Update

The outcome of my time at University.

When I started my Uni course back in 2014, I wanted to become a Lecturer of Particle Physics, because that is what I had told myself was my passion. Within a week of starting, I saw that this was not the path I would be taking. So I turned to my backup plan of teaching, but that too didn't work out. By my third year I was in the difficult but not unusual position of having to finish a course I hated, and having no idea of what to do with my life. I could have changed courses, but I was always taught to finish what I had started, and people reassured me that I would make it through and come out with the all-important Physics Degree at the end of it.

In third year I got a job. Not a big job, but a job, and the appeal of earning money for my time rather than spending money for it was a huge attraction. Taking more and more hours meant that I begin to regularly miss deadlines. I missed my girlfriend, and was taking time out every two weeks to visit her in Derby. My bedroom in the new house was dark and covered in damp. In January, about half-way through the second and last proper term, I was diagnosed with pneumonia. I had been walking to work in freezing cold conditions with liquid on the lung, and had barely noticed.

All of this was contributing to, although not completely the cause of, my plummeting grades. The simple fact was, it is hard to focus and learn something you have grown to hate. Third year Physics requires the internalisation of most of the first two years, and I might as well have arrived straight from Sixth Form, because I had forgotten most of it. The only course I did not fail outright was the group project, and I will freely admit that I did fuck-all on that. The worst failure was probably the Java course, where I submitted only one piece of work on time and failed to submit even the final coursework, the one worth half the marks. Through this I kept my mind busy on other things, all the time watching in slow motion as my degree careered wildly off the road.

Also, don't get me started on "Design The Spine" or the
"Physics Garden".

During this time I managed to burn a lot of the bridges I had spent the last two years building. Because I had been skipping most lectures by leaving after the first five minutes, I never got to see the people I sat in lectures with, and they seemed bemused and maybe a little disappointed by the way I was going. My best friend at Uni, the one who had pretty much defined my amazing second year, I barely saw because of competing schedules. And, eventually, I was barely interacting with my flatmates of three years. We used to spend long evenings watching TV together and cooking, and while it wasn't close, it was good. At the end of second term I left my job in sad circumstances. I was poor, depressed and lonely. I was even beginning to worry my girlfriend, however grateful she was to see me.

Obviously, I failed my third year. Nine modules out of ten. I had one month to learn enough to pass resits in each of my eight exams, and finish six pieces of coursework, including the entire Java module. I was used to failing by this point, having failed my first and second year exams as well, but by this time it was clear that the odds were stacked heavily against me, and that hard graft would not be enough. As it turns out, no, a month is not enough time to completely learn the Third Year Physics syllabus, and while I did pass several more modules than before (including, thankfully, Particle Physics), I failed the year overall.

Apparently I can refer to myself as Andrew Smith DipHE, although unless I'm a nurse or carer it's usually discouraged. My "Diploma" was a consolation prize, of sorts. It turns out that I might as well have not bothered going through my third year hardship at all; I would have got my Diploma of Higher Education if I had dropped out a week into October. While I am grateful that I have some recognition of the work I did at University, it will always be a mark against my name. Without it, I have no way to explain what I did between September 2014 and August 2017. With it, I will always be seen as someone who failed where so many others succeeded. Not quite good enough. Not quite.

I have contemplated coming back here to write many times, even in the knowledge that the readership is basically nonexistent. Nostalgia Filter was a way to put life in focus, if only for a brief time, but I had to stop it when it started to interfere with the various busybodying that accompanied my long, ill, lonely denial. That is yet to be seen. The good news, though, is that I have moved on. I am now living with my girlfriend, in Derby, and have a part-time job. I have no idea where I am going in life right now, and although I've heard some people say that's a good thing, I will need a long time before I am convinced.

I am going to miss you, Lancaster.

Thanks

News: Steven Moffat to regenerate into Chris Chibnall

Chris Chibnall will be showrunner by 2018.
Image from hypable

Yesterday was the home of a slew of news about the future of Doctor Who, with the main wonderful fact being that Steven Moffat, after producing his seventh season as showrunner in 2017, will be standing down from the position. His replacement will be Chris Chibnall, a man who on this blog has always had very mixed press - sometimes a powerful dramatic writer, but when writing for Doctor Who his scripts tend to be disappointments. The same news article in Radio Times later specified that there won't be any new Doctor Who on our screens until Christmas this year, which is disappointing even if it makes some sense.

Chris Chibnall is the writer of amazing ITV Drama Broadchurch and its short-lived American remake Gracepoint, the UK version of Law and Order, as well as some good episodes of Life On Mars, and a crappy Starz version of Merlin called Camelot retold for an adult audience. In terms of Doctor Who, Chibnall was the showrunner for the first two seasons of Torchwood, which are in my opinion the best of that show's run, producing great episodes like Countrycide, End of Days, and the heart-wrenching Adrift. On the parent program, however, he wrote less inspiring stuff - 42, The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood, Dinosaurs On A Spaceship and The Power of Three.

Chibnall's first three stories fell into the trap of trying to mass-produce an ensemble cast that we cared about, with his ability to do so decreasing with every attempt, from the genuinely likable crew of the space station in 42 to the caricature-laden pastiches that filled the screen in Dinosaurs on a Spaceship. He also got a lot of focus in the "September Season", essentially writing Amy and Rory's arc over that period and writing prequel and sequel shorts which attempted to show them living a life of domesticity. He had some very strong concepts and usually managed to execute them well, but overall his ability with characters was sub-par. His work also, like Moffat's, occasionally contains a few sexist undertones, although thankfully with far more fewer frequency and less sheer revelry.

I'm not entirely sure where the show is going to go, so I'm not being optimistic or pessimistic either way. Chibnall would not have been my first choice; if you remember, the first thing I wrote about Doctor Who on this website was "Chris Chibnall is a bastard." (Something I later redacted, as it's fairly libelous.) I can go on all day about how a female showrunner would have been progressive and great, or we could have Toby Whithouse, whose episodes I love, but I think that's a bit pointless right now. All I can say is that I'm glad Moffat is finally leaving the reigns, and allowing NuWho to extremely belatedly leave its second era.

Thanks.

Always and Forever: A Tribute to Bowie and Rickman

On the 21st February 1946, a boy was born in the London town of Acton, and was later named Alan Rickman. Almost a year later, just a few miles away in Brixton, another boy was born called David Jones. He would later change his last name to David Bowie. Both of these names are obvious and, of course, you may already know by now that they passed away from cancer on the 14th and 10th of January this year, respectively.

Usually I wouldn't comment on celebrity deaths. Lots have come and gone as this blog has existed - a whole host of Doctor Who stars, Christopher Lee, Robin Williams - I can't name them all, because I don't remember everyone who dies. You can't remember that. What you do remember is the good times. And boy, did we have some.

David Bowie was a musical godsend, a fashion icon and one of the most innovative, continually reinventing artists in British popular culture. His bizarre fashions have gone on to uniquely shape not only our culture, but Global culture, and his songs have entered the public record as classics that rival the Beatles in popularity. Even till his last days, Bowie was releasing regular albums and dealing in the avant-garde. Years after the heydey of his biggest 70s and 80s hits, they formed an integral part of my childhood and my teenage years, and I and many others would not be the same without him.

Alan Rickman originally decided to pursue acting once he left University. However, at almost 40 years old he decided to join RADA and train professionally - and almost overnight, with the role of villain Hans Gruber in Die Hard, he became a Hollywood sensation. His unique voice, hair and incredible poetic wit carried his career and work from strength to strength, leading to role in both Hollywood films and an impressive array of work back in the UK, including cult classic Love, Actually and, of course, the career-defining role of Professor Severus Snape in the Harry Potter franchise which, for many including myself, was his first appearance on television. Rickman was a cultural treasure, and someone who you kind of just assumed would be here forever.

The past few days have been a bit of a gut-punch, not just here but around the world. I don't particularly pretend to have any kind of significance in these matters, but I needed to make tribute to two men who helped to define who I am and did the same for multiple generations of people.

Thanks.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas everyone!

I've come back for a bit so my writing is gonna go into a lul again. I love writing for the website so I will get back to it, but for a while I'm gonna focus on my Uni work.

This year will finish off with the Doctor Who review (hopefully today), and then with TV Shows I Watched in 2015, which will appear sometime in the new year.

Thanks.

Six Years

Yesterday my live-in city of Lancaster was flooded and the power was wiped out for over 50,000 homes, the local electrical substation having been completely submerged in flood water due to a 30-hour rainstorm and very poor town planning. In the mad confusion of attempting to secure transport and communication, I forgot that it was my Dad's birthday, which reminded me of another thing - today is this website's birthday.
      Thank you, reader, for six years of amazingly fun times. I didn't think after last year that this website would still be running, but surprisingly enough it's still going strong, so long live Nostalgia Filter, and I hope you have a wonderful new year.

Thanks.

November is Cybermen Month!

You will become like us....

Hundreds of years ago, Earth was not alone in the sky. Its twin planet, Mondas, contained a race of humans far advanced of their Terran counterparts, and when Mondas was knocked out of its orbit, this race turned to technology in order to survive. They replaced parts of themselves with cybernetic alternatives, until a society arose which enforced their use in the name of survival. The products of this society became known as the Cybermen, beings stripped of all emotions, with only the imperative to survive and proliferate their kind across the galaxy.

      The Cybermen are my favourite Doctor Who villains by a country mile. The first Classic Who episodes I talked about on this blog were Attack of the Cybermen and Earthshock - reviews which I later revisited when my writing style became a little more focused. I've reviewed eight of the ten stories of the original run which feature the Cybermen as one of the main villains, leaving out only their first outing, The Tenth Planet, and 1968's The Wheel In Space. Having recently received the former on DVD, I had the idea to go back to those 60s Cybermen stories and give them another go, this time filling out the gaps.

      Back in the 1970s and 80s, a lot of the black and white episodes were burnt. By the end of the show's run in 1989, the vast majority of the stories I'll be reviewing this November were missing. Thankfully, over time we have recovered lost episodes, and for all but one of these stories, the stories exist in their completion - either in episodes as recorded or in animated reconstructions using the original audio. In four weeks, when I review The Wheel In Space - I'll effectively be attacking my first reconstruction . How exciting!

Thanks.

NEXT WEEK: William Hartnell bows out as the Earth is attacked by mysterious, cloth-faced beings... it's The Tenth Planet.

Take2Guide To Lost - Published Today!

As I mentioned last month, today marks the publishing of the Take2Guide to Lost, the ultimate guide to the brilliant show that helped to define television in the noughties. It contains over 400 articles from over 50 authors, including yours truly, and has overviews, discussions on themes and characters, as well as individual episode recaps.

If you have any interest in Lost at all, I cannot recommend this book more.

Buy the book here. Sales will help an ailing student writer. :D

Thanks.

Hold back (the) River!

I feel so sorry for Alex Kingston because she's amazing actress,
given suchterrible stuff to work with. But hey, it pays the bills.
Image from The BBC

In recent news, River Song is coming back to Doctor Who. You'll know if you followed my reviews of the last season that I've really given up on being excited about new stuff from this show, prefering to be pleasantly surprised by any good stuff that manages to slip through Moffat's tight grip. While Series Eight was messy in places, had a lot of flawed relationships and had a worrying theme of "faith defying science", it did seem like it was trying to have some fun ideas and concepts, and I often found myself enjoying it despite its silliness.
     One of the things that made Season Eight bearable was the absence of River Song, once an interesting and promising concept character who now stands as the personification of everything wrong with Steven Moffat's writing. I went into detail a bit with this in my article "The Best Laid Schemes Of Mice And Moffat", but I'll recap here. River Song was initally presented in her "final" episode, as a potential future friend/love interest of The Doctor. What that turned into was River being a "psychopath" assassin essentially kidnapped from Amy Pond's womb as a baby, raised specifically to murder The Doctor, who nevertheless falls in love with him upon first meeting him because of how cool he is. She is then forced into an Astronaut suit to kill him anyway (which is ridiculous, because why train her to be a willing killer if she's forced into it anyway, anyone could have manned that suit) and "kills" him. Except she doesn't, because it's just a robot facsimile of him. Despite this, The Doctor (and the Universe, and herself) insist that she spends the majority of the rest of her life in prison for killing The Doctor. The Doctor treats this prison as her home, picking her up and dropping her off here, even though she apparently has the ability to come and go as she pleases. And at one point we meet her ghost. Huh.
     Suffice to say that River Song is a total mess. Her concept was robbed from the character of Bernice Summerfield in the Expanded Universe (a tactic Moffat uses a lot), her dialogue is filled with bizzare non-speak and cliches designed to make her "mysterious" or "sexy", while her behaviour is informed by some insulting concept of what Moffat defines as a "psychopath" (see also Mary Morstan in Sherlock) and her character really exists for no other reason than to loosely tie together Moffat's stories. Seeing as that particular brand of ridiculousness belongs back in Eleven's era, and the show did seem to be trying to move away from that, I think that it's a huge disappointment to see her character return yet again. Nothing good is going to come of this, I'm telling you.

Thanks.

Back in action?

Any readers (as rare and elusive as you are) may have noticed that Star Trek Voyager reviews have resumed. Working with my revision and, eventually, my Uni work, I aim to at least finish Season Three, eventually moving onto Season Four. That much is in the bag, and trying to get all the way through Voyager at least gives me something to aim for. I will also do my best to review the new episodes of Doctor Who Season 35/9, which starts next month.
      I've been thinking about finishing off and/or revisiting several areas. I've been meaning to discuss Moffat's older work from a current perspective, and so I'm thinking about revisiting Doctor Who Season 31/5, starting from where I originally started live Doctor Who reviews for The Hungry Earth.
     A few months ago I was also planning out an essay about the portrayal of Women in Red Dwarf, as a late revisitation to the ideas I mentioned in "The Problem with Kochanski." Except this time without the unintentional misogyny.

Thanks.

Take2Guide to Lost!

Cover from Take2Publishing

Back in October, I was approached by the wonderful John Pruzanski to have some of the Lost articles on this blog published in an e-book. That book, the Take2Guide to Lost, is due to be published online on September 18th 2015, and will include 45 of my articles as well as hundreds of other pieces from over 50 bloggers and writers.

If you're interested, then bookmark this link and buy it when it becomes avaliable. Each sale goes to helping a poor student blogger. :D

Thanks.

Red Dwarf and other blog news

The Dwarfers are back!
From digitalspy

First off: Red Dwarf is coming back! It's official: two new series, one for 2016, one for 2017. What with this blog and its history of following Red Dwarf stuff, I'll of course be wanting to talk about them when they come out. That may or may not happen, but if there's anything which can give me motivation to continue Nostalgia Filter, it's two new series of Red Dwarf.
     So, about continuing Nostalgia Filter. My plans to review The Walking Dead more or less fell through - those reviews will probably be written at some point, but right now I have neither the time nor the motivation to sit through The Walking Dead's early season drudgery. Nor will there be articles on Orphan Black or Game of Thrones - I can't really analyse them in detail and I just enjoy watching them without doing that sorta thing.
     One thing I have considered is going back and finishing my reviews of Misfits, finally explaining what stopped me reviewing and covering the final season and a half. If that happens, it's likely to start in the summertime - right now I'm spending half of my time doing coursework and the rest procrastinating studying dutifully for my exams.
     Talking about Red Dwarf, I've wanted for a while now to find some way of revisiting those old reviews - anyone can see that my writing style has changed since my 2010 reviews, and even since my 2012 reviews (my style now seemingly being that I don't write any more, I say with bitter laughter). Revisiting all of the episodes might be a little difficult though, and it really would affect the infrastructure of the blog to have two or more reviews for each episode of what is a half-hour-format comedy. If I did revisit them, I'd have to make sure that I had something original and useful to say, and that's difficult.

      Before I stopped writing I did have something to do with Star Trek reviews - I almost started reviewing Voyager's third season, but I then put off writing a review for Flashback, the 30th Anniversary Special, and then didn't bring that boxset to Uni with me. I do however have some Deep Space Nine boxsets on me, and this summer might see either individual episode reviews or season overviews. I have to be honest with myself about what I'm capable of now that I'm this out of practice.

Thanks.

Ideas for the blog; 4/2/15

Now I've finished catching up with Doctor Who, there's something of a difficulty in moving forward with the project. I'm balancing work time with relaxation, doing a great too much of the latter, and writing here is a blend of the two that I can only really do when a number of conditions are met.

One of those conditions is having something to talk about that I actually enjoy. I love Star Trek Voyager to bits, but at the moment focusing on it and analysing it isn't exactly something I can do. Now when I watch a show from one of my DVDs it's one particular episode I remember liking, and following a narrative is given to week-to-week events, like the release of new episodes of stuff.

Which brought me round to my American shows, all of which will be coming out this year in their dribs and drabs - The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones and Orphan Black.

The Walking Dead is different enough with each season that I'm going to try and do season-by-season overviews, splitting up the more recent seasons into halves. That will tie in nicely with the broadcast of Season 5B, and it should produce a nice, say, eight articles. (Ooh, lofty ambitions.)

When Game of Thrones returns in April, I might have enough to say to write weekly reviews on each episode. Last year that was easier because I had a lot of fellow fans around; now things are a bit more lonesome, so we'll have to see.

I will be writing, trust me.

Thanks.

P.S. I totally forgot that today was the blog's actual fifth birthday. 

General Blog News 19/1/15

Regular readers (if any of you actually exist), would note that the reviews stopped at the end of 2014. This was a mixture of both a conscious decision on my part and a general move away from writing as recreation. I do not, however, believe that this is necessarily the end of this blog and its writing.

I think this because there are still a few series I need to finish - Series 8 of Doctor Who is trailing at the end, so I will cover those episodes, and I certainly have a lot to say about the Finale's plot twist. I'd also like to carry on my reviews of Star Trek Voyager, but that's difficult at the moment as I'm at Uni and my DVD collection is 60 miles southeast.

I've also wanted to write an overview of Lost to cap off the whole review experience, but that'll require me to watch the whole series through again and finding the time and motivation to do that will be a challenge. I also have the same problem with distance.

On top of that, I also wanted to write an article discussing the shows I watched last year. That may or may not be coming, I'm yet to sit down and think through the logistics.

I hope you're all happy and healthy. :D

Thanks.

A musing on five years

My current locale...

Five years ago today, I wrote an article about a set of fireworks. Gorton is a small area in the south of Manchester, and for the first few years of my life it was the place I called home, before me and my family moved to the marginally more scenic town of Droylsden in Tameside. Of course for my parents, it had had more permanence. At least, I guess so. That's the only reason I can think of as to why we attended those fireworks in the first place. Had I not attended those fireworks, I would not be on this website typing as I am now.
     Blogger is something of an archaic platform to work with. It wasn't exactly hip and trendy when I started using it in 2009, but it was a fair bit more popular than it is now, in an age where all of your blogging needs can be better suited by Wordpress or Tumblr. But then again, popularity was never my main aim - it was an attempt to express opinions about stuff. To a teenager bristling with opinions, an opportunity to do that in a space with few people will challenge you is a very attractive option. Once I started writing regularly I advertised my blog on social networks for a while, hoping to gain an audience like that of the blog that inspired me, Dan's Media Digest. But there's a reason why he's just been shortlisted for a "UK Blog of the Year" award and I've not written anything in months.
     Nostalgia Filter, or as it was once called, Audenshaw Reviews, is at its most fundamental a procrastination aid. Writing about something, making a project of it, is a task I used to set for myself - both because I enjoyed it, and because it felt satisfying to do something productive. As a result, I've I've ended up writing a short book. Taking a very rough average, I have a wordcount of about 900 words (for a standard length review, sometimes I find less to talk about, sometimes more.) Extrapolating that out for the 802 posts I've tagged as either "Review" or "Opinion", and that comes to 721,800 words. That's seven novels. In the past five years I've written seven novels. Except they weren't novels. They were blog posts about TV shows and films. (Note to self - the word blog isn't in the blog's internal spellchecker dictionary.)

A photograph from the event that inspired it all.
(Original owner unknown, please comment if
you want credit.)

     In the past five years, I've done my GCSEs, my A-Levels and the first term of the first year of my degree. I've performed in four stage productions, had a total of 63 articles published in external publications and have posted the word "Thanks" 934 times. (Including this one.) In that time I've watched over 700 hours of television and film in order to review it here, and then countless more hours after that to write up the damn things, with a minimum of about 45 minutes for each one to write it up. Which if you calculate it forward again means that I've spent a bare minimum of 601 hours writing here. That's almost a month.
      Time gets away from us so quickly. Right now this is the longest thing I've written for the blog in months. What began as a place for an arsey teenager to mouth off without being ridiculed by his peers has become something I'm immensely proud of, and something I regret not having done more with. I had planned for so long that this would be the end of this blog - something frightening for me to see as I look at the little (1) next to my "Scheduled Posts". But I don't think it is the end. Not yet.
     For hopefully not the last time,

Thanks.

5th Anniversary

Thanks for the memories, readers. :D

Audenshaw Reviews/ Nostalgia Filter through the years.

Welcome to 2014

Well, that last year seemed to last forever. Or at least, for a long enough time for me to write so many articles for this blog that I could drop dead now and still seem active until June. Last year I mentioned that I thought that 2013 was going to be my last year of doing this - that was for various reasons, all of which still apply, but last Summer I made a longer plan which basically means that 2014 is going to be my last year of this shindig, going up until just after I reach my fifth anniversary this December.

What's coming up in 2014? Well, some long-term US shows for one. The second and third seasons of both Lost and Star Trek Voyager will be gracing your screens every Wednesday and Thursday, with Star Trek Deep Space Nine hopefully joining them once I've done all of the Classic Doctor Who that I want to get through.

There'll also be some spendiferous Heroes overviews, as well as the new seasons of Doctor Who and, near the end of the year, a series of Best Of articles which will look at my favourite shows from over this blog's lifetime.

See you there, people. :D

Thanks.

IT'S CHRISTMAS!

Hello there, Winter reader. This is June!Andrew speaking, wishing you a very Merry Christmas firmly out of the way of the season.

Hopefully the second half of the year hasn't brought me into any depressive lapses, destructive tendencies or world-shattering catastrophies. And the same for you, too.

So, like every year, I invite you to get the hell off my website and spend time with your families and friends on the one day of the year that you're obligated to do so. Trust me, you'll thank me for it in the end.

Thanks. Merry Christmas.

We Will Rock You?

Yeah, this is happening.

Be prepared for some jimble jamble about my school production of We Will Rock You in late December.

Thanks.

Autumn leaves under frozen souls...

Top notch graphical skills here.

As you can see from the slick new paint job, Autumn is finally here! For Nostalgia Filter, that means a steady flow of goodies from now until the new year and beyond.

From the pre-written stuff, there's my continuing look at the first season of Lost, my runthrough of the first season of Star Trek: Voyager and the beginning of my long runthrough of the Fourth Doctor's era in Classic Who.

Not much live TV happening this Autumn, but you can be sure that I'll be taking a look at Merlin's Saturday night replacement show, Atlantis. I'll also be here to review the 50th Anniversary of Doctor Who. Which I'm sure will be fiiiine.

There will also be sporadic overviews for the five seasons of Heroes now and then, beginning this week.

See you there.

Thanks.

(This is, by the way, post number 750. Which is cool.)

News: Birthday!

So I'm 17 now.

That is all.

Thanks.