Doctor Who 3x01 "Smith and Jones"

So Nu Hu bounces back onto UK screens and it does so with a swagger, a jape and a knowing wink that it's already been commissioned for a fourth series. Which is why Russell T Davies seems to have followed through on his promise to not change a single thing.

Think back to the release of Oasis' third album. The expectation was massive and although the fans (like me!) thought it was great, the critics decided it was just too much of the same, identical to the first two albums. The third series of Doctor Who is following the same tack...except that SFX, Europe's best selling science fiction magazine, still appears to be kneeling in front of RTD with mouth agape. Still, I await the results of the forum vote.

This may be the year that I stop watching. There's only so many dysfunctional families that you can watch in a childrens SF show setting. Like Smallville it may develop into an event-episode watch only: the inevitable Dalek episode; the rumoured Master episode and the series end.

See, even the much-publicised "first black companion" (Sorry Mickey. You've been forgotten about) for which RTD can strike off another minority tickbox, can do something to shake up the program. Most programs in their third series have a shift away from where they were; think BSG stranding themselves on New Caprica. In introducing Martha Jones, a capable enough actress with a sort-of likeableness, you can't help imagining it's just Rose with brains. Which wouldn't be so bad if other things had changed for the better - RTD's way of writing 'generic female companion isn't too bad by itself - but all the usual Nu Hu tick boxes were marked in the very first episode: London? Check! Mouthy family? Check! Stupid people? Check! Sonic screwdriver used as regular mcguffin? Check! Contemporary setting? Check!

Let us not forget this is a program that can go anywhere in space and time - we should be seeing new weapons not gun analogues, new planetary vistas not...what we get, undescribable aliens not anthropods with dodgy voice changers, concepts, ideas - something to make you think! This is a kids program after all and surely it's remit should be to challenge the future generation, not to convince them that London is the place to go see spaceships?

6/10

List of words

This will not be a lengthy post. Or one that's probably even worth reading. If you've made it this far I don't want to see you following me, asking for these thirty seconds of your life back, ok?

This is a big, gopping list of words that I liked the look of. I'm also hoping that a google search might be confused. Here's hoping.

The Common Garden Oik

I'm not a nice person. This has been acknowledged on quite a few occasion including the time I alluded to my maths lecturers weight problem by shouting to the entire class that it wasn't possible for her to be under twenty stone. Beetroot? She was. I just sat there larfing and larfing...Hi Beverley by the way (Peoples College, Maid Marian Way, Nottingham for anyone that wants to enquire after her rotund wellbeing). I like to think I have standards though; I'd happily punch a woman given enough of a pummeling by one but I'd help her stand after.

But not even I'd stoop so low as to SWEAR IN FRONT OF THE MOTHER-IN-LAW.

This has got to be the most heinous of crimes. Murder cannot compare. Paedophilia? A mere trifle. See, it's not hard to continue my status of Golden Boy when you have my brother-in-law. He's the kind of person that tells his obnoxious six year-old daughter to tell other people to F*** off "cuz it's funny". Yeah, that's funny. See in twenty years that your daughter is a delinqnuent drug user like you? See those needle track marks? See those bruises on her inner thigh? That's your fault that is. Harsh but true.

So later when we're at a childrens birthday party and his four year-old niece wets her knickers, he calls her a bitch. Hmm. Needle track marks.

Well, 'Kate' goes ballistic on his ass not that he cares. He comes wading into the kitchen "Aah f***, F***y, C**t". (That's known as paraphrasing). Well, I never thought eyes could actually leave one's head but my ma-in-laws certainly did. You could watch the tumble weeds glide past before another word was said...which was quite some time as we had to fight with a bread knife to get between the bickering pair. It was only later, as is the 'Jones' way, that the truth came out about how she really felt. Which wasn't exactly a surprise.

In my quest for readers I've developed a plan: I shall include phrases on all my posts that are either unique or aim for the more populist google searches eg I'd like to see Britney Spears naked (see what I did there? I got a freebie. Britney Spears? Naked? Freebie? Hmm.) This posts phrase shall be: Reticulating flange

Was The Death Star Attack an Inside Job?

Some important questions need to be answered by someone in authority. Where's your "Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime", now Blair? Eh? EH? Bloody Labour and it's workshy manifesto.

The Quest - an update

Many thanks to Scaryduck for including me in his oh so fantastic link-o-matic. It can't be long before my world domination is...to commence. Surely. Of course, it helps when you actually post to your own bloody blog but with all this free time on my hands I surely must be able to find the time...

Anger Management

I've never been one to get my ire raised easily; I'm a chilly kinda person, I hang with the 'bros and am calmer than Robin Knox-Johnston at sea. But my wife....oh dear. She is the one and only person able to do this to me. A wrong word here, even a sly glance there and faster than a fireman in a flame my tempertaure rises and my steam kettle goes BANG!

This was my downfall yesterday. Small are the arguments we have but they escalate. Massively. See, I don't see the point in arguing. It doesn't get you anywhere, it certainly doesn't make you feel any better. In fact it just serves to create bad atmosphere and increases the things for you to argue about next time. So most of the time my wife argues and I just sit there saying "Yes, dear" which of course makes her even more irate (but I can't help that). It's only three hours later when she's still going on and basically repeating the same thing over and over and over and over again that I start to get annoyed and that's mainly because I'm bored. So I'll retaliate at which point the argument shifts emphasis and what I've just said is suddenly what the argument has been about all along.

Well yesterday I lost it. Under the sofa and sewn into the lining type lost. I stormed over to her, put her wheelchair in freewheel (to no insignificant possible harm to my fingers I must say (ever tried putting your fingers between the spokes of a moving wheel?) and pushed it into the corner. There she sat for a bit until she calmed down. After she'd vented massively at the indgnity of what I'd just done obviously. Eventually, with a bit of help from our old friend Asthma, she'd managed to work up enough courage to apologise. After a bit of crying she even managed to raise a smile. Now, I asked her, was it really worth arguing about wether the cat wanted to go out in the night? I think it's clear who was in the right.

So, dear non-existant reader, what things have you been right about in the past which others failed to see?

NB: Part of this post was made up. Only part, mind.