Wednesday 23 April 2014

Further historical connections

It’s also Shakespeare’s 450th birthday.

And probably World Book Night.

And the day when... wait. Why do I have tally marks on my hands?

The Doctor, St. George, And The Dragon

And the Google Doodles just keep on coming. How cool is this one?

Avoiding the nationalism issue, the obvious plot hook for St. George is The Dragon. But for a bit of variety, in eastern Europe he is better known for fighting the undead. To play that straight(ish) there are plenty of other games, as covered on my other gaming blog which you should also be reading, but there’s plenty of room for dragons, vampires, knights and saints in the Whoniverse.


A chatty Smaug-ish dragon (from space, or from the depths of the Earth and the Silurian era) would be a nice change from the usual. The above from IDW’s Doctor Who: A Fairytale Life, previewed here before it came out.

Primeval had an anomaly deposit a Dracorex Hogwartsia in the Crusade era and bring it and the pursuing knight (Tony Curran, Who’s Vincent Van Gogh) to the Notting Hill Carnival, so team historian Sara had to get them both back without causing any further paradoxes. Which was a bit of a shame as a knight joining the team would have been great fun.

Tuesday 22 April 2014

Titan's comic companions

Alice Obiefune and Gabby Gonzalez join the Eleventh and Tenth Doctors on their new comic adventures.

They join a lineup of non-televised heroes dating back to John and Gillian appearing in comics at the end of the first year of the show and taking in the likes of Nick from TV Action (a black companion for the Third Doctor), Frobisher and Izzy jumping over to Big Finish and more. Welcome aboard - I can’t wait to see your adventures!

Happy Earth Day!

Brought to you according to Google by the Rufous Hummingbird, Veiled Chameleon, Puffer Fish, Dung Beetle and Japanese Macaque.

Quick - which of these have good gimmicks for monsters? The Puffer Fish inflation thing and the Dung Beetle rolling its prized possessions around in a ball, perhaps? Maybe odd but friendly monsters...

Monday 21 April 2014

The Brontës

As well as Easter (with no new Doctor Who!) today is also, according to a Google Doodle, Charlotte Brontë’s 198th birthday. Best known for Jane Eyre (which this short article spoils the end of!) she was part of a familial movement for Gothic tragedies, as well as a childhood fantasy shared world involving maps and miniatures and waitaminute...

Who-wise, I have previously suggested the Brontës for a Celebrity Historical about windswept moors and dark secrets, and that was before they visited the DWM comics as android copies wielding blaster rifles to help save the world.

Monday 7 April 2014

Who is the Other? You are number seven.

Heading into New Adventures territory here.

As I understand it from explanations of the incomplete Cartmel Master Plan, the Other is the mysterious trickster of the Rassilon/Omega era, and was a pre-Hartnell, pre-regeneration-cycle Doctor. Or maybe all the pre-Hartnell Doctors. Or...

He partially manifests in the Seventh Doctor, which is why he’s “far more than just another Time Lord.”

Or something like that.

So what if this is something Time Lords could do, back in the day? Like storing their power in a Chameleon Arch, or taking the potions of Karn.

They could program themselves - or their descendants - to regenerate into specific forms under specific circumstances.

And since not every Time Lord has much control over their regenerations (the Doctor far less than most, it seems) they might not even know about it until it’s too late.

Thursday 3 April 2014

Night Terrace

The makers of Australian Whovian podcast Splendid Chaps seek to branch out into related fiction, with the adventures of retired world-saving time traveller Anastasia Black and her unwelcome companion Eddie.

Wednesday 2 April 2014

Where would you take the TARDIS?

A question that’s always worth asking.

SF Signal asks a variety of people including Paul Cornell, Trudi Canavan, Erica Ensign and Patrick Hester, providing a variety of interesting places to go and people to meet.

There are solid bases for quite a few adventures here (including one chosen by Carole Barrowman which I’ve already run!) as well as reflections on what the chance to travel would bring.

Tuesday 1 April 2014

Brigade Temporelle

Spurred on by a question about which international Marvel heroes would be fun to feature in the movies, related to my recent post about Marvel UK, I also looked up Cool French Comics for their local superheroes including those next to Marvel reprints... and coincidentally found Time Brigade.

It’s a classic time police setup (see also TimeQuake, and Pelgrane’s Timewatch RPG) in French. Which always makes me wonder what else we’re missing due to its creation starting in other languages.

And I note that the early 2000s revival mentioned at the bottom is written by Big Name Fans and revivers of Professor Gamble the Lofficiers. Also the curators of Cool French Comics. Small world.