Major Doctor Who geek-out post, here. You’ve been warned.

It’s been known for some time that Paul Cornell, writer of many Who books and the man who brought us the Time Dragons (I refuse to call them reapers) in season one, would be contributing a two-part script to season three.

Somewhat later, and I don’t know how, the rumour was that this script would be an adaptation of what was arguably his best novel, ‘Human Nature’. These rumours were stoked when the girl from Spaced was announced as playing a character called Joan — the name of the main character in the book. Now that a truckload of other actors have been named, all with the names of other characters, it almost seems certain.

This is awesome for at least two reasons. One; the story itself is a fantastic one, and quite an emotional one for the Doctor. There should be tears jerked, is all I’m saying. And two; the key child role in the story is being played by Thomas Sangster, the kid from Love, Actually. Which has instantly put to rest my fears of child actors. Robin Hood fangirls (and I know there’s one of you around somewhere) will be happy to note that it looks like Will Scarlett is in it too.

Adapting an old script has happened before; ‘Dalek’ in season one was in many ways a retelling of the same author’s audio play ‘Jubilee’. But that didn’t bother me as I’d never really been sucked into the audio plays. The books are different though — I like to think of them as having actually happened. In order to maintain my personal continuity, I’ve decided that something that happened in the Time War must have screwed around with time so that ‘Human Nature’ never happened in the first place, but now it will.

Ahem.

So, anyhow, look out for episodes eight (‘The Family of Blood’) and nine (title as yet unknown) next year. They should be great.

The Queen has a Christmas message, Dame Edna has a Christmas message. And so, I thought, us happy folk at atypicalreview.com should have a message too.

Unfortunately, I only thought of it on the night before Christmas, and I’m tired. Visions of sugar plums and all that. I’ve made the upsetting discovery that I’m hopeless at wrapping presents. If I tell you that, does it count as a message? Probably not. Not a very exciting one at any rate.

Let the message, then, be “I want turkey” and leave it at that. Oh, and something about goodwill, and peace, and love. If everyone could make it a target this year to kill one person fewer than they did in 2006, the world could be a better place.

This just in; Ian Thorpe has retired from swimming, at 24 years of age. I’m sure he’ll get murdered in the press — they’ll call him lazy, pathetic, a disappointment. But I for one know that if I could have retired last year I would have. The daily grind is getting to me. My 3-day weeks are wearing me down. The pressure of updating a website on a semi-regular basis. All the television I’m forced to watch.

Like Thorpie, Torchwood is also failing to live up to expectations. I’ve fallen behind on reviews mostly due to rehearsals for the Revue that happened on the weekend, but also because they’re not that exciting. I don’t enjoy writing negative reviews much, and I’ve got at least two that I need to do to catch up. It’s not the worst show ever, but it suffers from a strong case of “what the hell are we trying to do?”

And even though it looks from the outside like an ensemble show, it’s miserably failing on such things, partly because it keeps insisting on only having one plotline to sustain you for 50 minutes of runtime. This sort of thing works in Doctor Who, partly because you’ve only got two regular characters, and more because the adventure genre’s really good at stringing excitements together in a row. Putting five cast members together running through the same plot just gets dull. Let’s have multiple cases in an episode please. Or something.

At least some of the characters talked to each other this week. That was nice.

Putting on the Revue was something of a disappointment too — not that anything was wrong with it, particularly, but the fun of putting on a musical, putting all the songs and scenes together and getting something bigger and cooler as a result is completely missing from stringing a bunch of unrelated songs together. Of course, there was a lot less effort involved, too, but I’m left feeling like I paid half price for something a quarter as good.

Everyone online is talking about how good the new James Bond flick Casino Royale is, but it’s not out here for another two weeks. You’d think I’d be used to this sort of crap, but I’ve grown accustomed to getting everything at the same time as everyone else in recent years, for one reason or another.

Not everything’s disappointing. Battlestar Galactica continues to rock. There’s a Christmas special of Doctor Who around the corner. The next Harry Potter film looks like it might be better in film-form than in book-form.

Retiring at 24. Jealousy just doesn’t cover it.