SFX And Doctor Who Robbed Of Quiz Victory On A Tiebreaker

Paul McGann acts as team captain for SFX at the Sky Ultimate Film Quiz

Yesterday SFX took part in a fierce battle of cinema knowledge against teams from Total Film , Empire and website HeyUGuys . The battleground was the Sky Ultimate Film quiz at Collectormania in London Olympia Two. Dave G, Rich and Russell braved the icy roads to get there, and when we got there we literally dragged Russell away from the signing area for the 1966 World Cup winning football stars, so we could go and find out who'd been allotted our guest star team captain.

And we couldn’t have been happier! Paul McGann! Doctor Who number eight! What a great guy. Okay, his film knowledge wasn’t much help, but he was great moral support, and we had a great chat with him about Penge getting bombed during the Second World War and Luther . He’s officially now one of SFX ’s favourite stars.

The Total Film team, meanwhile, teamed up with Marshall Bell ( Total Recall , G vs E , Deadwood ), Empire was lead by Alice Krige (The Borg Queen herself!) and HeyUGuys had the trigger happy (well, buzzer button happy) Carl Weathers ( Predator , In The Heat Of The Night ) – he was certainly enthusiastic but a bit of liability to be honest (sorry, UGuys).

The format was University Challenge -based, with starter questions and bonuses, and it was introduced by Mark Dolan, presenter of Sky’s 35mm show (if you don’t have Sky, he's probably more familiar from Balls Of Steel) , who introduced Russell as Jordan Farley, the ninny. (He clearly doesn’t read the mag, but we won’t hold that against him; we might hold against him the fact that he kept giving HeyUGuys clues, but they did have Weathers on their side and had minus pints for a while because of the penalties he incurred, so we’ll let that slide). In the first half SFX got off to a roaring lead thanks to Richard’s intimate knowledge of Wayne’s World , and Russell’s love of Hitchcock. We came a bit of a cropper on the music round (hell, would anybody recognise the theme from Born On The Fourth Of July except John Williams?) but were in a commanding lead by the break.

But it was a game of two halves, and Empire fought back valiantly (the blighters), until at the final whistle it was 110 all.

It was a tie-break situation…

And we were just slightly slower on the button on a question about The Odd Couple .

Bugger.

So near, and yet so far. But we feel we failed with honour. And we did talk Penge with Doctor Who.

Dave is a TV and film journalist who specializes in the science fiction and fantasy genres. He's written books about film posters and post-apocalypses, alongside writing for SFX Magazine for many years.