Electric Dreams

Great news this week that Red Dwarf is to return with the majority of the cast intact, including Kryten, the robot who broke his programming. This was cause for celebration in the Chatterbox household, as our dvds are very well worn, and some new material will be seized upon with much delight. Once we had shared our worries that they will get rid of the wonderful grunginess of the original series we moved onto one of our favourite topics of the moment, which is whether a robot will ever be able to tell a joke that it has created all by itself.

In science fiction, robots are constantly breaking out of their programming to develop independent thought and sometimes a sense of humour, but even in fiction there are very few examples of robots designed with the consciousness and creativity to make a real joke. I certainly can’t think of any evidence of this in the real world, even with the fancy chess-playing computers. Somehow I have difficulty with the idea that Deep Blue, or even one of his cleverer descendents could get the giggles. Maybe that’s my lack of imagination though….

The jury is still out in our house, mainly because we run out of processing power before reaching a conclusion.

While you are thinking about it here’s a bit from an early series of Red Dwarf.

Heath Robinson Heaven

For anyone who likes machines, James May's Big Ideas is a bit of a must see, even if you do have a bit of a problem with some of Mr May's dodgy friends. It gave my geeky heart a huge thrill when this week we saw steel being melted with nothing more than solar power. I don't really care about all the problems with turning this into something that is practical. The mere fact that there are (let's be honest) slightly strange men in deserts doing these sorts of things makes me very happy.

I think James May might find himself thrown out of the petrol head gang if he keeps this up though.

My Day Out

So, the plan was, head into London by lunchtime, pick up a boat at Westminster pier to take us through and around the Thames Barrier on the water, then on to the Thames Barrier pier, so we could spend an afternoon at the visitor centre learning about a huge great machine that looks like a series of buildings and also have a cup of tea and blueberry muffin in the café. I checked the boat timetable online, and all looked good. After I printed it out I noticed a tiny note at the bottom which said ‘These boats cruise to/from the Thames Barrier, but only stop at Barrier Gardens Pier for pre-booked groups’. Hmmm, surely not? So I rang them, and yes, it is true. If you want to visit the Thames Barrier you cannot visit by boat unless there are 15 of you wanting to do the same thing at the same time. You have to go by car, or have a fiddly and time consuming journey by bus or train. The time involved means that you can’t get up close to the barrier on the water, and visit the visitor centre in the same afternoon (or at least not without scrapping the cup of tea and piece of cake). When I rang the Thames Barrier Visitor Centre they didn’t seem remotely perturbed by this.

We went to the Imperial War Museum instead. Lovely tea and cake.

'Skinny Boys in Suits'

Well, what a rollercoaster ride it has been for those final Dr Who episodes…

I watched them back to back when I returned from holiday, pausing just for a short catching of breath and the tiniest of ‘woo-hoos’ before continuing on to the grand finale of Journey’s End.

Cheesy? Yes. Did it matter? Not one tiny bit.

I was always keen on Catherine Tate as a companion, but I have to say she surpassed all my expectations. It was great to see a really sound buddy relationship on the TARDIS. Another fascinating thing was how similar Tate’s fast talking persona is to Tennant’s – it took this episode for me to really see it though. I wonder if the casting or the plot came first? Woteva, it worked for me.

So, I was really sad to see Donna go home – more so than Rose, who seemed a bit out of place this series, perhaps intentionally…. I got really confused about whether she got her happy ending. On the whole, I think not, although she got a very pretty substitute to play with. Gives the option for lots more complicated reunions in the future though, so all in all quite a smart move I think.

Clever RTD though – just what we needed to clear the decks ready for the start of a new regime. And didn’t he have fun – putting in all the bits you would expect, and having lots of little games, like the Daleks interrupting the brilliantly clichéd Rose and Doctor reunion. Very, very silly, but I liked very much.



I have loved every incarnation of Dr Who that I have ever seen, although I do have a bit of a gap between Peter Davidson and Paul McGann*. So I don’t have much truck with the competition between different incarnations, and tend to lap it up uncritically, whatever I am given, but here is my wish list for the next series anyway.

• Keep with the teatime family drama and up the sci-fi content a bit
• Lets have the Doctor back to his snappy, energetic, fast-talking self, rather than moping about with tears in his eyes.
• Lovely though it all was, I think the Doctor’s heart has been broken enough now – surely a Time Lord will need to hang around with mates for at least an aeon before he will have recovered.
• Bernard Cribbins was great – I’d like to see Wilf as a companion for one of the specials at least
• More running about and pulling levers on complicated Heath Robinson type machinery please.
• Bring back the Master and let us have a little rest from the Daleks

So that I’ve got all my Doctor Who thoughts dealt with in one go, here are my wishes for the next Doctor:
Black : Shaun Parkes**,
Female: Catherine Tate**, Tamsin Greig ** or Ann Marie Duff
Pretty and Talented: Julian Rhind-Tutt, James McAvoy, or John Simm**
Just because he’d be brilliant: Philip Glenister



*Colin what?.... Sylvester who?....lalalala
** Who cares if they have been in the series before?

The Rise of the Machines

You may have wondered why the Blue Ball Machine is one of my favoured links over there on the side of this blog.

The reason is that I love machines. Not swishy ipod-y, hi-techy machines which hide all their secrets behind black or silver blank faces, but the machines which really show you that they’re working.

For this reason, I love steam engines, old cars, typewriters, telephones and computers.

I was at Bletchley Park last year, when the Colossus was in full action, and it was a wonderous thing to behold. The kids and I stood for ages, blocking the aisle for less enamoured visitors, asking all sorts of questions, and were finally rewarded with a souvenir piece of tape. Actually the souvenir was irrelevant – all those dials, switches and wheels whizzing about was mesmerising. We also went to see the Bombe which was fully reconstructed at the time but not operating. Again, we interrogated the poor curator until to get rid of us he gave us a broken valve from the machine, and we skipped away happily with our spoils.

I went to the Royal Observatory yesterday, and there it was the wonderful clocks that held me in thrall, industriously clicking their lives away (and mine – sadly!). I have similar trouble when I head to Amberley Working Museum, which is full of obsolete machinery such as telexes and old telephone exchanges, many of which are still working, and if you ask politely you can get to play! And, one of the highlights of our holiday in Northern France last year was visiting the huge glass factory.....

The Blue Ball Machine is about as close as I can get to watching a machine in action when I am sitting at my computer. And as such, it makes me very happy. Does this mean that I am a geek?