Catmachine

What with all the furore surrounding the fiftieth anniversary of Doctor Who back in November 2013 you might have thought that the programme had celebrated enough anniversaries for now. After all - fifty one and a bit years on from the first episode? Nothing that special. But today, 25 January 2015, sees the fortieth anniversary of the beginning of what is probably my favourite run of sixteen episodes (four stories in the old money) from the show. There are of course stories and episodes that I like more than that, but this particular period - from 25 January to 10 May 1975 - was the most consistently enjoyable time for me watching. There is a danger that in writing this I will go over old ground but checking back on the Dimensionally Transcendental Confession blogs covering the relevant period it appears that I restrained myself from going into too much detail. It was almost as if I knew I was going to write this blog five years hence. My enjoyment of these particular four mon...

The problem with fiction is that if it tries to reflect the real world too accurately you run into all sorts of logical problems. This is particularly noticeable with long running TV series - especially soaps - as they strive to reflect the real world more and more. Take Eastenders . Its grim portrait of life in the east end of London is on several times a week at prime time with an omnibus edition on Sundays.  This raises the question - in the Eastenders universe what is on BBC1 at the times Eastenders is shown in ours? Are they watching us? The problem is of course that soaps often are a big part of the viewing public's lives and the omission of itself as fiction from the world it portrays means that a soap such as Eastenders will always have an air of unreality about it. But there's nothing really that could be done about it - the invention of another fictional soap to fill the gap would have the opposite effect and make things appear even further from reality. Some...