Nice night for a walk.
Today we are canceling the apocalypse!
What's the problem?
I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do.
This is my security chief, Alaric Atan, my chief medical officer, Claire Finn, and my ex-wife, Kelly Gracie.
To deny our own impulses is to deny the very thing that makes us human.
Where we going? Up to my shack! What the hell for?
Because when I left yesterday I turned the lights off!
I have pressed the button on the fancy screen.
Oh look, it records flashing red!
It is, yeah. No one's allowed to come in the door because it's flashing red.
Oh, it's like we're in a real studio!
This is very cool. TJ's gone and brought a new toy.
Yeah, we've got a new recording toy. We have a Mackie DLZ creator and it's probably massively over top for just our show.
But we have got plans on doing a little bit of creator stuff with streaming and game recording and some video work in the future and a few extra bits for the show.
So it is going to get heavily used.
I can't stop staring at it, I've got a big smile on my face.
It's got a lovely big screen, doesn't it?
We were looking at the Rodecaster 2 Pro and that screen was tiny. That's a 10 inch screen. It's like having an iPad attached to it.
It's like having a little laptop next to me basically. That's what it feels like.
100% and it's definitely an upgrade to what we were using previously.
It was designed to be a portable thing, it was designed to go out into the field so you could set up microphones for people and then move to your next location.
But that is what we don't do that.
Well at the time we did do it, we kept losing stuff didn't we?
Oh no, that was a different thing though.
That was with the wireless mics.
Yeah, that was those wireless mics.
That was when we went to London for Star Trek. We lost about over half of our content.
But it was all fun, wasn't it?
Oh, it was all fun.
Flash! Flash, I love you! But we only have 14 hours to save the Earth!
So, guess the intro from last week. So how did you do?
Err...
Well I mean I can tell before you.
Yeah.
You got them all eventually.
Exactly. Eventually.
Between the workshopping of you, Karen, Adam and Simon.
Yeah.
You got there eventually.
It was eventually. It was really good though and up until this point we still have had no 100% correct answers.
We had someone very close.
Very close.
One off.
Close.
I'm going to be anal about this and I'm going to say it needs to be 100% to get the £10 Amazon voucher.
Oh, it has to be 100%.
So if they didn't get it last week, same competition applies this week.
But with the intro they just heard, would you like me to play the previous one back to you?
Hang on a moment. That won't work, will it? Because you're about to make me do it.
No, no, no. So you're going to hear last weeks. Now I'm going to play you last weeks.
So you just can hear last weeks again and you can say what they are for people. It's over.
Oh, right. Okay.
They've got a new one now. No one got the first one.
You know I can't remember, don't you?
Let's just try this first time ever. We're going to press unpause on...
Ooh, okay.
I've done it on the wrong one. You've done that on the wrong channel. You need nine and ten.
Hear that? Yeah, I can hear that straight from Rob's phone.
I'm just doing a screen on my phone here.
Ooh, very sci-fi of you.
Yeah, so I can actually get the notes up.
Talking to the mic.
Oh, sorry. Yeah.
It's going well so far, isn't it?
So it's going to be very much like Cheap Show for a while where I shout at Rob to talk into the mic
because this new recorder, as you can hear, he's already moved away from it.
Oh, right here.
He's really anal about making sure you now talk into the microphone because the idea is it is really
making sure that no background noises, no echo, anything like that, no mic echoes are caught, all of that stuff.
So bear with us.
So I said last time there were seven, there was actually eight. I did put a post out saying that.
You did?
But even when I told the people that did write in to me that it was actually eight, they still didn't get it anyway.
And there's one in particular that they all missed.
So just from that little bit, even though I was speaking over it, can you remember any of them?
No, I really can't.
OK, so we had Ghostbusters.
Yep, obviously.
We had Aliens.
Yes.
I would have accepted Alien. I would have accepted that.
You would have just accepted the franchise. OK.
I'm going to do the hard one last because I go to Stargate when you hear the person saying Chevron 1 and Coder.
Yeah.
And Flash Gordon, which if anyone has now watched the episode along with us, they would have actually gone back and heard that.
Hopefully so.
Dive!
We had Farscape. That was a tough one.
That was a tough one.
I purposely picked a tough one because I wanted Karen to not get it because we'd been speaking about Farscape.
Right, OK.
So that was the one where he's like, it's in my head.
Oh, right. Yes, yes, yes. I know which one you mean. Yep.
So do you know much about Farscape?
Not much. I remember watching it when it first came out because obviously I was really kind of sci-fi orientated.
I was going through my Star Trek phase and it's a new show on Channel 4. I watched it. I just thought it was a little bit weird.
So there's a...
Maybe too weird.
In the later series, I think the main bad guy, I can't remember if he like dies, something happens to him but gets implanted into the mind of the protagonist.
And that's what he's saying. He's like, he's in my head.
Yes. I vaguely remember that.
Now, it's that weird one, isn't it? Because you've got the short little hairy alien dude.
You've got...
Yeah, yeah.
He was like a king or something. He was a regal.
Then you had, I think he was an ex-Neighbours actor, was the main man. I can't remember. I think he was definitely a soap opera person.
You know, it's interesting because he's in Stargate as well, SG-1.
Oh, is he?
Yeah, the later... and so is the woman. So the love interest. I can't remember her name.
Yeah, you've got the love interest.
Yeah, she's also in Stargate SG-1 in the later series.
Then you had the one that basically was a stolen character design from a George Lucas Star Wars film.
If I remember rightly, didn't you have to injure him to help him heal or something like that?
I don't really remember too much, yeah.
So yeah, there was something weird like that. Then you had the evil bondage dude.
Yeah, that's the bad guy.
Who then ends up in his head. Yeah, I remember that weird...
The pilot.
The pilot, yes, which always looked very cool.
And then you had the ship.
Yeah.
And obviously, I mean, same era. Babylon 5 we should probably look at at some point.
Miranda's obsessed with us watching Big Trouble in Little China.
Oh, what a good film.
Now, I've never seen it all the way through.
Sacrilege.
Yeah, that's exactly the word she would use too, because it's one of her favourites.
I mean, it's a great fantasy film.
So, Fast Company said Star Wars, that's the one that I didn't have on my list, but it's obvious that Star Wars is.
There's a lightsaber and Jar Jar Brinks.
And then Demolition Man is at the end.
Which it has to be.
Has to be.
For the first one of the series, it has to be in there.
Yeah, and the last one, Seaquest.
Seaquest.
That's the one that no one could get.
No, that's the one that nobody got.
Doesn't surprise me, because I don't think people believe that Seaquest existed.
Yeah, and it's got the dude from Jaws in it, which blows my mind that he's in it.
Ah, well there you go.
At least it's a show that I always take the piss out of Stiddy for, because when he used to explain it to me, maybe he didn't explain it.
But is there a dolphin in it?
There is a dolphin in it.
You get Torques or something?
I think there's a pair of dolphins.
Because is that what the joke is from Star Trek, from Lower Decks?
Yes, but there's also, I think that's partly DSV, but there's also an episode of Star Trek where Alexander, one of the most annoying characters, ends up befriending Troy's mum, who is probably my most hated character.
And basically she says, he goes, oh dad, do I really have to come with you? And he's like, yeah, I told you, get your ass back to our room. I mean, lucky you. You've got to live with me, mate.
And he's like, but we were going to go and see the dolphins. So even the Enterprise has dolphins.
Okay, well, that's it. No one got it.
No one got it. So this week, £10 is still up for offer. So it's rolling over, is it?
It will roll it over, it just won't go up in money. It's not like the lottery. I'm a cheap street.
We're only doing this once.
Oh yeah, it's only happening once. Until someone gets them all, then once it's done, it's done.
So obviously they would have heard, you won't have heard it. I wouldn't have heard it because I haven't made it yet.
But there is one, two, three, four, there is six, because I have it written on my, because I've got them planned. So one, two, three, four, five, six, six.
And is it hard this week?
This one is probably going to be easier.
Oh, okay. So we're giving the £10 away for this one.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure only one of them, somebody might not get, I think you're going to get all of these, unless I purposely pick really difficult.
Okay, cool. Anyway, sounds good.
Let's go on with it.
Look, water is leaking from her eyes.
So mate, what have you been doing?
Ah, same old, same old. You can stop now.
It's the running joke, isn't it?
It is the running joke. I haven't really watched much sci-fi, except for Flash Gordon, which is what we needed to watch.
I have been playing a lot more games. So I've been sat there. The Lenovo's come out most evenings.
I've completed, are we going to do a game section in a minute? And we talk about that then.
We'll just talk about it now.
So I've completed The World Is Not Enough on N64 and blown away by how good it was. I was really expecting that to be some sort of shoddy Goldeneye knockoff.
And it's not. It is entirely its own game. Yet they've taken a couple of little bits here and there, Eurocom.
But on the most part, it's absolutely worth playing. It's its own game and it deserves to be its own game because they've done such a good job on it.
It looks good. The levels are pretty much the similar length the Goldeneye levels were.
I thought they were the ones I've done so far. I thought they were a bit shorter.
They do get longer. They do get longer. But you're right. The first couple you play, especially the bank one, you realise, oh my God, that's like...
The bank one. Yeah. When you figure it out, when you actually realise what you've got to do.
Yeah. And it can be a little bit panickety about you go up to a door code, you choose the keycard to use, and if you're not pointing exactly at the keycard, hold a thing on the wall, and you're within a certain distance, it just doesn't do anything.
So you think, oh, it's obviously not that one. So yeah, I think I lost 10 minutes on the bank mission because it's like, well, I've gone and done the other door and it worked with it, but this door doesn't work with it.
And then I realised, oh, I need to take one step closer and boom, there it was. It worked absolutely fine.
So there's that. Finished Half-Life 2 the other day. Nice. So I'm two games down on that.
And the other one I've started is Duke Nukem for... not Duke Nukem forever. Duke Nukem... 64? Zero Hour on N64, which is the one I never played.
We had, back in the day, Duke Nukem time to kill on the PlayStation, which is similar story. It's Duke Nukem going through time to fix everything.
Zero Hour is the N64's equivalent. I don't know why they did two different games. Very odd because they're both third person, they're both very similar in design. I'm just looking at different studios, I'm guessing.
In fact, I think this is the same studio, interestingly, that did World is Not Enough because there's a lot of similarities in the controls and holding down one button and then doing another button to do extra bits.
So it is interesting to see that not necessarily the engine was carried over, but they went design style, let's keep it similar.
It's funny when you play a lot of these older FPS games, even when you go to the PS2 era, even the PS3 era ones, the buttons for every single one are totally different.
They're really difficult to manage because we're also used to the cod button skin, which is now basically the default.
X reload, Y jump, or whatever it is. The kind of B being crouch or whatever, or A jump, whatever it is.
Y change weapon, something like that, isn't it? There's a standard, but all those other ones...
It's taken years to get into a position. Don't forget, when it started with Doom, you had just the cursor keys, no mouse look.
You had control was fire, space was use. Then you'd find the occasional game would be, control would be crouch, or C would be crouch.
When crouching became a thing, space bar would become jump. So then you had to think, well, what's the use button? And they moved to return for being the use button.
Then obviously we got into the modern era of FPSs, and then the mouse started to get involved. You got mouse look, which then meant people moved to WASD,
which then gave you WASD. E is always use, R is always reload. Brilliant. Works really well. Space is jump, control is crouch, shift is run.
It's evolved from that. Then you're right. Then it comes into the console gaming. I think really the modern systems have pretty much gone for the same, haven't they?
So you've got your triggers are always fire. You've got your left trigger is always your secondary action. You've got your shoulder buttons tend to do grenades or something.
And then you're right. I think normally the top button, which is Y, isn't it? Change weapon. Why is normally, I think, is it change weapon?
Then you've got to the left of it, whatever that one is, X is going to be reload. Then no, X is down at the bottom, isn't it?
So here's what console is. If you're seeing an Xbox, X is on the left, but on PlayStation it's the bottom.
Yeah. So six o'clock tends to be kind of jump. Nine o'clock tends to be use. Very top is reload or change weapon.
And then three o'clock will either be reload or change weapon, depending on what's set to the other one. But there is that global standard now, isn't there?
One of the thumb sticks tends to be melee to attack. So you've got the standards. And interesting with this, with Junoocom Zero Hour, I actually had to go through all of their settings.
So they've got four or five different controller layouts all pre done for you. And I think I've chosen number three, which is the one that pretty much matches the world is not enough because I've just got used to playing that.
So actually it's quite nice to go back to a similar one. The only thing I'll say about it is rock hard. Some bits are pretty easy, but then you come across some of the lizard creatures, especially the snipers, two shots from them and you're dead.
And it suffers what you suffered with in Goldeneye. Although it's got a semi okay automatic aiming ability, the big issue with it is as soon as you go to the manual aim, it's clunky again, just like the N64 was, just like it was on Goldeneye.
You're holding down a trigger, one of the top shoulder buttons, you're using your joystick to move it around and it just moves left and right. And then you go to do the trigger and it's like, oh no, now I've moved off and I've missed them.
And with the snipers in Zero Hour, it's such a pain in the ass because I say two shots, you're dead by them. And almost always I've taken at least one hit from them when I've spotted them too late because I'm faffing about trying to get this precise shot on them.
Yeah. I don't know, did I ever play that? I'm not sure if I ever actually played it. But I do like the old Duke Nukem's.
Yeah, I do. I like all the Duke Nukem's on the most part. Duke Nukem Forever I thought was incredibly forced, a bit rubbish.
The nearest one?
That was the one that took years and years.
I never played it.
Yeah, it was rubbish. It was not anywhere near what Duke Nukem should have been. Interestingly, they did or someone leaked a really large build of Duke Nukem Forever back in from I think it was 97 or 98 when it first kind of appeared on people's radars as this is coming.
And then you've had Duke Nukem 3D look at this and it was using, I think it was the Quake 2 engine or a similar engine at the time and they're completing it, they're finishing it. You can actually download it and it's playable now.
Oh cool.
And you can play it on modern machines. And it's such a different game to what we've got now. I mean the joke was it was Duke Nukem Forever DNF did not finish. It should have stayed not finished in my opinion.
Yeah.
I mean people do say it's okay but it's just not a match to something like 3D. Even A Time to Kill on the PlayStation which was a third person, completely different style game. That beats forever in my book.
Do you reckon they could do another Duke Nukem nowadays?
Not easily and you'd probably end up upsetting too many people with his attitude and how he is and yeah I just don't think a game studio would bother risking it sadly. Even as a joke I'm not sure you'd get away with it.
Which is a shame because the games on the most part were good. It's really difficult to say actually because Duke Nukem 3D got Duke Nukem 3D World Tour released not too long ago, a few years ago obviously.
And that was released to PlayStation 4. So it was just Duke Nukem 3D, the original levels, the Atomic Edition and then some new levels from around the world where you go to different places around the, around Earth.
Bit crap but it's the same game and they've still released it but I don't know if it's because it was just the original that they got away with it. If they said we're building a brand new one from scratch and included everything that might be inappropriate, don't know. Honestly don't know.
I think if they took the inappropriate stuff away it wouldn't be a...
It would kill it.
They're still making those terrible cartoony porn ones.
Well, saying that, there is a game...
Leisure Suit Larry.
Oh, Leisure Suit Larry.
They're still making them.
Really?
Yeah.
Oh my god.
I think there's a mobile one.
The problem is, he's just a lech in that.
There might be a Switch one. Might be.
I'll have to look into that then.
On the Switch, yeah, you still...
Okay, I'll have to look into... saying that, the closest you can get to Duke Nukem 3D, a modern game is, and I'm just pointing it out, you won't see it because there's a box in the way, a game called Ion Fury and that was made by the same studio that made Duke Nukem 3D.
It's even in the original build engine. They've just modernised it so it works on modern computers. So it looks exactly like Duke Nukem 3D. It's got its own character. It's brilliant.
It's just like playing Duke Nukem 3D, just without his womanising, misogynistic attitude. It's still got a lot of humour to it. It's still very similar to that era of games. It's well worth playing. When we swap Steam, you'll be able to play it so you can have a go.
As he says, I'm here to kick ass and chew bubblegum, but I'm all out of gum. I'm going to rip off your head and shit down your throat. Hell to the king, baby. Tell me more about this man Houdini. What have you been up to?
I have also been playing a lot of games, but I've also watched some sci-fi. So we watched Alien Romulus. I'll try to put that little bonus out, that little ten minute snippet.
Yeah, it's in my queue to listen to tomorrow on my train to Kent. I'm whispering slightly, so the audio quality's not great. I do whisper a bit because I was half ten at night and I'm in the back of the garden. There's a lot of people around with dogs and people coming in. I was a little bit self-conscious about it. I don't know why. I walked for 45 minutes on my own doing it.
Without recording yourself to start with.
Yeah, fuck. Well, there's some that I cut from this bonus of me going, fuck it, is this on? What am I doing? And it was already on. So I just, a little talk. I basically just come my pants over it. I fucking loved it.
I really enjoyed it. I saw it at the cinema. I understand people's, or some people's frustrations with it. I don't feel that the people that criticise it saying it's just trying to rewrite Alien. No, it's not. I think it's actually a really good continuation of it.
I don't think it's trying to rewrite anything. Now, Telf did make the point that the end is very similar to, is it Prometheus? Yeah, but Prometheus was shit. Yeah. I could see the similarity, the offspring being the character. I saw that a mile off as she knew she was putting the black spunk in her. But I think that was the point of it.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that didn't detract from my experience. I just, the two things about it. We spoke last time about practical effects. The practical effects in this sell this film so wonderfully. They are perfect. Yes. The offspring character is practical. Everything is practical.
The practical effects is played by a Russian basketball player. And you look at him, he's like, you didn't need much doing to use a look like that.
It's just incredible when you actually see the xenomorphs in the background, where the scene before she shoots them all in the zero gym. They're quite clearly people in suits. They look like, but that's not a bad thing because it makes them feel real. Absolutely. They actually look like they're creatures with the right proportions of what you think a creature might look like.
I mean, it's as if that had been Alien four, whatever it was called, whether you know the swimming one. Yeah. Alien resurrection. They would have been all CGI and they would have looked fucking dreadful. And they did. They did look dreadful. I mean, I've got a little bit, a little bit love for resurrection, even though it's a terrible film. It's just kind of that.
It came out when I was old enough to actually see it. So I've kind of have that little bit of love for it because of that. I mean, one thing I would say about Alien Romulus, which I was so happy about, and they maybe did it a little bit too much, but they didn't do a discovery on us.
No, it's still felt. And we've said this about alien isolation. They didn't modernize the technology. Yes. That was so good. I got, there's a lot of grins while I was watching going, they've got the CRT monitors everywhere. They've got amber screens. They've got CRT monitors.
It was just, it's, I think there's a bit where it says 2036 and it was an implication that this is set in what their world of 2030. I don't think it is, but there was something that came up and ran was kind of like, is this meant to be in 2036? Back when they made Aliens idea of what 2036 would be.
The thing is you could see spaceships being just like this. Yes. This industrial, dirty, no panels anywhere, no fluorescent lights, you know, coming on.
That's another point, isn't it? And when you consider, if you were to build a giant spaceship that had to move people around, pardon me, that was doing some sort of industry, you're not going to make it beautiful and shiny. It's going to look like a ship that floats on the ocean currently.
And you don't get top of the range, super shiny, high definition craft. You get functional things. You get things that you know I can repair that.
Yeah. And the nice areas are all the living quarters. Did you notice the bridge, the mother room, the living quarters where they're all eating and the sick bay.
Yes.
And they all look completely different than any other part of the ship, which all the rest of it looked like. There's not a panel anyway. There's cables, there's everything.
As much as the JJ Abrams Star Trek films aren't necessarily the best Star Trek films, I've enjoyed them. They're their own thing. And at least they said, this isn't canon.
Okay, we've rebuilt a couple of the films and done it in our own way. Spock is now Kirk and Kirk is Spock in the second film when they're fighting Khan. But at least they had a go at doing something a bit different.
But the thing is, yes, the bridge of the ship and everything looks really shiny and new and you've got holograms and shit on there. But when you get to the engine room, it's a fuck off nuclear accelerator.
And then they actually went and said, you know what, what would our first sort of starships that we're going to have, what would it look like? Would it look like this really flash, cool looking warp core? Or would it just look like a nuclear accelerator?
And that's what they did. It's just pipes and it's gantries and it looks industrial. Exactly what you're saying. It looks to be worked in, not to look pretty.
Well, I think they got that right in Enterprise, didn't they?
Yeah, Enterprise again, they did it really well. It's this first ship. It's designed to look like it's to do a job.
Lump of engine with loads of walkways around.
Yeah. We've got no idea really what we're doing. We just need this to be functional and to do what it's meant to do. We'll make it look nice later.
Yeah. What I would also say, so then back to Romulus, the CGI aspects of it, amazing, some amazing cinematography with some of the external scenes. In particular, one of my favourite scenes is right at the end where the offspring is getting ejected out and she is hanging and the whole cargo base bit is dropping off the ship.
And she's going through the hull and just it's black. You for about five seconds, maybe less, you can't really see what's going on. It's black. Things are going past. You hear her screaming. You hear the monster going off and then suddenly, boom, there's light and you just see the asteroid ring going around the planet.
And this beautiful, imagine, I'd love to see this in an IMAX screen. This beautiful wide shot. IMAX would have been amazing. Yes. And just seeing that get destroyed and it was just a beautiful scene. I just thought like, yeah, okay, I'm watching a space alien get destroyed by an asteroid. But I was just like, this is the best, one of the best scenes in this film. This moment.
100%. I really, really liked that scene. The alien at the end, I think if I were to push a criticism, we see the baby born and then minutes later, it's this seven or eight foot tall alien.
Yes. And I know it's something we have to suspend our disbelief in. And even in the first film, they capture the chest hugger, the chest hugger, sorry, explodes, doesn't it? And then by the end of the film, it's a fully grown alien.
Very quickly. Well, because we've started watching alien the other day. And it is a very quick growing thing. It happens very quick. But it does feel maybe too quick to be a ending. Now, if that had happened when they got on the ship and that birth had happened before all of the shit goes down, when they do the zero G jumping through the aliens, the lift shaft and all of that.
If it had happened all before of that and you'd seen it, then we'd got 15 minutes of the zero G stuff and the rescuing the bits and so on. And then came back and it had grown. You know what? I would have accepted it a bit more. But to have it born, her literally jumped down into what looks like a grain silo or whatever it was. And now it's full size. That might be my only criticism I have about it.
Yeah, like I thought it was going to put a mummy, mummy scene on her with it like licking her face and being, I mean, kind of like resurrection. But no, it fucking eats her. I was like touch. Yeah, I like that. But I think my only, if I'm going to have to pick a criticism, I don't really want to, but if I did, the very beginning, the very first time you've seen Ian Holmes.
Yep. The just that first bit that is quite clearly computerised didn't work for me. But I think they did make a practical model of him because it feels like they did because every other scene after then, I was fine with it and it didn't look wrong.
Now, interestingly, you're seeing a different version to the one I've seen. Right. So they announced it recently. The cinema, a lot of people complain with how bad he looked. I didn't think he looked that bad. It's, I accepted it's a CGI representation. You've just got to accept that. The man's not there. So it's got to be what it is.
Apparently the home release of the film has had him completely reworked and made to look better is their work.
Oh, I thought it was practical. It's just the very first time you see him where he gets dragged up and placed. I was looking at going, I hope this is not going to be like that all the time that he's on the screen because I was really like uncanny valley. That's quite clearly computerised. I didn't like it. But that's like a five minute scene. Every time you see him after, he quite clearly looks like a degraded synth.
Clearly. Yeah. More than he does Ian Hines, but you know, it's him. And then when you see his face on the computer monitors, I think because they're doing all the staticky effects and stuff that really helps. It really did. And it made him look like it was him.
Yeah. A hundred percent. I mean, I will rewatch it now it's on Disney plus because I want to see how it looks compared to what I remember. I honestly didn't mind it. So I think a lot of people have moaned about something that really they should have just got over.
For me, the standout was obviously the character that was being played as her brother stroke Android. What an absolute amazing character portrayal from beginning to end and just how quickly he snaps and completely. It feels like a hundred percent a different character.
Yeah. Yeah. So you know what? Definitely that was the standout for me. And I think the thing I will say finally, because obviously we would need to talk about flash Gordon.
Ha. Better than covenant, better than Prometheus a million times better than both of those. Yeah. I've, I've got it. I don't know if it's my second or third favourite alien is still my favourite and I can't pick between aliens and Romulus.
I think I need to watch aliens again. A hundred percent. To remind myself and then I'll be able to definitively say, but that's how much I liked it. I thought this was pretty, you know what? It's my favourite film of the year.
I agree with you of 2024. I would say 2025. The best film I've seen this year. Nice. And I've seen flash Gordon.
Did you say flesh Gordon? Because that's a completely different film. I've not watched that. Just quickly. I think I've been playing a lot on the deck and I've been playing a lot of.
Dragon PS2. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm really enjoying that game. I'm playing this thing every single night at the moment. Anyway, shall we talk about flash Gordon?
Flash.
Oh, save you of the universe.
Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. What a film.
I forgot how funny it was. Slapstick in some places. Interestingly, again, a lot of my research has been IMDB because it's the quickest place to get a lot of this stuff. But apparently the director regretted that choice. He was told to make it comedic. He didn't want to. He wanted to make it semi-serious.
Oh really? I don't think it would have worked if it was serious. Well, I mean, up until a certain point of it, you kind of, you know, I know it's got a bit of comedic stuff to it, but when he's like trying to persuade her to dial in Dale with the telepathy phone call thing.
It was so cringe. Okay. So I'm talking to her. God, she's turning me on so much. What did I just hear that? I'm thinking of the wrong bit. I'm thinking of it. We've got the ring where no, no, no. This is when they're on the ship and she's got the thing that she pulls out. I'm going to tell you call someone. And then he's literally, oh, yeah.
And then all of a sudden says, God, she's turning me on. Oh, that wasn't for you. I was thinking that that's not for you. And then, and then just like, I've got to go. It's just like, what the hell is going on here? There was so many bits like that.
There was it. We're just going to go and just do random bits of this thing. We're just going to talk about it as two mates talking about a film. I don't want to go step by step. So the bit that really got Miranda and I, cause she watched it with me. So this was, I'm so glad she did because to hear her going, Oh, and then laughing as well.
It was great. But it all really, there's a few bits. I was going, Hmm. He seems a bit, I've said this before, a bit weird. All the men were like this bit. I'm surprised if this was on Disney, it would have the thing come up. This is from men in a different time.
It did. It does. It does. So interestingly, and I was really lucky. It's on ITVX at the moment. So I've got it. So I've got to watch it on ITVX for free and it's all its glory. But yeah, if you read the cinema re-release was released as 12A. Yeah, it's 12 on YouTube.
And it was released with a, this shows blah, blah, blah of the era and the time. But then the, must have been the 40th anniversary in 2020 had a fully remastered digital Blu-ray and there is no warning on it. And it's PG again.
Oh, the one I brought on YouTube is 12. It's rated 12. And it really started properly for us both Miranda and I, when Ming the Merciless was using his ring on her.
Oh no, Ming's ring.
Yeah, Ming's ring. I said that. That's exactly what I was going. I was going Ming's ring. Hey, we ends up in the ring, doesn't the old Ming ring. And she's like basically just stood in the middle of all this room while these people is touching herself up.
And we have both like going, Ooh.
Which director did this film? Is it someone that we currently knows on Me Too?
Yeah. Has he been to the island? Who knows?
Oh no, Nutswatch.
What I would say, what a wonderfully colourful, fun.
It's a beautifully designed thing.
Yeah.
The uniforms, the outfits of everyone, Timothy Dalton looking like Robin Hood.
Yeah, he was proper, proper Robin Hood. So we got, and what's the actors? Max Fonsido as Ming. I didn't realise it was him.
Yeah.
It's got some huge names in it.
Yeah. And obviously, as you just said, Timothy Dalton, Brian Blessed, who I knew was in it. Dive!
Gordon's alive!
Just incredible.
Yeah. Again, IMDB, went back and watched it. The man that hands over the suitcases to the plane, I think it is, Robbie Coltrane.
Yeah.
It's like, what the hell? Richard O'Brien's in it. There's so many good names in that film. So many. And as you spot them, it gets funnier and funnier, realising that they're mincing about and just doing this really weird space opera that isn't really that good, but it has no reason not to be as enjoyable as it is.
Yeah. I had a smile all the way through, even during the bits, I was like, oh, you can't say that. Oh, that's a bit... Flash was really like, I was watching you in the lobby. I wish I'd gone to it. And then there's a bit where he's talking to her, he's like, we'll have kids together or something. It's like, fucking slow down, Flash.
Flash by name, Flash by nature.
And I did also make the point, it's like, that's like me walking around with a t-shirt that says Rob.
Oh, I like it.
What really makes me laugh, and moving away from Flash Gordon, just for a moment, I know we do tangents. Have you seen Ted and Ted too?
I've definitely seen Ted one. I'm not sure I've seen Ted two.
So Flash is in it. He's in both of those films. And he's a coked up, like, he's just this coked up muscle head who lives on the fame of being Flash Gordon still. And I just love it because you think about it, watch the film, and you just think Flash's character, that's exactly what he would do.
Yeah. Oh, how good is the fight scene where he's doing American football?
Oh my God.
And then the doctor knocks him out.
Oh, what about the fight scene on the rotating disc that tips?
Oh yeah, the disc of Brian Blessed's got the controller to make it tip.
Give me the remote!
La la la la la la. Spiky time!
So Timothy Dalton's character, Prince, I've got it written down here, Prince Baron, essentially, or Baron, essentially Robin Hood, is having a fight with Flash Gordon on this disc in space.
Whatever it is.
And they're on the Hawkmen's moon or planet, whatever they've got.
I don't know how much whip training they do in the NFL, but he was pretty good with a whip because they were the two weapons that they were both given.
I can believe that Timothy Dalton's character is good with a whip. He's an alien, whatever. Maybe they use whips on his planet.
But I can tell you that Flash Gordon is unlikely to be good with a whip.
But he was good fighting, a haven of rock. Then suddenly, Brian Blessed's character, who is Prince, I've got it written down here, Prince of Alton.
Yeah.
But essentially a Hawkman, which was great. The only chubby Hawkman, all the rest of them were quite... there was a dude with the most broken nose I've ever seen in my life.
I'm so glad you said that because that's exactly what I was going to bring up. He's like his right hand man and you look at it, it's like your nose is the letter S.
Yeah, I've never seen a broken nose so broken.
Do you think Brian Blessed broke it?
It was like, bless him. It was like someone would have made a clay character like Morse and dropped him.
Yeah, it's GCSE art. I've made this beautiful sculpture of a head and someone's knocked it on its face. You've lifted it up and everything but the nose has survived.
Yeah, and you've just gone, oh fuck it.
Yeah, he's a boxer.
Yeah, the most broken nose I've ever seen. And they all cared about that dude. Flash went into a massive war to save this old guy.
And oh my god, right, so you talk about the American football thing. Then minutes later he's killed, brought back to life and they're in the ship and he's like saying to her, as she's taking him off to Timothy Dalton's character, he's like, well maybe we should team up with these people and we'll take over Ming's imperial army.
I just love the fact she goes, what's teamwork? Come on. You've mastered interplanetary travel for space and things like that and you're telling me you don't know what teamwork is.
Was this Ming's daughter?
Yeah.
She was gross.
Yeah, very much so.
She was like, she's me too, all over. She was playing all the men and like really using sex to sell her. On all of them. She had all of those dudes, blue balls.
100%.
Big time.
Now, brilliant bit as well. And I'm so glad that I heard it and then I am de-converting because someone else has written it on there as well.
So Ming's, at the very beginning of the film, you've got Ming's team talking to him and they're going, in sector SK, a little planet called Earth.
And basically they go on as, I've never heard of this word, Earth. And then it pans across the control board showing all the things that he can cause.
Earthquake.
Earthquakes on there. It's like, okay, guys, you've made a mistake.
What is it? Is it called Hot Hail?
Hot Hail.
That was the last one he chose. Like, that's the one that's going to get people. He's got earthquakes, tornadoes, everything. And it's like, I'm saving the best till last. Hot Hail.
Hot Hail.
I love how it goes to like models as well.
The models were great.
They were so good. It was Zarkov's lair, if you want to call it, or laboratory. It just looked so good.
That guy was hilarious. Like, everything about him was brilliant. How, like, he pulls a gun out on his scientist mate. You know what his real name is?
No.
Topol.
No!
Yep, he is, in the credits, says Topol. T-O-P-O-L. That's it, that's his name.
Oh, there you go.
Yeah. So at first when I come, I was like, oh, I'm going to like this, and realize it's him.
Yeah, so he gets a gun out. And then he convinces, and then they crash a plane after Flash. Right, so, God, we're going all over the place. I've just got so much information about this film to get out.
So he's on, so it starts off with Flash and her getting on a private jet home from a holiday.
Yeah, so they seem to be on some sort of private aircraft that's been chartered, not just for Flash, but for anyone at that location.
Yeah, and they go through turbulence, or they think they called it, what did they kind of call it? They called it like invisible air turbulence, or calm air turbulence.
Something like that, yeah.
Had a name. And cheeky fucking Flash goes up to the cockpit and tells him to go higher. Like he's a fucking pilot.
Because at this point, you don't know that he's been learning how to fly. I was just like, what the fuck does he know?
You kind of get this idea that he's meant to be like, not just this sports person, he's meant to be quite intelligent as well. But they kind of just forget about that by the end.
Oh, and as well, I was like, is that how people ask for signatures? It's like, would you like to do this for me? I think it's like, would you like to sign this for my son? Biff or Buzz?
Oh, that was it, yes.
Was that how you ask? I thought you'd say, can you do this for me, please? Not, would you like to do this? And then I just shoved it in his hands. Off you go then, fucking sign this for my son. Anyway, that was just a minor thing.
So then they crash the plane into it, and then it just all goes to shit from there.
And now the scientist basically, he's kidnapped them.
Oh, 100% he has.
The scientist man is a bad guy. Right.
But he isn't because, don't, don't, she's like, oh, I recognise who he is. He's a lunatic. He's a mental man. He said the world's gonna end. If she'd looked out the fucking window and seen that the fact the sky has turned red and the moon's getting rather close to Earth now, he was right.
Yeah, but all of our side, he's kidnapped them at gunpoint. Right. Then Flash is having a fistfight with him and smacks his head on the launch pad, which was hilarious because he even made a comedy kind of, dong.
And also, Zarkov, you're a highly intelligent scientist.
I think it's about a red pedal.
But you couldn't create a spaceship with the red pedal next to the steering wheel.
Why does it have to exist?
Why, even if it has to exist, why not put one on each seat? So whoever sat on the ship, everyone puts their foot down. Oh, everyone's doing it.
So that's the reason he's a second person because he has to press launch and then sit down. And then the person on the other side of the ship has to put their foot on the pedal.
It's ridiculous. It's absolutely ridiculous. No, just make it a switch because it's obviously just pushing something down. Just make it a switch. Now you've got a single, oh, why do you even need it?
Have it permanently depressed.
The thing is, he's put a gun on them. He's had a fistfight with Flash. So an old scientist has had a fistfight with a quarterback from the NFL and somehow had his head kicked in.
And then as soon as they get captured by the aliens, she's then linking arms with the scientists like they're best mates.
And she's really like, oh, I need you. And everyone's like, come on, love, two minutes ago.
Stockholm syndrome sits in fucking quick with you, doesn't it love?
Yeah, it does. Yeah, I felt that way with her a lot. She was all over the place. So they really made her an emotional flower, didn't they?
Now, what's funny about all of this and the better reading I did through IMDB, Wikipedia and so on, this was meant to be a trilogy.
It was so badly received that they didn't even take advantage of the after credit scene.
Well, well, with the end question, the end question mark is Ming picks up his ring after being killed.
So it's like Ming survived. Well, someone with a black glove survived. I got the impression that Ming.
Why he's in the ring. He puts his soul into the ring to save himself from dying. Good shout. Yes.
Someone else picks them up and transmogrifies them into Ming. Either way, it did so badly, they didn't get any more films.
So all these apps have got signed up for three films and only got one.
I think that would have destroyed Dalton's career. Imagine if he had three of those. When was he Bond? It was after this.
It was after this. Yeah. How? Well, he probably maybe he got Bond on the basis of how good he is. Oh, possibly.
I mean, to be fair, I think anyone's particularly... No one was bad in it. Really bad. It's just they work in what they've got.
Gold Mask bloke, by the way. Loved that costume. Gold Mask bloke. The baddie. Yeah, the baddie.
He had an amazing voice. I couldn't place who he was. I've got his name written down, but I couldn't place what he had been in.
But we were listening to it. It's almost like he was the main Shakespearean actor of the film.
And he had face cover the whole time. And then when he dies, his eyes bulging out. It's so funny.
Again, very comedic. So, so much to unpack. Oh my God, where do I go next?
Okay, the Robin Hood planet. Yeah. And how like Ming's daughter's like, oh, I love an initiation ceremony as she pervs over a very apparent teenage boy.
It's again, it was a bit uncomfortable. Yeah. I love the fact that I reckon they tried at least 10 takes of that and no one could get the drumming in order with the sticks.
So they just went with, okay, everyone just bang your stick whenever the fuck you want. Yeah.
Thank you. I know it's meant to be this ritual where everyone's going dun dun dun. Oh no, no, over there has got it out.
And suddenly it goes from dun dun. Everyone's doing it wherever they want. It's like, oh, I give up.
What did you think of the, there's a scene where, so when they first captured the three of them, they're deciding basically they're going to sexually enslave the woman.
Is essentially what's going to happen to her. They're going to put flash to death by gas. And the scientist, they wipe his memory and implant his memory.
Level six wipe couldn't even get rid of my brain. I can even remember songs by the Beatles.
What did you think about the scene where they actually do remove his memories? It's creepy as fuck, but it's hysterically funny as well.
It's like, I'm having a barbecue, having a great time swimming. Yay. She's dead.
What? No, was that his missus? Yeah. It's like, cause he, it looks like they're doing a bar mitzvah. They're all like a Jewish attire.
Yeah. And then, yeah. And then it looks like, yeah, they're having fun. They're lifting her up in the air, chucking her in the pool. And then it jump cuts to him.
Not in those clothes. She's laid out by a pool. She's dead. With a blanket over her. And then he regresses further and his mom and his dad all die in. And then he's born.
Yeah. And then he's in the womb. This is Charlie and the Chocolate Factory fucking tunnel of death. This is what I was just about to say. This is the scene, one of the scenes in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I really hate. Is that one in the tunnel?
This is the tunnel scene of Flash Gordon. Yes, it is. You're right. 100%. It is. I hadn't even thought about it like that. You're right.
Wow. What an insu... I didn't know whether to laugh or cry while I was watching that scene. It was both. It was both. It whiplash from that one scene, the whole film. That scene doesn't fit because I didn't know what I'm supposed to feel about it.
No. Yeah. And you've got to admit as well, you look at the laser and it's like, you watched Doctor No, didn't you? And you wanted a laser.
Yeah. So you've done your best to copy it on the cheap. Well, let me tell you what film they did watch. They watched Star Wars. Oh dear God, because yeah, Leia being sold off to Jabba the Hutt and being a sex slave straight away.
The planet that he ends up landing and going squid on at one point is quite obviously Yoda's planet. And it wouldn't surprise me if that's the same set they use because a lot of it looks very, very similar to Dagobah.
Because the original, so A New Hope 77, this came out in 1980. Yeah. So yeah, three years later. Just the way that some of the baddies on the ships are talking, very posh military arms behind their backs like Death Star, kind of, you know, the red weird creatures were clearly their version of storm troopers.
They'd become as fuck. Couldn't shoot straight or anything like that. So much. I was just like, yeah, Star Wars. They weren't even hiding it that that was Star Wars. No, no, they've stolen a lot from Star Wars in this film.
But it's clearly its own thing. I couldn't get over just how wonderfully colourful it was. I was so happy with all of the, all of the questions.
Well, I'll tell you one of the effects that I really liked, and I think it's again, Mythbusters may have done it, or Adam Savage did at least. There's videos on it online. You can look it up on YouTube how they did the skies. And it's basically these giant water tanks, the camera directly below it.
Then they used super, no, it was Star Trek, I think one of the Star Trek films, possibly Wrath of Khan or Motion Picture. And they put the camera under this water tank. They put really powerful lights and they just dump ink into it. So that first scene where you see the clouds and stuff, that red black clouds appearing, that's just ink being shot into a tank of water with the camera recording it.
And it's really effective. But talking of filming techniques, and I noticed this several times, obviously the 80s is still fairly early for chroma key. It's still not something that's been done all the time.
Superman popularized it. I mean, something else probably popularized it, but Superman for me is what popularized it. And there's so many times when you realize, so all the Hawk men flying with the lovely sunset behind them, it's really actually through them as well.
And there's a bit where Flash is stood on the Hawks, whatever that thing was, and it's being destroyed. Well, no, when he stood in the, where they've just had their big fights in, he's being blown up. He stood there and he's being chroma keyed out as well, because you can see the background through him.
Talking about the bike, why have the Hawk people got rocket bikes when they can fucking fly? I didn't get some of that. Like, I get that they can all fly, but surely they have spaceships too. I'm guessing it's a war machine maybe. Just to keep them safe.
But I think they've got guns. They all had just sticks. Yeah, I mean, were they shooting? I can't, I think they did have guns. When they fly in in their squadrons and they decide to help. I mean, what a fucking turnaround that is.
It's like, no, I'm not helping you. No, I'm not carrying you. We've got too much of our own stuff to carry anyway. Bye. Gordon's alive. Yeah, I'm on a rocket ship on a rocket bike. I'm completely flying blind. You're flying blind? I said you're a homing beacon. I should thank you really. 30 seconds ago, you could have saved his life and made it a lot easier.
They were moving the plot on. Yeah, there's a few points where they moved the plot on. Yeah, definitely. Overall, I thought the film was great. I had a lot of fun. I think even for the time, I think it went a bit too far with some of the sex stuff.
They almost came out and said that he was going to rape her. He might as well have said the words because it was so heavily implied. Almost the point of saying I'm going to have sex with you. The wedding scene.
I like how they had the same wedding march on Ming's planet as it do on Earth. But then the priest basically going, to have and to hold has become to have and do as you please with, but not eject into space.
Gets evil stare, of course, until she's lost her usefulness. I wrote the same thing, not to blast her into space. That's what he said. You know what I liked in that scene? The plane's flying past with the words and it said all creatures will make Mary under pain of death.
There was just little bits like that. It was almost like Futurama. It's like I was watching Futurama sometimes. You can see where a lot of modern sci-fi comedy got a lot of their sci-fi comedy ideas from. Futurama's definitely in it. The Orville, anything like that. Galaxy Quest. You can see that they've stolen a lot from this in the comedic styles. Whether or not they thought it was meant to be serious or not, you can see where they got some ideas from.
I like how his daughter wanted to get him killed by poisoning his power potion that he always has before making love. How lecherous was he with his own daughter? How gross was he with his own daughter at the beginning? She was like twiddling his mustache. I was like, oh, this is so disgusting. And her little poor little, I call them midgets. I don't know what the right word of saying is. Little pet she had. Did you notice that? Yeah. Yeah. I was like, not good.
Now, I'm just looking at the IMDB trivia here. Sorry, everyone. Dwarf's probably the correct word. Flash jumping towards the camera screaming, yeah, was improvised by Sam J. Jones. Nobody could figure out how to end the movie. Yeah, it was shit. I didn't like that bit at all. I was like, oh, come on. It felt out of character too.
Massively so. Massive. But then, you know, if you imagine celebrating an end of an American football game or you've just scored a touchdown sports, you just, you just, you just, you just place the best touch kick field, field touchdown.
So, oh, bugger. I've gone, okay. The thing we're missing massively, and we are miss massively missing this though. How fucking good is the soundtrack? Oh, this is the best bit. Now, I know it's Queen. And again, there's a trivia thing that saying Freddie Mercury wanted to be in the film. That would have been brilliant. I would have thought that would have been right.
So, it replaced the character and put Freddie Mercury there. He would have just been like, mings entertainer. He would have just been sat on the deck whenever mings there with the piano, just playing music or something. He would have been the weird little creature that Jabba the Hutt has.
What's that guy? Still, he's going to tell me off because he knows what's that character called. Oh, I don't fucking know. Fucking don't ask me shit like that. It's Star Wars. It's not Star Trek. You can imagine that he just makes up a song every time Ming comes in.
Ming has come into the room with a woman. Maybe like bad choice. Bad choice again by Ming. Oh dear, I'm dead. Zap, you've got Ming ringed. That's where you've got to be off on that.
Have you got Ming ring? Unfortunately, our cream won't help, but it feels nice. The soundtrack and I've got to say the end credits soundtrack. Wow. God, that hits hard.
It was just brilliant, wasn't it? Speaking of the soundtrack, the intro was like Marvel intro before Marvel did it. With the comic, actual comic. Overall, let's come to the end of it. We've been going for nearly half an hour.
Oh my God. Yeah, we need to hit it. I enjoyed it. I would complain a little bit about some of the chauvinistic nature of it, but I think that was just the way it was back then.
It was the way it was. It was accepted. It is. I wouldn't have thought anything different about it at the time. Just now, just the way things are. Obviously you think it now, but I still enjoyed it. Loved it.
And it's still by 2025. Fuck you Alien Romulus.
I lied. It's not Alien Romulus. It's this. No. More people should watch this as they haven't watched it. You've got to watch it. It was really fun, silly. Whether they want it to be funny or not, I found it quite funny.
Yep. 100%. Really, really enjoyed it. Don't care about the somewhat the issues that it might have. It was just fun, stupid and enjoyable. I am not going to be distracted from that. And I tell you what, I think I enjoyed it more than I did when I would have watched it as a kid because I understand a lot of the jokes now.
Yeah.
Freeze, you bloody bastards.
Okay. So next time on the Untitled Sci-Fi show, an hour in, I've just said the name of the podcast.
Well done.
Professional. We are going to be watching, contrary to what I may or may not have said on the Alien Romulus bonus, we're going to be watching Galaxy Quest.
Galaxy Quest, the closest to Star Trek you can get without it being Star Trek or the Orville.
Yeah. Keeping our safe zone. Still hugging near Star Trek, but not quite.
Are we allowed to watch Tim Allen?
Oh fuck, I don't care. We discussed this already with ignoring that stuff.
Yeah. Ignoring politics, unless it's brutally horrible Elon Musk style stuff.
Well, people are still watching Toy Story.
Exactly. If you can't watch a Woody, what can you watch?
And he was Buzz, not Woody. Shit.
Oh, was he the pilot's son?
What?
The pilot's son in Flash was called Buzz.
Oh God.
We just literally just said that. Right. Where can they find us? They can find us on the internet. Thanks for coming everyone. Love you. Bye bye.
No, it can find us on X slash Twitter.
Yes.
And you can find us on Blue Sky. So X slash Twitter is at underscore untitled sci-fi.
And you are now at underscore Variety Show pod. I noticed you changed it.
Almost all of the Variety Show stuff now is underscore Variety Show pod.
Yep. On Blue Sky, it's whatever Blue Sky's thing is, but just look for untitled sci-fi show and you are Variety Show.
VarietyShow.channel84.co.uk. You can email in your guests at what's the intro is at rob at channel84.co.uk.
If you'd like to speak to Tom, that's Tom at channel84.co.uk.
Or you can email both of us at podcastsplural at channel84.co.uk website, www.channel84.co.uk.
And you can find us. You can find the other studio channel84 shows, Lightly Used and He Takes Socks Off.
And that's it.
He's done it, ladies and gents. He has managed it on his own.
Unlike the last episode when he completely forgot we had to do this section.
Well, we nearly ended it there.
He's actually done it brilliantly this time. Well done.
Oh, what's the button? What's the button?
That's the wrong one.
This one.
And I'm now deaf.
It's so loud.
Just press the top one because you can.
Hang on. Hang on. I've got one. I've got one. We've got to do it.
Nondeswatch.
Oh, no. Stop it. Stop it.
No, that's music.
Oh, shit. Just end it.
See you later, guys. Love you.
Love you.
Thank you for listening to the Untitled Sci-Fi Show.
This station is now shutting down and will be back in two weeks.
May the Force live long and prosper inside of you.
This was a Studio Channel 84 network show.
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With all his men, he couldn't even kill Flash.
Gordon's alive?