Samurai Flamenco: "Idol Devastation"

Hazama's crusade as Samurai Flamenco seems to be taking off. He's receiving combat training from tokusatsu legend Kaname Joji, he's successfully intervening to stop genuine street crimes, and his popularity online seems to be growing and growing. When he steps in over his head, however, things look grim - until the sudden arrival of Flamenco Girl, the sidekick he didn't know he had.

Ever since I started watching Samurai Flamenco I've been noting how it's skirted the line between being something specifically Japanese and being a riff on American works like Mark Millar's Kickass or James Gunn's Super. This episode pushes things pretty firmly on both directions. It draws pop starlet Mari Maya into Hazama's superhero plans, after some pretty clear foreshadowing last episode. It's great to have another female character in the series, even if she appears to slide pretty smoothly into stereotype.

Star Trek: The Next Generation: "The Ensigns of Command"

The Enterprise receives an unexpected message from the reclusive Sheliak Corporate, a dangerous and territorial civilization with whom the Federation has a tenuous peace treaty. Humans has been detected on a planet in Sheliak territory. The Enterprise is given a narrow deadline by which they must evacuate all colonists before the Sheliak move in and murder them all. While Picard debates treaty law with the Sheliak to buy time, Commander Data travels down to the planet to rescue the isolated humans - only to discover an entire colony that's been there for 90 years.

While "Evolution" was shaky but promising, "The Ensigns of Command" is flat-out great. It's so great, in fact, that part of the production team stole the idea a few years later to make the Deep Space Nine episode "Progress". Due to radiation in the planet's atmosphere, Data is the only member of the Enterprise crew able to travel to the surface of negotiate with the colonists. They want to stay and fight the Sheliak. Data assures them that the Sheliak will easily kill them all. They don't believe him, or want to take the chance to save their homes. When all Data is capable of is logical argument, and the logical argument has failed, how does he convince the colonists to leave and save their lives?

PSX20 #7: Tekken 3

PSX20 celebrates the 20th anniversary of Sony's Playstation videogames console by counting down my 20 favourite videogames for that platform. These aren't necessarily thebest PSX games ever made, but they are the ones I liked and played the most.

Namco's Tekken was a 1994 arcade fighting game, later ported to the PlayStation, which used the then reasonably new technology of polygon-based 3D graphics to make a more exciting experience. It lagged a year behind Sega's similar title Virtua Fighter, which was a significant hit in arcades worldwide. I was never a particularly big fan of Tekken, vastly preferring both Virtua Fighter and its 1994 sequel.

This all changed with Tekken 3, released in arcades in 1997 and then ported to the PlayStation in 1998. Graphically it represented a huge leap forward for the genre. In terms of gameplay it was more instinctively playable: you could pick up the controller and have a reasonable time, employing a fair number of special attacks and combos (combinations of button-pressing creating high-powered attacks) in pretty short order.

Porridge: 40 years on

Happy 40th anniversary to Porridge, one of the greatest television comedies ever produced - and one of the few with a pretty solid claim to being the absolute best comedy of all time. It would be ridiculous to actually pick a single-greatest comedy series, but if you were going to at least write up a shortlist then Porridge deserves to be on it.

Porridge originated in an anthology series, Seven of One, commissioned by the BBC to test out potential comedy formats for Ronnie Barker. Each episode allowed Barker to play a different character in a different situation, and whatever format seemed the most popular would be subsequently expanded into a full series. It was Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais' "Prisoner and Escort" that was deemed the most successful. It followed career criminal Norman Fletcher (Barker) on his way to prison under the supervision of guards Mackay (Fulton Mackay) and Barrowclough (Brian Wilde). The subsequent series, named Porridge after a slang term for a term in prison, premiered on 5 September 1974 and ran for three seasons, plus a feature film and a one-season spin-off titled Going Straight.

The Pull List: 3 September 2014

Caleb Monroe and Mariano Navarro's Cloaks is a new four-part miniseries from Boom Studios. I'm really digging what Boom has had to offer in recent months. I think there's been a real renaissance at that company, where they've taken a chance on a wide variety of projects and really upped their profile in the best way possible. While the market's going to be dominated by DC and Marvel for the immediate future, I think all of the really interesting stuff is now getting produced at Boom, or Image, or their elder sibling Dark Horse.

Cloaks basically takes magicians - the performative kind - and transforms them into crime-fighting superheroes, or at least that's where it seems to be headed. The first issue focuses on Adam, a street magician who uses his skills to make a fairly decent profit as a thief. Obviously that career has its risks, and it's his failure to avoid those risks that leads us into the story proper.

It's a decent set-up, and draws the reader in very nicely. Mariano Navarro's artwork is strong and distinctive, without being too showy or experimental. It was, all up, a really enjoyable comic.

While Monroe is the writer of the book it was actually created by David Henrie, star of Disney hits The Wizards of Waverly Place and That's So Raven. It's not difficult to imagine this book as a proof-of-concept pitch for a feature film, and based on this first issue I wouldn't be surprised to see Cloaks in cinemas or on television within the next two to three years. (4/5)

Boom Studios. Written by Caleb Monroe. Art by Mariano Navarro.

Under the cut: reviews of Action Comics, Aquaman, Batman Eternal, Batwing, Black Widow, Detective Comics, Lumberjanes, She-Hulk, Usagi Yojimbo and The Woods.

Star Trek: The Next Generation: "Evolution"

The Enterprise has arrived at the Kavis Alpha system to enable a noted astrophysicist, Dr Paul Stubbs, to observe a rare but easily predicted stellar phenomena. While Stubbs prepares for his once-in-a-lifetime chance, nanotechnology developed by Wesley Crusher accidentally infects the Enterprise's systems, putting the mission - and the lives of the Enterprise crew - at risk.

The second season of The Next Generation was famously beset by production difficulties. A writer's strike hampered the development of episodes and led to a four-episode cut to the season. Personality conflicts and disagreements over the series' creative direction led to the departure of Tracy Torme and Maurice Hurley. After a brief three week period where Michael I. Wagner assumed the role of executive producer, the position was transferred to newcomer Michael Piller. It was the luckiest hire than The Next Generation ever made. Piller was not only one of the best writers that the series ever had, he also had a formula for ensuring the series went from one creative strength to another.

Piller had two rules for every script he supervised: firstly, it had to be about something; secondly, it had to be about a character's growth. With Piller's arrival, Star Trek: The Next Generation stopped being a series of self-contained weekly episodes and started becoming a continuing science fiction drama for the first time - and the rest of American SF television followed suit.

Babylon 5: Season 3 in review

I remember, back when Babylon 5 was originally broadcast, that it was Season 3 that I enjoyed the most. Season 1 had been shaky as all hell, but I was at an age where if a TV series had a spaceship in it I'd doggedly watch it anyway. Season 2 was a sudden and marked improvement that actually got me hooked into the series. Season 3 struck me as genuinely great television, and I finished the season finale on the edge of my seat, desperate to see what happened next.

It's been 18 years since that first viewing, and to older eyes the season is perhaps less impressive in some aspects and more impressive in others. The overall arc is remarkably well told, and the Shadow War is introduced incrementally. It's quite a shock, after watching "Z'ha'dum", to jump back to "Matters of Honor" and see how far the story has moved in just 22 episodes. The war is fully in motion now. New characters have been introduced, others have died. Enemies like Bester have become allies, and allies like Kosh have been swapped with distanced, threatening replacements.

Who might be the next producer of Doctor Who?

Doctor Who has had many producers over the decades: Verity Lambert, John Nathan-Turner, Barry Letts, Philip Hinchcliffe, Graham Williams and a few others. In the modern post-2005 era the series has had two showrunners (a term basically describing an executive producer and creative head): Russell T Davies and Steven Moffat. Davies produced the first four seasons and some specials. By the end of 2014 Moffat will have also produced four seasons and some specials.

Steven Moffat is a broadly popular writer. He just won an Emmy. He can't produce Doctor Who forever, and nor should he: new ideas are what's kept the series running for so long. While nothing has been announced or to my knowledge even believably rumoured, it can't be too much longer before Steven Moffat hangs up his TARDIS key and hands control over to the next showrunner. It's a difficult job, since it's a technically demanding series and the BBC's flagship drama. Who could possibly take charge?

Let's have a look at some potential names. I suspect some of these guys at least will be on the BBC's shortlist. I've listed them in alphabetical order by surname.