h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It should be made a flogging offence for anyone to make lazy "Hunger Games rips off Battle Royale (with Cheese)" comparisons, but I digress.

Having read all three books very recently, I've got to say that I can't understand how this can be marketed as "The New Twilight". The much-hyped three way romance never emerges, and Katniss (what a stupid name) always seems more focused on survival than getting doe-eyed.

I'm not sure how that compares to Twilight where the leading plank of wood with a blank expression on it seems only to breathe if it will interest some horror of the night.

Anyway, I'm taking the Mrs to see it soon, so I'll let you know what I think.

Battle Royale references? What Battle Royale references? I went out of my way to avoid them. Sort of.

Anyway, why bother, when you can accuse it of ripping off many other much more obscure (= points for pretension) movies, stories and TV shows?

You've got far too many pretension points already!

Ah, while I've got your attention, I need to show you a picture of a shelf in my new house that you're almost entirely responsible for:

http://yfrog.com/ob3o5xdj

(yes, they're in transmission order...)

Pretentious, watashi?

Ah, verily it doth make an old man's heart swell with pride... particularly the transmission order thing. You seem to have exercised quite good judgement in choosing what to buy, which I commend you for also.

In my defence, one of the Colin ones was part of a Sontarans box set. That's the only real dud in there.

Are there any McCoy stories that aren't hideously terrible? I tried watching Curse of Fenric on Netflix and decided to turn it off in favour of looking at the floor.

I don't know, if you don't like Fenric I'm wary of recommending any of them... not because that's a particular favourite of mine but because it's fairly representative of the (received wisdom/consensus) good ones. The final season does sort of collapse under the weight of awful storytelling (great ideas, just rotten narrative structure)...

I don't know, Remembrance of the Daleks has a lot going for it. I also like Greatest Show in the Galaxy, but I have to say that when I watch most 80s Who I'm not thinking 'this is good', as I do with the 70s stories, but 'this is good, despite... [insert qualification]'.

I don't think the companions help him either. When I see Sophie Aldred, all I can think is "at least she's not Bonnie Langford".

Hmmm. There's a discussion to be had here about how either Ace is the bizarro prototype for Rose, or Rose is Ace done 'right' in the sense of them both being working class girls from a tower block... Rusty Davies has said that, had Lis Sladen not died, he would've brought Ace back in SJA ...and possibly McCoy as well!

I'm not sure Rose is anything done right after Eccleston goes.

She just seems to be a whining, dull, millstone around Tennant's neck - who then casts an inexplicably long shadow over Martha and Donna before coming back as Jean Claude Van Damme (complete with ridiculous accent).

I'm not a particular fan of her elevation to, if not sainthood, then Great Significance. It certainly smacks of a certain self-regard on Rusty's part that the first character he created should turn out to be the most significant in the Doctor's history (or so we're invited to assume). Hey ho.

There's no narrative reason for it at all - there's nothing to distinguish her from the mass of companions.

I suspect Rusty would argue that she encountered the Doctor in unique circumstances - i.e. he was messed up after the War, and that her role in rehabilitating him (not that we saw much of this happening on screen, he seemed like a grumpy bugger most of the time throughout) won her a special place in his hearts. But on the whole I agree with you, yes.

Ah, so she's important because he manufactured a narrative contrivance in which she would necessarily become important.

Good stuff.

I think Rusty would either say that was 'exec's prerogative' or 'telling a story'. Couldn't argue with the former...

It sort of worked with Eccleston, I suppose. I just think Piper/Tennant was a rubbish combination.

Finally got to see The Hunger Games last night.

I enjoyed it. It's nice to see a female lead in a flick aimed at a teenage audience who doesn't just moon over the undead for hours. Two bits didn't sit right though.

Sutherland absolutely phoned it in - no menace, no sense of being a malevolent schemer.

Gale (no idea of the actor's name, he's the non-Games based 'love interest') seems to be about 30 and does nothing other than glower at the screen. I completely agree with your 'placeholder' comment there.

Other than that, I thought they handled the film quite well. The ESPN/Sky Sports style cutaways from the action were well done, and I wasn't overly concerned about the lack of uber-violence. But that's probably because I watched Brain Dead on DVD at weekend, and have had enough gore for this calendar year.

Fair comment. It occurs to me that if I'd seen THG shortly after, say, a Neil Marshall movie the lack of explicit violence would have come as something of a relief rather than being a problem.

I think the guy playing Gale is one of the Thor triplets... Hang on. Yeah, it's Hemsworth 3. Maybe he'll warm up in the sequel.

He does get some stuff to do in the sequel, but it'll be good to see whether the actor's got the chops to play fundamentalist "ends justify the means" sort-of-war-criminal in book/film three.

Sounds like the kind of thing the studio'll automatically tone down anyway. What I've read of the synopses of the sequels doesn't exactly make me impatient to see the movies anyway.

The next one veers very close to retread territory, but the third one's pretty good.

They're just very competently written books with some interesting themes. It's just a shame that they're being overhyped as either amazing satire or a blistering love triangle. Neither's really true.