Wednesday, July 29, 2009

A Doll's House

It's an oft-repeated observation these days that the weird thing about the Doctor Who universe is that nobody in it's ever seen Doctor Who.

Well, I was watching Dollhouse the other day, and at one point Topher uses the expression "Frak." Which means that Battlestar Galactica exists in the Dollhouse universe. Which then begs the question of why, when meeting Paul Ballard, his first reaction isn't "Did you know you're a dead ringer for Helo Agathon?" As well as, does Buffy also exist in this universe, and if so, why Topher hasn't remarked on the strange resemblance between Echo and Faith.

A possible explanation is that only the original series of Battlestar Galactica exists in the Dollhouse universe, and thus that Topher is saying "Frack." But it's more funny the other way.

Friday, July 10, 2009

What I'm reading

In other news, I'm completely fascinated at the moment with The Left Behind Index. This is a page-by-page deconstruction of the Left Behind novels, which is particularly interesting because it doesn't take the easy route of just taking the piss out of them. The writer is an evangelical Christian himself (albeit not of the Rapture-believing kind) and a journalist, and so uses the books to discourse on what's wrong with mainstream American evangelism, and how the books reflect the darker aspects of American culture more generally. It's a long read, but absolutely riveting.

Torchwood: Getting It Right

Anyone who reads this blog regularly will have realised I'm not a massive fan of Torchwood. Well, that's changed, or at least partly. You can keep Seasons One and Two, but I'm now a massive fan of Torchwood: Children of Earth.

OK, so the whole thing is so massively Recycled from the excellent 1970s Quatermass serial that everyone in the UK can hear the spinning noise from a graveyard somewhere in the Isle of Man. OK, so it contains the usual bombastic RTD threat-to-Earth-thwarted-by-someone-using-the-Internet tropes. OK, so there are lots of children in it. It doesn't matter. It gets it right. I wish the whole series had been like this, but since it couldn't be, I'm happy that we've got this little bit here.

ETA: Torchwoodmania!