The Dalek Invasion Revisted!

And now, due to unoriginality and the discovery of how to upload pictures, I return us to:



I felt this had to be revisted, to appreciate the humour. Also, I have pictures. Anyway, we start off with that. THAT. That is the first shot. How can it not be utterly fantastic? How can it not be the funniest thing since Batman discovered a small plastic shark attatched to his leg? Well, it gets better.

A quick play around in DVD menus reveals that you can turn CGI special effects on and off. That picture, despite it's sixties glory, had them on. The real flying saucers look much, much better.
Of course, it's better when you see and hear it, complete with sixties spaceship noise and the wobble of it on its string. But I feel the moral is there.

It gets better too. At one point, our heroes face an evil and deadly foe, that for no apparent reason, isn't a Dalek, but an evil monster that's on the lose on Earth for some reason!


But of course, all the horrors of that can't face up to the lethal and deadly ROBOMEN!


These are ordinary men who appear to have had some kind of hair enhancement device stuck on their heads, turning them into stupid looking slaves of the Daleks whos only purpose, I can assume, is to press buttons and turn door handles because the Daleks noticed they don't have any hands. I mean, they say dolphins could be as intelligent as man if they had opposible thumbs, so how did Daleks ever become space faring with only a plunger and a whisk? It boggles the mind.

The theme of aquatic creatures is good, actually, because next up we have the least convincing crocodile since Ace Rimmer decided to go surfing.

The flaw here is not that it's made of rubber (it's not), but it appears to be some kind of small alligator-resembling lizard. Cut in between shots of somebody afraid they'll fall in a pit, it's akin to Team America and the lethal panthers in that. Which is a shame, because the concept of the aliens invading so long ago all wildlife has escaped from the zoos, and although most of it died off, lizards thrived in the sewers, is really quite original, if not ridiculous, but this small might-be-a-gecko just is hilarious.

In fact, they address this on a documentary, I discovered, on the DVD. (Yes, this is a new piece of information I just found). Where they confess to using baby crocodiles, that were about 200 millimeters long. And trying to make them stand up for deadly alligators plauging the sewers. All I can say is; good job!

Of course, no ridiculing of a Doctor Who story featuring Daleks would be complete without mentioning the Daleks themselves. They're special here, for a seemingly inability to speak unless they're moving. They move backwards and forwards whenever they speak like they just HAVE to be doing something while they talk. And during the climax, as they're leader delivers orders, they all resort to driving around him in circles, for no apparent reason. As seen, kind of, here:

There are in fact four Daleks. Driving in circles. While that black one moves backwards and forwards giving orders. As soon as it stops speaking, they all stop, assemble into a line, and leave.

Why can they not sit still? Daleks are not robots, but small mutants inside those suits, maybe they're really uncomfortable and as a result they fidget? I don't know, but it's baffling.

In fact, they only can't sit still when speaking, when by coincidence, lights flash on their heads (for whatever reason, I don't know, maybe orignally designed to warn people a Dalek was reversing, it got wired into the speaking mechanism). As a result of this, I can only assume that the movement controls are by the 'turn lights on and off' switch inside the case, so they keep accidently moving forwards and backwards while doing it.

Anything else to say about them, well, all I can say is: look at them. Just look at them for a moment. And imagine how they could possibly conquer the Earth. Forget stairs. They wouldn't be able to handle a door!

"A door han-dle! I can-not ope-rate this dev-ice!"

Okay, that's not funny. But it's a point!

I'm being harsh. I really liked this story actually. Dare I say, it looked better than a lot of later science fiction, because other than the stupidity of the design of the Daleks, they look like they're made out of metal, and the fact that it takes place on Earth means that most of the shots are outside, so no ridiculously naff looking futuristic sets, and I actually enjoyed the story, despite it's sillyness (but I do have a weakness for silly adventure stories; hence my fandom of the A-team and Knight Rider). So, I confess, I am a fan. This is probably my favourite serial story ever, and up there competing with the new series of Doctor Who for favourite episode. So I confess, I love stories like this, but NOT because it's funny, I really do enjoy them for all the other reasons you might find enjoyment; watching the story, the adventure, whatever the hell the appeal of the Daleks is, it is there.

But above all.

You have to laugh.

Flying Planets

Uni life lumbers along nicely. I've actually used the oven to cook things instead of a microwave, and got a ton of reading to do as usual. I've missed sleeping on mind.

Got up at 1.30 today, it being the weekend, that was nice. And we're already working on our latest film project, which looks set to be great fun. Being a film and theatre student can do that.

Other than that I haven't done much. I've been feeling tired all week, even am now, after sleeping late, but that doesn't matter. I've also been marvelling at old episodes of Doctor Who..."The Dalek Invasion of Earth!!!"....it's so sixties it's the best thing ever. Daleks take over the planet to....remove the Earth's core and replace it with an engine to fly it around the galaxy for no apparent reason!!!

What an awesome plot!

Of course, me and Pete then decided the only logical reason was that the Daleks were going on an intergalactic roadtrip. Now THAT would be a funny film...

Impressive Comment Count

C'mon. 30. It was pretty impressive. On my previous blog that was.

Last night at home tonight, which is a little creepy. Everything has felt so normal these last few weeks, and now I have to return to Uni. Also, the fact I have to read a book so boring I can't stand the blurb suggests difficulty. That and I still have an unfinished essay that I'm finding very difficult. I'm expecting a low mark for it, but I don't think it'll matter overall. I only need 40% to pass this year and I can easily get that.

All in all, I'm very nervous about going back. And I've been feeling strange lately too. Kind of unsettled and depressed, but not about going back. Not about anything. But it hasn't helped me sleep, or do my work. Family issues are still complicated as well. But I'll live.

Being back at Uni will be weird, but hopefully good. I hope I'll do better this term (socially that is), I get the feeling people don't like me but hopefully that'll change. Also, I need to find a house and people to live with, so it HAS to change!

2007

Okay, so at this point in time, everybody does the traditional 'round up the year thing'. Well, it occured to me. It's now 2006. Next year is 2007. Doesn't that sound damn futuristic? You better believe it does! So what better off the ball thing to do than look into future and round up 2007 from a 2005 point of view.

2007. Well, the year starts off fairly dull, with only a new wave of innotive fashion being clothes made from silver foil sweeping the nation. These clothes somehow do something that makes them being silver worthwhile, because, you know, it's the future, and everybody wears silver in the future, according to old sci-fi shows.

What does this mean for us? Well, while Cooper rebels wearing his '04 jeans for jeans day T-Shirt, I finally end up looking like Ace Rimmer and Baird dyes his hair silver for charity, but it stays ginger just like it did before anyway.

February roles about and the flying car is invented, and somehow immediatly becomes popular so that we all feel we're finally living in the future. The good side of this is suddenly car insurance drops rapidely, and finally we can learn to drive the boring wheeled cars while everybody else flies about cheerfully. But we don't care. The roads are empty, unlike the skies that are truly now full (and ironically, taken from us, which is a kick in the nuts for us Firefly fans).

Flying cars and silver jumpsuits aside, life continues as normal, until more and more university applicants mean by March they deploy the flying car system to the Universities, and we end up with flying Uni's, freeing up more room on the now cheaper ground. However, transfers are unavailable, and soon the ground level becomes a pit of mutants who are repressed by those who live on the flying levels (whom we are lucky enough to be included between, having applied years earlier), like some really poor sci-fi plot. Luckily, we see what is going on, band together, and fight to change things in an epic adventre which ends with us defeating the evil John Prescott (who's taken over the goverment) who during the battle managed to sproute one wing and a swirly background, as well as some funky boss battle music, but we manage to defeat him and restore equality to the world.

Then in April we do a few exams, and I discover I like tuna sandwiches, in a shocking plot twist.

June of 2007 is relatively eventful, although we're all a bit tired from the tuna eating and exam doing, so when the source of the Roswell crash is revealed to be a giant evil crab all that happens is Pete says "Arr, it's a big crab like thing" and we continue our lives, until eventually it's taken down by the unlikely Mr Tombs.

The sixth formers finish school in July, but it is too late. Kiri hatches her evil plan of utilising those bands that go on our wrists she gave everybody to deliver electric shocks, disabling the world population and declaring herself Emperor. Then she realises what she said, and declares herself Empress instead.

Quickly the world of 2007 deteriates into your typical opressed sci-fi world, until a band of plucky rebels (yes, that's right, us, quite mysteriously including Kiri as well) and overthrow her by taking her photo, which upsets her enough to win.

Sadly, by August Lynde has used Kiri's former position of power and taken over the world for himself. We all thought that the jokes about Lynde trying to take over the world were just that, jokes, but wow, it all came true, and not only that, with his new outgoing personality he even laughed evilly, at least twice.

But it's okay, because when september ends we launch our first manned mission to Mars, with us on it, since we're kinda international heroes now. Thus we escape Lynde's evil domian only to run into deadly, lethal, evil aliens. A bit of investigation reveals they are in fact not Martians, but Plutoians on a holiday to Mars, thus any excitement over life on Mars is cut short.

Yet, there IS life on Mars. Only it's busy invading Earth. Earth is quickly dominated by alien forces as 2007 continues to spiral into the sci-fi world a year numbered '2007' should be. 'Course, we're on Mars, so we don't care.

That is until November rolls about and we go to do our futuristic Holiday (not Christmas, in the far flung future of 2007 you'll have to be politically correct) shopping, using the Quasi-Net, the new super internet linked between planets, but the deliveries don't arrive. We return to Earth discovering everybody has become mysterons. But we forgive them, because mysteron is an awesome word.

Of course, we quickly grow tired of living under their evil ways, because Holiday will be cancelled without them, so again we take up arms and plunge into an epic battle that tragically results in-

Opps. That goes into 2008, and that's a whole OTHER story.