Keeper Ross Doohan aims to grab his chance to become Aberdeen’s number one – even after Dimitar Mitov returns from injury. Bulgarian international Mitov is ruled out for six weeks with a hamstring injury sustained in the 1-1 draw at Hearts. Former Celtic, Ross County and Dundee United stopper Doohan was pitched in at half-time at Tynecastle. The 26-year-old then made his first Premiership start of the season in the 1-0 loss to Celtic at Pittodrie on Wednesday. Doohan says the injury to Mitov is a disappointing way to get his chance to shine. However, after working tirelessly in the background for 18 months, he aims to deliver an argument to be Aberdeen’s permanent first choice keeper. He said: “It is a chance to go out to show what I can do and hopefully cement a place in the team. “I want to be playing every game and it was just a case of working hard every day and proving myself in training. “To get myself in the manager’s eye line. “Dimi’s been supportive the last week or so when he’s been injured with me playing and before that I was supportive of him so that’s just life as a goalie. “It’s a disappointing way to get in with Dimi getting injured but that is football. “I have been working hard in training, waiting for the chance, so I’m looking forward to hopefully getting a run of games. “There is only one position and now I have a chance to prove myself to people. “I believe in myself.” Collision with Celtic attacker Kyogo Doohan had only started once under Thelin before the injury to Mitov thrust him into the team. That solitary start under the Swede came in Suddenly he was in from the start against defending Premiership champions and current league leaders Celtic. His dream start appeared to have turned into a nightmare after only 90 seconds when Celtic’s Kyogo Furuhashi collided with the keeper. The Japanese international caught Doohan in the face with his knee. Keeper Doohan was poleaxed and needed treatment on the pitch before being given the go ahead to continue. Doohan said: “As soon as it happened I just thought, just take a minute, compose myself. “And then we went through all the protocols with the doc and the medical staff. “Everything was all clear. “You need to put your body on the line to try and get the ball but thankfully it was alright and now I just move on to the next game.” Praise for Doohan after Celtic game Signed from Forest Green Rovers last summer, Doohan has started only four games for the Dons in 18 months, only two in the Premiership. Despite the early knock to the head Doohan went on to impress against Celtic. He produced a superb diving save to keep out an Adam Idah header. Doohan spent seven years at Celtic from 2015 to 2022 and worked under Brendan Rodgers during the manager’s first spell at Parkhead. He said: “He (Rodgers) came up and spoke to me and said well done and then best of luck. “The result was disappointing but I got a good comment from Brendan and also the goalie coach there (at Celtic) and the staff here. “So I just need to look forward to the game on Saturday.” ‘At a club like Aberdeen you need to win every game’ Aberdeen host St Johnstone at Pittodrie on Saturday bidding to end a four-game winless streak. Under boss Thelin the Reds were unbeaten in the first 11 Premiership games of the season, with 10 wins. However, the Premiership matches. Doohan said: “At a club like Aberdeen you need to win every game. “We’ve been pushing to do that and working hard on the training pitch. “The team spirit from the start of the season to now has been absolutely brilliant, nothing’s changed. “It’s just we need to get going and that starts again on Saturday. “We’ve been great at the start of the season. “Now we just keep going and believe in ourselves, that’s the main thing.”
Secret Level, Amazon’s new anthology series , is a visually stunning interpretation of iconic properties, twisting classic video games to reinterpret them into brief episodes — but the Dungeons & Dragons episode misses what makes the tabletop game great. It’s not the fault of the show as a whole, made by the same team behind Love, Death & Robots . Rather, it’s a mismatch of form; the brand that Dungeons & Dragons has become simply cannot be adapted in the same way as more non-narrative video games like Pac-Man , open-world RPGs like New World: Aeternum , or even other tabletop games, like Warhammer 40,000 . After 50 years and millions of players, there’s just too much D&D for this adaptation to work. To avoid any major spoilers, the basic premise of “The Queen’s Cradle” is a standard D&D adventure plot. Based on a short story written by award-winning speculative fiction author Brooke Bolander, the 15-minute episode follows a group of adventurers who stumble upon a young boy covered in arcane tattoos held captive by a dragon cult. Through the power of found family, they are able to overcome their individual shortcomings to fight a great evil. Where the other episodes of the series feel more pointed — exploring specific themes, like the pitfalls of capitalism in the Outer Worlds episode , or totally abstract interpretations from their source materials, like the Pac-Man short — “The Queen’s Cradle” felt more like a compilation of tropes from The World’s Most Famous Tabletop Role-playing Game . Of course, some of this is certainly biased due to my own over-familiarity with Dungeons & Dragons compared to the other titles in the series. But these episodes, which are as much a reimagining as they are a tribute, are supposed to appeal to old fans as well as the new. It seems the distinctions between the narrative mediums of video games and tabletop RPGs are drastic when attempting to adapt them into short-form anthology episodes. Even in an open-world video game, players have shared experiences interacting with characters and locations provided by a development team, regardless of when or how the game is played. Meanwhile, in tabletop role-playing, every single table has a different interpretation even when playing in official D&D settings. The collaborative element of a TTRPG relies on the improvisation and adaptability of the story to the player’s needs. Video games, by their very nature, do not do that. When a game is in your mind and not a developer’s, it can be anything and everything. And so, to combat this lack of a unified play experience, the episode attempts to hit recognizable touchstones fans of D&D as a brand might recognize. In doing so, it misses the magic of what makes tabletop games special. Compared to something like Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves — which uses the genre’s tropes as a source of comedy and tension to accurately convey the game’s culture within a feature-length film — “The Queen’s Cradle” is narratively limited by the constraints of the anthology series’ format. The profound emotional bonds that develop between characters over dozens of real-life play hours cannot be shoehorned into a 15-minute episode without feeling unearned and more than a little melodramatic — at least not alongside a constant series of self-serious winks and nudges alluding to the lifestyle IP that D&D has become. While the art is still stunning (if not, on occasion, entering into the uncanny valley), it feels like “The Queen’s Cradle” is more about brand recognition than the type of powerful, grounded, and often very funny anthology storytelling the team at Love, Death & Robots is known for and does successfully in many of Secret Level ’s other episodes. More than anything else, what this episode got wrong is: D&D is not a setting, nor is it a series of recognizable tropes and characters; it’s an experience of telling a story with people you love. And that takes time this anthology just doesn’t have. Secret Level ’s first eight episodes are now streaming on Prime Video. Dungeons & Dragons Entertainment Impressions TVLocally, Leading Tech Solution Bridging Online and Offline Retail, Announces First Omni-Seller Marketplace In Partnership with Trek Bicycle