The SFX Spurious Awards Of The Week #3

A brilliant crossover, a brilliant T-shirt, a spoilerphobic invention and a Daily Mail journo making an arse of herself

CROSSOVERS OF THE WEEK

Okay, the Nathan Fillion-starring US series Castle isn’t SFX, but the show deserves a mention this week for embracing our genre in an unexpected way. In the latest episode Castle (Fillion) is talking to guest star Dana Delany, who’s playing a top-notch FBI investigator, and they have this exchange:

Castle: “Severed digits? Secret codes? This is like one of my books.”
Agent Shaw: “You should have been with me on the Recapitator case.”
Castle: “What, that guy in Phoenix who switched his victims’ heads? That was your case?”

We believe you’ll find the case in question took place in Phoenix because it was in a multi-episode Medium story  a couple of years back (“Head Games”, “Heads Will Roll” and “Everything Comes To A Head”).

Not content with that, later in the episode Castle’s mother Martha, played by Susan Sullivan is seen watching an episode of The Incredible Hulk which starred her very own younger self! Her character on Castle is an actress, so it made perfect sense in the plot – she was feeling down, so she sat down to watch an example of her acting in 1978.

EPISODE TITLE OF THE WEEK (AND NEXT WEEK)
And talking of Medium, kudos to the show for an amusing new way of naming a two-parter: “There Will Be Blood Type A” and “There Will Be Blood Type B”.

RANT OF THE WEEK
Here’s wonderfully surly comedian Marcus Brigstocke on last Friday’s The Now Show (Radio 4) in the midst of rant about the ridiculous state of British libel laws: “Libel laws make about as much sense as the plot of Lost. Now, by the way, if that show doesn’t conclude with something absolutely, breathtakingly clever and explanatory, I am going after the writers as a livid, kicking column of angry black smoke, and I will be flinging people up trees.” Now, that got a BIG round of applause.

MOST ILL-RESEARCHED JOURNALISM OF THE WEEK
Writing in the Femail section of The Daily Moan, sorry, Mail, columnist Allison Pearson took exception to  the length of Amy Pond’s skirt in the upcoming opening  episode of Doctor Who’s new season, complaining “since when was Doctor Who’s assistant supposed to be sexy?” before going on, “What’s next… Cybermen become Cyberchicks with metal boobs?”

We have two words to say: Leela and “Cyberwoman”.

MOST UNCONVENTIONAL PARENTING OF THE WEEK

The prize goes to grieving Caprica dad Daniel Graystone, for his copious use of physical and mental torture to coax his daughter’s digital avatar into admitting she’s living inside a prototype Cylon. Yes, we know she’s effectively a robot who doesn’t feel pain, but we’re not sure that would hold up in court – either on Earth or in the 12 colonies.

PROOF OF THE WEEK
Earlier this week we posted our How Spoilerphobic Are You? personality test. Question four asked: “Do you cover up the bottom half of the TV screen with a piece you cardboard you keep especially for the job,  so that you can’t see the list of guest stars, just in case an old character will make an unexpected reappearance?” Now, you may have thought we had just made this up for the sake of a laugh, but here’s the proof that such things do go on.

THE NICE IDEA BUT WE WOULDN’T WEAR IT AWARD OF THE WEEK
Some waggish company has reimagined those “Team Edward” Twilight T-shirts with a Battlestar Galactica twist. Nice gag, but who’d actually wear one? They do have the advantage that you don’t need to worry about ironing them, though… Olmos is wrinkly enough already.

COMPARE AND CONTRAST OF THE WEEK
YouTube is awash with people editing together montages of their favourite TV shows or films to their favourite rock and pop tracks (personally we’d like to see a few more mash-ups set to Gilbert and Sullivan, but that’s our problem). But this one’s a little different. katamaran78 has created a Galactica mash-up to The Beastie Boy’s “Sabotage” that apes the original video almost shot for shot.