Day: October 4, 2012

Powdered Toastman

2012-10-04, 9:54 pm
Categories: Cartoons, Stream of Consciousness, TV

Featuring Frank Zappa as the Pope.

Ren & Stimpy is available for purchase or streaming at Amazon, or on Netflix. Contrary to the title of the DVD set, the episodes are not uncut; most notably the entire Bloody Head Fairy sequence is missing from Haunted House. This episode, however, is intact and is not the cut-up version shown on Nickelodeon.

(I'm not sure about the streaming versions but have no reason to think they'd be any different from the DVD release.)

Anyway. Zappa loved oddball cartoons, so he fits right in here.

And I'm sure one of these days I'll get to Duckman...

Doctor Who: Survival

2012-10-04, 8:48 pm
Categories: TV

Another old Who review; originally posted on Brontoforumus, 2008-04-11. This episode directly follows the last two I reviewed, Ghost Light and The Curse of Fenric.

The original 26-year run concludes with the ironically-titled Survival. (Gloria Gaynor can relate, I'm sure.)

It lacks the deeper themes and clever storytelling of the two preceding serials, and, due to the presence of Cheetah People, is far, far sillier. But it's a fun, if nonsensical, straight-up Doctor versus Master story, and is significant both for the last appearance of Ainley as the Master (a 1990's adventure game notwithstanding) and of course the series finale. Plus it explains what the Master's doing with yellow cat eyes in the 1996 TV movie.

$25 at Amazon; comes with a second disc that apparently has a lot of extra features dealing with the historical significance of the ep. It's not available streaming on Amazon Prime or Netflix; if you're still doing the disc version of Netflix I'd say get it that way, and the second disc is optional. The serial's worth checking out, but its predecessors are better.