Wednesday 7 November 2012

Aliens vs Wizards

What to do when your lead actress dies, but you still have the opportunity to do a children's series? Keep the same production team, get a new cast of kids, write a thin and ridiculous premise, and go for it again!

In WvsA, the new series from Russell Davies and Phil Ford, there are Wizards. Because there are. And there are aliens. Because there are. And aliens like to eat magic (because that's a thing). And so you have the epic battle that will be played out on our screens... which so far involves about three aliens and two kids... and of course the aliens are incredibly stupid, and overly incompetent. And, for some reason (and there is a reason, it's just not a good one, but remember that RTD doesn't give a rat's ass about actual plot explanations, just hand waves everything, and seems even antagonistic towards science here), wizards can only cast three spells a day... Oh, and the aliens are led by Boss Nass. (Seriously, the obvious puppet looks like Boss Nass, and is voiced by Brian Blessed, so yeah).

Interestingly, unlike in SJA, there are just two male kids, played by Scott Haran and Percelle Ascott. The main female presence is the grandmother played by Annette Badland. Dan Starkey is also present, as the hilarious hobgoblin, hob hob. The two lead aliens are played by Jefferson Hall and Gwendoline Christie (a bit of a change I suspect to be under all that latex after her role on Game of Thrones). And as the production team is the same (I'm guessing) the look of the series is exactly the same as SJA.

Can't say that I'm impressed, but I might just keep my eye on it...

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