Another quiet day today, with yesterday's sunshine being replaced by some gloomy, gray clouds.
A pair of science fictional treats on the telly last night, starting with Doctor Who fighting the Daleks in war torn London. It really does help to switch off all higher critical facilities and enjoy it for what it is - pure, crowd pleasing tosh. I'm not entirely convinced by the new Daleks yet, but the WWII Ironsides were excellent - I would love a model of one of these, even more so if it could deliver cups of tea on demand. I also liked the hat tip towards Asimov's positronic brains and I suspect that there will be rather a lot of fan fiction written about Bracewell's final half hour ...
The second half of the evening's viewing was District 9 in which a huge alien ship appeared in the sky over Johannesburg twenty years previously, leaving a cargo of dispossessed aliens who now live in a squalid shanty town, foraging in the rubbish heaps. I did start to wonder if it was just a very heavy handed metaphor for apartheid, but it didn't take long before it veered off in some very interesting directions. The director Neill Blomkamp was slated to direct the Halo movie at one point before it got stuck in development hell, and it is easy to see the influences not just from Halo, but also Half Life, Bioshock and Mechwarrior as well. Well worth a watch, I would say.
Talking of games, some notable freebies on the app store this weekend - the retro Cobra Command, the minimalist Auditorium and the compulsive rogue-like Sword of Fargoal. All worth a look, at the very least.
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