Furthermore

Torchwood

We watched the Torchwood finale last night, and I think that's it for me and Torchwood. Much as I love Mr Barrowman, the penultimate part jumped the shark during his snog with the doomed airman. We got the point already - can the writers not express a subtle emotion without smacking us over the head with it?

The last one was even worse - pure self indulgence by the writers. There's a scene where Capt Jack berates his team for all being idiots, and for a moment I thought there might be an explanation why the whiny, hysterical fools had been recruited to their positions of global importance. But no, it was just more emo wank before they brought on the demon that they'd already shown us in the trailer. Then the whole sorry mess finally dragged itself to its obvious conclusion.

What annoys me is that it has moments of brilliance, and that the same people who seem so able in Doctor Who, seem to lose all sense of characterisation and ability to write a good plot as soon as the constraints of a family drama are relaxed.

The Goodies

I watched the Goodies anniversary show on BBC2 last night. I dimly remember some of the sketches from my youth - mainly the tomato ketchup squirting one, and the beanstalk one for some reason. Having watched the show, I feel it's probably best left in the past - I don't think I'd watch it if it was on now, although I think my older daughter would enjoy it.

The thing that struck me though, was how much visual humour there was in the show, and of course it was all done with "real" effects since there was no CGI to speak of in those days. Tastes in comedy have moved on since then of course, but what goes around comes around, and I wonder whether we won't see some kind of blend of comedy and computer graphics. Where is the Terry Gilliam of machinima?

Just as I wrote that, I thought - why would I expect to see that stuff on TV (although no doubt it will appear eventually). It's already happening on the internet. You only have to look at sites like b3ta or somethingawful to find photoshop parodies and funny little animations in Flash. I can't think of any individual creator who I recognise, and I'm not sure if it's just a matter of time, or whether the medium has become more like the joke-telling culture - you never know where the originals came from.

What am I Like

I did the BBC What Am I Like quiz last night and came out as somewhere between a realist (ISTJ) and a resolver (ISTP). At the end of the quiz though, they whizzed through the list of categories so fast I couldn't see it. Went to look on the website, and it took me a while to even find links to the different categories, and I can't find a keyed list (ie from the different personality dimensions to the types) anywhere.

So, here's my version. I've also added the standard Myers-Briggs type codes after the descriptive names. You should be able to look those up from Google to find out more.

Update: Actually, try this site which seems to have a bit more detail on all the types.

Genius on the BBC

Quite interesting show on BBC2 last night. The main element was Tony Buzan teaching a group of 6 underachieving children for about 6 months. His theory was that this group of people actually tends to contain the future geniuses of our culture. On this rather tenuous hook, the BBC then added some segments on a young man who was born from the "Genius spermbank", a boy who was being hot-housed by his parents, and other bits and bobs generally on the theme of what makes a genius.

The interesting part of the program, to me, was not really whether Buzan found any geniuses, but simply the reaction of the children to his methods of teaching them. They were tested before and after the project by educational psychologists, and showed marked improvements in many areas (above what you'd expect from just being six months older), with verbal fluency skills showing a five fold increase in some cases.

I'm not sure what lesson we should draw from this - was it being part of a special project (with TV involved lets not forget) that engaged their interest? Was it something about Buzan's methods? The small group atmosphere within which it was "allowed" for them to be interested in learning - the degree to which peer pressure had switched off the children (in the lower part of secondary school, so maybe 12-13 years old) was very depressing.

It shows what can be done at any rate. Hopefully there's something here that can be applied more widely.

TV and Radio

Couple of things I caught over the last week - one was May 33rd, a terrific drama about multiple personality disorder (or dissociative personality disorder). The actress playing the woman with the alternates was fantastic - very naturalistic.

I don't want to get sucked into a discussion of multiple personality disorder, which (as far as I can tell) is perfectly real, but I thought the decision to explicitly link the disorder to satanic abuse was probably a mistake, given that the evidence for that is rather poor. Perhaps we were meant to see it as her interpretation of her experience, but to me, putting a camera on the scene made it part of objective reality. Powerful stuff anyway.

The other was Mitch Benn's Crimes against Music on Radio 4. I've heard him on The Now Show and I think there are to be 4 shows in this series. He does a lot of excellent musical parodies - the Smiths one was superb - I actually thought it made a half-decent addition to the Smiths canon. Thursday at 6.30 I think.