grumpyf1

Two words can strike terror into the heart of any parent – School play. If you’re lucky, it’ll be a tolerable affair, with some half-decent acting and not too many fumbled lines, set disasters, or one of the actors falling down and/or throwing up. At their worst, they can feel like they’re going on for days, and you start to wonder if the drama teacher is deliberately trying to get themselves fired. The choice of play often doesn’t help. An earnest Shakespearian outing, Guys and Dolls with awkward faux-American accents, or an ill-advised performance of Grease, anyone? Thought not. A school in the US has upped the stakes somewhat, by performing an adaptation of scary 1979 sci-fi blockbuster, Alien. Yes, it had the chest-bursting junior alien scene, too. Originally starring Sigourney Weaver as tough-as-nails spaceship Nostromo warrant officer Ellen Ripley, the film did a fine job of scaring the hell out of cinema-goers. In the following four decades, the alien-slowly-wipes-ou...

(Not actual size - they're probably bigger.) Some good news for the planet this week, in the battle against plastic waste. There’s an enzyme that chomps up PET, the plastic used in bottles. Left to it’s own devices, the plastic takes hundreds of years to break down. The creatively monikered PETase enzyme starts breaking it down in a handful of days. All good so far, then. Nasty plastics feed some friendly enzymes. Win-win, right? Not quite – it gets a bit creepy when you look into it. Ideonella sakaiensis is a bacterium that consumes PET. Like something out of a sci-fi film, it was discovered quietly scoffing plastic at a bottle recycling plant in Japan. Our friendly bacterium uses the enzyme as part of the snacking process. Bit weird, but fine. It seems that some plants do have a protective layer made up of something vaguely similar to polyethylene, so it’s evolved from that. Pretty damn quickly, as we’ve only been turning out plastics at scale for half a century. A ra...

BBC3’s latest Sci-Fi creation, Class, popped-up online a couple of weeks ago, with a familiar feel and a very recognisable guest appearance. Christmas is jingling it’s way towards us with alarming speed. This means (apart from eight weeks of festive songs on a loop in the shops) that the great Xmas day TV tradition is just around the corner. It’ll soon be Doctor Who Day, when an implausible plot with a snowy twist, celebrity co-stars, and a liberal dose of feel-good-factor burst forth from out goggle-boxes, temporarily distracting us from overindulgence, present-based disappointment and trying to avoid the washing up. The Doctor has made an early visit this year though, with a brief cameo appearance in BBC3’s new Sci-Fi drama, Class. Whovians will be familiar with Coal Hill Academy, where the main characters go for education, shared teenage angst, aliens and unexpected death. Originally just a good old-fashioned school with a grumpy time-traveller hanging around, it featured...

If you don't watch bonkers Sci-Fi who-will-appear-from-nowhere-this-week TV show Helix and Formula 1, this won't make much sense. Jusding by the fact that when I tweeted it, it got 1 favourite (from my wife), I can only assume the crossover audience is tiny, or I'm just a bit crappy at twitter. I'm going with the former, as my self-esteem is already quite low.