FanTASTic!

Mes Amis

Yes, I'm only a young thing... Cheers, Ray, for letting the cat out the bag - hoping I'd get by without another "My gosh, you're how old?" for a while. But maybe you're right, cos I'm having to get my picture taken for my agency's website and I can't get a decent one. Well, I can, but not one that makes me look like a fuckin' crime writer. Why? Because I look twelve years old (and rather fat). So we hit a new plan. I'm growing back the fuckin' beard and this time its going to be big. Its going to be a full goddamn beard. Already I've started it and the ladies love it (Oh, yes, they do!), which proves that modelling yturself on Al Pacino in Serpico is not neccasarily a bad thing. So I'm meeting my photographer again in the next week and this time we're going for beardy Russ in the Howff graveyard here in Dundee. This time we'll get it. This time I will look mean and moody. This time I might just fool people into thinking I'm a little bit tough.

Bad Wolf... Those two words have appeared in what must be every episode of the new Doctor Who series on the BBC at the moment. And let me say now, if you ain't seen it yet and you are the least bit interested in being surprised by this show do not read on...

YES THERE BE SPOILERS HERE

For the identity of Bad Wolf has been revealed as The Daleks! Yes, the daleks are back and bigger than ever. This episode of Who (the penultimate this series) has been both one of the funniest and one of the most fucking loony yet. Starting with the Doc stuck in the Big Brother house, Rose on the weakest link and Captain Jack Harkness (who seems to be being played by a young John Travolta this episode) on What Not To Wear (where he fondles robot Trinny's metal breasts being the insatiable sex beast he is) there's a bundle of laughs to be had in the first quarter. After all, the idea of television centring around execution is always mildly amusing. In fact, I think I'd love to see the current set of BB housemates fried by a laser. But then things turn serious when the doctor does his "save everyone in the nick of time" routine only to have Rose apparently fried by Ann Robinson (I couldn't tell, was that thing meant to be a robot or was it really Anne?). As everything suddenly turns deadly serious (you can tell: the doctor doesn't say fantastic once after that moment) the episode races forwards breathlessly on to reveal a giant Dalek taskforce in orbit over earth, with the Daleks clearly being the ones who have held back Earth's technological advancment and, for whatever reason, have decided to schedule future programming after the CH4 schedule.

And these daleks look mean. Retro, with those huge lightbulbs instead of the small ones they got later on. And, in a Michael Caine moment, when I saw that army on screen I couldn't help but whisper, "Daleks... faaahsands af em..."

I saw a documentary back when they did the first Dalek episode of this series where one of the designers said, "we made it more bling" and they ain't half kidding. The subtle subtext is: anyone who uses the word "bling" or wears too much damn jewellery cos they think it makes em look hard is evil. Of course, at the end credits we hear a husky voice talk to the doc in next week's preview and one has to wonder whether the mysterious controller of the daleks may just be their maniac creator, Chavros...

Speaking of the end credit's preview... Last week's ep buggered the surprise by showing the daleks in full screen... That kind of took the sheer shock value out of it all...

Anyway, mes amis, enough telly: back to the grindstone

Au Revoir

Russel