The Angels Take Manhattan. The Muppets were a lot nicer about it.

Is this a happy ending or a sad ending?
It’s an ending. That’s enough.

Behind the scenes bits, running over twenty minutes total.

Behold the Nekross from Wizards Vs. Aliens!

They're sort of spiny Twi'Leks in armour. With eyes on the end of their head tails.

Toys!

The Rory figure for the Doctor Who toy range has finally gone on sale - just over 48 hours before his final episode. Still, lovely to have him.

Photos here.

And thanks to Escher at DWAITAS for reporting The Brigadier and Jo figures!

And a Shoggoth Gel Guard since it’s apparently The Three Doctors set despite having three figures and no Doctors. If I were going to have Alistair and Jo and one monster it would be Boc. But never mind, it’s a very nice Shoggoth. I particularly like the Brig’s “really, Doctor...” expression.

The Little Essentials Of Life

Today’s Google Doodle is about the 14th birthday of... Google.

Still, considering what an effect it has every day, this straightforward search engine page is worth noting. I didn’t get online until 1999 and it was already ubiquitous and essential, coming from nowhere.

Which inevitably has me thinking of ubiquitous and essential things coming from nowhere, and who might be behind them, and to what end. Google has lasted because it’s (mostly) neutral about passing out information accurately, but imagine something redirecting such an everyday essential to its own ends. What if an indispensable became an inescapable? That’s how ATMOS worked and Cybus Industries got started...

Think of the going out before you enter.

10 Best Doctor Who Companion Departures (And 5 Worst) from SFX.

Some great examples to follow, and some... less so.

DWAITAS discusses the end of a character’s run, giving it more thought than many RPGs, reflecting its importance (sometimes properly addressed, sometimes not) in the series.

The Bad Trait “Unadventurous” in its Major form is expressly designed to write characters out, which may be a bit much but certainly reflects some of these departures.

Otherwise, the general advice is to make a departing PC’s (and particularly a departing player’s) last adventure as big a deal as you can (depending on how much warning you get, of course) and that’s advice worth taking to other games.

The Waters Of Europa

A Great Lake of liquid water on one of Jupiter's moons.

The Review Of Depth

Thanks to Siskoid's look at The Daemons this week, I looked up the recent review for DWM and discovered it and many more by Gary Gillatt are on his Wordpress page. Huge, thorough, opinionated and often hilarious.

Cubed

Or The Power Of Three. Thankfully not a Charmed crossover.

SFX pretty much covers what I think. Including the mystery versus resolution issue.

Behind The Scenes with CHIBNALL! this week.

Time Lords and no companions?

From this DWAITAS thread about a game where the players are all Time Lords:

In rules terms, this shouldn't be a problem. The characters might feel a bit samey, as they all have much the same superhuman abilities (regeneration, boosted Ingenuity) but different opinions, styles and gadgets should counter this.

An alternative would be to have all the characters be remarkable in different ways - so there's a Time Lord, an unkillable man from the future, a Nestene duplicate with a human soul, a Victorian Silurian ninja detective...

One thing you could lose in character terms is the sense of wonder and surprise about travelling in time and space. Time Lords (even less experienced ones) can be blasé about meeting alien races, seeing the birth and death of stars and planets and the like. It could feel very different from regular Doctor Who.

Peter Jackson would love to direct an episode

So would many of us, but Peter Jackson saying it is rather more newsworthy.

We know it doesn't work for Daleks any more...

A bit of a spoiler for a week and a half from now.

RTD on the creation of Wizards Vs Aliens

PIRATES! again

I mentioned International Talk Like A Pirate Day (that really needs to be shortened) on the main gaming blog that you should also be reading (ahem). With links to free PDFs and everything!

I discussed classic PIRATES! last year when covering The Curse Of The Black Spot. But of course the Doctor has also met that space opera classic Space Pirates, and more recently sort-of Zombie Pirates (also in space) and once hung out with a Time Lord/Lady who called him/herself the Corsair and sometimes kept a parrot. So there be room for plenty o’ piratical action within or beyond the Golden Age of the Spanish Main.

(See also Grace O’Malley.)

An Inspector of Space and Time

Any resemblance to Inspector Spacetime is completely coincidental.

Ahem.

I have returned! Which is nice.

How would you do on Doctor Who Mastermind?

I got the last three.