Merry Christmas!

Doctor Who Annual obtained. Going back to the storybook format to an extent, with two longish illustrated stories as well as episode featurettes.

DWM Yearbook on the way.

Warren Ellis suggests...

Remember that time in the early 80s when Kate Bush, the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and Cranes collaborated on a Christmas song for a Doctor Who episode where everyone was heartbroken and lost in an infinite snowdrift on a planet that orbited the afterlife? Well, that’s because it never happened, but this is the fugue delusion I sank into on the fourth replay of this wonderful little winter piece by Jodie Lowther, currently available as a free/pay-what-you-want stream/download. Lovely sound to come home to.

I can see exactly what he means.

Paul Cornell's Twelve Blogs Of Christmas

And today... a Doctor Who Christmas story by Juliet E. McKenna, unseen for fifteen years because it features the Doctor meeting Charles Dickens.

Bertha von Suttner

Bertha von Suttner was the first woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize, on this day in 1905.

Suttner is perhaps best known for writing the anti-war novel Lay Down Your Arms, which was first published in 1889 and explores the impact of conflict on women.

Trailer 2

Fewer Cybermen than you might expect in the new trailer released on Cyber Monday...

Advent(ure) calendar

Meanwhile on my main blog, Christmassy ideas.

Bow ties are cool

The first new series trailer for the anniversary brings us the Doctor in a tux!

Also, Cybermen and stuff.

Guest stars

One-time Doctor Sir Lenny Henry, Stephen Fry, Goran Visnjic (recently in Timeless) possibly as Tesla so check that historical character off the list...

Museo del Prado

The 200th anniversary of the Madrid art museum, home to over a thousand works on its walls and far more in its collection. Plenty to see and do, and possible ideas for times to travel to...

A Doctor Who idea from Dan Slott

(Dan Slott, writer of the Marvel Silver Surfer run that the most Whovian thing of that year.)

Here on Twitter

What's one controversial thing that you would do if you were the show the runner of #DoctorWho for a series?

The Doctor stops the Master from his latest doomsday scheme... but both are caught in the resulting blast.

2 regenerated beings emerge, their clothes burnt beyond recognition.

Both claim (or believe) they're the Doctor.

We don't let the viewers know till the end of the season.

23rd of November

The anniversary... and apparently the next trailer! Or something!

Guess who's back...

No, who, not Who. Pictures from filming show... well, adding the label would be a spoiler.

The Doctor is a doctor

Sheffield Hallam University presents honorary doctorates to Jodie Whittaker, Chris Chibnall, and more, honouring the cast and crew.

Doctor Who Magazine at 40

Many happy returns!

Mission To The Unknown

Mission To The Unknown can be known again!

The Woman Who Fell To Earth A Year Ago

And reported that the next series has now wrapped filming.

German Reunification Day 2019

German Reunification Day - next year will be the 30th anniversary.

Always worth checking international Google Doodles

Mission To The Unknown

A full remake of lost episode Mission To The Unknown, made by students, goes online on the Doctor Who Youtube channel next week for the anniversary of the original screening.

Freema Agyeman is a doctor, again

New Amsterdam - the hospital show, not the 2008 immortal detective show - also has Janet Montgomery as the hardboiled head of the ER and Tyler Labine in the psychological department. Which would make a solid TARDIS lineup...

The Twelfth Doctor sourcebook

New from Cubicle 7 today!

Terrance Dicks

Terrence Dicks has died, age 84. Tributes from writers and other fans including Neil Gaiman.

Apollo 11

Tonight at 3.56 a.m. local time it will be fifty years since human beings walked on the Moon.

Google talked to Mike Collins for their front page animation. Even in this brief interview I learned something - the “barbecue roll” to control the temperature of the vessel as it was in constant sunlight through the voyage.

Media coverage included a BBC Stargazing special talking about what NASA plans to do next, including a test drive of a prototype Mars rover.

Also today, three travellers arrived at the International Space Station.

Look back, look forward, and look up.

Jon Pertwee centenary

Celebrated with a big hi-def season rerelease, a documentary presented by his son Sean, a related interview and more, Jon Pertwee was born a hundred years ago today.

Pan Tadeusz

A Google Doodle today in Poland, Lithuania and Belarus, here in and Iceland, for the 185th anniversary of the publication of Pan Tadeusz, an epic poem by Polish writer and activist.

Wikipedia
Independent news story

While we usually associate epic poems with myth and legends, Pan Tadeusz is historical fiction about the region during the Napoleonic war.

Twenty years of Big Finish Who

Big Finish celebrates twenty years of Doctor Who audio with twenty hours free to listen, including interviews, as well as a preview of their new anniversary series The Legacy Of Time.

Years And Years And Children Of Earth

As previously noted, Years And Years is an idea Russell T Davies has had a while, with Turn Left as a foretaste, but he also mentioned in The Writer’s Tale that it was nearly the end of Children of Earth...

Character Class

I mean... Class characters for DWAITAS, thanks to Siskoid.

A first look at series 12

From the official Who Twitter:

Years And Years 1

Tonight saw the start of Russell T Davies’s Years And Years on BBC One and it’s very Russell T Davies, including some familiar faces in the cast and a thundering Murray Gold soundtrack.

Starting today (with the death of Doris Day on the radio added Drop The Dead Donkey style just before broadcast) it then jumps through five yeas to shows a normal family (Lyons, possibly a reference to this 50s British domestic saga?) dealing with life in 2024 and beyond. And let’s just say it escalates rather quickly.

It really did remind me of Turn Left, Donna Noble’s finest hour, just without her way of fixing things available so I’m not holding out much hope for a happy ending when we reach the 2030s.

Some of the “oh no, what will the future be like?” and “haven’t you read the news?” dialogue clangs, but there’s some lovely observation stuff too. And a funny robot, in a very post-watershed way.

GMing advice from Morgan Davie

Morgan Davie, friend and writer for C7’s Who line, was asked about GMing advice and responded on Twitter.

Years And Years, from Russell T Davies

Years And Years, a new series by Russell T Davies, starting next week on BBC One. His work has touched on this before with Donna’s parallel future in Turn Left, though this will give us more time with the family dealing with a frightening future.

Cubicle 7 at 10

To celebrate, big savings on Doctor Who bundles from C7.

World Book Night

Read a book!

Séance and Sensibility

Legends Of Tomorrow has just done a Jane Austen episode (complete with a Bollywood style musical number) and Doctor Who hasn’t?

Yuri's Night

Tonight in 1961, a human being went into space.

14 years of the new Doctor Who

Rose was first broadcast at 7 p.m. on March 26th, 2005.

Happy International Women's Day!

“Honestly, if I was still a bloke, I could get on with the job and not have to waste time defending myself!”
The Doctor, The Witchfinders

Happy World Book Day!

Hear The Iron Legion! Sound Of The Star Beast!

Big Finish are releasing adaptations of those early Doctor Who Weekly comic strips that I keep talking about. Will more follow?

Happy Lunar New Year!

We do not get a new Doctor Who episode for it.

A sufficiently weird SF setting becomes Whovian

This RPGnet thread of ideas for the solar system in a superhero setting offers a mix of science news, weird conspiracies, and quite a few things seen in Doctor Who.

Martin Luther King Day

The time is always right to do what is right.

Sake Dean Mahomed

A Google Doodle for the 225th anniversary of The Travels of Dean Mahomet, the first English-language book by an Indian author, Sake Dean Mahomed, who went on to opened London’s first Indian restaurant and brought the word shampoo to the English language.

A 13-style character sheet and more

Doctor Who RPG stats for Rosa Parks, James the VI and I, Tim Shaw and PTing, as well as a blank character sheet in 13th Doctor style, thanks to Siskoid.

Eleven plots from David Bowie's Reality

For David Bowie’s birthday, following ★ and The Next Day, going back another album to plot hooks inspired by the song titles for Reality:

Resolution

“Humanity will surrender!”
“They really won’t, trust me.”

Happy new year!