Reilly2040's Blog

Over the last week, I’ve been painting up my other space marines, and continuing to try around with different ideas. I’ve slowly added some extra details, like painting the scroll on the side of their legs and painting their belt pouches brown.

However, today I thought I’d go a bit extra. I’d been meaning to pick up the Citadel Washes pack to try them out, as well as some proper gold paint for the chest detail and shoulders, so tonight I grabbed them from Games Workshop and set about the next two marines I’d been playing with who had a red foundation.

I had been toying with a red and silver colour scheme, but each different mix I tried, I decided I prefered the red and gold scheme I’d used originally (the Genesis Chapter from the Codex). The results of tonight’s painting can be seen on the right. The middle marine is my original one, with the basic red foundation and yellow details. The only changes are I painted up his gun a bit, added black to the joints in his armour legs, and painted his belt pouches.

For the other two marines, I started as usual. Black undercoat, and red foundation. Then green for the eyes, black in the mouthguard, and brown for the belt pouches/holster.

I then used my new shining gold paint on the shoulders and chest detail. I then took the red wash and applied it over the marine, save for his chest, which had a black wash applied.

Once the washes had all dried, I then lightly added another layer of gold to the chest (very lightly with hardly any paint on the brush to try for a dry-brushing effect) and added another layer of gold to the shoulders as normal.  The green in the eyes, and brown for the pouches/holster were re-applied.

For the gun, a basic coat of gunmetal was used, as well as red for the marine’s hands. The insignia was then painted bronze. The hands were given a red wash, the same as the marine, while a black wash was applied to the gun itself.

I’m pretty happy with the results.   The washes definitely add a level of depth to the figures with minimal work, and the gold looks much nicer than the yellow.

Next is to paint up my final two marines with the green and black Salamander paint scheme again I think.  That’ll give me two groups of three in each colour scheme.   I’ve started painting one so far, however this time, rather than gold I’ve applied a light foundation of bronze to the chest logo over the black basecoat, which currently looks quite effective, so I may leave it with that.   For the wash, rather than the obvious green, I’m tempted to try the Devlan Mud wash and see if it gives the whole thing a more battle-worn look.

Oh yeah, and I need to tidy up the left eye of the marine in the top picture.  Bit of a splodge that one

Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.

Graceful retirement award,

For me, there’s only one real contender for this award (especially since most series these days get axed rather than conclude properly).

Battlestar Galactica

I’d had a bit of a mixed history with Galactica.   Seasons 1 and 2 I absolutely adored, however once the New Caprica stuff in season 3 was resolved, I really felt the show started to go off the boil.  I found myself increasingly bored by some of the episodes, and felt there was a noticable degree of padding sneaking in (season 2 had had similar issues, although it was here they really got to me).  With the first 10 episodes of season 4 I was hopeful things would start moving towards a conclusion, however again I just felt like the show was plodding towards the end and some of the episodes I really didn’t like.

However, the last 10 episodes changed everything.  Tighter, and with a focus on the end game, the final Cylon was quickly revealed, and we got a real feeling that everything was coming to a head.  However with the finale looming, I found old doubts creeping in to my head again.  With so much left to be resolved and answered, would the previous sluggish pace mean a rushed ending?

Nope.  Instead Galactica delivered in a way better than I think even the biggest fans were expecting.  Dangling questions were addressed, and what had been a grim sometimes depressing show to watch, surprised everyone by having an optimistic, happy ending for the characters.   It was a brilliant finale, that cast aside any doubts I had developed about the show and cemented its place as one of the landmark Sci-Fi series others will be compared to for years to come.

The McMillan’s Pasties – now with over 20% real cow, a true lunch treat – award for shameless product placement

Its the award for shameless marketing, and there’s one main contender

Knight Rider

Its completely understandable, with Ford co-financing the series, but there was always much amusement to be had when excuses were found for KITT to transform into a different Ford vehicle every week.  There were a few notable transformations (the classic Mustang), but towards the end of the series, they seemed to try and standardise the transformations more, for example, KITT would generally rely on the same pickup truck mode a lot more rather than turning into a random transit or the like (infact the transformations in general seemed to get cut down, with even the Attack Mode’s appearances dropping off sharply).

Its hard to be too critical of Knight Rider though.  Many shows tend to have a specific vehicle supplier, its just that they had a specific mechanism built into the show to show off Ford vehicles that drew more attention to it.   I didn’t mind it as much as other viewers seemed to.  Once you accepted KITT’s transformation abilities (and lets be honest, the original KITT would do things that required just as much, if not more, suspension of disbelief) I found there was fun to be had watching KITT transform into that pickup.

Guilty pleasure award,

Its a series that was widely panned, was riddled with problems, but despite myself I found myself really enjoying.  And I’m going to agree with Pie Man here as well (infact agreeing with Pie Man is a main feature of Part 4).

Bonekickers

It took itself far too seriously, but still there was so much fun to be had watching the intrepid team of archaeologists improbably unearth some irreplaceable historical treasure only to then destroy it utterly (usually involving setting it on fire).  Legendary sword Excalibur survives for hundreds of years underwater with not a single sign of decay or rust, but three seconds in the hands of Dr Magwilde and its trashed.

The shows failure in the ratings and critical mauling weren’t really a surprise, but it gave me a good chuckle every week.

Worst treatment of a series.

There’s a lot of crossover for this award with previous awards, so I’ll name:

NBC

I was sorely tempted to have this award target Sarah Connor Chronicals and Virgin 1, but instead I have to really bring up Knight Rider again.

I should prefix this by saying, I think that NBC actually had the right idea for what a Knight Rider series should be.  While studio interference is usually portrayed as wrong, I think Gary Scott Thompson’s dark, arc-driven vision for Knight Rider was probably at odds with the fun-loving, Mike and KITT-focused show that it needed to be, at least for the first season to establish itself.  There’s no doubt in my mind that the later episodes of the show were much stronger and had a great feeling of confidence.

However, what grates, was the way the support for the show completely fell off.  At the beginning, there were lots of trailers and publicity.  GST’s episodes start coming in and they’re not what NBC wants, so they demand changes.  These changes are implemented, however by the time those episodes come to screen, there’s no longer any publicity at all.  No trailers or hype.  What’s the point in demanding a show changes direction if you’re not going to give those changes a chance?  Given the lack of backing, they’d have been as well to leave GST’s earlier plans alone and just see if the audience would’ve gone for a darker Knight Rider.

There’s the aspect of the show’s non-cancellation as well.  As far as I’m aware, they’ve still not officially said “its axed”.  They’re doing the old BBC/Doctor Who trick, circa 1987 of just not scheduling a new season, and hoping no one notices that the show’s gone away.

The soon-to-be-released DVD set is apparently quite weak as well.  While the episodes are all present and correct with nice transfers, apparently no time has been given at all to special features.  We know there’s deleted scenes from the early stuff that was cut.  There’s also all those TV trailers.  They could be put on.  Interviews with the cast and crew would be interesting as well, with documentaries surrounding the original plans for the series, and what might’ve happened in the missing five episodes of season 1, and any potential season 2.  Again, it just comes across as a studio that completely gave up on the show.  This despite a core audience of 5 million viewers who stuck by it despite opposition from American Idol (or Got Talent, I forget) and other big name cult shows like Lost.

Anyway.  That’s the end of the Pie Man Television Awards 2009.  Its meant as a bit of fun, although probably turned into a bit of a ranty marathon.

Overall, I felt this was a pretty good year for TV that’s sadly culminated in a lot of those shows not making it back next year.  There was a lot of good stuff made in both the US and UK.  One show that springs to mind that I never mentioned was the remake of Survivors which I enjoyed greatly, and True Blood’s only just started here but had an intriguing start.  Smallville had a great year, launching its 8th season with a new team behind the scenes with confidence, moving the show forward very much towards its “Superman” endgame, and even rising above the loss of Michael Rosenbaum.  Lots of good stuff out there, and with new shows coming in next year to replace those that didn’t get a second season, I’ll be intrigued to see what we get next.

Over the last while, I’ve been slowly getting into tabletop wargaming.  I’ve been playing for a few months with a group of friends with one of them providing all the miniatures, and for a while I’ve had the vague notion to start collecting my own, as I’ve always been impressed by them, and the level of detail they have.   However, one thing always put me off.  The idea of having to paint them.

You see, I’m blighted by two things in this regard.  Shakey hands, and no artistic ability.

After seeing the Battle for Skull Pass Warhammer starter set, I became very tempted by the 40K Black Reach set.  Here was a way for me to instantly have two reasonable armies with a variety of weapons, some generals and even a special unit.   However, again, I’d have to paint them.

I got talking to my friend with the Skull Pass set, and he pointed out that a basic paint job on his goblin spearmen was actually pretty easy, so I shouldn’t be put off.  I resolved to investigate further.  I spent some time quickly googling, and watching some Youtube videos, but they all seemed to be from experienced painters, who would talk about things like “washes” and “dry-brushing”.  What I wanted to know was, could someone with shakey hands, get some basic paints and do a job that, while it’d never look like those pretty pictures on the box, would look ok enough that I could use the units in a game without being embarrassed?

And so,  I ended up in the local Games Workshop, where they told me they did free painting lessons.  They supply everything you need and take you through the basics as well as demonstrating some of the more advanced techniques like dry-brushing and washes.  I was pretty impressed, so thought I’d give it a go.  All I had to lose was 15 minutes of my time.

Suffice to say, the painting lesson went very well.  I was given a Space Marine unit and taken through each stage of painting it up to a basic standard.  From an incredibly basic point of view, this took the form of four stages:

1. Base coat.  Paint the whole thing black.

2. Base colour.  In my case I was going with the traditional Ultra Marine colour scheme, thus the whole marine was painted blue, save for his gun.

3. Shoulder detail.  Paint the edges of the shoulders yellow.

4. Paint his gun gunmetal grey.

And that was it.  The trickiest part was undoubtedly the shoulders, although what that involved was just taking your time and slowly rotating the marine around while making small, straight strokes with the yellow paint along the edges.

While the finished marine wasn’t going to win any awards, it was certainly acceptable.   I was intrigued enough to pick up the hobby starter set (basic foundation paints, glues, paint brush etc), and some packs of their basic space marines for practise (3 Space Marines for a fiver, perfect for practising on).

When I got home, I did decide to add some extra detail, as the helmet looked very plain.  So I added red eyes, and some black to the mouth plate.  The trick to this I found was again, taking my time, but also just adding a little paint to the point of the brush, and slowly dabbing it in place.  In the case of the eyes, I invariably ended up splodging it on, but by letting it dry and then putting a little blue paint on the end of the brush, I could then paint around the splodge to get a more satisfactory job on the eyes.

I’ve now done three marines in this style.   I’ve played around a little, trying three different colour schemes, and trying to add detail here and there.  Some of this hasn’t worked, so I just paint over the offending bit again.   One thing I have been doing, which I think looks better, beyond the eyes and mouth, is to hold off attaching the gun to the miniature and painting the crest on their chests yellow first.  It again serves to break up the solid colour a bit.

The finishing touch is pretty simply dabbing some PVA glue on the base, and sprinkling on either sand or grass (again, included in the hobby starter set).

I’m still very much playing around, seeing what works and what doesn’t, but I do think the results I’m getting are not bad.  Again, it’ll never look as good as those pretty pictures, but for having them painted up in a basic way, that I’ll not be ashamed to play with, I’m pretty happy and its all done using the very basic paints.  I’ve only done three marines, and I’ve only been painting a few days, so if you’re not sure, I’d say give it a go.  Patience is really the only thing you’ll need, and if the idea of having to go over the same bit a couple of times to neaten it up doesn’t scare you off, you’ll probably be all right.

I’ll definitely be getting some more models to try painting, and I’ll probably throw caution to the wind and pick up some of those washes to play with as well.  Again, this is where I think those basic marines are useful, as I’ll probably just base coat them, apply the base colour, and then try a different wash on a couple of them before adding any details, just to see what looks best.  If they end up not looking great, then its not a huge loss, and once its dry, I can always paint over it again.

Green Lantern #44 continues the story of Blackest Night, following on from J’onn’s appearance in that title.

As seen in the preview, the action picks up with Hal and Barry investigating Bruce’s grave.  Geoff Johns again takes the opportunity to build on the Hal and Barry friendship, this time playing on the fact that they’re both at heart cops.

Hal’s quick off the mark to take a shot at J’onn while Barry is more thrown by J’onn’s appearance and wondering what’s going on.  Again, its a nice touch by Johns, playing their personalities off of one another with Barry being more cerebral whereas Hal is very much a man of action.  This triggers the Black Lantern Martian Manhunter to attack them in earnest.

If anything, this issue actually works really well as a showcase for J’onn.  Ok, so he’s an emotion-eating zombie in it, but Geoff Johns does a great job of showing off just how powerful and diverse J’onn’s powers are as he gives Hal and Barry a real run for their money through a combination of his intangibility, shape-shifting and raw power.  There’s also a great fake out where we see Barry attacking and pummelling J’onn,  only for it to be revealed that its actually Hal he’s attacking, having fallen victim to J’onn’s mental powers.

Then we get the real shock moment of the issue with John once again visiting the remains of Xanshi, only to find the area flooded by black rings saying “Xanshi RISE”.  The visual of the entire area of space flooded by the rings flying about was superbly rendered by Doug Mahnke and the idea that its on necessarily the population of Xanshi but the planet itself is very exciting.  The idea of a Black Lantern equivalent to Mogo could be fun indeed.  And even if it is just the population, John suddenly finding himself swarmed by Black Lanterns with no backup should be fun.  We know from the solicits that upcoming issues will feature John heavily (I’m assuming Hal will be more focused on the Blackest Night mini itself) so I’m really looking forward to him getting some much deserved focus.

See Part 1 and Part 2.

The Reilly 2040 Worst padding award.

Yup, its the award Pie Man named after me

The story behind this award being that there are various shows I really think would’ve benefitted from a shorter, UK-style 13 episode season rather than the full 20+ episodes the US likes.  Its generally arc-based shows I find suffer from it, with their compelling main storyline dragged out to fill the mandatory season length.  There can be other factors as well, as while arc-based shows tend to do very well, studios prefer standalone episodes for their stronger performance in repeats.  And that’s definitely the category our winner falls in to.

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles

Sarah Connor had a 13 episode first season.  It had a running plot thread with Cromartie rebuilding himself and chasing after Sarah and co, as well as developing its characters, with Sarah’s ex fiancée discovering she was still alive and finding it conflicting with the life he’d built for himself or FBI Agent Ellison slowly discovering the truth of what was happening with the Terminators, or Sarah’s ongoing attempts to prevent Skynet from being developed.

Given this success, a second season quickly followed, along with a bump to a full season order.  However the story also goes that the studio was unhappy with all the linked plots and demanded more standalone episodes.  Sadly for me, this really soured the second season.  We had an interesting main plot with the Weaver T-1001 and what it was up to, developing “John Henry” who may or may not turn out to be Skynet.  We had Sarah, John and co slowly finding clues pointing towards what she was doing.   We had Jessie manipulating everyone and trying to sow distrust between John and Cameron.  All really interesting plots, especially with the way the writers started using the fact that all the time-travel was changing and confusing things.

However, the standalones really broke this up and dragged everything out.  It didn’t help that when we finally did get Sarah and the gang meeting Weaver that it was rushed into the last five minutes of the last (ever) episode.  Instead we got a bunch of standalones of wildly varying quality.  While I quite enjoyed the one with Cameron at the library, the episode which featured Sarah and the Sleep Institute really caused me to struggle with the series.

I can’t help but feel this was a series that really would’ve been better had it been restricted to 13 episodes a season, and allowed to tell a tight storyline across those episodes.

Worst network interference,

There’s a couple of contenders for this.  Sarah Connor I’ve ended up talking about in depth above, and the other is Dollhouse, which Joss Whedon started working on for Fox, after being convinced it wouldn’t end up another Firefly, only for Fox to start demanding changes to the scripts to remove plot and add in more Eliza Dushku in skimpy outfits.  The result was a very uneven and at times formulaic start to the first season, and viewers leaving the show in droves.  However, Fox did redeem themselves a bit by signing up the show for a second season, much to everyone’s surprise.  I guess they’re trying to learn from the Firefly mistake, and want to give the show a little room to grow before ditching it, which is commendable, although it remains to be seen as to whether or not the damage has already been done.  Still I wish more networks would give some shows that same kind of leeway.  We’ve seen so many shows that go on to be classics have a ropey first season.  Babylon 5 probably being the most notable.  So who am I going to give the award to?

Dollhouse

This was very close, and I had to think over it a lot.  However I think what tips it, is the element of history repeating itself.  While Fox are now bringing it back for a second season to give it a chance, it shouldn’t have happened in the first place.  You’ve got Joss Whedon making the show.  The guy who produced several of the big cult successes over the last 10 years in the form of Buffy, Angel, Firefly and Doctor Horrible.  How many successes does the guy need to have before they trust that he knows what he’s doing?

Pie Man special award.

Hmmm, is Pie Man supposed to choose this award for me I wonder?  Anyway, the random award for a show that deserves mention, and I’m giving it to:

My Own Worst Enemy

This is probably my favourite show I’m currently watching.  Christian Slater stars as Henry and Edward.  Henry is a normal, quiet family man, whereas Edward works for a top secret Government Black Ops unit.  Unfortunately for Henry, they’re also the same person, and when the chip that controls which of them is awake at any one moment breaks down, Henry’s life is thrown into turmoil.

I’d thought this sounded like a fun show, and I’m just continually impressed by how good it is.  There’s solid action in the spy missions, intrigue regarding Edward’s backstory and what motivates him and suspense as Henry and Edward strive to keep their broken condition secret from the heads of their unit.  There’s strong consideration to the characters involved as well and great performances.

This is going on a bit long, so I think I’ll split it off again.  Look for part 4.

Well, today saw the press release to accompany the start of filming of the new series of Doctor Who.  Of course, this was a significant one as it signalled the first look at Matt Smith in costume.

There was some excitement this morning with the first official picture, however it soon became eclipsed when the candid shot of Matt Smith and Karen Gillan went into second place behind the shots from the actual filming grabbed by the paps.  As the new shots gave us variety, but also featured the new TARDIS exterior and a surprise guest star, who I’ll not name here for now.

Matt’s look had been widely speculated about for a while, but no one seems to have expected what we got.

Its a surprisingly retro look.  The 11th Doctor looks like a geography teacher (and indeed, comparisons have been drawn to what the human Doctor, John Smith, wore during The Family of Blood 2-parter).   There’s also a slight feel of the 60s Doctors, Hartnell and Troughton about the look.  Or even the fourth Doctor if you took away his hat and scarf would’ve been wearing something similar.

What completes this 60s feel for me is the TARDIS exterior.  Its a surprising return to the exterior from the Hartnell era, especially the first series with the white window borders, and the St John’s Ambulance badge on the right-hand door.

I’m still very much digesting this new look at the moment, but while it was a big surprise, there’s definitely something of the Hartnell and Troughton Doctors about it that attracts me to the look.  Especially the picture on the right.  There’s something just very “Troughton” about it.

So the latest solicits have gone up at IGN, and give us a tantalising look at the future of Blackest Night.

Firstly, I’ve got to say how much I love that cover for Blackest Night #4.  While I’m still a little unsure about the raised GL badge on Hal’s uniform, the rest of the cover is a cracking image.  It needs to be at least a desktop wallpaper onDC’s site, if not get a release as a poster.

The Blackest Night Superman solicit introduces us to an idea I hadn’t even thought about, but makes so much sense, when the Psycho Pirate’s Medusa Mask is hinted as a weapon against the Black Lanterns.  As something that controls emotions, it would make a lot of sense that it could be used against them.

Also interesting is the appearance of John Stewart on the variant cover for not Green Lantern, but Green Lantern Corps.  I’m guessing his Xanshi subplot may turn out to be a big thread in Blackest Night then, and perhaps this hints that there’ll be a lot more crossover in the plots of GL and GLC than there was in Sinestro Corps War.

The preview for Green Lantern #44 is also up, expanding on Hal and Barry’s conversation at Bruce’s grave as the Black Lantern J’onn turns up.  Again Geoff Johns writing Hal and Barry’s friendship continues to be a real highlight of the DCU at the moment.  I love their conversation regarding secret identities, and Barry commenting on how much better Kyle’s crab mask is than Hal’s

Again we’re seeing that the Black Lanterns seem to possess their personalities rather than the usual “Brainzzzzzz” zombies, so it’ll be interesting to see what exactly their nature is.  Do they have the actual souls bound to them, or are they just copies of the original personalities within the body?  Are Ralph and Sue still out there doing their ghost detective bit, while their physical remains were off killing the Hawks?  Of course, if so then it suggests the possibility of a resurrected Carter and Shiera Hall versus Black Lantern Hawkman and Hawkgirl/woman.

Check out Part 1.

Best UK Network/Channel.

I’m really torn on this one.  There’s not many real contenders, although some of the smaller channels are quietly building themselves up a solid programming base, be it Sci-Fi UK with quite a few new shows lately that I’m enjoying (in fact a large percentage of my TV viewing at the moment is in their direction with Knight Rider, Dollhouse and My Own Worst Enemy).  Likewise FX has some notable shows, including Dexter, and True Blood which starts this week.

I’m really torn for this award, and I think I’ll have to wimp out and split it.

BBC/Sky One

Both have distinct merits.  Sky One for me is one of my favourite channels for import shows as they treat them very well.  Yes, its a subscription channel, and yes, there’s adverts, but they show them very close to the US broadcaster (in some cases only a couple of days afterwards, and in some cases before the US).  Its a pet peeve of mine the channels like Channel 4 and Virgin 1 who buy high profile shows, and then sit on them for 6 months.   Sky One’s also recently started developing its original programming with the Terry Pratchet TV movies, and Skellig (which, granted I never watched, but its nice to see them trying).

The BBC has become the stronghold of British-made cult TV.  Obviously, Doctor Who, Torchwood and Sarah Jane Adventures, but also Robin Hood, Merlin and Life on Mars/Ashes to Ashes.  Yes, they’ve also made utter rubbish like Spooks: Code 9 and Bonekickers, but its just nice to see cult TV being treated seriously in this country again.   The only real black mark was when the Beeb put Ashes to Ashes opposite its own showing of Heroes series 3.  That really annoyed me.

The Pirate Bay award for Services to bit-torrent,

This is basically the opposite of the previous award, and as I mentioned above, there’s really two contenders for me, in the form of Virgin 1 and Channel 4.  Both of which have a habit of buying high-profile US shows, and then sitting on them, meaning we get to hear from all the US people online all the spoilers and how great/bad the season was, and then just as they’re about to get the next season, we’ll finally get it.

I think though I’ll go for:

Virgin 1

Largely for sitting on Chuck season 2 until Sarah Connor was finished, but also for the bizarre move of shifting Sarah Connor’s timeslot forward by an hour halfway through the run.  It moved it from something I would watch on Thursday nights, to something I would tape and watch later.  And it wasn’t like they were freeing up the earlier slot for some other high-profile show, just yet another of their reality ones.

For a channel that constantly used Terminator idents to hype their rights to the show, it just struck me as a weird and annoying move.

Only the Good Die young award,

Lord knows there’s plenty of competition of this one.  Middleman is an obvious contender, but Pie Man created an award for it anyway (next).  Knight Rider had just found its footing when the axe fell.  I believe My Own Worst Enemy got the chop at 9 episodes as well.  Journeyman is really tempting as well, but sadly falls outwith my 12 month limit.

So I’m going to go with:

Primeval

The show had always been one I’d enjoyed, not afraid to be a bit daft and revel in its own silliness.  The third season saw a lot of upheaval with several main cast members leaving and being replaced, but none-the-less the show did very well in the ratings, and the new cast were starting to gell.  The show also ended on a cliffhanger which the writers have admitted they’d have never done if they’d thought there was any danger of the axe falling.

There’s still the vague hope out there that the Beeb might buy the rights, but for now, Primeval will be missed next year.

Never given a proper chance award,

This award looks at the shows that were great, but never seemed to get the backing they deserved.  Knight Rider to an extent applies here.  While they initially got a lot of backing from the studio, creative differences between the producers and the studios led to problems early on.  The studio got the show to change direction, and in all fairness to them, it was the right move, with the later episodes showing a vast improvement in fun and quality.  However, despite their changes being made, by this point the studio seemed to have lost interest and gave the show virtually no advertising, which meant it was just left to fall in the ratings and die off.

However, despite this, I’m going to say:

Middleman

While Knight Rider could’ve been treated better in the later part of its run, Middleman got no hype or advertising attention straight out the gate.  A brilliant show that those who saw it only found by accident.  Annoyingly this has also translated into international markets as well, as I haven’t seen any UK network pick it up yet.  I’m holding out hope that Sci-Fi UK will nab it and give this brilliant show lots of backing and a chance at a great run over here.

Most promising 1^st Season.

Not counting shows that have been axed, there’s not many shows that fall into this category.  Merlin is a strong contender, but I’ll have to go with Pie Man on this one.

Being Human

A brilliant cast, a great storyline, some real horror and laughs along the way.  While I never saw the original pilot, this sucked me in straight away.  There were some brave plotlines, and you really sympathised with Mitchell as he attempted to be more human, despite the efforts of his fellow vampires.

Most Off the Boil Series.

Not necessarily a series that was once great but now failing, but just perhaps a series that needs to find its footing.  And for me its got to be

Heroes

Heroes exploded onto our screens with an amazing first season, but since then it’s really struggled to find its way.  Volume 2 got too soapy, Volume 3 faced criticism for being over complicated and full of technobabble.  Volume 4 seemed to go down better, although it didn’t really click for me.  While I really enjoyed volume 3, despite the complaints, I thought volume 4 required a little too much suspension of disbelief and the way they nerfed two of the show’s main powerhouses was disappointing.  Granted, I’m now getting used to Peter’s new powers, but Hiro without his mastery of time and space doesn’t seem as much fun.

Sometimes I wonder if they might’ve been better with their original idea to radically shake up the cast each season, allowing them to develop new heroes.  Instead they’ve built up a huge cast of regulars now that they sometimes struggle to give something to do.

I’m still looking forward to season 4 (volume 5).  The ending of season 3 promised to introduce a twist on the usual lingering menace of Sylar and how the characters approach the situation with “Nathan” will be interesting.  I’d like to see them try to build up more of a stable of super-powered menaces though.  Sylar’s really the only recurring big villain they’ve got and it’d be nice to have a few more characters built up as real threats.

Stay tuned for part 3.

After two years of buildup, Blackest Night has finally arrived.

As Ganthet predicted during the Sinestro Corps War, the other Corps have risen and the War of Light is now in full swing, with the Alpha Lanterns attacking the Red Lanterns on Ysmault, Ganthet’s own Blue Lanterns under seige from Larfleeze and the Orange Lanterns, and the Green Lanterns and Star Saphires fighting the Sinestro Corps on various fronts.  But now, the Black Lanterns are rising.

This is an exceptional first issue.  After two years of hype, and a PR blitz by DC over the last few months with previews, action figures and interviews, it would’ve been so easy for this issue to disappoint even if it had been good.  But it doesn’t.  Not by a long shot.  This is Geoff Johns finally being able to tell the story he’s been building to.   Unlike Final Crisis there’s no slow buildup here.  We’ve had the buildup, and now its straight into the main event as the black rings seek out various prominent characters from across the DCU.

There’s real horror in the reveal of the Black Lanterns who are rising, especially on Oa where the entire crypt of deceased Green Lanterns is brought back to confront the GLs.  Line of the issue has to be Guy’s “What the #@$%?”.

Ivan Reis is at the top of his game here as well.  He’s always been my favourite Green Lantern artist, but here he takes things to another level.  He’s dealing with some fairly horrific visuals which are apart from the space opera stuff we’ve usually seen him do, and he handles it beautifully.  There’s various splash pages throughout that just caused me to stop and actually look at the detail, and appreciate them fully, be it Hal showing Barry images of all the heroes who’ve died while he was gone, the Black Lantern reveal on Oa, or the reveal of Ralph and Sue as Black Lanterns.  Its astounding work.

And having mentioned Barry, here Ivan reinforces something I felt while reading the Blackest Night #0 preview, that Ivan draws one of the best interpretations of Barry I’ve seen.  He really captures the feel of speed in the character in a way I don’t think any other artist has done for me.  I just love it.

One of my big worries was when Blackest Night got moved from being a Green Lantern event to a DCU-wide event.  With it being the third part in Geoff Johns’ Green Lantern trilogy, and with all the build up to the War of Light being very Green Lantern-centric, I was really worried that this would prove to be a poor pay off to the dangling Green Lantern plot threads.  I needn’t have worried though, as Geoff manages to do a sterling job of making this feel like the natural continuation of the Green Lantern storylines while interweaving the larger DC universe.  He features the Green Lanterns, while also paying attention to other characters throughout the DCU, and it all gells together wonderfully.   My only worry would really be that anyone not following Green Lantern for a while may get a bit lost by some of what’s going on.

This was a cracking start to DC’s big summer event.  This felt like it had all the impact of Secret Invasion #1 and there promises to be a lot of good stuff to come.  Roll on the next issues of Green Lantern and Green Lantern Corps.

Fellow Blogger and regular commenter Pie Man 70′s done his own TV awards, and it was such a good idea, I thought I’d rip it off.  It helps that I agree with a lot of his choices, thus making it easier to cut and paste most of this post

You can check out his awards here: The Pie Man Television Awards 2009.

The only real rule I’m sticking to is that its focusing on cult/sci-fi/fantasy type TV shows.  The time frame is fairly vague, but pretty much anything in the last 12 months.

Best New Series

There’s been a load of good new shows over the last year.  Sadly most of them are now axed thanks to the recession and the usual keenness of US networks to axe anything that doesn’t have brilliant ratings from the get-go.   I was personally very tempted to give this to My Own Worst Enemy, which is currently airing on Sci-Fi UK and is ruddy brilliant.  However, its still halfway through its run, so in fairness I should give it to a show that’s shown all its episodes.  And this is the first award where I’m in complete agreement with Pie Man 70.

The Middleman

Its difficult to understate just how much I enjoyed this series, and how gutted I was when it was axed. Apparently ABC completely failed to realise what a potential hit they had on their hands and neglected to advertise it. Which has been a real shame, as every review I’ve seen of the series raves about it. Gloriously silly, great sense of humour and visuals and a great cast. Grab the DVDs, buy it on iTunes, pray Sci-Fi UK buy the rights, but see this show.

Best Returning Series

I’ve slightly tweaked the name of this award from PieMan’s version just for clarity.  There were loads of really good returning series this year.  Heroes followed up its slightly lackluster volume 2 with a great volume 3, but volume 4 didn’t click nearly as well for me.  Battlestar Galactica headed towards its finale with confidence, Prison Break delivered a brilliant payoff in its finale that was a real treat for fans following the show from the beginning, Dexter continues to be superb television, delivering a great story every year and Lost continued to be must-watch TV, revelling in its own backstory.  However for me, the ultimate winner has to be:

Chuck

Despite barely escaping cancellation this year, season 2 delivered on everything that made season 1 so popular.  A brilliant sense of humour, great action sequences, a stellar cast and most of all, heart.  Be it Chuck dealing with the carnage his double life causes to those closest to him, the Buymore staff dealing with their latest evil deputy manager, you really care about all these characters.  Cap it off with some superb guest stars, and really, its amazing this show had to struggle for a third season.

Most Improved Series,

This one’s very tough.  Partly due to so many shows getting the axe these days after their first season.  Galactica was a serious contender for me.  I felt that season 3 seemed to lack focus, and I wasn’t hugely impressed with the first ten episodes of season 4.  However the final ten episodes turned everything around and reminded me how much I loved this show.  Ashes to Ashes also improved a lot over its not-brilliant first season.

However for me the winner has to be:

Torchwood

Granted, the time period this is covering is pretty vague, but for me it works for either series 2 or especially series 3.  See the numerous other blog posts about how good series 3 was, but even series 2 was a marked improvement over a ropey first season, dispensing with the almost adolescent aspects in its approach to being the “adult” Who spinoff (a feeling they nailed with the third series), giving us a great new character in Captain John and delivering a great storyarc with Owen’s “death” leading up to his and Tosh’s final sacrifice.

Most gratuitous T&A in a series.

Dollhouse is probably the only other contender in this award, but even it doesn’t match up to the winner:

Knight Rider

Really the only choice.  Its arguably one of the main areas in which the show was misjudged and thankfully calmed down as the show went on.  They were a bit too fond of the gratuitous numbers of women in bikinis in the first half of the season.

The Andromeda WTF is this still running award.

Like Pie Man, I can’t really give this award to anything.  As shows have been axed left, right and centre.  There’s probably a soap opera or something that it applies to, but there’s nothing particularly on my radar for this.   Dollhouse is a potential contender for this next year unless it really blows me away, and Heroes is dangerously close to going off the bubble unless they manage to recapture some of that series 1 magic.

This is going on a bit long, so I think I’ll split it up a bit.  Look for parts 2 and 3 in the near future.