Whoa.

I have a soft spot for fan credits and trailers (as you may have gathered) but this Twelfth Doctor credits sequence showcased by io9 should be of interest to all and sundry. The logo design alone makes it worth a look.

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
Martin Luther King Jr.

A year on from Neil Armstrong’s death, his biographer looks back.

The Eleventh Doctor's Wardrobe Tests

At last!

Remember three years ago, Steven Moffat mentioned how Eleven’s costume was going to be more “pirate” and the bow tie and tweed look was a late decision? And we never got to see the wardrobe test photos?

NOW WE CAN.

New DWM, and Shalka sequels that never were

I saw Ben Aaronovitch and Paul Cornell discussing their London-based urban fantasy series last night, and oddly they both feature prominent in this months Doctor Who Magazine, although less prominently than The Twelfth Doctor of course, with a big Fact Of Fiction retrospective on Remembrance Of The Daleks and a fair bit about Scream Of The Shalka (coming soon to DVD!) in the look back at the shows return in 2005.

And now the gaming-relevant bit, plot hooks that were never made. I won’t spoil why Grant’s Ninth Doctor was so grim, but here were the proposed sequels...

Memoria by James Swallow “made good use of the TARDIS-bound Master”.

The Forest Of Ancestors by Stephen Baxter “about a race of people who were living trees”.

And chosen to be made next, Blood Of The Robots by Simon Clark: “Vorada, a planet that was a giant garbage dump where the robots worked”.

Not quite enough to start a session with, but a rubbish dump planet is certainly an evocative setting, particularly with cobbled-together robots who might go a bit Cannibalist...

It's a date!

Christopher Eccleston jokily promises to take part in the 100th anniversary special. ;)

"How very small your butter churns must be in this age!"

Via Bill Bridges: Percival Dunwoody, Idiot Time Traveler explains the woman supposedly using a mobile phone in the background of a Chaplin film. I am entirely convinced this is how it happened.

"Wherever she went, including here, it was against her better judgment."

It’s also Dorothy Parker’s 120th birthday. She’d make quite the feisty companion. Imagine what she could do with an initiative system where Talking always leads.

“There is no such hour on the present clock as 6:30, New York time. Yet, as only New Yorkers know, if you can get through the twilight, you’ll live through the night.”

Debussy

Lovely Google Doodle for Debussy’s 151st birthday, animating Claire De Lune. Nothing plotty, I just think it’s nice.

Follow Her

Via Comics Alliance, another imagined Doctor design. No link to the contest, unfortunately.

Bring me the head of the Twelfth Doctor!

Bif Bang Pow are already sculpting him for the 8” Mego-style line. Looks good so far. Of course, the style of figure does not appeal... but it looks like they have plans for Clara and John Hurt too! John Hurt hardly ever allows a likeness to be made, so that’s particularly cool.

Maybe someone I know can cast the heads and also shrink them to 5” scale...

Blood Of The Daleks vs To The Death vs Death In Blackpool

The official Doctor Who Facebook page is running a Doctor-by-Doctor monthly vote for a favourite classic story, has now reached the Eighth Doctor, and their solution to have more than one thing on the ballot was to get Paul McGann himself to pick twelve audio adventures, from arrival of the Lucie onwards:

Blood Of The Daleks
Human Resources
The Zygon Who Fell To Earth
Sisters Of The Flame
The Vengeance Of Morbius
Hothouse
Death In Blackpool
The Resurrection Of Mars
Relative Dimensions
Lucie Miller
To The Death
Dark Eyes

Good list, I think. Of course, my Eighth Doctor is in the comics (and some of the audios, not least The Chimes Of Midnight) but I would certainly watch such a series...

Kids with remote control robot. Giant robot. Versus the police.

This will end well.

I can imagine a pre-credits sequence starting the other way around. Police called to a disturbance... find a big robot stomping towards them... and pan back to a little kid controlling it.

Pyramid magazine, back when it was on newsstands, had a mini GURPS setting called Sprockets, collected in the first Best Of book in which unique and inexplicable gadgets appear all over the Earth and people get to take them over pretty much at random, with hilarious/dangerous consequences. Like the Cubes in The Power Of Three. Or Santa Wants You Dead... Put them all in the hands of kids and stand well back.

Award, award!

Congratulations on a Gold ENnie for DWAITAS (Family Game) and Silver for the TTC (Supplement)! And everyone else too, not least Night's Black Agents and Achtung Cthulhu.

We have a new Doctor, how about a Master?

The Master is a lot better at regenerating as he chooses than the Doctor. He could stay John Simm despite having died properly twice now for this reason, although maybe with another new look? Or perhaps that version has run its course, with The End Of Time being a fitting last hurrah.

Here are several other ideas. Many of which have also been suggested as possible Doctors, of course... A follow-up article runs through five popular options including Bill Nighy and goes “nah” to all of them, except Alan Rickman. Because come on, Alan Rickman!

Sadly, no female Master suggestion - Helena Bonham Carter? Miranda Richardson? Hermione Norris? Gina Bellman?

At one point it suggests that the Master (at least sometimes) deliberately chooses to reflect the Doctor, which is where this idea came from. It keeps him vital, unpredictable, like the Doctor and the series itself.

My first thought would be to run with the Master’s expertise in disguise and hypnosis, as well as a new face, and have the Doctor (and us) meet him without realising it...

Five Children And Who

Today’s Google Doodle is for the birthday of children’s author Edith Nesbit.

(Although somebody really should tell them that 1858 wasn’t 89 years ago.)
(EDIT: someone has.)

Best known for The Railway Children, she also wrote updated fairytales, Shakespeare adaptations, horror stories, and a series of what would today be called YA urban fantasy, adapted by the BBC, about then-modern kids meeting a strange and mystical being who grants their wishes unreliably and takes them on adventures including trips back in time...

Most stealable title: Thirteen Ways Home.

Of course Bill Nighy was offered the role of the Doctor. How could he not have been?

Hunch over before clicking

Via DWM Time Teamster Emma:

From the people who did that Google Street View... click the arrow going into the Dalek. The result is somewhat less immersive but more revealing behind the scenes.

A sign that something may have gone wrong sometime

Via Shadows Over Scotland author Stuart Boon (who is apparently not in the armour) and taken at QCon in Dublin.

Where do you want to go?

Click the double arrow. Seriously.

It's Erwin Schrödinger's Birthday. OR IS IT?

Yes it is, according to today’s Google Doodle. But have you looked at it today? Maybe you have and maybe you haven’t. How can I be sure?

Quantum variance being what it is (or is it?) means that a time travel game like Doctor Who could allow something normally very rare in RPGs. If the characters ever reach a decision point and go one way, they can go back and go the other... As long as they avoid creating a paradox, they can go left and right. Could be useful when the room on the left proves to be a death trap...

An RPG magazine article!

It seems that there are DWAITAS and TOR articles in the next issue of Gygax Magazine. The DWAITAS article is by Jay Libby, who worked on Aliens And Creatures.

Which seems slightly out of step with the All Early D&D All The Time that the rest of the magazine seems to be. Still, this is welcome, and would be even more if Gygax was available in stores...

Initium

A short film in which time travel is possible but highly unlikely could provide inspiration for a time-is-going-wonky sequence in a big series finale, as well as being really neat.

Neil Gaiman on Twelve

Writing about Twelve, that is, not writing for Twelve. Fingers crossed there.

This post addresses his casting, as well as the Doctor’s race and gender. (He notes that a black actor has been offered the role before. I know that there was also serious talk of casting a woman as the Doctor as early as the Fifth. Those arguing against either development wouldn’t have tradition on their side if it had already happened.)

Smoke And Mirrors

Stop everything, new Doctor Puppet episode!

And now the DWAITAS news

Quoting Gar, here:

We were planning on a new core set print run anyway - stocks of the Eleventh Doctor box sets are running low. A new core set won't impact on planned schedules, like the ongoing release of the historical Doctor books. There won't be, I hope, any significant delay caused by the redesign of the core.

Remember those screentest scenes?

These? I can now easily imagine how they might sound as played by Twelve. Particularly the threatening spaceship talk (now removed from the site by request of DWM) which starts off breezy and whimsical and now I can hear the hint of menace building.

“But facts are facts, they’re behind the magic line, and that’s the way it is now.”
As read by Imaginary Matt, a cheery little smile and shrug.
As read by Imaginary Twelve, a hint of a smirk and a slight narrowing of the eyes.

Twelve really IS a fan.

An essay on how good the Doctor Who titles are, written in 1976 by the Twelfth Doctor.

And in 1972 he was kindly sent a shooting script for The Mutants and set designs by Barry Letts after a letter asking how the show is made. So that factored in to him becoming an actor in the first place.

See also Rufus Hound apologising profusley for getting something wrong live.

The Twelfth Doctor is...

I imagine if you're looking at this page you already know and/or don’t mind a spoiler, but cut anyway.

Neil deGrasse Tyson IS the Doctor! (Last one, I promise!)

Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey trailer. Neil deGrasse Tyson takes over the chair in the ship of the imagination from Carl Sagan.

The great stories, the ones that really mattered...

Also found there, Seven Things That Make A Truly Great Doctor Who Story. Most of them apply to any adventure story, but the sixth is particularly Doctor-y. And players need to remember the seventh...

Doctor Who Regenerated

From Lydia Butz, creator of Search For The Truth, comes Doctor Who Regenerated. The link goes to the first adventure, now complete including clever resolution, and followed by an aside about a perfectly natural response to “if I had a time machine where would I go?”

The Twelfth Doctors

Soon we will know.

The potential energy of a hundred uncast Twelfth Doctors is about to be released.

Do you have any questions for the Twelfth Doctor?

But for now, looking at the odds and based entirely on what the talked-up actors have done before, imagining what their Doctors and adventures might be like. All but one have been in the show, but that never stopped Colin Baker or Freema Agyeman or Karen Gillan...

Big Finish discount their first fifty Doctor Who audios

Which is nice! Stories dropped to £2.99 download or £5.00 CD include The Chimes Of Midnight, Storm Warning, Spare Parts, Jubilee, Doctor Who And The Pirates...

800 posts here, and to celebrate...

A 35-foot-tall straw Dalek looms over the countryside.

“Some people have no’ got enough to do. Definitely...”
My mother, on seeing this post.

I feel like I should offer a plot hook, something about crazy Dalek-worshipping crazy people who are crazy... but... yeah...

SUNDAY

WE WILL KNOW.

Apparently.