Day 7
TV Meme day 7- Least favourite episode of your favourite show.
The Greatest Show in the Galaxy
There are others which are worse than this, but I had to pick ‘The Greatest Show in the Galaxy’ for one over riding reason:
Clowns creep me right the fuck out.
Some can be funny, but they’d be funnier without the costume. Creepier ones are plain horrible.
Unfortunately that’s the why they were included. Ace hates them just as much as I do, so they’re crucial to the plot.
In essence, the Tardis picks up a transmission, a brochure for the famous Psychic Circus: the self proclaimed greatest show in the galaxy!!! Ace is reluctant, but The Doctor insists they go.
This takes them to the desolate planet Segonax, where the Psychic Circus has been for a long time.
The clowns are all robots, except for their leader. One circus member, Flower Child, has tried to escape and been hunted down and killed. Her lover, Bellboy, also tries to escape, but gets rounded up by the Chief Clown and brought back. Bellboy gets to live because he’s the only one who knows how to repair the robots (why he’d bother is anyone’s guess). On getting back he gets severely punished.
The Doctor and Ace meet a few others on their way to the circus: a biker, an old army officer named Captain Cook, his companion Mags, and an eagre fan. For some reason there’s also a broken down bus with a killer robot on board. The Doctor and co escape from it as soon as it’s filled enough time in the script.
When they arrive The Doctor and Ace discover the only audience is a family of three who look down from above and don’t like any of the acts. They also discover the people who buy tickets are actually expected to perform. If your act fails to amuse the audience, you die. Painfully.
Deep inside the main tent there’s deep shaft with a glowing eye in it. This makes little to no sense.
The biker dies in the ring, followed by the fan boy (Whiz Kid)
A character called Dead Beat is revealed to have once been a headline act who virtually ran the whole operation. Then Bellboy gets killed by robot clowns while the Chief Clown looks on.
There’s also a ring master who stands around being menacing in a voodoo sort of way, but doesn’t really do much else.
The Doctor ends up in the ring, where Captain Cook sets Mags on him. Turns out she’s a werewolf. For no apparent reason. Then she kills the Captain instead. The family actually enjoys this.
The ringmaster and another character then have to perform, fail and get killed. This is basically because they were becoming an irritating irrelevance.
Ace and Dead Beat go off to eliminate the clowns for the same reason. Meanwhile The Doctor goes into the ring, revealing the family as a trio of evil gods who demand to be entertained. (I have no idea why they do this, or how the Doctor discovers them). He keeps them distracted till Ace gets back, providing Sylvester McCoy with a chance to show off his magic tricks and spoon playing.
Then a tent explodes. And everyone goes home.
But there’s also another school of thought… that ‘The Greatest Show in the Galaxy’ is a metaphor of the entire show at that point.
The Psychic Circus is ‘Doctor Who’, a once great and popular entertainment, now stuck in the same rut and not allowed to reinvent itself. The Gods of Ragnarok are the network execs who hate the show and want to see it suffer. Their amusement at the deaths of the performers refers to the way Colin Baker was fired. The wasteland refers to the awful rescheduling that kept the ratings low at this point. And Whiz Kid is clearly a mockery of the fans who were still supporting the show after all this time.
Problem is that this doesn’t serve to be the show poking fun at itself. It just draws attention to all it’s faults. The cracks were really showing by this stage and it’s a clear indicator that the series would only have one more season before going away for a very long time.
Even if it weren’t for all these problems, the story just doesn’t really come together as well as it should.
But most of all… clowns creep me right the fuck out.
Movie Meme day 7- The most surprising plot twist or ending
The Usual Suspects
Unlike so many others in this meme, there was no other contenders for this one. But first let me use these immortal words…
SPOILER WARNING.
I can’t tell you about the ending without giving it away, so consider yourself warned.
There’s been a series of crimes that started in New York. It’s ended in a pile of dead bodies and a burning ship on the docks in LA. The same five crooks have been implicated in all of it. And most of them have been identified amongst the bodies. One of them has been brought in for questioning by the LAPD and the FBI. His name is Verbal Kint (Kevin Spacey in his first Oscar winning role). He’s got a malformed leg, a useless hand and a low IQ.
FBI agent Kujan brings him in to tell his story. First they rattle Verbal by leaving him alone in Detective Rabin’s office for a few minutes. Then the story begins.
Verbal is evasive but they gradually get it out of him. The five crooks were brought in for a police line up in New York. One of them, Keaton (Gabrielle Byrne) is trying to go straight, but the arrest has destroyed his latest attempts at legitimacy. The crims decide to join forces and expose a chain of police corruption, then flee to LA. They complete a job for a mysterious client. The client has them brought in to meet his lawyer, a man named Kobayashi. He provides each of them with files containing names and addresses of there friends, relatives, criminal records and details of crimes they thought they’d got away with. This makes it clear that the employer effectively owns them… and then they find out who he is. Keyser Soze… an underworld figure of terror. Some say he’s a legend. Others say he’s a myth. Still more say that he’s not only real, but actually the Devil incarnate himself! In effect, Keyser Soze is the criminal world’s boogey man. Even talking about Soze has Verbal trembling in terror.
‘Keaton used to say “I don’t believe in God, but I’m afraid of him. Well I believe in God, Agent Kujan, and the only thing that scares me is Keyser Soze.’
It turns out that the burning boat was said to be the scene of a drug war, but further investigation reveals there were no drugs on the boat. Just a man. A man who could identify Keyser Soze. He was there as a trade off between two different mobs, and Soze was using our main characters as a way to get himself in there so he could personally eliminate the target. He then killed all of them, except Verbal who never saw him clearly.
By this point Verbal is on the floor of the office, a blubbering mess. He’s seen his friends killed and saw the back of the man who killed them. Kujan wants to know why Verbal didn’t shoot Soze. Verbal replies ‘How do you shoot the devil in the back?’ then holds up his crippled hand ‘What if you miss?’
Kujan says that Keaton arranged the whole thing, that there probably is no Keyser Soze, that he’s now got clean away, and that Verbal was left alive to convince the police that Keaton was dead. Verbal was picked because he’s stupid and a cripple, the kid the others pick on. Heart broken Verbal gets up and shuffles out of the office, his face showing nothing but contempt for the police.
Kujan feels sorry for Verbal, but lets him go and settles back to finish his coffee and chat with Rabin. While Rabin is talking Kujan looks at the notice board on the wall that has so far been behind him the whole time… and in front of Verbal.
Verbal leaves the police station and makes his way down the street. A car follows him from a distance.
Kujan notices things on the board that connect to little things Verbal said during his story. A lot of them. Basically most of the things Kujan hadn’t already known for himself. Snatches of audio from throughout the movie come back, including the name of the lawyer, Kobayashi.
Suddenly realising what’s been going on, Kujan drops his coffee cup and tears out of the room. On the bottom of the broken cup is the name of the manufacturer: Kobayashi Porcelain!
In the street Verbals leg suddenly seems to stretch out and straighten. His stride becomes confident and purposeful. His crippled hand spread the fingers, and he massages them. He then lights a cigarette with a smooth flourish.
Kujan runs out of the police station looking for Verbal, but can’t spot him. The car pulls up next to Verbal/Soze and he gets in. The driver is the man we previously thought was called Kobayashi. The car drives off leaving Kujan floundering in the crowd, knowing that he’s been bullshitted by the most dangerous and most wanted man in the criminal world, and let him get away.
“The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist… and like that, he’s gone.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBrwUGdbODA
Some people actually hate this movie because, they say, the ending contradicts everything else. Idiots. That’s the whole point!
The Greatest Show in the Galaxy
There are others which are worse than this, but I had to pick ‘The Greatest Show in the Galaxy’ for one over riding reason:
Clowns creep me right the fuck out.
Some can be funny, but they’d be funnier without the costume. Creepier ones are plain horrible.
Unfortunately that’s the why they were included. Ace hates them just as much as I do, so they’re crucial to the plot.
In essence, the Tardis picks up a transmission, a brochure for the famous Psychic Circus: the self proclaimed greatest show in the galaxy!!! Ace is reluctant, but The Doctor insists they go.
This takes them to the desolate planet Segonax, where the Psychic Circus has been for a long time.
The clowns are all robots, except for their leader. One circus member, Flower Child, has tried to escape and been hunted down and killed. Her lover, Bellboy, also tries to escape, but gets rounded up by the Chief Clown and brought back. Bellboy gets to live because he’s the only one who knows how to repair the robots (why he’d bother is anyone’s guess). On getting back he gets severely punished.
The Doctor and Ace meet a few others on their way to the circus: a biker, an old army officer named Captain Cook, his companion Mags, and an eagre fan. For some reason there’s also a broken down bus with a killer robot on board. The Doctor and co escape from it as soon as it’s filled enough time in the script.
When they arrive The Doctor and Ace discover the only audience is a family of three who look down from above and don’t like any of the acts. They also discover the people who buy tickets are actually expected to perform. If your act fails to amuse the audience, you die. Painfully.
Deep inside the main tent there’s deep shaft with a glowing eye in it. This makes little to no sense.
The biker dies in the ring, followed by the fan boy (Whiz Kid)
A character called Dead Beat is revealed to have once been a headline act who virtually ran the whole operation. Then Bellboy gets killed by robot clowns while the Chief Clown looks on.
There’s also a ring master who stands around being menacing in a voodoo sort of way, but doesn’t really do much else.
The Doctor ends up in the ring, where Captain Cook sets Mags on him. Turns out she’s a werewolf. For no apparent reason. Then she kills the Captain instead. The family actually enjoys this.
The ringmaster and another character then have to perform, fail and get killed. This is basically because they were becoming an irritating irrelevance.
Ace and Dead Beat go off to eliminate the clowns for the same reason. Meanwhile The Doctor goes into the ring, revealing the family as a trio of evil gods who demand to be entertained. (I have no idea why they do this, or how the Doctor discovers them). He keeps them distracted till Ace gets back, providing Sylvester McCoy with a chance to show off his magic tricks and spoon playing.
Then a tent explodes. And everyone goes home.
But there’s also another school of thought… that ‘The Greatest Show in the Galaxy’ is a metaphor of the entire show at that point.
The Psychic Circus is ‘Doctor Who’, a once great and popular entertainment, now stuck in the same rut and not allowed to reinvent itself. The Gods of Ragnarok are the network execs who hate the show and want to see it suffer. Their amusement at the deaths of the performers refers to the way Colin Baker was fired. The wasteland refers to the awful rescheduling that kept the ratings low at this point. And Whiz Kid is clearly a mockery of the fans who were still supporting the show after all this time.
Problem is that this doesn’t serve to be the show poking fun at itself. It just draws attention to all it’s faults. The cracks were really showing by this stage and it’s a clear indicator that the series would only have one more season before going away for a very long time.
Even if it weren’t for all these problems, the story just doesn’t really come together as well as it should.
But most of all… clowns creep me right the fuck out.
Movie Meme day 7- The most surprising plot twist or ending
The Usual Suspects
Unlike so many others in this meme, there was no other contenders for this one. But first let me use these immortal words…
SPOILER WARNING.
I can’t tell you about the ending without giving it away, so consider yourself warned.
There’s been a series of crimes that started in New York. It’s ended in a pile of dead bodies and a burning ship on the docks in LA. The same five crooks have been implicated in all of it. And most of them have been identified amongst the bodies. One of them has been brought in for questioning by the LAPD and the FBI. His name is Verbal Kint (Kevin Spacey in his first Oscar winning role). He’s got a malformed leg, a useless hand and a low IQ.
FBI agent Kujan brings him in to tell his story. First they rattle Verbal by leaving him alone in Detective Rabin’s office for a few minutes. Then the story begins.
Verbal is evasive but they gradually get it out of him. The five crooks were brought in for a police line up in New York. One of them, Keaton (Gabrielle Byrne) is trying to go straight, but the arrest has destroyed his latest attempts at legitimacy. The crims decide to join forces and expose a chain of police corruption, then flee to LA. They complete a job for a mysterious client. The client has them brought in to meet his lawyer, a man named Kobayashi. He provides each of them with files containing names and addresses of there friends, relatives, criminal records and details of crimes they thought they’d got away with. This makes it clear that the employer effectively owns them… and then they find out who he is. Keyser Soze… an underworld figure of terror. Some say he’s a legend. Others say he’s a myth. Still more say that he’s not only real, but actually the Devil incarnate himself! In effect, Keyser Soze is the criminal world’s boogey man. Even talking about Soze has Verbal trembling in terror.
‘Keaton used to say “I don’t believe in God, but I’m afraid of him. Well I believe in God, Agent Kujan, and the only thing that scares me is Keyser Soze.’
It turns out that the burning boat was said to be the scene of a drug war, but further investigation reveals there were no drugs on the boat. Just a man. A man who could identify Keyser Soze. He was there as a trade off between two different mobs, and Soze was using our main characters as a way to get himself in there so he could personally eliminate the target. He then killed all of them, except Verbal who never saw him clearly.
By this point Verbal is on the floor of the office, a blubbering mess. He’s seen his friends killed and saw the back of the man who killed them. Kujan wants to know why Verbal didn’t shoot Soze. Verbal replies ‘How do you shoot the devil in the back?’ then holds up his crippled hand ‘What if you miss?’
Kujan says that Keaton arranged the whole thing, that there probably is no Keyser Soze, that he’s now got clean away, and that Verbal was left alive to convince the police that Keaton was dead. Verbal was picked because he’s stupid and a cripple, the kid the others pick on. Heart broken Verbal gets up and shuffles out of the office, his face showing nothing but contempt for the police.
Kujan feels sorry for Verbal, but lets him go and settles back to finish his coffee and chat with Rabin. While Rabin is talking Kujan looks at the notice board on the wall that has so far been behind him the whole time… and in front of Verbal.
Verbal leaves the police station and makes his way down the street. A car follows him from a distance.
Kujan notices things on the board that connect to little things Verbal said during his story. A lot of them. Basically most of the things Kujan hadn’t already known for himself. Snatches of audio from throughout the movie come back, including the name of the lawyer, Kobayashi.
Suddenly realising what’s been going on, Kujan drops his coffee cup and tears out of the room. On the bottom of the broken cup is the name of the manufacturer: Kobayashi Porcelain!
In the street Verbals leg suddenly seems to stretch out and straighten. His stride becomes confident and purposeful. His crippled hand spread the fingers, and he massages them. He then lights a cigarette with a smooth flourish.
Kujan runs out of the police station looking for Verbal, but can’t spot him. The car pulls up next to Verbal/Soze and he gets in. The driver is the man we previously thought was called Kobayashi. The car drives off leaving Kujan floundering in the crowd, knowing that he’s been bullshitted by the most dangerous and most wanted man in the criminal world, and let him get away.
“The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist… and like that, he’s gone.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBrwUGdbODA
Some people actually hate this movie because, they say, the ending contradicts everything else. Idiots. That’s the whole point!