The TARDIS materializes on the glassy beach of a small island surrounded by a vast sea of acid. Inside an enormous tower, the only structure on the island, is Arbitan and the giant mind control machine he is sworn to protect. Arbitan puts a force field around the TARDIS and forces the Doctor and his companions to search the planet (that being the planet they are currently on, Marinus) for the four missing keys needed to upgrade his machine. Despite all of his actions, Arbitan is one of the least evil people on the planet compared to everyone else the group encounters on their mission to recover the keys to Arbitan's machine. Each key is located in a different region of Marinus with its own corresponding danger: a city controlled by hypnotic brain creatures, a jungle full of traps and predatory plants, ice caves guarded by robot soldiers, and a vaguely fascist state where Ian is framed for murder. Oh yeah, and there's these aliens in wet suits with big, crazy helmets. Needless to say, the group have a lot on their plates.
After finding themselves in the Himalayas in the 13th Century, our weary travellers are ever so politely taken captive by Marco Polo. Polo confiscates the TARDIS with intention of giving it to Kublai Khan as a gift. The Mongol Warlord Tegana, Marco Polo's travelling companion, launches a series of schemes in an attempt to steal the Doctor's "flying caravan" for himself. Along the way to see Kublai Khan the group encounter sand storms, sabotage, bandits, creepy caves, thieves and assassins. 
After departing the Daleks home planet, the Doctor and his companions are knocked unconscious by an explosion. It doesn't get much better after they wake up. A series of unexplained events, blackouts, violent outbursts and mechanical malfunctions follow. Things start to get squirrelly on the TARDIS after the crew begin to turn on each other. With the ticking clock of total annihilation hanging over their heads, the Doctor and his companions must unravel a series of clues to find their way to safety. The Edge of Destruction is essentially a bottle episode put together to fill out the show's original production order. It's not entirely inessential though, the relationship of the main characters sees some development and more details about the TARDIS itself are fleshed out.
Bravo Rankin/Bass, bravo. I thought I had plumbed the depths of your Christmassy madness, but that was before I saw Nestor, the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey. The Nestor Special takes a few cues from Rankin/Bass's Rudolph Special, wherin our protagonist is an outcast because of his physical abnormalities. After being thrown out of the stable where he grew up and the death of his mother, Nestor meets up with a cherub named Tilly who tells him that he has a greater purpose, one that will bring him to Bethlehem. Along the way he hooks up with Mary and Joseph and uses his long ass ears to help guide them to Bethlehem through a sandstorm, much as Rudolph used his freaky nose to help Santa through all that Christmas fog. The Special is narrated by Roger Miller (who sounds an awful lot like Bruce Campbell) and is somewhat based on a song written by Gene Autry, which makes about as much sense as anything else in this Special.
I'm not sure what to say about Mr. Bill's Christmas Special. A third of the Special was filled up with some lame schtick from Father Guido Sarducci (Remember him kids? No? Ask your parents). Another good chunk of the special was filled with a weird retelling of A Christmas Carol featuring some of the worst first generation CGI you have ever seen. There were also a few fake TV commercials thrown in the mix as well. There was actually very little of Mr. Bill in Mr. Bill's Christmas Special, which makes me wonder why the heck they made the dang thing in the first place.
Though Gargamel and Azrael were present, I'm pretty sure the main antagonist of the Smurfs Christmas Special was the devil. Referred to only as "the stranger," the villian was a mysterious cloaked figure capable of powerful magic who tried to transport some kidnapped children via a ring of fire. Once defeated, the stranger simply disappeared. That's some heavy shit for a cartoon about little blue people. 
The Little Drummer Boy is pretty typical of Rankin/Bass's Christmas Specials, it takes a well known Christmas type figure and tells an origin story of sorts. The Little Drummer Boy is probably also one of the more straightforward Rankin/Bass Specials, since it doesn't feature warlocks, abominable snow men or anthropomorphic depictions of weather. The Special is kind of a sidequel to the Gift of the Magi, as the little drummer boy crosses paths with the three wise men and eventually follows them to Bethlehem. Aaron, the little drummer boy, spends most of the Special pissed off, he's sworn to hate all people after his parents were killed by desert bandits. By the end of the special Aaron makes it to Bethlehem, is reunited with his dancing animals and swears off hatred after playing his drum for the newborn Jesus. 
This one is probably a bit obscure for any of my non-Canadian brethren out there. The Raccoons was a cartoon series that ran from 1985 to 1991 on the CBC. The series was preceeded by a number of television specials, the first being The Christmas Raccoons. The show and the Special had a bit of an evironmentalist agenda, every week the Raccoons faced off against Cyril Sneer, an aardvark industrialist bent on maximizing profits whilst destroying the Evergreen Forest. Since the Christmas Special was the first ever adventure for the Raccoons it mostly just introduces the main cast of characters. The Raccoons bump heads with Sneer for the first time after the aardvark cuts down their home for lumber. And when I say they bumped heads, it's pretty much what actually happened. The Raccoons are only able to stop Sneer from clear cutting the forest after they beat him up. And who says all Canadians are friendly? 
Ah Rankin-Bass, you can always be counted on to bring me some yuletide absurdity. I probably hadn't sat through 1970's Santa Claus is Comin' to Town is some 20+ years, so it was nice to essentially see it again for the first time. The Special (which includes voice work from Mickey Rooney, Fred Astaire and Keenan Wynn) tells the story of how Kris Kringle came to be Santa Claus and how many Christmas traditions got their start. You see, Santa began as an abandoned orphan, raised by toy making elves, who really wanted to bring toys to the children of a vaguely Germanic village called Sombertown. The town was under the thumb of Burgermeister Meisterburger who outlawed toys and made Santa and his associates outlaws. Herr Meisterburger even went so far as to burn a pile of toys in the middle of the town square in front of the children as a warning. In the end, Santa and his friends (which include a warlock and a penguin) succeed, mostly by outliving the Burgermeister, and Christmas is saved.
Bugs Bunny's Looney Christmas Tales probably isn't on too many "Must See Christmas Specials" lists, but the Special deserves at least some credit for the amount of material that they're able to cram into 23 minutes. The Special is a compilation of three original cartoon shorts with a bit of a wrap around story to tie them all together. The first short is the obligatory adaptation of A Christmas Carol, featuring Yosemite Sam as Scrooge and Bugs Bunny filling in for the spiritual motivators. The second short is a Road Runner cartoon that has virtually no connection to the holidays. The last short finds the Tazmanian Devil accidentally assuming the role of Santa Claus and bumping heads with Bugs. There's nothing terribly special about the Special but I appreciated it for it's lack of somber themes.
I managed to get in my annual viewing of my favorite Christmas Special with some friends last night, that special being A Muppet Family Christmas of course, so I thought I'd follow it up with some more of Jim Henson's Christmassy goodness. I'd heard of Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas before, but I'm not sure if I'd ever actually seen it. The special tells the story of Emmet Otter and his widowed mother, two down on their luck otters trying to make ends meet. A local talent contest promising big time prize money offers them a chance to finally have a proper Christmas, but in order to enter they'll have to put their last few meager possessions in hock. They'll also have to compete with the likes of the Riverbottom Nightmare Band, a rock group made up of degenerates who sound an awful lot like Deep Purple. I was convinced that the special was going to be a serious downer, but it thankfully steers clear of cliche endings and overly maudlin moments.
Most Christmas Specials do little more than insert their sitcom/cartoon characters into variations on A Christmas Carol. The Fat Albert Christmas Special does that too, but it also mixes in a little bit from the Christmas pageant. The Special starts out with Fat Albert and the gang rehearsing a Nativity play when they're interrupted by Mr. Tyrone, the heartless owner of the junkyard where the gang have made their clubhouse. Mr. Tyrone threatens to bulldoze the clubhouse because he's a jerk and that's what jerks do around the holiday season. After he leaves, the gang are interrupted by a family in distress. Their car has broken down, they've got nowhere to stay and the mother is due to give birth any minute (sound familiar?). From there it's a madcap dash to save the clubhouse and help the struggling family. The special is short, entertaining and has a visual stlye that depicts urban environments in a stylized yet somewhat realistic manner that marks it as being very much from the 1970s.
I've only ever seen a handful of SpongeBob SquarePants episodes before but, as far as I can tell, the stop motion animation special It's a SpongeBob Christmas! only differs from a normal SpongeBob episode in that everything is made of felt and clay rather than being traditionally animated. The plot of the Special finds Bikini Bottom's resident evil genius, Plankton, plotting to get everyone put on the naughty list by feeding them fruitcakes contaminated with jerktonium, thus turning them all into jerks. SpongeBob himself is immune to jerktonium due to his innocent heart and overwhelming capacity for Christmas Spirit. I have to give the makers of the Special props for having John Goodman do the voice of Santa (because everything is better with a little Goodman in it) as well as climaxing the special with a song called "Don't Be a Jerk (It's Christmas)." All in all, it's a bit more absurd and manic than what I usually look for in a Christmas Special, but it's still miles away from some of the treacly, depressing crap I've sat through in the past.
I wasn’t surprised to find out that there was a cartoon
series based on Pac-Man but I was surprised to learn that it somehow lasted for
two seasons and had its own prime time Christmas Special. It couldn’t have been
easy for the people at Hanna-Barbera to adapt Pac-Man into a Saturday morning
cartoon series. It’s not like the original video game contained an abundance of
backstory or character development. But they forged ahead and made a show out
of the property anyway and, 30 years later, I watched their Christmas Special. The
plot of the Special is pretty standard for a cartoon that doesn’t feature
humans and doesn’t exactly take place in our world. An unfortunate mishap
leaves Santa stranded in Pac-Land on Christmas Eve and it’s up to Pac-Man and
his friends to save Christmas. I don’t recommend watching the Special unless you are
overly fond of the words “Pac” and “chomp,” as they featured in every other
line of dialogue.
I wanted to kick off the holidays on a positive note this
year, which is why I decided to lead off my annual Christmas Special binge with
Prep & Landing: Naughty vs. Nice. I really enjoyed watching the original
Prep & Landing special last year and I can happily say that the sequel does
not disappoint. Everybody’s favourite elves Lanny and Wayne are joined by Noel,
Wayne’s charismatic younger brother (voiced by Rob Riggle).The trio are on a
mission from Santa to recover some North Pole technology stolen by a young
hacker known only as jinglesmell1337 (yes, you are old and internet lingo has
become the domain of children). Will 
Way, way back at the
beginning of the year I decided I was going to watch and review the entire
Doctor Who series from the beginning. I knew it would not be an easy task. It
certainly didn’t help that I waited 10 months to watch the show’s second
serial. Said serial introduces the Doctor’s most iconic foes, the Daleks. After
escaping a tribe of pissed off cavemen, the Doctor and his companions are
transported to a planet ravaged by a centuries-old nuclear war. Our travelers
encounter the pacifistic, agrarian Thals and the mutated, robotic, murderous
Daleks. The Thals vs Daleks conflict is reminiscent of the Eloi and the Morlocks
of H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine, though Wells’ Morlocks didn’t have laser
cannons and intergalactic genocide on their minds (correct me if I’m wrong, it’s
been awhile since I read The Time Machine). The Daleks are (spoiler alert for a
48 year old television program) eventually defeated, though their popularity
ensured they would continue to return throughout the entirety
of the show’s run. 
The Tricks &
Treats DVD, which can probably be found in most $5 bins this time of year, is a
collection of Roseanne’s Halloween episodes (plus one episode from the final
season which was more of a Rosemary’s Baby homage). Before watching this I
probably hadn’t seen an episode of Roseanne since the show’s initial run. The
Halloween episodes were always fan favorites and it seems pretty obvious that
the cast and crew must have had fun putting them together. Highlights from the
DVD include awesome costumes, a mulleted George Clooney, an appearance from the
ladies of Absolutely Fabulous, a fresh faced Johnny Galecki, and an
appearance from the mysterious “Second Becky.”
If you haven’t already seen The Cabin in the Woods, go see
it now. I won’t tell you anything about the movie’s plot and you should
probably avoid spoilers like the plague. I will tell you that it’s one of the
smartest original horror movies I’ve seen in years. If you’ve been a horror
movie fan for a while, you owe it to yourself to see this movie. Stop reading
this hype and go watch The Cabin in the Woods.
Going into The Gingerdead Man I knew that it was directed by Charles Band and released through his company Full Moon Features. So I was ready for a bad movie, one that probably wouldn't even be a "fun" bad movie. I was prepared to be underwhelmed and in that regard I was not disappointed. The movie's running time, minus credits, is 57 minutes. Gary Busey is on screen for approximately three of those minutes. Busey is also credited as the voice of the Gingerdead Man but I'm not entirely convinced he recorded all of the puppet's lines. I think they were going for Child's Play in a bakery but it's closer to something that might have been on a 90's horror anthology series like Goosebumps or Are You Afraid of the Dark? I do not recommend watching The Gingerdead Man. I briefly considered giving up horror movies for a while after watching it. I have since recovered.
I don’t like to ski
but for some reason I’m a sucker for movies based around skiing and ski resorts
(Ski School, Better Off Dead, Hot Tub Time Machine, etc.), which explains, for
the most part, why I ended up watching Ice Spiders. The movie, directed by Tibor Takács (The Gate), finds a sleepy
ski resort preyed upon by giant, genetically engineered spiders. The CGI spider
effects in this movie are pretty terrible, but that probably comes as no
surprise. Stephen J. Cannell, who created dozens of TV shows including The
A-Team, has a small part in the movie as the owner of the resort. As far as
poorly made, low budget, made for TV horror/sci-fi movies go, Ice Spiders is
definitely one of them.
When you watch a
bunch of shitty horror movies in a row, you start to evaluate them on a sliding
scale. “Well, Sea Beast wasn’t very good but at least it was better than
Octopus. So I guess that means it wasn’t a total waste of time.” Sea Beast
stars Corin Nemec (TV’s Parker Lewis) as a down-on-his-luck fisherman plagued
by little green aquatic monsters. The movie is quite similar to Humanoids from
the Deep (which I can’t believe I haven’t already reviewed on this site)
wherein a small fishing village is besieged by killer creatures from the sea.
That said, Humanoids is an enjoyable B movie from the golden age of Roger
Corman schlock while Sea Beast is more of a forgettable SyFy Original movie that
hardly merits a rewatch. 
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