Update on plans for the future of Doctor Who

Update on plans for the future of Doctor Who at BBC.co.uk

Russell T Davies on departing, being positive about the unknown.

Roundup at Empire.

Christmas (special) is cancelled.

“the BBC will put Doctor Who out to competitive tender this year.”

The CBeebies cartoon is still happening. Beyond that,,,?

Ten plots from David Bowie's Lodger

For David Bowie’s birthday and now monthly, adventures based on his studio albums’ song titles, working backwards.

After album titles, ★, The Next Day, Reality, Heathen, Hours, Earthling, Outside The Buddha Of Suburbia, Black Tie White Noise, Never Let Me Down, Labyrinth. Tonight, Let’s Dance, Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)...

Lodger from 1979 concludes the Berlin trilogy with some experiments like two songs with basically the same chord structure.

Fantastic Voyage

Well this has to be about miniaturisation, doesn’t it?

“How can we be in here? How do we fit?”

“Miniaturisation ray.”

“How would you know that?”

“Well, there was a ray, and then we were miniaturised.”

Amy and Rory, Let’s Kill Hitler

Doctor Who has done this a few times, including going all-in on the submarining through a body with a Dalek. The Master uses a version of it to kill people and turn them into action figures.

So maybe shrink the travellers down to the size of toys - or miniatures, to be even more meta - and make them get around a house much like the one you’re playing in.

African Night Flight

The travellers visit 1920s Nairobi and the opening celebrations for a flying school. A dashing veteran scout pilot, some romantic complications, and a time travelling saboteur.

Move On

One of the travellers has a bad break-up, and the Stranger suggests speed dating through time travel.

Yassassin

The title comes from the Turkish Yaşasın, meaning ”Long Live”, so the spelling to echo assassin adds to the joke. And now rather than in 1979, “Yass” is a purposely camp positive. So... a secret agent in the Manchester Village?

Red Sails

Pirates! And probably some aliens as well.

D.J.

The travellers have to save a pirate radio station in 1963 from censors and music-hating aliens.

Look Back in Anger

The Stranger has to stop her last incarnation doing something disastrous..

Boys Keep Swinging

The travellers have to help evacuate an underground swing club in 1930s Berlin.

Repetition

One of the travellers finds himself living through the same disastrous day, can he change the ending?

Red Money

(Recycling a Relics item) The Chinese tradition of giving money in red envelopes promises good luck and prosperity for new year and other occasions like weddings. And this year every envelope given pays out double. What’s going on, and who wants to profit from it?

Doctor Who Title Card Generator

Doctor Who Title Card Generator inspired by the Star Trek one from last week.

Back in the day I had to screencap the background and add text myself. Kids today.

Ten plots from David Bowie's Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)

For David Bowie’s birthday and now monthly, adventures based on his studio albums’ song titles, working backwards.

After album titles, ★, The Next Day, Reality, Heathen, Hours, Earthling, Outside The Buddha Of Suburbia, Black Tie White Noise, Never Let Me Down, Labyrinth. Tonight, Let’s Dance...

Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) from 1980 provides the title for the second of the Gene Hunt time warp police series, Ashes To Ashes, as well as an X Files episode named after the title song. And he once performed it on The Jack Docherty Show backed by the show’s mouse mascot.

It’s No Game (No. 1)

The travellers investigate disappearances and get trapped in an alien VR game, or an escape room, or possibly an RPG. Nah, silly idea. Maybe a LARP because the monsters from Rogue were larpers rather than cosplayers. Or a game against the Toymaker. Or a chess match with Fenric. Or a football match with invaders. There’s a lot of this kind of thing, you know?

Up The Hill Backwards

The travellers are caught in an avalanche, which doesn’t seem to be natural.

Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps)

The Stranger finds herself the subject of a horror film about a shapeshifting kidnapper who can appear out of any door. This seems a tad unfair. Who made it?

Ashes To Ashes

One of the companions gets to attend his own funeral. And the date says he should be dead already.

Fashion

The travellers discover a sinister conspiracy pushing youth fashion and other trends wait that’s Josie And The Pussycats oh well do it anyway.

Teenage Wildlife

Young people being targeted by alien big game hunters. How close these are to (a) Predator or (b) fox hunters depends on the point we want to make.

Scream Like A Baby

A baby monster emerges and starts calling for its parents. Given the baby is ten feet long that could be a health hazard. Yes that’s The Abominable Snow Baby oh well do it anyway.

Kingdom Come

A Biblical apocalypse. Angels and demons fighting in the skies over the Earth. And this definitely didn’t happen in the year 1999, so what’s that about?

Because You're Young

A circle of rich old men using an alien medical device to siphon the youth out of people.

It’s No Game (No. 2)

The second round of whatever that game ended up being. But now it’s Sudden Death!

Gerry Anderson's Project SWORD

On the subject of Gerry Anderson and SF toys and saving humanity, Lizbeth Myles of Telefantasy Time Jump has written a comic based on Project SWORD, a TV series Anderson produced toys and comics for but never made the show.

Gerry Anderson's Doctor Who - a thought exercise

As a result of seeing an ad for the official Gerry Anderson channel on YT and Fireball XL5 already featuring on Telefantasy Time Jump, and looking for connections of which there are a few, got to thinking what Gerry Anderson getting to produce Doctor Who would have looked like.

Probably his live-action era, UFO and Space: 1999 and others (so we know what his Star Trek would look like) or later in the Wilderness Years.

I’d imagine lots of monsters, spaceships and miniature sets that get destroyed in great detail.

Maybe something like the UNIT era but with more futuristic and merchandisable vehicles.

But maybe with some of the Thunderbirds focus on rescue fiction in amongst alien invasions like Captain Scarlet and more?

An observation caused by an adventure

Modern Doctor Who character meeting Daleks: “Oh no, Daleks! They invaded Earth a bunch of times!”

Modern Doctor Who character meeting Cybermen: “They invaded Earth a couple times and went emotional and gave up after a day. Let’s see if they’re ready to negotiate.”

Eight plots from David Bowie's Let's Dance

For David Bowie’s birthday and now monthly, adventures based on his studio albums’ song titles, working backwards.

After album titles, ★, The Next Day, Reality, Heathen, Hours, Earthling, Outside The Buddha Of Suburbia, Black Tie White Noise, Never Let Me Down, Labyrinth. Tonight...

Or is it more than eight?

Let’s Dance from 1983 is a big crossover pop hit with songs to dance to and songs about dancing.

I could go for a season throughline here, but I'll mostly swerve dance plots. I did one last time, and having the travellers appear on Strictly might be a bit too much like The Interstellar Song Contest.

Modern Love

Internet dating, can you trust what you see on screen? Buffy and Angel did this with demons. Did Doctor Who do it with aliens?

China Girl

Why is there a beautifully made figurine of the Stranger in the window of that antique shop?

Let’s Dance

An alien diplomatic envoy and entourage arrive in modern London and they expect the reception to include (a) representatives of other alien visitors in the area like the Stranger and (b) formalities. And then there’s a murder attempt.

Without You

A few years before a companion’s home time and she bumps into - or gets a chance to see - a lost love.

Or, a sequel to Within You from Labyrinth?

Ricochet

The travellers in the Wild West face another time machine crew, here to steal precious metals ahead of a Gold Rush mining disaster. Cybermen optional.

Or, slingshot around a sun.

Criminal World

The Galactic Federation has just outlawed an entire planet? Crime planets appear in a lot of space opera settings, but does this one deserve it?

Cat People (Putting Out Fire)

Hollywood, 1942, and the travellers have to get help from filmmaker Val Lewton against, well, you can guess.

Shake It

An artificial earthquake threatening a future colony.

Or, the travellers have to staff a malt shop in 1950s California.

The Daleks' Master Plan

Now streaming the recovered and restored first and third episodes along with the second.

Two lost episodes found!

The first and third episodes of The Daleka’ Master Plan have been found and will be watchable on iPlayer at Easter.

And so the number of lost episodes goes down again.

(Shame about the Mavic Chen of it.)

Nine plots from David Bowie's Tonight

For David Bowie’s birthday, adventures based on his studio albums’ song titles.

After album titles, ★, The Next Day, Reality, Heathen, Hours, Earthling, Outside The Buddha Of Suburbia, Black Tie White Noise, Never Let Me Down, Labyrinth...

Tonight (1984) is a short album, largely covers with some of the new tracks co-written by Iggy Pop.

Loving The Alien

Well, there are plenty of ways to use this title, with or without Doctors and companions having emotional investments. So let’s say... The travellers return to their home time and find an alien visitor has become a celebrity.

Don’t Look Down

Sabotage in a future flying city! - or - A monster lurking in people’s shadows.

God Only Knows

Tome around the time Christianity should be going mainstream, and another religion seems to be gaining favour instead.

Tonight

After saving the world, the travellers find themselves guests on a late night talk show.

Neighbourhood Threat

A suburb in the heights of the Cold War, and the travellers have to help the “monsters” due on Maple Street.

Blue Jean

A second encounter with the Jean Genie, troublesome avatar of not-quite-understood American pop culture, only this time he’s nursing a broken heart.

Tumble And Twirl

Mavity has failed on a 26th century space station!

I Keep Forgettin’

Was there someone with us just now? I’m sure there were three of us in the TARDIS...

Dancing With The Big Boys

So to save the world the travellers have to make sure a teenager gets to compete in a dance contest. Life’s like that sometimes.

World Book Day

Happy World Book Day!

Peter Capaldi, Friday I'm In Love

Peter Capaldi, Friday I’m In Love live in Edinburgh

Twelve plots from David Bowie's soundtrack for Labyrinth

For David Bowie’s birthday, adventure hooks based on his studio albums’ song titles.

After album titles, ★, The Next Day, Reality, Heathen, Hours, Earthling, Outside The Buddha Of Suburbia, Black Tie White Noise, Never Let Me Down, moving to a monthly feature...

Labyrinth from 1986 was a musical collaboration between Bowie and composer Trevor Jones, as well as Bowie’s starring role in the film as Jareth the Goblin King.

The film has its own story game, so I’ll try not to re-enact it in my title ideas.

Not to be confused with any other musical Goblins and their king that we might have seen in Doctor Who (though I did use them for one) or the times Bowie played a vampire, a mage, a ghost, a demon...

Opening Titles

The travellers are guests of honour at the premiere of a new film / play / opera / installation / holoshow / other popular entertainment or baffling art piece about a previous visit by the Stranger - but someone wants to make it her final curtain!

Into The Labyrinth

An ancient/future weapon of the Time War strikes the TARDIS, randomising its internal structure. How do you get back to the control room?

(I would have done a Minotaur but they did that in The God Complex.)

Magic Dance

The travellers have to recruit the Smothers Brothers to win a dance-off with an avant-garde troupe from Alpha Centauri.

Sarah

The travellers receive a letter from Sarah Jane Smith, an investigation she could never complete.

Chilly Down

A plan to restore the polar ice, threatened by an energy corporation and a thing escaped from the ice.

Hallucination

The travellers fall into illusory worlds designed as perfect traps for each of them. Almost perfect, anyway. (Hey, I’m allowed one, right?)

As The World Falls Down

One of the travellers is newly heartbroken, and a world with a Pathetic Fallacy interface locks on to his feelings.

The Goblin Battle

Since the death of the Goblin King there are now a Prince and Princess trying to claim the throne, fighting above modern London in their air galleons.

Within You

The Stranger takes a blast from a memory thief’s weapon and the travellers fall into fragments of her past. Can they save her from her darkest moments?

Thirteen O’clock

A secret hour where impossible things happen.

Home At Last

The TARDIS lands without warning on Gallifrey, and the Stranger finds herself face to face with her family.

Underground

The map of the London Underground is a masterpiece of simplifying a complex system. The agents of chaos want to undo that. And as they do, it will cause more than a few delays...

Five Doctor Who Moments

Five Doctor Who Moments That Live In My Head Rent-Free by Lizbeth Myles