Apr 2025 – JG Judgementally Comments…

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service

Connery’s gone, Lazenby’s in but can he convince as a Bond for the ages or will his Service no longer be required?

For the first time in the series, “James Bond Will Return” means Bond but not the actor playing him, as Connery gives way to George Lazenby’s one-and-done attempt to take over the title role. But is his poor reputation deserved, and does one of the most forgotten of all Bond films deserved to be relegated to “oh yeah, that one” status?

Pre-Existing Prejudices:

If I’ve seen this one all the way through then I have absolutely no memory of it. I know the famous final scene well enough, and a couple of set-pieces, but beyond that… blank. So Lazenby is going to get a fair crack of the whip, if nothing else – I honestly have no idea how good or otherwise he is in the role, nor anything else about him at all, really. I’m rather keen to watch what amounts to an entirely new Bond, so let’s get on with it!

Doctor Who Season 15/2 Episode 2,”Lux”

The first episode wasn’t great but can “Lux” be the light at the end of the tunnel?

What’s The Episode? “Lux”

What’s It All About, JG? The Doctor and Belinda arrive in 1950s Florida, where people have gone missing at the local cinema. They investigate and discover that the projectionist, Reginald Pye (Linus Roache) is still inside, playing movies to an empty theatre. Inside the theatre, they are terrorised (allegedly) by Mr Ring-a-Ding (Alan Cumming), an old-timey cartoon who is actually Lux Imperator, the god of Light. After faffing about in an animated section and a metatexual section, they escape back into the real work. They manage to defeat Lux by having Reginald Pye use a bunch of celluloid to blow a hole in the back of the cinema, let in lots of sunlight, and then Mr Ring-a-Ding just sort of drifts away (rather like the point of this episode) and the missing people are all restored.

Doctor Who Season 15/2 Episode 1, “The Robot Revolution”

Ncuti Gatwa’s back for a second season of the fifteenth Doctor. But can Season 2 manage a better start than his first one?

What’s the Episode? “The Robot Revolution”, the first episode of Season 2 (let’s not get into the whole numbering thing again).

What’s It All About, JG? The episode starts with Belinda Chandra (Varada Sethu) getting a star certificate from her awkward boyfriend Alan (Jonny Green) before cutting forward 17 years, where she’s a nurse working in a hospital and living in shared accommodation with other twenty-somethings. A robot turns up and abducts her, just as the Doctor arrives to try and prevent said abduction (and Mrs Flood does a bit more fourth-wall breaking). She’s taken to the planet MsBelindaChandra, the one that Alan named after her, to be made queen and marry the AI generator. The Doctor turns up to try and save her, cry, and generally put things right. The robots on this planet rebelled against the population for what seemed to be no reason. The AI generator actually turns out to be Al (as in Alan), her old boyfriend, who has been wired into the planet’s system and was responsible for said robot revolution via some timey-wimey shenanigans and time slippage. He’s stopped by touching two versions of the star certificate from different times which reduces him to a single egg and sperm. Trying to take Belinda back home, because she does not want to be there, the Doctor discovers the TARDIS bounces off 25th May 2025 and so they need to go the long way round.