My hour for tea is half-past five, and my buttered toast waits for nobody.

Well, everyone except me. The Talons of Weng-Chiang is on tonight on Sci-Fi (yes, still called that here, using old logos fished out of the skip, nae doubt) and it's absolutely champagne Doctor Who but no, I'm still stuck here at work, waiting for that ever tardy rubber stamp of alrighty (yes, I know keeping me waiting is an unsubtle power game, but really not impressed right now). No school detention was ever this cruel. Mutter, splutter.

I love old Weng-Chiang, it is quite simply, well, what's not to love? Foggy London, murdered prozzers (major Riper riffs), vicious Chinese tongs, the Victorian theatre (no doubt with Walter Sickert sketching in the middle rows), war criminals from the 51st Century (pay attention, you will be examined on this later), wicked little piggy homunculus, a giant gold dragon that shoots lasers (beware the eye of the dragon!) and Sherlock references ahoy and the gorgeous double act that is Jago and Litefoot. It's like shoving Moore, Gaiman and Doyle in a blender and pushing the button. It is just ...wonderful.

Okay yeah, there is the giant rat, the muppet mouse of terror, but if they'd only stuck to the stage directions and just kept it to menancing shadows it might not have been quite so laughable (hilarious, even when I was a kid). But it just kind of makes me love the show even more.

Yeah, this is the stuff I watched as a kid and loved to bits (and, I dare say, you can tell that a lot of my favourite writers are also passing familiar with the tale - grin).

If you've not seen it, go and watch. Yes, 70s tv budget, but the story, so much fun. So dark and twisted. So damn delightful.
( more: carry on up the opera house )