ThaOGDreamWeaver

Just ahead of tonight's ep: the sad news that the OG Tess Annie Wersching (also ST:Picard's Borg Queen, Bosch, 24, Vampire Diaries and others) has died at the age of 45. Cancer sucks. May she rest in light. Okay, here we go...

R-JP is best known for being arm candy in Bridgerton, and would rather not be known for work on The Gray Man.

So did everyone else. He's in Shada, a Tom Baker serial that was never completed due to a strike at the BBC. It was completed a few years back with animation and voiceovers. Doug also reused Reg in Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, where we discover the only thing that can kill a TARDIS is hooking it up to the British phone system. On a very tangential note... ...the frequent strikes in the UK in the 70s came back to haunt me when I was working for another TV company in the early 2000s. This creepy little no-budget number was an April Fool's Day special for 1977, but another strike delayed it to the summer - accidentally War Of The Worlds'ing the UK. Where do I fit in? Well, for the station's 40th anniversary, I put some clips online and a nice history site about it. And got death threats. And all the clips stolen, syndicated to a bunch of different sites, some re-edited with bible quotes to prove its authenticity. Yup, conspiracy theorists believe to this day that Alt/3 was real (it wasn't) and was suppressed by the US government (it was).

Well, this being a tIme travel series, earlier/later versions of Rassilon or anybody could show up anywhere/anywhen. In the New Who series, Rassilon's been played by Tim Dalton (in full scenery chewing mode driving John Simm mad and ending Tennant's first run) and Donald Sumpter (killing Clara and imprisoning Capaldi for four billion years, which seems to have annoyed him a bit). The other one that'd be fun to show up is Regius Professor "Reg" Urban Chronotis, created by one Douglas Adams. A Time Lord who's been quietly living and working as a professor at Cambridge for the last couple of hundred years. His colleagues have noticed he doesn't seem to change, age, or die, but being British think it's impolite to mention it.

Midnight Star - Freakazoids

Trailer 2: not quite as strong as the first, but still fun. And Hugh being a git.

Puddles Pity Party - Friday I'm In Love On Thunder Road

Episode 2 spoilerage ahoy:

Ultravox - Love's Great Adventure

Pannonia Allstars - Imperial Reggae

Depeche Mode - Never Let Me Down Again

Having watched through Ep1 myself... I know of LoU and have read much praise for it, but never played it, so I'm coming in fresh. This is A Good Thing. But if LoU players do show up here, please let us know about any in-jokes etc they've used. Now we go beyond the wall... SPOILER QUARANTINE ZONE AHOY!

Melbourne Ska Orchestra - Theme From Get Smart

US3 - Cantaloop (Flip Fantasia)

Black Gryph0n & Baasik - Insane

Sky - Toccata

So, Last Of Us is among us, and... it's apparently very good indeed. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-64261582 Admittedly the writers had a lot more to work with than (and live up to) than most game adaptations. But well done. Well done indeed. Now if we could just pitch a City Of Heroes adap to the same writers...

Ah, more Pedro content. Excellent. If I had a comment, it's that this trailer is rich in pretty... and pretty vacant in content (unless you're as wise in the Mandalore and/or as much of a nerd as m'learned coll' above. But that's a good thing. They may have learned from Andor that not dropping every surprise in the damn trailer is better. Grogu made his choice to stay with Dad - whether or not that's wise, or whether other Mandos accept the little green guy... is more of a question. (And remember that Grogu is intensely Force-sensitive, so he will know.) Sackhoff hasn't done anything cancellable (to my knowledge), so theory of reuniting the remnants under Mandalore The Reforger (or Mandalore The Penitent?) and Bo-Katan not being on board with that stands. Guessing intertwined subplot of crime syndicate bid to "capture" the fledgling, unstable New Republic. Little on the nose for modern times but hey, metaphors gonna metaphor.

I can't find much on her outside the movie. So I guess with both her and Conrad, they've taken a relatively minor existing character and sketched in something new around them. Gives the writers and actors more room to play with, and you can throw the audience curveballs. Assuming you don't telegraph the whole thing in advance in press releases. (cf Arthur Harrow in Moon Knight, but Ethan Hawke still delivered. Also, Sharon Stone was in the running for this role, which is interesting but also telegraphs the plot - Sarandon would be pulling a face-heel turn at some point rather than being outright badass from the first reel.)

Madness - It Must Be Love (HBD🎂 @ Suggs)

Not sure Ted's actually in it much. He's not on the declared cast as yet - and I believe this takes place after his death, when Jaime acquires the Beetle. Then again, George can swing in with a few dad jokes of his own if you're missing out. BTW, Matt Reeves is meeting with Gunn & Safran to work out rules and boundaries for the bright, shiny DC-verse, versus the GRIMDARKPAINANDSUFFERING Bat-verse. Given Reeves' take had a lot of critical acclaim - and incidentally, pulled off a $770m take vs $180m budget during the pandemic downturn - it makes a lot of sense to carry on with that as its own side thing. And it's not like there haven't been multiple strands, styles and writers of the Bat at any one time in the comics.

It is known: Blue Beetle is likely the final release from the pre-Gunn era. Currently finishing up in post. Gunn himself has confirmed it's going ahead mid-2023, following the death of Batgirl. It was slated as another HBO MAX exclusive, but is getting a theatrical. How wide, I dunno. It's the Jaime Reyes version, played by relative newcomer Xolo Mariduena... ...and there's a whole extended family of Reyes to back him up, including veteran comic George Lopez as Uncle Ben Rudy. Obvious Bad Guy looks like your standard evil-version-of-the-good-guy fight, played by fine journeyman evildoer Raul Trajillo. Character is even called Conrad Carapax, which... seriously? C'mon. Do better. But with all these movies, the most expensive actor is usually the Boss Bad. And we have Susan Sarandon turning up as Victoria Kord - Ted's sister. Doesn't sound like my cup of alien space tea, but with a decent script and a Shazam-esque attitude, it could play pretty well.

That seems like depriving yourself of... a lot... of movies. Though I don't think I'm ever going to work through his collection of the last couple of years - he's been working like a man possessed. Some of it's fun (Mandy, Colour Out Of Space, and silly but entertaining FNAF-ripoff Willy's Wonderland), some of it... ...well, if anyone can tell me how in the name of rum'n'raisin fudge this thing got greenlighted, it would be relevant to my interests.