Silly Faces and Sillier Legal Propositions

So, they've taken down TV Links. That's certainly a shame, it was a very useful site. I admit that maybe, once or twice (give or take), I used it to catch up on shows or to see some stuff that's never been shown over here. I'll have more to say tomorrow, I think, since I can feel a righteously indignant rant swelling up inside me. And I do love my righteuous indignation, not to mention my ranting.

All I'll say for now is read the articles (the link above is to Google News, there should be at least 5 or 6 stories on it) and leave any comments you want. There seems to be some dispute as to what the legal grounds are – has the arrested man (as yet unnamed but presumably the guy in charge of the site) committed any crimes simply by linking to illegal videos? Would such a ruling have greater repercussions on sites such as search engines? Was any warning issued to him first?

That's partly why I'm holding off judgement. I want to get all the facts, though I have no doubt I'll end up on the side of TV Links. That, and it brings up some other interesting points about the progression of technology and distribution (I'm particularly thinking of music piracy and download systems).


In other news, I finally got round to reading some of Star Trek: The Manga. As I imagined, it was unanimously declared geeky. Fortunately, that doesn't bother me and it didn't much seem to bother anybody whose opinion I actually give a toss about. As for what's actually contained between the covers... well, there are the some funny sound effects (helpfully translated from Japanese by Sam), some bizarre facial expressions and the standard Star Trek plot “twists”.

The twists, as indicated by the speech marks, are fairly predictable, at least thus far. The second story had a decent enough one; it could have done with a bit more build-up but it wasn't given much space and it had some cool concepts, so I'll let it get away with it. The first story (I'm only partway through the third of five, by the way) gave away its twist to any Trekkie fairly early on. And let's face it, if you're reading Star Trek: The Manga, chances are good that you're a Trekkie. Or a Trekker. I forget the difference, but I know that one group doesn't like to be called the other.

And the facial expressions. Sulu smirking as he tells the captain that they're exit route has been cut off by a hull breach made me laugh. I even posed a hypothetical scenario to some friends of mine: “Your ship is under attack, one of your crew is dying and you've just learned that the only way to save yourselves is by destroying an evil cyborg. Of course, you need a blood sample from said cyborg to cure your dying crewman and you can't destroy the space station it's on, because then there would be nothing stopping you from falling into a black hole.”

Now, a question. “Would you have this look on your face?”


Hilarious. But it's not a bad little compilation. The second volume came out recently and I can get it for under a fiver on Amazon so I may buy that.


Further news, still sci-fi related. Peter Davidson is, as rumoured, making a comeback as the Fifth Doctor in the Doctor Who Children in Need special. While it may well be played for comedy and obviously couldn't fit in between the cliffhanger-ish ending of last series and the resolution coming in the Christmas special, previous specials have been in canon. This one's penned by Steven Moffat, a veteran Who writer, and I'm really, really hoping that it's being used as a test for the possibility of more multi-Doctor episodes in the future. I'd certainly kill to see Christopher Eccleston back in the role, and some interplay between the post-Time War Ninth and Tenth Doctors and the unaware Eighth (or even, dare I say it, Seventh) Doctor could make for some very nice drama.

But that's maybe just wishful thinking. Either way, watch out for the scene on Friday 16th November, during Children in Need night.


I think that's it for today. Still need to play more Phantom Hourglass but that'll have to wait. I need to get some Physics homework done tomorrow, which I probably should have done over the holiday and was planning on doing tonight, except I don't know what questions it was. I'd check my prep diary, but Sam (currently going by the name Thomas, after another discussion with Sam Potter, henceforth known as Burns, over who should get to use their name resulted in each going by their middle names) managed to lose it while searching my bag for a sheet of paper. So it's lying in the common room. I'd use his, but it long ago disappeared into the ether.

Where was I? Oh, yeah, wrapping things up. Before I go, I'll just say that this headline put a rather amusing image in my head. Go figure. Now, I'm gonna go lie in bed and find out how the latest woman to flirt with Captain James Tiberius Kirk is going to kick the bucket. Looks to be alien brain-screwing signals.