Okay, so "Dreamland" was pretty weak, except for a few funny bits where David Tennant brought a smidge of his typical wit and sparkle to the role. It was hard to take the computer-generated animation seriously, and the story pretty much made no sense whatsoever. But considering it was aimed at little kids and shown via the "red button" service and the children's BBC channel, it's best to take it on its own terms, as a fun bit of fluff. Who didn't want to hear David Tenant spout ridiculous Shakespearean puns like "Some are born crate, some have crateness thrust upon them?" And for me, it was pretty much worth it to watch the "grey" aliens with headbands and machine guns fighting Tractators/xenomorphs.

What did you think?

If you'll recall your pop culture history, Kaufman was a popular comedian in the 1970s who was on the TV series Taxi, and for his only starring film role he played a robot accountant in the obscure but amazing Heartbeeps (one of my favorite robot romance movies ever). After playing a robot, he became notorious for taking method comedy too far when he got into wrestling. Nobody was completely sure if Kaufman was joking or serious when he became a full-time wrestler who always fought ladies — but he died before anybody could figure it out.

Watching Spiner's "making of Dreamland" video on his new site (you can find it by clicking on the "video" link), I started to get an Andy Kaufman feeling. Is Spiner serious about this, or is it a method comedy joke? I mean, I am totally excited for him to delve back into the cheesy singing — that's a win, as far as I'm concerned. But there's none of the "yes I'm sort of kidding" stuff that went into his album Ol' Yellow Eyes. It seems like he's playing this one pretty straight. Which confuses me. And, admittedly, makes me want to stab my eyes out too.

Spiner's character Data was always one of my favorite characters on Star Trek: The Next Generation. The guy is a good actor and looks pretty damn Edward Nortony when it comes down to it. I wish this guy would get some weird roles in cool indie flicks or on Fringe or Sarah Connor Chronicles instead of doing CDs that make me . . well, worry a little bit about him.