I Saw Elvis In The Woods

A brief return of our occasional feature "Gee watches a Science Fiction television programme and give his opinion on it." By the way this is a spoiler heavy post about the recent Doctor Who special The Waters Of Mars. So if you don't want to know the score look away now.


It turns out that I’m not fashionable.

Now as far as clothes go I guess that’s always been the case. Recently one of my friends posted an old school photo on Facebook, taken when I was probably about five. It was one of those deals where they get everyone to pose in a group, and then sell a print of it to their parents for about five times as much as it costs to reproduce. Anyway there they all are, my school chums with their cherub faces and cute smiles. Each and every one of them wearing a checked shirt of some sort. And there’s me, wearing a navy jumper with the giant face of Goofy emblazoned across the front. It’s stands out so much I might as well have had a neon sign over my head saying “Really this kid has no idea”.

It’s something that’s continued to this very day. For example in this weeks Jennifer Anniston Weekly National Enquirer, they have one of those “Let’s compare people on the Red Carpet” things. Basically they take eight celebrities who have recently walked the line and post pictures of their dresses, inviting us to gasp with wonder or laugh with glee at the fashion successes and disasters. Now to me they pretty much all look ghastly. Each of them are covered with frills and bows from head to toe, as if Liberace’s ghost had thrown up over Hollywood's finest. However some of the celebrities have got it bang on the money, and some of them have got it terribly wrong. I know this because some pervert with unsmiling eyes and impossibly white teeth has had the good sense to score each dress out of ten. Otherwise, I’ll be honest with you, I’d be lost.

But in the geek community, ah dear reader, in the geek community I am very fashionable indeed. In fact when it comes to movies, TV, and comic books I’m almost a god. I know the new things to look out for, the old things that are respected, and the stuff that’s just plain great. I am like a nerd version of Victoria Beckham.

Or at least I used to be.

Over the past couple of days my fashonista status has been tested to it’s limit. The reason? Well on Sunday just gone the BBC aired the newest episode of the world’s longest running Sci-Fi series Doctor Who. It’s been a whole seven months since we last saw everyone’s favourite time travelling alien, where he faced a bunch of flying sting rays with endo skeletons and a pissed off attitude. Obviously having learned nothing from Steve Irwin, the Doctor stood up to these wee beasties and heroically saved the day, leading to much rejoicing.

And so having left a gaping hole in all our lives for far too long the Doctor was at last back on our screens with what was sure to be a triumphant return. Grateful for what I was about to receive I settled in to my default position (Gee Note: In bed with a tub of ice cream if you're curious), turned the volume up and put the lights down low, and prepared to have my socks blown off. This was going to be an hour of pure awesome.

Except it wasn’t.

By the end of that hour I was so deflated that I had to leave the bed (Gee Note: ! ) and go for a walk. Really that’s how low I felt. It wasn’t that I was disappointed. It was more than that. Like I’d been given a pot of gold by a leprechaun only to find out after he’s left that the gold is actually that chocolate money stuff and it’s two years out of date.

(Gee Note: By the way I love chocolate money. I just wanted to mention that knowing that members of my family read this and Christmas is coming up. Also, speedboats)

So the next day after a restless nights sleep I awoke early and immediately went online to watch the dust settle. First stop, the Guardian Newspaper online and a review from Sam Wollaston.



Huh? He actually liked it? Oh well, who the hell is Sam Wollaston anyway? I need some of my real geek brethrin around me. They’ll feel my pain. So over to SFX.co.uk I go.


Oh… what the hell? You too? Mind SFX makes a living out of favourably reporting on Sci-Fi shows and books as that’s what their readers love. I mean nobody really reads it for tips on how to get Roses to bloom all year around. Because if you are doing that, you may want to skip it one week and pick up Gardeners News instead. Trust me it will blow your mind.

No. What I need are some hardcore, hairy, live in their mothers basement, speak Klingon fluently, know the difference between a Dark Jedi and a Sith, geeks. I need me some Aint It Cool News.


You guys?!!?!? YOU GUYS?!!!?!?!?! You guys hate everything! Everything! Jesus I remember the uproar when Heath Ledger was announced for the Joker in The Dark Knight. You guys went almost biblical in your curses of damnation. It wasn’t until the poor bastard died that you let up on him a bit. And you liked this? You. Liked. This.

So I started to think “Is it me? Am I wrong? Did I miss something?” I was about to write it off as just one of those things when I mentioned it to a friend of mine. It turns out that they had missed the initial broadcast and were planning on watching it that night. In an attempt to understand this phenomenon I decided to do the same, and then compare notes. Because truth be told I haven’t known this person very long but they make me laugh, and so therefore I respect their opinion on very important matters. It’s strange how that works.

So thanks to the wonder that is the BBC’s iPlayer (Gee Note: Rejected slogan ideas for the iPlayer part 1- “For shows you couldn’t be bothered watching the first time around and are only doing so now because there‘s nothing else on.”), I cranked up my PC and watched this new episode again, armed with my trusty notepad and pen.

And I really really hated it the second time around.

This new special, entitled “The Waters of Mars” takes place in the year 2059 (Gee Note: Although by the looks of the “home videos” watched by some of the characters everyone furnishes their houses using an Argos catalogue circa 2009) where the Doctor drops in on the first Earth colonists of Mars. Forearmed with the knowledge that this base is set to explode killing everyone in it’s boundaries that very day, he decides not to act upon it. You see these people’s deaths will inspire the human race to even greater future accomplishments and is therefore a fixed moment in time that simply cannot be tampered with. Despite the fact that he does this kind of thing all the time and it’s never seemed to bother him before, on this particular occasion the last of the Timelords is pretty much set on not lifting a finger to help these folks when all Hell breaks loose.

The Hell in question is a virus in the water on Mars, found in a frozen glacier under the planets surface. Drinking this turns everyone in to, um, well water spewing zombie things. Think if a bunch of fire hydrants got together and decided to put on an am-dram production of “Dawn of the Dead”. What it is and where this virus came form are questions that are left unresolved. I mean why bother explaining that when there’s a funny robot to be had.



Ah the funny robot called Gadget, a seriously irritating and completely unneeded addition to what otherwise would have been a rather dark and foreboding setting. Gadget is a major annoyance, dumbing down an already fantastically unintelligent product. Also it just looks cheap (Gee Note: Like as if Jar Jar Binks had tried to rebuild a broken down Johnny 5 but cocked it up, got bored, and walked away), making it painfully obvious to the viewer that despite trying to be a fabulously epic tale, Doctor Who is still far away from matching any American TV show when it comes to production values.

But Gadget is really a minor irritation. So too is the surprise appearance of a Dalek during the episode. The captain of the base, played with steely determination by Lindsay Duncan, was apparently inspired to head to the stars after her life was spared by a Dalek during the events of “The Stolen Earth”. Hmmm, goes the Doctor, that must be because the Dalek knew your death was a fixed point in time.

Now think about this for a second. Dalek’s are great big homicidal metallic pepper pots with zero empathy. They wouldn’t spare a small child anymore than Jessica Simpson would leave you her last Rolo. Also if a Dalek knows what is going to happen in the future, why the hell is it fighting a war that it knows it won’t win? I mean if I’m that Dalek I’m going to have something else to do when the call comes in to round up the troops. “Hmmm. What? Oh, it’s fighting time? Awww, and I just put the scones in to bake. Well, I can’t just leave them in there. They’ll be ruined. Tell you what, I’ll catch up with you guys when they’re done. Yeah yeah EXTERMINATE and all that. You have fun now you hear?”

But all this is completely forgiveable. No really it is. Because as ludicrous as it sounds it pales in to comparison to the insanely ridiculous finale.

Here’s the deal. Captain Dalek Love begs, and I mean begs, The Doctor to save her and her people. The Doctor does a perfect impression of me when it comes time to do the washing up by shrugging his shoulders and saying “Sorry love. Can’t help you”. So he starts to walk away and she’s all like “Damn you!” before she goes back to trying to fight the zombie fire hydrants. However as the Doctor walks away he somehow has an audio feed from the base transmitted in to his helmet and with every scream and exclamation of hopelessness he takes a heavy step forward. That is until he can take it no more and with tons of manic energy rushes back to save everyone left. Hooray right?

Well no, because upon dropping the survivors back down to Earth, and having a well deserved “Yes I am that awesome!” moment to himself, the Captain now thinks the Doctor is a dick for saving her. Even though she BEGGED him to do it (Gee Note: Tsk. Women huh?). Why? Well don’t ask me, I have no idea. It doesn’t make a blind bit of sense. “Hi. Can you save my life please?” “Yeah sure. There you go. Anything else I can help you with?” “What the hell did you do that for? Thanks a lot pal. You prick!”. Anyway to atone for all this the Captain shoots herself, despite not being able to put a bullet in the head of one of the monsters and thereby putting a stop to this entire thing before it began, and the Doctor breaks down and questions if he has gone too far by screwing with time in such a fashion.

And the best bit? Right then out of nowhere an Ood, a creature we haven’t seen since 2008, turns up. And then disappears again. Why? Why not? They’ve done everything else badly up until this point, why not this?

Actually the real best bit in all of this is how long the above mentioned finale takes to unfold. From the moment The Doctor starts to walk away from the base to Ood Sigma doing his best David Copperfield impersonation, the whole sorry mess is played out in just five minutes. Five minutes where characters motivations are flipped like pancakes for no good reason, everything is rushed to a massively lame climax involving the stupid robot, and a vision of a very boring alien turns up.




You see I actually like the concept of The Doctor being driven to the edge of sanity, drunk on his own power as he tries to make the Universe do what he wants rather than serving it all the time. Before finally, finally, his own World collapses around him and leaves him even emptier then when he started. But a concept is only as good as it’s execution. And when something is executed as poorly as that, it makes Willie Francis look like a cow in a slaughter house (Gee Note: Go on. Google ‘Willie Francis‘. You know you want to).

By the way remember the friend I was talking about? The one who hadn’t seen the show until last night? Well I asked them their opinion on it this morning. Guess what they said?

Oh, I really enjoyed it actually.

Screw it I give up. This geek culture thing is way over my head. I’m going to find myself something else to do. Where’s that copy of the National Enquirer gone?

Oh Drew Barrymore. What WERE you thinking!

You know New Zealand is an odd country.

Now the reason I say that is no way related to the fact that the New Zealand All Blacks defeated Wales in a game of Rugby Union this past Saturday. Heck New Zealand have dominated these matches for so long now you kind of get used to losing them. Kind of.

No, there are other way more important reasons why New Zealand is an odd country. For a start you’ve got the crazy ways in which the folks there entertain themselves.

About two weeks ago the free London paper Metro reported a story which is, well, completely bonkers. Basically every year in New Zealand the South Island town Waiau holds an annual pig hunt. To kick of the hunt a competition is held amongst the town’s children. This year however the contest has been banned after a section of the public kicked up a fuss about it’s nature. The reason?

Well the competition is to see who can throw a dead rabbit the furthest.

No really.

Obviously while it may be unbelievable that anyone could possibly find this offensive, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals disagrees. They complained so passionately that the organisers felt compelled to call the whole thing off. The best bit of all this hullaballo (Gee Note: Good word usage) is a pair of polar opposite quotes. The first comes from dead bunny chucking head honcho Jo Moriarty. When asked about the ban he replied


(Gee Note: Yeah! Manholes being renamed Personnel Access Covers to avoid offending women, and local councils renaming Christmas “Winter Holiday” to make it more “accessible” to non-Christians was bad enough. But not letting children throw around deceased vermin! That’s just not on!)

The second comes from SPCA animal cruelty inspector Charles Cadwallader who said


(Gee Note: Well no. I mean we did try giving the old girl a whirl, but her jawbone detached and hit little Jimmy square in the forehead. I can still hear him crying now. And the smell. Good God. I mean there’s only so many Pine Forrest air fresheners you can hang off one corpse you know?)

Isn’t it amazing how two different groups can have such contrasting views on something as simple as allowing children to throw rabbits around? Is it any wonder then that a possible plesiosaur can also cause as much debate?

Allow me to explain. On April 25 1977 the Japanese fishing vessel Zuiyo Maru was off the coast of New Zealand looking for some fun times. Or fish. You know, one of the two. Anyway they were sailing East of Christchurch, chilling out max and relaxing all cool, when all of a sudden one of the eagle eyed crew spotted something, er, fishy in their nets.

The Japanese sailors spied a carcass clogging up their trawl the likes of which they had never seen before. Convinced that they had discovered a previously unknown form of animal the men aboard the Zuiyo Maru proceeded to do the smart thing and collect a couple of samples here and there, as well as taking pictures of it like it was 1930‘s Paris and Jean Cocteau had just stepped on to the deck. And then the captain of the ship, one Akira Tanaka, decided that they needed to dump it overboard and carry on their merry way (Gee Note: Look before you get all “Awww why did he do that?” bringing back undiscovered mega fauna is good and all. But it don’t put no food on the table. Tanaka gotta eat. So do the little Tanaka’s. You want that on your conscience, huh? Hungry little Tanaka’s? No. No of course you don’t).



Measuring this badly decomposed body the folks aboard the Zuiyo Maru estimated it to be about 10 metres long and weighed it in at two tons. According to their reports the creature also had a one and half metre long neck, four large fins, and a two metre long tail. Also a massive lack of dorsal fin. Oh and no gills.



Upon it’s arrival back on Japanese shores the Zuiyo Maru and her able seamen (Gee Note: Oh please don’t cheapen this by giggling) were greeted by a storm of controversy. The samples and pictures taken were whisked away and studied by the top bods at various universities. Astonishingly two of them, Professor Tokio Shimaka and Dr Fujiro Yasuda came to the same independent conclusion. It was, they said, the remains of….

Godzilla.

Dun dun duuuuuunnnnnnnn.

Nah I’m just kidding. They both said it was…

A plesiosaur .

Dun dun… Um. Actually that bit‘s not made up. They genuinely believed that it was a plesiosaur. For those of you who aren’t familiar plesiosaurs, picture in your head the Loch Ness Monster. You got it? Good. What your looking at is a plesiosaur. For those of you who have no imagination then here’s a picture of one. Admittedly I could have just posted it to begin with. But if watching pre-school programming for the past two hours straight has taught me anything it’s that our brain is like any other muscle. It needs a good workout every so often.



However, the thing is not everyone agrees with Messers Shimaka and Yasuda. Most notably Glen J. Kuban put forward the theory that the dino-fish is undoubtedly the rotten corpse of a basking shark. You see when a basking shark decomposes it takes on a form not unlike that of a plesiosaur. Also amino acid test on the samples provided by the Zuiyo Maru seemed to indicate that the unidentified animal was most likely Chondrichthyes in origin. Or Shark to you and me.



Nonsense cried others, such as Professor Yoshinori Imaizumi of the Japanese National Science Museum who said, "It's not a fish, whale, or any other mammal.". And Fujiro Yasuda himself was another to rule out the whole shark theory "No animal of that size has such an elongated body.”. Claiming that the position of the fins was all out of whack for a basking shark he continues, “We can't find any known species of fish that correspond with the animal caught outside New Zealand. If it is a shark, it is a species unknown to science.”

And so before you could say “Nerdfight!!!!!!” it was on like Donkey Kong. The carcass on the Zuiyo Maru sparked a debate which has pretty much raged on till this day. Most scientists agree that it is likely a decomposed basking shark. But there’s enough people outside of the usual crackpots creationists who are questioning the accepted theory. And that in itself is enough to make this New Zealand Monster very interesting indeed.

Now if you’ll excuse me I’m off to see how far I can throw a dead rabbit. What? It sounds like fun.

Ah Tuesday.

Three nights ago was Halloween. Which is both a good and a bad thing. Good because Halloween is the one night of the year I can get completely trollied before settling down on the sofa to watch a four hour marathon of Most Haunted. Well actually I can pretty much do that at anytime of the year, but on Halloween I can do it without having to try and justify it to the future ex Mrs Davies. So instead of "But darling, I want to see how many times Billy Roberts says "I sense a… er… thing... person... spirit. A spirit here"." or "But darling, I want to see how much Yvette Fielding looks like Gozer the Gozerian in this episode.", a simple "It's Halloween!" will suffice.

Bad because Halloween brings with it all sorts of hokey jazz. For example on my desk in front of me I have a box of complimentary mints from a company which has obviously nothing better to do with it's time. On the lid of the box it says "Warning: Inside this box are some very scary things!". Oooh what can be inside? A snake that springs out at you when you open it up? Confectionary made to look like a bunch of disembodied eyeballs? A portal to an unknown dimension where left is right, up is down, and Perez Hilton is a useful member of society? Well sadly it's none of those things. Open up the box and you get… wait for it… mints. Regular minty type mints. No strange cackling sounds. No horrific depiction of an unspeakable horror. Just mints. Now unless you have a childhood trauma involving little white dots, and God only knows what that would entail (Gee Note: When I was 10 years old my parents were gunned down in front of me by a block of polystyrene. This made me dress up as, oh I don't know, a giant squirrel and fight crime. 'Cause you know, that's the only rational way to deal with deep seated mental issues), then mints aren't really scary.

Ikea isn't really scary either, although some of it's clientele might qualify. For example on October 19th this year The Daily Torygraph Telegraph reported that the face of Jesus had been found once again (Gee Note: Thank goodness. I've been looking for that thing everywhere). This time however it wasn't on a pot of jam, or a grilled cheese sandwich maker. Hell no, this facial deity was found in the glamorous location of Renfrewshire, Scotland inside everyone's favourite place to buy cheap Swedish furniture. The image was first noticed when one local shopper decided to relieve himself in the Ikea store. Rather than risk causing an international incident by doing the business all over a reasonably priced Billsta Bar Table (Gee Note: Only £105. Ideal for those of you who are tired of resting your beer on the top of the fridge and have more money than sense), he slunk off to the in store toilet facilities where upon he made an astonishing discovery.

I was only heading to the toilet and found God. It takes you by surprise. It is really clear in the wood. (Gee Note: I love the understatement here. It's like saying "So I was in Paul's house doing a poo when all of sudden the Supreme Hindu God Shiva was there in front of me waving his arms about like a nutter. It was the last thing I was expecting let me tell you!".)



That's right folks, plain as the eye can see on the bathroom door was a picture of good ol' JC himself. Or was it?
My wife thought He looked like Gandalf from Lord of the Rings but it is definitely more like the Turin Shroud.

Setting aside the idea for a moment that some dude was so astounded by this heavenly vision that he dragged his poor wife in to the men's loo to have a gander, she does make an interesting point. It could be Jesus. It could be Gandalf. It could even be this guy:



So how do we know for sure? Well I'm afraid there's only one course of action. We must pit Jesus and Gandalf one against the other in a series of contests, judged by a panel consisting of David Copperfield, Paula Abdul, and Aaron Stanford (Gee Note: Stanford really does need the work). Round One will be the "Rabbit out of a hat" round, where the contestants will try and, er, pull a rabbit out of a hat. Extra points will be awarded for cuteness of said rabbit, as well as for the use of the words "abracadabra" or "shazaam". Round 2 will be the "Make David Blaine Disappear For Good" round, while Round 3 will be "Freestyle Throwdown Magic". We'll call it MAGIC OFF 3000 and show it live on Pay Per View, the proceeds of which will go to feeding thousands of homeless midgets with hairy feet. The winner will then be able to claim the picture on the toilet door as their own likeness and will also walk away with a Blankety Blank Cheque Book and Pen. See, it's both a fair and just way to settle all of this, with the added bonus of being entertaining and relatively harmless. Well, unless you happen to be David Blaine of course. But if that's the case then, man, you've got to admit you had it coming.

With all that cleared up, let's turn our attention to something that is actually quite scary. Ladies and gentlemen please put your hands together for The Fouke Monster.

Picture the scene. It's the early 1970's, Carole King is playing on the radio, and the summer feels like it's never going to end. You're a young wife who's only just moved in to a sleepy little town in Miller County, Arkansas. The first week that you're in your new home passes without incident during the day, but at night strange sounds are heard from outside your front door. You pay them no heed. After all you're new to the neighbourhood, and as far as you know next door could have a working abattoir out back. Or a high end sock puppet master theatre. Or one of those assault courses where chickens compete against ducks to find out which truly is the better bird.

Anyway this goes on for a couple of nights, until one evening when your husband goes off hunting with his brother. You wait for him patiently to come home and when he doesn't arrive at a suitable time you feed his dinner to next door’s ducks and fall asleep on the sofa. An hour passes, maybe two, until you are awoken by the sound of someone or something reaching it’s hand through the screen window on the front door. You wipe your eyes and the creeping sensation starts to make it’s way up your spine as you realise that it’s not a human hand. At first you think it’s a bear, but it’s too big, and the wrong colour. Whatever it is it’s strong enough to force it’s way through the door, and you can hear it snorting and squealing as it makes it’s way inside your house.

If you’re reading this and thinking “My that all sounds very familiar” then either you should take that novelty glove away from your prank loving husband, or your name is Elizabeth Ford and you once had a run in with the Fouke Monster.

Thankfully on the night in question - May 2 1971 - husband Bobby Ford arrived back home just in time, and spooked the creature away from the porch and his, by this point, terrified wife. It didn’t last however as the creature returned later that same night. Bobby, thinking he had successfully scared the bejeebus out of the beast the first time round, cowboy’d up and went outside to confront it once again. And... he got his ass handed to him. No really, Bobby was dominated like a teenager in Roman Polanski’s house. Thrown around like a rag doll for the best part of ten minutes he managed to escape, and after being treated in St. Michael Hospital for shock and scratches across his back, he reported the ordeal to the local police force. Ford claimed that what had attacked him and his family was seven feet tall, around 300lbs, had bright red eyes (Gee Note: Oh welcome back “It had red eyes”. It’s been a while) and moved like a great big monkey. The police investigated the area and found scratch marks on the porch, damage to the door and windows of the house, and a series of three toed footprints on the ground.

Later that month the wee beasty was spotted again by D. Woods, Wilma Woods, and Mrs R. Sedgass, who claimed that on May 23rd they saw an “ape-like” creature crossing Highway 71 (Gee Note: Initial investigations in to this event ground to a halt after the police realised that Madonna was no where near Miller County at this time). A couple of days after that Willie E. Smith discovered a set of three toed footprints in his soybean field.

And then sightings of the Fouke Monster just kinda stopped.



An article published in the Texarkana Gazette contained an interview with Southern State College archaeologist Dr. Frank Schambach (Gee Note: Crazy name! Crazy guy!). Schambach argued that the whole thing was more than likely a hoax. For a start, three toed footprints simply doesn't compute as all hominids and primates, both historical and modern, have five toes. The creature's apparent nocturnal behaviour also raises eyebrows, as it is not a known trait in any form of monkey or ape. Add that to the lack of historical evidence of the region being home to any type of primate and, according to Schambach, the whole things seems as fishy as a big bag of fish.

It’s hard not to admit that Schambach has a point. But the thing about undiscovered creatures is that, well, their undiscovered. Five years ago if you asked anyone in the know about the possibilities of a carnivorous slug then they would have most likely have sat you down and patiently explained to you that slugs are herbivores, before patting you on the head and giving you a lollipop for being such an inquisitive little thing. But then five years ago was before a carnivorous slug was found quite happily chomping away on worms at the bottom of a plant pot in Cardiff.

Now is it likely that there’s a seven foot tall monkey man stirring up trouble in Miller County? Well outside of sporadic sightings here and there, since that initial rash of sightings in 1971 it’s been pretty quiet. So if it was just the public’s imagination run wild spurred on by enthusiastic local newspaper reports then so be it.

But to dismiss it just because it doesn’t fit a currently known biological pattern is, in some ways, an easy way out. After all the laws of nature a being constantly re-written with every new breed of bird and insect discovered each day. I mean no one would believe a woodpecker’s tongue would work, except for the fact it actually does. So is a three toed ape with anger management issues really that hard to believe?

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve just found out there’s a picture of Jennifer Love Hewitt dressed in a Playboy Bunny outfit this past weekend doing the rounds online.




Halloween is a good thing.

At the end of last week I Saw Elvis was saddened to hear of the death of Mac Tonnies. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family.

I've decided that I'm never going to a cocktail party again. Not that I get invited to many you understand. It's just by banning myself from attending these events in advance, I'm actually serving a greater good. You see I'm a very clumsy person, and so putting me in a room with nice suits and glasses full of brightly coloured liquid is like giving Kiefer Sutherland a bottle of Jack Daniels and the keys to a Ferrari. For example two days ago I was in a supermarket, placing my items on the till conveyer belt, and somehow I managed to accidentally throw a tub of Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream at the head of a rather startled woman in the next aisle. If it wasn't for my forewarning of "OH TITS!" and her cat like reflexes, the entire situation could have got rather out of hand.

Now being this useless is a tough old row to hoe. And, even though I really should be used to it by now, there's only so much social embarrassment one man can take. Which means I'm always on the look out for hair brained schemes that might - just might - allow me to take a romantic stroll on a beach with a loved one and, oh I don't know, not get stung by a scorpion. However, never in my wildest dreams did I think that the Pentagon would be the ones to step up to the plate in this regards.

According to a report on the BBC website, a pair of scientists in the Pentagon named Michel Maharbiz and Hirotaka Sato made a beetle fly around a room. Which isn't that big of a deal I guess. I mean give me a beetle and a rolled up newspaper and I can accomplish the same thing. However what is a big deal is that these dudes managed to do it by punching in some keys in to a laptop.

That's right folks, allow yourselves to be introduced to the world's first remote controlled insect (Gee Note: Not counting Paris Hilton). Now I’m not going to pretend to have any earthly idea how they did it, but apparently Messers Maharbiz and Hirotaka implanted beetle larvae with some sort of mechanical device. Then once the beetle reached maturity they discovered that with a flick of a switch they could get it to perform the Macarena at will.

Bare in mind that this is actually not as fun as it sounds, at least not for the beetle. The beetle’s thought processes aren’t altered during this entire experiment. Instead it’s muscles are the ones being controlled by the men in white coats. Which strikes me as kinda cruel. Say you’re a beetle and you spy off in the distance a lovely bit of jam. You set off on your way to acquiring that tasty treat, but then all of a sudden you’re flung up in to the air and are buzzing around like a maniac. All because some nerd with nothing better to do wants to show off to his friends. “Hey guys watch this,” he says “The beetle thinks it’s going to get the jam. And now it’s flying away from the jam. Ahahahahahahaha. Stupid beetle”. Speaking as a man who enjoys his jam that’s not cool bro. Not cool.

But there’s something even crazier to all of this. A cyborg beetle has absolutely no useful military application. I mean like none. Partly because as well as the various bit and bobs the beetle would need to be loaded with for this whole muscle control deal, it would also need to fitted with a tracking device. Which, while it might make a very entertaining real life version of the board game Buckaroo, would probably weigh the poor bastard down so much it couldn’t take off. And even if it could, the ratio as to what the beetle could carry would be so small - just 4.0 grams on the largest beetle tested by the Pentagon - that it would render it rather pointless. So unless they’re planning to get all Biblical on Iran’s ass by manufacturing a plague of, er, beetles with which to terrorize them into not making nuclear warheads, the whole thing seems a wee bit redundant.

Unless of course they manage to create a version of this for humans. Then I might get one and pay someone to follow me around the supermarket. Hey at least then I know I won’t assault innocent shoppers with some Mint Chocolate Chip.


Another story that caught my eye recently was in Wales’ very own Western Mail. It turns out that in the Brecon Beacons, which is a scenic mountain range running throughout South Wales, a new water treatment plant has caused quite the commotion. Locals from the Glyntawe area, which is about a stone’s throw from where yours truly lives, are exceedingly grumpy about the fact that the new plant looks like, well, a water treatment facility and not a pretty tree or something. Anyway they’ve gone and kicked up a fuss and formed a protest group called “We Want Out”.



One of the leaders of the group, 77 year old retired farmer Elizabeth Tyler (Gee Note: The first time I read this I did it too quickly and had to stop and ask myself “Why would Elizabeth Taylor give a toss about a building in Brecon? Is it a Richard Burton thing?” It turns out, no, no it isn’t) claims it represents “the lost beauty of the area”. She places the blame firmly on the Brecon Beacons National Park Authority, or BBNPA, for not denying planning permission for the plant.

And so the folks in We Want Out have decided to riot protest by spending the night on one of the cranes used to build the plant, complaining to media outlets, and hiring a local shaman to place a curse on BBNPA.

Dude… wait. What?

"This curse will only be lifted by the shaman when a public apology is issued by the BBNPA to the residents of this area." Says Tyler.

For a start where the hell do you find a Shaman around these parts? Bare in mind that I live here, and I’m in to all kinds of weird things (Gee Note: Reading up on sea monsters and UFO sightings I mean. Not stuff like “and the safety word is banana”) and I’ve never heard of anyone claiming to be a shaman. I mean just how do you find these guys? Do you just walk in to a pub and say:

“Excuse me, I’m looking for someone to place a curse on a governing body.”

“Oh I’m sorry love, I’m Dai the Glass. I fit windows. You want Dai the Shaman over there in the corner.”

Also how bloody harsh are these people? Curses used to be placed on thorough rotters who raped livestock and killed women (Gee Note: It’s just occurred to me I typed that the wrong way round. Screw it I’m not changing it now). Not on inept National Park administrators. You can imagine the folks at the BBNPA waking up one morning to find that their arms had fallen off and that their youngest child had been struck down with consumption. “Oh my God! My arms! Little Jimmy’s cough! Aaaaaarrrrggghhh! It’s the curse! The curse I tells ye! If only we’d have painted the water treatment plant green so it could blend in with a really large bush!”.

Still, even if they are horribly cursed, there is one consolation for the BBNPA.

At least they’re not beetles.

 A brief return of our occasional feature "Gee watches a Science Fiction television programme and give his opinion on it. People then realise why he has never been hired to do this professionally.".

There's a wonderful passage in William Goldman's Adventures in The Screen Trade where he offers a word of advice for budding script writers. Say, for example, one movie studio produces a film about crime fighting hedgehogs that becomes an unexpected smash hit, destroying box office records and wowing critics and audiences alike. As a novice screenwriter waiting for their big break, you watch it and about half way through realise that you can write an even better hedgehog crime fighting movie. So you spend the next three weeks hammering away at your keyboard non stop, not pausing to eat or sleep or appease grumpy loved ones. But in the end it's all worth it, as you've managed to produce a script so good that it positively fizzes on the page.

You've also just wasted the past three weeks.

You see no matter how good your script, it's highly unlikely that any major Hollywood studio would touch it. Because, truth be told, by the time you've sent your script to the power players in cinema not only have they each received 500,000 identical scripts that week, but they've also had their own hedgehog crime fighting movie in development for months and months before hand. It's like when the Da Vinci Code went nuclear and all of a sudden there were a million other pot boiler thrillers about hidden codes in ancient texts clogging up bookstore shelves. Those books weren't written overnight (Gee Note: Although considering the derivative nature of most of them you'd be forgiven for thinking they were). Instead book publishers probably had these novels on the back burner, unsure what to do with them until the Da Vinci Code came along and did gangbuster numbers. In the entertainment industry the key is always to anticipate trends before they happen. That or start a new one.

So it's quite surprising then that five whole seasons of the celebrated television show Lost have come and gone before FlashForward was finally aired.



Then again perhaps not. Lost is on it's last legs, the coming season already confirmed to be it's final one. And with it's demise goes one of the consistently top ratings draws in ABC's arsenal. So it's only natural that ABC's exec's should try and find a carbon copy replacement to fill the airwaves.

This is where FlashForward comes in. It's premise is a simple one. An unknown event causes every man, woman, and child on Earth to black out for two minutes and 17 seconds. During this blackout they all see a vision of their own future six months down the line. Of course this being television everyone’s future is absurdly eventful. Like fighting swat teams with your bare hands, or drinking tequila slammers with an emu. Then everyone wakes up, dust themselves off and goes about the business of trying to work out what the hell just happened.

So far, so Lost. But you’d be a fool for thinking that FlashForward is some kind of identikit remake of Jack Sheppard and chums adventures on the island. You see Flashforward differs in one key aspect.

It’s not as good.

It tries it’s damnedest you understand. There’s unexpected creatures, like a Kangaroo hoping through Los Angeles for no reason. There’s an international cast of mixed ethnicity, including the stunningly beautiful Gabrielle Union, an Asian-American named Demetri (Gee Note: Why a dude with two Korean parents would have a Russian name is never explained. But then names aren’t everything. So says I, Gareth Danger Excitement Ninjaskills HOT Rhys Davies), and a pair of plummy Englishmen in the criminally underrated Jack Davenport and the criminally dull Joseph Fiennes. There’s even the occasional familiar face from Lost in there, with Sonya Walger and Dominic Monaghan amongst the series regulars. And of course, the plot is driven by a set of questions that lead to some more questions that, in turn, lead to yet more questions.

But the difference is that in all those areas where Lost succeeds FlashForward, er, doesn’t. Where the Polar Bears served a genuine purpose in posing a threat to the islanders, the Kangaroo just hops in to view and quickly hops back out of it. There’s no sense that it’s a mystery begging to be explained, just a whacky visual effect used to manipulate audience curiosity. Maybe it means something. Maybe it doesn’t. The fact is that currently in the series it’s a throwaway moment with absolutely no relevance to anything happening around it. It’s as if the show runners got together in a room and said:

“Hey guys. We need something to separate us from all those other metaphysical time travel dramas on television at the moment. Any ideas?” 

“Hmmm. Hey I got it. How about, now stick with me on this, but how about we get Joe to walk past a kangaroo?” 

“Why would there be a kangaroo in Los Angeles?”

“It doesn’t matter. We won’t mention it again and if someone asks we’ll just say it escaped from a zoo or something.”

“Hmmm. Kangaroo you say? I like it! It’s crazy! It’s unexpected! And it’s sooooo fits Los… um… I mean FlashForward. Good work guys. Let’s take the rest of the day off.”

The international cast is a mixed bag as well. Joseph Fiennes is by no means horrendous but doesn’t smoulder the way a leading man should. He just doesn’t have a smile or a light behind his eyes that could break hearts and weaken knees. And while I’m sure he will excel when the time comes to be full of anguish and internal torture, I’m not convinced he has enough to keep us interested in the meantime. Sonya Walger is also insanely unremarkable, to the point where you forget how charming and appealing she was in Lost. On the other hand, Davenport manages to carry the weight of the world’s problems around with him with such subtlety that it becomes quite touching. And  John Cho - playing everyone’s favourite Russian Korean FBI agent - is by far and away the stand out performer, managing to blend both rage and vulnerability seamlessly as he contemplates his future.

However the "unanswered question" plot structure also proves to be problematic. Even Lost struggles with it occasionally, walking a fine line between intriguing and frustrating all too often (Gee Note: Who attacked Sayid? Well that was John Locke. Why did he do it? Because Locke believes they were brought to the island for a purpose. Why does he think that? A great big smoke monster went up to him in the jungle and didn't kill him. Where the hell did the great big smoke monster come from? It lives in a well under Ben Linus' house? Why does it live… oh forget it). However in FlashForward's ham fisted attempts to follow suit they ratchet that frustration up another notch.



For example, at one point Joseph Fiennes discovers that the name "D. Gibbons" is apparently hugely important to all this time travel stuff. Then in one of those "Dun dun duuuuuuunnnnnn" episode endings he asks his suitably creep daughter what she saw in her future vision thing. The daughter answers with a cryptic "D. Gibbons is a BAD man.". Roll end credits while the audience goes "Oooh I wonder what she means!"

So in the next episode the first five minutes is devoted to a very serious Joseph Fiennes prising the information out of his daughter as to what EXACTLY she saw during her blackout right? Well, er, no actually. In fact it isn't mentioned again at all, as we're supposed to believe the conversation ended right there and Fiennes went off to Germany to talk to a Nazi war criminal about dead crows (Gee Note: Don't ask). Now I don't know about you, but if my child came home one day acting all weird the very first thing I would is sit them down, give them a cuddle, and make sure I understood precisely what was bothering them. Either that or lock them in the attic with a bucket of fish heads. Regardless that son of a gun is going to spill, especially if the fate of the world depends on it.

And here in lies the problem. FlashForward is so obsessed with being something else that it largely ignores the things that work in it’s favour. It's probably assembled one of the finest casts in television history, and so the writers should be climbing over themselves to give these folks something to sink their teeth in to. Instead we get cardboard cut-outs of characters going through the motions, killing time until the next feeble plot twist comes along. In the very first episode we learn that Fiennes is a recovering alcoholic. Great, except it has absolutely no impact on his day to day life apart from having to attend the occasional AA meeting. We never see him struggle with the addiction, instead he spends his time charging around the globe searching for clues. In that case why bother making him an alcoholic in the first place? It would be like everyone in Top Gun talking about how great a pilot Tom Cruise is, only to never show him flying a plane.

The aftermath of the blackout was shot beautifully, displaying the visceral carnage of buses ploughing through walls and planes dropping out of the sky with aplomb. But instead of lingering on the chaos by - say - following a brave fire fighter dramatically rescuing some helpless folk, we’re whisked away from it all far too quickly. We follow Joseph Fiennes as he heroically runs away from the destruction, stumbles across a kangaroo and thinks nothing of it, before arriving back at his FBI office to stare at a white board. “But… but” you cry, “there was all sorts of mad as a badger shit going on there. Why are we following this tedious mong when we could be watching explosions and fire and stuff?”. Why indeed.

Still we’d better get used to it, as this time next year there won’t be anymore Lost and FlashForward might be the only game in town. And, on the evidence so far, if that’s the case I hope we all blackout.