By Roy Mathur, on 2025-03-18, at 23:00:50 to 00:06:10 GMT, for Captain Roy's Rusty Rocket Radio Show
Sorry for the recent delays to the podcast due to joint pain, eczema, an infinitely prolonged migraine, a bug that caused me to lose my voice, IBS, and finally a death in the family. The nasty migraine brought on perhaps by bright sun didn't just effect the pod, but life, and also meant I even had to cancel my obsessively regular monthly trip into London. I'm still recovering now.
On top of all that, The Mark of the Rani shownotes were accidentally deleted. I don't know how I managed this extraordinary feat. Running a Recuva slow scan all day didn't help. I had to start from scratch, though that was further complicated from not being able to read my own handwritten rough notes.
We are finally back on track, so if you thought I was ditching it all in, you'd be mistaken. No, I'm here for the very very long haul and, to end on a positive, happy Holi (14th March).
In 566, I talked briefly about how I enjoyed Ke Huy Quan's character, but completely forgot to mention his most iconic moment when he beats up security guards with a brown leather bum bag (bum bag fu?) It is all the more embarrassingly relevant to me as I own a very similar bag, that is in fact, the latest of many predecessors and, adding insult to injury, now barely fits around my ample waist.
Not geeky at all, but 2020 film, based on the non-fiction book of the same name, about a grieving woman who swaps her empty home for vanlife. A minimal of actors interact with non-actors playing themselves. The widow seems to enjoy the life, but it ends on a bleak note, as she abandons a new love for life on the hard road.
Good as this is and as Frances McDormand portrays her wanderlustful character, and as much as I like David Strathairn, I can't but think this would have made a better documentary.
Wallace is in the frame, when the criminal mastermind penguin escapes and hacks Wallace's robotic gnomes to commit crimes.
It's the usual Aardman high-jinks, but I wanted to commend this latest 2024 BBC film in the series for being refreshingly more diverse with less racial and gender stereotypes. I particularly enjoyed Lauren Patel as PC Mukherjee and Muzz Khan as Anton Deck. Even moreso because many years ago when I'd broach the subject with a certain ex-friend, specifically regarding their very wrong perception of the demographics of Up North, I'd be condescendingly and contemptuously put down. Were I not of a peaceable disposition, I would travel back in time and strike the damnable varlet across the face with my riding gloves! Fygor! Fire up the vimana!
Delightfully positive comedic 2012 BBC stop motion animation short by The Graffalo writer Julia Donaldson about a kind witch who makes room on her broom for lonely animals.
Absolutely wonderful and also has Mum's seal of approval. The phrase "room on the broom" has entered our shared personal lexicon as a shorthand metaphorical touchstone for happiness.
This 2025 reboot of Universal's The Wolf-Man series starring Lon Chaney Jr. is an effective, though grim, low key affair that features sickness and cannibalism, when dad goes mad in the woods. Like almost all werewolf movies it's an tragic story with a tragic ending.
It is very different to Universal's last attempt at bringing back the werewolf genre in the inferior, star-studded 2010 The Wolfman starring Benicio del Toro, but it is also argueably much less fun.
A final girl 2025 movie in which the final girl happens to be a robot, when Jack Quaid buys a gynoid sexbot to commit a murder, and then she tries to escape.
I'd be a better human boyfriend.
Robototicist creates next-gen toy, a sentient robot girl, then tests it as companion for her grieving niece. The minor 2023 film trended on TikTok because of the uncanny dance moves of the kid who played the robot.
It's a satisfying trashy sci-fi horror. It reminds me a lot of 80s robots run amuck films like RoboCop and Runaway, but I'm still mostly on the side of the robot.
There's two ways to describe this 2023 horror film; both are equally valid. One: scientist harvests data from dead brains to create simulcra and conducts illegal experiments in his basement. Two: necromancer enslaves the dead in his dungeon. Even if the simulcra are not the souls of the dead, they are sentient entities that with a dead brains data set. So, not only does he create AI, he creates unhappy AI. This film is morally quandaryless.
Creepy, quiet, and decidedly budget (down to the plastically creep box prop and its interface cobbled together from a Volca mini-synth). Very well acted by Geoffrey Cantor as a grieving husband/mad scientist trying to reconnect with his dead wife at the expense of everyone around him. Morally conflicted necromancer? I'm there, but it's an unrelentingly sad slog, so no rewatches for this wizard.
2024: Happy Death Day/Outlander type scifi tale of reincarnated stalker's erotomaniacal obsession with her vacuous pretty boy victim through time. By and starring Alice Lowe with Nick Frost as a reincarnated dog.
The giant buffoonish heart-shaped Regency wig ("You look like an arse") is the star, but I found the script average, the acting amdram, the direction disjointed, the camerawork clumsy, and the FX and makeup poor (probably deliberately for the sake of badly judged; the Kensington Gore was a particularly fake shade of bright vermilion). The poor pastiche of 80s The Comic Strip Presents... was a slog. I'd expect better from the Sightseers co-writer.
I've been catching up with season 3 2025.
I love the love for oldschool Marvel, DC, but I'm turned off by the incredible violence.
I started watching Legion in 2017, stopped at end of season 2, and started on the final season 3 days ago.
Amazing, weird, mind-bending, and a little too slow-paced in the last two seasons, like the writer was making it up as he went along. I like the spontaneity of seat-of-the-pants writing and I loved Lost, so I approve.
Matt Murphy is back and dealing with a tragedy and Kingpin's mayoral ambitions and I'm there for him, though I confess not remembering what happened at the end of the pre-Disney+ Netflix show. That seemed a lifetime ago.
What Matt and his friends go through is awful, but at least the new show seems exactly like the show of old with plenty of skull-crunching violent fisticuffs to entertain. Enjoy.
Apple TV+ 2020-- comedy, partly produced by Ubisoft, about a video games studio that produces a thinly veiled version of Blizzard's World of Warcraft. Although I played Warcraft: Orcs and Humans on MS-DOS, I know little about the MMORPG that followed, but I do remember it was played by an entire security company I once worked for in Vancouver, before they fired me after I became enraged during a dispute involving the proper use of stationery.
It is very good and very funny, even without a laughter track. It's like The Office mixed with Halt and Catch Fire, and is an illuminating and cynical insight into how games are made.
Episode 5 from season 1 is a phenomenal, though only vaguely related, non-comedic drama. It is a heart-wrenching standalone story about the previous tenants of the cursed office space selling out creatively. Cristin Milioti (Made for Love, The Penguin) is the bees knees as a gothy and delightfully dark creative.
Episode six from season two is another stand-out drama. It is a short film detailing master of backstory, writer C.W. Long Bottom's very own backstory, and is even titled Backstory! Written by Graig Mazin (Chernobyl), I found the period piece---Asimov, Le Guin, and Bradbury feature---as a genre writer myself, nostalgic and deeply moving. It is my favourite of the series so far. The next episode is also about him, but in the modern day as he seeks closure with an old friend. While the cast is amazing, I'll watch anything with F. Murray Abraham, especially when he leans into playing a mediocre, Salieri-like sci-fi author, who calls a disgusting concoction of port, coffee, and sugar, a Rutger Hauer (my favourite actor of the 80s). Due to Abraham's legal issues, the character is written out in the first episode of season three, which is also where I bow out.
The second and finale season begins on April 22nd 2025.
I hope they explain the lightsaber ship. Is it Kyber crystal powered?
New Who season 15 (2) begins on April 12th 2025.
I have intentionally avoided rumours of showrunner changes and perhaps a hiatus in the show. If such a pause is in the offing, I'd say it's a terrible mistake for the Beeb to not learn lessons from Old Who, but if it happens, I've still got the classic series and the Virgin New Adventures novels.
Because I love the alien conspiracy theory of The X-Files, I'm rewatching those specific episodes. though, if anyone can tell me how to avoid the Doggett episodes (I'm not a fan), while still enjoying the mytharc coherently, I'd appreciate it. This is something I'm doing for my own enjoyment, not for the podcast, so don't expect an official podcast revisit of each episode.
NB episode 4 of season 1 is not normally included in the list of mytharc episodes, but should be because we learn about Mulder's sister Samantha's abduction by aliens.
I have successfully wrenched. What has that to do with geek? I've always been a system scripter, largely tinkering with backend software back when I worked in IT and also in my personal life. So, each time I successfully wrangle hardware of any kind, e.g. soldering and now spannering my motorcycle seems like an accomplishment.
I recently fitted a rear rack I bought many months ago without killing myself or my bike. I also put on a recently bought top box to enormously extend my trips because I can carry locks and my shopping on the way back, if the locks work and my bike is still where I left it. Vehicle theft, particularly two-wheeled is so endemic, I wish these pain-in-the-bum thieves the same literal pain-in-the-bum that has afflicted me. Let's see them riding straight to hell with their bottoms afire.
What else? I have an extortionate Honda service to book because this is a new bike and I want it to hold its value. I wish I'd thought of the servicing expense before buying, even at the incredible bargain price I paid for the bike. This is the first and last new bike I ever buy. The next will be something I don't have to treat so gently and dig so deeply to maintain. Bloody Honda.
Finally, my CBT will run out soon, though I have only ridden about 200 miles and I'm not ready to do the big test. Blimey, I'll have to do the bloody CBT again, won't I?
In my quest to own my own media and stave off bit rot, I've been using MakeMKV to convert DVDs to ISO backups. MakeMKV is free while in beta (it's been in beta for about a decade) and can be registered legally by Googling the code, which will take you to the MakeMKV forum. It works well, even on Win 7 32 bit, thought whatever drive I use sounds like a helicopter taking off.
The ISOs can be played directly via VLC, but as they are clones, you'll have to faff your way through menus. Of course, you could simply make MKVs too.
Microsoft will turn off Skype on May 5th, expecting users to migrate to Teams; no thanks. Skype is my preferred VOIP platform that I have used for many years.
Signal or WhatsApp are decent replacements, but remember to export your data if need it via https://secure.skype.com/en/data-export and your contacts to CSV via https://secure.skype.com/portal/overview.
I've deleted the two episodes up on YouTube, put up during the archive.org hack, since they attracted few listens.
New YouTube material is going to be posted shortly, so subscribe.