Thursday, 28 August 2025

Alrightreads: TV XX

Nick Brown, The Red Dwarf Quiz Book: Written for Smegheads by Smegheads and Definitely No Aliens

2018 / Ebook / 49 pages

***

Straight-up trivia questions without the visual puzzles of its more official and dated namesake, I was doing respectably before it got on to the later series.


Keith Topping, The Complete Slayer: An Unofficial and Unauthorized Guide to Every Episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer

2004 / Ebook / 702 pages

****

A comprehensive, no-chaff episode guide from a '90s British male perspective, for better and worse. My friend was watching the series for the first time and I didn't feel like another rewatch just yet, but this kept me up to speed for vicarious thrills and trivia.


Jonathan Blum and Kate Orman, Doctor Who: Vampire Science

1997 / Audiobook / 288 pages

***

Doctor Who's weirdly off-brand yet surprisingly significant vampire arch fiends should be a natural match for the new Byronic incarnation, but it's all too cynically 90s to fully embrace that.


Kevin J. Anderson, The X-Files: Antibodies

1997 / Audiobook / 276 pages

***

A smart sci-fiey episode, certainly better than some of those.


Joe Haldeman, Star Trek: Planet of Judgment

1977 / Audiobook / 151 pages

***

An early 'Trek book written by a bona fide sci-fi author seemed like a frontier worth exploring. It's as subtly off-brand as I'd hoped, subjecting Kirk and his redshirts to gory survival horror inside an impossible anomaly, unfortunately padded out by a tedious clip show to seemingly prove that the author has actually seen the show.