The Schrodinger Effect

Blogging, haven't done this in awhile, summing my recent life activities in a mere few sentences that might be vaguely interesting to those who are interested in reading in the first place

*breathes*

Last night, Mrs Nagel and I headed up towards Leeds, Leeds Town Centre to be exact, well, Leeds Town Centre's city loop/ring road thing for about twenty minutes before settling in the train station's car park to ascend on Bar Cenessa to see Chris Hoyle, of The Projection Room fame, and his new film 'The Schrodinger Effect' starring Mr Hoyle himself and fellow Doctor Dave Hodson.

Having picked up Mr Chambers on our way, yes Mr Chambers will ALWAYS join us on these big WHO events, we walked the shops first and picked up a few bits and pieces before settling down in seats in the er... function room of the Bar Cenessa.

Greeted by the man himself, Chris Hoyle, and a glass of shampers, we were treated to a series of videos of Doctor Who-ness from BBC2's 1999 Doctor Who Night to the traielrs for Chris' fan film. After these, Mr Hoyle did a short introduction before we were treated with a bloody brilliant looking fan film that is as of yet the best Projection Room film since 'Gene Genius' (oh wait, that was their last one). The quality of the direction, executed by Hoyle himself, and the sets and props, namely the TARDIS exterior prop (mayde by Hoyle), and TARDIS interior set, brilliantly constructed by both Hoyle and Hodson. And the film was topped off with some brilliant CG/Visual Effects produced by the most northern of northern-based people, Graham Quince, of which we had the pleasure meeting him and his fantastic wife, Debbie.

Come the end and a round of applause, everyone sited their views and opinions with each other and Chris sent round a guest book for all to sign. And shortly afterwards a treat of a DVD was played with featurettes and brilliant behind the scenes of construction of sets and props, scripting and editing and visual effects was played with appropriate head shots of Chris, Dave and Graham... hmm... one even wearing the same T-shirt he's wearing that day..hmm.

With a fantastic few hours of entertainment we were treated with the possibility of watching the latest 'real' Doctor Who episode, The Sontaran Stragemn starring current Doctor Who, David Tennant and companion, Catherine Tate with returning companion, Freema Ageman as Martha. While on the big screen would have been brilliant, the technology wasn't permitting so we all sat around a little television screen to watch this latest episode, but Chris did connect the telly up to his big speakers (ooooh errr!). And with that, we said temporaral goodbyes in hopes of catching up later, and continued to find some swanky place to eat, well it wasn't swanky but we had a good eating and couldn't catch up with the man himself later but ah well and continued on our way home. A fantastic evening and we look forward to the next one... maybe our own even? Thanks Chris and company for a brill evening.

The only general comment we had about Chris' film was that it was awfully similar to our intended 'Time and the Doctors' what a shame we were two years late with our script, completely unaware of what Chris had envisionged. Ah well... we'll have to rethink 'Time and the Doctors' now. 'The Schrodinger Effect' was just proof that Chris Hoyle is the motherdaddy (I'm sure he'd like that) of British fan films, having produced them from as early as 1994, and proves that with a little effort you can produce something of brilliance that everyone will enjoy watching. The film was also an excellent show reel for Graham having produced all the visual effects. I think 50% of the film was a visual effect and 50% raw live footage, conceived between Graham and Chris.

But again, a fantastic show and one well worth remembering. Thanks Chris.

Doctor Who: Partners in Crime

Right, I thought I’ve better start a new series of review blog posts about the new series of Doctor Who starring David Tennant and … ahem… Catherine Tate.

Doctor Who S4EP1: Partners in Crime

Doctor Who returns with Partners in Crime featuring the return of Time Lord, David Tennant and Temp worker, Catherine Tate as Donna Noble, last seen in the 2006 Christmas Special, ‘The Runaway Bride’. The Doctor is investigating Adipose and so is Donna. With a few near misses the two finally meet with a brilliant silent conversation through the windows of Miss Fosters’ office.

An interesting opening episode let down, unfortunately, by the writing, sorry RTD but this is on par with Series 1’s ‘Rose’ and Series 2’s ‘New Earth’ oh, and any other episode you’ve written really. Yes, it was a jolly romp to open the series, light hearted and interesting for the younger minority but it just wasn’t… right. It felt like a comic, which was good, but unfortunately the idea stretched the few pages of a comic and could have been so much better. Over used music, sorry Murray but when do we get to hear more new tracks of music, ah well, can’t complain, we got the same thing in Series 2. Because of the silliness of the episode and the pointlessness of the episode, I don’t think the Doctor did much ‘saving the day’ wise really, ultimately it would have ended this way, just a shame it didn’t “end another way”. But otherwise, Donna gets a fine entry into the TARDIS. I never liked Donna to begin with in the Christmas Special but unfortunately she is warming to me and it’d be interesting to see how she gets on. 3/5

Next time… Fires of Pompeii