Well, we’re now two episodes into the first series of the new Knight Rider, and so far I’ve been enjoying it a lot.

The second episode was probably the stronger of the two so far. The first serving more to setup the arc-plot regarding Mike’s past in black ops and, of course, explain his name change to Michael Knight. This allowed the second a bit more free reign as an adventure of the week type story to throw in some nice character moments (loved the scenes with Mike and KITT watching the western) with the first episode having set things up.

Both episodes have been high on the action quota, and the second especially harked back nicely to the feel of the original series, with Mike travelling to a remote town, getting involved in street races and, as I mentioned, some nice building in the friendship between Mike and KITT.

Its also interesting to note some of the changes Gary Scott Thompson’s brought in. The “KITT cave” makes a lot of sense for the scale of the operation (realistically one engineer maintaining KITT in the back of a truck isn’t likely) although the humour from the supporting techs is sometimes forced. The arc plot with Mike’s past is welcome, and much in the style of Doctor Who, seems to be something being drip-fed into episodes for the regular viewers, while the episodes themselves remain stand-alone, probably building up to some revelations in the finale.

The changes to KITT are a bit of a mixed bag. I definitely appreciate the reasons they changes KITT’s attack mode. In the pilot, it wasn’t instantly obvious which car you were looking at in a particular scene without checking closely (the spoiler usually being the quickest give-away), and there’s no doubt this is a more aggressive-looking attack mode. However I prefer the sportier lines of KITT in his regular mode, and the blue underlighting (forming the Knight Research logo) is really just a bit over-the-top. However the good news is that the attack mode is also being used quite sparingly so far, with the Shelby remaining the main “hero” car of the piece which I definitely like.

I do miss the iPhone-inspired screen from the pilot, but the new HUD works well. Although there have been a couple of times when Mike’s been driving and its clearly obscuring his view of the road. It perhaps needs to be more obvious that KITT’s driving while Mike’s using the screen (safety first ). KITT’s new vocaliser (for want of a better term) seems a little busy to me, but I do love how they’ve included the three bars from the original series in it.

How the series fairs in the modern age of networks being quick off the mark to cancel shows remains to be seen, but, while its still finding its feet, Knight Rider strikes me as filling a gap in the market with some good “switch your brain off and enjoy the ride” action.

We’ve now had two episodes of the BBC’s latest entry to the “Doctor Who” Saturday teatime slot: Merlin.

The show is basically Smallville meets Arthurian Legend. A young Merlin is sent to Camelot by his mother, who is finding it increasingly difficult to help him with his growing magical talents. So she sends him to stay with Gaius, who appears to have some knowledge in the ways of magic although not a magic-user himself. He quickly identifies that there’s something different about Merlin, who is able to use magic without the use of potions or spells, unlike all other magic-users. However, with King Uthar having banned all magic in the kingdom on pain of execution, Merlin has to balance keeping his powers discrete, while at the same time, embracing them.

To me, this show has proved much stronger so far than the other “Doctor Who” slot candidate, Robin Hood. There’s a confidence in this show in what its trying to be, and the cast all suit their roles well (while I’ve enjoyed episodes of Robin Hood, and its got some nice ideas, its never quite gelled for me, although I did quite enjoy season 2). The first two episodes were good fun, with some nice character building, with the first establishing Merlin and the setting in Camelot, while the second episode took the arrogant young Arthur from the first episode and showed the pressure he’s put under by his father as prince.

If I have any worries at this early stage, its that there could be a trap of falling into a predictible pattern, with some magic-related threat to the kingdom, Merlin discovers it, however is angsty about revealing the threat without being able to use his own powers.  Merlin manages to discretely foil the threat.   However, as I say, its only two episodes in, and I hope that with setting and characters established, we’ll see some more arc elements start to emerge.   We obviously know the outcomes for these characters, so it’ll be interesting to see if Morgana’s villainous future is hinted towards, and you have to wonder how often Merlin will be able to visit the Great Dragon before someone notices…

Its great teatime TV, and its definitely something I’m looking forward to every Saturday.  I’m very interested to see how the storyline develops.

Its been a strong year for new genre shows from the States. Granted, some didn’t survive their first season, but still Journeyman, Terminator and Chuck have all been really solid offerings.

Coming a bit later than the others is The Middleman, originally conceived as a television show, before being launched as a comic series, things have come full circle with the show finally being made.

Wendy Watson is enjoying a normal day at her temp job at the genetics factory when a monster escapes from the lab and attacks her.  She tries to fend it off but is rescued by a mysterious man, who goes on to recruit her as his new assistant.  It turns out that the kind of alien warlords and insane scientists that comic books love also exist in real life, and its his job to stop them.   He’s supplied with an impressive array of advanced technology, but he doesn’t know where it comes from.   He’s just the Middleman.

This is a brilliant show.   Daft as a brush and not afraid to show it.   The show follows Wendy as she goes into training to become the next Middleman, working alongside the current one.  This involves her dealing with the aforementioned insane scientists and alien warlords, as well as dealing with the impact her new job has on her personal life (her friends think she’s working for a temp agency), while receiving training from the likes of Sensei Ping in the art of being a Middleman.

If I had to compare this show to another, its probably the closest (and most successful) we’ll get to an American version of the Avengers.  There’s a very similar vibe coming off of it (although this show played more for straight out laughs than the Avengers was).

Definitely one to check out.  I hope this enjoys a long run.

Another show I’ve been really enjoying every week, but not really mentioned here, has been the new series of Gladiators. While it took some time to bed in during the opening episodes, by the time it got to the quarter finals it really picked up steam, with the Gladiators personalities starting to establish and them showing how much more comfortable in the events they’d become.

Its been good fun to watch, and I’ve gotten really into it, although I do feel it suffers slightly from the added adverts we have these days, which means one less event, and less mike time for the Gladiators themselves. However overall its been a lot of fun, and I’m really looking forward to the second series.

To wrap up the first series, Sky decided to bring back some of the original Gladiators and have them face off against the new Gladiators. Added to this, they boosted the length of the show, which allowed another event, as well as lots of time for mucking about and post-event interviews. This really added to the atmosphere of the show, and really added an element of fun to the proceedings. It was great to see the classic Gladiators again, although it was such a shame Hunter had injured himself prior to the recording and couldn’t compete more. Still, he absolutely destroyed Spartan in Duel (that first hit looked painful).

Wolf was on great form. His hair may be shorter, but he still gets what the audience want. His big fight with Oblivion was worth the wait, and had me in stitches as Ian Wright jumped in to try and separate them before ending up red carded by John Anderson. I’m really pleased to hear he’s coming back full time for season 2 in his new “Team Manager” role. There was a great sense of fun in this special that they need to build on in the main series.

It was interesting to see the Gladiators running the Eliminator as well. Atlas managing to hold onto the cotton reel was impressive, but then got promptly blown out of the water by Predator on the hand bikes. And Lightning really demolished the monkeybars, although Tempest really showed how fast she can be as she nearly caught her on the Pyramid.

Great fun, and makes me hopeful that season 2 should be really good now they’ve had a season to settle in. I hope they tweak the eliminator though. I’m not keen on the water start (removes most of the benefit in the head start) and the cotton reels are just a bit pointless.

While this show seems to have been nearly universally derided, I’m going to step up to the plate.

I’m enjoying it.

Being a bit behind on things, I’m only now catching up with the show (just watched episode 4 of 6), but I’ve enjoyed what I’ve seen.  There’s no denying that its silly and over-the-top, but that’s what I’m finding fun about it.  I’ve been enjoying switching my brain off and going along for the ride.  The over-arching plot with the mystery behind Gillian’s mother’s breakdown and Gillian’s continuing obsession behind what her mother was looking for adds a bit to the episodes (super-duper sword?  British history?   Hmmmmm ).

Sadly, as I mentioned it took a fair kicking from the critics.  I’ve no idea what the ratings were like, but I’d certainly be happy to see a second series.  There’s nothing wrong with a show just being a bit silly and fun, and as long as it doesn’t start taking itself too seriously then I think there’s a place for it.

Another random find on Youtube.  Great mixing of clips here.  The author’s done a cracking job

With Season 1 of Knight Rider due to start in about a month, there’s a load of new trailers appearing online.   Here we get a tease about turbo boost:

But, while we don’t get to see a lot, there’s a sense of fun in thisclip that hits the mark for me

Spoilers ahead for the new Stargate movie, which aired on Sky One last night.

The latest TV movie from the Stargate SG-1 team finds our heroes once again up to alternate timeline hijinx. SG-1 head to the Tokra homeworld for the extraction ceremony of Baal. As the last surviving System Lord (well, until someone comes up with a killer idea for another TV movie with a System Lord in it anyway ;-)) its a bit of a big deal, however Baal claims that he is merely another clone, and the original Baal is still out there.

Flashback to 1939. The Stargate is being transported to America on a ship captained by Ben Browder buried under some latex (I was hoping that the fact this was Ben Browder wasn’t going to be a plot twist, fortunately its revealed shortly afterwards that its Mitchell’s Grandfather). Sure enough, the gate is activated, and out steps Baal, who sends his Jaffa to kill the crew and plants a bomb on the ship. Fortunately Mitchell’s Grandfather is quick on the uptake, survives the attack and manages to chuck the bomb overboard. However, the damage is done as the timeline shifts around SG-1, and they sprint for the gate and dial Earth.

Finding themselves on an alternate Earth where the gate was never discovered after being lost at sea, Daniel, Mitchell and Carter find themselves relocated under new identities, and barred from having anything to do with the Stargate project. While the US Government takes their information to launch a new Stargate program, they refuse to allow them to alter the timeline. In a brilliant scene, Landry tears into them for their arrogance in assuming that their timeline is better than the current one, forcing the trio to realise that they may be trapped.

Of course, Baal eventually turns up with his fleet and our heroes are quickly called in to help save the day.

I really enjoyed this. Its chock full of Go’auld cameos and the dilemma is really interesting as we see Daniel, Carter and Mitchell forced to face the possibility of living out their days in anonymity.

However, if I was to have a problem with the story, its that it really felt like it should’ve been a two-part miniseries. There’s a lot of story to be had, and the resolution ended up feeling slightly rushed. After an interesting setup, it would’ve been interesting to have more focus on the new lives SG-1 had to live with. Also, while Landry’s speech was brilliantly done, you never feel like we’re given enough of a reason not to want the old timeline back. Granted, we know that the proper timeline has advantages for other races out in the galaxy (the Jaffa being free for example), but on Earth, aside from the reference to Jack’s son being alive, there’s no real reasons for our heroes to care about this timeline. It would’ve been more effective if there’d been a real sense of loss to SG-1 saving the day.

Of course, it also suffers from that old time travel problem, in that about 5 minutes in, you know a reset button is going to be hit by the end of it. Its become too much of a Sci-Fi cliche these days, and Stargate has become particularly fond of time travel in its later years, with this story getting a lot of comparisons to the likes of the Moebius 2-parter.

None-the-less, this is a great story, and a good, fun movie. And mention must go to the effects. Stargate’s benefited a lot from top notch CGI for years, but it really shines in this movie.

Saddo that I am, I enjoy spending time on Youtube looking for nifty fan-made openings to Doctor Who.   I thought I’d share  few of the ones that caught my eye.

I really love this Tom Baker-style opening for the 10th Doctor:

And here’s quite a cool 80s-style Eccleston opening:

So, the San Diego ComicCon brought a tonne of news over the weekend. The big news from the Knight Rider TV show, aside from the sneak peak posted earlier, was the official reveal of the new attack KITT.

Replacing the attack mode from the 2-hour TV movie, Gary Scott Thompson’s quoted as saying he felt the original looked too similar to the regular-mode KITT (something I can kind of agree with. I know that during the pilot, I had to keep checking for the spoiler to tell the difference in some scenes). He also felt that the attack mode needed to look more aggressive and threatening. Which there’s no doubt this certainly does.

I’m still undecided though.  I really don’t like the big vents on the bonnet (although I appreciate that they’re there for a practical purpose).   Its a bit too fast-and-the-furious for me, whereas the fanboy in me cries out for a KITT that looks sleek.  Certainly, anyone that was still struggling to accept the Mustang is really going to be bothered by this I suspect.

I do get a really good vibe from the 1 minute preview though.  For me, the tone came off well, and it felt suitably action-packed.  Mike adopting the Michael Knight name is a good move as well.  While I liked the iPhone inspired main screen for KITT in the pilot, the new windshield display does look cool.  Unsure about KITTs new vocaliser, but I do like how its more of a tribute to the classic three bars the original KITT had.

Slightly baffled by the repeat of the “are you a homosexual” joke however.  It wasn’t particularly funny the first time, and it seems odd to directly lift some dialogue from the pilot like that.   I wonder if it’ll make the final cut of the episode…

Only last thing I will comment on is the blue neon lighting under the attack mode KITT.  In the States it may be cool, but over here, its generally associated with muppets who’ve got a stereo more expensive than the rest of the car, and drive like complete idiots.

Not to mention, excessive neon lighting on cars gives me Joel Shumaker Batmobile flashbacks.