Only for those in Melbourne, naturally. Back in April, when the Metcards had price adjustments, they changed the way that 10 times 2 hour tickets work. Now, if you validate them a second time in one day, they automatically last you until 2am the next morning. How sweet is that?

Well, it’s pretty good, anyhow.

I got Neverwinter Nights yesterday, having ordered it online the day before. Pretty efficient. My adventuring career is going well. Except, I keep trying to charm animals, and I do, and they’re my friend, but my actual human friend hasn’t noticed and keeps trying to hit it: which makes it angry and distinctly uncharmed. So I keep trying to charm, and he keeps getting hit by my stupid friend, and one of them dies while I desperately try to keep them apart.

And yes, I know Neverwinter Nights is a really old game that you can get for $20 for a PC. But that is the way of Macs and Games.

Damn that Michael Moore. He’s spoiled my innocence. I used to be able to watch documentaries and think I’d learned something. Now I’m so mistrustful my brain develops layers and layers of “take that with a pinch of salt” that end up feeling like I’ve taken nothing away at all.

Or maybe they just don’t make documentaries that well any more. I’ve just watched the Tony Robinson documentary on The Da Vinci Code which pretty much attempts to discredit every single thing the book says — fair enough I suppose, but it does it without interviews with the Catholic church or any other church. It discusses the idea that Magdalene and Christ were married yet doesn’t talk to any of the prominent Anglicans who have suggested such a thing.

Basically, whenever it talks to anyone on either side of the fence, they’re either engaging in guesswork, or clearly loonies. And there I was, wanting to know THE TRUTH. It’s depressing being an adult. I hope all the cool stuff I used to watch about Egypt was all true. Otherwise I’m very upset.

Until now the main take home message for me from the whole Corby saga was that if you are going to be international drug smuggler, make sure you are a good looking Anglo female in your mid-to-late twenties since this seems to be sufficient proof of your innocence to the vast majority of Australians. But this isn’t exactly news as the Tampa incident already demonstrated the inherent racism of the population of this country.

But it turns out we aren’t just racists, we are terrorist sympathisers too. According to Channel Nine’s highly scientific poll, 20% of our fellow countrypeople think its legitimate to carry out biological attacks on foreign nations who have the nerve to find one of our pretty white girls guilty of a crime. The fact that she had an open trial and her defence was largely based on heresay which wouldn’t have even been allowed to be presented in an Aussie court seems irrelevant.

And yet we can’t understand how the populace of Islamic nations would feel sympathy for Al Qaeda when America imprisons Muslims for years without any openness or any trial whatsoever…

This has probably been happening to all sorts of TV shows and I haven’t noticed, but I’m observing a peculiar trend in Melbourne’s ‘Green Guide’ when it comes to Doctor Who.

Last week, they got someone to review it who admitted she’s never liked any sort of TV that involves any ‘un-real’ elements. Thus the brilliant ‘The End of the World’ gets a pathetic write up, being criticised presumably for not being about policemen or nurses. And now this week, the reasonably good ‘The Unquiet Dead’, lauded in the UK by one critic for being the best piece of television that year (which was a bit over-the-top, I’ll admit) is called “a bit crap”.

Of all the places to go, the reviewer asks, why a 19th Century morgue? Erm. Why not? I can’t be sure if it’s the morgue bit or the 19th Century she’s not interested in. Did she notice that last week they blew up the Earth? It seems she was hoping for cross-dressing, given Mark Gatiss’ Leage of Gentlemen work.

Most irritatingly, she claims that Doctor Who is one of those things, like Star Wars, that if you didn’t see as a kid you won’t get, and comments that as Eccleston and Piper are both probably leaving, the show is most likely doomed anyway. She couldn’t have fitted in more off-putting TV reviewing language if she’d tried. Neither reviewer even vaguely alluded to whether children — you know, the “target audience” — would enjoy it. And I know I haven’t either, but Grapefruit is a genre site. The Green Guide is a popular TV guide for everyone, but most of the critics seem more interested in proving their wit and turning people against shows which irritate them for spurious reasons.

Ahem. I didn’t expect that to go on so long. Hmmm. Sorry.

Ah, what could possibly distract from the important task of writing essays and studying? Bearing in mind that these things must be accessible from the same places that I’m supposed to be doing work; i.e. my room.

Trailers. I’ve always enjoyed movie trailers but now Apple has high resolution trailers on their QuickTime High Resolution Gallery. QuickTime 7 introduced a new codec, eloquently named H.264, which makes the movie muchas smaller. The awesome Serenity trailer comes in a resolution of 1920×816, which is even bigger than my rather big 20″ LCD screen. Scary. Obviously these are only for people with bandwidth to burn.

TV. Doctor Who is nearing the end of its first season in the UK and is going from strength to strength. Alias finished with yet another of its trademarked irritating cliffhangers. Frankly, I’m getting a bit weary of the show. If Jennifer Garner and Victor Garber weren’t in it I’d probably abandon it at this point.

Games. Having seen Revenge of the Sith, I’m now able to play through the last third of LEGO Star Wars which is great fun. What I’m itching for is a game that makes some use of my new iMac though. I may have to order Neverwinter Nights quite soon.

Domains. The grapefruits.org domain is up for renewal soon. I’m vaguely tempted to change it to something like thegrapefruit.org given that grapefruits is completely wrong from a grammar point of view. But then, people are pretty used to grapefruits.org. It might well be the most spurious reason I’ve ever had for doing something so complicated.

Web Design. I don’t know how it happened but I’m working on a new grapefruit design. Semi new. Still the same header pics obviously as they’re a lot of work. It started when I dropped the yellow sidebar and as it hasn’t looked that good since I’ve decided to really go for it. Foolishly. But it wouldn’t be swot vac without a grapefruit redesign. It’s like a biological imperative.

I’m typing this through my iMac. Oh, the whiteness. Oh, the speediness. And suddenly I have an awesome TV in my bedroom, kind of.

I’d write more, but I’ve got settings to fiddle with.

Oh, and Revenge of the Sith was quite good.

I apologise for the steady stream of Doctor Who reviews, to all of you who don’t give a rat’s arse. I promise to have a Hitchhikers and a Star Wars review out at some point. That second one isn’t necessarily mine. Or maybe we’ll all do one. I don’t know.

Doctor Who premieres in Australia this weekend. It’s getting a good amount of publicity it seems.

I’m all anxious waiting for my iMac. 2-3 weeks, they said. Well it’s 2 weeks and one day and I can’t stand it. If it comes the day before my Optics assignment is due there’ll be hell to pay. I’d better do it in advance. Oooh yes I will.

Having been reading Darth Vader’s blog, I’m all hyped up for Revenge of the Sith. Not that I’ve got unrealistic expectations, mind you. The only things I’m looking forward to are:

• Darth Vader’s voice.
• Ian McDiarmid as Palpatine, the star of the show.
• The cool lightsaber fights.
• The tying into the old films.

Screw quality dialogue, good acting, any of that crap. Who needs them? I don’t. Well, I do, but for one day only I’m suppressing that part of my brain. Father’s Day gave me plenty to chew on while I’m watching Hayden Christiansen struggle through Lucas’ dire words.

Doctor Who meets Donnie Darko[ftn] and rocks quite severely. ‘Father’s Day’ manages to be the best episode of the season while keeping one foot in reality, one foot in the wacky ideas of the novel series, and yet another foot in brilliant humour. I’ve been whinging about the Doctor failing to obviously save the day for a while now; he doesn’t do it this week either, and yet I couldn’t be happier.

In this story by old New Adventures scribe Paul Cornell[ftn], Rose asks the Doctor if it wouldn’t be too much trouble to pop back and watch her Dad die. Ever eager to impress — a character trait of the Ninth Doctor I really enjoy — her friend takes her right to that point, and… she saves his life instead. From that point on, wackiness ensues, as crazy Time Dragons appear out of nowhere to remove the paradox from existence, and the Doctor finds himself short on options, and rather angry with his best friend…

Christopher Eccleston is on record saying that this is his favourite episode. It’s easy to see why. If the Doctor gets a better story this season I’ll be impressed. Previous episodes have sidelined and neglected him on occasion — ‘Father’s Day’ does the former, but not the latter. The scowl on his face after Rose screws with time; his reaction to the TARDIS’ unexpected dimensions; his stern admonishing of baby Rose; “Just.. say you’re sorry”; updating the congregation on his plans via the pulpit, and looking sheepish while fiddling with the key; his disgust at Jackie’s stupidity. And that’s barely scratching the surface. Christopher Eccleston IS the Doctor, as they say, and I’m expecting to shed a manly tear when he regenerates.

Of course, this story is mostly about Rose and her Dad, and it’s great. I’ve watched a lot of TV about father-daughter relations in my time[ftn]. This one manages to be reasonably fresh while dealing with a lot of things that’ve been said before. The disillusionment of Rose as she sees how her parents really are is something we can probably all relate to in some form. Billie Piper is, as always, fantastic, but Shaun Dingwell gives the best guest performance so far this season as her dear old, useless, Dad. What I love about a show like Doctor Who, or Season One of Angel, is that the format allows a guest actor to come in and get equal screen time and emphasis with the regulars. I’m not necessarily against the large regular cast that accumulates in shows like Alias and Buffy, but it does mean that guest characters usually get shafted in deference to regular characters’ development. Dingwell presents both the pathetic and heroic natures of his character marvellously, and sells his rather clever deductions about what’s actually going on.

Finally, for us nerds, there’s the whole crazy aspect to the time shennanigans this episode. In more clinical Sci-Fi universes, like Stargate‘s, time travel can get a bit awkward. Who‘s universe is the sort of semi-magical one where the idea that Time would actually try to sort herself out fits right in. ‘Father’s Day’ pulls off a bit of a Matrix — there’s enough explanations for everything to make sense the first time, and plenty of room for fun speculation afterwards. Where do the Dragons come from? Who remembers what? What’s the limit of Time’s ability to heal itself? Of course, the danger with such scripts is that some people insist on calling them plot “holes”,[ftn] which hardly seems fair. Maybe one day I’ll write an essay on the difference between the two. But not today. You can all relax.

It seems Doctor Who‘s dull patch is over after one episode. Some shows take whole seasons to break out of such things! We should all be grateful.

Footnotes

1. I’ve been thinking about Donnie. Clearly the events of that film are set before the Time War, and the forces manipulating young Mr Darko are Time Lords doing what they used to do to sort out such things.
2. Author of awesome books such as Timewyrm: Revelation, Love and War and Human Nature. And of crummy ones like The Shadows of Avalon, but you can’t win them all.
3. Pretty much every episode of Alias, for example.
4. Ugh, I’ve just found such an idiot. The sort of person who doesn’t realise that “I don’t understand why this happened” and “This shouldn’t have happened” aren’t the same thing. All people who haven’t worked out on a second viewing why the first Doctor and Rose disappear after Rose interferes — or why the TARDIS is in a different space at the end — and complain about it deserve to be shot.