The best of the new (and not so new) Autumn Programmes you should watch

Autumn is here! And along with the leaves falling to their untimely deaths and the cries of wosses everywhere about the cold and host of new tv programmes are back on the air, or making a triumphant comeback. Here then are the seven best new and not quite so new programmes to drown out the sounds of the world giving up and hibernating for six mounths.

#8 Continuum

The first season of this has actually finished, but that’s probably for the best as it is one of those shows where it is much more enjoyable all in one. The plot revolves around time travel, with a group of future terrorists fighting against the regime of big corporations that have taken over the world in 2077. They are sent back to our time, along with a future cop (she is the green woman in star trek film and something else, but that’s all i knew her as). Its er struggle to try and stop them restarting the revolution on our time and get herself back home. Honestly one of the best series i have seen this year it is one of those rare shows where even the evilest of villains is in some way understandable and with the flash(back? Forwards?) to 2077 the audience begins to question whether future cop shouldn’t be trying to help the rebels.

#7 Arrow.

This is the reimagining origin story of the green arrow, and it sets out to capitalise on the popularity that smallville brought to the modern day robin hood. The first episode premiered on Wednesday and by all accounts was surprisingly good. The trailers have been coming out for months and they made it look like a batman rerun and that is defiantly the case. It plays along the same kind of lines, millionaire play boy turns dark avenger to save the city he loves, but if anything it manages to go darker then batman (i was shocked as well). It plays well to the non geeks out there but for those who have even a bit of comic book knowledge the sly shout outs and the subtle foreshadowing is great. And as it has only just started you can be all hipstery about it later when it runs for the tenth or eleventh season as you liked it before it was cool.

#6 Fringe

Sadly you can’t be quite as hipster about this one as it has begun its fifth (and final season), although I’ve been watching it for the last five years so that gives me like 300 cool point right there. This show has gone from strength to strength and has changed dramatically from its first season to its last. The premise, if not the plot, is fairly simple it is a x files show with an extra mad scientist on the pay roll. The show soon evolves into parallel universes time travel, scientific abominations which will keep you coming back for more. A great show to watch in one go.

#5 Person of Interest

This has just started its second season but if you couldn’t be bothered to watch the last season is easily accessible from any episode. A reclusive genius creates a machine that can predict human behaviour, and gave it to the government to stop terrorism by tapping into all communications. The problem however is that it can also predict murders, which the government doesn’t care about. Cue Reece, a invincible ninja (essentially, he is meant to just be really well trained but no one without superpowers could do what he was meant to be able to do) who helps save the general public from the murder of the week.  It’s a fun show that if you can be bothered to delve into in asks some interesting questions on A.I, the right to privacy and so on, or it can just be a fun who’s planning on killing who (with ninjas).

#4 New girl

This isn’t really geeky, but hell its extremely funny. What more do you want out of a comedy programme?

#3Alphas

A take on the X men theme, where mutants exist and a wise leader has brought them together to help them and help the world understand them. While in the first season at times it felt the show didn’t know how dark or comic book like it wanted to go, it has now found its footing and is taking a completely different path then the x men. It also still tries to hold on to the term “scientifically plausible” which is easier some weeks then others but on the whole it achieves the goal of making it seem at least reasonable that the alpha team could live in the real world. The only question left is what power would you want, super strength, super agility, super senses, the ability to electromagnetic waves (so can surf the internet WITH YOUR MIND!), or any other of the many new powers.

#2 Grimm

This can be summed in one sentence “supernatural police procedural”. What want more? It focuses on a cop who has the power to see the monsters as they really are, not the human faces they hide behind. So whether its a cat monster, a werewolf a pig man of a witch he can see them all. As the Grimm he has to sort out the murders and basically police the monsters. Its a good show which sounds kind of daft, but makes a real effort to be dark with lots of grisly murders and blood, lots of blood (it makes one believe they get it half price the amount they use on this show).  Now is the perfect time to join as well, Mr grimm (you might have been able to guess i can’t remember any of the main characters names so far, a part from #5 which i looked up) has just told his partner so there is no more stupid sneaking around and the world is finally opening up and we get to see how the monster society really works.

#1 Revolution

I love this show, but I’m not sure whether its because the show has most people using bows and swords (which i can use) or just the basic premise itself. It all starts when electricity just stops being a force on our world, nothing with electricity will ever work again. Move forward 15 years and we start to see people survived, what happened to the country (America obviously) and how things have changed. Honestly i would be hooked just on the thought experiment alone, I mean what would happen to all the people in the cities? How fast would people descend into barbarism? Would a government hold up? Would we be able to simply start living like we did in the 1800’s or has our culture become so reliant on electricity that it would simply be impossible to change back? Would guns still be useful after 15 year (after all making ammo would be difficult to say the least and getting the materials would be almost impossible). A fun idea to think about and it makes you realise how different the world would be. On top of all this one of the many militia that sprung up afterwards has kidnapped blonde haired boy and so the family goes off to find him. Plus revolution isn’t a bad show, though at the monument it can’t decide whether it should be all dark and emotional (it shouldn’t) or more of a swashbuckling adventure (it definitely should).  This is defiantly a show with lots of room to grow and a definite must if you are like me and enjoy the game of what if?

Myths – the origin of the Leprechaun

The leprechaun, if you’re anything like me you kind of have a vague idea what they are and what they do. To most they are little Irish fairies that have a pot of gold, give wishes and look snazzy in green. The image of them nowadays is promoted as the cover of the lucky charms cereal (which if you don’t know what is imagine crack for kind but with more sugar, that is to say awesome). But in fact there is so much more to them then meets the eye. In their current state leprechauns have been around for about six to seven hundred years and are way more evil then you thought. They have always been shown as grouchy old men but essentially harmless, well like most fairy stories it gets more messed up the further back you go.

They were never classified as evil but apparently back in ye olde days they were much more forgiving. Cases such as for a bit of a joke three leprechauns dragged a king out of his bed with the intent to drown him. He woke up and got three wishes out of them, but not because they were sorry, just because they were caught and those were the rules. Frankly that is the behaviour of a sociopath, no remorse just doing what he or she wants without thought of right and wrong. And what makes it worse is that apparently people would hear these stories and go “well he got a pot of gold from him, the leprechaun can’t be all bad” and went and classified the leprechaun as neutral.

Tee hee! I burn down orphanages with the souls of puppies and tears of koala bears. Tee hee!

Is it just me or is that a kick in the teeth for the leprechauns, I mean if you go to all the trouble of dragging someone to the sea just to drown them I would want some recognition. I would want people to see a little old guy in green and shout “don’t let the leprechaun try and kill me in really elaborate ways!”. Maybe that whole sentence is a little much to ask for, but really a little fear would be nice for these small green killing machines. But they didn't just try and drown people there are load of cases where they would play tricks on humans, normally leaving them dead.  Sure they sometimes made shoes as well (it’s the fairy family business, for some reason), but seriously how are murderous old men who like to trick humans a good or even a neutral thing? None can like having shoe made for them for free that much.

This prettying up of fairy tales though is fairly common, and if the leprechaun tale ended with that we could all stop imagining the dead eyed killing machine above trying to tricking us into eating a spatula but the tale of why they became what they are today is just as interesting (and like 50% less creepy). Before the Anglo-Saxons decided that Britain looked pretty nice this time of year, and even before the Romans started prancing around Europe there was a Celtic Empire (kind of). It was a huge amalgamation of different tribes that had moved over from around India and spread out. The Celtic and Indian tales are surprisingly similar and the ancient language of the Celt (which can be found as an ancestor of ancient Irish) and Sanskrit are as related (like first cousin you see once a year but had to pretend you knew/ cared about  related not brother sister related).  They all tell the same kind of origin story, which as always seems the ways with the more interesting gods, they were born out whole and got down to the business of marring their own sisters and deciding who to go to war with. Various hijinks ensue and the children of Danu (a big river/mother goddess to all the other gods) find themselves at war because they got bored and the other people looked at them wrong (there is more to it then that but that really is the core reason).

Anyway the good (and remember these were old style flawed gods so words like good just mean slightly less of  bastard) guys find themselves losing, their main king has just been killed by a guy called Balor who has such a huge eye that it takes ten men to hold the eyelid open, and a single look from it kills. Then rides in Lugh Lamfada who is the god of... well just about everything, he makes stuff is apparently all wise and is the best sword swinger around. Honestly reading some of his tales is like reading well written fan fiction. By this point i wouldn't be surprised if i read something like “and then he used he super awesome sword to kill all the bad guys because he is super cool and amazing”.  But in the tale everyone seems to think this as well and he was locked up as he was to precious to be let near a war.

despite this stupendously stupid plan he turns up fashionably late kills Balor (the eye guy) and drives the other army into the sea for eternity because he’s awesome thats why. He then goes on to be at least three other times bitch slaps a sea serpent, wins some shoes off a giant and generally acts the part like a thirteen year old is writing his life.

But like most things someone had to be the boring one and in this case it was the church, when Christianity made its revival in Britain after the Anglo-Saxons they weren't going to have this guy reminding people why paganism was more fun. This sounds glib but honestly at this point Britain was happily toasting thor and even the older gods and generally having a grand old time acting like barbarians, and Christianity was like the parent who had been gone for the weekend. It tidied up, told the child off and tried to warn him away from such behaviour by villainising and generally insulting the bad influence friend, which in this case was Lugh. Sadly over time he was made ito little more then a grumpy old man, who was still good a making stuff but that was about all, and Britain went back to being a good boy and getting drunk with his friends (quite so much).

So there you have it, this has been an extremely brief introduction and honestly i could of gone on at length about all of it, but at a certain point i would have put on my lecturing hat and gone boring. But honestly the whole history of celtic myths, and how they declined, let alone the myths themselves are well worth checking out.

Webcomic review - Girl Genius, a steampunk adventure

Warning – due to the nature of this comic, steampunk, I may start speaking like Nigel Thornberry, that is using such words as smashing or any variation of jolly.

In this review then I will be looking at the web comic girl genius, a steam punk adventure story, which is to give you the short version, amazing. Mostly when praising, or even talking about webcomics the phrase “for a webcomic” kind of hangs around the conversation, like the creepy guy at parties who laughs at all the jokes but never talks and offers to stroke your hair.  But this is simply not the case for GG (girl genius) which delivers great art, a smashing story and funny one liners all in one go.  When reviewing a webcomic you have to first decide what kind of review to do of it, whether it be for the general feel of the comic, the comedy or the plot. After all many (great) webcoimcs simply do not have an overarching plot, or even if they do only use it change the situation and so produce more chance for comedy. For GG though this, even from the very beginning, cannot be said and is a straight forward narrative for the first page. Unlike other webcomics GG never started life with a gag a day format such as Clavin and Hobbes or Garfield, but rather started as any graphic novel should, with a mystery.

That mystery is who is Agatha, the main protagonist?  GG starts with a bang, with the dreaded Wulfenbach Empire is coming to the town of Beetleburg. Plans are set into motion and a locket is stolen. In this world of quasi Victorian contraptions and people saying such things as “I say!” without irony, mad scientists exist and are a terror to the common people. They are referred to as sparks and have the ability to build the most outlandish of things, walking houses… easy, flying hats…no problem but what each of these mad scientists love to make are the ever enjoyable death rays. Agatha is the just a student, who when surrounded by sparks can’t seem to make her inventions work. Don’t worry if this sounds like the beginning of a story about a woman’s quest to find herself, within half an hour of reading she has figured out she is a spark and beginning her journey across Europe with a talking cat (an experiment gone too right, it makes sense when you read it), a warrior princess and a host of other characters who all feel as fleshed out as the protagonist herself. Personally my favourite character is Moloch VonZinzer (yes they all have such gloriously penny dreadful names) whose situation gets worse and his sarcasm gets better. But honestly the amount of side characters to cheer on is fantastic and most of them will have some kind of death ray.

Make no mistake, when reading GG you will come across the literally hundreds of different ways mad scientists have thought to kill one another from electric bees to a walking stick which shoots lightning. Everyone will have their favourite but for me it is the musical organ of death or perhaps the fencing epee that freezes people with one touch.  All this is done in the best of the steampunk style and the feel of the Victorian adventure stories permeates throughout  the whole comic giving the it a wonderful exuberance that you simply don’t find that often (honestly every once in a while I would feel like shouting “what ho!” after a particularly rousing action scene).

But what makes this webcomic special is that it doesn’t feel like this is the one area that the writers focused on this, in fact it seems to be just the tip of the iceberg of what this new world could offer. A good example of this is England in GG, which has never been shown, just mentioned. But despite this the reader still gets a feel for what kind of country it is with an immortal queen and the best sparks in existence.  The world building then is top notch, which is an accomplishment in a novel where if the writer can’t be bothered or is just too hung-over to be subtle can just flat out tell you what the world is like.  With a web comic the art has to be just as engaging as the story, at least at the beginning, and it would take a velociraptor juggling chainsaws to keep me interested in the exposition needed to explain the world of GG (of course this could just mean that I have a really small attention span).

honestly i looked up velociraptor and got this, oh internet i do love you and your ability to bring my five year old's self's fantasies to life.

The plot then is all important to GG and one of the main reasons to read it, it is one of the best examples of steampunk around but avoids the trap of creating a world just so people can go around with steam contraptions and more gears on things then could possibly be needed.  This is definatly there, but it is not all GG is, rather the words feels much more fleshed out, a place which feels reel like only the best of books do.  But it is the little asides that I like the most, one such being:

“people keep giving me rings, but a just a small death ray would seem more practical”.

GG though isn’t perfect, it slows down dramatically when the group enters the castle and what was a plot that went so fast it laughed in the face of light speed slows down (though not without good reason, a lot of stuff goes down in this section) to the pace of a really fast moving snail. But that is why now is the perfect time to start reading, the pace is picking up, a suitably epic battle is under way, secrets are being revealed and giant death suits are starting to appear. So if you have some spare time check it out, it is well worth the days you will lose reading it.

check it out at http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php

Series review - Smallville

Smallville the show about the growing pains of superman recently (may last year if you really want to be accurate) amid a lot of people saying “wait is that still on?” and maybe the more pertinent question “why is this still on?” But despite the hate and (maybe more depressingly) the indifference of the general public there must have been at least some fans still hanging on as it got to an impressive ten seasons. So one day while doing absolutely nothing I decided that I might as well give our super powered friend the benefit of the doubt. My verdict… quite good.

 I know this doesn’t exactly sound like high praise but there is one thing you have to understand about me, I have the soul of a twelve year old boy in that all relationship malarkey is just filler for me until someone blows something up or someone falls over. And that’s the problem this show is all about relationships, mainly how superman can’t have them.

why won't you just blow stuff up with your LAZER EYES!

The other reason it got only a quite good is that sad to say but the first two seasons, that’s 44 episodes just suck. Maybe not all of them, the season finale of season 2 is actually excellent but the rest? Hit and miss. In these first two seasons they have a monster of the week type format, and then they have to think of a contrived way of keeping Clark for just running over there and punching the dude until they stop trying to kill the town/ poison the water/ eat all the cupcakes. Actually this is a problem not so much for the show as the superman tale, I mean let’s all be honest here superman is more than a little bit over powered. So the only way for any story to have suspense is if the villain hides somewhere. And after you have seen twenty or thirty episode where it takes them thirty minutes to figure out who the bad guy is and where he lives you kind of have your fill. (is it just me or did anyone else watch these and just shout at the tv that superman and friends should just ask around and see if anyone is missing or has turned into a bit of a bastard lately).

The one thing I would advise though is to ignore all the not so subtle references to Jesus and Clark being similar, they get better at it through the seasons but even at their best the writers and subtle are only just in the same room together. The most obvious one is when Clark is left to die on a cross at the end of season one, until he rises again. This is just one of those annoying things that you have to either ignore or laugh at.

But if I have any advice to give it would be this, skip to season 3 where it starts to get better. It’s odd basically season three actually feels like a season one, in that it sets up all the main characters, has a understandable (and more importantly good) over aching plot and the whole romance between Clark and Lana disappears for a while. From season 3 onwards the consequences of people actions actually start to affect the world plus the world starts to expand a little and the viewer gets to see outside of smallville. Honestly it feels like a new director or producer came in and told the writers that they should aim for interesting, and not at boring.

 If you don’t have time to watch seven seasons what about five? The show is ok, watchable would be the word I would use, up until green arrow turns up. Before then the show had been fun but kind of aimless, there was this crystal plot which was fun, and Lana kind of turns into a witch (by the way this is the most annoying thing about this show, every week the main characters are always skeptical of things “a man who can breathe under water? Don’t be absurd! Now I’m must dash I have to run at the speed of sound to buy some food”) but Clark was still just a farm boy who only really helped people who slapped him in the face with their problems, normally by being dead. When the archer turns up the show starts to climb out of its teen drama but with an alien theme and more into how super man came about. From then on the show really hits its stride and even by the last season is still being fun superman action that it was always meant to be. There is one season where green arrow just disappears but then he comes back and is awesome again. One other thing makes it interesting, when Lana Lang leaves. Now I feel bad about writing this but whenever she was on screen you knew all the fun was going away and emotions were going to appear (by emotions I mean staring wistfully at one another). Then Lois Lane turns up and she is just so much more fun, and even with my twelve year old soul which shouts yuck at any romantic part wanted them to be together.

The show then is like an overweight elephant, it takes a while to get going, trips up a bit here and there, but one you start watching it at full stride it’s hard to look away until the end where it crashes in glory.

Religion in the DC universe

Firstly I want to point out that I am not a major comic book reader, that is not to say I don’t like them, quite the contrary in fact, it’s just that even in this day and age getting editions of American comics which aren’t batman is like trying to find an episode of doctor who were at least a couple of people don’t die, it possible but you are never sure it’s worth it. So I am not up to date with all the obscure law in DC, but I have read at least some comics, the major ones like where superman dies and then all the other batman ones. The question I want to ask though is about the obscure side of the DC universe, that is why is Christianity still around?

Now before people start to get angry remember that we are talking about a fictional universe, everyone put down their pitchforks? Good we can continue. Now I’m not suggesting that in the DCU (DC universe) people don’t believe in God, in fact the amount of people who came back to life and/ or go back to beginning of time or do any number of things where it is at least indicated that there is some intelligent force is at work would make me a believer but definitely not a Christian. This is not to say Christianity is bad in any sort of way, it’s just that with so many people around who can do all this amazing stuff wouldn’t it be really hard to believe that this random guy was the son of God (again reminding people, in a fictional universe).

This thought came about surprising not when I was thinking about superman (as there are plenty of other places which compare him to Jesus if you can be asked to look) no I was thinking about The Flash. Yes he can easily walk on water, go back in time, jump dimensions, and basically do a lot of what would be considered miracles. And in the DCU it was already established that aliens just love to visit our planet ( I always thought of them visiting earth as them visiting stone henge, not a lot to do but be excited and mildly confused by what its doing there, have some sandwiches and then go home with some crappy pictures of a rock) and in this universe they love making themselves out as gods, so why does everyone believe that Jesus was the son of God?

sorry about all this winking Jesus

The other religions can get away with it, after all if you told Buddhism that the Buddha was really an alien and then pointed out that crazy shit what happens so regularly the Buddhist after some deep thought (and a lot of vodka) might be able to accept this. And Islam and Judaism could still be like “so Moses had the power to control every third frog he saw… well that’s makes him even more awesome a prophet! ( in my mind they would also be drunk)”. A Prophet after all wouldn’t have to be human to be from God. So sadly for poor Jesus he seems to be the only one of the major religions that would take a major hit, hell some of the religions would probably thrive.

All the religions that base themselves around reincarnation would suddenly have proof and would get to show off to all the other religions at the family gatherings, after all batman, hawk girl, hawk man, to name just a few have at some point been reincarnated, and have the proof. It would be the first religion that when some smart ass atheist asks for proof the believer can pull out a picture of  hawkgirl (after all who DOESN’T have a picture of hawk girl on them at all times) and laugh manically. While pushing the picture in their faces.

But really I think we would be kidding ourselves if we thought that any religion would do amazingly well in the DCU, after all even in our boring superhero less world the number of people who actually believe is falling, can you imagine what the numbers would be like if there were people who could fly, were invulnerable and stopped meteors regularly ( on a side point what is up with all the meteors that head to earth, it’s like the galaxy just doesn’t like earth that much, though with shows such as the Jersy shore who can really blame it) what are the chances that people would begin to worship some of these guys and girls, after all hero worship could quite easily turn to just plain worship.

WHY DON'T YOU EVER KEEP YOUR CLOTHES ON, WHATS THE POINT IN WEARING THEM!

The point of all this then is one simple question, could anyone in the DC or Marvel universe for that matter (though in marvel lately they have been at least trying to show how all these gods and goddesses and magic are just advanced science) be religious, or would religion be the only thing that helped people get through the 23 alien invasion?