The Doorman

A new comic series from the Heavy Metal stable, about watching doors between worlds...

Australia Day

The Google Doodle for Australia Day makes a showing for its indigenous people. As noted before, Doctor Who has never visited Australia (not counting a scene shot in the UK in 1966) so would one story fit a turning point in national history? Or should we look at Australian SF?

You have been watching...

An oddly not-animated Google Doodle indicates that today marks the 90th anniversary of the first demonstration of television. A rare luxury before the war, it became more common in the UK in time for the Coronation, as seen in The Idiot’s Lantern.

If you see only one Doctor Who story...

... this io9 article suggests it should be Terror Of The Zygons.

David Bowie tribute: Major Tom to Button Eyes

I am partially responsible for The Line It Is Drawn tribute to David Bowie, but not the Doctor Who reference, or this final sequence by Nick Perks.

2016 off, 2017 Moffat, 2018 Chibnall

So, there is news.

“Feels odd to be talking about leaving when I’m just starting work on the scripts for season 10, but the fact is my timey-wimey is running out. While Chris is doing his last run of Broadchurch, I’ll be finishing up on the best job in the universe and keeping the TARDIS warm for him. It took a lot of gin and tonic to talk him into this, but I am beyond delighted that one of the true stars of British Television drama will be taking the Time Lord even further into the future. At the start of season 11, Chris Chibnall will become the new showrunner of Doctor Who. And I will be thrown in a skip.”
Steven Moffat, announcing his departure.

Also, S10 will be in spring 2017, not this autumn.

In the meantime, Class is on the way...

Wilbur Scoville

A Google Doodle game for the 151st birthday of Wilbur Scoville, who measured the heat of peppers.

So, er, plot? Something about alien gourmands seeking the spiciest food in the galaxy?

Synchronicity

A new time travel film that takes an idea from Back To The Future Part II and runs with it.

Time: the series

Yes, really, just Time.

An action-adventure drama in which “an unlikely trio traveling through time to battle unknown criminals in order to protect history as we know it.”

Shawn Ryan (The Shield) and Eric Kripke (the first five years of Supernatural) are producing.

Not to be confused with the time travel comedy pilot from Phil Lord and Chris Miller which was called In Time but has apparently lost that title.

Which is also not to be confused with the film In Time.

Don’t get confused.

Are you confused?

Robert Banks Stewart

Robert Banks Stewart, creator of the Zygons and Krynoids - as well as Shoestring and Bergerac and the adaptation of The Darling Buds Of May - has died. My condolences to his family, friends and fans.

Where do you want to go next?

Now that the Eleventh Doctor book is out, what next for the RPG? By Tim Knight, Siskoid and some other guy.

Blackstar

As I noted when it came out, sort of joking but not really, the title song and video for David Bowie’s Blackstar is a great piece of nightmarish SF that would make a fantastic episode of Doctor Who. So...

David Bowie

As noted in TWH, David Bowie was a man of many faces and roles. His connections to SF and fantasy, in his music and acting and beyond, naturally included some direct and indirect links to the Doctor and his world. Among other things, including some near-miss appearances on the show, he inspired a companion for the Doctor in the comics, who changed his appearance as much as the Doctor himself.

When I started a Doctor Who play-by-post game, I called the first adventure...

And had we gotten as far as featuring the Master, that adventure would have been called The Man Who Sold The World.

Also on RPGnet, Kammerice came up with 36 adventure hooks from Bowie titles.

Happy 45th anniversaries to the Master and Jo Grant!

They both made their first appearances in Terror Of The Autons on January 2nd, 1971.

And I had to change this entry title from “anniversary” to “anniversaries” because it looked like they were married!

Which would have been a slightly odd plot hook at the time, but far from the oddest...

Happy New Planetary Rotation!