Cliff Hanger

At the very least, get Patient Zero and BFP. The other four are enjoyable (and "Brotherhood of the Daleks" is maybe the most utterly insane Dalek story not written by RTD) but those two specifically set up Charley's post-Doctor status quo with the Viyrans. There's one in between those two, but it's relatively skippable. (Shame you missed out on the $5 sale the day the Charlotte box came out, that's when I picked them up. Did I post about that here? I forget.) I'll be listening to the rest of the episodes at work this week, so I'll mention if shit gets really good or goes off the rails heavily, and whether they fill in any more of the gaps for Charley's backstory. After that, much as I want to get New 8th season 2 I think I'm more likely to circle back and do more First 50 since they're so damned cheap; I've got about half the Sixes now but only two each from Five and Seven.

Listened to the first Charlotte Pollard solo story today. Decent little space opera story about an operative trying to slip her leash, but honestly by the end of the Sixth Doctor stories she's evolved enough since her days with Eight that, along with the fact that they've moved away from anything associated with traditional Doctor Who (no races not exclusive to BF, etc., probably at least in part for legal reasons if they ever need to divorce her from continuity like Virgin did with Bernice for a while in the 90s), it doesn't always feel as familiar as it seems like it should. The Sixth Doctor stories are an absolute must, by the way; you'll be TOTALLY lost if you try to jump from "The Girl Who Wasn't There" or any other point that isn't "Blue Forgotten Planet." I can't really evaluate how a total BF newbie would come in; it feels like it would probably be easier for someone who's never "met" Charley than for someone who has but left off before BFP. The exposition felt like it covered most of the important stuff regarding her current relationships and tasks, but I already knew it all. All in all, it's okay. Glad I didn't wait til the price goes up on 5/31, though; $35 on MP3 is a little steep for the quantity provided (says the man who has been irrevocably spoiled by all the sales they ran from December to March, and has somehow managed to acquire the entire 8th Doctor Monthly Range run plus a half dozen others outside the $3 bin without paying over $5 for anything). It makes me fairly hesitant to jump on any of the other spinoffs, though, since a lot of those look very much like a character or two got created with the specific purpose of creating a tenuously-linked solo run. Charley at least had a good ten years worth of proper Doctor Who stories.

So my replacement PS4 came in on Saturday. It took three tries to turn it on, which of course wasn't a good sign, I set it up to download stuff and then left for about 3 hours. When I came home, it had turned off completely and wouldn't come back on. We are officially in "WTF?" territory here, and because my weekend schedule and work today wouldn't allow me to do so I get to call Sony *tomorrow* and try to get *another* replacement. But hey, I got my copy of Watch_Dogs today from Amazon!

Is uspect they're holding back in preparation for E3, whrn the headliner games turn over.

Every fiber of that being says I WOULD BUY THAT GAME, but then I remember that I'm the guy who can't read text without getting too close to the screen for a Wiimote to work. So, y'know, great idea, count me out.

I played 19 out of the 20 best games of the generation according to IGN, but I don't think I had as much fun with any of them as I did playing music that I don't normally listen to with plastic instruments. Am I crazy or did Microsoft miss the ball by not making sure there was a Rockband/Dance Central mashup with the launch of the Kinect. They could have had a much more diverse selection of music, and drunken dancing. Well, from their (and Harmonix's) POV, Dance Central was brand new when the Kinect launched. Trying to create an entirely new thing in Dance Central, then tacking it onto something that had recently gone from commercial juggernaut to relative failure in Rock Band would probably have seemed like unnecessary complications and needless risk from a dollars-invested POV. It feels like a great idea NOW, but in 2010 it was probably an unacceptable risk to the people allocating development budgets.

Looking forward to listening to "The Maltese Penguin" (the second Frobisher story, written by Shearman of course) tomorrow at work. Currently trying to decide whether I can justify $55 for season two of New Eight this month or whether to just say fuck it, plow ahead through Dark Eyes and come back to the BBC show when I have more cash in pocket.

FYI: per the Playstation Blog, this is your last week to 'purchase' Resogun as a freebie, as well as last year's E3 "headliner" games LBP Kart and Uncharted 3. If you expect to get a PS4 ever, go get Resogun from the PSN web store, you'll regret not doing so. I still haven't gotten to Uncharted 3 yet, so I can't comment on it; LBPK is...well, it's a kart game with a track builder. It's worth your $0, but I've never really latched onto LBP. I would expect XCOM to expire on June 10 as well to make room for next year's PS+ "headliners."

Mark Waid has been publicly gushing over the Flash pilot, which he's seen in its entirety. Given his ten years of custodianship of the franchise, I'm prepared to take that as very good news.

This doesn't go here since it's not an action show, but it doesn't go anywhere else either. ALL of Sealab 2021 is on adultswim.com now, no login/cable account required. Get your fignuts on!

See, I've never heard anyone describe the Turtles as well-defined in #1. they're basically all the same character IMO, and most of their establishing character moments (Donnie's the nerd, Mikey's the goofball, Raph is angry) don't really come til #2 and 3. I remember "Turtles Forever" giving the B&W Turtles all the same voice to play on this, but I could be misremembering. Splinter and Shredder are pretty well-defined out of the gate, but the brothers are fundamentally interchangeable (there's no way that Donnie as we know him later would've been the one to finish off Shredder, for instance) Then again, I'm weird and still consider 4Kids TMNT the best-ever execution of the concept, so what do I know?

So that black-and-silver Kid Flash costume for Future Wally looks like it should work but doesn't, if that makes any sense. I think maybe the open-top mask only works for me with more hair, which is a really weird complaint, but beyond that it just feels off in a way I can't really elucidate. Also, with that much metallic silver it should really be a chromium cover and not a lenticular.

I actually wouldn't consider voting on Wii or 360 for pretty much exactly that reason. I had those systems, but used the 360 about 60 percent for XBLA games like Lode Runner and Perfect Dark, and on the Wii the only 'proper' games I ever bought were the NMH titles and Punch-Out. Everything else was VC. But since MSA got mentioned, it seemed apropos to raise the question because Devil's Crush is still that good.

I remember reading an interview with probably Pulido in, God help me, Hero illustrated (slogan: More Wizard.than Wizard) when Ernie launched and thinking the initial idea of building a universe around a couple of horror characters, then destroying it within five years, was fascinating. Of course, by the time I stepped out of the Marvel/DC sandbox in 96 or 97, Chaos had become Blood-Spattered Tits LLC and i never actually read anything.from them.

And just like that, my interest evaporates. I was prepared to put up with a ninety year old Hank and an adaptation of "To Steal an Ant-Man" for one of my favorite writer/directors. Now I'm just pissed that they rearranged all their plans for the character to meet Wright's needs and somebody (don't know who) fucked it up this badly this late.

Hope for a big party and early screening at Dragoncon like the one they did in 2011 (the last two years the show wasn't in season Labor Day weekend, but that year we got to see the new ep between the UK and US airings on a big screen with BBC blessings and Sylvester McCoy on hand.)

Sad to hear that the Harlock CGI film is ass on toast, especially since it's coming to Netflix.

If they're going to include Metal Slug Anthology, which contained no new or enhanced material from the Wii generation, my pick is "Devil's Crush on Virtual Console."

Up to episode 7 of Arrow. Carter Bowen, huh? PLEASE tell me his dad is secretly the Fiddler.

Or Valiant! (Skip Shadowman.)

Amplitude made its funding and will be coming in a little less than a year. I honestly wasn't expecting it to get there with a Kickstarter window of only 18 days, and being a sequel to a game that like ten people bought (although it appears that 9 of them became games journalists, and the other was me).

Big Finish are doing a one-day sale on box sets: Dark Eyes I, UNIT Dominion, Love and War and a couple of Jago and Litefoot singles. I picked up DE, but I'm only through the first season of New Adventures; is the rest necessary, or is it only necessary to know what happens to Lucie at the end of the radio series (on which I've been spoiled)? Super irritated to be three hours' drive from Doctors 5-8 in Houston this weekend and not get to go.

Out of all the indy-indy stuff that was shown for PS4 last year at the big E3 presser, Transistor was what I was most excited about. For some reason, I thought it was still a good six months away. Watch Dogs may have some competition when my replacement console arrives next week.

Bjornson acquitted himself nicely murdering schmucks; he didn't really do any acting, but he wasn't asked to. If nothing else, he probably has a career ahead of him playing monsters who butcher twelve dudes in one fight and then get killed by the hero. Bronn and Tyrion's breakup was a really fun, oddly sweet scene. Very different than in the book where I read more venom from Tyrion and more fuck-off from Bronn.

He seemed legit baffled that Mighty Avengers is my favorite thing he's ever done and called it "a huge pain in the butt to work on", but he was very nice and friendly. When I explained it was one of my favorite Pym stories of all time, he brightened noticeably and said that the Hank arc was by far his favorite thing about it. (which is funny, because to my mind it was always a Hank book with Herc/Cho/Pietro et al. as a supporting cast more than an 'Avengers book.' Which may be why I like it more than he does, in retrospect.)