Doctor Who: Voyage of the Damned teaser

Just seen this a few minutes a go.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ec8kG0gti9Y

Been quite looking forward to the Christmas special, but surprised to find out that this Titanic is a spaceship.

Futurama has done this before and I read that Douglas Adams (creator of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has done it before then).

Despite that, the ship still looks good (like something out of Star Trek.

But with this, and Torchwood getting castrated, AND the return of Billie Piper next year as Rose Tyler, it seems the new Doctor Who may be going down hill a bit.

Prince Caspian Trailer

Blooming 'eck, the next Narnia looks rather good! It looks better than the OK first one (though Caspian seems a bit wet).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqzYukVDqy4

Captain Jack Gets Castrated

The next series of Torchwood will be shown in two versions.

One will be the uncut adult version; and the other will be edited to make it "suitable" for family viewing.

Doesn't this destroy the whole point of Torchwood?

If kids want to watch it, just watch the [rather good] Sarah Jane Adventures (a former Doctor Who companion leads a bunch of young people in investigating alien activity).

David and Goliath: The Movie

Today, it looks like I will be making a low-budget movie of David and Goliath with my Church youth group.

Job at Blockbusters

I probably should've put this up a couple of weeks ago, but I now have a gap year job at my local Blockbuster Video.

"Christian Films" and Fearless Faith

There has recently been talk on film-related Christian webpages regarding so-called "Christian films". From what I can gather, these kinds of films (the more Hollywood kind, not the indie-like evangelistic films) are films that have "Christian values" and are made to be more "clean" and "wholesome" etc. I haven't seen many of these films, except Amazing Grace, which contained the odd use of the word "bloody", but I didn't hear complaints and when I read about this kind of thing on the Internet, most if not all of the complaining about content and values etc. come from American websites.

That is not to say I am anti-American, certainly not. I am in support of the Christians who are willing to look at films as art and base their opinions on the artistry rather than how "clean" they are.

Today, I received a book I ordered written by John Fischer and called Fearless Faith, which discusses the "safe Christian subculture" and how we are not to live in that way. I think this should be the way forward and I intend to read this book and see how I can apply the ideas to how to be a Christian in the real world.

Doctor Who: Series 3 Overview

Well, it's been over a week since another new Doctor Who series concluded (they seem to pass quite quickly now!). Having seen each episode at least once, here is a brief overview and general opinion (though I hope to go into more detailed analysis later).

Having had his friendship with Rose Tyler cut off by parallel worlds, a less-hyper Doctor meets more mature and accomplished Medical student Martha Jones and so starts a new "era" in the new series. Like the previous two series, little clues have gradually built up to a climatic finale. But whereas Series One felt new and Series Two had a set format with a good structure of episodes that fitted the time of the year it was broadcast, Series Three seemed a bit more confused in its structuring and the tone was darker (during the period of Daleks in Manhattan/Evolution of the Daleks one of my friends said it was getting a bit boring).

Interestingly, due to a week's break, it felt like the series were set to two halves (the "Coming Up" trailer showed an exciting group of episodes).

Despite a structure of varying types of episodes, a lot of them have been very good and have dealt with interesting themes.

The Shakespeare Code looked at the power of words and brought up the subject of science vs. the supernatural.

42 shows show the female captain is willing to try an save her sun-possessed husband (marital faithfulness?)

And then of course, the mid-series two-parter Human Nature/The Family of Blood (perhaps a new Classic?) has the Doctor becoming human (a story that writer Paul Cornell said on Doctor Who: Confidential has being in stories like Superman II and the life of Christ). This particular story has moving and had amazing performances from everyone.

I should also mention Blink, a brilliantly original "Doctor-lite" episode which was indeed scary.

And then of course, there was the finale, which turned out to be of three episodes. I thought Utopia would be a pre-finale episode in which the Doctor saves the human race at the end of the universe. But then Derek Jacobi took a Time Lord fob watch out of his pocket and we have a heart-pounding last few minutes in which we find out what the Face of Boe's "You are not alone" meant (which I had nearly forgotten). There had been rumours that at the end, Derek Jacobi would regenerate into John Simm as the Master, and the hints were certainly there early on (the Sound of Drums, the Professor's face on seeing the TARDIS). But what a performance from Derek. From a nice old man to a transformation into his five minutes as the Doctor's arch enemy (helped by another fantasticly exciting music from Murray Gold).

And then there was the regeneration - into John Simm, who had been announced as playing Prime Minister Harold Saxon, a name that was first discreetly hidden in Series Two (a newspaper heading) but I first noticed in Torchwood and I guessed would be the new "arc word". I was able to watch John as the Master and not think of him as being from Life on Mars.

I'll finish this article later...