Asylum of the Daleks

I can't believe I watched this legally on the ABC a few hours after it premiered in the UK! Good going, ABC, I hope this is a sign of things to come.

Anyway: I wasn't a huge fan of season 6, and was worried we were going to get more failed attempts at Epic, but this didn't try too hard and set up some mildly interesting context for the upcoming season, so I am moderately optimistic.

As an individual episode I thought it was ok. The premise is as problematic as you'd expect from the title, and while not done as badly as it could be is in no way subverted, and there were plot holes and heavy handed "surprises", but it was entertaining enough.
( spoilery thoughts )

Also known as Terra Australis Incognita

I was surfing my network this morning and came across The Dead Isle, a steampunk book by popular fic writer Sam Starbuck/copperbadge. I found myself rather bemused by the premise: "the heavily-guarded coast of Australia, the “Dead Isle” which has no Creation, and which sealed itself off from the outside world more than twenty years before. Rumors abound that Australia is building a war fleet, intent on conquest".

Australia didn't even exist as a single country back in 1860, and even now our international ambitions tend to stop at "push around the local smaller countries" and "hope the US notices how much we like them". So I'm wondering if his Australia bears any resemblance to the real one, beyond being full of robber barons (obviously).

And then I watched Total Recall. Nobody told me it was set in Australia! An Australia with no Australian accents whatsoever, and not even a hint of Australian architecture/landmarks etc under all the post apocalyptic urbanisation, but I like to think they were in there(*). Somewhere.

Overall it's actually a pretty fun movie. Not deep, but fast paced and entertaining, and much less cheesy/dated than the original. There was even some mildly interesting scifi world building (with a few massive holes in it, heh) and what could almost be read as an anti-colonialist message. Sure, the major characters are all white and the setting is more Bladerunner-crossed-with-Firefly than an attempt at a realistic multicultural society, but "the Colony" is actually fairly brown, and there are actual (minor) Asian characters with names and (minimal) personality!

And as much as I think Dichen Lachman would have been cooler as the female lead from a setting POV, I have no complaints about watching Kate Beckinsale and Jessica Biel bash the crap out of each other and a bunch of robots :D

(*)No Indigenous Australians either, of course. Not sure they'd be super happy with the idea of Australia being a "dead island with no magic", either.