niktemadur

When I found out a film version of TTSS was coming out, I got angry. TTSS was already perfectly executed as a story by the BBC, I have the DVDs, Sir Alec Guinness was already perfect as George Smiley. Why cram and "Hollywoodize" a 2-hour version of something that was already perfect at 12 hours?

Then I saw the film and was astounded on every single possible level that matters. As of today, if I'm surfing channels and TTSS is playing, I put the remote control aside and joyfully watch this work of art over and over again.

Excellence. The best film I've seen since "The Lives Of Others" and "The New World".

All series on the topic of astronomy and cosmology must and will be measured to that watershed event of the early eighties, "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan, which left me with clarity of what we knew, and the relevant questions yet to be answered at the time.

A magisterial Morgan Freeman guides each episode by asking fascinating and timely questions, then allowing experts to answer them.

The result feels too all-over-the-map, sometimes patronizingly simple, then suddenly, as if taken for granted, skipping over crucial logical stepping stones in the explanation process. "Through The Wormhole" suffers from too many people with different verbal styles (and varying verbal skills) to follow a coherent thread of an idea from beginning to end, the way Mr Sagan did so masterfully back in the day.

Then there's a certain something Discovery Channel Influence, with episodes titled along the lines of "Is There A God?", which Mr Sagan would have found sensationalistic. And I agree with Mr Sagan.

Bottom line: As a passionate follower of astronomy since the early eighties, I watch "Through The Wormhole", but in 2012 I prefer my astrophysics/cosmology shows hosted by Neil DeGrasse Tyson, or Brian Cox.

For as long as I can remember, I've heard about the good Doctor, references, inside jokes and the like. Such as "Real Daleks don't climb stairs, they flatten the building".

The quandary was this: Where do I begin, with thousands of episodes aired? I was afraid of getting myself into something deep, dense, voluminous and possibly repetitive, impossible to get back out of.

The very simple yet belated answer was, of course, by accident.

On one of those sleepless nights, flipping channels, I saw astronauts in a Victorian library, and was immediately intrigued by the weird homage to Kubrick. Before the commercial break, I was treated to electronic ghosts and invisible floating piranhas.

Then this absolute beauty comes up, I paraphrase - "You've been living in a computer simulation, your physical body is elsewhere" - "But I've been dieting"

Bleak, subtle and sophisticated humor? Check, and count me in.

As it turned out, I had stumbled into the middle of a Sy-Fy Channel short marathon of Doctor Who. I resisted going to sleep until the damn thing ended five or six episodes later, at ten in the morning.

What wildly imaginative premises, what a high-quality level of writing, what a gem this is! There is serious brain-power at work here, courtesy of the BBC yet again, on a continuing heroic mission to sacrifice short-term profit for long-term legacy. As evidence, I present "Monty Python's Flying Circus", "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy", "The Singing Detective", "Brideshead Revisited".

From what little I've seen in half of a short marathon, Doctor Who deserves a ten out of ten.