Doctor Who Christmas-story

Daily Telegraph has a three-page long Doctor Who Christmas-story, which you can read even if you know absolutely nothing about Doctor Who.

A man's head was sticking out of the chimney, looking at him upside-down. The man's face was covered in soot, he didn't have a beard, and his hair was very untidy. His glasses had nearly slipped off his nose. "Ah," he said, "Now. This is not what it looks like."

Tom went over and peered at him. "Are you a burglar?" he said.

"Okay. Right. This is not either of the two things it looks like. I'm -"

He looked suddenly horrified, then with a great blast of soot he fell out into the fireplace, and rolled to his feet. He was in what might have been a very fashionable suit if you were what Mum called a bit of a waster.

It's very good. Do read it. Link.

Journeyman

This show must have one of the best themes ever.



I love the way the guitar seems to be trying to break away from a loop, eventually successing.
The visuals are also great; they really bring out San Fransisco as a mythical place, where everything is possible. I really love stuff like that; a right picture taken at a right time is greater than life itself, and more real than the original ever were.

That's why I love photography; it's from around us, but magically when you take the picture, it becomes an artefact of more magical reality.

Buffy Season 8: Long Way Home

Buffy Season 8: Long Way Home (#1-#4)
Script: Josh Whedon
Pencils: Georges Jeanty
Inks: Andy Owens
Colors: Dave Stewart
Letters: Richard Starkings & Comicraft's Jimmy

I just finished this. And I have only one thing to say; wow.

Before I start to talk about the comic, a brief monologue on the background should be in order; Buffy the Vampire Slayer aired seven seasons from 1997 to 2003, created a spin-off Angel which ran five seasons till 2004. Apparently TV-film about yet another character would be currently in production and come out sometime next year.
The show was ground-breaking in many ways; and to this day many of the more popular shows use plot-points and characters created here; Veronica Mars and Chloe Sullivan (Smallville) come readily to mind.

Background
The premise is pretty simple; the world is full of evil things, and vampires are pretty much the low end as far as the threats go. Slayer - always a female - who is armed with super strength, damage resistance and combat skills was created to keep humanity safe. When she falls (usually only after few years), a new Slayer awakens somewhere to continue the mission.

The TV-Show
Buffy is the Slayer. During the TV-series she and her friends went thru the education system (high school, university), had few relationships, tried to find their place in the world,, grew to be adults and finally got things working pretty well for them; at least as well as things can go when people around you die more or less frequently.
The thing that made the series great was in showing how mundane supernatural is when you are forced to live in the middle of it year after year. Even the demons have bars and have to sleep and get money somehow. And it might not be very good idea to go to the graveyard during night-time. Oh, and a looming apocalypse more or less annually, usually around May. Better leave the calendar open.

The Comic
It has been few years since the season seven ended. And as Buffy notes, the problem with changing the world is that once you do it... the world is all different. You have more responsibility, and there is nobody to tell you how things should be done. Because everything is new. The book has a nice balance between returning to the characters of the TV-show and telling how they are doing after we last saw them. And even as we follow combat training and assault to military installation, there is still time to catch on how the characters personal lifes have been going, why Lando Calrissian's outfit bode bad for the future (Ewoks!) and wonder who in the cast was harbouring true, unrequired love towards Buffy..


The goodness
If you didn't guess, I'm a huge fan of Buffy (and I don't use that word lightly), so I was a bit unsure how to aproach the comic. On the other hand, it doesn't have the facial expressions, background music or other techniques available in television, and on the other there also aren't any budget limitations for what you can and can't show.
And then there's the one limitation I was most worried off; 40 minutes of TV every week isn't the same as 22 pages of paper once a month. On top of it all I was quite worried about the deconstruction; the style of the later years to tell as little though text as possible to give more space for the art. The books look amazing, but you also read them in five minutes. This isn't the case here; text fills the space, confident that it's needed. And when a truly shocking sight comes up, it is given the space necessary. But all in all, the pages are used very economically, with only few boxes carrying minutes of conversation.
And speaking of the art; there's a certain amount of talent required to make the characters look like the actors that once did the roles, without making the art look stiff and unnatural. Save few panels with Andrew (above), the artist has avoided this in an excellent manner. Good old-school art with realistic yet simple style; no photorealism and no manga, both of which would probably ill-suit the series.

All in all; Buffy is back. With new direction and without the limitations that seemed to strangle the show sometimes during the later seasons. I confidentially wait for the new issues and the TPB's; the first one should come out in just few days.

I'll be waiting for it at the door.

Some songs I've been listening to

Three songs that I have played quite often on my iPod recently.

The first one is from a free concert in Helsinki in -92, and that is the genuine choir, and not some pretenders. This is the version of the song I most like;

Leningrad Cowboys and the Red Army Choir - Knocking on Heaven's Door


Juice was a groundstone of Finnish pop/rock for decades till he died a year or two ago. He had (among other things) very bad diabetes, and his living habits left much to be wanted. It's a surprise he lasted as long as he did.

Juice Leskinen - Musta Aurinko Nousee


Some Swedish band that was the representative of the previously mentioned country in Eurovision Song Contest this year. I heard this song at local music TV while idly waiting for something to happen.

The Ark - Prayer for Weekend


Listen if you care to.

What I watch now

I wrote this last October. Since then I have discovered new shows and abandoned old ones. Lets see where we are, maybe you will find this interesting or not. If you are hooked on good shows like I am, it might be interesting to drop names and recommendations.

OLD SHOWS
Shows that have been cancelled, ended or otherwise will not be returning, but I will always keep close in my heart
BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER - You know the drill. Beautiful blonde girl in the graveyard during night time. Vampire attacks. But the girl had a stake ready. Nice mix of comedy, horror, soap opera (I like my shows with soap) and good plot and acting. I tried to watch this years ago but left with impression of cheap morning action for teenagers. I couldn't have been more wrong. The show is about vampires in the same way as, say, police is about issuing speeding tickets. The hostile list goes from military to nerds and from witches to cafeteria workers.
Seven seasons long, it's a coming-of-age story where the main characters personalities develop and plots run their courses over years. I would maybe say this is very similar to X-Men/Spider-Man circa 1985, with added humour and no masks. Surprisingly, the series was very good (and sometimes amazing) from beginning to end. The worst parts were, imho, large chunks of the first and some of the fifth. But even at it's worst, it's still very interesting.

ANGEL - Buffy spin-off. Where Buffy is about building your own life, Angel is about getting your life back together. When Buffy lives in a world where everything is black and white, Angel is about shades of grey. About group of people who try to do good when they don't really have a reference point where to belong to - be it a goody vampire, failed demon researcher, street thug or former cheerleader-turned-office manager. Rather grim, the main characters betray, cheat and kill each other without much warning.. And still succeed in being likeable people.
Detective-series which morphed into heroic fantasy series and again into corporate politics series. The first two seasons were very good, the third season good, the fourth...well..watchable.. and the fifth is amazing.

FARSCAPE - When experimenting a new type of shuttle for inter-solar system flights, astronaut John Crichton flies through a wormhole to another part of the universe, where he is stuck on a living cargo ship with three escaped criminals. The show is very original Star Wars without epic "let's destroy the Empire"-plot. Most of the series is (at least in the beginning, I'm still in the middle of this show) about travelling from planet to planet and the developing relationships between the main characters, with the main characters trying to find a way home.. but without having any maps.

FATHER TED - Three Catholic priests are exiled to Craggy Island near the coast of Ireland. One for being demented, hostile and alcoholic, another for being unbelievably dumb ("He-Man is a fictional character?") and Father Ted for embezzling church-funds. The show is half-an-hour comedy about interaction with other priests, with their parish - most of who seem to be insane - and their personal differences.

HARVEY BIRDMAN - ATTORNEY AT LAW - Birdman was a hero of Hanna Barbera-animation in the sixties. D-class at best, he is now an attorney in a law firm which represents Jetsons, Flintstones and other Hanna Barbera-characters in lawsuits. Very funny in crazy "WTF is wrong here?!"-way.

JUSTICE LEAGUE [UNLIMITED] - Superman, Batman and other powerful heroes of the DC-Universe band together to fight battles that they wouldn't win alone. Exellent animation, this show had nice humour and the feeling of epic things going on.

VERONICA MARS - in Neptune High, the student body are the children of millionaires and their servants. Veronica Mars is the daughter of the town's former sheriff-come-detective, and focal point and go-to girl when things go wrong and you need someone to put things straight, even if that something involves hidden mics, video, stalking, scamming etc. Good plot, good acting and a sense that things are going somewhere. I once dismissed this as uninteresting. I am happy to be wrong. This would probably have been coming-of-age story, but it was cancelled after three seasons.

Shows I have dropped during the past year
HOUSE - Unlikeable, but genius doctor solves medical problems too complicated to anyone else. He is the guy to whom specialists turn to. The first two seasons were excellent, and I quite liked it. The third and most recent one were quite disappointing. Apparently the network moved off many of the writers of the shows and replaced them with new ones, maybe figuring that once established, show doesn't need as much talent as to launch it. The end result was that the mysteries didn't make any sense and that the character of House himself turned from sarcastic and unfriendly to hateful and unpleasant.
The show is retooled for fourth season, but I guess I will not be watching it. I might take a look at the first episode to find out how they changed it.

SMALLVILLE - Superman as a teenager in a small town. This is basically dumbed down Buffy without the character development, good plot or direction. I stop watching this every year, and then check the few episodes that are relevant to my interests. Every season is about 70% crap, the sixth less than the earlier five.

Shows that I will continue watching once the season starts
AVATAR - THE LAST AIRBENDER - Aang is the Avatar, who is tasked to keep peace in the world with his elemental powers. He is also 12 years old and can't take the responsibility. He escapes and is stuck in ice for hundred years. When he wakes up, one of the nations has taken over the world and is fighting against the remnants of the others. He has to set things straight.
This show has an epic plot, good characters and the third season should tie most of the plot points. It amazes me how this children's animation (look, I have no illusions) really encompasses the term "for all ages" in the original meaning, and not in the "suitable for kids"-way.

DOCTOR WHO - The third season was AWESOME. The first season was very good, and the second was almost as good as the first, but the third one? Awesome. I had a vision how the Doctor should act, which often came short in the second season... I mean, we are talking about character who -given time- can do almost anything, but chooses to limit himself to make things more interesting. The third season really nailed this side of the character, and I can't wait till the show returns.

EUREKA - In a secret government think-tank town, where everybody is a genius and holoprojectors, robots and virtual reality is part of the everyday life, the new average-IQ sheriff has to solve town problems and regular doomsdays due to careless research and button pushing.
TORCHWOOD - Immortal man heads a task force of specialists to stop alien/supernatural things from affecting daily life too much. Spin-off of Doctor Who, for adults. The first season disappointed me repeatedly, but I'm still hoping that the creators will push the concept through next season. It has much potential.

THE IT-CROWD - A very succesful company where the toilets are unisex, clean and well decorated, the view from the windows is amazing -- and it's all owed to the unapriciated tech-support, which works from the basement, answering repeated calls that go along the lines of "Your computer doesn't work? Have you tried turning it off and on again? Are you sure you have it plugged in? It works now? Great." From the creator of Father Ted. This is an UK-show, currently broadcasting it's second season. US-version is in the works for January.

HEROES - People find they have super powers - what happens? The characters are more or less international, and on background there runs premonitions of hellish futures, mass deaths and goverment conspiracies. The first season was good, it would have been amazing if not for the fact that some of the plot-points were spinned to spin-off comics series you could download from the show website. The comics were regularly pretty amateurish and contradicted the show itself, leaving a bit skitsofrenic feeling.

FUTURAMA - This should be pretty self-explanatory. The show gets 13 new episodes/four tv-movies next year.

NEW SHOWS
That I will quite possibly love..I hope
BIONIC WOMAN - After very bad accident that left her without legs and right arm, eye and ear, Jaime Sommers is given new military, top secret prostethics that let her run 60 miles an hour and other very nifty things. What will life be like now? A reworking of a 70s series, with promised new plot-direction, this should be interesting at least.

CHUCK - A nerd who works in a department store's tech help. Then he unwillingly absorbs (in a MacGuffin-way) all the information of NSA and CIA databanks, just before the databanks and their backups have been destroyed. Suddenly he's very important, and he notices that his customers often have guns hidden under jackets and earpieces on ears... Basically James Bond/Mission Impossible action on nerd-habitat. Should be interesting.

TERMINATOR: SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES - Name says it all. Takes place after T2, and I quite think that T3 is no longer in continuity. Good riddance. This can't help but be awesome, no matter what.

PUSHING DAISIES - A fairy tale like show about very introverted piemaker who can bring dead back to live, but only for a minute or somebody else has to die. Suppliments his income by giving hints on murder cases. Think the film Series of Unfortunate Events, but less grim.

REAPER - A 20something slacker finds out that his parents have sold his soul to the Devil. If he wants to keep it from being collected, he has to work as a bounty hunter for souls that have escaped hell. The gick gomes with mental powers, insight about supernatural and regular chatting sessions with very charming and pleasant (but ruthless) Lucifer himself. A Kevin Smith series.

Shows I will not be watching
FLASH GORDON - A reworking of a concept from 30s (50s, 70s and 80s) this very low-budget scifi-series lacks everything that makes it Flash Gordon.

Sliders - creating alternative realities

Few days ago I had the opportunity to see the pilot to scif-series Sliders, from 1995. In the show punch of people "slide" from world to world trying to find a way back home. The plot of the pilot was - to make long story short - about four people who are stranded on an alternative timeline, where Soviet Union had won the Cold War.

For the record, I happen to like alternative timelines, the "what if"-scenarios. But I didn't like this one. A fast plot summary;

The sliders arrive to the new world, thinking they are home and separate. The first is in hurry and shouts a taxi; the second one decides to call home and the rest two (the inventor and his teacher) start to talk about physics in the park where they landed. Then each notices that something is wrong;

• The telephone box doesn't have a coin slot and the operator wants to know if the slider has calling privileges, and thus wants to know her id-number. The operator further mentions that the box is operated by PT&T (People's Telephone & Telegraph).
  
• The taxi driver speaks Russian and not English.
  
• There's a statue of Lenin in the park, instead of Lincoln.
  

The plot starts to develop as the taxi drives through a toll booth, and the slider pays his trip with a dollar he had in his wallet. This promptly gets him to jail.

Meanwhile the three sliders walk around seeing police beating, arresting and even shooting citizens. They stop to buy a sausage from a stand and pay with a dollar. The sausage seller mistakes the sliders into revolutionaries and reminds them not to waive the dollars around; apparently they are used by the resistance as a code. The official new dollars are printed with red ink and have Khrushchev's picture in the middle.
At this point police takes interest in the three sliders and the sausage seller helps them away into revolutionaries hide-out. Once there they see a broadcast from People's Court; apparently the show is entertaining in nature and has a smiling host. During the case witnesses are sworn in with the traditional oath, which ends in "...and help me God". One of the cases handled is that of the fourth slider, who is sentenced to Alaskan gulag for 15 years.

The revolutionaries explain how the world has come to this; how losing the Korean War started a set of events which spread communism to the rest of the world, leaving USA economically separated from the other countries. In the end even USA fell, and thus they are now living in the The Socialist States of America.

The revolutionaries help to free the fourth slider. After farewells the sliders depart the world.

* * *

I found the episode to be fairly painful to watch. The changes were for shock value and not at all consistent; the telephone box wasn't operated by coins but the city (San Fransisco) had toll booths; the court used vows that mentioned God; the difference between streets were the police acted like thugs and the devoted people who saluted voluntarily when the national anthem played and so on.

I have noticed similar problems with several stories; the writers often just replace some things (such as statues) and names (AT&T => PT&T) without considering how the changes affect the larger dynamic of the world. Writing a story is not just about character interaction (while that was pretty painful as well) but about surroundings, particularly in a show that is devoted to alternative timelines.

I don't know why I'm so disappointed. Maybe because the articles I read promised a show with large following and it had nine stars out of ten; maybe because once you see a story that has done it RIGHT you can't help but compare the rest to that one (for example some episodes of Stargate SG-1, Star Trek DS9, X-Men, Buffy.. the comicbook Exiles is all about alternative outcomes of other comics...) .

What is real?

Many TV-series (particularly scifi-series, which are very dear to me) have an episode where the hero has to question what's real and what's not. In the more extreme cases, the hero starts to have flashes where he or she is actually locked in a mental institution, and everything that has thus far happened in the show has been a figment of imagination. This is strengthened by people in the institution knowing about the series chronology, about vampires (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) or aliens (Smallville).

In Smallville Clark Kent finds himself in a such a situation. He is shocked to find that Jor-El is infact a brand of soap, and Oliver Queen (a.k.a. Green Arrow) is the name of the hospital worker administrating his medicine.
Buffy in turn finds out she has been in the mental institution for six years - since the series started - and both her mother and her father are expecting her to come out of it. All that has happened in Sunnydale is just dreams in a sick woman's mind. It makes it even worse that the series questions itself: "sick girl who's in mental ward or super-girl who battles vampires - which sounds more insane?" to paraphrase from memory.

This annoys me on three levels; first it ridicules fans who have invested time to the series chronology. It highlights the built-in ridiculousness of the more absurd parts of the series mythology (hero's super strength, origin story, being centre of the world). Also, for stories to work we have to believe in them, believe in the rules of the world; these is-the-hero-insane stories beg the question is that time well placed.

On second level, the stories don't end well. The mental ward is often thought to be in "our" reality, where there are no Kryptonians or vampires. It is inherently more "real" than anything in the series itself. After you introduce the ward, you also have to explain why the ward was just the figment of the hero's imagination. Otherwise we get to the "it was just all a dream" scenario, the most effect way to lose interest of the watcher.

In Smallville, Martian Manhunter explained how the ward was infact a psychic attack by hostile force, who tried to overtake Clark's mind by showing him that he was mad.
In Buffy, just the opposite is done; at the ward Buffy's mother explains how the friends in Sunnydale are not friends at all but traps that keep her comatose in the real world. The episode ends with Buffy asking forgiveness from her friends - and then cut to the ward where the doctor diagnoses Buffy comatose and we are shown parents weeping. It wasn't a trick, or an attack.

On third, and less popular culture-level these episodes beg the question about life itself. If we interpret the world solely by our senses, and our senses are processed trough our brain - how can a person decide if she or he is hallucinating? A person tells you that you are hallucinating - do you trust the person? Or if two different things claim that the other isn't real - how can you make an educated choice between the two?

This isn't just about me pondering TV-series. I have a friend who sees hallucinations. Doing pretty well with them too, as I gather. Takes medication for it. When my grandmother gets sick, she regresses one year at a time back to her childhood. Mother is going to get me soon. Who are you? Why are you here Uncle? Back from America? When her body gets better, her mind gets better as well, and again she knows who I am..
And while I don't have anything of that magnitude, I do get blackouts when I rise or make sudden moves, during which my ability to see or keep my balance greatly diminishes. They take up to 30 seconds and when my mind clears it always hits me how much on the mercy of few wirings I am. My whole world - literally - is hosted inside a lump of meat. And the distinction is so hard to make; am I living in the world or is the world living in me?

[ To talk about am-I-crazy scenarios, here is a good wiki-link about it taken to it's extreme; Tommy Westphall.

The mental ward or it's variation has also been used in Star Trek: TNG, Star Trek: DS9, Lost, Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis and Charmed. ]

What I watch currently

I found this great webpage, Next Episode which lets you mark up the shows you watch that come out of American television. American shows have week-to-month long breaks in the middle for no apparent reason. Some show might have only 13 episodes per season, but there might be two seasons in a year... or show might have 26 episodes, and then come out two episodes at a time, every two weeks (save when its on vacation etc). All in all, a great service.

Stuff I watch (includes wikilinks);
Avatar: The Last Airbender. This is action cartoon. It has the best qualities of eastern action (fastly moving cameras, cool character moves), good acting, big budget, magic, changed world, hint of romance, bad guys that have good qualities, good guys that have bad qualities etc. It has a definite storyline that has been written in stone. The plot moves forward, and the characters have objectives they might reach only after few episodes from setting them.
Its about a world where Tribe-Nations - each master of one of the elements - fight against each other (actually, Fire fights with Earth and Water). The person who was supposed to stop the fighting got stuck in the ice for 100 years, and now has to master all the four elements, while Fire Nation tries to stop him. The person in question is 12 years old and has a very bad attention span and no idea how the world has changed during his chilling time.

Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law is intentionally made to look like 60s Hanna Barbera-shows (you know, like Flinstones). Harvey Birdman, who used to be D-list superhero, has turned his life around and now works as a lawyer at Sebben & Sebben, taking cases of other animation characters, such as defending Fred Flinstone (accused of being a Mob Boss) or pushing the case of Apache Chef, who has spilled coffee on his lap and cant.. krhm.. grow big no more. Very crazy, very enjoyable.

House is a hospital series centered around Doctor House, who has high moral values and no ethical ones. In one episode he drugged the patient to make sure he wouldnt object to the tests he ran. He also regulary has people break (illegally) into patients houses to find out what they are hiding. Hugh Laurie (of Jeeves & Wooster and Black Adder fame) is House. Again, highly enjoyable but with lots of disgusting graphics.

Jericho is only few episodes out yet but looks very awesome indeed. After atom bombs start dropping, little Jericho in the middle of nowhere gets off without any hits nearby. The series follows the town as it tries to face the new reality. Kinda Falloutish.

Heroes. Another new series. Around the world, few people slowly find themselves having superpowers. Even though they dont know of each other - indeed, dont know the others even exist - they start to find their way to New York. And while they don't know of each other, they walk the same streets and talk to the same people. It's only matter of time before they meet.. and thats good, because in six weeks New York will be in ruins if nobody does nothing.

Harry Potter Part I

I just finished reading the Harry Potter-series. I have known of the series since about 2001. However, I had not seen fit to read any of the books, mostly because I found the descriptions of the series dissapointing and the fans of the series annoying.

I once browsed thru book one, but didn't much think of it. Two weeks ago I loaned the first book from library again (I was really bored and I have mostly read everything else worthy there), so I thought to give it a try. The first one went down pretty badly. I didn't find it that interesting. Second was slightly better, and starting from book three I read the rest inside a day or two per book (the last book went in a day).

Anyway, now that I have finally educated myself in this phenomeon, you would be wise to expect that I will be writting several posts about the subject. That is why there is "Part I" in the topic.

Things I thought to bring up are:
1. The relationship between parents and children in the books
2. The concept of magic and "muggles" in the series.
3. How the concept of these stories relates to other stories in this and other genres.
4. Some problems I have with these series, particulary the target audience.

I do not yet know which of these concepts I will actually be talking about, it may be that I drop some of the topics in the list, and talk of other things entirely. There might even not be "Harry Potter Part II".

Anyway. I have noticed in myself that, when reading long stories on one go, I really start to live the stories. And when I close the last book, I start to feel very small and unimportant. It may be that I live thru much trough the stories, and my mundane life, that goes between school and computer (and friends during weekends) is not that interesting.

Stories that have previously caused myself such immersion could start with the David Eddings' Belgariad and its sequel Mallorean. I reread them last summer and noticed that they haven't really stood the test of time, but at the time (when I was 13) they were really great.
It was the first story I read that wasn't based just on adventure (Tarzan, Zorro, Blyton-books) or on story on epic levels (Star Wars, Lord of the Rings), but had some romance- and soap opera there too, if I may say it so bluntly. I may have talked of this previously in this blog. Since then I have felt so very strongly when I first read Rumiko Takahashi's Maison Ikkoku, Uncanny X-Men's "classic" stories (from #80's up to #250 or so), saw the 90s Superman-series (I watched the first three seasons nonstop) and a read Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth-series (before the very dissapointing last books).

Anyway, should I have any readers, I would ask you to recommend some similar stories for me to sample. Longish, with development between and with the characters.

School Rumble

This was actually one of the two animes I have bothered to watch during - say, the last two years (not counting my eternal love, Rose of Versailles [should write about that too, someday]).

School Rumble is a school comedy, in the heart of which there is cute girl named Tenma, who acts and appears like she would be several years younger than her age would presume; she is pretty bad with school and not the sharpest pen in the box anyway.
The other main character is the school's toughest tough guy, Hajima. The series starts at the beginning of the school year; Hajima returns to school only to be near Tenma, who he loves from his heart. He, like Tenma, is not very bright; for a thought guy, he has a big heart, but people cant see it because he is also quite violent by nature, and fears for his imago (and enemies, who would surely attack him if they would see him going soft). Hajima is also exellent artist, and now and then during the series we see peeks to his manga, which revolves around him getting Tenma as his girlfriend (naturally, the manga has happy ending).
Tenma, too, is in love, but to a guy who can only see... food. Therefore, the two main plots is Hajima trying to propose to Tenma, and Tenma trying to propose to her heart's desire, Karasuma. Karasuma, too, is a character of suprising qualities. All in all, of all the characters, he seems to be most out of this world. Excelling in everything he bothers doing, he dosen't seem to have much social contacts - maybe he is simply unable to creating them.

Along with Hajima, Tenma and Karasuma, the casts consists of most of the class they are going to, 2C. Each of them seems to have qualities not really expected from normal people, or even of anime thats basicly a love story. Tenma's little sister can read minds; class president (in love with Tenma's sister) is also karateka, one of Tenma's classmates is (apparently) half-Swedish, and has problems with her family she seldom sees... and so on.

But the thing that really makes School Rumble orginal is how drastically the genre of the story changes; Dragonball, Initial D, sports, horror... all such and more the story sifts to, and often, only afterwards the viewer gets to know, was it all a dream, or did it really happen? The characters, particulary Hajima, go to the very extreme to get what they want or forget it -- such as becoming a holy man who talks to animals, channeling their wisdom to those who want to know the future. Other particular thing that suprised me was how jokes of the moment, that don't really have any part in the plot carry on and on, while other stories would simply disregard them. Like the holy man sketch; it only lasts five minutes, and the animals are only part of the background, making the joke to work. But few episodes later half the episode is used to tell what happens to the giraffe that Hajima had earlier.

The anime was very refreshing experience. Usually Im bothered by the ammount of cliches these series use, seemingly without noticing. School Rumble avoids most of them, and when it dosent, it gives such twist that you cant help but enjoy. This is, surely, one of the best series I have ever seen. It would, thought, be even better if the show would have definite ending. Now Hajima only finishes his manga, which gives him some small comfort before going after Tenma again; Tenma, though, dosent seem to understand its over now. After the texts, she starts telling about what happens in episode 27 - without realising this was the very last one.

We can only hope that someday there will be OVA or second season. One would really wish to know how the story finally ends. Apparently there is a manga too, but what hope do we have of ever reading it in english (or in any other language I understand?). Chances also are, that the manga hasnt found it conclusion yet either.

Alfred J. Kwak

Remember Alfred? I remember. When I was kid, roughly 7-10 years, this came out from telly. The story was strange; the first ten episodes were about his childhood, and the next episodes - I dont know how many, but there were many, maybe around 40? -about him as adult. I have faint impression that Alfred would have been journalist by trade. He lived in Waterland (Vesimaa, in finnish), which was fashioned to be like Netherlands. From there, he traveled to around world, and even got to visit space. Maybe he timetraveled as well? Or am I thinking the later Moomin episodes? Can't remember. Episodes that have permanently been burned on my mind, included one where he visits oil-trilling comblex in the middle of the sea, and finds that the ancient civilisation of dodos lives in the bottom, encased in glass-domes. Or the episode where he visits Egypt and is lost in a pyramid... I would have impression that there lived an ancient (goodlooking) honest-to-god female pharaoh there too.. but I may remember wrong.

Or how Alfred's old classmate ends up as dictator.. If I remember correctly, he is a crow, and damn proud of the fact. Sadly, he has a secret; he is only halfblooded, and his mouthpiece is infact not black, but dyes it to make it look so..
I also remember he would have visited in Africa, in country with apartheid going on, and would return from there with his new girlfriend (picture).

The mole in the picture is the man who raised Alfred, after he was orphaned (I think his parents got swept in the sea).

Great show. I wonder, would the animation still be as cool as I remember it, the storylines as daring? As I know remember some of the plots, there might be good change that the show had political agenda going on. It wasnt Disney-program; it was japanese production based on some storybooks made in Netherlands. Would be really interesting to see some episodes again.

Valerian and New Orleans

I remember, years ago, reading a french comic book (in finnish, of course), named Liikkuvien vetten kaupunki, if I remember correctly. Translation would be around the lines of "The City of Moving Waters". It was about two time travelers, who come back into past, into the year 1986, soon after catastrophe that makes the timelines nearly impossible to walk during the next few hundred years, a time which separates the modern world and the future, where time travel is possible and Galaxity is the peak of human civilization, culture that knows how to travel both in space and time, and have agents around both.

Anyway, in the beginning story Valerian is looking for his partner, who goes by the name of either Linda or Laura -- I forget. They are in New York City after the catastrophe, evacuated after the waters rose about ten meters over the street level.

Anyway, thats what Im thinking about now.

The parallels with today should not be too hard to see.

Was watching the news, and it occured to me how similar the footage was between NO and Baghdad. The reporters used nearly the same words. The story used nearly the same "plots". There was a person who hadn't eaten in a week, a man nearly mad because he had seen so many bodies float past him etc. The only difference that really hit me in the eye between NO and Bagdad was how welleaten these people looked. Sure, they were probaply really hungry, but its hard to stay serious when woman that appears to be around 100 kilos in weight goes about her dying because of lack of food.

Sure, these people are in need of help. But it wasnt like they didnt have oportunity to step into a bus and take vacation upstate or something, when the weathermen went - probaply in several channels, all at once - "FUCKING GET OUT OF THE CITY" to the viewers. These people thought they could do just fine back at their home sofa. Lousiana (thats where the city is located, if I remember correctly?) is pretty warm place, and you could probaply survive out in the wilds a week or so without depending on food store or anything. Plus the government offered their own staying places as well.

Oh well. Darwinism at work here.

That sounds so cruel. I hope the people will be ok - at least those alive - but of course its just one of the many tradegies in the world today. Concentrating on this one just dosent sound so... right. As it would be cheating. But of course, if you dont have friends or family there, its not really that real to you ,and you can go back to killing those people on computer, and hope you find the Final Bad Boss soon.

Doctor Who

I started watching this when the new season came out (was it last January?). I also watched the 2003 USA-movie, the intended pilot for new series (that didnt become anything). Because this series is so cool, Im gonna do fast summary about it:

The Doctor ("Who" is only in the title, the character itself is just "Doctor") is near-immortal alien, part of race that call themselves the timelords - thanks to their technology that allows them to travel in space and time, instantly. The series is old - the first episodes came out in the early 60s, and the show was on telly till late 80s, when it was shelved, waiting for better days. They tried to revive the show earlier, as I told, with USA-headed telly-series, but the revisions the americans did to the show, werent really that popular (they made Doctor half-human, for examble).

The idea of the series is pretty simple, there are companions, humans from different timeperiods, that the Doctor has taken fancy off, and invites to adventure on his ship, called the TARDIS (whose camo-shield has been permanently stuckt on "police box", as they looked on 60s at Britain). Trhu the eyes of the companions (which switch regulary), is the show seen, with Doctor explaining strange occurences.
Doctor has several "arch-enemies", like fellow timelord who calls himself "The Master", and has devoted his time to become Emperor. Other enemies include the near-invincible robots, the Daleks, that look really sinister with their "EXTERMINATE!" shouts with robotic voices and appearance that mostly brings to mind big pepper-springlers.

While Doctor is more or less immortal, with lifespan counted in thousands of years, he can die; but as timelord he has another trick up his sleeve; he can return from death, up to 11 times before 12th death is final. But there's a catch - while his body regenerates, his appearance and personality changes, sometimes even dramatically. The Doctor has now died nine times and his tenth life is starting up. At this time, he has been old and wise, aristocratic, somewhat sinister and calculating, and "few cards short of the whole deck". On producting point, this ability was developed to allow new actors take the role of Doctor without having to explain the change of appearance. At the same time, the very possible change of real death keeps the viewer on the edge of the seat. It is not unknown for both the Doctor and his human companions to die during some particulary wild adventure...

But about all else, "Doctor Who" is a show of exitement, jokes, sense of mystery and good time. Not that many months ago, "Doctor Who" was voted as the #1 cult-series of all time - over Star Trek, X-Files and many others.