Once Upon a Geek

Here is another installment of KID WHO! This time we decided to watch the classic episode, “The Curse of Peladon“.

“Kid Who” features reviews of Doctor Who episodes from the perspective of a child. These short audio interviews are between myself and my eight-year old step-son.

You can play the audio file right here on the Once Upon a Geek site with the handy-dandy player below!  Running time 1 minute and 36 seconds.

If  you’re unable to play the file above, please download it here.

I thought a poll might be fun today!  So… who is your favorite actor to play “The Doctor” on Doctor Who?  I’m excluding David Tennant and Tom Baker from the poll because they always top the list of favorites.  This way, I thought you might have to work a littler harder to choose.

Please use the poll in the right-hand sidebar to vote.  If you are reading this blog on LiveJournal, please visit my main site to vote.

I’ve even added an option for people, like Serv, who would rather see Doctor Who die a slow and horrible death.

Here is another installment of KID WHO! This time we decided to watch the classic episode, “Genesis of the Daleks“. Given that the mid-season trailer showed several Daleks and hinted at the possible return of a wheelchair-bound villain, I thought this would be a good one to post. 

“Kid Who” features reviews of Doctor Who episodes from the perspective of a child. These short audio interviews are between myself and my eight-year old step-son.  Please forgive the poor audio quality and the abrupt ending on this one.  It was actually the very first Kid Who installment we recorded.

You can play the audio file right here on the Once Upon a Geek site with the handy-dandy player below! 

Click here to see all installments of KID WHO.

Even if you aren’t a Doctor Who fan, you gotta admit this mid-season trailer just looks great!  I can’t wait for the rest of the season!

If you can’t see the embedded video, click here.

Here is another installment of KID WHO!  “Kid Who” features reviews of Doctor Who episodes from the perspective of a child.  These short audio interviews are between myself and my eight-year old step-son.  Please bear with us as we do these segments.  He’s still getting used to being recorded, and I’m still trying to figure out the best way to interview an eight-year old.

This time we decided to discuss the recent episode, “The Doctor’s Daughter“.  You can now play the audio file right here on the Once Upon a Geek site with the handy-dandy player below!  Thanks to Ed for showing me this utility.

If  you’re unable to play the file above, please download it here.

Welcome to the first installment of KID WHO, a new infrequent segment here at Once Upon a Geek!  “Kid Who” features reviews of Doctor Who episodes from the perspective of a child.  These short audio interviews are between myself and my eight-year old step-son.  He has become more and more a fan of Doctor Who and we decided to record some of his thoughts on various episodes. 

Please bear with us as we do these segments.  He’s still getting used to being recorded, and I’m still trying to figure out the best way to interview an eight-year old.

The first installment is his review of the classic Tom Baker episode, “The Sontaran Experiment“.  I thought this would be a good classic episode for him to watch, especially after he’d seen the updated Sontarans recently in the current series.  Finally, this episode was only two parts, so it didn’t drag on too much.

Link to download Kid Who below:

Kid Who - The Sontaran Experiment - 2 minutes 4 seconds (486 KB)

We hope you enjoy!  Even if you don’t, we had fun doing it! 

Steven Moffat will succeed Russell T Davies as Lead Writer and Executive Producer of the fifth season of Doctor Who, which will broadcast in 2010.

While not unexpected, it’s still pretty exciting news!  I think Steven Moffat is an excellent choice to be the showrunner for Doctor Who.  He’s going to be brilliant! He can do really creepy (”The Empty Child” & “Blink“), he can pull on the heartstrings (”Girl in the Fireplace“) and he can do funny (”Time Crash” & “Curse of the Fatal Death” with Rowan Atkinson).

I liken this to the 1970’s transition from Doctor Who producer Barry Letts to Philip Hinchcliffe. Barry Letts gave us tons of great stories (”Silurians“, “Inferno“, “Terror of the Autons“, “Day of the Daleks“, “Daemons“, “Three Doctors“, “Sea Devils“, “Robot“, etc). But then Hinchcliffe took it in a new scarier direction (”Ark in Space“, “Genesis of the Daleks“, “Terror of the Zygons“, “Pyramids of Mars“, “Brain of Morbius“, “Hand of Fear“, ”Deadly Assassin“, ”Robots of Death“, ”Talons of Weng-Chiang“,  etc). I can imagine we’ll see parallels where Moffat will take us to scarier places. I can’t wait.

It’s a big year for the continuing saga of Star Wars.  This year will see the new “The Clone Wars” cartoon and the new multimedia event “The Force Unleashed”.  Even though I know better, I’m finding myself interested in these items.

Click here to view for the new “Star Wars: The Clone Wars” trailer.  I’m not entirely sure how I feel about this new animation style, but I’m more impressed than I expected to be.  I really expected to hate this look after falling in love with the original Cartoon Network version of Clone Wars.  Lucas says the new style was inspired by the look of the old Thunderbirds TV series.  That interview can be found here.

This new Clone Wars premiers first as a theatrical movie on August 15, 2008.  Then it will be followed up with a television series starting in the fall on Cartoon Network.  This series takes place between Episodes II and III.  Looks like Anakin has a padawan of his own this time, Ahsoka Tano.  On the down side, that’s not Frank Oz doing the voice of Yoda. 

Interestingly enough, Star Wars has another major project this year also.  It’s called “Star Wars: The Force Unleashed“.  It was original supposed to launch in Spring 2008, but now it’s been postponed until September.  I gotta think the postponement has something to do with the new Clone Wars cartoon.

This multimedia event will have numerous products that tie-in.  The centerpiece is a new video game, but there will also be a tie-in novel, a graphic novel, action figures, a reference book, and a role-playing supplement.  This event is being marketed somewhat like “Shadows of the Empire” was back in the 1990’s.  I personally find myself more excited about “The Force Unleashed” than the new “Clone Wars”.

This story takes place during the large gap between Episodes III and IV.  It follows Darth Vader’s Secret Apprentice as he hunts down the few remaining Jedi.  Apparently the story will also explain key plot points that directly lead into the events of Star Wars Episode IV.

You can watch the amazing trailer for the video game below.  It takes a little while to load, so I would load the whole file first, just so it plays smoothly.  It’s worth the wait.

Even though I’ve been let down by Star Wars over the past several years, I’m looking forward to seeing some new adventures.  I’ve got my fingers crossed that they will be enjoyable.

Looking for some background noise while I sorted through paperwork Saturday night, I turned on a Sci-Fi channel.  Being Saturday night, they were of course running their monster/creature movie of the week.  This time it was Sabertooth.  A TV movie made back in 2002.  It was pretty predictable for Sci-Fi: wild creature on the loose, young people in an isolated area, a rising body count, and the requisite hot blond. 

The reason I thought this was blog-worthy was just a split second of footage in the beginning.  The very first shot of the movie was an establishing shot of the laboratory where the sabertooth is being held.  The shot of the laboratory was actually stock footage from the old “V” TV series.  It was specifically an exterior shot of the “Science Frontiers” building, even with the sign and logo in the foreground.  “Science Frontiers” in “V” was Nathan Bates company; also the place where Julie Parrish worked.  If I hadn’t been watching the “V” TV series recently, I don’t think I would have noticed.  I checked the web and apparently I’m not the only person to spot this.

I guess I’m just surprised by this.  I suppose the Sabertooth filmmaker needed an exterior shot of the laboratory and using stock footage was the easiest way to do it.  However, seeing something from “V” just took me right out of the story.  After that I just couldn’t completely engross myself in the movie.  Yeah, that’s it.  That MUST be the reason I couldn’t enjoy the film tremendously.  It couldn’t have anything to do with the horrible special effects, weak acting, or threadbare plot.   :)

Just a heads-up… I appeared in a recent episode of The Unique Geek podcast with the rest of the usual gang. It can be found here - The Unique Geek Issue #65.  In this episode we discuss the rules that we wish Hollywood would follow.