Now, Minchin has reflected on the show’s final months, in conversation with Doctor Who Magazine. “It was doing hugely well on CBBC”, he recalled. “We already had scripts commissioned [for future episodes]. We were ready to go. And CBBC wanted more series after that. We’d been in to have meetings. “Russell [T Davies] was living in LA, but was fully committed to it. Then Lis [Sladen] rang Russell to tell him the news [that she was struggling with cancer]....

Talking mirrors, a ‘haunted’ fairground, a creepy old man, boys who look like they’re all in the same boy band and a troublingly attractive female lead – this week’s first installment of The Sarah Jane Adventures has it all! Right from the get-go the chills start with a scene from the future. Rani has become a crazy old woman in Sarah Jane’s attic and is visited by Adam, a young boy who would be best described as a better-looking Luke....

The Son Episode 7 The Son season 1, episode 7, “Marriage Bond,” is a more introspective offering from the Wild West series. Set after a lethal crime that followed a murderous crime, the First Son of Texas and his apparent heir want to stop the cycle of death that is eating away at their home. The family is as divided as the Texas border town and the historical arc corresponds with what looks like the promise of unity....

The Tomorrow People has been a roller coaster, with some episodes hitting high marks and some hitting the lowest of lows. There are some pretty large plot holes, major issues that go unaddressed, and a general lack of connection and passion that I have felt in other shows I have reviewed. I am not a person who gets emotionally invested in television shows, but I would love to continue watching Defiance and Continuum because of their sheer intensity....

However, at E3 things took a surprising turn. Although the Wii U is still far from where it needs to be, a great line up of games was announced and demonstrated at the show, including a brand new Zelda, and confirmation of a new StarFox title. It was all very impressive, and although still a relatively small portion of big titles, Nintendo made a lot of good moves this year, with many saying it’s now time to nip out and buy a Wii U....

5.5 Monster’s Ball We start off with the season’s apparent big bad – Dr. Maxfield. His experiments on a newly undead Jesse feel worryingly like yet another Buffy rip-off in the form of a scientific angle on the supernatural just as our heroes enter college but, as it’s the only glimpse we saw of whatever he’s doing with Jesse, I won’t rant about it just yet. Otherwise, Elena discovers a friend of murdered roommate Megan, for whom Maxfield is acting as legal guardian, and he claims everyone around him tends to die....

6.5 The World Has Turned And Left Me Here She has her fans, obviously, but the series found its genius through the relationship between the Salvatore brothers and how both Katherine and Elena interrupted their bond. It was compelling and interesting and something we hadn’t seen explored before on television, the sheer ridiculousness of the situation only elevating the soap opera familial politics between them. Somewhere along the way, the show lost that core, but that final moment of this episode, The World Has Turned And Left Me Here, proved once and for all that season six has every intention of getting it back....

The episode opens up with the Governor combing a little girl’s hair. Here’s the kicker–this little girl is a zombie and, formerly, his daughter. The Governor looks out of his window to see Michonne looking up at his window. The Governor then has a gathering with the townspeople and raises a glass to their survival. Michonne takes advantage of the gathering, and takes it upon herself to snoop around the Governor’s house....

4.1 30 Days Without An Accident The Walking Dead‘s cast is enormous at this point. Between old favourites, Woodbury holdovers, random people showing up in the woods, and new characters who we’re supposed to get to know and care about, there are a lot of folks hanging out in Georgia after the dead rise up to feast upon the flesh of the living. When a show has a bunch of people to deal with, one of the easiest ways for writers to create focus is to split the group up into more manageable chunks....

The episode starts with the Police clearing up after the shoot-out at Marlo’s apartment. They wheel away the body of Omar’s accomplice and then head off back to the station. Meantime Chris is searching Omar’s haunts while Snoop is checking the hospitals but Omar has vanished. Marlo calls a meeting outside the apartment and looks up at the fifth floor window from which Omar jumped and tells Chris ‘Don’t seem possible’....

The Omens I re-watch the episodes from time to time (although that’s really unnecessary considering I can recall them easily by closing my eyes and thinking for a bit), and although my opinion is arguably tinted with rose-coloured nostalgia, I still maintain that they’re the pinnacle of 80s animated storytelling, and hold up very strongly even today. If you can, it’s worth tracking down a copy of Exodus, the very first feature length episode, but make sure you get the PAL version as the American edition has some appalling cuts....

There have been an influx of both shows and movies lately that position family as the “big drama” that’s to be dealt with. There is no shortage for these sort of projects as actors as interested in those juicy, emotional roles, and as a result you have things like large-scale productions a la This is Where I Leave You or more intimate, smaller looks at family that the Duplass Brothers have become known for, such as Jeff, Who Lives at Home, Cyrus, Happy Christmas, and many more....

Our third visit to Ben Temps proves the age old adage if you go down to Louisiana, don’t have sex with Jason Stackhouse. Not if you want to live to regret it. Just days after Maudette Pickens met her untimely post-coital death, Jason’s latest conquest, Dawn, is murdered in her own home and found by one Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin). It appears that for the citizens of Bon Temps, despite the vampires, sleeping with Jason is the most dangerous activity one can engage in....

Elektra was called “shockingly dull”, “a disjointed drag” and “a half-hearted effort”. Ghost Rider was labelled “cheesy and infantile”. In hindsight, Daredevil got off lightly, with a reasonable 44% rating on Rotten Tomatoes (www.rottentomatoes.com). Having picked up the director’s cut DVD recently, it all becomes clear; studio meddling ruined this movie. They trimmed out the darkness and filed down the edges; cutting out a whole sub-plot and ramping up the romance until the whole thing – in the words of Talking Heads – stopped making sense....

In 2012, author Neil Gaiman told a group of arts graduates that freelancers get jobs thanks to three attributes: a) their work is good, b) they deliver on time, and c) they’re easy to get along with. You don’t even need all three, he said, “people will tolerate how unpleasant you are if your work is good and you deliver it on time. They’ll forgive the lateness of the work if it’s good, and if they like you....

But did you know we were this close to getting a live action Voltron TV series? How did this come about? What would it have been like? “Alex (Albrecht) was honing up his directing chops and we were both Voltron fans and he just wanted to do something that he thought people would be interested in seeing and get to do some directing.” When the short came out it got quite a bit of attention from the geeky side of the internet....

That’s been a huge topic of discussion surrounding the Voltron tie-in book, The Paladin’s Handbook. Purporting to be a “guide” to Dreamworks’ Voltron Legendary Defender, fans are already debating whether certain details about the characters within are canonical to the series or not. While that may sound like it’s all canon, Montgomery points out that some of the material in the bible has “evolved a little organically through the process....

Like a train careening down the tracks, Voltron season 5 nearly flies off the rails. There’s too much happening. After a somewhat slow first episode it’s just nonstop from there. It’s almost as if they took what was supposed to be two seasons worth of plot and crammed it into six episodes. This means the big twists come at you nonstop and while many of them are great I wish the season had taken some time to ease up....

4.1 A New Hope Regular viewers know that the show revolves around a warehouse with TARDIS-like powers (it’s way bigger on the inside) filled with deus ex machina solutions to every episode’s problem. The great thing about that is how the creators have managed to make each of those “easy” solutions both suspenseful and challenging. In fact, I would say one of the most exciting part of the show is trying to figure out what the artifact is this time and how will it affect everyone....

There has been a fair bit of debate over the direction of Westworld Season 2. Some argue that the show has completely lost the thread of its former glory in season 1, while there is at least a minority that thinks it’s as good as ever. We’re in the third camp: one that thinks it is missing a step (at least in the first three episodes), but that’s a byproduct by the clever design of season 2....