As usual, click the image to see a doublesize version.

With the GallifreyOne fan site virtually off the air these days, I didn’t realize that Torchwood had even aired yet! What is Torchwood …?? sigh … Well, once there was a British TV show called Doctor Who. After MANY years and too many stories, it went off the air in the late 80s …

Well, this Amazing British TV writer/director/producer named Russell T Davis
was quite a fan, and had a vision to return the good Doctor to the airwaves. His new telling of the tales (and Christopher Eclestone’s portrayal of the Doctor) were a big hit …
midway through the first season of new episodes, there was a tale with another time traveling character that stole the show … his name was Captain Jack … and after another 2 years, RT Davis and crew created a spin off series about Captain Jack and his Torchwood Institute – seems they salvage alien technology for the good of humanity …

I caught the first two episodes tonight – what a triumph. It IS an adult SciFi series, but quite a fun romp!

No more sneaky downloads via bit-Torrent … soon you’ll be able to get your weekly fix of the (new version of the classic) British Science Fiction show on the SciFi Channel. Of course, they’ll start with the shows from last year (so called “season One”, but considering the original show ran from the 60s through the late 80’s with a TV movie in the mid 90’s, its really season 27 (See
http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Contrib/SciFi/DrWho/episodes.html).
Be sure to check the BBC announcement at

http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/

Thats Teddy – our guard cat, scowling over everything! (click image to enlarge)

This is a small room downstairs, with a lovely view out the large windows to the left. But with a cozy futon and the light rope, its become a really comfy theatre room! Note how crisp the Channel 9 HD news broadcast is – and this is a daytime picture. Thats why we choose a CRT instead of DLP or a projection set. Plus, it fits the scale of the room

Look at the small “trays” I built on the walls near the ceiling – these conceal a long string of LED light rope that runs around 3 walls of the TV room. At night, even with the lights on, its not a distraction to the TV/movies.

34″ Phillips Widescreen HD CRT –
We’ve got an OLD pair of L36 decade JBL speakers (circa 1974) in the front, 2 more recent small JBLs hang from the ceiling in the rear, and a Sony subwoofer sits off to the side. AV/Sound control is handled by a JVC AV Receiver (a few years old now) and JVC components make up the rest (CD, DVD, Casette tape and VCR).

Oh – the shiney white lump next to the cable box is an Apple airport express, so I can use the Mac up in my office to feed music like a huge jukebox.

Since we got the Phillips Widescreen HDTV in March, we have been watching a lot of movies. Of course, network TV is more inane than ever in widescreen – We’ve never found any reason to watch “reality” shows. I did put up an old but very good UHF antenna and rotor to get the Over-The-Air (OTA or Broadcast) stations from Washington and Baltimore. There are a few shows sent in HD (even a local news show in HD!), there just isn’t that much we want to watch. And our local Blockbuster doesn’t have much of a selection. Sure – they have the latest Adam Sandler movies, but when it comes to the classics, or even old Hitchcock films … nada.

So, on a whim, I joined Netflix last month to see what they had.
Good move – I found out they have 40,000 films in stock, and they are always adding to it. Lots of classics and independant films – and more recent films that I didn’t get to see when they quickly passed through our local art-film house. I finally got to see one of my long desired wish list films – “Fitzcarraldo”! Oh, that was such an excellent film … Klaus Kinski as the dreamer having the natives drag a steamboat up and over the hillside between the two rivers – amazing stuff. And they have episodic TV shows – we watched the first season of “The L Word” during a number of nights last month.

But last week, I saw a show listed that I never thought I’d see again, something I only saw a few episodes of once, when it first aired on FOX TV back in 1996. I added the 3 discs of the show to my Netflix queue, and today – I got disc one of “Profit”.

We watched the 2 hour Pilot at dinner, then watched the next episode “Hero” after the 8PM showing of “The Daily Show with John Stewart”. Great stuff, very dark humour, yet its still hard to believe they thought this would play on broadcast TV 10 years ago …