Tuesday 25 December 2018

Resolution Revelation

Well, gosh. Whoda thunk?

A Christmas Special! Of sorts.

A TARDIS Yule log, courtesy of BBC America. While the UK pulls out all the stops for Christmas Day TV, a recording of a log fire is one of the all-time classic Christmas specials in the US...

And a happy Christmas to all of you at home!

Monday 24 December 2018

Gifts from Paul Cornell

From his Twelve Blogs Of Christmas, Paul Cornell imagines Christmas specials for the first seven Doctors. Need plots? Have plots.

And also a free Hammer House Of Podcast commentary track with Paul and Lizbeth Myles for Dr. Who And The Daleks, including Paul’s impression of a Dalek artist and Lizbeth’s appreciation of tickertape, plus the favourite Hammers of a variety of artists.

Saturday 22 December 2018

Thursday 20 December 2018

Wednesday 19 December 2018

Leaving the TARDIS 2 U

Spent my entire commute today writing in my head the farewell speech Prince gives in the traditional Doctor Who regeneration finale before he regenerates into Janelle Monae. So that's where my head's at.

John Rogers on Twitter

"... heh ... so *this* is what ... it sounds ... like ... when doves --"

Thursday 13 December 2018

See You Yesterday

See You Yesterday, a new film produced by Spike Lee, about creating a time machine to save a loved on from police brutality.

Tuesday 11 December 2018

Adventure hooks

Caused by the news of no new series in 2019, an RPG.net thread of plot hooks limited to plausible budgets and featuring the Thirteenth Doctor and friends.

Friday 7 December 2018

Neural Net Titles Of The Daleks

One solution for a lack of new Who in 2019 - get a computer to write it!

... Maybe not.

Thanks to Adrian Tchaikovsky via Paul Cornell on the Twitter for the link.

Although I’m amazed nobody’s actually done The Daleks Of The Daleks.

My 1500th post here!

Thursday 6 December 2018

Sunday 2 December 2018

It Takes You Away

“We’d know if we were vampires, right?”

Fan work of the wilderness years

Radio Times looks back at the time of Wartime, the Stranger, and more, and talks to some of those involved whose names are more familiar now.

Sunday 18 November 2018

Kerblam!

“If you want it, Kerblam it!”

I did rather like putting this one out on the weekend before Black Friday.

Apparently this is the first episode with an exclamation point in the title. This seems like a shocking oversight.

Wednesday 14 November 2018

Controversial opinion...

While a Christmas special is the jewel in the crown of British TV, I think New Year’s Day fits Doctor Who better than Christmas.

(Added suspicion: it’s a way around the promise to have no classic monsters in 2018...)

Sunday 21 October 2018

Rosa

“You can walk away.”
“Rosa Parks can’t.”
“Rosa Parks doesn’t.”

Rosa gets big hero camera pans and music as well as the Doctor.

It felt very much like an episode of Timeless - a story about people trying to manipulate history, specifically American history.

Sunday 14 October 2018

The Ghost Monument

“I’m on a spaceship. Okay.”

Oooh, oner in the Cerebos cockpit.

That was a quick special guest Art Malik.

Robots in camo gear, bit Destiny rather than Call Of Duty, but then I would say that.

Monday 8 October 2018

Coming soon...

... some people! Some of them in historical costumes. Is Alan Cumming playing James the Sixth and First maybe?

Sunday 7 October 2018

Thursday 27 September 2018

Friday 21 September 2018

Mister Rogers

A Google Doodle in the US for the 51st anniversary of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, a public television series about someone who always seeks to help.

Thursday 20 September 2018

"Let's get a shift on."

New trailer, just over a minute. Spaceships! Shadows! She’s in charge, bro!

“Sometimes I see things need fixing, do what I can.”

Tuesday 11 September 2018

Joanna Baillie

A Google Doodle for Joanna Baillie, born 256 years ago today, a Scottish playwright (and descendant of William Wallace) who I must admit I had never heard of before. She had some boosting from Sir Walter Scott, and inspired Lord Byron, among others.

Wednesday 5 September 2018

Sunday, October 7th

The Woman Who Fell To Earth leads the new series, on Sundays. Likely a solid call after the last series which may not have started at the same time twice.

Since my games society meets on Sundays it’s not great for me, but, eh.

Monday 3 September 2018

Lucie Miller is coming back

io9 describes her as the best companion you’ve probably never heard of... they really should have said the best you’ve never seen.

Wednesday 8 August 2018

Tuesday 7 August 2018

A Doctor Who RPG Stream

Thanks to the announcement of new shows from Geek & Sundry at Gen Con, I discovered that their Star Trek Adventures series Shield Of Tomorrow has finished... and the GM mentioned a previous Doctor Who RPG game. So something to look through the backlog of!

Tuesday 31 July 2018

The Time Traveller's Wife, the series

The Time Traveller’s Wife to be adapted for HBO by Steven Moffat. In the interview he acknowledges having been influenced by it before.

(And will the title role get as weirdly typecast by it as Rachel McAdams?)

Friday 20 July 2018

Is that...?

Jodie Whittaker sneaking on stage to model the Doctor’s outfit in the Comic-Con fashion show for the official replica clothing line from Her Universe was delightful.

Sunday 15 July 2018

The universe is calling

Now that the teaser trailer has aired on BBC One, here it is.

And in showing the Doctor making little changes in her future companions’ lives in a flash, it makes the Doctor look like an artron-energy-powered speedster. Which I presume is just artistic licence... though with this show, you never can tell! :)

Friday 13 July 2018

Wednesday 11 July 2018

The Thirteenth Doctor toys

Various sites have photos of a variety of inevitable stylised pop culture ornaments, a costume from Her Universe, and a 12” scale figure from Character Options. No sign of anything for their classic 5” scale line, or their Star Wars style 3.75” scale.

Apparently we’re also getting Bill in 5” scale this summer, among various new and variant figures for it. In the UK they’re exclusive to B&M. So I have to find one of those, I guess.

Edit several weeks later: apparently you can get Bill from Amazon. If she’s in stock.

Tuesday 29 May 2018

Classic Doctor Who on Twitch

Today, Twitch begins a seven-week endurance run/celebration of all things old-school Doctor Who, live streaming over 500 episodes worth of adventures in Time and Space. As reported by io9, with some suggestions for specific stories to check out.

Saturday 5 May 2018

Karl Marx

Today marks the 200th birthday of Karl Marx, whose ideas (and the misinterpretation of his ideas) had a huge effect on history starting around a century later.

Thursday 3 May 2018

Georges Méliès

Sometimes Google go all in with their Doodles. To celebrate George Méliès they produced a cartoon that can be viewed in VR as well as showing the 360 view in Youtube and I don’t even know how that works.

Monday 23 April 2018

World Book Night

It’s World Book Night. Read a book. It doesn’t have to be about night. Necessarily.

Monday 26 March 2018

Rose

It was thirteen years ago today that Rose Tyler met a mysterious stranger...

Wednesday 14 March 2018

Stephen Hawking's time travel party

Stephen Hawking held a party in 2009, but the public invitation went out the day after, inviting time travellers. He said none showed up... but why did they miss it?

To add another theory, obviously they knew to stay away because history records that they did...

Thursday 8 March 2018

International Women's Day

Among other celebrations of International Women’s Day, Amelia Earhart is now available in Barbie format. Now to run Doctor Who adventures starring others in the range like Frida Kahlo (who has already appeared in DWM), Katherine Johnson (featured in an episode of Timeless), Ava DuVernay (director of A Wrinkle In Time), Olympic boxer Nicola Adams...

Friday 26 January 2018

Wilder Penfield

A Google Doodle we didn’t get here: the 127th birthday of Wilder Penfield, Canadian immigrant neurosurgeon, famous for this work on mapping the brain and its sensory functions.

His method for treating epileptic seizure was made into a short film that kicked off “I smell burnt toast!” as shorthand for oncoming brain trauma and a fairly standard joke about the subject - I used it myself a couple weeks ago, because I did actually smell burning.

Wednesday 10 January 2018

Tuesday 9 January 2018

North Korea as a setting

Tim Knight challenged me thus:
I challenge you to come up with a modern Doctor Who scenario set in North Korea ... that doesn't feature Tr*mp or some 'twist' like Kim Jong-un is a slitheen ;-)

I think Team America: World Police pretty much covered that twist. :D

For North Korea specifically, the Doctor would normally find a pretext to overthrow a dictatorship or unite a divided people, but since we can’t just do that in real life...

Kim Jong-il went after advanced technologies, which makes for obvious “unscrupulous people try to exploit aliens and/or dangerously unfamiliar technology” stories, but those are indeed obvious.

My usual trick here is looking up local history and mythology - which in this case led me to discover a South Korean hit TV show with Train To Busan star Gong Yoo playing an immortal protector sometimes called the Great And Lonely God. So if you want a Korean version of the Doctor that’s an option too!

Let’s focus on something at ground level, with relatable people on all levels.

The Iron Eater
Miners going deep in the North Korean mountains find their equipment breaking down, apparently corroding overnight. The overseer cracks down to increase productivity - himself worried about the response from the capital if the mine’s quotas fall too far behind. A veteran miner old enough to know the old myths of monsters refers to Bulgasari, a monster who eats iron - and in exchange it fights nightmares.

Is an old, forgotten bargain still in effect? Can the travellers and the miners find a way to communicate with the creature and find out why it’s sabotaging the dig before the central authorities move in? And is there something worse waiting in the depths?

(The creature also appears in a film Kim Jong-il had made by kidnapped South Korean director Shin Sang-ok.)