The Journal of the Browncoat Cat

This reworking of Doctor Who title sequence in an American montage style using the newly unveiled version of the theme was posted on You Tube by the user JSYBen.

It is, as they say in Scotland, sheer pure brilliant.

This hyperlink sits in my favourites, it links to a lovely piece of Stargate SG-1 fan fiction originally written by Keith Jamison.   It always brings a smile to face.  I love it, and I hope you will to.

STÅRGATE  SG-1:   Å   CHRISTMAS   TÅLE

And the good news is that from now on in, the days start getting longer again. From today onwards I start feeling fully festive. Even though I am in work until 4pm on Christmas Eve, the holiday starts here.

I went to have what is left of my hair trimmed today in the local unisex salon. This was the last day of bussieness for them at the salon, so instead of the usual clinical black trousers and black overalls, Beverley and Katie were wearing very sexy female santa outfits, which definitely raised a smile for me.

During the day, I was having work done in my back garden. At my New Year’s Eve Party, I will be setting off an humongous firework at Midnight. Now this means that my friends will have to go outside to watch it, and lets be honest, the garden was a bit of a deathtrap, so much work had to be done to get the inside of the house up to scratch, the outside took a back seat. However, it is now safe for people to step down from my back door, onto a small concreted section, the start of what will be my patio. Although I did not envy anybody working outside today, and the two builders deserved every penny I paid them.

The main event of the day the TIMELESS: Christmas Meal. The original plan had been for me to get there on the train, but Janet and Andy were planning on going to see Beowulf in the Cardiff Bay Odeon, after they dropped Thomas and Jim at their mother’s house, so I had a lift there and back. Thanks Janet. which this year was being held in Henry’s Café and Bar in Cardiff. Originally, 14 members of TIMELESS had paid their deposit for the event. Unfortunately, four people dropped out on the day for various reasons. Never the less, those who could make it had a great time. Henry’s was wee bit on the noisy side, but I suppose that this was only to be expected on what the people of Cardiff were calling Black Friday, the last working day of the last working week before Christmas when so many people working in offices were heading off for a celebratory drink. However, this did add to the atmosphere of the night, so I wont knock it. The food in Henry’s was magnificent. I thoroughly enjoyed my meal, and the service was also impeccable. I had the Mushroom and Stilton Brioche as a starter, which was glorified mushrooms on toast, but as I was so hungry at that point that if I had not had something to take the edge of my appetite, I would not have appreciated the main meal. So it served its purpose. My main course was Turkey, which was very nice, however, because of the late cancellations, there were four spare meals that the group had to pay and consequently got distributed between the diners, so I had a taste of the strip loins of Beef and the Salmon. The Beef was to die for, absolutely the best I have ever had in a restaurant.

After the meal, we all adjourned to the Central Bar, which was considerably quieter than Henry’s, where my upcoming New Year’s Eve Party was discussed.

At 11pm, I made my way to the entrance of the Park Plaza where I was picked up by Janet and Andy for the trip home. They had enjoyed the movie and had had a pleasant evening, so I got home at midnight after having a very good day.

It is a bit of a mystery to me why so many fans of The Sarah Jane Adventures, one of the spin-offs from Doctor Who are so keen to see the Doctor put in an appearance in one of the stories.  It would be perfectly acceptable for characters from The Sarah Jane Adventures to appear in the mother show, just as Captain Jack from Torchwood makes regular return trips to the mother show, but the road should be strictly one way.  Surely at the point that the Doctor took a major role in the narrative, it would stop being an episode of  The Sarah Jane Adventures and become just another episode of Doctor Who.

The briefest of cameos would just about work, being acceptable because the Doctor would not actually do anythng at all.  For instance in The Sarah Jane Adventures right at the start of Series Two, before the titles, they might show the Doctor turning a corner into a street where the TARDIS is parked. He enters the TARDIS and the camera pulls back to a long shot of Sarah Jane, Alan and the kids turning into the other end of the street, and then cut to their p.o.v. as they watch the TARDIS dematerialise. Then cue the titles for episode one of the series.

When I was a child in the 1970’s, the BBC insisted on showing the American comedy series Bewitched in the kiddie’s slot before the Early Evening News. This has always struck me as being bizarre, considering that the series which ran from 1964 to 1972 was made for Primetime viewing on the ABC Network in the USA, and not for the kiddies. But I suppose it was the dark days of the 1970’s and things were very different back then.

The whole thrust of the series is that Samantha is a Witch who has fallen in love and married Darrin an everyday bloke who works in advertising, as a result she has turned her back on her incredibly powerful magical abilities and is trying to live her life as an ordinary everyday suburban housewife. This infuriates her mother Endora, who does her best to break up Samantha and Darrin’s relationship. She cannot harm Darrin, he has to chose to end the relationship of his own free will.

Now the BBC has another opportunity to stuff things up with Bewitched. as they have purchased the rights to make an UK version of the series. I just cannot see such a 1960’s American concept working in modern day Britain, it did not work in modern day America when a very lame movie version that wasted the talents of Nicole Kidman and Michael Caine was released in 2005. The pilot has been written by Paul Mendelson, creator of the sublime May to December and So Haunt Me but who also created the dire My Hero. I truly hope that this series sees a return to form.

However, Aunty has got one thing right. Sheridan Smith, from Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps and the radio version of Doctor Who has been cast as the British version of Samantha. An excelent piece of casting there, as I think she looks a lot like the original who was played by Elizabeth Montgomery. No word yet on who will play Darrin, but I read somewhere on the internet that the two will not be actually married, just living together. Which should make things easier for whoever gets cast to play Endora.

It has been announced that the wonderful Sarah Jane Adventures is to have a second series.  The announcement came not with a bang, but with a whimper.  The announcement was buried in a press release about Piers Wenger taking over as head of Drama at BBC Wales.  Somewhere in the middle of this document it said that Julie Gardner would continue to be the Executvive Producer of a new [presumably a third] series of Torchwood and a new run of The Sarah Jane Adventures.  So confirmation from the BBC, if through the back door of the continuation of the series.

Not that I am at all surprised by the decision to go for a second series.  The average ratings for the satellite CBBC Channel at 5.30pm on a Monday is something like 90,000 viewers; The Lost Boy Part 2, the final episode of The Sarah Jane Adventures received a whopping 640,000 viewers.  With viewing figures like that, the second series was a bit of an inevitability really.

So what would I like to see in Series Two:

• The Zygons – One of the monsters from the original run that Sarah Jane encountered when she was a regular on Doctor Who.  I am really surprised that these great villains never returned to the mother series, so they seem just right for a rematch with Sarah Jane and the kids.
• A cameo by Nicholas Courtney bringing the marvelous Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart (retired) to the series.
• No more fanfare and naff effects when Mr. Smith the supercomputer makes an appearance.  It is already in Sarah Jane’s attic, why does it need to hide away.
• Not just the Brig.  Lets have some other Earth based companions from the original run of the series putting in an appearance
• Less Chrissie Jackson.  I really felt like throttling Maria’s mother whilst watching the final story.  She is a character who has run her course.  Enough.
• An end to people speculating about when the Doctor is gong to turn up.  He isn’t going to.  This is The Sarah Jane Adventures not Doctor Who.

It seems that this humble little web log has been noticed. Part of my review of Human Nature/Family of Blood has been quoted by Stephen James Walker in his book Third Dimension the unofficial guide to Series Three [29] of Doctor Who. The quote is on page 204 of the book, and it is my comment that the punishments the Doctor doles out to the Family are as far from Terrence Dicks’ classic description of the Doctor never being cruel or cowardly as it is possible to get.

One moment of absent minded can have numerous consequences.  For instance yesterday, even though I knew I was going strait to Cardiff, and it would be a rush to catch the train, I still managed to get halfway home before I realised my mistake.  And so I  hared back down Church Street, across Bute Street and along Station Street, arriving at Treherbert Station in time to see the 5.17pm train to Cardiff effortlessly glide away from the platform.

Not to worry, I would still arrive at the Cineworld Cinema complex in time to see the main feature The Golden Compass, the new film  adaptation of Philip Pullman’s novel Northern Lights, if I didn’t waste any time after arriving in Cardiff. So on arrival at the cinema, I inserted by Barclays Connect card into the machine, retrieved my ticket and went and took my seat in Screen 7, as the first reel started.  Of course, what I did not realise was that my precious Barclays Connect card was still in the ticket machine. In a rush, head in the clouds, only myself to blame. I can thank my lucky stars that the card was handed in to the reception at the cinema complex, and not taken and used for nefarious purposes because I did not notice I had lost the thing until this evening when I tried to get some cash from the ATM outside the Barclays branch in Treherbert.  Still that card is now cancelled and a new one is on its way.  However, I really should be more careful.

The BBC has just released a press release about the second series of Torchwood. This snippet from the release caught my eye:

“I’m also pleased to announce that, due to popular demand from
families and younger viewers, we will be showing a special
pre-watershed repeat so everyone can enjoy the new series.”

What, they are going to put it into the half hour slot currently occupied by Claudia Winklemann and Strictly Come Dancing: It Takes Two? Because as soon as they as soon as they cut all the obviously “Adult” content out of Torchwood, with all the gratuitous bonking and swearing gone, it will only have thirty minutes of material per episode.