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Dr Who

Lately, the 3rd season of the new Dr Who [with David Tennant as the Doctor and Freema Agyeman as Martha, his assistant] has been especially good, in a show that's been great overall. I don't wait for a U.S. outlet to pick the episodes later. I download them as soon as they air on BBC1 and some kind soul makes them available on the torrent network.

A few weeks ago, I saw "Blink", which was probably the freakiest and scariest episodes of Dr Who ever. The villians were stone statues who were actually psychopathic aliens, and the story [by Dr Who writer Steven Moffat] was very clever, and plays with your mind. Kids who see it will be afraid of statues, no doubt. Then came Utopia, where the Doctor is reunited with Capt. Jack as they are propelled to "the end of the universe" and meet the Master, reincarnated, so to speak. In tonight's episode, "The Sound of Drums", the Master comes back to present day earth as a maniacal British Prime Minister, Mr Saxon [see www.votesaxon.co.uk], which continues into next week's finale, "Last of the Time Lords". Can't wait to download and watch them.

BTW, the scariest sci-fi I've ever seen from TV is the "Countrycide" episode of Torchwood, the British sci-fi show. It's a Dr Who spin-off, which I also download, off course. Another, new Dr Who spin-off that seems promising is The Sarah Jane Adventures, featuring Tom Baker's former assistant; the debut episode was nice.

A great Dr Who parody from a British comedy show Dead Ringers can be found on YouTube, in which an actor as Tony Blair laments how unpopular he has become after being so popular before, how his successor-to-be Gordon Brown is an idiot, and how he'd like to stay on longer for the sake of his legacy. So he morphs into David Tennant (the real Tennant making a cameo appearance), and promises "a hundred more years!". See also the jolly parody "Christmas Day at Dr Who's" ["Didn't you get me this next year?"], the "David Tennant & Catherine Tate" sketch, and "Eccleston Quits". And then there's the most famous Dr Who parody, "Curse of the Fatal Death", starrying Hugh Grant and Rowan Atkinson, which can be easily found on the web or torrents.

I've read that in some of Britain's popular media, Dr Who has gotten more attention than Tony Blair, who is stepping down soon. That seems only fitting. After all, has Tony Blair ever killed a Dalek?

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