Outcasts

Yes, I know we have had the budget (I wasn’t keen) and one of the biggest marches of recent history, but I feel I have to comment on Outcasts

For those who didn’t know, outcasts was the BBC’s latest attempt at a big budget, grown up SF series. In itself this is a good thing, I love Dr Who but I always had fears that the old beeb would assume this was all that was required for its SF output, so it’s good to see them branching out a bit.

The BBC certainly didn’t skimp, it was filmed in South Africa, written by Spooks scribe Ben Richards and brought in some fairly big name actors such as Daniel Mays (Ashes to Ashes) and Jamie Bamber (Battlestar Galactica) and it had an audience who were willing it to be good to show that grown up SF could work in a prime time slot.

Outcasts was set in and around the human settlement of Fort Haven on the planet Carpathia and followed the colonists as they struggled to survive on an alien world. They would face conflict from without, in the form of the genetically modified ACs and a mysterious alien force, and from within as the charismatic and manipulative Julius Berger tries to unseat Tate, the colony’s president.
First, I quite liked it, it was flawed and often slow, but the concept was intriguing and some of the characters grabbed me. Of course this may say more about me, I found joy in Bonekickers.
So, what went wrong? Why did it end up graveyarded on sunday nights? Why did it turn off both sci-fi fans and mundanes alike?

Sadly most of the blame has to fall at Ben Richards feet. The first episode had many mildly intrigued, but not blown away, and the slow pacing sent viewers switching to Gypsy weddings or whatever else was on in droves. This flaw would have been fine on its own and it could have earned a solid audience from genre fans alone, sadly Richards didn’t help himself there.

I can’t confirm this, but Ben Richards appears to be a bit snobbish about SF. His first error was to wax lyrical about how Outcasts wasn’t really SF, it was more a frontier western but on an alien planet, more about people that aliens, space ships and lasers. Yes, anyone who knows SF will roll their eyes at this, it shows a writer who dismisses SF as childish space ships and bug eyed monsters which is kind of insulting to the genre that gave us Brave New World and Blade Runner. This alone did not put people off.

The main problem in my eyes was that the writers, and richards as show runner has to take some responsibility here, hadn’t watched or read any SF before making an SF drama, the net result of that was they didn’t know a hoary old cliché when they dreamed one up. The warnings were there, in interviews the writers spoke of the “space western” as if it was a brand new idea. Old concepts themselves do not make a series bad, but some background knowledge of the genre would have highlighted where the ideas had been tried previously and where they had been better executed. This may have changed some directions and perhaps forced the writers to drop some dead ends and develop some ideas more completely. For example, they had a brief “gold rush” idea with diamonds, and it could have developed further, with people slugging it out for stones that were precious on earth but common as pebbles on carpathia, showing the odd things we value, but it was forgotten pretty quickly.

Finally, Outcasts biggest problem was a lack of internal consistency. People aquired abilities, gizmos that would easily solve problems disappeared entirely (brain reading machine, I’m looking at you) this just seemed like lazy writing and did affect my enjoyment, and I was massively sympathetic before it started.
So, what was good, Cass and Fleur, the two P&S operatives (police) were engaging and likeable and even Tate, who started off giving the impression that they really wanted Patrick Stewart for his role grew on me. The stories picked up as it went on as well, and the reveals of some mysteries were actually pretty good (Cass’ backstory in particular) but it sadly was too little, too late.

I may later post about an alternative way I would have run outcasts if I don’t decide it makes me too much of a monday morning coach

The AV Referendum

If anything should show you that the lib-dems are being royally screwed in this coalition it is the AlternativeVote (AV) referendum.  A Key Lib-Dem policy has always been the introduction of Proportional Representation (PR) to our electoral system.  When the horse trading of the current coalition was going forward the two offers regarding vote reform on the table were a referendum on adopting the AV system from the Tories and an automatic adoption of AV with a referendum on a more proportional system from Labour.  Obviously there was more on the table because based on the voting reform issue the labour offer was definitely better.  Indeed one of the arguments used by many key Tories against AV is that it is not proportional, so they put AV and only AV on the table, then slam the only alternative they offer as not proportional, and indeed AV wasn’t a lib-Dem policy.
The problem is, AV isn’t a proportional system, its better than First past the post, not much but a bit, in the way that a candidate must have attracted over 50% of votes, albeit second and third preferences, to win their seat.  This is an important step since at the last election nearly two thirds of MPs were elected with the endorsement of less than 50% of their voting constituents.  Still, the problem remains, for all of us who wanted voting reform AV isn’t really what we wanted, indeed Nick Clegg himself had made some speeches about how poor a system AV is.
The problem here is that the vote isn’t for anything as simple as whether we want AV or not, both sides are reading more into it.  Bearing in mind the referendum paper will have a simple Yes/No option on it what will be read into the votes is entirely different.
First, a “Yes” vote, on the basic level really means you would like AV implemented, but doe sit, it could also mean you dislike FPTP and would like further reform.  This is definitely the view of many of the Yes campaign’s supporters, the fear obviously is that future governments will still argue that no-one wants a proportional system, and that they wanted AV.  Similarly someone opposed to PR may prefer AV but will fear this as the thin end of a PR wedge.  I believe most of those voting Yes would really prefer the referendum to be worded “Would you like to get rid of FPTP?” as opposed to “Would you like the AV system?”
This leads to the problem of what a “No” vote is read as.  To some voters it may be simply they do not like AV as a system, preferring something like the Single Transferable Vote or some other system that is not on the table.  However, “No” voters should be aware, your vote will be read by those in charge as a vote in support of FPTP and the status quo of safe seats and of big majorities hammering legislation through parliament with your only say being once every 5 years.
This is the biggest dilemma in the floating referendum voter; they don’t like FPTP, but don’t really like AV either, and don’t really like the idea of endorsing either system.  However, this is the first time in my 31 years of life that voting reform has ever been on the table, if the No campaign succeeds I expect at least a further 30 years until another chance presents itself.  This is our opportunity to show that there is an appetite for a change to our politics and indeed possibly for further change, so I will be Voting Yes in the Referendum.
My Yes vote does mainly originate from wanting rid of FPTP, however the quality of arguments from the “No” camp has been poor, be it lying about the cost of the voting system (Vote “No” or the baby gets it) or rather bizarrely combining criticisms that because it is sort of proportional more extremist parties like the BNP will get in (Yes, they trot out the BNP Bogeyman, read that as Vote No or you get the BNP) with criticisms that it isn’t really proportional at all.  Effectively, see argument 1 if you are anti PR, argument 2 if you are Pro, please for our convenience don’t read them both.  Finally they argue that AV will cause more coalitions and unaccountable back room dealing (Unlike what FPTP did in 2010) despite the fact that Australia uses AV and has had fewer coalitions that the UK.  In fact an Australian Politician wrote an open letter to correct all the No campaigns inaccurate statements about AV because of the levels of inaccuracy in the campaigns website.
In the interests of balance, here is the website for the No Campaign, and here is the Yes where they pretty much destroy every argument in the No campaign.  Guess that’s what they get putting the person in charge of the Tax Payers Alliance in charge of their campaign.  Also you can check you are registered to vote here.

Snowmageddon

We’re all doomed, the icy white stuff has trapped us, quick, stockpile bread, milk and petrol in case they run out.

Yes, it has snowed, a function of weather.  Its snowed a lot, we also got trapped by a wave of idiot commentators and idiotic members of the public spouting uninformed opinions regarding the way our infrastructure stands up to the snow.  I thought I’d take a look and try to explain why we appear to grind to a halt in the snow and hopefully bust a few of the myths in the process.

So, to begin, why do our roads, rails and runways seem to shut down entirely when the snow hits while no other country seems to have this problem.

This is actually part of our first mini myth; countries with a similar or warmer climate, such as Belgium, Germany and France do suffer in the snow, to roughly the same extent.  In the previous snow fall there were massive tailbacks on the autobahn and deaths in France due to accidents.  Their trains get slowed down as well.  Their rail networks hold up slightly better, but this is due to their relatively recent construction (Around 1940s-50s) and the lower frequency of services.  As to why we survived better when we got similar snowfalls in the 1960s, quite frankly fewer of us travelled smaller distances to work and did not expect shops to run 24/7.  Back then it was also not unthinkable to call and say you were snowed in.
So, what about countries with snowy climates, Russia, Canada, North America, even Sweden, Norway etc.  How do they keep things running during their far more severe winters?  Well two reasons.
First, they Engineer for it, their infrastructure is built with snow in mind, such as better facilities for clearing points when they freeze and snow drift breaks.  Similarly more of their vehicles can be equipped for snow.  They also have a larger stand-by level of snow ploughs gritters etc, as anyone who had to deal with bitter cold and severe snow and ice every year will have.  Why don’t we, because we won’t pay for the gritters or the stand by crews, and I assure you if we did then come the first mild winter some lump like Eric Pickles or the Tax Payers alliance would be out asking why we are wasting so much money on gritters that are not needed, using the usual faulty memory that plagues those who resent paying a penny of their vast fortunes in tax.
We haven’t engineered our infrastructure for this in the past because there has been little to no requirement.  It make it pretty clear that this weather is unprecedented, or at any rate rare when it doesn’t qualify to be included in the engineering specs for the construction of new roads and railways or the abilities of council vehicles and trains.

Similarly, in places like the Northern US and Canada, a “snow day” is not an uncommon occurrence, where whole schools and workplaces will close for a day.  This official closure allows the authorities to clear the roads without the rush hour traffic getting in the way and compacting the snow into ice.
Finally, as people they are better prepared, many in those parts own snow tyres or snow chains, and just about every municipal vehicle will have access to these as well.  At least now our authorities are looking into buying such things for the next cold snap, hopefully allowing ambulances and police vehicles to avoid getting stuck.

The second question is “Why do we start running out of simple things like bread and milk?”  This is easy.  Particularly for perishable goods such as bread, milk and fresh fruit and veg, most stores now work on a principal of receiving supplies of these on a daily basis, this allows them to minimise losses through spoilage by only stocking around a days worth of such items.  The down side is if the supply chain is interrupted supplies can run short.  This is not helped by people panic buying the minute the snow hits, the stores can take a small run on bread but people filling their freezers quickly wipes out their supplies.  Fuel is a similar case although will usually last slightly longer.  The pres don’t help as the minute they say there are shortages it promotes even more panic buying.  Again in cold countries, this just doesn’t happen because people are used to the weather and don’t get driven into a panic by the possibility of 24hrs without being able to drive to Tescos, something which seems to affect most brits judging by the rushes around the Xmas Day and new years closures.

People also do need to pitch in.  In Edinburgh the Army were drafted in to clear the streets, conversely, in Aberdeen, where this weather is more common most know in heavy snow you dig yourself out, then start digging out the street.  We have a certain complacency that it is the council’s job to clear the snow, which it is, however they will usually have more important routes to clear, so if you want your street cleared quickly, do it yourself.

Finally, and this will sound bad, its high expectations.  In cold countries people understand that it’s best to wait out the snow, allow the authorities to clear the roads then carry on.  We seem to insist that in the face of adverse weather everything must carry on regardless.  People seem to think that with the passing of a snowplough and gritter that roads will magically return to black tarmac.  Well sorry, a snow plough will be wrecked by hardened ice and grit ceases to melt anything below -10.  Grit is tricky to do right, too soon and it will simply be washed away or destroyed by traffic, too late and the snow can dilute the effect.  Finally, things can and still do go wrong.  The M8 closure should not have cost a transport minister his job, no opposition MSP has been able to explain how they would have acted differently.  The M8 was hit by heavy snow during the morning rush hour where, as anyone who has driven it during that time will tell you, it is full.  You could not have got a gritter through that traffic, the traffic then compacted the fresh snow to ice and this causes accidents and in some cases made some hills completely impassable.  I drove a more minor road that day and it was an experience I would not like to repeat.  We need to learn the world will not end if we take one day off work, and the govt needs to stop kowtowing to businesses complaining of the cost and call a few snow days, for the long term good.

The Pie Man Televison Awards 2010

Ok it’s a bit late, but since the US is slowly disbanding the traditional dates of seasons it has meant that I have had to wait a bit before really trying to pull together last years TV, so technically this covers late 2009 as well, basically think of it as covering any TV that was made after last years television awards.  As always there is an SF bent to proceedings, and this year things are a bit sparse, not because of a lack of new shows, although there is a bit of that, but because with me now having a family I just can’t log the hours of TV I once managed.  So, arbitrary awards ahoy.  As always this will be littered with spoilers, spelling errors, bad grammar and generally poor quality writing, proceed if you dare.


Best TV show.

This one was tough, although truth be told the US isn’t nearly pulling its weight like it once was.  So what did we have, well there are many shows I liked, but how many would I actually judge as “best?” Ashes to Ashes was definitely good in its final season, Stargate Universe has become must watch TV even if it took me a while to get into my head that it wasn’t like the last two Stargate series, Lost had a great final season, Being Human S2 was great and of course we had the two masterful newcomers in Misfits and Sherlock which nearly qualified for best show on their first years.  Instead I’m going with…

It’s a bit of a hard one to judge, see if I have my timeframes right, and if I don’t tough, my 09/10 period catches 3 of the specials and the new series, so I’m spoiled for choice.  I know the specials weren’t as well received by everyone, although there is very little hate for Waters of Mars the Xmas and New year end of time 2 parter has taken a lot of flack.  It was a little flawed and very overindulgent in its last act, but it was a goodbye to the team that have brought our show back, and for that I can forgive anything, I cried manly tears.  Then we have the new series with Steven Moffat at the helm and Matt Smith and Karen Gillen playing the Doctor and Amy Pond, and you know what, its different, but Matt Smith has definitely taken to the role like a duck to water meanwhile the feel of the show is different but also much fresher, perhaps a little more kiddie friendly as well which is no bad thing, it is a family show.  The standout episode of the series was “Vincent and the Doctor” but credit where credit is due, the final 2 parter was great, with a mix of action, drama and comedy.  In fact that could be said of the whole series.  Downsides are the iDaleks and a slightly off 2 parter featuring sort of Silurians but in general I wait with baited breath for the Xmas special.

Best New Show.

Again, a little spoiled for choice, and again very much dominated by British TV, obviously Stargate Universe is an option, and I’d even consider Caprica, although I have to confess that I gave up half way through and came back at the end, none the less, while it took its sweet time to get going I was warming to it.  Truth be told it was very nearly Misfits, Channel 4’s ASBO superhero show, and if I can’t come up with an award for it from the usual categories then expect a spurious award near the end because it deserves some love.  However, best newcomer is non SF, it was short, but daring and once again it’s Steven Moffat.

Sherlock

 This was a surprise, the BBC were running a set of new dramas, some one offs or week long events like The Deep, but then there was Sherlock, a modern take on Sherlock Holmes.  Epically named Dominick Cumberbatch took on the role and gave a great young Holmes in his performance, managing to keep the character enjoyable even if you know in real life he’s pretty unlikeable.  Martin Freeman took the role of Watson, now a veteran of Afghanistan drawn into holms’ world.  The show had a real energy and pace, so much so you really didn’t notice its quite staggering 1hr30mins running time per episode, yes each episode was a mini movie, that in itself is bold enough and kudos to the Beeb for letting them try it.  So far we only got 3 episodes but with a further 3 planned these could be short bursts of brilliance.

Best Finale

We had quite a few series end this year, or indeed be axed.  In the end though there were two real contenders for this prize, and oddly enough both had similar finales.  Lost didn’t win it, now I’m not a hater of this finale, yes it was a bit annoying that the island’s secret was basically “It’s a magic island” and I know that many found the “Alternate” flash sideways turning out to be the afterlife a cop out, and I would have perhaps preferred it to be a parallel world and the solution not to be turning the island off and on again, but regardless Lost’s finale was emotional and offered a sense of closure for me at least.  But it’s not the winner, no that has to go to…

So, it was all a sort of limbo for coppers who died on duty and Gene Hunt was to usher them to the next world, it makes sense, fits in with the Life on Mars Finale, and in general works.  It shouldn’t, it should be a cop out (pardon the pun) but it explains so much.  And of course we had the villain of the piece, Jim Keats, the more modern DCI and very possibly an agent of Satan himself trying to lure genes cops away, he managed to really create a nemesis for Gene, initially subtle and menacing his final few scenes where he was all out evil mad were a joy.  Taken as a 5 series story Life on Mars/Ashes to Ashes is going to be one of my must own on DVD (Hell I’ve already got Life on Mars) I think re-watching now I know the secret will only reveal even more.

Most Improved Show,

This is a tough one this year, possibly because most of the series are either new or the returnees were pretty damn good already.  So I reckon I may be pretty controversial when I say the winner is


 You may think I’m just making sure chuck gets an award this year, and you may be right, however stay with me.  Chuck was good already, but I really do think that it has been consistently improving over its run.  S3 gives us chuck with a new intersect, one that gives him kung fu skills.  Not just that but its one of the few series I know that can take getting a sudden series extension and not have the latter half turn out rubbish.

Most Gratuitous T&A in a series

I didn’t catch too much of Dollhouse this year, so I can’t say if it qualifies.  In fact T&A is clearly something ion this age of austerity we can’t afford, or perhaps its just I’m watching fewer shows that lend themselves to it.  I should probably watch the Hawaii Five O remake as it’s meant to be littered with it so I can have this award in next year.  I could use Misfits but what T&A it had wasn’t particularly gratuitous, so instead I’m opting for a non genre show that I’ve watched a bit of, because I like this award.


I’ve seen a few episodes of this and wow, you thought Knight Rider was bad, women seem to wonder around topless just for the hell of it.  The scene that I thought really exemplified this was during an episode where there had been a drought and at the end it rains once our titular hero has killed someone in a gladiatorial bout.  Apparently in ancient Rome rain made women in crowds fall out of their tops.  Similarly a fringe benefit to being rich was that you could have topless slaves hanging around your house and your wife wouldn’t bad an eyelid.  I get the feeling at script meetings someone did ask ‘How can we get more boobs into this series?’

Best Factual series

I’ve realised I watch a lot of documentaries, due to the unique nature of various channels I often don’t know if I’m watching something new or something ages old.  I have also decided to have two separate categories.  Shows like the excellent Wonders of the Solar system are clearly factual, however entertaining they may be while something like Top Gear is technically factual but is first and foremost entertainment.  I thought this was an important distinction.
This year I’ve been fairly spoilt for choice.  A good start was the badly advertised and barely plugged “The Digital Revolution” presented by Dr Alex Krotski, this had a lot going for it, not only was it an interesting insight into the social impacts of our information age but it was presented by the presenter I liked the most from 1990s games review programme Bitz.  Mythbusters is also a worthy candidate, straddling the boundary between factual and Entertainment factual with aplomb.  The winner this year must be.

This is one of these things that the BBC has everyone else beaten by a country mile.  Professor Brian Cox takes us through some of the wonders of the solar system.  That’s kind of it.  The content was factual but presented in such a way that it wasn’t stuffy or dry.  Brian Cox is an excellent presenter and speaks with a genuine and infectious enthusiasm for the subject matter and the visuals that are presented are truly awe inspiring.  Seriously try to watch this.

Best Entertainment Factual

And so from the less noble end, again we have Mythbusters as a possibility and the ever present Top Gear, in fact all we were short of were a few drama-documentaries which seem to have been in short supply.  However my award goes to.

I’m a big fan of James May, I think he’s a good presenter, particularly when given a subject matter he is interested in, he can usually add a touch of humour to whatever he’s presenting.  This series spun off from three one-off programmes he did, concerning toys.  In this he takes a toy, tries to convince some kids its fun and works towards a giant challenge.  This series had May building a life size Airfix model Spitfire, building a bridge over a river using only Meccano, re-creating the brooklands racing circuit full length but using Scaelextric, Living in a house made entirely of Lego and re-instating a branch line in Hornby double-0 gauge.  His success sis often varied but in the process it was nice to see kids taking an interest in toys and the way James May and a TV crew could get families and communities out together.

Best UK Network/Channel

To be fair there’s only a little competition in this, Virgin/Channel one are improving but look set to be dismantled after a Sky Buyout, Living will probably qualify for a Pirate Bay award next year, Channel 4 made a good effort with Misfits and now that Big Brother is gone I expect wonders.  Sky1 itself is on a bit of a decline, having far fewer shows that I’m interested in this year than last now that Lost is gone however their recent purchase of exclusive rights to all of HBO’s output is promising even if their proportional budget on home grown series is miniscule.  Bravo is still Bravo with nothing particularly new or interesting and with SyFy running V, Eureka and Warehouse 13 its fast becoming the channel filled with series I should watch but don’t.  No, the winner this year is,

Its not perfect, and there are criticisms, but this channel this year has given us, Dr Who, The Sarah Jane Adventures, Merlin, Sherlock, Ashes to Ashes, Top Gear, James May’s Toy Stories, The Digital Revolution, Survivors, Vexed, Miranda, Charlie Brooker’s Screen Wipe and many others.  All thoroughly entertaining, all home made.  It runs very few bought in series these days which is good as all the money from these series goes straight back into the BBC and into British pockets, surely worth supporting.

The RIAA award for harm caused to Bit-Torrent

Most networks are beginning to understand that getting stuff on screen as soon as is humanly possible after US screenings is the best way to stop people downloading stuff.  So this year the award has been flipped to recognise those who do their best to keep you off the Bit Torrents.  A credit here should go to ITV, Channel 4 and the BBC who have made their on demand service for catching repeats available to as many people as possible (Living only allow on demand on premium packages and sky only allow their Anytime service on sky) Sky have got anytime and have the best record for putting shows on usually in the same week they air.  I’m torn though.  See Sky’s protectionism is driving people like me to bit-torrents when we miss things (There were a few episodes of Lost I had to catch up on through “Alternate” means) it’s a small thing but it’s the only thing this year that pushed me to Bit Torrent.  In the end it has to be

Both are as good as each other, most of the channel’s main output is available, most are on for a week at least and they have back catalogues available for free or very little.  This could well be the future of TV.

Only the Good Die young award.

Not too many entries here.  I could say Defying Gravity but I may sound like a broken record next award.  Instead I’m going to go for,


 I know it was 2 seasons old, but it was really getting moving.  They had found a groove, were building a mythology, and now we’ll never know how it was to end.  I miss my dose of supernatural fun.

Never given a proper chance award

This one should be obvious

It was shafted by Fox, let down by the Beeb, graveyarded and left to die.  A shame because this was a series that really got under my skin.  Space exploration where exploring space is the main source of peril, it was drifting near documentary territory at times.  I just wish everyone involved had been a little more confident in the series to push it harder.  I think this could have been a classic.

Most Promising 1^st Season.

Again, a crowded year, Sherlock, Caprica, Stargate Universe, Defying Gravity. But in the end of the day the series which had a season that made me sit up and take notice was.

It shouldn’t have worked, it was badly marketed, with the creators seemingly telling as few people as possible about the show, it epitomised the joke Channel 4 Mindset of any new series being something crossed with Skins and the cast seem pretty dislikeable from the get go, but it worked.  A good combination of humour, drama and character this series drew you into its world.  A mysterious storm gives a group of youngsters on community service Super Powers, but how will they use these abilities and how will they explain why they killed their hulked-out probation worker.  See, the premise is even hokey, and it often had a “Storm powered person of the week” format that reminded me of Smallville’s early “Kryptonite powered baddy of the week” format, but it worked, and worked well.  The characters grew into full fledged personalities and the final episode in particular, which involved an evangelical Christian able to turn anyone who could hear her to her way of thinking had a real night of the living dead vibe to it.  Season 2 has shown no dip in quality either.

Most off the Boil series.

No pre-amble it has to be

So off the boil its been axed, Heroes, I would say its not you, its me, but it is you and I can’t do this anymore, I can’t sit through dross just to have the one or two great episodes, it just isn’t working for me.  Yes, I gave up through Season 4.  Can’t fault the networks decision here; however I have a concept for a sitcom starring Ando and Hiro if you’re interested?

The Reilly 2040 worst padding award

It’s a tough call, I could hit Heroes a bit more but that would be cruel, and if Padding was the only problem with “the Deep” it would be a mercy.  It could be Caprica, I don’t know because I faded out mid season and came back nearer the end.  No, it’s a tough call but I think it will be


I suppose it usually wasn’t a padding episode, but more some episodes were padded, So much of the Earth based body swap stuff is just tedious and most of the time you’re just waiting to see people in dark corridors whisper at each other to let you know that you’re seeing the interesting bit.  If you extracted the padding and re-distributed destiny sub-plots I reckon you could have shaved a couple of episodes off this series.  Overall though USTV, you are improving.

Pie Man Special Award

This is an award for something I think is good but has been sidelined by better, newer or just by accident.  This year it is


It nearly warranted the “Worst Treatment” award, see last year Team Chuck only thought they were getting 12 episodes, wrote a tight 12 episode arc and once ratings were ok were then surprised with another 10 eps.  I don’t give the award because wheat we got from this was something more akin to 2 seasons rolled in one.  It may have actually removed some padding.  Chuck is still a Joy, and a greater involvement of the extended cast meant we got more Buy More antics, a greater involvement for Morgan and best of all, an end to the will they/won’t they Chuck and Sarah question, they did and it stuck.  Plus we got at least 2 new Jeffster Numbers.  I can’t say this enough but a Jeffster Album?

Graceful Retirement Award

I think we only had one real contender, Heroes’ retirement being anything but graceful the award goes to

It was big finale time, and to be fair a cracking final season, obviously there is some disappointment from not having the Island’s secrets revealed in any way beyond “Magic” and the flash “Sideways” transpiring to be the afterlife was a slightly wasted opportunity, but it left me satisfied and gave a sense of closure which was welcome.  The story is complete; we need not worry about Lost any more.  And I for one cried like a baby at the finale, although the way Michael giacallo Scores episodes I’m sure he could make the Go-Compare adverts seem like stirring pathos laden masterpieces.

Worst Treatment of a series

Virgin/Channel One were a possibility, but chuck wasn’t as badly treated as last year.  I reckon Living are already getting much of my Ire for next year over Chuck as well, so lets have a different perpetrator this year.

The BBC has had one major problem this year.  Its Schedule or lack thereof.  It seems that either the IPlayer has spoiled them or they it is in fact incredibly difficult to put a programme on at the same time every week.  For its big hitters like Sherlock ad Dr who it’s often a matter of 30mins or so but I really shouldn’t be checking an EPG to see when Dr Who starts this week.  For others like James May’s Toy stories, it roved quite freely, so much so that I watched every episode on IPlayer.  But the worst has to be their treatment of Defying Gravity.  It was graveyarded, that I don’t mind, but there were some weeks we got two episodes, some one, some none, never at the same time, sometimes on different days.  Again IPlayer was my friend but how the hell can we be expected to support a show when it isn’t on the same time every week.  The BBC really needs to sort this out even if On Demand is the future.

Biggest Missed opportunity

I was tempted to say Caprica, but it was improving towards the end of S1, instead I think I’ll shoot at a one off Drama the BBC produced initially as a 5 day TV event, but were so worried about its poor quality that we had to endure 5 weeks of torment.  I speak, of course, of.

The Deep

James Nesbit, Minnie Driver and a crew of other “Him off of that things” take a submarine to the Antarctic undersea volcanoes to try and find out what happened to the previous mission (Containing Nesbit’s wife) and carry on their research.  What followed was a horror of dodgy premises, poor acting, poorer scriptwriting and mind boggling stupidity.  Note to writers, you should not see a twist and say “Was that meant to be a twist”

Various plot elements only made sense if you accepted that someone would pay to shove idiots underwater.  Here are two examples, presented in time honoured “Choose your own adventure Style”

You are on an evil giant Russian sub that looks suspiciously like that factory they film Dr Who in a lot.  To repair your sub and get everyone away from the soon to explode nuclear reactor you need to find the last sub and salvage a part from it.  You are using two pods to double your search chances.  One is your own, its controls labelled in English but it lacks the ability to dock with an airlock.  The other is the Russian one; it can dock but has all its controls in Russian.  You have two pilots, one, Clem speaks no Russian, does not know what part to look for and will have a long drawn out trauma about his wife who was killed on that sub, the other, Svetlana speaks Russian and knows what part to find.

If you put Svetlana in the Russian pod and Clem in your own, go to Paragraph C
If you Put Clem in the Russian pod and Svetlana in your own, go to Paragraph B

B  Congratulations, you are churning out daft decisions suitable for a writer of The Deep, situation 2 is here.

You are a sonar operator and know your boss is on the take to corrupt Russian oil barons.  You suspect your boss knows you are on to you when he comes in holding a pistol, but the slide is frozen.

If you rush your boss to try and wrestle the gun from him before he can free it up go to Paragraph C
If you stare at him with a gormless expression, akin to a cow looking at a slaughterhouse wondering what goes on in there, go to Paragraph D

Paragraph C Bad luck, your decisions are good but do not draw out enough “Drama” you will never make it as a scriptwriter of “The Deep”

Paragraph D Well done, you are probably dead, of your own stupidity, but if you have survived the terrors of using a spoon to eat breakfast you could have a future writing any sequel to “The Deep”

Think this sums up what I thought of the show, it could have been interesting, educational, tense and claustrophobic, but it failed to hit any of these.  The money should have been given to the poor.

The Problem with Labour

You may be asking why I'm having a pop at labour, surely with the cuts announced and whatnot I should be going at the Tories.  Only its been done better by better folk.  I recommend a look at Obsolete and Liberal Conspiracy for good arguments against the cuts.

Nope, I'm having a pop at Labour because, not counting the Lib-Dems (And I suspect we have many years of not counting the Lib-Dems consider the damage this coalition is doing to their reputation, ho-ho, political humour) is that like it or not (And I don't) they are the best credible opposition to the cuts, and the most likely alternative to play the "Big" party in a future coalition (Should we get a fairer voting system)

It looked promising when Ed Milliband beat his brother in the party leaders election, the Tabloid and Tory spin that he was a puppet for the unions and the "Red Ed" moniker seemed like tired old jibes and really weren't sticking. (In fact my Union backed Diane Abbott, guess more of its members who didn't tick the box to stop contributions to Labour disagreed.)

Ed made a good start, namely by saying the Iraq war was a mistake.  That made me sit up I can tell you.  I thought this was a turning point, they might now start admitting that not everything Blair did was fantastic and right.  I think Blair did some things right, minimum wage for one, but it seems like the Blairites in the Labour party don't like to hear any word against anything he did, and he made some howlers.  There was the Iraq war, draconian terror legislation, idiotic and costly Public Private Partnerships, I could go on.  In fact one of the worst policys was removing student grants and introducing tuition fees.  A bad policy in general, and hypocritical considering it was passed by those who had more of their education paid for by the state than any subsequent generation.

The problem with the introduction of fees was that it removed a taboo, Thatcher was too scared to go near free education but now the taboo has been removed the increases proposed by the coalition are merely bartering over how much.  Worse, unless they admit that the policy, which may have seemed right for the time, was a mistake, then Labour look hypocritical for opposing increases, since critics can simply stump any labour minister by asking if they think fees are a bad idea.

Sadly, I see a lot in the Post Brown Labour Party that I saw in the Post Major Conservatives.  back in 1992 many Tories were looking back at the Thatcher years with nostalgia.  In those days the Tories were looking for a new Thatcher, or at least a thatcherite to regain the heydays of that era, not realising that Thatcherism had been rejected by the electorate as much as Major's government.  The same now stands for Labour, the Blairites get snippy if anyone dares say that anything King Tony did was a bad idea.  This is unhealthy, again they blame Gordon Brown for Labour's defeat, but people were as tired of Blair before Brown came in.  Just as people didn't vote out the Tories because they weren't Thatcherite enough, they didn't vote out Labour because they weren't Blairite enough.  Quite frankly this factioning has to end and sadly a leader can't end it, instead the party itself has to choose to put these things aside.  They can't really effectively oppose Coalition policy when it so closely matches much of the Blairite policy of the past.  The party needs to cleanse itself of the bad parts of Blair and brown.

Sadly at the moment it looks like they'll go down the path of the Tories, at the moment the Political party has decided to rebel against the expulsion of ex-immigration minister Phil Woolas.  It is covered very well at Obsolete, Liberal Conspiracy and Enemies of Reason.  Some of the party have decided to defend this man, the man who sang from the Daily Mail's hymsheet during his tenure as Immigration minister and who chose to use false information against his nearest rival combined with the worst form of dog whistle racism.  He has been rightly punished by the law for his illegal conduct, but instead of doing what the party leaders have done and quite rightly rid themselves of this liability some have risen to defend him, why?  Loyalty? more likely because he is one of "theirs" and they protect their own.  If this is what the Parliamentary Labour party is rebelling over then we are surely doomed to a minimum of 10 years of tory governance.

The New Heroic Age - So Far - Part 1

Quite a few of these titles have now completed their initial arc, and others are over 4 issues in, so time for a look at how we’re getting on.

First I’ll look at the four Avengers Titles, so much for saving myself money.

Avengers
Well, good news is we have a title that is just Avengers, not new, mighty secret, dark or minty.  However, so far at any rate, this is my least favourite of the Avengers titles.  To be fair, it has a few handicaps.  First is the art.  People seem to get excited when John Romita Jnr is drawing a book, and I feel like some sort of nutter because I really fail to see why.  I have joked in the past that Romita Jnr and myself have something in common; neither of us can draw Iron Man.  This is unfair of course; at least if we were both to draw shellhead you’d be able to work out who Romita Jnr was drawing.  In general though I wouldn’t count him as one of my favourite artists.  Add to that Bendis writing, which I don’t mind, but its never worked in an all out superhero book and for my money is better used in titles like Alias, or indeed New Avengers.  The plot has some interest to it, the Avengers must travel into the future at the behest of Kang the Conqueror because, something has to be done about their kids.  It also has its faults, yes it’s nice to see Noh-Varr used again after he was re-vamped in Dark Avengers, but overall so far this really isn’t doing it for me.  Hope the plot picks p pace soon.  Also hope we’ll see why Wonder Man is acting up, he’s really out of character at the moment and I think that jars too.  As for the line-up, well at the end of Dark Reign, Steve Rogers basically said anyone who wanted to be and avenger was, but there was going to be a core team, and it’s a slightly odd hybrid between classic and Bendis, so we have Iron Man, Thor, Captain America (Bucky Barnes) and Hawkeye, with Spider-Man, Spider-Woman and Wolverine coming from the Bendis era.  It actually works quite well although I still don’t think Spider-Man and Wolverine work in Avengers.  A nice addition is Maria Hill, former Director of SHIELD as their liaison; in fact the three teams all have a liaison which is a nice touch.

New Avengers
 The plot here is a little different.  Luke cage was a little put off that cap was returning things to business as usual, so cap gave him his own Avengers team.  Aside from the main squad he has his pick of members and he gets Avengers mansion to live in.  Funny thing about New Avengers, most of the members have another super-team.  Cage leads the Thunderbolts, Hawkeye, Spider-Man and Wolverine are all Avengers (actually lets not go into how many teams Wolverine is on, he does at least joke about it being his mutant power) and Thing is still on the Fantastic Four.  In fact only Iron Fist, Ms Marvel, Mockingbird and Jewel have no other affiliation.  They also have a Liaison in the form of Victoria Hand, Osborne’s second in command when HAMMER were running things, and probably one of the most interesting characters invented for Dark Reign.  Despite my mockery, it is actually pretty enjoyable; the plot is leading on from Dr Strange loosing his role as Sorcerer supreme and has mystic foes possessing various team members and in the last issue all appears to be linked to the Ancient One.  While Bendis’ writing seems out of place on Avengers it fits well with the team dynamic in New Avengers, hell half his team are usually in as wisecracking jokers in some form.  Immomen’s art is bright  Overall this is really promising which is a great turnaround as New Avengers titles have previously been the most forgettable for me.

Secret Avengers
This one had me a little excited, but then it had the advantage over every other comic bar Iron Man, War Machine was in it.  While the world is more Heroic, Steve Rogers leads a more covert squad to deal with serious problems hopefully before they become serious.  The Team isn’t exactly A-list, featuring Steve Rogers, War Machine, Black Widow, Valerie, Beast, Moon Knight, Nova and Ant Man (Eric O’Grady), plus Steve’s Girlfriend Sharon Carter as Liaison.  Not A-List but then they are meant to be a more covert squad.  So far it’s had a nice mix of espionage, mystery, in the secret society stalking the team apparently lead by nick Fury, and action, then I shouldn’t have doubted this from Ed Brubraker, who is definitely one of Marvel’s top writers.  Mike Deodato does a star turn on art as well giving us both luxury penthouses and Martian dig sites with ease.  I have a possible theory for this team, with Steve’s “Everyone Is an avenger now” idea I wonder if the roster for Secret Avengers might fluctuate a bit, with Steve doing Mission: Impossible style selections for each specific case.  I’d quite like that although the end of the first arc doesn’t really support this.  It did remove my misgivings regarding Nova being on the team as at the end he flies off and cap notes that he won’t be a reliable team member with his cosmic responsibilities.  Still, I know the story needed Nova but does Cap carry so much weight that Nova would say “Sorry trainee corps, but your most powerful member has to go off and do something for cap, good luck with the evil universe breaking into ours and all.”  Still, interesting stuff, and if it is Nick Fury in this secret society, does that link to the “Zodiac” society we’ve had glimpses of in Secret Warriors?  Or is Nick Fury the Wolverine of secret societies.  The story itself was a good setup involving the Serpent crown, secret societies and a huge throwdown on Mars.  A very solid title indeed.

Avengers Academy
I got over my initial disappointment that this wasn’t a knockabout comedy where mismatched wise-cracking recruits try to defeat the evil machinations of an overbearing guy called Harris.  Instead this replaces The Initiative and so for me has some big shoes to fill.  Fortunately it doesn’t disappoint.  We see a new batch of recruits, all near screw ups, most suffered some sort of abuse under HAMMER rule, all have one thing in common, as they find out they were the kids thought most likely to turn to villainy so the Avengers Academy faculty, as well as teaching them mastery of their powers also have to prevent them from turning.  Christos Gauge has a very nice setup, with the character Veil being the voice for #1 and Finesse for #2, and so far seems to continue through the following isses.  Once the twist is revealed near the end of #1, you can see quite clearly how close our young students are to villains.  Nice to see familiar faces in the faculty as well, although it seems to have its share of screw ups.  Wasp (Hank Pym) leads with Justice, Tigra, Quicksilver and Speedball as trainers.  I’m sure many fans are glad to see the back of Speedball’s Penance phase, me included but it is nice to see Speedball isn’t entirely recovered and back to normal yet, so it doesn't have the stink of a retcon, just progress.  Mike McKone had not been on my radar before, but I do like his work in this.  More importantly, I liked The Initiative because it seemed like Marvel were trying to introduce some new characters and be a little creative, after all in Marvel and DC New Heroes are pretty rare.  What I like about this is that I could believe we may loose a few recruits to villainy, and that would make things very interesting.  This title is half way through its crossover with Thunderbolts called “Scared Straight” while it involves some of the T-Bolts it can be read in isolation (In fact the prison shutdown is handled in less than an issue over in Thunderbolts) but it is interesting to see the members who were directly harmed by osbourne teaming up to go after him.

Looking for cuts in all the wrong places

Surprisingly, we didn’t see the real extent of the coalition’s plans for budget reduction during the budget.  In fact it’s been an ongoing series of small announcements that has shown the full extent of the cuts that they propose.

Much has been written (And very well written) in other places regarding whether these cuts are even necessary, and at base many of them have a point.  It is ideological from the Tory side to reduce the size of the state and favour the private sector.  My problem is that this ideological crusade for “Small state” is blinkering them to better ways at promoting recovery and saving money.
I’m going to try and stay off the “Evil Tory” narrative and portray this purely as how I see it, bearing in mind that I’m an engineer not an economist.

During the election campaign Cameron talked about reducing council wastage, seemingly a war on glossy leaflets and expensive police cars.  (The police car story in question was pretty well debunked) At the time I wondered if there were really enough savings in this area to hack chunks out of the deficit.  Now, I understand every little helps, but, like the police car story I think much of this has been based on a perception of reality rather than reality, namely that councils are full of jobsworths who haemorrhage money in pointless projects.  No where is this clearer than in Eric Pickles recent idiotic crusade against “Unnecessary” road signs.  There he was, on BBC breakfast wondering around London pointing at signs asking “Why is that there” or declaring “That’s totally pointless”.  As I said previously, I’m an engineer not an economist, and so as an engineer who has studied highway engineering I can tell Mr Pickles that the road signs are there for one of two reasons, first, and by far the most prominent will be because the signs presence is stated in the Design manual for Roads and Bridges, which states, amongst many other things, what signs must be placed where and at what intervals.  As the representative of the council said on the same BBC breakfast news, if a sign warning of a speed limit or parking restriction isn’t where it is legally prescribed then enforcement of any charges there is impossible. 

The second reason is that there has been a reported need for such signage, this could be questioned but is quite often borne out of accident black spots, say a one way street which is hard to identify, may well have increased signage.  The only other signs are ones directing you to places.  Now here’s a wee contrast.  Drive through Glasgow, particularly the south side, not many road signs; now try to find the M8, The science centre or the Burrel collection.  All are badly signposted with some roundabouts being completely unsigned.  Compare this with Dundee, loads of sign posts but finding your way around is easy as signs are placed in advance of turnoffs allowing you to find lanes etc.  I did laugh when the council official challenged Eric Pickles to take a trip around his borough with a camera crew and point out what signs he thought were surplus to requirements and the council official would explain why it was there.  Sadly I fear that uninformed blowhards making opinionated judgements will be a sad hallmark of the coalition’s cuts.
The second place where “Wastage” will be cut from the public sector is in staff.  This is based around the narrative that public services are filled to the gunnels with “non Jobs” and that this was a handy way for Labour to appear to reduce unemployment figures.  This approach has two problems.
First, assuming that the staff cuts are these non-jobs, and I accept some of these do exist, although like the savings Cameron said he could get from glossy leaflets I suspect far fewer than are needed to make the numbers talked about, the government is going to be paying these people one way or another, they might as well be recouping some of the money as tax, be it income, NI, VAT or any other tax.  Cutting their jobs means you pay less, but both government and the private sector get less out of them in the long run.  Still at least this one I would concede is arguable and depends on your opinion.

When asked about cuts it is always stated to come from wasteful “Backroom” posts, to you or me this means, admin.  I’ve previously posted on how underappreciated admin staff are, and this is the same thing writ large.  The Coalition is sadly filled with managers, they’ve never done admin, and they don’t understand it or indeed see the point of it.  Whenever admin is being cut anywhere what you have to remember is it needs to be done.  An administrator will do it efficiently, sack the administrator and suddenly doctors, engineers, managers and everyone else has to cover that work.  It means either record keeping becomes sloppy, and this can have serious consequences, or that the people covering admin have less time to do their actual job.  Either work falls behind causing problems or more expensive professionals have to be hired to balance the workload of a relatively cheap administrator.

The third is the daily mail favourite, Benefit fraudsters.  Yes the damnable scroungers who take from taxpayers like you and me to buy their big tellies and tasteless trainers.  Now I’m not a fan of benefit fraudsters, ideally I would like to see them all stopped, but is it really as big a problem as something like Tax evasion.  Well, financially speaking benefit fraud costs us around 1.6bn, quite a bit (I won’t go into the 5bn odd bandied about which actually lumped in errors) tax evasion, and this is evasion rather than all the people doing perfectly legal avoidance, is worth 15bn in unpaid taxes.  So, if you were looking for some quick cash and wanted a group to pursue, which would you pick.  I don’t buy the argument that tax evaders are harder to catch; the actual hardcore fraudsters are every bit as skilled as the accountants working for tax evaders.  I would guess that going after “Scroungers” is a good headline grabber when in reality all that will happen is more difficulty and pressure on legitimate claimants, after all they provide details and so are the easy target.  In fact they recently told the FT that they should be less black and white on tax evasion, could you imagine the uproar if someone said that about benefit fraud.  It would definitely be a better use of scarce resources to go after tax evaders and closing tax avoidance loopholes.  I did like some of the suggestions on the spending challenge website.  These included anyone involved in UK politics or the running of the country must be a taxpayer, and anyone running any news media in the UK must also be a taxpayer.  Can’t see why either of these would be unpopular with the public so I expect to see these go ahead soon, unless Mr Osborne can come up with a reason why not.

The final miss-step I will look at is the seemingly ever-present thought that farming things out to the private sector will always save money.  This is one of the places where the Tory Private Sector good, public bad dogma rears its ugly head.  They won’t consider, despite the evidence to the contrary, that privatisation is not always the answer.  At a basic level it seems simple; you pay a company to undertake running a utility or service at an agreed cost.  The up side is that the company may well already have staff on its payroll and an admin department to save the trouble of running one yourself.  Also, private companies have to make a profit and so will run at maximum efficiency.  This assumes that public run organisations can not run efficiently because of the lack of a profit motive.  While I would agree that many don’t I reject this.  There is no reason why a non profit public utility can’t run as efficiently as a profit chasing company.  Particularly undertaking public services.

Second problem, regulation.  If you take anything out of public ownership it requires independent regulators (Public run organisations are regulated by govt departments) which equals expensive Quangos.  Sadly this is directly tied to the profit motive mentioned earlier.  Regulators are required to ensure private firms provide the contracted services to the agreed standard.  Without regulation the government would be faced with constantly pursuing companies for breach of contract, and anyone following the Edinburgh trams farce can see how easy that is.  Or indeed, to take the example of the East Coast train provider Stagecoach, there came a point where the fines for reneging on their contract were less than the losses they were incurring on running the service.  This was in a regulated industry and net result was government having to take back control, effectively paying for the running of East Coast trains twice.  I suspect that the same thing will happen when Connaught finally fail.

I hope this hasn’t come across as Tory bashing; my problem is that the coalition is trying to solve a huge problem by only considering the world through their narrow ideology.  It is blinding them to other solutions and that can only be a bad thing.  It’s never good whey party dogma interferes with dealing with a problem.  George Osborne has recently said that he wants to see £4 public sector cuts for every £1 tax rise and what occurred to me is that he wouldn’t even consider that the other way around.