Dr. Horrible and other things from the telebox

I think it's time to have one of those long rambly posts again, after some short and unpleasant ones. It'll have the usual structure of my tv related posts, with subheadings so that anyone who might be reading can skip the bits they totally don't care about.

Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog

This was brilliant. Absolutely brilliant, in the truest sense of the word. Joss Whedon is possibly a genius. I wasn't entirely sure what to expect, but I had high hopes after reading everything Whedon said about how he made it and why it was made. The songs reminded me of the musical Buffy episode, and also I guess of Sweeney Todd. It was hilariously funny in parts ("The hammer is my penis" - I laughed so much) while still being semi-serious, and then the ending was really sad and really not how I expected it to be.

I think it's a real shame that this isn't available in the UK yet. It's not on the iTunes store, and although apparently it was available internationally on the website, it no longer is. I will definitely be buying this when it becomes available, but if they want it to do well in the UK, they need to make it available pretty soon. I bought the soundtrack anyway, so I don't feel guilty about how I obtained the film. The soundtrack itself is amazing, and I've been listening to it over and over since I bought it yesterday afternoon. I think £7.99, the normal price of a normal album, is a bit steep for an album no longer than my bus journey to town, but it is fantastic. I might watch it again later :D

Firefly

So this isn't new, but I've been rewatching Firefly. It's been a while, and I caught some on tv the other day. I persuaded my dad that it was good, and we marathoned a bit this weekend. It really does baffle me thinking how this got cancelled. It's original, it's funny, and it's entertaining. The plot is great, the characters are interesting, and I don't think there's another sci-fi like it. I'll say it again, Joss Whedon is a genius. It's a crime that these characters didn't get a good conclusion. Well, Serenity is a good film, but this story deserved more. Serenity told a small story, and this deserved a few seasons of development. Maybe I'll get the comics, but I'm not really a comic person. I want a tv continuation.

I think one of my favourite things about Firefly is the language. The Chinese thrown into sentences, evolution of words like "shiny", and just the way they speak in general. "No power in the 'verse can stop me!"

Stargate Atlantis

I may have said this in a previous post, but season 5 is awesome. Way better than 4, and some of the best episodes are showing up here. Whispers was really something special, I thought. Creepy, and I'd go as far as to say scary. It had that problem though that I've moaned about on many occasions, in that the team were split and it only focussed on a couple of main characters. Sheppard was there, and McKay was briefly there, and then there was Beckett, who I guess I still see as a main character. If this was a one off, it would have been a good one to focus on another team with minimal main characters. It isn't a one off though. They do this too much now. It was a problem for me in later SG1s, and it's been a problem since Atlantis season 4. If it had been a one off, then like I say, this is one where it wouldn't have mattered. It was interesting to see the all female team, and clever that Vega was killed off. I don't know why, but Wikipedia and other sites seemed to be making a big deal of her involvment in this, and her introduction earlier in the season. I thought she could be another secondary character, similar to Lorne. Nope, killed by monsters. I like monster episodes. The alien one of season 3, can't remember what it was called but it was episode 19 I think, was really awesome, and this was just as good.

This week's episode, The Queen, was also pretty good. I like Todd the wraith, but I can't help thinking that they've done something stupid by trusting him and making him leader of that wraith alliance. I guess Teyla is still in control though, since she can go back at any time and get him kicked out. I like Todd as in insight into what the wraith really are though. They aren't just monsters who want to kill. They need to feed. Todd does seem to want to make things better for them. It's interesting anyway, and I enjoyed this episodes. What I didn't enjoy was the trailer for next week's. It made out that someone will die. Not sure that they will, but I'll be gutted if Keller dies.

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Now playing: Neil Patrick Harris - Brand New Day
via FoxyTunes