Get A “Simpsonised” Avatar

I found an area on the new Simpsons Movie where you can create you own Simpsonised avatars. You can choose from a range of templates and customise body, hair, eyes, eyebrows, nose, mouth, torso, legs and shoes and have the option to save your avatar in JPEG format of 612 x 692.

An avatar I created can be found here.

Picket Fences

Now, would you think this TV show is about the strange-goings on in a small Wisconsin town? Strange things such as cows giving birth to human babies, transgender teachers, and a spate of people turning up dead in freezers?

No, I wouldn’t either.

Doctor Who – The Classic Series II

Continuing with my plan to watch the classic series of Doctor Who, starting with Sylvester McCoy and working my way backwards, it seems that my plan has gone awry again after having decided to watch a selection of the shorter serials from the series, regardless of the order. I started with Sylvester McCoy (The 7th Doctor) and began watching two of the serials out of the remaining five I have yet to see.

Ghost Light – The Doctor and Ace travel to 1883, to Gabriel Chase, a house that Ace once burnt down in her home town of Perivale. The owner of that house turns out to in fact be an alien who came to Earth in a stone spaceship which now resides in the basement of the house. Smith intends to kill Queen Victoria and restore the British Empire to its former glory.

Ace inadvertently causes the release of the ship’s owner, a being know only as “Light”. It is discovered that Light came to Earth to catalogue its species, but has now found out his catalogue is obsolete due to evolution (Darwinism seems to be the prominent theme running through this story). His only choice is to destroy all life on Earth to keep it from changing again. He disintegrates when the Doctor convinces him that evolution is irresistible and that he himself is constantly changing.

This serial was fairly complicated on first watch although it has high re-watch value. It was broadcast as a 3-parter and is available on DVD.

The Sontaran Experiment – The Doctor, Harry and Sarah Jane arrive on a desolate Earth to discover a group of shipwrecked astronauts, which have been lured there by a fake distress call. Roth, one of their number, tells Sarah of a gruesome alien with has been conducting experiments on him and his captured crewmates. The alien, a Sontaran, known as Styre, is performing experiments to test the humans physical and mental capabilities in the run up to a Sontaran invasion of Earth, although its silly that they’d even need to perform experiments, since the Earth is largely de-populated anyway.

The Doctor challenges Styre to un-armed combat, knowing full well that the Sontaran isn’t used to Earth’s gravity, and will soon need to return to his dome to revitalise himself. As they are fighting, Harry removes a vital component from the dome, and as Styre enters to revitalise himself, the energy is drained out of him, destroying him in the process. The Doctor then sends a message to the Sontaran fleet, warning them that without Styre’s report they cannot invade.

This serial was broadcast in 2-parts, which I assume was meant to act as a bridge between The Ark In Space and Genesis of the Daleks, the serials proceeding and succeeding it.

Dragonfire – The Doctor and Mel travel to the human trading colony of Iceworld on the dark-side of the planet Svartos. Here they meet Glitz, who has come to Iceworld looking for supposed treasure, which is said to be guarded by a dragon. Also on Svartos is Kane, a – literally – cold-blooded criminal who has been imprisoned here by his own people from the planet Proamon.

The Doctor and Mel, helped by Ace, discover the dragon is in fact a bio-mechanoid, and that the treasure is inside its head. Kane is desperate for this treasure (a power crystal) and captures Ace, demanding the Doctor give him the crystal in return for Ace’s freedom. The Doctor complies and Kane uses the crystal to activate Iceworld, which turns out to be a giant spaceship. Kane is determined to return to Proamon and take revenge on his people. The Doctor reveals that Proamon no-longer exists, and, in an act of despair, Kane opens a viewing port, allowing bright light to flood into the control room and causing himself to melt.

This serial was broadcast in 3-parts and is Ace’s first story, as well as Mel’s last.

Eerie, Indiana

“My name is Marshall Teller. I knew my new home town was going to be different from where I grew up in New Jersey but this is ridiculous. Nobody believes me, but Eerie, Indiana is the center of weirdness for the entire planet. Item, Elvis lives on my paper route. Item, Bigfoot eats out of my trash. Item, even man’s best friend is weird. Still don’t believe me? You will.”

This short blurb spoken as a voice-over by the main character during the introduction sums up the back-story quite nicely. A boy, by the name of Marshall Teller, moves from New Jersey to the seemingly picturesque and apparently normal town of Eerie, Indiana, but things aren’t what they seem.

The show was originally broadcast from 1991-92 on NBC, but was cancelled before it had the chance to gain a decent sized audience. I remember catching the odd episode on Channel 4 here in the UK and instantly liking it, so when I heard about a Region 2 DVD release, I snapped it up.

The show itself can really be described as a cross between The X-Files and Malcolm in the Middle, with story-lines dealing with dogs who conspire to take over the world, the Eerie wolf (which is in fact a Werewolf), an obsessive housewife who preserves her youth by sleeping in a giant vacuum sealed container and an old mill haunted by the ghost of the worse (as in rubbish) bank-robber east of the Mississippi, all the while being original enough not to insult its audience.

Arguably, the best episode is “Reality Takes A Holiday“, in which Marshall discovers an Eerie, Indiana script in his mailbox, and suddenly finds himself on a TV set, where his family are actors and he is destined to be written out of the show! This is probably the most original concept for a TV episode I’ve ever come across.

More information can be found on the Wikipedia article, of course.

 

Doctor Who – The Classic Series I

I’ve been watching alot of the classic series of Doctor Who lately, starting with Sylvester McCoy (The 7th Doctor) and working my way slowly backwards, although this plan went to pot when I watched two serials in the wrong order and skipped back all the way to Logopolis (Tom Baker’s last serial) for no apparent reason. Although alot of Sylvester’s tenure hasn’t been released on DVD yet, you can find the majority of the classic series on youtube if you look for it.

I started with Season Twenty-Five (1988):

Silver Nemesis – The Doctor and Ace travel to England in 1988, where Cybermen, Nazis and a 17th Century sorceress named Lady Peinforte are trying to gain control of a statue made of living metal, also known as validium, created as Gallifrey’s ultimate defence. Similar to Remembrance of the Daleks, the Doctor uses this artifact from Gallifrey’s past as the centre of a well-laid trap to destroy an old enemy, the Cybermen. This was a 3-parter and because of the similarities to RofD, I rate it just as highly.

The Happiness Patrol – Fairly average when compared to the serial proceeding it (Remembrance of the Daleks) and the serial succeeding it (Silver Nemesis), but still good fun. The Doctor and Ace travel to Terra Alpha, a planet where sadness is outlawed, and the penalty for being a “Killjoy” is death by drowing in a stream of molten candy, prepared by The Kandyman! Oh noes!

I then jumped back to Season Eighteen (1980-81):

Logopolis – The Doctor and Adric, along with Tegan travel to Logopolis, home to a race of mathematicians who help to reconfigure the outer shell of the TARDIS. It is discovered that the universe passed its normal point of heat death long ago and has been preserved only by the logopolians calculations. The Master intervenes and halts this process, and the Doctor is forced to join forces with The Master in order to save to universe!

I received three of the new series books in the post today, The Art of Destruction, The Price of Paradise and Sting of the Zygons, which as far as I know, is the first new series novel to deal with a classic series monster. I shall read them over the next two weeks and post my thoughts.

While I’m on the subject of Doctor Who novels, I recently finished Casualties of War, which is the first Eight Doctor novel I’ve read, I quite enjoyed it myself. A synopsis of the book’s plot can be found here.

Away from the subject of Doctor Who now, I’ve also been watching my Eerie, Indiana DVD boxset, a show which only ran for 19 episodes, but was cancelled before its time. Its quickly becoming one of my favourites, and most of the series can be found on youtube, here.

I shall do a post on the DVD boxset and the show itself when I get round to it. Heck, I love the show so much, I might even devote and entire page to it. =)