The story opens with Lister getting bored of counting irradiated haggis, which presumably he only does because Rimmer has confiscated his cigarettes. In order to relieve the tension slightly, Lister wants to go on a date – to bring Kochanski back, albeit in hologram form, for one evening. This suggestion leads to some comedy with the swapping of hologram discs – three episodes in we already hated Rimmer enough to root for the ‘arm of a Danish moron’ when it starts to rebel – and ultimately to Lister deciding to become an officer, outrank Rimmer, and order him to hand over the holodiscs. The is a slight nod towards philosophy, as Holly explains why he brought Rimmer back to keep Lister sane, as opposed to one of Dave’s drinking buddies: HOLLY: Jean-Paul Sartre said Hell was being locked forever in a ro...

It seems about three million years ago that I started the Great Red Dwarf Re-watch here at CGC; sorry about that, but we'll try and make it a bit more of a regular feature from here on, starting with the first post-pilot episode, Future Echoes. With the premise set up, Future Echoes had the task of setting the pace for the rest of the series. In fact it was filmed later and slotted in as episode two because it did just that, and did it well; Future Echoes defines ‘sitcom with proper sci-fi bits’. In case we missed The End, the scenario is re-capped in an introductory ‘distress call’ by Holly, and then it’s straight into Lister and Rimmer antagonising each other. The bickering between Lister and Rimmer is really the heart of this episode - as it is for much of the series - although Cat does have a couple of amusing moments (following Rimmer into the bunk room, staring at his Helen Shapiro hairdo) and character-defining lines: Two suits is dead! We also meet talkie toaster...

February 1988.  Star Trek: The Next Generation had recently launched, but was still a couple of years away from UK screens, where TV science fiction consisted of Kirk-era repeats and Doctor Who. Yes, the first time round - Sylvester McCoy and Ace, specifically. This was the world into which the BBC chose to launch the Jupiter Mining Ship Red Dwarf; possibly a risky move given the extent to which Doctor Who was struggling to survive at the time, but the Dwarf succeeded, largely by being both good sci-fi and a good sitcom. So successful was the show, in fact, that Series XI is due to hit the screen later this year - which seems like as good a reason as any to introduce Christian Geek Central to Red Dwarf - starting, of course, at... The End The End is slightly different to most Red Dwarf episodes, having to do all those things a pilot episode should: set the scene, introduce the hero (Lister), kill his nemesis (Rimmer), evolve his pregnant cat into a sentient humanoid, a...

Doctor Who fans may have noticed that the annual 'female Doctor' debate was reopened recently by none other than Sylvester McCoy himself. So I'm going to blatantly cash in, and offer my opinion through the medium of a review of a Seventh Doctor story. Battlefield is not the best of McCoy era Who; neither is it particular bad, it just happens to be the only Seventh Doctor story I've watched recently. It is, in fairness, a mixed bag; cheesy in many ways, but it’s old skool Who, what else should it be? It has a sense of humour that might have been brilliant in the hands of Douglas Adams & Tom Baker, but does at times get a bit silly here. The Arthurian knights from another dimension and the fact that the Doctor, at some point in his future, apparently becomes Merlin, should have been brilliant; unfortunately the fight scenes are mostly just too slow to be believable, and the fact that the knight-aliens slipped into our dimension via a massive plot-hole (or at ...

It's been a while since I lasted posted here, but since that was to review The Five Doctors , I should probably return to the Whoniverse with a look at the classic Doctors who came after. I don't have good memories of the Colin Baker years. Having been introduced to Who by the much-loved Tom Baker, and then growing up to the utterly likeable Fifth Doctor, number Six was something of an unwelcome change. The fact that he was followed by  Sylvester McCoy's (also utterly likeable) Doctor hasn't done our Col any favours either. However, coming back to him in the wider context of Who history, I think I may have done him a disservice. There's no denying that the wardrobe department did their best to make him memorable for all the wrong reasons, some of his companions were eye candy at best, and then there was Trial of a Time Lord, which I epically disliked at the time; but for all that, I don't think it's fair to blame Colin Baker or his rendition of the Docto...

With over 30 years of backstory to catch up on, figuring out where to start with classic who can be a daunting prospect – whether you're watching it or blogging about it. I’m starting with the 20th Anniversary special episode The Five Doctors, which works well as an introduction to the first five Doctors – pick the Doctor you’d like to see more of and then check out more of his adventures. Fans who are familiar with the earlier stories will enjoy the in-jokes, catchphrases and call-backs to Doctors gone by, and the cameo appearances of some of the earlier companions. The central conceit of the story is that the Doctor’s various incarnations are being kidnapped by some cloak-wearing rogue with a time scoop and brought to the Death Zone on Gallifrey, where they must break in to the Dark Tower – the tomb of Rasillon, founder of Time Lord culture – in order to release the Tardis and return to their own timelines. On the way the various Doctors meet old friends and old enemies...

Confession: I have never been a Whovian, that is a fan of Dr. Who. I stumbled across the character and the series on my local PBS affiliate when I was a young teenager and immediately dismissed everything about it as being irredeemably cheesy: the stories, the props, the sets, even (and I know I will lose some points for this) the Doctor himself (as played by Tom Baker).  As a youngster who was exposed to the glorious effects of Star Wars, I thought that the American science fiction TV series like Buck Rogers, the original Battlestar Galactica and others were more compelling to me. Even a series as dated as the original Star Trek was, it had better sets and effects than Dr. Who. As I grew older, Dr. Who faded even further into the background. I didn't know (or care) who played the Doctor after Peter Davison (Tom Baker's successor - the only reason I knew even that was due to an article in STARLOG Magazine that I read). I didn't keep up with much in traditional geekdom for...

PLEASE NOTE: The mp3 file links for this post are outdated. To listen to this episode please visit  The SBU Podcast Archives.  Sorry for the inconvenience. Part 2 of David Arington's thoughts on Dr. Who Season 1 and a conversation about the latest DC Movie News!

PLEASE NOTE: The mp3 file links for this post are outdated. To listen to this episode please visit  The SBU Podcast Archives.  Sorry for the inconvenience. Some thoughts on the "Gotham" tv series premiere, the Agents Of SHIELD season premiere and the conclusion of our look at game emulation and abandonware. Plus, a "Summer Of Free" Aftershock! Stractics Download Link-   http://www.spiritblade.net/downloads/Stractics_Rules_and_Printouts.rtf

PLEASE NOTE: The mp3 file links for this post are outdated. To listen to this episode please visit  The SBU Podcast Archives.  Sorry for the inconvenience. Professor Alan reviews "The Silent Partner", Kim asks "Why, Fiction, Why?" and Paeter launches "Farscape Shawarma"!

Two bits of dialogue jumped out at me last night while watching "Legend Of The Seeker". Since the concept of the show and books lends itself to asking "truth oriented" philosophical questions, I came up with a couple for last night's show. Kahlan: You can't ask me to change my beliefs! Richard: And you can't ask me to change mine! In the show, a baby's life hung in the balance during this conversation and the argument hit a stalemate at this point as they both surrendered themselves to this overly sensitive mentality. Why can we not ask each other to change our beliefs? I agree that we can't "demand" that someone change their beliefs. But why can we not ask someone, in light of good evidence and solid reasoning, to change their belief on an issue? I mean, I can always say "no", can't I? What's the harm in asking if the request is accompanied by good reasoning? Well, in this episode, good reasoning didn...