Jason Thompson

A repost for the evening crowd. Our journey in the magical realms comes to an end. Twice...

We come to the end of another series, and beyond...

Screenshot of live TV from the second Apollo 14 EVA, shortly after the TV camera had been aimed towards cone crater. The astronauts are just visible on the centre right of the image as tiny blobs. The diagonal line of coloured blobs is lens flare from the sun, just out of shot upper right.

Screenshot of live TV from the second Apollo 14 EVA, an hour after the astronauts set off for cone crater. They are long since gone from the TV image. The diagonal line of coloured blobs is lens flare from the sun, just out of shot upper right.

Screenshot of live TV from the second Apollo 14 EVA, almost two hours after the astronauts set off for cone crater. They are long since gone from the TV image. The diagonal line of coloured blobs is lens flare from the sun, just out of shot upper right.

Screenshot of live TV from the second Apollo 14 EVA, nearly three hours after the astronauts set off for cone crater. They are long since gone from the TV image. The diagonal line of coloured blobs is lens flare from the sun, just out of shot upper right. Shortly after this was taken they had returned to the area of the camera but from a different direction, so nobody saw them coming!

This was a nice bit of publicity work but in many ways was too little, too late. Live TV from the moon needed to be interesting, but since the camera couldn't move and they had to walk some distance away, it was live TV of an empty moonscape for hours. The below screenshots cover 2 solid hours.

Human Spaceflight: 06 Feb 1971. At the conclusion of the second lunar surface EVA on Apollo 14, Alan Shepard does his famous 'golf on the moon' moment. A specially modified 6-iron club head was attached to a tool handle and he used it to knock two golfballs across the lunar surface.

Minor edit to the video so hopefully this one will just show. Watch this space for further information about the upcoming quiz by me and @sihart.bsky.social

Nah, it was Lytton's hands being crushed. I removed it, replaced it with a few Cybermen and posted the revised version on another post and it was fine.

Yep. Re-edited it without the hand scene and posted again and it's gone through without a warning.

And that story got a 'U' certificate when it came out on VHS!

Minor edit to the video so hopefully this one will just show. Watch this space for further information about the upcoming quiz by me and @sihart.bsky.social

Graphic media? Really? Oh dear...

What's this? Another quiz from me and @sihart.bsky.social? Yes indeed. The questions are written, we just need to set a date. Watch this space!

The Hamsterverse hits its half million downloads! Five years; commentaries, Strictly’s, Book Clubs, Patreon, X-Files, friendship, laughter, madness, facts (occasionally), scandal, gossip, and a lot of people crossing paths and sharing their love. It’s been a huge adventure. Thanks for pressing play.

Another awful episode, but does have a significance of sorts as it's the first Star Trek episode to feature a guest actor who had previously appeared in Doctor Who. Barrie Ingham, playing Danilo Odell here, had been Paris in 'The Myth Makers' and Alydon in 'Doctor Who and the Daleks'.

The descent had a few issues, notably a spurious abort signal that required a hastily devised software patch from mission control to avoid premature abort of the landing itself, and the late lock on of the landing radar, but it made the landing originally planned for Apollo 13.

Human Spaceflight: 05 Feb 1971. "It's been a long way, but we're here." After successfully landing Apollo 14's lunar module Antares on the Fra Mauro highlands, Alan Shepard, America's first astronaut, becomes the fifth person to walk on the Moon. LM pilot Edgar Mitchell follows shortly after.

Awful episode. The single worst example of Worf being overridden when he expresses concern about sending Geordi over to the Pakled ship instead of, say, any old engineering team.

A gin and orange, a lemon squash and a scotch and water PLEASE!

Interesting, thanks. So what might cause red cells to break in the circulation? Malaria perhaps?

Is that by any chance a blood film from a patient who is heterozygous for sickle cell?

Yay - I'm back on Hamster. Not so yay - it's for the Vengeance on Varos novelisation. Torture is the word...

What happens when four innocent bookclubbers are trapped with the pages of a torture zone with no hope of escape...? And what will the people of Hamster think?

Happy Belated World Book Day!

@jameslark.bsky.social @jasonjtt.bsky.social @ianwinterton.bsky.social

podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/h...

The only bit that I always laugh at is when Guinan, who is looking out the window in Ten Forward, from where she can see the cube, goes to her office (which we never see again) to turn on a viewscreen to look at the ship she was just looking at!

This one absolutely captivated me. The moment that cube appeared on the screen, the Borg themselves, the slicing a section out of the Enterprise, seeing the damaged cube regenerating. I really hoped we would see them again.

I love that when they bring them back later and decide actually it's better if they want to assimilate the people not just the tech they just brazenly flag it in dialogue as a change in their priorities!

I believe the original intent was to tie the Borg to those insectoid things in 'Conspiracy' but all the writer's strike issues during the second year meant a lot of unrealised connections as it was a struggle just to get the season made (and it still ended up truncated).

MUCH later.....

Ah yes, the tired 'two blokes with repressed issues have to get into a physical fight to express their feelings and get closer' trope...

A troubled production, by all accounts, and ultimately so forgettable even with the surreal imagery in places.

Data squeezing some loaded dice to fix them bugs me, since there is no way he could have redistributed the uneven mass and left the dice unaltered externally!

A personal favourite, even if the ultimate solution is to literally turn the Enterprise off and on again!

I remember distinctly from first viewing the destruction of the Yamato. The saucer section flying towards the screen while melting away was a stunning visual.

I’m in a movie with Gwyneth Paltrow and Daniel Craig.