Carruthers Ten Years On: February 2012

February 2012 on the Carruthers blog featured videos of The Fast And The Furious (not that one) and its remake The Chase. I didn't watch either of them and tacked a Doctor Who video on to the end of the latter. There's also a post about X-Men references.

I quite like Love And Death and this English translation of Vin Diesel.

Top Ten Bond Pre-Titles Sequences

Every James Bond film since 1963's From Russia With Love has opened with a teaser sequence before the titles that has been sometimes intrinsic to the plot of the film, sometimes not even slightly. I watched the beginnings of all of the films up to and including Spectre and ranked them, then I wrote this article about the top ten. I would love to have had the time to watch the full films, but I have a toddler and so needed to watch these snippets while he napped. 

There's no No Time To Die, because I hadn't seen it and this was written to tie into the the ever-changing release date of the film. I'll have to watch No Time To Die again to decide where the pre-titles sequence might fit.

Maybe I'll post the full ranking when the next Bond film comes out, but in the mean time here's a top ten.

Marked

BBV Productions have tweeted a pair of bookmarks, or I suppose if you put them back-to-back, a double-sided bookmark. Below is the one featuring what increasingly seems to be the cover for Auton, alongside those for Cyberhunt, Cybergeddon, Republica, The Rani Reaps The Whirlwind and The Airzone Solution.

Auton is available for pre-order with two other books here if you are in the UK and here if you are not.

Big Damn Heroics: R. Tam, Session 416 - Second Excerpt & Episode Death Tolls

Spatial Anomaly also covered the first of The R. Tam Sessions, Session 416 - Second Excerpt.

Accompanied by an article about episode death tolls exclusive to patrons.

Please consider popping over to Spatial Anomaly for a butcher's.

Auton Artwork Not Final

Here is the cover for my Auton novelisation that was featured in the pre-order announcement is very clearly stated to be NOT FINAL. I don't know if it is likely to remain, but I would be pretty happy with it if it did.

They are available for pre-order in the UK here or not the UK here.

Star Trek's Oddest Crossovers

Star Trek is no stranger to crossovers. Characters from one series can and have popped up in another. There's an article in that, but this is not that article. Instead this about something much weirder: examples of crossovers with other shows from Webster, Here Come The Brides, seaQuest DSV, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, X-Men, Green Lantern and The Carol Burnett Show.

I wrote this about Star Trek's Oddest Crossovers.

Announcing Auton

So, the cat is out of the bag. The Top Secret thing that I have been writing is a novelisation of Auton.

Auton is a direct-to-video Doctor Who spinoff produced by BBV in 1997. It's a sequel to Spearhead From Space, the first story to feature Jon Pertwee as the Third Doctor. With the help of UNIT he foils an attempted invasion of Earth by killer plastic shop window dummies. Auton picks up the story decades later as the invasion resumes.

Now the company is novelising much of their back catalogue. Novelisations are a part of the lifeblood of Doctor Who. The Target novelisations are an institution in themselves.

Auton is now available for pre-order as part of a bundle of three books. The other two appear to be the Krynoid tale The Root of All Evil by Paul Mount and The Choice from BBV's brace of Adventures in a Pocket Universe, featuring K9 and the Mistress.  

They are available for pre-order in the UK here or not the UK here. More news as and when I have it.