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Good grief. That was like a totally different show tonight. Fortunately, it was a much better one. But the tonal whiplash is quite something. Back to RTD next week, though, and so I'll set my expectations accordingly. Nicely done by Moffat this week though.

[Dredd]

Hard to argue with that. In all, this was a fantastic comic. It's issues like this that make me quite cross more people aren't reading 2000 AD.

Dredd ramped up the horror and intrigue. The last page was chilling and creepy. The so-far silent enemy is leagues ahead of anything Judge Death has been in recently.

Intestinauts was fantastic. That CYOA section was imaginative and chaotic. Everything about this was great.

The 3riller showcased great imagination and craft on the part of its creators, but also how 2000 AD just burns through great material. In the US, these pages would have been well over 20. Maybe more. But what a wonderful start. I hope it sticks the middle and the landing.

Brink continues to be brilliant. Again, it's five pages of mostly talking heads, and yet relentlessly compelling.

And then things finish off with a history lesson of sorts on Proteus Vex, which is just superb.

It might not be its finest but it is damned close to be sure.

Indeed. For all people wanging on about the good old days of 2000 AD, here we have a Prog with only one 'classic' strip and yet five grade-A crackers. Top work, everyone involved!

Blimey. I used to use them for FCBD and some other stuff and they were always fab for one-off orders. (I never had an ongoing with them, mind.)

Also, if it's a viable option (assuming the collection is continuing to 200), I'll bet Matt Smith could find another 50 or so pages of content to pad it out a bit. (I'm sure there's a better pairing, not least because there are no creators in common, but I don't believe XTNCT has been in the collection yet. So tuck that at the back of Proteux Vex II and I'd be well happy!)

The film largely filters the book through a US lens. It doesn't do so heavily, but that does twist it away from the book's anarchist tendencies. (I also never felt the lurch in the film made any sense. The scandal wasn't big enough and the voting patterns were nonsensical. But then I guess those details don't really matter too much!) 

As for the comic, I agree with Colin. It's been a while since I read it, but the story for me was more solid and more interesting than almost everything else I've read by Moore. It has heart. It's also brutal. Like Colin says, even the antagonists aren't cyphers and feel human, albeit ones that are on the wrong side of history. I also echo that I'd much prefer a B+W version of the book, but I suspect that's either impossible (in the sense no B+W art survives) or DC just isn't interested (perhaps due to the mess that was created when it took on the series, which has subsequently denied Moore the rights to his work back).

I witnessed possibly the first shift here when the latest Phoenix lay unopened and unread for two days. That said, mini-G is now part of the Beano fan club and loves her Gnasher badge. She never clicked with Monster Fun, though. Those early issues felt very "lots of boys and naff-all girls" and it for her never really recovered from that.

It'll be interesting to see where things head next. Although I suspect she may well continue to pick up Jamie Smart books for some time, even when The Phoenix is but a memory.

Disappointing but only because it's so good. I thought this would run and run. Such fantastic worldbuilding. Oh well.

[Dredd:]

Nice cover. Also, interesting editor's letter, which says one of the reprint slots next week is being replaced "with a pair of brand-new stories". Woot! Lovely to hear, not least because I've cooled on the reprint since the Matt Smith IDW Dredd and Ruckley Rogue Trooper ran out. (I need to re-read Johnny Red, though; not sure I gave that a proper airing.)

Dredd: I loved D'Israeli. I'm rarely convinced he's a good match for Dredd. But it works here, with an increasingly absurd tale that's a lot of fun and doesn't overstay its welcome.

After a whopping ten pages of interviews (all good), we get a Steve Roberts kluge pin-up, before the final part of DeMarco. I need to re-read this tale as well, because it's kind of washed over me. It didn't really stand out. By contrast, I'm enjoying Armitage more than I have in a long while. It's blazing along nicely.

Another interview (newcomer Helsby) leads into a slightly odd piece on Ted Cowan (given that there's naff-all info about him in the wild), and some Robot Archie. As is often the case with this stuff, it's an extended trailer for the book, although it just about works well enough in giving us some bite-sized mini stories of sorts.

Reprint-wise, Hook Jaw wraps. I couldn't stand this. I get that a lot of it was pushing extremes on stereotypes (choice dialogue: "I'm gonna slaughter every last one of these pirate sonsabitches then coil out asteamin' American deuce on their corpses."), but, I dunno. I just didn't care about any of it. I guess at least it ended well.

I'm fairly certain I've read Toxic before, but I don't remember much about it. Other IDW Dredd that feels a bit off, but I'm sure that will be perfectly serviceable. And then we wrap up with two originals: a new Harrower Squad has Yeowell having fun with stompy blocky robots, but the star is Dreadnoughts, which is its typical mix of grim and compelling. Alas, the editor's letter refers to it as a "short series". Hopefully not too short.

In all, a bit of a mixed bag, although I the majority of the original material was very good. That bodes well if there's going to be more of it as of next month.

Looking online, there was quite a backlash against his Roger the Dodger, which I think says more about the sensibilities of old fart parents than children. Lots of "this isn't the Roger I knew". Well, yes. It was much funnier and sillier, but still smart and mischievous. By comparison, the current Roger feels very safe and a bit dull. (Mind you, that in itself might not be the worst thing. The Beano has its own voice and feel, and that's neatly countered by The Phoenix, which to some degree fills the IPC/Fleetway equivalent from when I was a kid – more anarchic.)

As for The Dandy, perhaps that in the long run was a good thing, in giving DCT some razor-sharp focus. The Beano seems to be on reasonably firm ground these days, and The Dandy survives to some degree with the annuals. (I don't really count the specials, which are mostly reprint and staggeringly expensive for what they are.) They also just started flirting with Zoom, presumably following on from The Phoenix doing the same. Although the first Beano session was weirdly long and weirdly late in the day. I'm not sure how many of the target audience would be fully attentive during a 75-minute(!) video that didn't start until 7pm. Maybe Scottish kids have later bedtimes or something.

Blimey. It really is just one. 146 and 148 are the two unknowns, and there's no obvious context around them, to help guess what they might be. (Well, we know one should be The Order, but not which one.)

144: Harlem Heroes (vol 2)
145: Dredd: End of Days
146: ?
147: Armoured Gideon
148: ?
149: Age of the Surprisingly Cute Wolf
150: Counterfeit Girl

Context is everything. Christmas: lots of people were excited about the refresh of the show, and it was aired on Christmas Day, when families are together and probably fancied something fun to watch. This Saturday was a new series, sure, but not the debut for the new Doctor, and the weather was astonishingly good for the time of year.

I'm sure we'll know more in the long run. Although there is a sense that RTD can do no wrong, and that may counter anything that does turn out to be a negative, to some degree. (Honestly, I wasn't overly thrilled by his return, given all the shit that went on during Eccleston's run, and also on the basis of the manner in which he writes. But it is what it is.)

kids really don't watch live TV any more

Can confirm, at least in this household. I think the last thing we watched live with our 9yo was the women's World Cup final last summer. She these days watches a lot on iPlayer, but nothing live. She wants to watch things when she wants to watch them. TBF, so do we. Even with the very rare 'live' TV we watch (mostly things like Sewing Bee), we watch on iPlayer.

The ratings are broadcast. They don't include people watching on iPlayer, which may well be a significant number when factored in. And I suspect the numbers on Disney+ will be more important in the long run.

That said, I'm unsure whether these are the episodes to get people on board. I can imagine a lot of "what the fuck was that?" And the horribly messy way in which we transitioned from 13 to 15 hasn't helped. A clean break and starting completely afresh would have made more sense, but there you go. It's not like the show has ever made a lot of sense. It's always been messy to some degree.

It felt very... RTD Who. The man doesn't do logic. His plots, such as they are, fall to pieces the second you examine them. But the show is loud and flashy and sometimes fun.

I thought Space Babies was absurd. I'm not sure I liked it, with the thing lurching back and forth between uncanny valley talking babies, the C-list Alien, and the Doctor repeatedly being weirdly callous in scaring the kids. The final act wasn't earned either. This one could probably have been saved with a script editor but this show since the return hasn't cared about giving someone in that position any power.

I thought the second episode was much better. The villain was menacing. The story just about held up. Ish. And the ending was so over the top that you had to admire probably the most expensive thing Doctor Who has ever done being a dance number. Even if the song itself was (ironically, given the plot) terrible.

So a 2/5 and a 3/5 from me for those so far. And that's a quarter of the series done. It'll be interesting to see where it goes and if people are so quick to consider RTD the second coming at every available opportunity. I'm preparing for it to be fine and am not terribly invested. It's six hours of hopefully entertaining telly.

Yes, the alien nature of Proteus Vex makes it something special. It has imagination and strange elements. These beings aren't just humans slightly reworked. In 2000 AD terms, perhaps Shakara is the closest strip in that regard. Although Vex is much deeper.

And I'd second the art. Honestly, I was disappointed when the artist changed and a little unconvinced by the second run. It just didn't quite feel right. But now I can't imagine this being illustrated by anyone else. Lynch's art in this strip has evolved to become nothing short of superb. Properly top-tier stuff.