I had a really surreal moment at the end of The Bill last night when, in the trailer for next week, I could have sworn I saw Tommy Knight (Luke in SJA, although I was too tired to remember the actor’s name at the time). I contemplated rewinding – I don’t watch live because I refuse to watch adverts. I’ve been on The Bill website a lot recently to try and learn some of the names because I don’t recognise most of the regulars any more, so I know they don’t have credits or tell you about the guest stars (not when they’re not that big, anyway). But what I did find were more trailers and clear evidence that it is Tommy Knight 30 seconds into this video and a photo that tells me he’s playing Greg. Although I am more excited that Terry was in it – I hadn’t seen him yet, so I didn’t quite believe the website when they said he was still in it.

I am enjoying The Bill at the moment, despite its lack of theme tune and pullover, and I am getting used to the incidental music. I can even name some of the new characters. Not that I can necessarily recognise them first off, mind you, even though they have their names on their uniforms these days…

I stopped watching in June 2005, I discovered from looking through my blog. And started again in October 2009. Thanks to the magic of YouTube I’ve been watching some old stuff and I can honestly that what I’ve missed has been utter rubbish, for the most part. And it’s obvious from the synopses too, which consist of a lot of sentences about the character’s personal lives back then. These days it’s a couple of sentences about the crime, which is what I’m watching for. I don’t mind them having personal lives, as long as it’s a background to the crime and isn’t the main focus.

Now I might go and put on an early half hour episode from the Volume Two DVD I got for Christmas and see who I recognise…

This post contains spoilers for the latest SJA episode, but nothing else.
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I am very behind in talking about SJA, not surprisingly given that I was at the gymnastics when the first one was broadcast and my copies of the audios had only just turned up that day.

There are going to be spoilers here for Prisoner of the Judoon, The Mad Woman in the Attic, The White Wolf and The Shadow People in that order.
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I was in the vicinity of Slough twice this weekend, but on Monday it was to see Lis Sladen (Sarah Jane Smith) in panto along with a group of people from sarahjane_fic. She was only in a scene at the start and the end as Mrs Darling and one in the middle as a mermaid. The panto being Peter Pan.

Now, I don’t know if I ever knew the story of Peter Pan because I feel like I knew bits and not other bits. But now I understand why people say Wendy had a crap deal – who in their right mind would want to be mother to a load of Lost Boys when still a child herself? That’s the sort of thing children don’t really notice, but given they can get the credit crunch into the panto you’d think they’d update that bit too.

There were some other famous people in it, but I’d never heard of them.

In general, it wasn’t a great panto. I think the local amateur one is better. Peter Pan was played by a man, not a girl, which I’m sure isn’t right. There was a scene with Ice the Dog and some girl doing tricks, although I don’t think anyone had told the dog that. Lis’s mermaid scene mostly involved her waving her arms around and looking like a bit of a prat, frankly. Her last scene as Mrs Darling mostly seemed to involve making sure the kids were in the right place. But she was great, obviously.

But the highlight of the whole thing was the pantomime Dame and the comedy bloke and two pirates doing an alternative 12 days of Christmas, which mostly involved them throwing each other’s props around. They had to hold their props up when they sang the words, for every fourth present for each of them. Buy the end they were scrambling round the stage and having to get the audience to throw them back to them!

The second funniest bit was when they had some kids on stage and the comedy bloke couldn’t understand that one of the girls was called Ferrari!

But it didn’t really matter what the panto was like because I still had fun with ladyvivien, cosmic_llin, Sasha, revolutionaren, carawj, sarah_janesmith, thesjaadventures, sneakyangel and her friend.

Funnily enough, this might just contain SPOILERS…. Read more…

I not-so-cunningly left talking about last week’s SJA till after Spooks and about the best I can do at the moment is ‘bibble’. But I will try.

There are spoilers in here for last week’s SJA. Read more…

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Originally uploaded by paranoidangel

Look who I met yesterday! Well, first I met cosmic_llin, revolutionaren, carawj in a coffee shop and ladyvivien in the queue. Given that I got there at 11am and wasn’t on my own till 5.30pm there was a lot of chatting going on. And a lot of queueing. We joined the queue a bit before 1pm, since the signing was scheduled to start at 1.30pm. It was 3.45pm by the time we got through. it was supposed to finish at 4pm, but judging by the size of the queue behind us, I don’t think it did somehow.

Borders is, of course, the world’s hottest bookshop. So now my left arm actually hurts from carrying my coat over it for most of the queue. cosmic_llin gave out badges, some people gave out a sample chapter of a book and the official BBC people gave out some wristbands. Which it turns out I’m allergic to.

Daniel Anthony (who plays Clyde), Lis Sladen (who plays Sarah) and Tommy Knight (who plays Luke) were all really nice. The two boys were taking the post-it notes off the stuff to be signed and having a competition over who had the most.

Afterwards he went back to the world’s hottest coffee shop. After all that I was quite happily walking around with no coat or jumper on, I was so hot. But it was a good day. It was mostly just good to discuss all manner of things with people who knew what you were talking about.

Edit: I’m quite impressed I can post this from flickr to my blog, which then gets crossposted to my LJ and it can still cope with the lj user code, which is converted using a plugin in WP!

I did watch last fortnight’s episode, even if it was on a laptop in a hotel room in Toronto while doing the washing. And then this fortnight’s I watched tonight. So I should talk about them both (even if it’s just to annoy Hilary when she’s doing tonight’s soniclipstick) and spoil them a lot for those who haven’t seen them.

Cut for spoilers: Read more…

The biggest, most exciting part of this episode that’s also non-spoilery is that it had George Garfield in! Well, I can’t remember the actor’s name and he was only in the first half, so I couldn’t read his credit, but that was very exciting. I really hope he’s in more episodes.

Also I managed not to laugh at Mr Smith. Maybe I was just tired.

And now for the spoilery bit: Read more…

I enjoyed it. More specificness and SPOILERS if you haven’t seen it behind the more:
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I will talk about tonight’s SJA (or, as my PVR called them, ‘Sarah Jane Adventures-2′ and ‘Sarah Jane Adventures-2-2′ because I have too much crap sitting on it) when I’m more awake (suffice to say I liked it and I laughed at Mr Smith so much during part 1 that I have no idea what he said – they really need to sack Alexander Armstrong).

But I am going to do the same thing as last year and only watch it every other week so I can watch a whole episode at a time and not half a week. So this is a plea to everyone who talks about it to please warn for spoilers (and by that I mean make it obvious you’re talking about SJA, that way I won’t read it for a week). Somewhere in the subject/title and/or first line would be a fantastic place – I dislike having to read the first paragraph to work out what you’re talking about only to find I now know what the cliffhanger is.

It goes without saying that whenever I do talk about episodes that will spoil it for people who haven’t seen it, it won’t be hard to spot.

Anyone who violates this and spoils me through no fault of my own will be taken off my friends list. No second chances. I’m that kind of a man girl woman damnit

I was so tempted to watch part 1 this weekend but I resisted. So, I watched both parts of The Lost Boy this evening. In summary Arggghhhhhh! But more details:
SPOILERS
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I’ve been meaning to write a post about this for ages. With the stuff I watch or read, I keep finding parent & child relationships where they’re not actually related (or at least, don’t have that direct relationship) fascinating. I’ve got a perfectly normal family going on, so there’s no psychological reason like that, I just like it.

melliyna asked:
1. In your fandom(s), what are your favourite parent/child relationships? (biological or non biological parents and children) Why?
so I thought I’d answer here, rather than in a comment.
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I went to London today. I thought I’d go to the big Tescos with the big Free From section at Earls Court. I walked out of the tube station at the main (TARDIS) entrance and then realised I hadn’t been for a while and didn’t quite remember where it was. So I took a guess and realised a bit further down the road how lost I get in London with a map and directions. Eventually I looked at the map and worked out a route to get there. After I’d walked a lot further than it looked like I should I looked at the map again and realised I still wasn’t on the right route and in fact not only had I turned the wrong way out of the station but I had also gone out the wrong exit.

Eventually I got there, approaching it from an entirely different direction, only to find they’ve moved everything around. They also labelled their red grapefruit as pink and they didn’t have chocolate buttons. However I passed a Holland and Barrett in my getting lost and went in just in case. They had three packets – I now have two left. Hopefully, some local Holland and Barretts will have some. But now I’ve had a packet I feel better. I just need Harry to shut up about the chocolate buttons and talk about Ruth instead. Or smarties, I have some packets of those.

I got the bus back to the tube station after that, and made my way to the British Museum. I’m gradually working my way through London’s museums. This was one that was very badly signposted and I only found it because I thought the road with coaches parked on it was suspicious. I had a wander round all the ordinary boring museum stuff and thought it wasn’t going to take me long to get round. Until I found the ground floor (I came in on floor -1, which was very confusing). They had a big room of massive statues and gates etc from the Egyptians and some other eras I can’t remember. But they were all really impressive. And then I found a massive marble structure in another room. And then I found the Parthenon. I ended up spending two hours in there.

And then I got lost in the museum trying to find the cloakroom. It was a very confusing layout. I decided to go out the main entrance, on the basis that lots of other people were, and by following them I found Tottenham Court Road station. I went into the Sainsburys there on the off-chance and mixed in with their red grapefruit with a pink sticker on, were some that looked as if they might be pink. So fingers crossed for when I cut one open tomorrow morning.

I was home in time to watch SJA: Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane? For which there will now be spoilers if you’re not up to date with the CBBC episodes.
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I seem to have got through a fair bit of Doctor Who recently, partly courtesy of a free trial from Sofa Cinema, although not helped by the post being weekly and a week behind. Although it must be improving – I’ve had post twice this week and one was a credit card bill which was on time. Although wrong. The saga seems never-ending.

I bought Planet of Evil from amazon and to make it up to free delivery I ended up also getting Ark in Space and Genesis of the Daleks, so I have every Harry DVD. I watched the first two episodes of Ark in Space to remind myself how Harry talks. Although by watched I mean listened. I’m fine with the green bubble-wrap monster slithering along the floor, it’s the fly-like thing (which they put on the cover!) and the bloke with the green arm I just can’t cope with. There was a bit I ended up winding back and then turning subtitles on for because Harry says he once got his nose caught in a sliding door in Pompey Barracks! I never knew that. But now I do. A lot of his postings aren’t mentioned in canon, but it does make sense he was at Portsmouth – it’s the only naval base in this country I can name for a start.

I watched some Two and Six as well. First, there was The Mind Robber. I thought from the first episode it was going to be quite a scary thing with no real alien menace revealed. Which I was quite excited about, but then it turned out to be like The Celestial Toymaker. I enjoyed it, it just wasn’t quite what I was expecting based on the first episode. I did get quite excited by the quote from Little Women, which I recognised. Zoe annoyed me at first – at the end of episode 1 she points out to Jamie that the Doctor seems to be flying away from them when the TARDIS explodes. Then she pauses and then screams. It seems like she’s perfectly normal and rational and then decides that actually, she’ll scream. After that, though, she settled down and annoyed me less. Although she works out the pattern for the maze that bears no relation to the picture of the maze we’re shown on screen…

netgirl-y2k ‘recommended’ Mark of the Rani to me. I liked the Rani in it. The only other story I’ve seen her in is the Seventh Doctor’s first and she spends a fair bit of that time pretending to be Mel. So this was my first chance to really see what she was like, and I really liked her. More than I like the Master. They were quite funny bickering and competing, but ultimately, the Master was a bit pointless in this story. Although what the actual story was I’m really not sure, but it was quite entertaining.

I listened to the two SJA audios. I preferred the yellow one (The Glittering Storm) to the pink one (The Thirteenth Stone), but I listened at work and was interrupted a lot during the pink one, so that probably didn’t help. Although I also didn’t like the premise of Sarah accompanying a school trip, so I was slightly against it from the start. It was definitely interesting in places but the alien aspect took a long time to show up. I felt that The Glittering Storm was in there much quicker. Mostly it was nice to listen to them as it made up for not watching SJA this week (or next, since I’m in London, but then I do get two in a row and that’ll be the end of the series!).

I was terribly excited to discover one of the Companion Chronicles was Steven & Dodo and read by Peter Purves. I much prefer his narrations to any of the others. I liked this one – I liked the story, the setting and his impersonation of the Doctor. Most interesting was the interview at the end. Although the trailer at the end for the next one read by Frazer Hines was amusing because it sounded awfully like he’d forgotten how to do anything that sounded vaguely like a Scottish accent…

For some reason, until I heard an interview with Peter Purves a while back, I hadn’t connected him with the Blue Peter presenter at all. I’d heard of him, everyone has, but I hadn’t realised the actor and presenter were the same person at all. In my defence, he was a bit before my time – he stopped a year before I was born. John Leslie is the one I remember well and I hated Diane-Louise Jordan. I think it was because she replaced someone else and I felt like she dressed not like an adult (I don’t think I’d grasped the idea of fashion).

Me and Lis Sladen I tried to post this from flickr but it was having none of it, so you’ll just have to go to the link yourselves to see the photo.

I went to London today to the Lis Sladen signing at Borders.

I had a fright getting out of the car park to get to the train station, when something big and black with lots of legs suddenly appeared at the top of my windscreen, which then resolved itself to be a cat jumping from my roof to the bonnet and then to the ground. It must have got on once I was in the car because I never saw it before then. As I got over the shock, it sat in the road in front of the car, and I had to get out and shoo it away.

I got to London without further incident and met up with sarah_janesmith, tellitslant, ladyvivien, mariannesquee, cosmic_llin and her friend Sasha. The signing was on the top floor, where we went and picked up the audio books, then went down to the ground floor to pay for them, then back up again to try and work out where to queue. Which turned out to be the wrong place and we were moved to queue in a thin strip of space between the wall and the escalator. Which meant that not everyone in the group could hear what everyone else was saying. cosmic_llin had made badges saying ‘What would Sarah Jane do?’ and ‘Eldrad must live!’ which she handed out to most of the queue, and Lis.

When Lis came out, just past 2pm (to cheers and clapping) she then spent time with each of the people there, taking photos and chatting as well as signing. I managed to confuse her (I have this effect on people for some reason!) by giving her one cover with my name and one with hhertzof and then she was confused which my name was and whether she’d signed the right one with the right name.

But I mentioned that the one that wasn’t for me was for my friend in America who would like to be there, but was in America. Lis said that she liked America but hated travelling (I agreed with the latter). She said she did like the American conventions but hadn’t been to one for years. I said that if she went a lot of people would love to meet her.

By the time we’d all gone through it was 2.30pm, so it had all gone really quickly. We then spent the next couple of hours chatting, eating and drinking before going back to the tube station. Except that sarah_janesmith spotted her outside Costa Coffee, so we went over and thanked her for coming and doing the signing.

The demographic of the queue was interesting, because it was partly people with kids, partly blokes, and then there was us – a group of 7 girls.

Tonight I travelled in time and watched tomorrow night’s Spooks through the magic of digital TV and my PVR. I don’t think it was as exciting as last week’s ep, but it will be interesting to see what the repercussions of it will be. I wouldn’t be Harry for anything, though, he has such a hard job.

The most interesting thing in it was when one of the spies introduced herself to a member of the public using the false name of ‘Bernice’. Which made me sit up because that’s not exactly a common name. Then when said member of the public starting speaking I thought she sounded awfully like Lisa Bowerman. And sort of looked like her, but she didn’t say much and wasn’t shown in a very clear light. I happened to not quite stop it after the trailer for next week’s episode and discovered there were credits (since when were there credits on Spooks?) and it was her. I can’t believe that name was coincidence.

Then I watched SJA: Warriors of the Kudlak. SPOILERS follow:
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A bit of a round-up of things I’ve been watching. And not watching in one case.

In Doctor Who, I’ve been working my way through The Key to Time and recently finished The Androids of Tara, which was okay but not particularly exciting. But, there was fencing at the end. Some of which was actually proper fencing, even if they were just playing about with parrying and riposting at one point. And their moves were all far too big. But, it’s still a lot more realistic than a lot of the sword fighting you see on TV.

I’m sure amazon changed my rental DVD list around, but it meant I got to see Revelation of the Daleks, which was my first Sixth Doctor story. I haven’t been putting him off for any reason, I just haven’t got to him. I liked the Doctor and Peri and the interactions between them. I hated the story, but then I’m not that excited about Daleks and I haven’t really been that keen on any Dalek story.

After that I went back to the Second Doctor. I listened to The Moonbase while I was away, which I enjoyed – not least because I had no idea it would have Cybermen in it. I’m three-quarters of the way through The Tomb of the Cybermen now. The Cybermen don’t look scary, since they’re obviously just wearing material. And some of them don’t have chest plates. But I love their voices, their appropriately horrible. I’m really liking Jamie so far, and Two. Jury’s still out on Victoria since this is only the second story I’ve seen her in and I don’t feel like I know her yet.

There was SJA on TV yesterday. My PVR decided not to record it though. It did that once before with Life on Mars. The BBC iPlayer, which doesn’t quite work anyway last time I tried it, only has the BBC1 episode on. So next week I’m going to watch the BBC1 episode followed by the CBBC episode – so both parts of Warriors of the Kudlak in one go. Which I was considering anyway because I hate cliffhangers.

Then tonight there was Spooks. And another Harry, they’re breeding like Jacks. I wasn’t convinced at all about them doing one 10 week story, rather than 10 (or however many episodes they usually have) stories. So this one did take a while to start up but it was exciting once it had. How on earth they’re going to come back from that I don’t know. The strangest thing, though, was the Glenister brothers between them being in all Kudos productions – Philip Glenister is in Life on Mars & Ashes to Ashes, and Robert Glenister is in Hustle and Spooks.

I know the next episode starts soon, but everyone at work just watches the BBC1 one because the BBC3 one is too late at night. And since I’m out most Tuesdays, I’m taping it to watch Monday (plus if the PVR decides not to tape it again, I have the BBC1 one to fall back on, since the BBC hate repeating things).

Sunday and Friday seem to be the days for most TV, it seems. Till next Monday anyway when Spooks starts again. I was very glad I have a PVR with two tuners last night because Michael Palin started a minute and a half before Top Gear finished.

When I got home tonight, though, there was SJA halfway through – the PVR comes into its own again. SPOILERS for Eye of the Gorgon part 2:
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It was fortunate I’d done pretty much everything I wanted to before today because it didn’t stop chucking it down with rain till I got home. I’m so pleased to be here – it’s cold because turning the heating on just before I went away seemed stupid, and my neighbours have decided I need to hear every word of their TV really clearly.

A proper write-up to follow – I still have 2 hours 15 mins of TV to catch up on and 40 unread RSS Feeds. For now, though, there are photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/paranoidangel/tags/cardiff/

I read six Chalet School books in preparation for my TARDIS Big Bang story, and now I think I need to read more. But I definitely like the Austrian ones better than the English & Welsh ones. I wrote 10 pages of notes on A6, which hopefully I’ll be able to make some sort of coherent sense out of. I’m not sure some of the original makes sense, which doesn’t help.

I watched SJA live:

Spoilers for Eye of the Gorgon part 1:

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