I bring you ideas!

Also from RPGnet, only the registered can read the play-by-post boards, so I asked to repost this plot hook by Gleaming Terrier on a Doctor Who PBP recruitment thread:

Oh, and as for a Christmas special, if I ever get to run a campaign, I'm having the players arrive on the planet of Raskatchewaron, on the eve of their Great Awakening, a singularity-type event which ushers in the Golden Millennium, as the computer creates scientific wonders and leaves the people free to create art the likes have never been seen in all of existence. Of course, the Time Lord forgot that the beginning didn't go off quite as planned: the computer decided that those detrimental to society were going to be removed, to allow everyone else to flourish. Of course, such genocide can't be allowed to proceed...

"Making a List, Checking it Twice..."

Happy Hogmanay! Or for those in the future, Happy New Year!

Ten Thoughts

Bleeding Cool looks at The Snowmen and partially reviews the episode but also points out connections. I hadn't made the link to the Dalek Asylum being snowy...

Happy Hogmanay!

A new Google Doodle links to the year's Google Doodles and shows what looks like a fun party in the non-time of The Big Bang.

The Doctor Who New Year Special

SFX’s Jayne Nelson imagines a Doctor Who New Year special partying with the Doctor chez Pond among other genre communities, like the Serenity crew in Firefly if you hit “Previously” or Bag End if you hit “Next”.

In reality we’ve only had one New Year special, the mostly lacking in festive cheer The End Of Time Part Two which was actually set on Boxing Day. Classic Hogmanay or New Year’s Day premieres include the one after The Feast Of Steven which was nearly a New Year special but had a bit of the Dalek plan plot. Aside from that we have The Highlanders, and the opening episodes of Day Of The Daleks and The Face Of Evil. None of them festive, per se, although the Third Doctor got stuck into the wine and cheese...

So what might a New Year special be like? The “midnight kiss” plotline Jayne suggested certainly works and sounds like it could make for a fun adventure, chasing all around the world being pursued by monsters from Christmas Island to Midway via Sydney, London and New York.

And of course, there’s always the countdown leading to something apocalyptic - see the Eighth Doctor’s entire canonical tenure, aka Enemy Within.

I’d be tempted to throw in a reference to Gregorian versus Julian calendars and the eleven missing days (I believe this features in the New Adventures books) and how the modern Western human calendar is both arbitrary and important...

Terror Of The RPGnet Links

Nathaniel Torson does a Q&A on the Time Traveller’s Companion.

Stamps Of The Doctor

A big gallery of the Doctor Who anniversary stamps.

They’re all first class stamps, in case you’re wondering why it starts with Hartnell marked “1st” but then Troughton isn’t 2nd...

Oculus

And for those missing Karen Gillan... a first photo from Oculus.

Which is about an evil mirror. And by the creator of Oculus: The Man With The Plan, a thirty-minute short I saw years ago. If so... we’re in for a scary treat.

Orphan Black

BBC America's first homebrew genre show, on the way in March. Wonder when BBC Not America gets to see it...

The Dalek Project

The Dalek Project

Second of BBC Books’ original graphic novels, it was going to be the first (starring the Tenth Doctor) but a particular episode got in the way. So now it stars the Eleventh Doctor and directly references the episode in question.

Past here, we enter the realm of spoilers...

I've mentioned a stop-motion episode before...

So I’ll just link to Alisa Stern’s How The Doctor Puppet Saved Christmas here.

A happy Christmas to all of you at home!

"I never know why, only... who."

The Snowmen

Well, that there was a whole proper episode. And then a “what? what? what?!” type of an ending. I enjoyed it, and look forward to understanding it in a few months' time...

(If you want specifics, SFX have got your back. And Bleeding Cool got your preview. New Cybermen! More Victorian adventures! Celia Imrie! Liam Cunningham! And Bigger On The Inside has your thorough analysis!)

And the musical leitmotif as the Doctor went undercover... hmm...

Very trippy new titles too - complete with slit-scan diamond tunnel effect and faint-but-spottable Doctor face in one of the vortex clouds.

Merry Christmas (if applicable in your spatio-temporal coordinates)!

Devil In The Smoke

The Lizard Woman, The Troll and The Parlour Maid get their spinoff, at least in book form...

A bigger review from Adam Tinworth.

(Hmm... since we have a detective story featuring a Sontaran among the investigators, will the classic “knocked out with a single strike from behind” bit happen to him?)

Also: Sontaran Carols.

Time!

The Time Traveller’s Companion is up for pre-order and I’m linking to the RPGnet announcement because, scroll down...

“Yep. The 50th anniversary is around the corner and the game line is under full steam to get all 11 Doctor books out next year. I’m doing a final proof on the First Doctor this week, actually.”

Edit: TTC PDF downloadable.

Dagnabbit

I see from the latest trailer for The Snowmen that another of my monster ideas has been taken. Oh well, it's validation it was a good idea...

The new TARDIS interior...

In the most detail yet!

Apart from the Doctor standing in front of the console.

(Which looks a lot like the Mike Tucker 1990 “hanging console” redesign that was only ever made as a miniature...)

Multi-platform-y, a bit dingy at the back and more blue-green, a bit more towards the 2005 version but a more metallic version? Actually oddly a bit like the Nth Doctor’s from t’RPGnet PBP I ran, designed by the Doctor’s player RM Bailey...

(And some kissing, But then, one expects kissing.)

Some spare plot hooks from The Future Of Hollywood

The annual Black List of unmade screenplays worth reading has a fair number of interesting-sounding SF/F stories in amongst the sports dramas, grim true stories and biopics.

(Hmm. Top biopic there is Dr. Seuss. Celebrity Historical material?)

Vastra Investigates

Two scenes of prelude... the second of which looks like it could actually be the start of The Snowmen...

Via Thom Marrion:

Houdini And The Space Cuckoos

Quoting the Doctor Who page...

"Earlier this year we asked who you would like to see the Doctor meet in a future adventure. We were delighted by the huge number of responses and the enormous breadth of your suggestions.

The most popular ‘nominees’ ranged from Florence Nightingale to Nikola Tesla with writers, scientists and soldiers all having their champions. We were forced to discount characters who were fictional, so Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson had to be left in Baker Street and similarly, people we’ve already seen the Doctor encounter were eliminated, which meant figures like Shakespeare were barred.

In the end, Doctor Who’s Executive Producer Caro Skinner sifted through the most popular suggestions and picked the person from history whom the Time Lord would meet in our seasonal short story… It’s the master escapologist, Harry Houdini!

And so in the 2012 Adventure Calendar’s festive tale the Doctor will encounter Houdini… The short story was written by Joseph Lidster and is called Doctor Who: Houdini and The Space Cuckoos. It’s available to download and read, exclusively from this site, starting tomorrow!"

And that was yesterday. Therefore, click here for the pdf of part one.

The Future

Steven Moffat Teases Next Year’s Doctor Who.

Not much to go on yet, apart from Neil Gaiman on Cybermen, and knowing the Mark Gatiss episode is a return to a specific period and possibly a specific group of characters...

Doctor Who: The Child Of Time

DWM’s first collection of Eleventh Doctor comics has arrived.

(With the news that the second Seventh Doctor book is on the way. Hooray!)

Written entirely (barring some edits) by Jonathan Morris and illustrated by lots of folks, this collection reprinting twenty-one issues’ stories includes standalones, almost-standalones with an arc attached, Big Two-Parters (here four-parters as the comics have that much less elbow room), comedy, horror, and a big apocalyptic super-crazy ending.

In the commentary section at the back, he notes that some ideas overlap a bit closely with the TV series at the time and other things had to change because he accidentally stepped on future episodes. I know how that feels, since in this one book he managed to hit two Celebrity Historicals I’ve suggested in this very blog, three I considered but didn’t include as they were a bit close to someone else, and one I’ve included there and featured in The Door In Time, as well as a classical reference for a monster name. (eerie music plays)

Anwyays, plenty of exciting, creepy, odd and funny ideas here...

"Cybermen?" "Miranda!"

Not such a terrifying notion really...

(It would also appear that Rob Brydon and Sarah Alexander are the controllers of the universe. I’m okay with that...)

The Shalka Doctor Versus Santa

The Shalkaverse gets a Christmas Special, two weeks before Richard E Grant appears in The Snowmen, courtesy of creator Paul Cornell’s Twelve Blogs Of Christmas, written by Chicks Unravel Time writer/editor L M Myles.

Both a viable adventure plot and an examination of this Doctor and companions’ particular quirks and foibles.

You Are In Charge...

What do you do? What do you do?!

I will answer this at some point...

Okay, now I have.

And as Google Doodled this year, happy 197th birthday, Ada Lovelace.

Need some female celebrity historicals?

There are a whole lot in the linked articles, as well as modern heroes and remarkable people of all colours and religions.

Before you know the rest of the story...

IDW have relaunched and renumbered their Doctor Who comics again with the second Issue 1 of the Eleventh Doctor era after the previous run only got to 16 (you’re never going to get to issue 450 like that, you know!) and Hypothetical Gentleman, which addresses Amy and Rory’s first anniversary, just months after losing Melody - an emotional gut-punch that the series never really addressed.

I only have the first issue (picked up in Forbidden Planet London as it was signed by artist Mark Buckingham) so I have half the story, a cliffhanger, and the significance given to that dating to go on. Issue 2 seems to be out, but I haven’t seen it, so having half a story I inevitably wonder what happens next...

Want to go to the Moon in 2020?

Do you have 1.5 billion dollars spare?

No you don't. Still, nice thought while it lasted...

Where were you in '05?

Doctors of Futures Past is a “Where I Watch” thread for the 2005 series. It looks to be a non-fan perspective, as it doesn’t mention the classic series at all in the intro.

Some consistent trends are already starting to emerge. From Rose:

“I still love the Doctor’s approach to dealing with people during a crisis, giving them rapid fire information while keeping them moving so they don't have time to panic.”

The Adventure Calendar has opened to reveal a whacking great gallery of images including single character images that would be good candidates for cardboard standees and a scandalous view of Clara's ankle.

The New Three Doctors

I have made this joke before. Because it is true.

Coming Soon: a couple hours sooner than expected

The Snowmen will be shown on Christmas Day at 5.15. The original slot for Doctor Who.

I look forward to complaints from parents' groups about it being too dark and scary for the timeslot...