The Goodies and The Loch Ness Monster

The Goodies TV series ran through the 1970s, with 76 episodes made across nine seasons. Sadly their first season was not actually that good, containing more misses than hits and with material that has dated much less well than the contemporary TV series Monty Python's Flying Circus. That said, the Goodies' trademark scenes of sped-up-film slapstick are good value from the start, and every episode contains at least one such scene and is where most of the lols come from.

But, as I watched through the episodes, by the end of the season I was hoping that things would soon improve to the heights I knew the Goodies were capable of (having seen such classics as Kung Fu Kapers, Bunfight at the O.K. Tearooms, and - unsurprisingly a personal favourite amongst us cats -  Kitten Kong before), and I was wondering how long it would take them to get there - not to mention thoroughly sick of the incidental music song "Needed" which was repeated ad nauseum throughout season one.

So when I sat down to watch the first episode of the second season, The Loch Ness Monster, I was at first horrified by the first thing I heard after the title music (sadly still the inferior first version, not the great one they'll go on to use in their middle period) was "Needed." An inauspicious start indeed.

But I needn't have worried too much, as the episode very quickly improved to a greater height than anything the first season achieved. Not only did it guest-star Bernard Bresslaw (Rell the Cyclops in Krull), but also Stanley Baxter!

As a Scottish cat, I might have been offended by the appalling stereotyping of all things Scottish as the Goodies go to Scotland to try and capture the Loch Ness Monster for Bresslaw's zoo - haggis, bagpipes, highland dress, the usual clichés - but the presence of Stanley Baxter made it all OK, especially when he recognises them as being English* tourists straight away, despite their disguises (Tim's kilt is way too short, while Bill's is way too long, which is a nice visual gag). The show is livened up by Sir Stanley's presence and his interplay with the Goodies, with every scene from after he appears a treat to watch.

My friends and I recently met a Scottish monster too, you might just be able to make him out in the foreground of this photo:

His name is Dragon, and now he lives in our house where he has claimed all the DVDs for his hoard, even the Blakes 7 ones!

Dragon is quite friendly really, and he likes playing Ars Magica (so long as he can play a dragon) and Eternal, where his favourite card is Xo, who is also a dragon with a hoard. He doesn't roar so much these days, as when he does roar at us then Scary Cat rars back and scares him, so now he has to decide what sort of noise he will make instead.

* Graeme Garden is Scottish in real life, but it is made pretty clear here that his TV character isn't.

A Cat Sits on the Eternal Throne

I have been playing a great new game with the (sadly rather generic) name Eternal. It is a lot like Magic: the Gathering except it is made to play on computers from the very beginning, and so if you are playing on a computer - which you have to be, since Eternal is a computer game - it plays much better than Magic.

When I first started I expected I would be mostly playing the single-player story mode and puzzles (which are great fun by the way - some of them are easy but some of them are so hard that I had to get Professor Cat to help me), because I had bad experiences playing Magic Duels against trolls who would do their best to abuse the timer rules to make games not fun for me. But the mannys who play Eternal on the internets seem to be, for the most part, friendly and happy to say "hello" and "thanks for the game" and sometimes even "nice play!" So you will often find me playing in the Casual mode where playing a fun, friendly game is more important than winning.

Sadly Eternal is not purrfect yet - there are not enough cat cards in the game to make a cat army deck (like I did in Magic: the Gathering) so instead my best deck is full of dinosaurs! Magic has been around a long time though, while Eternal is still a young game and growing. My biggest hope for the game in the future is that they put in more cats.

Here is my current Dinosaurs! deck list, which is a lot of fun (especially when Adaptive Predator shows up) although it probably needs some more refinement:

4 Initiate of the Sands
2 Savage Skybrood
4 Seek Power
2 Equivocate
4 Second Sight
4 Static Bolt
2 Twinning Ritual
3 Auralian Merchant
4 Pteriax Hatchling
2 Ancient Lore
4 Avisaur Patriarch
2 Clutchmate
4 Nesting Avisaur
3 Twinbrood Sauropod
1 Adaptive Predator
3 Predatory Carnosaur
6 Time Sigil
3 Amber Monument
4 Primal Sigil
2 Clan Standard
3 Cobalt Waystone
1 Crest of Wisdom
4 Elysian Banner
4 Seat of Wisdom

And in the market:

1 Twilight Hunt
1 Dispel
1 Xenan Obelisk
1 Twinbrood Sauropod
1 Predatory Carnosaur

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: The Curse of Fenric Part Two

The soldiers decide to take the Doctor and Ace to Captain Sorin.

Dr Judson reads more of the translation and in the church basement new runes appear, as if they are making up their ominous foreshadowing as they are going along.

The Doctor teams up with Captain Sorin so they are let go.

Dr Judson is now in the church basement where he sees the new runes, and Commander Millington tells him to use their computer to translate them, since they are too new for Nicholas Parsons to already have a translation prepared earlier. The Doctor and Ace then go into the basement and see the new runes.

"Ace, come here and look at that. What do you notice?"
"This one's a slightly different alphabet to the rest."
"Yes?"
"And, well, it uses fewer characters."
"And?"
"And, that means it's older than the rest."
"And?"
"And, er, I don't know."
"And it wasn't here this morning."

Then Commander Millington captures them.

Nicholas Parsons makes a speech in which he hesitates and repeats himself a lot. I don't know if he was deviating from the subject as well, but as there is nobody there to listen to his speech (except us viewers), I think it indicates that he is going mad. Have I mentioned yet that this is one of Cthulhu's favourite Doctor Who stories?

There is a brief scene of padding where the British and Russian soldiers have a fight on the beach. Scenes of them fighting on landing grounds, fields, streets and hills were presumably cut for time.

Commander Millington takes the Doctor and Ace into his secret lab where they are making poison to drop on the Nazis. Then he takes the Doctor to see their computer, "the Ultima Machine," where they have hidden some poison for when the Russian soldiers come to steal it.

The two mannys who went swimming back in part one talk to an old manny, who says

"You will burn in the everlasting fires of hell, you wicked, evil girls! You have black hearts. There's no love in heaven or Earth for you - nothing for you but pitiless damnation for the rest of your lives. Think on it."

which seems a bit harsh to me, but then I'm only a cat.

Commander Millington demonstrates his poison by poisoning some birdys, which upset my friend Mr Purple Cat, and the Doctor wasn't impressed either. As if having a Nazi office wasn't a big enough clue, we know Millington is definitely a baddy now. He gives the Doctor the exposition about how it will win the war against Russia, who they are not actually at war with.

This scene was nominated as the 20th best evar moment in the series back in Doctor Who Magazine #242, a flawed list that curiously omits to include any scenes from Timelash, and, while they made a good case, I can't help but wonder... if the Ultima Machine is programmed to self-destruct when it translates the word "love," they had better hope that they don't end up translating any Nazi codes or Viking runes that contain the word "love" before the Russians steal it. Symbolism is all very well, but it can only let you get away with so much...

A special effect knocks down a bit of wall so that some mannys find a pot. They ignore it, so it tries glowing green for a bit to get their attention, but it doesn't manage to succeed... yet.

The two mannys go swimming again and get disappeared by a camera transition.

Millington orders his henchmanny to burn all the chess sets he can find. This sounds a bit mad, but then again he did have a set in his office earlier so the henchmanny ought to find at least one. Except that this scene takes place in his office, and the henchmanny leaves without finding a chess set to burn.

Dr Judson translates the new runes, which by this stage are clearly just trying to ominously foreshadow as hard as they possibly can.

The two mannys have been turned into vampires, and they lure a soldier into the water where some monsters grab him.

Ace speaks to Dr Judson and tells him that the runes are a computer program (without using that exact term, so presumably she already used it earlier in the round). This makes him very excited and Ace very pleased with herself.

"And the half-time score: Perivale 600,000,000; rest of the universe nil."

she says, although I don't think we can simply take her word for it as Nicholas Parsons is usually in charge of keeping the score.

The two vampires go in and menace the old manny from earlier in a really over-dramatic, stereotypical vampire way. However it is still quite effectively scary. In the following scene the Doctor and Ace find her body and, because this isn't part one, don't immediately get framed for her murder.

The vampires next meet Nicholas Parsons who quite reasonably points out that "vampires are just superstition," but that doesn't stop them from menacing him until he gets rescued by the Doctor and Ace.

It turns out that Ace did the wrong thing in smugly helping Dr Judson, and so the Doctor and Nicholas Parsons rush to try and stop him from running the program on the Ultima Machine.

It's time for a lot of monsters to rise up out of the sea, but surprisingly this isn't the cliffhanger. It was good enough for The Sea Devils and Full Circle, but not here.

The Doctor, Nicholas Parsons and Ace run into the room to try to stop the computer which is already running the program, and it cannot be stopped. Millington says

"You're too late Doctor!"

and we get a proper crash-zoom to the Doctor's face to end upon.

It is tough to judge this episode in isolation - it is great at building up atmosphere, but the plot has yet to come together fully, with the Doctor, Ace and other characters still seemingly going from location to location as required to hit the necessary plot beats to let the story come out a bit at a time.

We're halfway through now though, and I have hope and faith that it will all start to come together in the next part. (Also I've seen this story before, so I know it does.)

And Now Come Cats!

I have been playing a game called Magic: the Gathering. It is a good game in which you summon your best cats to form a cat army to fight against the baddy's army, which may be made up of vampires or weredoges or zombies or dragons or dinosaurs or even bad cats!

Of course my army is full of good cats because cats are best. The opposing armies are represented by cards that you choose to go in a deck of cards. Here are the cards that I and my friends like best:

Scared Cat may be only little, with not much strength or toughness, but he is cute handsome and he can come back from the dead as a Cat Mummy. (You can see an artist's impression of what I would look like if I was a Cat Mummy at the top of this page.) Also there are other cards in the deck that can give him more strength and toughness.

Scared Cat is Scary Cat's best card.

This cat has a strength of three. He is a fierce cat!

Initiate's Companion is Puppy's favourite cat card, although he also like cards that have wolves, hounds and other doges on them.

Longtusk Cub is only a kitten when he first arrives but, as it says on the card itself,

It won't be small forever.

He can nom energy to get big.

Longtusk Cub is Kitten's best card.

Other cats that nom energy to make themselves stronger are a leopard and a tiger, although the increase to their strength is only temporary.

There is also a flying Vehicle that cats can Crew, meaning they get inside and fly around in it. It was made by the Cat Monkeys of Kaladesh, who are clever inventors who can also give their strength and toughness to other cats. One of the best cats for them to do this to is the Skyhunter Skirmisher.

Skyhunter Skirmisher is a flying Cat Knight. He is another cat who starts off small, but he can attack twice, so that every time he gets stronger he really gets twice as strong!

Scrounging Bandar is the favourite card of the Monkeys With Badges, while Skyhunter Skirmisher is Mr Purple Cat's best card.

Prowling Serpopard is a Cat Snake! That may sound strange, but he is very useful when the baddy wants to use counterspells to stop you from summoning your cat army - because now they can't!

Okatra is a cat God from the world of Amonkat where she is their equivalent of Ceiling Cat, or possibly the Hoff. Okatra makes Warriors, not cats, so she is not like the Maker of Cats.

Regal Caracal is an expensive luxury cat! He always arrives with two of his friends, and he makes all other cats stronger and tougher.

It suffices to say that Regal Caracal is Expensive Luxury Cat's best card.

Ajani is the best main character in Magic, because he is a Planeswalker who is a cat. He is a brave and loyal cat, and he took an Oath to keep watch when he joined the Gatewatch.

Ajani is Gamma Longcat's best card, and mine too.

Nissa is also a member of the Gatewatch. She is not a cat, but she is a good friend to cats and has the ability to give all your cats extra strength and toughness.

This card also does that, representing as it does the vigilance of cats who stay alert even when having sleeps (so not all cats then).

These cards are useful for getting rid of the baddy's army.

Of course in order to summon all your cats to be in your cat army, you need lands for them to live in. Cats are coloured green and white in Magic (unlike in real life where they are coloured red and orange and yellow and green and blue and blue and purple... like me) so that means they prefer Forests and Plains and lands like that, although cats that nom energy also like living in the Aether Hub.

When I put all these cards together I get the following deck, which is called Cats.

4 Sacred Cat
3 Longtusk Cub
4 Scrounging Bandar
3 Initiate's Companion
1 Oath of Ajani
2 Declaration in Stone
3 Skyhunter Skirmisher
2 Prowling Serpopard
2 Aetherstream Leopard
2 Aethersphere Harvester
1 Always Watching
1 Nissa, Voice of Zendikar
1 Oketra the True
3 Cast Out
2 Regal Caracal
1 Riparian Tiger
1 Ajani Unyielding
9 Plains
9 Forest
2 Canopy Vista
2 Sunpetal Grove
1 Aether Hub
1 Tranquil Expanse