Others

on Doctor Who and a female Doctor

So, the Guardian asked me this morning to respond to this piece, which contains this extremely awful paragraph about the possibility of a female Doctor: “This is also the time when many people – who probably don’t watch the show very much – suggest that the next Doctor could be a woman. It’s well established that Time

Bane and Douglas Reynholm

Look, I’m just posting this because as far as I can tell I’m the only person on the whole internet (so far) to notice that Bane in The Dark Knight Rises sounds *exactly the same* as Matt Berry’s portrayal of Douglas Reynholm in The IT Crowd.  I need better clips to appear on YouTube to

Buffy: Never kill a boy on the first date

Oh dear. This episode makes even Teacher’s Pet look well put-together. In theory it ought to be fine. A nice bridging episode bringing together several different elements: the Master gets a new ally “the Annointed One”, which should make him more scary. Buffy tries to have a dating life with Emily Dickinson-fan Owen but it doesn’t

Buffy: Teacher’s Pet

So I watched three episodes: Teacher’s Pet, Never Kill a Boy on a First Date and The Pack all in one go. Mostly because I knew I wanted to see The Pack again so much, and seeing it in context like this makes me realise what an amazing ep it is and how much there is to

On Talking Smack

Adrian Hon and Andrea Phillips and I often shoot the breeze about how much we hated some movie, book, TV show or game. We go into some detail. We explore the many different ways in which we hated it. We do it so much that we’ve frequently joked that we should set up a podcast about all the

Buffy: Witch

What’s weird to me now about this episode is that in my memory it was *really good*. And now, looking at it, it’s a mess.  The episode centres on Amy – later a fairly significant character, so the early development here is nice – who turns out to have been mind-swapped by her mother, who

Because I am a geek

So I bought a Nike Fuelband. Mostly because Andrea Phillips has one and I was jealous. I liked the little fireworks display when you reach your fuel goal for the day. It’s probably market-state research for Zombies, Run! or something. Yeah, no, it was basically because it looks cool.  Anyway, because Andrea and I are geeks like this,

Buffy: Welcome to the Hellmouth/The Harvest

Why does a person start watching a TV show? Why do they carry on watching even if the first few episodes aren’t really that impressive (as they often aren’t)? What is it in a show that can make you think there’s something interesting there? I think the first thing is: the name. I suspect that

Buffy and me: a year-long project

It’s no secret that I have had a very intense relationship with the TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I’ve written academic papers about it, newspaper articles about it, and in 2004, when I was a penniless writer struggling to finish my first novel while working part-time for a charity, I was so driven to find people with whom

Zombies, Run!

So: Zombies, Run! It’s a new iPhone app I’m making with the fantastic games studio Six to Start. We launched it on Kickstarter just five days ago and kept it low-key, just sending out a few tweets and Facebook/G+ status updates, and it’s already got $21,209 of funding. Wow. Could this have gone any better?