The Doctor is the Worst Friend Ever

Friendly warning from all of us here in the Galactic Empire, because we care: this post contains spoilers for Doctor Who's The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People. It also contains logic.

Clone Wars In Review: 1x02 "Rising Malevolence"

In our ongoing mission to bring truth and light (of the really bright green variety) to an otherwise dark galaxy, the Death Star's PR team continue our weekly review of episodes of Star Wars: The Clone Wars.

Episode 1x02: "Rising Malevolence"

Moral: "Belief is not a matter of choice, but of conviction."

Actual Message: "It's okay to do disobey orders if you think your reasons are good enough."

 

The Seperatists have a new secret weapon. The Jedi Council send Master Platoon Plow Koon Button Eyes Predator Face to investigate.

Using all of his amazing Jedi precognitive and empathic powers, Master B.E.P.F. guides his ships straight into a Seperatist "trap", which here means "floating in space a very obvious way, making sure to have a red sun in the background so as to be particularly easy to spot".

Count Dooku and General Grievous fire the new superweapon, destroying the Republic's fleet and forcing the survivors to employ Standard Jedi Emergency Protocol #1: When in doubt, run away and hide out!

Very perceptively, and using all of their great knowledge of the Force, the Council think everyone is dead. Skywalker's skimpily dressed sassy Padawan Ahsoka Tano thinks there could be survivors, and she isn't afraid to sassily tell the Council. They wisely ignore her. In classic Anakin style, he then gives her a lecture about following orders, before promptly ignoring them himself and going to investigate.

While Anakin, Ahsoka and ubiquitous droid sidekick R2-D2 search the debris for survivors, Master Plutonium and three of his clone soldier friends encounter a group of droids who just want to talk/throw them into the vacuum of space. However, Master Protein & co. have a surprise in store for the poor droids and throw themselves into space first, presumably so they can put their lives in the maximum amount of jeopardy possible.


Apparently one handy Jedi ability is the power to survive the sudden decompression, lack of oxygen and extreme cold for extended period of time without a suit or any kind of breathing apparatus.

Improbably surviving the improbable space shoot out, Master Potpourri and friends are rescued by Anakin and Ahsoka just in time to put them in more danger when Grievous returns in his flagship and superweapon, the Malevolence. It fires on them but due to some fancy flying on Anakin's part, the Jedi narrowly escape, once again bravely fleeing another battle. 

Overall, a fun episode with some excellent action, with Skywalker's final escape from the ion cannon's blast being a particularly high point.


Score Sheet:
Jedi Deaths: 0 (but plenty of fun Clone Trooper deaths to make up for it)
Death Star Superlaser Nods: 4
Darth Vader Moments: 0.5
Disgustingly Feel Good Scenes: 2


Rating:

Clone Wars In Review: 1x01 "Ambush"

In our ongoing mission to bring truth and light (of the really bright green variety) to an otherwise dark galaxy, the Death Star's PR team have decided to do a weekly review of episodes of Star Wars: The Clone Wars.

Starting with episode one, we will work tirelessly to restore balance to the Rebel propaganda embedded in the TV show and ensure that the Empire is fairly represented. Watch along with us, Sithizens!

Episode 1x01: "Ambush"

Moral: "Great leaders inspire greatness in others."

With the Clone Wars raging across the galaxy, both the Republic and Count Dooku's Separatists need allies. In a display of staggeringly bad scheduling, King Katuunko of the Toydarian fly monster people decides to meet gremlin Jedi Master Yoda and streamlined Sith lady Asajj Ventress at the same time. Ventress proposes a fair deal: if Yoda and his three Clone trooper strong escort can defeat her legion of 10,000 death robots, Toydaria will be free to join the Republic.

After bravely fleeing the obligatory opening space battle, or star war if you will, Yoda quickly sets about causing tens of millions of dollars in property damage by luring a bunch of droids into an ambush of his own, killing them all and orphaning countless toasters and Roombas throughout the galaxy.

Eventually the sadistic little goblin is forced by the superior numbers of the droid army to retreat, though not before doing some serious Force showboating. Employing a typical Jedi tactic of hiding in a cave, Yoda uses the Force to make snap judgments about the character of his three Clone troopers, which apparently inspires them to use a rocket launcher on some offending rocks later on. Take that, rocks!

In the climactic battle scene, Yoda proves once and for all that he shouldn’t be on a disability pension by almost singlehandedly dispatching the remaining droid army, saving King fly monster and cheating in a fight with Asajj Ventress by stealing her lightsabers. Thankfully, she escapes moments before Master Yoda can eat her intestines with his demon teeth (see below).

Overall, an action-packed episode to kick off the series with some exciting set pieces, classic Battle Droid jokes and a clever escape from Asajj Ventress, though not much in the way of storyline.

Score Sheet:
Jedi Deaths: 0
Darth Vader Moments: 0
Disgustingly "feel good" scenes: 2

Rating:

Me vs Dan Brown

WARNING: Not Star Wars related! And long! I wrote this a while ago on my old blog and thought I would share it with the world again.

I enjoyed Dan Brown's first few novels but couldn't help but notice a few annoying quirks over time, e.g. extraordinary overabundance of unnecessary details; lame dialogue; recycled characters / events / situations; horrible metaphors and similes; incorrect word usage; obvious "twists" and, really, really bad character descriptions.

I wrote this before diving in to The Lost Symbol, to "celebrate" its release. Without further ado - I give you my imagined version of Dan Brown's next novel, "The Lost Artifact of Ambiguousness".

*      *      *      *      *

Archaeologist Peter Oldman listened in horror as the horrible beeping sound clawed at his ears like a rake claws at a pile of dry autumn leaves. He knew with the certainty that Howard Carter must have felt when he descended the steps of tomb KV62 in Egypt's Valley of the Kings that he was going to die. I am, thought Peter Oldman intrinsically, going to die.

In front of him, strapped to several bricks of C4 explosive, plastic binder, plasticizer and taggant chemicals 2,3-dimethyl-2,3-dinitrobutane was a mobile phone. He knew with an absolute yet completely unnecessary to the plot or current action certainty that the phone was a Nokia N95 with a 332 MHz processor and 64MB of SDRAM.

The ringing stopped as suddenly as a stop sign appearing out of the fog on a foggy day and a voice crackled through the speaker.

'Hello, Mr. Oldman,' the voice sublimated. Oldman had never heard the voice before yet somehow knew he had heard it every day before now.

Peter gasped, 'What do you want with me? I've told you everything I know about the Artifact.'

The stranger, who called himself Zekal'Mor rather than his real name, even in his own inner monologue, because it would keep the audience guessing about his identity for another three chapters, laughed strategically.

'Isn't it obvious?' Zekal'Mor asked in an unintentionally rhetorical way. He paused while he thought of some incredibly cliched dialogue, then added, 'I want you to die.'

Before Peter Oldman could deposit another thought, the hot heat of the explosion's explosive inner sanctum disintegrated him completely, leaving behind nothing but ash.

Symbologist Robert Langdon frowned at the ancient manuscript in front of him. Showing a careless disregard for the irreplaceable and incredibly fragile document that no one would expect from a highly celebrated University Professor, he held the parchment up to the light.

He gasped. 'This is the Symbol for the AAA - the Alliance of the Artifact of Ambiguousness.'

Although this was a good time to explain what his comment meant, it was an even better time to awkwardly describe Robert Langdon's physical appearance because it is important to give a detailed description of any male characters as soon as they appear in your story.

Langdon was not traditionally good looking though he did look oddly like Dan Brown and by a strange coincidence almost every woman he met in the course of his stories found him attractive. He wore a charcoal turtleneck sweater under a tweed jacket, which was completely coincidentally the author's favourite ensemble. Strapped around his wrist was a Mickey Mouse watch to tell rather than show the reader that the protagonist had some endearingly strange yet harmlessly inoffensive character quirks.

'What is it?' Spanish astrobiologist Elizabeth Enriques enthused quizzically.

She had dark hair and her gunmetal grey eyes sparkled with a deep intelligence that was never really utilised or evidenced in the context of the story except to solve one or two minor puzzles that access to a google search engine could have solved in 20 seconds because her role in the narrative was actually just to listen to Robert Langdon's verbal diarrhea about symbols and junk.

Rest assured that Elizabeth was extremely hot and was an expert in bikram yoga, which was not at all relevant to the plot of the novel but would lead to at least one uncomfortably sleazy exchange of dialogue between Elizabeth and Robert at the end of the novel in which it would be "implied" that she could finally use those skills for something worthwhile - in the bedroom.

Behind them stood acclaimed philanthropist Anders Grange, a powerfully built 45 year old man with silver hair, who stalked the room like a timberwolf, back straight and proud and on two legs but totally like a wolf at the same time. Grange had been Langdon's best friend since their childhood, despite not having been mentioned or referenced at all in any of the previous three Robert Langdon books.

When Anders spoke, his voice was far away yet disturbingly close. 'I have heard of the AAA. They are very old and powerful,' he reminded. 'The legends say they possessed an ambiguous artifact that granted them power over life and death itself.'

His voice was suddenly as wistful as a blade of grass waving in the sunlight and implied very subtly that he would ultimately turn out to be the sole bad guy responsible for the global conspiracy.....