Something Something Something Darkside

Not an undecided blog title but the name of the feature length Family Guy episode/movie that I got round to watching today. After the huge success of their Blue Harvest episode Star Wars spoof, they decided to go the whole hog this time and turn it into a spoof movie and they pulled it off quite well really. You have to know the basic storyline and characters of the original film to understand a lot of the more subtle jokes but even if you haven't there is something in there for you.

Most of today was spent in front of the TV, thanks mostly to Victoria Wood night followed by a double episode of Defying Gravity which has now sadly come to an end.
I missed Victoria's Christmas special the first time around and so tonight gave me the chance to see it after her tribute programme, something the BBC is doing a lot of over Christmas. It is the turn of June Whitfield next week - although I'm not entirely sure of her contribution to TV, the only thing I remember seeing her in is Absolutely Fabulous as the nan and she has (to me at least) always been an old person - if that makes sense. Although the new Christmas special was quite funny in places, it wasn't brilliant and I much preferred the old episode of Dinnerladies that followed afterwards. I find it amazing how these old comedies can be so funny years after they were originally broadcast and even after watching them countless times and it really is a true testament to the writer when they pull something like that off.

One last Defying Gravity entry now. Whilst a lot of things were cleared up during the final two episodes, there were still so many unanswered questions - although to be fair most of these are concerned with the future of the mission and the characters rather than missing answered to already posed questions. Despite everyone on the ship and at mission control deeming it impossible, Zoe managed to retrieve the Gamma object. Once they had touched down on the surface, things started to go the same way as the Mars mission and Zoe began hearing the crying noise and became convinced that her aborted baby was actually lying on the surface of Venus. She let slip to Donner that the baby was his and despite (or perhaps because of) this he waited for her to return before setting off back to the ship. Whilst Zoe was holding the gamma object, Jen managed to get her first look at it and reacted in the same way as everyone else did, implying that it was the most beautiful thing that ever existed. Once back on the ship however, she seemed once more unable to see it. A bit of a corny end to the show with the whole 'back from the dead with a kiss' thing although it does clear up whether Zoe survived or not. One thing that was never explained and that I have only cleared up by reading the Wikipedia page is Nadia's visions. She keeps seeing a man with a beard in ISO uniform and it turns out that the intention was to reveal her as a hermaphrodite. Her hallucination is therefore playing on her guilt of choosing to be a woman rather than a man and she is therefore seeing herself if she had made the other choice.