The Borg, The Borg, They Live In A Morgue

Well They Do!
Now, starship interiors are carefully designed, by the writers and the directors and the set creators, to look the business.  A long time ago, when Star Trek was simply an obscure Sixties cult show, the Enterprise bridge was a thing of wonder.  All those buttons!  All those screens?  Sulu's cool battle computer sight that turned up in later seasons!  And what the heck was Spock looking at with his "What The Butler Saw" machine?
     The Next Generation Enterprise was very much a child of it's time - more like Star Fleet out of Ikea than an engineering manual.  Yes, it's ergonomic design meant that crew could work comfortably for long periods of time.
     I don't have time to go looking for pictures, the PC's running like a sedated slug, so - use your Photography Of The Imagination.
     Contrast both of those designs with the Borg:

Soulless, drab and miserable.  Probably designed by First Bus

     Actually I take back that crack about a morgue.  Compared to the above, a morgue is a positively partying laugh-out-loud parlour.

Poirot - The Disappearance of Mister Davenheim
Conrad felt this particular episode paid rather too much homage to a Sherlock Holmes story, about the city gent who actually made his earnings by begging with a quick wit.  I recognised Kenneth Colley playing dual roles as well, so the end revelation was no great surprise, either.  And Agatha - or the scriptwriter - resorted to the old Rabbit Out Of A Hat Plot Resolution, again.  Mister Davenheim has been embezzling from his bank, we are told. 
     Eh what?  Where did that revelation come from?  Never a hint of it until Poirot declares it so.  How are we the audience supposed to have seen that coming?
     Less carpingly, I must commend the director and the technical services for putting on a truly excellent display of vintage racing cars.  I don't have time to do a screenshot so here's a web picture:

A monster in it's day

     These things are raced around the track, driven onto and off the pits and give an instant sense of Thirties genius locii.  The television also blends in vintage footing.  Jolly good stuff, even down to the Pathe film camera on top of a car.
     Not really anything to do with the plot, but very well done!
     There were also some nicely underplayed moments when Poirot was teaching himself various conjuring tricks, implying that David Suchet is able to do these himself, displaying skills of -

"Legerdemain"
Sorry, couldn't resist seguing from one to another.  The word is French, aptly enough, and literally translated means "lightness of hand", in other words an ability to perform apparently magical acts through skill and proficiency in creating illusions.

For example, this

     Poirot takes a phone call and knocks the whole thing down.  Then he simply picks it up erect again, as the cards are all taped together.


"The Infinite Monkey Cage"
 - is a touring BBC science show.  It's on in Manchester in October and I've applied for it*!

Conrad has registered!

     This is only the registration side of the process, and there's no guarantee that I'll get a ticket, or even two, but still - Professor Brian Cox**!

The Metro And "60 Seconds"
What a coincidence.  No, nothing about the Coincidence Hydra biting Conrad on the bum yet again, this is yesterday's feature of some gonk who used to be in Westlife***, whose name I cannot recall and who I care so little about that I'm not going to look it up.  That would require three things: 1) Effort, 2) Caring and 3) Effort. I realise that Effort is in there twice, but I'm trying to make a point here.
     Okay, Mister Whoosit just so happens to have a single coming out.  Who could have expected such an amazing coincidence to happen!  A single coming out and a spot in the Metro's paid-for-puff section!  Imagine that!  How incredibly contemporaneous!  What more can we expect?  Lions lying down with lambs?  Water running uphill?  Westlife re-forming?^

Here's a giant excavator instead of - whoever he was

On Thermonuclear War And The Train-Mobile Minuteman
Lest you be not aware, gentle reader, the "Minuteman" here is not one of Paul Revere's fellow American militiamen, but a whacking big Inter Continental Ballistic Missile weighing hundreds of tons, armed with a multi-megaton^^ warhead and with a range of 11,000 kilometres.
     Herman mentioned them in his text, yet they never went into service, and Conrad wondered why.  He suspected cost, and he was right.  An experimental train was constructed to carry missiles and crew and security, which proved to be hugely expensive, costing far more than building a silo for the missile.  Plans for six Train-Mobile Minutemen were abandoned, Congress's Oversight Committee saying that they were worried, as timetabling had been outsourced to First Bus ...

The concept.  As you can see, that's one big-ass train

* Squeals like an excited schoolgirl
** And that other bloke.
*** Hilariously known to my pub quiz partner Phil as "Pondlife"
^ Some things you just don't joke about
^^ Big.  REALLY big.