Best end credits of all time?

In any list of the best TV end credit sequences of all time, Terrahawks has to be in consideration for the top spot. It is glorious in its full early-80s fake CGI (very much in the style of The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy TV series), which portrays a wonderfully simple concept of the goody Zeroids and baddy Cubes playing a game of Noughts-and-Crosses.

I mean just take a look at this:

Purr.

And in this one the Cubes cheat, lol!

The Brig can't help you now, he's in Geneva

This video is full of in-jokes for Doctor Who fans like me. Look out for two appearances from Kevin Stoney ("a Stoney-faced deceiver") lol!

Cosmos: Sisters of the Sun

This programme begins with a short sequence on the dawn of astronomy when ancient peoples all over the Earth used the human talent for pattern recognition to name constellations and use their movement in the night sky to predict the seasons.

For the real meat of the episode we jump forward to the late-19th century. A scientist called Edward Pickering employed "computers" - a team of women - to map the stars, taking years to classify hundreds of thousands of stars.

The team was led by Annie Jump Cannon and Henrietta Swan Leavitt, who used spectroscopy to determine the stars' chemical composition and came up with 7 categories and 10 sub-categories with which to classify them.

The animated segments of the episode beautifully show them working at their day jobs as Tyson's respectful voiceover keeps things interesting.

Cecilia Payne came from the UK to join their group and worked out that the categories they had come up with corresponded to a star's temperature. Her PhD thesis was that stars were primarily composed of hydrogen and helium (something I would have assumed was known before then, but before Payne made this discovery astronomers thought that stars were made up of the same elements as the Earth and in roughly the same proportions). If Tyson's voiceover was respectful before, he is positively in awe as he describes this, saying it pioneered modern astrophysics.

The next section of the programme is on the life of stars from 'birth' to 'death', including the sun - we see the sun becoming a red giant in 4 to 5 billion years, then collapsing again into a white dwarf, as Tyson discusses the atomic processes that cause these transformations.

Other stars have different fates in store depending on their size and mass, and if they are part of binary star systems. The heaviest stars end up as supernovas, black holes, or hypernovas. Eta Carinae is 100 times heavier than the sun and could become a hypernova, destroying entire star systems and their planets up to hundreds of light years away from the centre of the explosion. Tyson reassures us earth is 7500 light years from Eta Carinae and is safe, but will see it as the brightest star in the sky when it goes.

Tyson closes the episode by talking about how the milky way galaxy would look from the point of view of a globular cluster, in one of the most poetic speeches in all of Cosmos - and echoing closely Carl Sagan's lines from the original series:

"A still more glorious dawn awaits.
Not a sunrise, but a galaxy rise.
A morning filled with 200 billion suns.
The rising of the milky way."

Eurovision 2013

Click the picture to see my score card full size.

My favourite song was from Romania. Here's why:

Euro Visiooooon

On Saturday it is the Eurovision Singing Contest, and we cats are already excited about it.

Here is what I think should be the theme song for the Eurovision Singing Contest, but it isn't really.



Euro Visiooooon!

Chu Chu likes the music...

I don't understand it...



...but I like it too.

Rainbow Trololol

Valentine's Day

Here is a video about Everybody's Big Gay Boyfriend Sir Stephen Fry.

I am posting it because it is Valentine's Day today and Everybody's Big Gay Boyfriend Sir Stephen Fry is my Big Gay Boyfriend.

Big Gay Longcat reviews Star Trek: Spock's Brain

I was going to do The Changeling as my next Star Trek review until Star Cat pointed out that it is just like The Motion Picture only not long.

So here is a review of Spock's Brain instead.

This is the first episode of season 3, and I am sure that when the mannys who made it decided to show it first they thought it was the best example of Star Trek that would keep all the mannys wanting to watch more Star Trek because it is so exciting.

If so then I think they were wrong. There are much better episodes than this in season 3. Almost all of them, really.

It starts with a spaceship flying towards the Enterprise, which is already on Red Alert and ready for action. A woman beams on to the bridge. She makes the lights go on and then off and everyone on the Enterprise falls down to have sleeps. The woman is the only one still awake and she touches Mr Spock's head.

When the lights come on again and everyone wakes up the woman is gone and Mr Spock is not on the bridge, he is in sickbay. Captain Kirk is very worried and asks Dr McCoy what is wrong with Mr Spock. Dr McCoy tells him:

"His brain is gone. It's been removed surgically."

Captain Kirk guesses the woman has stolen Spock's brain and so they will have to search for it. Dr McCoy says:

"Jim, where are you going to look? In this whole galaxy, where are you going to look for Spock's brain? How are you going to find it?"

The Enterprise follows the spaceship that has Spock's brain until they lose the trail. There are three planets that it could have gone to but none of them look like they could have made a spaceship. Lt Uhura detects energy from one of the planets so they go to it.

This scene tries to be dramatic but it is not really because it is so obvious that they should go to where the energy is instead of the other planets. Lt Sulu and Mr Chekhov are being silly when they suggest investigating the other planets. Maybe the woman took their brains as well?

Captain Kirk beams down with Scotty but then he forgets that Mr Spock is not there and asks him for lifeform readings. This shows Captain Kirk misses his friend a lot and is worried about him.

They are attacked by primitive mannys but win the fight using phasers and capture one of the mannys. Captain Kirk speaks to him - he knows things about this planet but he doesn't know what women are and then gets scared of their questions and runs away.

Scotty finds a cave. Dr McCoy beams down with Mr Spock's body, which he can move about with a remote control.

Remote Controlled Mr Spock.

The cave takes Captain Kirk, Mr Spock, Dr McCoy and Scotty inside the planet. They meet a woman called Luma and Captain Kirk stuns her before she can do anything to them. He then asks her questions but she doesn't know anything.

Captain Kirk gets through to Spock's brain on his communicator so he can speak to Spock's brain but they still don't know where it is. Then they meet the woman who Captain Kirk recognises as the one who stole Spock's brain. She is Kara and she captures them.

Captain Kirk asks Kara about Spock's brain but, like Luma, she doesn't know anything. Kara doesn't remember being on the Enterprise and doesn't even know what a brain is.

"Brain and brain! What is brain?" she says.

I know what a brain is. I am a clever cat.

Kara will not let Captain Kirk speak to their controller, who is in charge of their planet, and Captain Kirk suspects it is Spock's brain that is the controller. They escape from their guards (really easily) and go looking for it.

When they find the controller's room Kara is there and she zaps Captain Kirk, Dr McCoy and Scotty, but Mr Spock's body is unaffected so Captain Kirk uses the remote control to get Mr Spock to overpower Kara.

Hoping she will restore Spock's brain to his body, Captain Kirk puts Kara in the teaching machine to give her the knowledge but she will not do it, so Dr McCoy tries it as well.

"He's operating at warp speed!"

Dr McCoy starts to put Spock's brain back in his body but the knowledge is temporary and he forgets half way through. He manages to carry on enough so Mr Spock can talk to him, then Mr Spock takes over and tells Dr McCoy how to finish putting his brain back in.

When he is better Mr Spock talks so much that Dr MCoy wishes he had not let Mr Spock be able to speak again. Lol!

Spock's Brain is a very silly episode, especially when it tries to be serious and dramatic about finding Spock's brain and putting it back in, which is a silly idea in the first place.

It is quite exciting in places and it is good in bits, like when we see how much Captain Kirk misses Mr Spock that he calls Scotty "Mr Spock" by mistake, but there are no memorable baddys like Khan or high stakes to make things tense for our heroes. I always knew Captain Kirk would get Spock's brain back because Mr Spock needs his brain to be in other episodes.

Don't believe Star Cat if he tells you otherwise.

Mystery Solved

I have finished watching Sharpe now, and I have found out the answer to Gamma Longcat's riddle about what the end of Sharpe has to do with the Eurovision Singing Contest. It is this:

Eurovision 2010

I love the mannys' Eurovision Singing Contest, it is very camp and fabulous and it is tonight! I will be watching it with my friends, this is going to be a great Caturday for me.

Here is one of my favourite songs from recent years, it is about pirates!

My pirate friends cannot stop singing it, they are very excited about Eurovision too.

Have a great Caturday everybody, and enjoy the show if you are watching it.

Big Gay Longcat reviews Blakes 7: Blake

SPOILER WARNING: Do not read this review if you have not seen the last episode of Blakes 7 but have any intention of ever doing so. This review will give away all of the ending to the series.

Avon needs Blake, so they go looking for him and find him. But is Blake still a goody or has he decided to join with the baddys? It's up to Avon to decide who to believe, and what to do about it.

Blake, by Chris Boucher, is - of course - the last episode of season 4 and the last TV episode of Blakes 7 ever. It is a very sad story and brings to an end the tragedy of Avon that was begun at least as far back as Rumours of Death in season 3.

It starts with Scorpio! abandoning the base, which then blows up. This directly follows on from the events of the previous episode Warlord and shows there is no turning back now.

Avon wants a figurehead for his rebellion after Zukan turned out to be a baddy. Vila quickly realises he means Blake. Orac has tracked Blake to the planet Gauda Prime, which was also Soolin's homeworld and sounds like a very bad place.

Blake is in a wood, having noms, when he meets Arlen. Blake is a bounty hunter and he kills three other bounty hunters so he can capture Arlen. It looks like Blake has become a baddy!

Scorpio! is attacked and they are going to crash on Gauda Prime. Vila, Dayna and Soolin teleport down first. Tarrant can't leave the controls or Scorpio! will explode straight away, so he can't escape. Avon hesitates as he is sad that he has to leave Tarrant behind, but then he teleports down with Orac. Scorpio! crashes and Avon thinks Tarrant is dead.

Blake is paid for capturing Arlen. The mannys paying him have detected where Scorpio! crashed.

Vila, Dayna and Soolin find an old house. Mannys are looking for them, they attack Vila but Avon arrives and kills them.

On crashed Scorpio! Slave dies but Tarrant is still alive. Blake finds him and they fly back to Blake's base in a flying thing called a flyer. Avon and the others follow them in another flyer they got from the mannys Avon killed.

At the base Blake learns there are a lot of ships coming that they didn't know about before, but he doesn't pay attention to this because he is excited that he is going to see Avon again. He hands Tarrant over to the mannys because he knows who Tarrant is from hearing Slave say "Tarrant" before he died.

Tarrant doesn't know it is Blake but guesses it when Blake mentions Jenna and knows a lot about their group including Orac. Thinking Blake is a bounty hunter and a baddy Tarrant escapes before he can find out Blake is not really a bounty hunter, he was just testing Tarrant. Blake is still a rebel and Deva and Arlen are working for him.

Tarrant is on the loose and he fights with mannys who see him. An alarm goes off. Avon and the others arrive in time to help Tarrant. Blake comes in. Tarrant tells Avon that Blake is a baddy and Avon believes him enough to ask Blake "is it true?"

"Avon, it's me, Blake." Blake is happy to see his old friend, but Avon has been through a lot of things since he last saw Blake and his best friend Tarrant has just told him Blake has betrayed them.

"Stand still," says Avon to Blake.

"Have you betrayed us? Have you betrayed me?"

He shoots Blake three times.

Blake's last word is "Avon."

Arlen shoots Deva and reveals she is a Federation officer. She shoots Dayna when Dayna goes for her gun.

Then Vila disarms and knocks out Arlen.

But more Federation soldiers arrive and shoot Vila, Soolin and Tarrant.

Oh noes! Tarrant is dead! Poor Tarrant.

Avon is surrounded as he stands over Blake's body. He raises his gun and smiles.

The end.

That is the end of the saddest story I have ever seen. Blake and Tarrant (and Vila, Dayna and Soolin) are dead and Avon is in big trouble. I am a very sad cat as I write this and think of the tragic ending that they came to after all of Avon's cleverness and Tarrant's bravery and everything.

Why am I also a happy cat at the same time? It must be because although it is a sad story, it is a very good story at the same time. Everything in the episode drives events towards the final scene and the consequences arise from who the characters are, as established not just in this episode but as far back as Star One, when Blake tells Avon that he always trusted him.

Blake still trusts Avon as he did then, but Avon has been through so much since then - particularly the events of Rumours of Death when he found out that the love of his life had betrayed him - that he believes Blake could have betrayed him as Anna did.

Vila trusted Avon too, until the events of Orbit when Avon proved he would kill a goody and a friend to save himself. But here it looks to Avon like Blake is no longer a goody or a friend because Tarrant, who is Avon's friend, says so and the situation makes it look like Tarrant is right.

Easy to overlook with so many characters getting shot is Vila, right before he gets shot, doing the bravest thing he ever did when he knocks out Arlen. Vila is not my favourite character, but I do like him because he is clever in a different way from Avon and the others, and most of the time he pretends not to be.

Why was Vila brave right at the end? I think he was always both clever and brave, he just pretended not to be so other mannys wouldn't know how clever and brave he was. He acted silly so they would underestimate him. I think this worked so well that even some of the story writers underestimated how clever Vila was.

I don't know how Avon survives, but I do know he does survive because Kaston Iago in Kaldor City is really Avon in disguise. I know this because he is played by Paul Darrow and he meets Carnell who was in Weapon from season 2 of Blakes 7.

Duncan thinks Iago is a different character from Avon but he is wrong, Iago is Avon with only a different name for legal reasons.

This episode makes me feel both happy and sad at the same time, like at the end of a Shakespeare tragedy. It is unlike anything else I have ever watched. It does not feel like a story all by itself, it feels like the end of a story - the story of Blake and Avon that was started when Blakes 7 started.

Now that story is finished. Blake is not my favourite episode even though it is very good, but it is a brilliant way to end the story. It ties together the whole series. Blake is a TV masterpiece.

I wish I was a mountain

(Not really! I love being a Longcat!)

Meanwhile, what has Big Gay Longcat been up to?

I love Captain Kirk!

I have been watching more Star Trek.