PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Dad's Army Series 1

I had seen British people talking about Dad's Army on a variety of programs in the last two or three years and I thought I might like to see it. Most of them speak highly of it: In 2004, Dad's Army was voted into fourth place in a BBC poll to find Britain's Best Sitcom. It had been placed 13th in a list of the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes drawn up by the British Film Institute in 2000 and voted for by industry professionals (Wikipedia). There was a DVD at the library with a miscellaneous bunch of episodes from the whole 9 series but it was so hacked up by the scum library patrons that it wasn't playable. There isn't any US release of the whole series. I dithered about and eventually talked myself into buying the whole series from the UK. It was just under £20 and almost £10 for the movie. With shipping and exchange it was still under 50 bucks for the 15 discs. There's not as many episodes in the British seasons but it still comes  to 80 episodes, 4 Christmas Specials and the 1971 theatrical film.

That's Clive Dunn, Arthur Lowe and John Le Mesurier on the bottom and Arnold Ridley, James Beck, John Laurie and Ian Lavender on the top row. That's the main cast of the show. There's a few other supporting cast that appear now and again. The series was created and written by Jimmy Perry and David Croft, the duo who were also responsible for 'Allo 'Allo, Hi-De-Hi! and It Ain't Half Hot, Mum. I've only seen some episodes of 'Allo 'Allo and I wasn't a fan of that show. I don't remember ever seeing any episodes of Dad's Army when it was on. I would have thought it would have been on Canadian TV when it was being made. It ran from 1968 to 1977.

The series takes place during World War II and the setting is the little seaside town of Walmington-on-Sea on the south coast of England. The government has decided to use the older men in the coastal towns as a defense force. The first series has bank manager Arthur Lowe start the local platoon in the Home Guard. He's the Captain and his chief clerk, John Le Mesurier, is his Sergeant. John lodges with Mrs Pike and she's Ian's mom. The rest of the men are a nice mix. They all have their quirky personalities and that leads to plenty of fodder for the comedy. Clive Dunn is a bit too old but he's so game to be in the army and do his duty. He's often delightfully nonsensical. James Beck is a black market spiv and he's always got a bit of a shady deal going on. John Laurie is a feisty old Scottish undertaker who's got some sarcasm in him. Arnold Ridley is a sweet old man who does the first aid. Ian Lavender works at the bank. He's a bit of an idiot and a momma's boy.

The show is pretty much a typical sitcom. There's plenty of little trials and tribulations as the men set up their platoon. They have no rifles or uniforms and they meet in the church hall. First the army sends wooden rifles, when the first real rifles arrive, there aren't enough of them to go around. Dealing with the pompous head of the area Home Guard is a regular occurrence. He's the thorn in their side but he usually pushes them to get better or cheat harder. Eventually they get uniforms but they don't have any buttons. The Home Guard offers a £10 reward for the capture of any German's, pilots get shot down regularly, and that spurs James to be brave when he confronts some downed German airmen. In the last episode of the series the men have gotten talked into a shooting contest with another platoon. Carry On film series regular Barbara Windsor guests as a sharpshooter the platoon dresses up as a soldier to try to win. She chokes after the first shot but they win on talent anyway. It makes me laugh even though it's pretty typical sitcom writing. The main attraction is the actors and their characters. I'm enjoying the men and their silly bits of business so far. I've got 8 more series and 4 more Christmas Specials and that feature film to see if that enjoyment lasts.

Haven Season 3

I got the third season of Haven and watched it over the last few days. There are only 13 episodes and they started to air back in the fall of 2012. Emily Rose is Audrey Parker, Lucas Bryant is Nathan Wuornos and Eric Balfour is Duke Crocker. Audrey and Nathan are in the police force and they spend a lot of time helping the troubled. Those are the people that have supernatural abilities, not all of the abilities are really helpful, often there's a lot of collateral damage. Even though they all live in a town with lots of weird things happening all the time a lot of people are surprised that they get the troubles. When the last season ended Audrey had been shot with a Taser and kidnapped. Her kidnapper is a skin walker who's collecting parts of women's faces to build a new face. The weekly troubled stories are about the same as the previous seasons, maybe a bit more grisly. One week someone is stealing organs from the dead persons. A new cop, Dorian Missick as Tommy Bowen, comes to town following the trail of missing organs. He's from Boston but by the end of the episode he's gone to work for Nathan and the Haven Police Department. He'll only last a few episodes but that's Haven for you. There's a high death count for such a small town. Several deaths are at the hands of the Bolt Gun Killer who kills with a modified cow killer that blasts a metal rod into the back of the victims head. Not a very nice guy. In one episode the scales of justice come to life and punished the criminals that get free on a technicality. Audrey learns more about the Colorado Kid, he's not really dead, yet. Duke travels back in time to 1955 Haven. Everyone thinks he's an Indian and he meets his dad. A high school reunion turns deadly. That's another good reason not to go to one. There's plenty of new details on the mystery of the barn. It's the supernatural place that Audrey and Duke disappear into at the end of the season. The season was a bit more serious than the last season. It's still got stories that are interesting and the underlying story arc moves along fairly well. I still like the series and plan on getting the 4th DVD set.

Science Fiction Sunday 330

The Greatest Show In The Galaxy is the 152nd serial in the series. It's the last story of the 25th season and the 4 parts aired from December 14 1988 to January 4 1989. Sylvester McCoy is the 7th Doctor and Sophie Aldred is Ace. The script is by Stephen Wyatt who only wrote one other script for the series, Paradise Towers. It's directed by Alan Wareing who would directs a couple more Doctor stories the next season and then go on to direct hundreds of episodes of Coronation Street and Emmerdale. Not shows I would watch myself. Andrew Cartmel is the script editor and John Nathan-Turner is the producer.

John would have a lot of trouble with this episode. After the location shooting was done the cast and crew came back to London to find the BBC studios had been closed because of asbestos. The BBC said they couldn't rent any other companies studios and of course all the BBC properties were overly full. The serial was briefly cancelled until John Nathan-Turner figured out that they could erect a giant tent in the car park of the BBC Elstree Centre and shoot there. The thin walls and top of the tent were no barrier for ambient noise but they managed to get the show shot.

The Doc and Ace get invited to the Psychic Circus on the planet Segonax. Ace isn't too interested, she's no fan of the clown, but they go anyway. Other travelers arrive too. There's something sinister going on at the circus. People are killed mysteriously and the Doctor and Ace are in jeopardy. The Psychic Circus used to travel about the galaxy but they have gotten stuck on this planet under the control of three of the Gods of Ragnarok. The circus people make their customers perform and the Gods kill those who do not satisfy them. They are pretty big dicks, those Gods,  so most people are killed. The Doctor will soon kick their jaded asses. Sadly many of the circus staff die in the fight.

I enjoyed this episode for the most part. It had a nice level of the bizarre and there was some danger and humor. I did like the evil head clown played by Ian Reddington. He was voted Best Villain of the year by Doctor Who Magazine readers. He was pretty creepy. Chris Purdy plays one of the circus staff and I couldn't place why he was familiar. It turns out he was Ian McShane's assistant in Lovejoy. I watched that whole series a while back and enjoyed them for the second time through. Most of the other actors I wasn't familiar with but I have seen T P McKenna in The Saint and other British TV. Daniel Peacock, whom I first saw on The Comic Strip Presents and The Young Ones plays the biker below. Everyone in the crew wanted to drive the motorcycle and Sophie said she had a turn.

There's a nice enough commentary with moderator Toby Hadoke, Sophie Aldred, actor Christopher Guard, composer Mark Ayers, Stephen Wyatt and actor Jessica Martin. There a making of the episode featurette, some deleted scenes, a short on a model shoot, a Psychic Circus music video, Mark Ayers music demo reel, a look at the newspaper coverage of the Seventh Doctor, a sketch from the Victoria Woods show with Jim Broadbent as the Doctor, a photo gallery, info text, isolated score, a coming soon promo for the Planet Of Giants DVD, the Radio Times listing and Visual Effects designs and storyboards PDFs.

The Great Mouse Detective 1986

I hadn't seen The Great Mouse Detective since I first saw it April 2 1993. I didn't have a copy and Sperhauk was nice enough to pass along the DVD from his BluRay combo set. I watched the movie after I got back from the TCLUG meeting. For those that don't know, it's the mouse version of Sherlock Holmes. Basil of Baker Street lives below the Sherlock Holmes flat and at one point we hear, but only see the shadows of, Sherlock and Dr Watson having a bit of conversation. The voice of Sherlock is provided by Basil Rathbone in the form of clips from his 1930s Sherlock Holmes films.

A young mouse girl's father is kidnapped from his toy shop by the henchmen of Professor Ratigan. The Professor is voiced by Vincent Price and he's a real jerk. He wants to take over the country by having the toy maker, Mr Flaversham, create a robotic queen and then have the robot give him the throne. Flaversham's daughter Olivia goes to see Basil and along the way she runs into Dr Dawson. He helps her find Baker Street and they both meet Basil for the first time. The trio teams up and they go after Mr Flaversham. They have a great adventure and meet plenty of other characters. As you could guess Basil keeps the right person on the throne, the family is reunited, and Sherlock gains a new companion and detecting partner. It was fun and I enjoyed it. I'll add it to the Sherlock Holmes section of the DVD collection and watch it again some day.

Friday Night Movies 521

 

Our first feature is the 2014 Disney animated feature Big Hero 6. I didn't know anything about it but Greg had seen it and he was pretty enthusiastic that it was lots of fun. It's based on a 1998 Marvel 3 part mini-series. but the movie isn't really much like the comic book, other than some of the names of the characters. Hiro Hamada is a super smart 14 year old who builds robots which he uses to make cash at robot fighting events. The fights are legal but he betting part is illegal. His brother Tadashi goes to university and he wants Hiro to go too. There's a contest to get in and Hiro shows off his tiny microbots. They win the prize and Hiro is headed for the school. While Hiro and his brother are outside the event building the place catches on fire. Tadashi runs back into the building to save Callaghan. The building blows up and Hiro is devastated.

The big puffy guy is Baymax, he's a medical robot that Tadashi was working on before the movie started. I want one. He's the best. That's Hiro on his shoulders. The others are all students at the university and Tadashi's friends. They are all quirky science nerds who Hiro turns into superheroes.

He's got a reason. One of Hiro's little microbots managed to find it's way into his jacket pocket before the fire and it's still there. The microbots are programmed to head for other microbots and connect up. This one acts like it knows there are other microbots around. Hiro doesn't believe it, thinking all the other microbots were destroyed in the fire. Baymax offers to track the microbot and that leads to a secret microbot factory and our villain.

Kabuki man controls the microbots and he chases Hiro and Baymax out of the factory. It's then that Hiro decides to turn the other students into superheroes so they can capture him. They have some set backs but eventually get the job done. There's lots of action and plenty of humor mixed in with a bit of sadness. I'd pick The LEGO Movie over it for the Oscar but I'm partial to the little bricks. It was still mostly fun to watch and I'd probably watch it again.

Greg brought a 3 movie set of Jerry Warren movies. He's a low budget film maker that has pretty low scores on the IMDb for all of his movies. This one scores a 2.8 but might be a three. I was kind of interested in the film because it had Lon Chaney Jr and John Carradine in the cast. I thought that the picture of Lon in a robe on the DVD box looked familiar. but I wasn't sure I had seen the movie and I do see a lot of stills from films I haven't seen. I didn't remember that I had watched the House Of Black Death back in 2011 when I found a copy on the Internet Archive under the title of Blood Of The Man Devil so we watched it. As the movie played the odd scene was familiar. I looked up the movie on the Internet, we all do that now that everyone has a mobile of one sort or another, and found that I had see the move and posted about it. Here's the post on the movie, slightly edited.

Blood Of The Man Devil is a 1965 horror movie with John Carradine and Lon Chaney Jr playing warlock brothers. They are Satan worshippers and part of a cursed family. Tom Drake and Delores Faith are the other two family members doomed to hell. There's a bit of murdering, some angry townies, some spooky noises, a big old house, lots of fog and evil. Doesn't that sound like there might have been some potential in that story? They didn't do much with it. One director shot a lot of the movie, a second shot more and a third finished up the mess. It's nearly watchable. I kept wondering what the heck was going on while watching the movie and I'm pretty forgiving when there's something left out of the story. I figure it might have been intentional to keep you on your toes. I'm only fooling myself but that's me. I can't handle the truth.

The movie was made under the title House Of The Black Death and retitled a few times. Lucky for me I didn't see it over and over again thinking I was seeing some new movie. That's Sabrina to the right with Lon enjoying the show. She dances when the Satanic Rites are going on. Guess you have to have something to make that ritual worth coming out for. I wouldn't recommend wasting your time on it, you know, unless you need to watch a lot of crappy movies for some reason, or say, you need to see all the horror movies ever made. This would be a good one for that sort of thing. It's just not quite goofy enough to become your classic bad movie.

Blast Of Silence 1961

Blast Of Silence is a 1961 crime noir film written and directed Allen Baron. I hadn't heard of him until I picked up a copy of the Criterion DVD but it turns out I had seen some of his work in the past. This was his first feature film and one of his few credits out of the TV business. He started directing TV right after the film with a couple of episodes of Surfside 6. I remember that show with some fondness but haven't seen it in years. It hasn't ever come out on DVD and I haven't found any bootleggers with it. Allen worked in the TV business for the next 25 years directing nearly 100 episodes of various shows like The Love Boat, Kolchak: The Night Stalker, Love American Style, Charlie's Angels, Fantasy Island, Arnie, The Brady Bunch and many more. I've seen a bunch of his work but didn't know it.

Blast Of Silence is about a hit man from Cleveland who comes to New York to kill a low level mob boss. Allen plays the hit man, named Frankie Bono, and he does a fair job. Frankie gets to work as soon as he gets the target's name and photo. Frankie follows the mob boss around and sets up the hit. Frankie buys a 38 Special revolver from a big fat guy named Big Ralph and gets a silencer for it. That just won't work and I don't know why people don't know that. You see it in the movies and on TV quite often. While Frankie's waiting for the right time to kill the mob boss he runs into a guy who he used to know 20 years ago. The guy invites him for a drink and to a party. Rather than keep a low profile Frankie goes and gets briefly involved with the guy's sister. That doesn't go well, the hit man isn't much good at interacting with people. When Big Ralph sees Frankie observing the mob boss at the Gate Of Horn in the Village he applies a bit of blackmail. Not a very good idea and he winds up strangled on the floor of his apartment. Frankie, kind of spooked by it all, tells the man who hired him he doesn't want to do the job anymore. The guy tells him to get his shit together and get back to work, he's already in enough trouble just for calling. Frankie fills his contract and goes to collect the rest of his money. He winds up dead in Jamaica Bay.

It was a darn good film with lots of interesting looking scenes. Baron is an artist who got the film bug. He got a couple of grand together to see if he could make his own film. He figured he'd be able to shoot some footage and use that to attract the rest of the money he would need. Baron chanced on a backer in a restaurant, got $18,000 more, and finished the film. There's a narration by Lionel Stander. He wanted $1000 if they used his name and $500 is they didn't. They went with the cheaper option. It's still a pretty good narration, Lionel's gravely voice is perfect for the job. I was really impressed with the work that everyone did on the film and was glad to have seen it. I would recommend it to anyone who likes a crime film.

Babylon 5 S3D6

It only took a couple of days to get back to Babylon 5's last disc of season 3. It's only got 2 episodes, each season was 22 episodes. Since it always seems to be feast or famine feast around here when it comes to new things to watch, it seems so easy to stop and start a series I've seen before. J Michael Straczynski wrote the last two episodes and he wraps up the season with a huge cliff hanger. Two main characters are missing. I'm not much of a fan of the cliff hanger. At least when I'm re-watching the show I already know what happens after the end credits roll on the last episode of the season and don't have to wait months and months before I know what happened at Z'Ha'Dum.

Shadow Dancing  October 21 1996

Written by JMS and directed by Kim Friedman

Delenn asks their allies to supply a big fleet of warships to attack the Shadows in Sector 83. Sheridan believes the Shadows have been pushing refuge ships into the Sector. Once there are enough ships in the area Sheridan thinks the Shadows plan to attack them to demoralize their enemies. Since the attacks by the Shadow fleet have stopped near Sector 83 Sheridan thinks the attack might be happening soon. The allies have agreed to send ships to attack the Shadows at Sector 83.

Sheridan sends Ivanova and Marcus to scout the area. They get spotted, attacked and damaged. The White Star has self repairing technology but the enemy is 20 minutes away and things aren't looking too good. Don't worry the fleet is near enough. They pop out of hyperspace at the signal and the battle is on. The White Star finishes it's repairs and joins the battle. The Shadows are driven off but there's heavy damage to the allies fleet. Med lab is filled with patients at the end of the episode.

Cut in with the other events going on Doctor Franklin gets stabbed while looking for himself on Walkabout. He finally meets himself and it's him who's been keeping himself back. He winds up in med lab. He'll be alright. He's just a hard learner when it comes to lessons. At the end of the episode Anna Sheridan comes aboard the station. She's supposed to be dead, killed on Z'Ha'Dum. Sheridan and Delenn had started another Minbari ritual that night. The couple spends the night together and the woman watches the man. If she likes what she sees while he sleeps, then they proceed to the nest ritual. It's complicated on Minbar and it's complicated when your dead wife shows up no matter what you were doing.

Z'Ha'Dum  October 28 1996

Written by JMS and directed by Adam Nimoy

Anna Sheridan fills her hubby in on her new life on Z'Ha'Dum. The Shadows are misunderstood and she wants to tell him the truth but only if he comes to Z'Ha'Dum. Kosh told Sheridan "You will die  if you go to Z'Ha'Dum". Knowing it's a trap Sheridan has Mr Garibaldi empty the White Star of it's crew and put a couple of big ass nukes in the hold. He sends a message to Delenn and leaves with Anna in the White Star. 

On Z'Ha'Dum with Anna, Sheridan meets with Justin who's played by Jeff Corey. He explains he's the man in the middle and he fills Sheridan in on what the Shadows want out of life. The Shadows want Sheridan to join them and not fight against their plan. They want to advance the races by making them fight to gain strength through adversity. It doesn't matter that the weak race might get wiped out. They don't want to kill Sheridan, he'd be replaced and thought a martyr. Sheridan has smuggled a gun in with him and he blasts the Shadow that shows up while Justin is telling Sheridan to do what he's told. Sheridan had upset the group when he said that Anna wasn't his wife. She'd been in one of the Shadow ships acting as a human CPU. Once you've been plugged into a Shadow ship you're never the same again. They could restore memories but not the personality.

Sheridan escapes only to find himself at the edge of a huge deep hole in the ground. He sets the White Star to ram into the planet and arms the nukes. Just before it crashes Anna and some Shadow guys show up. She tries to talk him into surrendering but he's not having that. Kosh tells him to jump and he does. The ship blows up real good. Back on B5 Ivanova knows something has happened. Everyone is sad, then they learn that Mr Garibaldi's Star Fury didn't come back to the station.

That's the end of the season which I thought finished with a couple of crackin' good episodes. How's Sheridan going to get out of that one, huh? I'll also want to know what happened to Mr Garibaldi. Now it's onto the 4th season. The Shadow war will continue and there will be plenty of new characters and interesting things forthcoming.

Haven Season 2

I got Haven Season 2 from the library and watched the whole season pretty damn quick. It stars Emily Rose as Audrey Parker, Lucas Bryant as Nathan Wuornos and Eric Balfour as Duke Crocker. They all live in a little Maine sea town called Haven that has some troubles. In fact they named them "The Troubles" and they give the afflicted, or troubled, abilities that can cause problems. People die and the non-troubled are not too happy about it. Stephen McHattie returns this season as Reverend Driscoll. He's got a powerful fear of the troubled and he works through the season gathering support in the town. He's ready to kill and he's got a bunch of pals with guns backing him. It will be his downfall and I won't miss him. Audrey learns from the real Audrey Parker, who turned up at the end of the last season, that all her memories are fakes. The Real Audrey stays for a few episodes before she has to leave. The trouble of the week are varied, ten plagues of Exodus one week, an epidemic of people's worst fears coming to life the next, another has a fellow who has the power over electricity, another has folks trapped on an island with a shape shifter who's stealing identities and in one episode has all the men in a family are driven to live under the sea while "The Troubles" are in town.

There's lots of other secrets dredged up while "The Troubles" percolate in the background. The Chief had his own cleaner, retired WWE wrestler Edge, plays Dwight Hendrickson. He's troubled, he attracts bullets like a magnet, which he learned about on his tour in Afghanistan. Edge turns up in a few episodes and he does a good job making the character work. Jason Priestly turns up as a guy who's trouble is he's charismatic. Everyone fauns over him, except for Audrey, she isn't affected by people's troubles. They try a bit of romance but it doesn't work out very well. Audrey's immunity to "The Troubles" works to her disadvantage when all the ghosts come back to town. She can't see them. Duke's wife Evi turns up and she's got a connection to the Rev Driscoll. Evi works her way back into Duke's life and even works in his bar for a while. She should have stayed out of Haven. It's a bad place for tourists.

The story is still entertaining and the settings are great. Nova Scotia fills in for Maine and it sure looks beautiful. The stories moves along quite quickly and that's something I like. I like the level of humor to drama and I'll be getting the next season from the library before too long.

Babylon 5 S3D5

 

Poor Babylon 5 keeps getting pushed aside by the other shiny discs that keep coming my way from Netflix and the library. I don't mind, I like seeing new things more than the old stuff sometimes, and I can pick up the story right where it left off pretty easily. J Michael Straczynski continues to write the episodes and they are still some good ones. All the directors are regular ones and they all do a fine job.

War Without End Part 2  May 20 1996

Written by JMS and directed by Michael Vejar

Sheridan, caught in a time slip, travels into his future and learns that he has a son with Delenn. The son is safe but his parents aren't so safe. They are locked up on Centauri Prime and it looks like it the end of them. Emperor Londo calls them to his chambers and shows them his keeper. Sleeping now, the result of just enough alcohol in Londo's system, so lets them go. As they leave G'Kar comes in and confronts Londo, they strangle each other, Vir finds their bodies and true to prophecy becomes Emperor. Vir will be a much better Emperor than Londo ever could have been. It seems to me that there are some novels that deal with that time in Londo and Vir's lives.

On Babylon 4 Sheridan eventually comes to rest and we all learn that Sinclair is really Valen, a Minbari not born of Minbari. Sinclair takes B4 a thousand years into the past, turns into Valen with the help of the Tri-luminary, and gives the station to the Minbari of the time. A good ending for the Sinclair character. I liked Michael O'Hare from the start and have continued to like him in my repeated viewing of the series. A good solid episode with a nice revelation at the end.

Walkabout  September 39 1996

Written by JMS and directed by Kevin G Cremin

The new Vorlon ambassador arrives on Babylon 5. He's also called Kosh. He's got a much darker and more demon like environment suit than the previous Kosh. He'll turn out to be pretty much a prick. Lyta tells Sheridan that the Vorlon are upset that one of them died.

We get back to Dr Franklin who's wondering around in Downbelow. He gets involved with a singer who has an illness. He tells Mr Garibaldi about the concept of walkabout and how he needs to be less bothered by the people in the command center. Mr G takes the hint.

Sheridan recruits Lyta Alexander to test out his theory that telepaths can cause problems to Shadow ships. She agrees to go along. They  have a hard time getting the other races to go along. Even the commander of the Narn ship they helped earlier in the season isn't willing to help, wanting to save their ships to help Narn itself. Mr Garibaldi yells at G'Kar and they rally a bit of an armada. The telepath test works well and Lyta stops the ship, learning at the same time that a part of Kosh resides in Sheridan. I like the fighting the Shadows part over Dr Franklin's soul searching.

Grey 17 Is Missing  October 7 1996

Written by JMS and directed by John C Flinn III

Mr Garibaldi is looking for a missing service tech when he finds that deck Grey 17 had somehow been missed when they built the station. There's a group of men trapped there by a Zarg. They've all become psychotic under the leadership of Jeremiah, played by Robert Englund, and they believe the way out is through the Zarg. Mr G kills the big monster and gets back to work.

Delenn is being appointed head of the Rangers and Naroon doesn't think she should have the job. It should go to him and the Rangers should fall under the control of the Warrior Caste. He intends to attack Delenn but Marcus learns of it and fights him long enough for the ceremony to take place. Naroon learns a lesson and Marcus takes a good beating. Another episode where one thread of the story is better than the other. I like the Delenn and Naroon scenes a whole lot and the business between Naroon and Marcus is even better. The missing floor is just a bit more goofy than it could have turned out. J Michael thought it was rather weak and he didn't care for the Zarg at all.

And The Rock Cried Out, No Hiding Place  October 14 1996

Written by JMS and David J Eagle

Lord Refa comes to the station and Londo sets him up for a fall. Past friends, Londo and Refa, they are bitter rivals now and the Emperor is sick of their feud. He wants it ended. Londo tricks G'Kar into going to Narn on a rescue mission. Refa gets it out of Vir with the use of a telepath and he heads to Narn to capture G'Kar. Londo's plan works well and soon Lord Refa has been hacked to death by vengeful Narns.

Religious leaders from Earth come to the station and meet with Sheridan. They are part of the resistance movement back on Earth and they've brought news from Earth. One of the men, Rev Dexter, a Protestant minister, gives some advice to Sheridan. Dexter holds a service and invites everyone. They all sing the  "No Hiding Place Down Here" which gets cut with the Narns chasing Lord Refa to his death. No one's going to miss that guy, he's much worse than Londo could be.

Delenn takes Sheridan out to see the new White Star fleet and he's so excited he kisses her right on the command deck. The ships will come in handy, the Shadows have their own fleets being built by the races on their side. One of my favorite episodes. I have quite a few. I think I'll watch the last two episodes of the series tomorrow.

Science Fiction Sunday 329

Silver Nemesis is the 25th Anniversary serial in the 25th Anniversary season. It's the 151st serial and it's 3 episodes first aired from November 23 to December 7 1988. Sylvester McCoy is the Doctor and Sophie Aldred is Ace. It was the first script by Kevin Clarke and the 6th and last serial to be directed by Chris Clough. Clarke hadn't seen much of the series when he called script editor Andrew Cartmel looking for work. He lied when he said he had an idea for the 25th Anniversary serial. He showed up to TV Center the next morning with out any ideas and on the spot he came up with the idea that the Doctor is God. Luckily it's an idea that wasn't used. It just didn't make any sense to me. John Nathan-Turner, the producer, added the Cybermen to the script in order to have more silver in the story. Nathan-Turner also wanted to have Prince Edward in the serial but that got nixed by the Royal Family. They do have a cameo by a fake Queen. In the commentary both script editor Andrew Cartmel and Chris Clough think that there wasn't much point to that, it didn't really move the story along. There's a fair bit of non-moving material in this serial.

 

There's a whole bunch of story in this serial, the Cybermen, some 20th century fascists and a crazy lady from the 17th century are all looking for the Nemesis statue. The statue was created by Rassilon as a defense for Gallifrey and it's got 3 parts, a bow, an arrow and figure of a woman. The 3 parts need to be put together to get it to work. It has great power that none of them would use for good. The Doctor launched the figure into orbit in a powered asteroid. It's been looping back to Earth every 25 years since the 17th century. Bad things happen when it gets near but that's about to end with the current arrival. It's going to crash on the earth November 23 1988 near Windsor Castle. They weren't allowed to actually film at Windsor so they used Arundel Castle. 

The 3 parties after the statue arrive and there's plenty of fighting and running about. The fascists are the first to fall, the crazy lady merges with the statue and the Cybermen's fleet is destroyed when the statue rams it. The Doc and Ace head off for their next adventure. I enjoyed the story but not as much as last weeks story. There were complaints from reviewers that the story was just a rehash of the last Dalek story and I can see why they'd say that.

There's a commentary with Sylvester McCoy, Sophie Aldred, Andrew Cartmel and Chris Clough. It was mostly enjoyable. There's the usual making of, some deleted and extended scenes, trails and continuity, photo gallery, info track, isolated score, Radio Times listings and an add for the forth coming DVD of Time And The Rani.