Sci-Fi

The BBC has released a new trailer for the fifth series of Doctor Who. It features The Doctor and his newest companion, Amy Pond gaxing up at the stars when the ground beneath them gives way, pitching the pair into a vortex.

It's a little step closer to seeing the 11th Doctor in his first full episode - and another glimpse of what to expect from Matt Smith and Karen Gillan as they take over the lead roles in one of our favourite TV series! Something I found funny is that many Who fans are still looking for reasons to despise Smith as The Doctor. Here's a cracking comment from Screen Rant:

Yeah it is, and the trailer is in 3D at uk cinemas. It might make more sense in 3D but like this it just looks like cheesey rubbish. And Smith's voice seems so weak, there's no confidence or command there at all.

Karen Gillan looks hot though, so she gets a thumbs up.

Caprica: the plot thickens. After the extended first episode, it's time to find out what this series is shaping up to be. Second episode Rebith doesn't offer much in the way of clues. There's a fair bit of plot development, but the viewer is in the dark to a fair degree.

The computer image of Zoe Graystone is now permanent resident in a hulking great robotic body. Imagine being a teenage girl and having your consciousness crammed into an unsightly seven-foot robot - all those body-image issues! Suddenly "Does my butt look big in this?" seems like a trivial question!

Poor ZoeBot. Lumbered with that red-glowing mono-eye. Boyfriends are a thing of the past, unless Daddy Graystone can knock together a boy-toy for her. And it looks like Daniel Graystone has a fair idea that his sorta-daughter is resident in the robot. After all, it's the only one that'll work with the chip that holds Zoe's data.

The prequel series to Battlestar Gallactica - Caprica - started tonight on Sky One. Now, a moment of full disclosure: Battlestar Gallactica is one of those massive sci-fi series that I've steered clear of out of sheer terror. BSG had/has an enormous geek following, and it's difficult to break into a series that is so well-established, so late on.

Caprica is a fresh start for an old series. It begins with an orgy of sex and violence (a strong start?) which turns out to be some kind of virtual world that three school children are inhabiting. Back in the real world, the three are planning to run away from home together. One of them chickens out, the other two get on a train together. But here's the shocker - one of them is a suicide bomber who promptly proceeds to blow the train to pieces.

Zoe - one of the two who died on the train - is the daughter of a wealthy inventor, creator of the visor technology that allows access to this virtual world. He discovers Zoe's friend using the technology and discovers a digital 'replica' of his daughter stuck in the VR world. He very quickly works out that this advanced technology could help his business out of a rut - and captures the digital Zoe to analyse.

David Tennant's final adventure as Doctor Who wrapped up last night, and what a mixed bag it was. We had the return of the Time Lords, and their subsequent vanquishing about five minutes later at the hands of The Master. There was The Doctor and Wilf stuck aboard the Vinvocci ship, then turning it into a proper battleship with Wilf in the gun turrets!

The whole of humanity got restored in about five seconds flat with one blast from Rasillon's big glove, and Gallifrey appeared above the Earth, freaking out the newly human-again population. The Time Lords have all gone crazy from the Time War and now want to destroy time itself, but the breach of the Time Lock is bringing back everything from the end of the Time War. Confused? I'm gonna have to watch that part again, but it seems like Russell T Davies was hell-bent on bringing the Time Lords back, even if he didn't have a brilliant story to give them.

After tonight's final part of The End Of Time, we got our first glimpse of the all-new 11th Doctor, Matt Smith. And within nanoseconds, there was an uproar on Twitter about him.

Jokes about being the first Doctor with acne, obvious cracks about his age, moaning that "Geronimo!" might be his catchphrase. There were even some nasty remarks about Smith's looks - one Twitter commenter said he looks "like a distorted, melted Gordon Ramsay in a Hall of Mirrors!"

First off - it's hard to judge the guy's potential in the role on the basis of about 2 minutes of footage. Especially in the wake of quite an emotional departure for David Tennant's Tenth Doctor. Here are a few reasons why I think Smith will be a great Doctor...

I've been watching a few old episodes of Doctor Who lately, and it soon becomes clear that the special effects budgets of the older series led to some truly pathetic monsters.

But as you can see from above, the Russel T Davies era of Who had its fair share of turkeys as well - the Slitheen were the flatulent, murderous, green freaks who disguised themselves as human in order to take of the world (what else?).

Which brings me to the point of this post - the SPACECAST blog has their own list of the worst conceived monsters in Doctor Who. And even the Davies era get included - with the Slitheen making an appearance and that ghastly scribble monster that attacks Rose and The Doctor in Fear Her.

Despite Wedeck's warning last week to "stay the hell out of Hong Kong" (seriously, how many times do you hear that from your boss?), Benford and the finite-lived Demetri Noh jet over to track down the woman who told Demetri when he would be killed.

You could tell that this was the mid-season finale of FlashForward - the episode was just electric. Benford and Noh's trip was just one part of it. Lloyd Simcoe makes a televised statement that his lab's plasma field experiments caused the blackouts. Within seconds of the revelation, he's been shot at, and most of the planet want him dead.

Well, except for the alluring Mrs Benford, who suddenly sympathises with Simcoe and offers him help in getting his son shifted to a more secure hospital. Simcoe pulls a blinder of a chat-up line when he suggests to Olivia that in a parallel universe, they may have met at Harvard - Olivia was due to move to a house beside Simcoe when she was going to university, but pulled out because of Mark's career. Instead, Simcoe's future wife moved into that house, they met and made a baby.

And so it begins, on the red planet, The Doctor encounters one of those "fixed points in time" that he can do nothing to change. But though he tries to back away from the doomed group of space pioneers, the Gallifreyan is about to drift into his darkest adventure yet.

The story

Be warned, the rest of this post may spoil the life out of the story! The Waters Of Mars sees The Doctor on his own for his second adventure since leaving a brainwashed Donna Noble back at her mother's house. He finds himself on Mars for a bit of an exploration and stumbles across a research base on the planet, Bowie Base One (more on that later).

He encounters Adelaide Brooke, the leader of the colony, who asks him to state his name, rank and intention. To which he replies "The Doctor, Doctor and fun." The crew of this colony...not exactly a barrel of laughs. However, as The Doctor starts to identify the members of the crew, he realises that there's a reason why he already knows their names. Why? Well, after checking the date, he realises that he's arrived on Mars on the day that their colony is destroyed.

Episode 7 of FlashForward could be a pivotal one for the series. There was a huge focus in The Gift on the aftermath of the flash-forwards and how people responded to them. As always with this show, the theme of self-fulfilling prophecy and whether destiny is already written come to the fore.

Let's review the episode today by exploring the key themes? And naturally, there'll probably be a ton of spoilers for those of you who didn't bother to watch...

FlashForward gets curiouser and curiouser, doesn't it? I've just finished watching the Halloween-themed episode Scary Monsters and Super Creeps, which went a long way toward intensifying the drama between the characters.

The addition of former Hobbit Dominic Monaghan to the cast did little to impress me though. Anyone who saw Monaghan's appearance in Chuck last year (as a caricature of a rock star) will notice a distinct similarity in how he has approached his character in FlashForward. So we'll forget about that part for the moment.

In a very hospital-centric episode, we get the loose ends from last week cleared up - sexy Agent Janis is going to live, but is devastated by being rendered infertile. Is it a bluff or has she really changed her FlashForward? Who knows? Benford and Wedeck kiss and make up after their tiff last week, and Demetri continues to struggle with his lack of a vision.