Cyberclogs

The penultimate episode of Dr Who season 4 was I have to say really a rather good one, with just about the whole cast of companions coming back into the fore, The structure of the episode was actually a bit busy but thankfully things keeping flowing along nicely as the story jumps between the different characters. So it was great to see the return of Captain Jack (and his 2 remaining Torchwood crewmembers) Sarah Jane, Martha, and of course Rose (again). With all the planets in the local constellation being pulled together the Doctor and Donna are trapped in the TARDIS in desperate need to get back to Earth and with no real way to contact any of his companions, not to mention a whole army of Daleks on their way to harvest Earth, and to top it off with the return of their evil creator, Davros, just how could things get any worse?

I felt this episode was definitely one of the strongest ones of the season so far, my only problem with it is I found it hard to follow some of the exposition that was going on as David Tennant was rattling it off about 100 miles an hour, its definitely one you'd need to play back on your iPlayer to get the gist of. Its really good to see all the companions back again and the surprise return of Penelope Wilton as Harriet Jones "former Prime Minister" (still flashing her credentials!). Another slight niggle though is that this episode assumed that people were fans of all the spin-off shows in order to get some of the references, as otherwise I struggled to identify who was that boy with Sarah Jane (until she said who he was) and what's that home defence tech system she has? Also having not watched Torchwood in a while (since the beginning really!) I didn't get who that guy was with Captain Jack either. OK and another slight niggle seeing the return of Davros was good, and Julian Bleach did a fair job as him but it didn't quite scale the heights of Michael Wisher's fantastic original performance, but it would be a tough act to follow. My niggle with Davros though is if he used his body to regrow his Dalek force wouldn't have no body left at all? There is quite a lot of them!

Anywayyy one of the highlights of the episode of course was seeing The Doctor running towards Rose to reunite with her, only to have their wonderful moment ruined by a Dalek, which brings up what will happen next week in the finale? And who is going to die next week? We'll find out.

Sunday is called the day of rest, well for me yesterday was a Sunday unlike any other in recent memory as I did an acting workshop with our group, and out tutor Bill Wright, who put us through the mill of punishment ha ha. Actually it was a really good day as in the morning we worked on text and "action" i.e. putting the actions into the text we read, its not as easy as it sounds, but it was great fun to play and do infront of the group. And we were given a scene to do from a play which I acted out with Judith from our group (who is hilarious and very talented I might add) using an actors theasurus book to help us come up with words or intentions to put into the text, this worked quite but only up to a point as we only got so far with coming up with words to use. It was a bit like a crossword for actors. Bored yet?

Anyway in the second of the day punishment came to town in the form physical work, Bill used the methods of the Polish Theatre director, Jerzy Grotowski, and had us basically run round the room in different ways, leaping, jumping, crawling on all fours etc, it was very demanding stuff. Later we had to use the actions we worked on to incorporate them into our text or monologue, I chose to do a scene from the Alan Bleasdale drama GBH and I did find it tough to combine the movements with the text but I think overall I did OK. So suffice to say today I'm feeling a bit done in with cramp in both legs, it was a really good day though I would do it again but not in a hurry.

Anywayyy moving onto the Doctor Who Episode 11, Turn left, which was a rather good episode, Russell T Davies despite having had many ego attacks writing on this show, making it as cheesy and camp as possible, he does best when he writes episodes that challenge the format of the show. Turn Left certainly does that to an extent by taking a "What if" scenario and expanding it into a story, the story being what if Donna never met the Doctor. The result of this of course is the Doctor dies and all the bad things that happen on planet Earth happen because he isn't alive to prevent them. But then Donna receives a strange visitation from a familiar face, Rose Tyler who tells her she will die at some point and the Universe is in danger.

This episode was a nice departure from the norm and to be perfectly honest some of these episodes work better without David Tennant's larger than life Doctor persona all over them (no offence David you still are good!). The real surprise in fact of this episode and this show is actually Catherine Tate as she proves more than anything she can act. This episode is hers and yeah ok there are a couple of typical loud shrill "Donna" moments but she carries this episode on her own. Another fine example of her acting was actually in the Pompeii episode aswell where she begs the Doctor to save the greeks from the Volcanic eruption (OK I degress). But she can handle the emotional serious scenes very well. It was also great to see the return of Rose Tyler, Billie looking great as usual, her scenes with Donna were excellent. But the highlight of this episode had to be the end where that familiar phrase is uttered again "Bad Wolf". Next week's looks very interesting. My only hope is that Russell T Davies doesn't crucify the ending.

Having just recently watched the 10th episode of Doctor Who, Midnight, I'm struggling to fathom what it was actually all about?? The Doctor and Donna go to the lovely idyllic looking planet Midnight, where Donna decides to chill out at the baths and the Doctor goes on a shuttle ride over the planet, but as usual things go horribly awry on the flight, as an unknown outside influence tries make its way into the ship.

This episode was to be a fair a good change of pace, with the Doctor and Donna separated from each other for most of it, and also no TARDIS aswell. But I really did struggle to get to grips with what it was actually about, the outside evil influence whatever it was, was never identified and where did it come from? What did it have to kill the crewmembers and try and absorb them? I understand being Dr Who evil always has to be afoot and has to do something but in this episode it just wasn't clear what was going on. So by the end I was somewhat baffled and a bit annoyed again by the lack of explanation or exposition, there seems to be a fair bit of that in this year's episodes. Its good to have a bit of mystery but to honest if the mystery ends up just confounding then why bother? Achhh anyway, the next episode Turn Left, looks really promising and sees the return of a familiar blonde haired campanion: Rose.

Well well well, I'm finally getting to writing about The Apprentice finale which was on last week, so a week late eh??! Ah well a lot has been happening, well OK not really but sort of. Enough gibbering get on with the Apprentice then...

Well I was somewhat underwhelmed by the final to be honest, the task itself was pretty unremarkable to watch, design and pitch a new perfume to wholesalers of perfume. The two teams actually both worked fairly well, and we saw the return of six ex-apprentices who actually all contributed well enough to the teams without too much moaning and bitching. The main bitching actually came from Alex and Helenne, two of the finalists who just couldn't agree on anything together! Alex kept suggesting names for perfume bottles and Helenne just kept knocking them back, and she didn't suggest anything herself! To be fair to Alex he did come up with the unique idea of making the bottle design, into a kind of two-part giveway thingy (I don't know much about perfume of course!). But Helenne did sweet FA as usual, I really don't know why she was in the final in the first place! Even ex-apprentice Jennifer commented and said Helenne should be happy to be in the final but she just looked miserable and stressed out. Claire and Lee definitely worked a whole lot better together than Alex and Helenne did, although Lee did feel the pressure mount on him went it neared time for the presentation, something which he does struggle at. But when it came to the presentation Claire and Lee's presentation was by far the better one, Claire I have to say did really well and Lee redeemed himself and kept it together. Alex and Helenne's presentation was pretty bland and they also used some really irritating music to plug it aswell!

But in the boardroom Sir Alan thankfully chose the right two candidates to fire first, Alex and Helenne, they really didn't deserve to win, although I did feel a bit of sympathy for Alex as he drove away in the taxi in tears. Out of the two finalists, Lee and Claire, I really did feel Sir Alan did have a tough choice, they were both really good, strong capable candidates but I really felt Sir Alan did make the right decision, Lee did deserve to win. He was far more level headed and seemed to have a better capacity to listen to someone than Claire did, if Claire did win she probably would have just gotten on Sir Alan's nerves in no time at all, but she would have probably done a real good job. So that's another series over and it was one of the best yet despite a somewhat lacklustre finale, but thankfully I felt the right man won.

Managed to finally get round to watching the latest two part Dr Who story, Silence in the library and the Forest of the Dead. The first part where the Doctor and Donna turn up in a futuristic library with absolutely no one in sight was fairly creepy in places but then Professor River Song (Alex Kingston, still looking good!) turns up in a spacesuit with some crew members also suited up who are trying to make sense of the mysterious forces in the library. To top things off Professor Song seems to know the Doctor rather well (initmately it seems) or at least in the future, but the Doctor has no idea who she is (as he hasn't met her yet!).

The first episode was fairly OK but kind of lacked any real intruige and I felt a bit tired of the storyline by the end of the episode, as the Doctor mainly runs around (again) spouting out confusing expositionary dialogue. The second part picked up the pace a bit more and turned out to be a more satisfying conclusion to the story, with writer Steve Moffat making clever use of technology to "save" people, to quote Professor Song a "Spoiler" is coming: the library has stored all the saved people into its massive hard drive (probably explains all the fragmented scenes with Donna and her hubby and kids in the fantasy world or hard drive). And its up to the Doctor and River Song to get them out.

Overall this story wasn't a bad one, the first half was a bit dissapponting but the second episode certainly makes up for it. Alex Kingston does really well in her role as Professor Song but I was left a bit annoyed at just how little she gave away as to how she knew the Doctor, the only thing the Doctor lets slip is that she knows his real name which she whispered into his ear earlier in the 2nd part. I guess they just like keeping the mystery in all things. To be honest does it really matter what the Doctor's real name is, it could be something either really mundane or unpronouncable (it could even be Phartifukballs!! that was Slartibartfast's original name!). Anywayyss Midnight is coming up next, with the Doctor taking a rather dangerous looking shuttle bus journey. Looks promising from the trailer.

Episode 11 of The Apprentice promised to be a great one and it was rather, as it was the episode we all were dying to see, the interviews. The final five contestants went up against four of Sir Alan's most trusted interviewers who proceeded to grill them all in their own unique ways. So we got the usual bulldog nastiness from Paul Kelmsley (the big heavy gruff one with designer stuble) and Claude Litner (the highly cynical older bald one) and thankfully a bit more restraint and incredible shrewdness from Borden (the beardy one) and a nice interviewer this time Karren (who managed Manchester City football grounds or something at the age of 23) who didn't bitch and goad anyone.

The apprentices actually all did fairly well in their interviews, apart from Lucinda who really did bark up the wrong tree with Claude and Paul, who really got her gander up and brought out Lucinda's aggressive side. But they did raise an excellent point, why is she here? If she enjoys working as a contractor and already earns 100 grand why go work for Sir Alan? Lee did struggle a bit in his interviews, he did well enough with Paul, but Borden dropped a clanger on him by bringing up issues of his education, where he lied on his CV about completing a course that took 2 years but he dropped out after 4 months. Claude also picked up Lee on his CV's various spelling errors as Lee clearly seems to be dyslexic, but to be entirely honest being mildly dyslexic myself I don't think it really should hinder his chances. Alex was less impressive in his interviews as he really kept repeating himself by saying he was so young at being just "24" all the time, in fact Paul just spent most of his interview saying how boring Alex was until he said something about his past that was laudible. Helenne on the other hand probably realising just how crap she has been in the previous 10 weeks decided to go "balls out" so to speak and give her all in the interviews and she ended up being in virtually all the interviewers good books!! If only they had seen her over the past 10 weeks tasks!! But it does appear that with Helenne that task performance doesn't count so much as boardroom and interview performance.

After much deliberation with the four interviewers Sir Alan, it gave him some feedback on who should stay and go, and shockingly enough it was mostly all positive apart from Lucinda. And in the end Sir Alan made up his mind and decided to fire the colourful, fussy yet likeable Lucinda. I felt this was a fair decision though, she was an excellent team leader but she didn't work very well within a team, she was too whiny and hindered the teams more at times than helped them, shame cos she was doing really well mid-way throughout the program, but I think the last two weeks tasks sealed her fate to be honest. But I am shocked at Sir Alan's decision to keep the four remaining candidates as finalists, I mean what is he exactly playing at here? Helenne should have gone for sure in my opinion and I could almost see him fire her there and then but he didn't, so he must be going soft! Alex also rather unpleasantly brought up Lucinda's doubts in the boardroom about accepting whether she wanted the job or not, something which he shouldn't have done. I mean this boy has already backstabbed in the past, he tried to fire Claire twice and he usually takes any opportunity to raise something that will try get someone fired, not good in my book. However I'm quite pleased Claire is in the finale, she has come along way from the gobby big-mouth from earlier weeks, but then again during the interviews that side of her came out again, so has it all just been an act to adapt herself so she can't get through then become all gobby again? Maybe. Lee however I'm well chuffed to see in the final, he's a good all round guy, he can also hold up his hands to making mistakes and has consistently performed better than any other candidate (apart from Claire of course) and deserves to win more than anyone. So next week should be interesting....

Now quickly onto an annoyance: Paypal suck ass, they really are getting on my wick, they have introduced a new policy where any payments are made through ebay buyers to sellers, won't be processed until the buyer has left feedback for the seller or 21 days has gone by without feedback. I mean this really is a bloody swindle, I'd also probably question the legality of what Paypal are doing in this instance. If someone has made a payment to a seller, Paypal should have absolutely no right to withold that payment in fact I think its f-ing disgraceful! This is clearly a problem since some buyers clearly don't remember to leave feedback for some items or probably don't even bother, which means I will need to email them all in future in order to secure payment. Shocking! I hope there are some serious complaints made about this as Paypal repeal this stupid decision. Annoyingly enough on ebay sellers can no longer leave negative or neutral feedback for buyers, which is also really annoying, it gives the buyers alot more rights than the sellers, and leaves out the possibility that some buyers might take the piss in regards to making payment. I don't think its right that sellers on ebay should be biased by either Paypal or Ebay. So let's hope something get's done about this. Rant over.