Katy Perry - ET

Katy Perry's Teenage Dream album campaign is a prime example in how to convert a nation of pop lovers to your cause - and with the run of four stellar singles she's released from the album, I can safely say I count myself among those converts.

If it's consistency you're looking for, then Katy delivers; something the brilliant video for ET seems keen to establish. You don't see many artists lavishing this much care and attention on the fourth video from their album, yet here we have a stunning science-fiction flick, brimming with CGI. Normally the fourth single is just hastily thrown out there as an afterthought to mop up the last of the album's sales before the artist moves onto the next project, but here it genuinely feels like this is the next project.

The other thing I love is that Katy isn't afraid to go out there with her outfits. You feel these days that some artists are almost intimated by the ever-prevailing nature of Lady Gaga's vastly extravagant creations, so much so that they don't even dare to attempt anything on that scale. But in the ET video, Katy arguably goes one better with her 'alien' attire. Certainly, it's visually striking - and for me, genuinely chilling, as opposed to the often quasi-comical or just outright bonkers Gaga outfits. For a song that is all about 'other-ness' and things coming from beyond our world, it fits perfectly.

The whole visual feel of the video is sumptuous - very Final Fantasy meets the Fifth Element. Kanye gets to ride in one of those cool futuristic sphere things that could have come straight out of Girls Aloud's Untouchable video.

ET works so well because it's a thing of contrasts, the harsh, mechanical beats with Katy's airy, supernatural vocals... her astounding beauty (particularly in the final vampy get-up) with the unsettling nature of the alien touches. You're never quite sure how you should feel, bewitched or frightened, enchanted or scared. One thing's for sure though, it's a great song, made even better by a brilliant video.

Doctor Who series six... the wait is nearly over!

Have I mentioned before how fucking excited I am for the new series of Doctor Who? What with Outcasts coming to an end, I've been missing my weekly sci-fi fix, and when it comes to science fiction, Doctor Who is the show to end all shows. It really is the pinnacle of British TV drama and I always await its return every Easter with baited breath.

And this time round it's all about Matt Smith's second year as the Doctor; he excelled in his first series as well as in last week's brilliant Christopher and his Kind. We've all seen the US based trailers and the return of River Song and series six looks set to be potentially the show's biggest yet. Doctor Who goes BIG, as it were. Something this brand new trailer seems to emphasise even more...

Featuring a myserious astronaut cloaked in darkness, this is Doctor Who going in for the all out properly spacey sci-fi (something that at times it has held back from in recent years, instead going for the more 'domestic' focus of 'real life' stories). Consider my appetite well and truly whetted...

A night of science (and fiction)

Sunday night is a bit of a TV treat for me. We had the marvelous Wonders of the Universe first up, presented by the effortlessly cool Brian Cox. He is just such a dude. He also has the amazing capacity to make infinitely complex science ideas easy to understand. Accompanied by ultra-cool CGI visuals and a rather bizarre metaphor comparing an old prison building to a star, Cox led us on a whistle-stop tour through the elements and how they are made.

This kind of show really does just blow your mind wide open. The theories and ideas on offer and as spellbinding as they are majestically large and expansive to grasp. Major kudos to the BBC for giving such faith to a series like this and putting it in a prime-time slot, much like they did with Cox's recent Stargazing Live series. This is space, for the Facebook generation - pure scientific poetry... and all delivered in Cox's charming Northern accent.

As a big science fiction fan, anything to do with space has always fascinated me (especially when there's cool special effects). A particular favourite moment of mine from this episode was when Cox's old prison/star metaphor came to a dramatic end - the prison exploding while Cox himself walked away in slow motion as if that kind of thing happens every day. He's like the James Bond of Astronomy.

And if that wasn't enough, the night of space-based thrills continued in the form of the Outcasts series finale. Anyone's who's read my other blog posts about the show will know how much praise I have for it, and it was with a heavy heart and many emotions that I came to this last episode. And the show most definitely went out with a bang.

Fleur was absolutely amazing this episode. Her and Cass have been the beating heart of this series, but tonight Fleur was every inch the star. With the revelation she is in fact a special breed of AC, we saw her joining Rudi; leaving behind her past life in Forthaven.

Rushing through a hotbed of political drama between Tate, Julius and Jack as well as a deadly outbreak of infection, there was one moment this episode was all building too... the space-ship touching down on the surface of Carpathia. Again, this is the stuff sci-fi is designed for and My God was it amazing. Put simply, the best cliffhanger I have seen in a long, long time.

The BBC NEEDS to make another series of Outcasts. They just can't leave it there. There's so much more to explore on Carpathia...

Catching up with Outcasts - Episode 6

I'm still loving absolutely loving Outcasts, it really is the best thing on TV at the moment. I think it's such a shame that the BBC have been so quick to move it to a late night Sunday slot just because it hasn't achieved good ratings/good public feedback. The BBC is supposed to be all about championing challenging new dramas and introducing them to new audiences, so by being so limp-wristed at backing Outcasts at the first time of trouble, it really goes against this. Hopefully they'll still have the faith to make a second series, because quite frankly, there's so much more to Carpathia and its characters that I want to find out.

As it stands, we've got only a couple of episodes left to tie everything up, a rather large feat considering the dramatic end to episode five as another landing ship was revealed, floating in high-orbit over the planet. And even more chilling, Julius was in contact with it. His creepiness goes without saying; whether it's his quasi-religious speeches or silver-tongued persuasiveness, he represents himself as the ultimate manipulator.

In Episode six we got a fascinating exploration into the introduction of the idea that there are 'things' out there on Carpathia. We saw Tate 'seeing'his children, convinced they were real and not a hallucination. And now everyone sees a creepy duplicate of soldier Josie Hunter. Her kids can tell something's not quite right, and so can we, already underminding the immense swell of emotion we felt when she stumbled safely home from the dangers of the desert.

One line got to me more than any other this episode though, when one of Josie's kids tells us the fake Josie that kidnapped them 'wanted to know what love was'. This sent a chill right down my spine, similar to how I felt when I saw the skulls and bones Stella uncovered in the previous episode. We have to remember that although Outcasts has kept many traditional sci-fi elements on the back-burner, what we have here is essentially, that good old staple - an alien. A being not of Earth. Whether it will be truly 'revealed' this series remains to be seen though.

Other highlights this episode were a couple of ACs breaking into Forthaven and turning all the lights off; the sight of a disembodied hand surging up through the sand to claw a tunnel under the perimeter fence was thrilling and acted as a nice little parallel story to all the Josie Hunter stuff.

I'd like to give mention to the series' brilliant music too; the main theme and the various variations of it are beautiful and fit the look and feel of the show so well.