Eurovision 2012

We cats all love the Eurovision Singing Contest because it is so fabulous! Yesterday we had a cat party to all watch it:

Click the picture to see my score card full size.

I had a sleep in the middle of it and although I missed Estonia and Norway's songs I had a dream that was much better. In my dream the Shat and the Hoff entered the Eurovision Singing Contest and got all the points, and so they agreed to have a Eurovision Kissing Contest as a tie-breaker. But before they could do that I was woken up by the Azerbaijan entry.

I think I was dreaming about the Shat because I saw him on TV yesterday. He was presenting Have I Got News For You instead of being Captain Kirk in Star Trek, so I didn't understand what was happening.

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: The Ark in Space Part Two

Me and Starcat have been joined by Cthulhu to watch this episode. Cthulhu says The Ark in Space is one of his favourite Doctor Who stories, though I don't know why.

We see the alien fall down again. It doesn't land on Harry and it is dead anyway, so Harry escapes from that perilous situation unscathed.

One of the mannys wakes up. Harry thinks she is a bird but she is Vira really. Vira thinks Harry talks nonsense and I would agree with her if he is going to mistake mannys for birdys. Vira tries to wake up Sarah and her leader, who she calls Noah though she says his real name is Laser. He is always called Noah (even in the credits) so I will call him Noah, though if my name was "Laser" then I wouldn't want to be called anything else.

The Doctor tells Vira that the mannys have all overslept by several thousand years, which is an impressive achievement - even cats would find it hard to have that much sleeps!

The green thing that Harry saw last episode is somewhere else, wriggling and turning handles. It is up to something but we don't know what. The Doctor finds it and it looks really horrible.

Noah and Sarah wake up. Vira has noticed that one of their mannys - Dune - is missing, and Noah thinks the Doctor is to blame. Noah gets a gun and shoots the Doctor before he can do anything to stop the green thing. The green thing touches Noah's hand and he falls over.

The Doctor wakes up when Harry and Sarah find him.

"Oh, he shot me, did he? Cut off in mid-sentence. I might have been saying something important. I was saying something important!"

This is a little joke before the episode gets very serious. Noah wakes up and then he goes and captures the Doctor, Harry and Sarah with his gun.

Vira wakes up another manny - Libri - and he gets scared of Noah. Noah gets confused and says he is Dune, the missing manny, and then he runs away. The Doctor convinces Libri to chase after Noah and then he tells Vira that he thinks the green thing nomed Dune and his memories too.

This is a very dramatic scene and is well acted by everybody in it, but it is just building up to the climax to make it more effective: Noah shoots Libri, and then we see that his hand has turned into a green tentacle!

This is a very scary moment and it is the end of the episode! Oh noes! We will have to wait until next time to find out what is going to happen.

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: The Ark in Space Part One

The Ark in Space is the next story after Robot in season 12 of Doctor Who. It starts after Harry has been interfering with the Doctor's helmet regulator (oo-er, I think) and now the TARDIS has taken them to space.

They exploratron around the ark in space getting into trouble - Sarah gets disappeared, while the Doctor and Harry get shot at by a pewpewpew gun.

They hide under a table to escape it. Harry throws a shoe to distract the pewpewpew gun...

...and the Doctor turns it off. Then they go looking for Sarah.

Harry sees a green thing while the Doctor finds a thing that sounds like it is the Space Internets.

"It's a complete record. History. Music. Architecture. Literature. Engineering... Incredible! The entire body of human thought and achievement."

"Yes, but what's it all for?"

"Posterity? I don't know..."

If the rest of the drawers are filled with pictures of cats then... Space Internets! Then they find all the mannys, having sleeps in a big room.

"Homo sapiens. What an inventive, invincible species... It's only a few million years since they crawled up out of the mud and learned to walk. Puny, defenceless bipeds, they survived flood and famine and plague. They survived cosmic wars and holocausts. And now here they are, out among the stars, waiting to begin a new life... ready to outsit eternity. They're indomitable! Indomitable!"

If that's what the Doctor has to say about a species whose only noteworthy quality is possessing thumbs, then I can't wait to hear what he has to say about cats!

Harry finds Sarah having sleeps with the rest of the mannys. He looks for something to wake her up, and when he opens a cupboard an alien falls out and lands on the camera. 

This is the end of the episode, and I have to wonder if this is an early, more primitive version of the crash-zoom-to-face cliffhanger ending?

This is an intriguing rather than an exciting first episode - though it does have its moments - we only see the alien right at the end but we know it is up to something because there are clues cleverly spread throughout. Part Two will follow next time, but for now all these mannys having sleeps has made me a sleepy cat...

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: Robot Part Four

I am glad this episode starts by showing Robot disappearing the tank again, since it gives me a chance to see if Gamma Longcat was right when he said it's only a model. I still think it must be a real tank, because a toy tank would be smaller.

The story carries on with obvious baddy Miss Winters wanting to blow up the world to make a new and better one, but Professor Kettlewell isn't sure if that is a good idea or not. He makes up his mind when Harry comes in and knocks out a baddy. Professor Kettlewell stops the countdown.

They go outside and Robot disappears Professor Kettlewell. This makes it go blargh; it says "I have killed the one who created me!" and then falls over. Benton nicks off with Robot's pewpewpew gun.

Miss Winters starts the countdown again, but the Brigadier goes around and arrests her. Seeing as Professor Kettlewell has been disappeared, the Doctor tries to stop the countdown. He says:

"The trouble with computers, of course, is that they're very sophisticated idiots. They do exactly what you tell them at amazing speed, even if you order them to kill you. So if you do happen to change your mind, it's very difficult to stop them obeying the original order..."

"But not impossible!"

The Doctor stops the countdown with 2 seconds to go. The Doctor's quote about "sophisticated idiots" suggests that he has been to the future and seen the internets.

Sarah wanders off and bumps into Robot, then in the next scene the Doctor, the Brigadier and Benton are looking for them. The Brigadier muses on how he will stop Robot when he finds him:

"You know, just once I'd like to meet an alien menace that wasn't immune to bullets."

Nobody bothers to tell him that Robot isn't an alien. Benton mentions Professor Kettlewell's metal virus from the last episode, and the Doctor rushes off to a chemistry lab to make it. This makes Benton look smug.

Meanwhile, Robot starts the countdown again. Luckily it goes back to 300 instead of starting at 2 where it left off. Maybe the countdown is really like an internets loading bar? This time it gets stopped with 10 seconds left by a "Fail Safe mechanism" which isn't nearly as dramatic as the last time the countdown was stopped (or even the time before that). I like countdowns, but maybe you can have too much of a good thing.

Robot comes out and the Brigadier shoots at it with the pewpewpew gun (holding the gun in an odd way to do so).

But instead of making Robot disappear it makes Robot giant. It becomes so big that it picks up Sarah and puts her on a roof, then goes around standing on mannys and houses and things until the Doctor and Harry drive along and see it. Harry says "Curiouser and curiouser."

"Said Alice," replies the Doctor. Gamma Longcat says this is a literary reference to Alice being big like Robot. Possibly after she got shot by a pewpewpew gun, we're not sure.

Professor Kettlewell's metal virus turns Robot red, then it gets little again and goes

The threat is over, and the next scene is back at UNIT HQ.

"Would you like a jelly baby?"

Sarah is too sad to nom a jelly baby. The Doctor is about to leave in the TARDIS.

"The Brigadier wants me to address the Cabinet, have lunch at Downing Street, dinner at the palace, and write 17 reports in triplicate. Well I won't do it. I won't, I won't, I won't!"

The Doctor hits a brick but it doesn't break, which is a subtle callback to him breaking a brick at the beginning of the story and shows he is a new Doctor - one who can't always break bricks with his hands.

Sarah says "Doctor, you're being childish." To which she gets the wonderful reply:

"Well of course I am! No point in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes. Are you coming?"

Sarah noms a jelly baby.

They are about to leave in the TARDIS when Harry comes in and, after also noming a jelly baby, is persuaded to go into the TARDIS. "Oh I say!" he says.

The three of them go off on more adventures...

This is a remarkable story because, although I have seen lots of stories with Tom Baker as the Doctor, on videos and DVDs and in books, this was his first! This makes it very special, but if I had not seen Jon Pertwee turn into him at the very start then I don't think I would have known it because Tom Baker is a perfect fit for the Doctor straight away.

I think Tom Baker is my favourite Doctor now - he has a scarf just like mine!

The story of Robot is quite good - with enough exciting elements to keep me happy and enough countdowns that it could have been written by Terry Nation - but it doesn't stand out. There was a film made a couple of years ago which has a similar story to Robot, it is called Endhiran (which translates as "Robot") and instead of the robot becoming giant at the climax, it makes lots of other robots and they all join together so they become a giant robot made of lots of normal-sized robots.

Other than that, the story is very similar except it doesn't have Tom Baker in it so it is not as good. It is a long film and has lots of silly scenes (such as the song about Kilimanjaro) but some of the best bits have been posted on YouTube so we don't have to watch the whole film if we don't want to.

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: Robot Part Three

We get to see the whole of the fight scene between the Doctor and Robot from the end of the last episode again, which takes up the first two minutes of this episode.

Sarah comes in and tells Robot that the Doctor is a goody and not a baddy, which confuses Robot. "I am confused" he says. Then UNIT mannys come in and shoot Robot but the bullets do nothing. The UNIT mannys keep shooting Robot anyway until it leaves.

Benton makes an "Oh noes!" face. Then Sarah and Benton find Professor Kettlewell in a cupboard having a sleep.

The Doctor is beginning to work out what the plot is about. The Brigadier tells him what the obvious baddys are after.

"A few months ago, the superpowers, Russia, America, China, decided upon a plan to ensure peace. All three powers have hidden atomic missile sites. All three agreed to hand over details of the sites, plus full operation instructions to another neutral country. In the event of trouble, that country could publish everyone's secrets and cool things down.

Naturally enough the only country that could be trusted with such a role was Great Britain."

"Naturally. I mean the rest were all foreigners," quips the Doctor.

Then Captain Blackadder comes in and says "There was one tiny flaw in the plan."

Oh wait, it was a different other TV programme that last bit happened in.

Sarah and Professor Kettlewell go to a meeting of the obvious baddys, who are now dressing and acting a bit like Roderick Spode from Jeeves & Wooster to make it even more obvious that they are the baddys.

They capture Sarah and the Doctor and it turns out Professor Kettlewell is a baddy too (though he is not dressed as one - very cunning). UNIT comes to rescue them but Robot helps the baddys escape with Sarah still a hostage.

Harry calls to tell the Brigadier that the baddys are going to hide on location, but then he is captured as well. The Doctor and UNIT go to the baddys base and get past their defences with lots of explosions to keep things exciting.

Then the baddys send Robot out to shoot them with the pewpewpew gun they have made that makes mannys disappear. This makes the Brigadier grumpy but he says "I brought along something to deal with it."

The Brigadier sends in a tank confident that, because a tank is even bigger than a robot, it will beat Robot. But he is wrong because Robot makes the tank disappear too! That is the end of the episode - can anything stop Robot? Maybe an even bigger model of tank? Or maybe the metal-destroying virus that Professor Kettlewell off-handedly mentioned earlier on will turn out to be just the plot device the Doctor needs? The next episode is the final part of Robot so we will find out then.

Some Cats Do Read Comics

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: Robot Part Two

The robot is called "Experimental Prototype Robot K1," which is too long so I'm just going to call it "Robot." This is also the name of the story so it is easier for me to remember.

The obvious baddys who Sarah met in the last episode come in and tell Robot to kill Sarah, but it says this conflicts with its Prime Directive. I don't understand how killing Sarah would break the Prime Directive, but it means that Sarah doesn't get killed by Robot.

Sarah tells the Doctor about Robot so Harry goes to spy on the obvious baddys until the Brigadier has enough evidence to go and arrest everybody.

The Doctor goes to visit Mad Scientist Professor Kettlewell, who says that if they force Robot to go against the Prime Directive then he will go mad. I mean that Robot will go mad, not Professor Kettlewell - he's already mad. Or at least his hair is.

We then see Robot breaking the Prime Directive by interfering in the internal development of another civilisation killing a manny and stealing his paper. The juxtaposition between this scene and the one immediately preceding it represents a clever use of dramatic irony by the writer.

Robot then goes to visit Professor Kettlewell and tells the Professor about his problems - he is a sad robot.

Sarah visits a silly manny who thinks mannys shouldn't wear trousers and who wants all mannys to do what he wants. At least I think that's what happens in that scene, I got a bit confused. But I got the point of the scene which is is that he's another obvious baddy.

The Doctor and the Brigadier visit the obvious baddys and they tell the Doctor that Robot is dead.

The Doctor doesn't believe them but he can't find where they've hidden Robot. Harry visits the obvious baddys too, but he's in disguise...

Harry is disguised as Steed from The Avengers. I'm not sure if the obvious baddys are fooled or not.

The Doctor goes back to Professor Kettlewell's house and meets Robot there. But then Robot tries to kill him so there is a cliffhanger!