Day: October 29, 2007

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Sarah Jane Adventures Season 1

Whatever Happened To Sarah Jane? – Part 1

The Sarah Jane AdventuresAfter experiencing an eerie sensation while hanging out with Luke, Maria, Clyde and Maria’s dad at the park, Sarah is reminded of an odd alien puzzle box that came into her possession. When she received it, she was told to give it to the person she trusts the most – and so she now gives it to Maria. She also lets Maria and Clyde in on a little secret: a large meteor is headed for Earth, and a collision would meant the end of all life on the planet…but Mr. Smith will harmlessly deflect it, without drawing any attention from the authorities. The next day, when Maria drops by Sarah’s house, Sarah isn’t there, there’s no sign of Luke, and suddenly Clyde has no idea who she is. Even Maria’s dad doesn’t remember Sarah. Sarah’s house is occupied by a woman named Andrea Yates, and there’s no evidence of any of their adventures together. When Maria tries to prove to her dad that Sarah Jane existed, she finds nothing but an obituary dated 1964 – involving a girl who died after falling off a pier during a school trip, witnessed only by a fellow schoolgirl named Andrea Yates. Something has happened to change history – and now Sarah and Mr. Smith aren’t there to save the world.

Get the DVDDownload this episodewritten by Gareth Roberts
directed by Graeme Harper
music by Sam Watts / title music by Murray Gold

Guest Cast: Joseph Millson (Alan Jackson), Juliet Cowan (Chrissie Jackson), Alexander Armstrong (Mr. Smith), Jane Asher (Andrea), Paul Marc Davis (The Trickster), Jimmy Vee (The Graske), Jessica Ashworth (young Sarah Jane), Francesca Miller (young Andrea), Jason Mohammad (Newsreader), Philip Hurd-Wood (voice of the Graske)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

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Season 3

The Wedding Of Sarah Jane Smith – Part 1

The Sarah Jane AdventuresLuke, Rani and Clyde are growing suspicious: Sarah has been increasingly secretive about a number of recent evening excursions. Luke places a tracking device on Sarah’s car and instructs Mr. Smith to pinpoint where Sarah is going. It turns out that it’s nothing more suspicious than a date, and while Luke tries to cope with some confused and very human feelings, Clyde and Rani do some investigating of their own, looking into the background of Sarah’s new boyfriend. Finally, Rani is convinced that nothing is amiss, but Clyde remains suspicious. When Sarah abruptly announces that she’s getting married, and just as abruptly deactivates Mr. Smith, it seems that Clyde’s fears may be founded. But even Clyde isn’t ready for a surprise guest who appears on the big day: a guest who doesn’t have an invitation, but does have a TARDIS.

Get the DVDDownload this episodewritten by Gareth Roberts
directed by Joss Agnew
music by Sam Watts & Dan Watts / title music by Murray Gold

Guest Cast: David Tennant (The Doctor), Nigel Havers (Peter Dalton), Mina Anwar (Gita), Ace Bhatti (Haresh), Alexander Armstrong (Mr. Smith), John Leeson (voice of K-9), Paul Marc Davis (Trickster), Zienia Merton (Registrar)

Sarah Jane AdventuresNotes: Nigel Havers was one of the stars of the UK series Manchild, a sort of all-male version of Sex And The City, in which his co-stars included Anthony Stewart Head (of Buffy fame and the villain of Doctor Who stories such as School Reunion and the Big Finish Excelis audio series) and Don Warrington (the ill-fated President from Rise Of The Cybermen, and the voice of Big Finish’s Rassilon). Appearing very briefly as the officiant at Sarah’s wedding is Zienia Merton, best known to SFTV fans as Sandra Benes from Space: 1999, but also a guest-star in the fourth-ever Doctor Who serial, Marco Polo, which starred William Hartnell as the Doctor in 1964. K-9 mentions a “stair navigation” hover mode, never before seen; this episode aired just two days before the K-9 spinoff series brought viewers a new-style K-9 who spends almost all of his time hovering!

LogBook entry by Earl Green

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5th Doctor Doctor Who The Audio Dramas

Castle Of Fear

Doctor Who: Castle Of Fear1899: The Doctor and Nyssa visit Stockbridge at Christmas, taking in the local flavor, including the performance of a traditional play which includes a doctor who is said to be “an earl of space and a lord of time.” Unnerved by the specificity of that reference, the Doctor sets out to discover the origins of the play.

1199: The Doctor and Nyssa discover strange goings-on in 12th century Stockbridge, from French knights and local noblemen who are not the people they claim to be, to a small Rutan task force intending to take over Earth to serve as a base of operations in Rutan war with the Sontarans. The Doctor will stop at nothing to keep the Rutans from achieving their aim. Nyssa, on the other hand, will cheerfully give them everything they want.

Order this CDwritten by Alan Barnes
directed by Barnaby Edwards
music by Richard Fox & Lauren Yason

Cast: Peter Davison (The Doctor), Sarah Sutton (Nyssa), John Sessions (Roland of Brittany/Mummer), Joe Thomas (Hubert, Earl of Mummerset/Mummer), Richard Cotton (Osbert/Mummer/Yokel/Demon), Susan Brown (Maud the Withered/Yokel), Teddy Kempner (Yavuz/Mummer/Yokel/Demon), Trevor Cooper (Smithy/Mummer)

Notes: This is the first appearance of the Rutans in a Big Finish audio story. A single Rutan was the cause of the events of the Tom Baker Doctor Who story The Horror Of Fang Rock, which also established the Rutans’ ongoing war with the Sontarans. Another Rutan was seen – though not by the Doctor – in the fan-made video production Shakedown: Return Of The Sontarans (1994), the only time the Rutans and their mortal enemies have ever shared screen time. The Doctor says that the Rutan’s presence in England in 1199 is no coincidence: this Rutan crew was probably tracking the Sontaran soldier Linx (The Time Warrior, 1973-74), so it’s reasonable to assume that the third Doctor and a very bewildered Sarah Jane are battling Linx at roughly the same time that the fith Doctor and Nyssa are fending off the Rutans.

Timeline: between Time Reef / A Perfect World and The Eternal Summer

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

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Season 1 Wizards vs. Aliens

Dawn Of The Nekross – Part 1

Wizards vs. AliensA pair of wizards cast an incantation in a stone circle, apparently drawing the attention of an alien spacecraft. The Nekross have arrived on Earth to begin harvesting the power of magic, upon which their king and their entire species feeds. Since practitioners of magic on Earth tend to live in seclusion, keeping their powers secret, they’ll make easy prey.

When his class gets a welcome break from school to take a field trip to the stone circle, young wizard Tom Clarke – the latest in a long line of wizards, whose dad cautions him against misusing his powers – finds a magical artifact. His science geek classmate Benny is quick to dismiss the possibility that the item has magical properties, until he sees it glowing in Tom’s hand. The Nekross, aboard a spaceship hidden behind the far side of the moon, detect the surge of energy from the item (dropped by their last victims) and begin a search for Tom so they can drain him of his magic. Tom’s grandmother, Ursula, arrives to protect her grandson by using her own powers, but the two of them make an even more tempting treat for the aliens.

Order the serieswritten by Phil Ford
directed by Daniel O’Hara
music by Sam Watts

Wizards vs. AliensCast: Scott Haran (Tom Clarke), Percelle Ascott (Benny Sherwood), Gwendoline Christie (Lexi), Jefferson Hall (Varg), Brian Blessed (voice of the Nekross King), Annette Badland (Ursula Crowe), Michael Higgs (Michael Clarke), Tim Rose (Nekross King puppeteer), Manpreet Bambra (Katie Lord), Connor Scarlett (Quinn Christopher), Paul Hunter (Robert France), Harry Lawtey (young Mark), Brian Miller (old Mark), Sara Stewart (Miss Webster)

Notes: Created by Russell T. Davies to fill the time slot and resources previously allocated to The Sarah Jane Adventures (whose run ended abruptly upon the death of its star, Elisabeth Sladen, in 2011), Wizards vs. Aliens is not a Doctor Who spinoff. Most of the behind-the-scenes personnel from SJA continue to work on this show, and a few familiar faces can be found in front of the camera as well. Annette Badland portrayed Blon Slitheen in the first season of Davies’ Doctor Who revival, while actor Brian Miller is the widower of Elisabeth Sladen and appeared in Doctor Who and SJA numerous times. Brian Blessed also appeared in Doctor Who (in one of the series’ most controversial segments, parts 5-8 of The Trial Of A Time Lord), but is thankfully better known for appearances in Blackadder, Flash Gordon, and as the voice of Boss Nass, the Gungan leader in Star Wars Episode I.

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Categories
6th Doctor Doctor Who The Audio Dramas

The Space Race

Doctor WhoThe TARDIS brings the Doctor and Peri to Kazakhstan in November 1963, and they happen upon a wrecked car with three dead passengers – all of them executed prior to the wreck. When they spot a second vehicle, the Doctor and Peri “borrow” identity papers from the corpses and are picked up and whisked away to the Baikonur Cosmodrome, the heart of the Soviet Union’s space program, where mission controllers are frantically trying to reach Vostok 7, a mission to send a cosmonaut around the moon and return her to Earth. Posing as two scientists from Moscow, the Doctor and Peri discover that something has gone disastrously wrong with this mission, which probably has something to do with why it’s been erased from official history. The Doctor manages to restore contact with Vostok 7 and help the engineers fly it by remote back to Earth, only to discover that inside the capsule is a live dog with a human voice – a dog the Doctor recognizes as Laika, the first living Earth creature sent into space. But why is Laika now speaking with the voice of the first woman to go around the moon, and what other secrets await the next visitors to the moon?

Order this CDwritten by Jonathan Morris
directed by Nicholas Briggs
music by Howard Carter

Cast: Colin Baker (The Doctor), Nicola Bryant (Peri), Karen Henson (Larisa Petrov), David Shaw-Parker (General Mikhail Leonov / General Paterson), Tom Alexander (Captain Alexei Kozlov / Lieutenant Andrews), Stuart Denman (Sergeant Leonid Kurakin/Scientist), Samantha Beart (Marinka Talanov / Female Worker)

Notes: The Space Race employs real and invented details of the cold war space race in roughly equal measure. There really was a Project A119, a plan by the U.S. Air Force to detonate a nuclear warhead on the surface of the moon, supposedly to analyze the makeup of the lunar material displaced by the explosion; the real mission objective would have been a morale victory, particularly if the resulting blast could be seen from Earth. A young doctoral student named Carl Sagan worked on the real-life Valentina Tereshkovaproject, which was classified for over 40 years; a similar Soviet plan to nuke the moon was also left on the drawing board. The “Voskhod 3KV” ICBM mentioned was actually a Vostok 3KV, a booster which propelled the second Voskhod flight into orbit. A real Vostok 7 mission was in the planning stages for late 1963, but it was never intended to venture further than a high Earth orbit. Vostok 6, flown by cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova (seen here), was the final Vostok flight; after her flight, the Vostok program ended and the Voskhod program began, but only two Voskhod flights were made before emphasis shifted to Soyuz and the Zond lunar program. Soviet space engineers did, in fact, design their own lunar landing vehicle, but the N-1 lunar rocket never proved to be safe enough for manned flights.

Timeline: after Revelation Of The Daleks and before The Trial Of A Time Lord

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
Class Season 1

Nightvisiting

ClassDaddy’s home. That comes as a bit of a shock to Tanya, since it happens on the second anniversary of his death. And he’s not quite the same – maybe it’s the constant pleading for her to take his hand, or maybe it’s the vine-like root connected to his back, snaking out the window and connecting to a network of similar tendrils, all of them connected to others who have apparently risen from the dead. Ram sees his late girlfriend and runs rather than trying to reconnect with her, meeting up with April in the process. Even Miss Quill has a visitor who seems to be from the other side, though she is skeptical about it all. What has taken root across London and brought the dead back to their loved ones?

Download this episode via Amazonwritten by Patrick Ness
directed by Ed Bazalgette
music by Blair Mowat
“Nightvisitor” written & performed by Jim Moray

ClassCast: Katherine Kelly (Miss Quill), Greg Austin (Charlie), Fady Elsayed (Ram), Sophie Hopkins (April), Vivian Oparah (Tanya), Jordan Renzo (Matteusz), Kobna Holdbrook-Smith (Jasper), Natasha Gordon (Vivian), Anastasia Hille (Orla’ath), Anna Shaffer (Rachel), Andrew Frame (Man), Janie Booth (Old Woman)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

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Discovery Season 1 Star Trek

Magic To Make The Sanest Man Go Mad

Star Trek: DiscoveryStardate 2136.8: Burnham is relieved when duty calls her away from an increasingly awkward party to investigate something a bit more worthy of her attention, a spacefaring creature in ill health. Since it is an endangered species, the Discovery crew is bound by law to beam it aboard and transport it to a safe facility, but once it’s aboard, it disgorges something that would make any creature ill: Harcourt Fenton Mudd. Enraged that Captain Lorca left him stranded in a Klingon prison, Mudd is back for revenge, and has an illegal (and unstable) device to create a time loop. He can kill Lorca as many times as he likes, and is willing to do the same to the rest of the crew, until he extracts the secret of Discovery’s drive system to sell to the Klingons.

Order DVDsStream this episode via Amazonwritten by Aron Eli Coleite & Jesse Alexander
directed by David M. Barrett
music by Jeff Russo

Star Trek: DiscoveryCast: Cast: Sonequa Martin-Green (Commander Michael Burnham), Doug Jones (Lt. Commander Saru), Shazad Latif (Lt. Ash Tyler), Anthony Rapp (Lt. Paul Stamets), Mary Wiseman (Cadet Sylvia Tilly), Jason Isaacs (Captain Gabriel Lorca), Wilson Cruz (Dr. Hugh Culber), Katherine Barrell (Stella), Peter MacNeill (Baron Grimes), Rainn Wilson (Harry Mudd), Milton Barnes (Deck Crew #1), Emily Coutts (Keyla Detmer), Jason Deline (Medical Officer), Hamza Fouad (Deck Crew #2), Julianne Grossman (Disocvery Computer), Patrick Kwok-Choon (Rhys), Sara Mitich (Airiam), Oyin Oladejo (Joann Owosekun), Ronnie Rowe Jr. (Comm Officer 2), Izaak Smith (Jogger #1)

Star Trek: DiscoveryNotes: Betazed (future home of Counselor Deanna Troi) is already known to, or may already be a member of, the Federation in the 23rd century, as Mudd has been involved in criminal activity in Betazoid territory. Actor Peter MacNeill, though he appears only very briefly here, was a regular in Captain Power And The Soldiers Of The Future (as “Hawk”) and on the ’90s series Psi Factor: Chronicles Of The Paranormal. He also voiced numerous characters in the 1980s animated series Star Wars: Droids, and guest starred in two episodes of Gene Roddenberry’s Earth: Final Conflict.

LogBook entry by Earl Green