Skip to main content

Dr Who

Lately, the 3rd season of the new Dr Who [with David Tennant as the Doctor and Freema Agyeman as Martha, his assistant] has been especially good, in a show that's been great overall. I don't wait for a U.S. outlet to pick the episodes later. I download them as soon as they air on BBC1 and some kind soul makes them available on the torrent network.

A few weeks ago, I saw "Blink", which was probably the freakiest and scariest episodes of Dr Who ever. The villians were stone statues who were actually psychopathic aliens, and the story [by Dr Who writer Steven Moffat] was very clever, and plays with your mind. Kids who see it will be afraid of statues, no doubt. Then came Utopia, where the Doctor is reunited with Capt. Jack as they are propelled to "the end of the universe" and meet the Master, reincarnated, so to speak. In tonight's episode, "The Sound of Drums", the Master comes back to present day earth as a maniacal British Prime Minister, Mr Saxon [see www.votesaxon.co.uk], which continues into next week's finale, "Last of the Time Lords". Can't wait to download and watch them.

BTW, the scariest sci-fi I've ever seen from TV is the "Countrycide" episode of Torchwood, the British sci-fi show. It's a Dr Who spin-off, which I also download, off course. Another, new Dr Who spin-off that seems promising is The Sarah Jane Adventures, featuring Tom Baker's former assistant; the debut episode was nice.

A great Dr Who parody from a British comedy show Dead Ringers can be found on YouTube, in which an actor as Tony Blair laments how unpopular he has become after being so popular before, how his successor-to-be Gordon Brown is an idiot, and how he'd like to stay on longer for the sake of his legacy. So he morphs into David Tennant (the real Tennant making a cameo appearance), and promises "a hundred more years!". See also the jolly parody "Christmas Day at Dr Who's" ["Didn't you get me this next year?"], the "David Tennant & Catherine Tate" sketch, and "Eccleston Quits". And then there's the most famous Dr Who parody, "Curse of the Fatal Death", starrying Hugh Grant and Rowan Atkinson, which can be easily found on the web or torrents.

I've read that in some of Britain's popular media, Dr Who has gotten more attention than Tony Blair, who is stepping down soon. That seems only fitting. After all, has Tony Blair ever killed a Dalek?

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Evangelicalism's gradual demise

The term "evangelical" was popularized by Martin Luther ("evangelisch" in German), which meant a follower of the gospel. The term was originally a very good and useful term, as it referred to someone who believed in a religion based on faith and following the teachings of Christ, rather than man-made religious rules. It was meaningful enough but also broad enough to encompass a general theological orientation and religious lifestyle. It could include and accommodate somewhat different views or interpretations of Christian belief, including those who focused more on the grace, spirituality and lifestyle of Christ. As such, it was not the exclusive property of one religious group or theological orientation. The meaning has been generally positive in modern church history. However, in recent decades the term has been hijacked by fundamentalists who insist on a narrow interpretation of the term, insisting on a set of specific theological beliefs, while ignoring the C...

Portraits of Christ: John’s Gospel, part 2

In John’s Gospel we have an emphasis on Jesus that is unique compared to the other gospels. John not only emphasizes his deity, but his mysteriousness. The reader is left with an impression of Jesus as a mystical teacher, in the sense that his words and actions are not only those of a profound religious teacher, but of one who is other-worldly. So often in this gospel we read of Jesus making statements that the crowds, the religious teachers, and even his own disciples sometimes could not fathom. For starters, there are the “I am” statements (e.g., I am the bread of life; I am the living water; I am the good shepherd; I am the way, the truth, and the life), which were clearly claims to divinity, for these statements in the Jewish context referred to God’s title “I am,” given when Moses inquired of his name at the burning bush. Jesus makes much use of mystical metaphors like these and others, like all the ‘day’ and ‘night’ references in this book, which portrays him as mystical or my...

Portraits of Christ: Luke’s Gospel

Particularly in Luke, we see a Jesus born and raised in the backwaters of insignificant Jewish towns - born in Bethlehem, and growing up in the small farm village of Nazareth. You would think that if God mainly cared for or wanted to influence the powerful and mighty of the world, then Jesus should have been born in Rome, or Athens, or Alexandria, or at least Jerusalem. Instead he is born to a peasant girl named Mary in the middle of nowhere, at a time when the province of Judea suffered under poverty and oppression. Incredibly, her peasant son changed the world. But he never did it by allying himself with the rich and powerful or even seeking them out in order to implement his program. Usually if you want to start an influential movement, even as a grassroots movement, you would still recruit some wealthy donors and celebrities or leaders to promote your movement. Jesus did it totally opposite. He did not even focus on winning over the religious establishment; in fact, he often chall...