Saturday 30 January 2021

Big Damn Heroics: Our Mrs Reynolds, Safe & Deleted Scene

Some Spatial Anomaly news: Big Damn Heroics has reached Our Mrs Reynolds, the episode in which Mal gets married and Christina Hendricks gives a bravura performance.


There's also an article about a delete scene from the episode that's exclusive to patrons. 


The Safe article has gone public. 

Wednesday 27 January 2021

Carruthers Ten Years On: January 2011

January 2011 on the Carruthers blog saw me shamelessly indexing all the posts so far and 'remastering' posts with photos that hadn't worked previously. Why fix broken links when you can simply post it again?

The Mona Lisa post is alright.

I'm a little embarrassed by the photos that accompany the B's and Mo On Show. They seem like a lapse in taste and I can only plead that in 2010 they were meant to be ironic. I doubt that they qualify. 

Saturday 23 January 2021

Big Damn Heroics: Safe, Opening Narrations & Shindig

This week on Spatial Anomaly, there's shooting, kidnapping and cattle rustling as we look at Safe, the episode which tests the definitions of crew and passengers. The Safe article is exclusive to patrons  for the next seven days.

As if that weren't enough. We also have an article that is exclusive to patrons about the no less than four different opening narrations that were shown at the top of most episodes on their first broadcast. They aren't on the DVD and a great many people that love the show have never even seen them.

Meanwhile, the Shindig article is now available for public consumption.


Come and join for a spell on Spatial Anomaly

Friday 22 January 2021

Spatial Anomaly Exclusives So Far

I probably haven't done enough to draw attention to the Patreon exclusive articles that I've been writing and posting each week. At this point, there are three articles about Firefly that remain steadfastly only available to Spatial Anomaly's patrons.

The first concerns the deleted scenes from the pilot episode, what they would have revealed about the characters and whether they should have been included in the episode as broadcast.  


The second Patreon exclusive article is about Firefly episode orders. The differences between the order the episode were broadcast, production order and Joss Whedon's preferred order, and perhaps more importantly, why it matters.


And the third is a character profile of Badger. I'm going to to one of these for each of the recurring and regular characters.


The only way to read these three articles and any of the subsequent Patreon exclusives is to become a Patron, but I would imagine that the only way you would know whether that's something you want to do, is if you head on over and have a look at some of the free stuff and see if it takes your fancy.


Wednesday 20 January 2021

Modern Doctor Who Cliffhangers

Cliffhanger endings have always been an intrinsic part of Doctor Who, but since the show's return in 2005 the format has changed and there are fewer of them.


I've written an article for Hero Collector about them, a top ten of modern Doctor Who cliffhangers.



Pleasingly episodes from all five of the modern Doctors made the list.



As did those featuring Daleks, Cybermen and a number of incarnations of the Master, but which ones and in which order?


I wrote this about Doctor Who cliffhangers.


Monday 18 January 2021

Don't Be Blue

Today is Blue Monday. Apparently the most depressing day of the year.

I wrote this list of suggestions of uplifting sci-fi to help you beat the blues. Between them that's a seven hour schedule that's sure to cheer you up, however Blue your Monday is.



Saturday 16 January 2021

Big Damn Heroics: Shindig & Bushwhacked

Big Damn Heroics has reached Shindig, as Mal tries to do business at a fancy party and finds himself duelling. Kaylee's frock, Mal's sense of honour and River's impression of Badger, it's all here for patrons of Spatial Anomaly.


In other news, Bushwhacked, the episode which shows us that Alliance bureaucracy can be as deadly as gorram Reavers, is now free to read for non-patrons. Please have a look and consider becoming a patron.

Thursday 14 January 2021

Spatial Anomaly

I've started a Patreon called Spatial Anomaly. I've got a lot of ideas for it, but at the moment it's primarily for delivering my Firefly articles.

If you sign up to the Patreon at any tier, you will get access to all the articles for Big Damn Heroics (and similar subsequent projects) a week before they go public.

If you choose to sign up to a higher tier, then in addition to early access to articles you will also receive an extra exclusive article each week and be able to vote for whatever should replace Firefly when we reach the last episode.

Please have a look around at the free stuff on Spatial Anomaly and consider chipping in for the not-so-free stuff.

Saturday 9 January 2021

Big Damn Heroics: The Train Job

With one pilot done, Big Damn Heroics has moved onto the other. The co-pilot if you will: The Train Job.


The Train Job is a fantastic episode that seeks to introduce all the necessary elements from the other pilot without repeating itself. It's a tall order and it succeeds admirably. Let's do some crime.


Wednesday 6 January 2021

Twelfth Night, Or What You Voted For closes tonight

 The final performance of Twelfth Night, Or What You Voted For is online tonight at 7pm.

You can get a free ticket here.

Those of you with a prior engagement have missed it.


Tuesday 5 January 2021

Twelfth Night, Or What You Voted For opens tonight

The first performance of Twelfth Night, Or What You Voted For is online tonight at 7pm.

You can get a free ticket here.


Those of you with a prior engagement please consider attending tomorrow.

Monday 4 January 2021

Once More Around The Sun

2021, it sounds so futuristic, but get used to it because it's now. I've made my own entirely accurate predictions about the year ahead, but science fiction has made several of its own about what 2021 has in store for us.


As has become become an annual tradition, I wrote this about science fictions predictions for 2021.

Sunday 3 January 2021

Twelfth Night, Or What You Voted For

I'm acting again. It's been a while.

I'm playing Antonio in an online version of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, which has been influenced by the recent departure of the United Kingdom from the European Union, hence the Or What You Voted For.

Unlike Brexit it'll cost you nothing. It's on the 5th and 6th of January at 7pm.

You can get a free ticket here.



Saturday 2 January 2021

Announcing Big Damn Heroics

This is something of an experiment: I plan to write about an episode of Joss Whedon's science fiction/western series Firefly every week for the next approximately fourteen weeks and if wildly successful, possibly beyond. I'm calling it Big Damn Heroics
Firefly concerned the spaceship Serenity, its crew and passengers and the adventures that blurred line between the two. The TV show premiered in 2002, was sorely mistreated by its network and cancelled all too soon after. 

In total, there were fourteen episodes broadcast, albeit in the wrong order, in varying timeslots and often pre-empted by sports events or movie repeats. I'm going to be writing about the series in its intended broadcast order, which is also the how the episodes were presented on the DVD and Blu-ray releases. I would argue that it has pretty much supplanted the original broadcast order. That said, I'll be definitely making lots of references to the contradictions and confusions that this caused. 

Each Saturday, I will publish an article on Patreon about a new episode, beginning with:

3) Firefly: Bushwhacked (16th January 2021)
4) Firefly: Shindig (23rd January 2021)
5) Firefly: Safe (30th January 2021)
6) Firefly: Our Mrs Reynolds (6th February 2021)
7) Firefly: Jaynestown (13th February 2021)
8) Firefly: Out Of Gas (20th February 2021)
9) Firefly: Ariel (27th February 2021)
10) Firefly: War Stories (6th March 2021)
11) Firefly: Trash (13th March 2021)
12) Firefly: The Message (20th March 2021)
13) Firefly: Heart Of Gold (27th March 2021)
14) Firefly: Objects In Space (3rd April 2021)


If these first fourteen find an audience then we can talk about the movie, the webisodes, the comics, the short stories and the novels in subsequent articles.

So please join me every Saturday for some Firefly.

Friday 1 January 2021

My Predictions For 2021...

For the last five years, I have produced a quintet of flawless predictions on New Years' Day of the year ahead. Here's five more for 2021...

  • The Carmarthenshire village of Bancyfelin will inexplicably win Miss Universe.

  • Lego Bricks will replace all world currency.

  • To lower costs, the alphabet will be reduced to twenty-fie letters.

  • Punctuation will be taxed.

  • Society will be reorganised as a millinocracy: the larger your hat, the more important you are. Doorways will need to be raised, neck strengthening exercises will be vital, car sunroofs will require widening.