Whoa.

I have a soft spot for fan credits and trailers (as you may have gathered) but this Twelfth Doctor credits sequence showcased by io9 should be of interest to all and sundry. The logo design alone makes it worth a look.

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
Martin Luther King Jr.

A year on from Neil Armstrong’s death, his biographer looks back.

The Eleventh Doctor's Wardrobe Tests

At last!

Remember three years ago, Steven Moffat mentioned how Eleven’s costume was going to be more “pirate” and the bow tie and tweed look was a late decision? And we never got to see the wardrobe test photos?

NOW WE CAN.

New DWM, and Shalka sequels that never were

I saw Ben Aaronovitch and Paul Cornell discussing their London-based urban fantasy series last night, and oddly they both feature prominent in this months Doctor Who Magazine, although less prominently than The Twelfth Doctor of course, with a big Fact Of Fiction retrospective on Remembrance Of The Daleks and a fair bit about Scream Of The Shalka (coming soon to DVD!) in the look back at the shows return in 2005.

And now the gaming-relevant bit, plot hooks that were never made. I won’t spoil why Grant’s Ninth Doctor was so grim, but here were the proposed sequels...

Memoria by James Swallow “made good use of the TARDIS-bound Master”.

The Forest Of Ancestors by Stephen Baxter “about a race of people who were living trees”.

And chosen to be made next, Blood Of The Robots by Simon Clark: “Vorada, a planet that was a giant garbage dump where the robots worked”.

Not quite enough to start a session with, but a rubbish dump planet is certainly an evocative setting, particularly with cobbled-together robots who might go a bit Cannibalist...

It's a date!

Christopher Eccleston jokily promises to take part in the 100th anniversary special. ;)

"How very small your butter churns must be in this age!"

Via Bill Bridges: Percival Dunwoody, Idiot Time Traveler explains the woman supposedly using a mobile phone in the background of a Chaplin film. I am entirely convinced this is how it happened.

"Wherever she went, including here, it was against her better judgment."

It’s also Dorothy Parker’s 120th birthday. She’d make quite the feisty companion. Imagine what she could do with an initiative system where Talking always leads.

“There is no such hour on the present clock as 6:30, New York time. Yet, as only New Yorkers know, if you can get through the twilight, you’ll live through the night.”

Debussy

Lovely Google Doodle for Debussy’s 151st birthday, animating Claire De Lune. Nothing plotty, I just think it’s nice.

Follow Her

Via Comics Alliance, another imagined Doctor design. No link to the contest, unfortunately.

Bring me the head of the Twelfth Doctor!

Bif Bang Pow are already sculpting him for the 8” Mego-style line. Looks good so far. Of course, the style of figure does not appeal... but it looks like they have plans for Clara and John Hurt too! John Hurt hardly ever allows a likeness to be made, so that’s particularly cool.

Maybe someone I know can cast the heads and also shrink them to 5” scale...

Blood Of The Daleks vs To The Death vs Death In Blackpool

The official Doctor Who Facebook page is running a Doctor-by-Doctor monthly vote for a favourite classic story, has now reached the Eighth Doctor, and their solution to have more than one thing on the ballot was to get Paul McGann himself to pick twelve audio adventures, from arrival of the Lucie onwards:

Blood Of The Daleks
Human Resources
The Zygon Who Fell To Earth
Sisters Of The Flame
The Vengeance Of Morbius
Hothouse
Death In Blackpool
The Resurrection Of Mars
Relative Dimensions
Lucie Miller
To The Death
Dark Eyes

Good list, I think. Of course, my Eighth Doctor is in the comics (and some of the audios, not least The Chimes Of Midnight) but I would certainly watch such a series...

Kids with remote control robot. Giant robot. Versus the police.

This will end well.

I can imagine a pre-credits sequence starting the other way around. Police called to a disturbance... find a big robot stomping towards them... and pan back to a little kid controlling it.

Pyramid magazine, back when it was on newsstands, had a mini GURPS setting called Sprockets, collected in the first Best Of book in which unique and inexplicable gadgets appear all over the Earth and people get to take them over pretty much at random, with hilarious/dangerous consequences. Like the Cubes in The Power Of Three. Or Santa Wants You Dead... Put them all in the hands of kids and stand well back.

Award, award!

Congratulations on a Gold ENnie for DWAITAS (Family Game) and Silver for the TTC (Supplement)! And everyone else too, not least Night's Black Agents and Achtung Cthulhu.

We have a new Doctor, how about a Master?

The Master is a lot better at regenerating as he chooses than the Doctor. He could stay John Simm despite having died properly twice now for this reason, although maybe with another new look? Or perhaps that version has run its course, with The End Of Time being a fitting last hurrah.

Here are several other ideas. Many of which have also been suggested as possible Doctors, of course... A follow-up article runs through five popular options including Bill Nighy and goes “nah” to all of them, except Alan Rickman. Because come on, Alan Rickman!

Sadly, no female Master suggestion - Helena Bonham Carter? Miranda Richardson? Hermione Norris? Gina Bellman?

At one point it suggests that the Master (at least sometimes) deliberately chooses to reflect the Doctor, which is where this idea came from. It keeps him vital, unpredictable, like the Doctor and the series itself.

My first thought would be to run with the Master’s expertise in disguise and hypnosis, as well as a new face, and have the Doctor (and us) meet him without realising it...