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!

The Husbands Of River Song

“Does sarcasm help?”
“Be a great universe if it did...”

The Lego Just In Time For Christmas

The Lego TARDIS, Eleven, Twelve, Clara, Weeping Angel and Daleks set is out! Just.

Haunted

A new illustrated story by Joseph Lidster starts today in the Doctor Who Adventure Calendar.

Beethoven

Apparently Beethoven wrote his Fifth. But according to this cute Google Doodle game for his 245th birthday, a horse tried to stop him...

Changing the history of SF and fantasy

Tonight a new Star Wars film opens. (You may have heard...) The series has affected Anglophone popular culture (including Doctor Who) immensely for decades, and it might not have happened without George Lucas getting in a car accident and deciding to get serious about filmmaking...

Of if he had managed to get the rights to make a Flash Gordon movie like he wanted...

Gene Roddenberry created Star Trek while working on other pitches, like a cop show called Police Story that was never picked up for series. What if it had been?

GURPS Time Travel mentions a parallel world lagging decades behind ours in technology due to the loss of a major SF magazine editor...

And of course, the Doctor has met Mary Shelley and various monstrous creations of science...

Marcus L. Rowland wrote a Time Lord RPG adventure about changing history to stop John Wayne becoming President and starting a third World War - it’s a great example of how culture can affect the wider world.

The Faces Of The Doctor

Paul Cornell begins his annual Twelve Blogs Of Christmas by wondering where the Doctor gets his faces from, pointing out that Twelve is the second Doctor to have met someone who looks just like him before, and One and Two had lookalike humans as well...

The Ninth Doctor is back! (in comics)

Titan go from miniseries to ongoing. Nine! Rose! Jack! Possibly the Slitheen but don’t hold your breath!

Hell Bent

“Have you been travelling?”
“From time to time...”

A spoilery synopsis and photo from the Christmas Special

As this io9 article notes, things be happening. It has a title and everything.