Doctor Who 5.04 - The Time of Angels
Previously on Doctor Who…
That’s right, folks. It’s the return of River Song.
Here’s a link to Cracked.com instead. It’s okay, I won’t blame you.
Iron Man 2
In 2008, Marvel Studios released a film adaptation of Iron Man. It did amazingly well at the box office, and was well received by critics. This year, the follow up Iron Man 2 has hit theatres. Does it measure up to the quality set by the first movie?
Lock up the liquor cabinet and hide the women. Iron Man is back!
Doctor Who 5.03 - Victory of the Daleks
Previously on Doctor Who, the Doctor killed all of the Daleks at the sacrifice of his own people.
Then the last surviving Dalek killed itself.
Then more Daleks came, and Rose wiped them all from existence.
Then some more popped up from the void between the universes, but the Doctor and Rose shoved them back into the void.
Then a handful wound up in 1930’s New York, but they killed themselves.
Then one survivor defied the laws of time travel and brought back the creator of the Daleks, who created a new Dalek race that was eventually wiped out by the Doctor’s half-human clone.
And thus the Daleks were dead FOREVER, NEVER TO RETURN!!
Damn it to hell
Doctor Who 5.02 - The Beast Below
Previously on Doctor Who…
In the last episode, the Doctor met a little girl named Amy Pond. Then some timey wimey stuff happened, and he encountered her again as a young adult. Then more time travel happened, and he finally recruited her as a companion on the night before her wedding. Of course, she hasn’t exactly told him that she’s getting married yet.
Doctor Who 5.01 - The Eleventh Hour
Previously on Doctor Who, EVERYBODY FUCKING CRIED.
Seriously, this time. In the previous episode, our time traveling hero, the Doctor, suffered a bad dose of radiation poisoning and started to die. He began to regenerate to save his own life. For those of you unfamiliar with regeneration, allow me to explain. The Doctor’s people, the Time Lords, can sometimes cheat death by regenerating. Regenerating allows the body to heal itself of all wounds, but it has the consequence of changing the person’s appearance and some aspects of their personality. Basically, in order to save himself from death, the Doctor had to change into a completely new person. Time Lords can do this 12 times, giving them a total of 13 lives. From this day forward, ladies and gentlemen, the Doctor is on his 11th life.
Wacky Races
Okay, so here’s the premise: It’s a rally race, and the racers are wacky.
Are you still with me? Okay.
Hanna-Barbera made 17 episodes of this show with that very simple premise in mind. It was pure insanity, but you like insanity in your cartoons, don’t you? Of course you do. There was one clear theme across every episode, and it’s that the villains (Dick Dastardly and his dog Muttley) spent every episode trying to sabotage the other racers, only for their plans to backfire. Dastardly and Muttley were by far the funnest characters on the show, but let’s not forget the other 10 racers on the show.
Peter Perfect was your typical hero archetype guy, driving a phallic race car he named the Turbo Terrific. He was the most straight-forward racer on the show, and wasn’t opposed to lending a hand to his opponents when they were in distress. He lost more times that you’d think.
No, he’s not trying to compensate for a small penis at all…
Rufus Ruffcut was a lumberjack driving a car made entirely out of wood. That doesn’t sound too wacky until you realize his sidekick is a beaver named Sawtooth who sat there eating pieces of the car the whole time.
Next was the Army Surplus Special, which was literally a tank driven by two soldiers who weren’t shy about shooting other cars on the track.
My second favorite car on the show was the one driven by the Ant-Hill Mob. They were seven dwarf mobsters in pinstripe suits driving an old bulletproof hooptie. They later appeared on the spin-off series about Penelope Pitstop.
Penelope Pitstop was a southern belle dressed in pink with a dainty little pink car that contained gadgets that automatically put on make-up for her. She wouldn’t become the least bit interesting until she got her own spin-off show.
Why Women Shouldn’t Drive
Professor Pat Pending was an inventor whose car looked like a frankensteinian construction made from a car, motorboat, and an old airplane. He was always converting the car into a pure airplane and flying over the competition.
The Bouldermobile was driven by two cavemen who looked not unlike Captain Caveman.
The Creepy Coupe was a miniature haunted house mounted on wheels, complete with its own thunder cloud and a dragon hidden in the belfry.
The Red Max was like a parody of the Red Baron. He didn’t have a car so much as he had an airplane, and it had a machine gun mounted on the front that he’d use to shoot other racers.
The Arkansas Chug-a-bug was a steam-powered jalopy driven by a hillbilly and a bear.
Finally, there was Dastardly and Muttley. Dastardly and Muttley were simultaneously the antagonists and protagonists of the series. They were the villains, but nobody else in this cast was half interesting enough to carry the show on their own. They were also, by far, the dumbest flipping idiots to ever cheat in a race. Here’s how a typical race would go for this: They pull way ahead of every other racer, set up a booby trap, lie in wait for the trap to spring, and then have the trap backfire in their faces after every other driver has passed them up. Did you catch what they did wrong? They had a car that was fast enough to leave every other racer in the dust, but they wasted their time by setting traps. No only that, but they stayed behind to see if their traps were sprung rather than pulling further ahead.
And why exactly were they the villains? Everyone else was cheating but Peter Perfect and Penelope. Others were shooting military grade weapons, doing drive-bys, breathing fire, swinging clubs, and flying over one another all the time. Yet somehow Dastardly and Muttley took last place in every episode because their methods of cheating were a tad more Machiavellian. Maybe they would’ve walked away with a few wins under the belts if they resorted to throwing explosives out the window.
Wacky Races lasted for one season on TV, but its legacy lived on with two spin-offs: The Perils of Penelope Pitstop and Dastardly & Muttley in Their Flying Machines. Both spin-offs were pretty good, and I’d say a little bit funnier than Wacky Races. Still, if you’ve got the Boomerang network, you can catch Wacky Races every night around prime time and in the wee hours of the morn.
You WISH I was making this up!
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Marvel is planning to relaunch Astonishing X-Men along with a whole new line of comics under the Astonishing brand. That piece of work by Kaare Andrews will be the X-Men’s new looks. If you think it’s as hilarious bad as I do, then don’t worry. Marvel’s Astonishing comics will be vaguely disconnected from regular continuity.
Full story from Marvel here.
The Twilight Zone Radio Dramas
You’ve probably seen The Twilight Zone before. It started airing in the late 50’s through mid 60’s, and repeats of those classic episodes have been airing on miscellaneous TV stations throughout the decades. It was brought back with new episodes in the 80’s, and again at the turn of the century. Basically, if you’re not familiar with The Twilight Zone, then you’ve probably been living under a rock for the past 50 years.
In 2002, a new team of producers got together to revive The Twilight Zone for radio. Dozens of creator Rod Serling’s old TV scripts were rewritten for radio and recorded with many of today’s celebrities in starring roles. Actors like Jim Caviezel, Lou Diamond Phillips, Jason Alexander, Jane Seymour, Hal Sparks, and Adam West lend their voices throughout the episodes, with Stacy Keach taking the role of narrator. Continue reading…
