A happy Christmas to all of you at home!

This year has seen a new edition of the RPG, the return of The Davies due in a couple of years, a miniseries, Big Finish secure...

Paul Cornell's 12 Blogs Of Christmas

Paul Cornell presents his 12 Blogs of Christmas, this year looking at formative fannish things starting with Geoff Love and his orchestra with, among other things, a startlingly funky Doctor Who theme.

Flux: The Vanquishers

December 5th also has a special episode. Good for it!

Doctor Who can be a very oddly paced show at times. Flux is certainly an example.

And yes, a bunch of doors in time. Okay.

A festive adventure hook

Doing Christmas related plot hooks through December on the main blog, and included a Doctor Who hook.

Flux: Survivors Of The Flux

Flux: Survivors Of The Flux: Survivors Of The Flux: Survivors-

Oh, that cliffhanger had a ledge under it. Okay then.

And yes we have another separated companions and extra companion story.

Does Yaz just like that puffy sleeve jacket and culottes look? Not saying that’s a bad thing.

I assume Peggy is is boarding school?

(I like the archaeology progress talk.)

Love the huge tree TARDIS control centre.

And love the plot rather less.

November 23rd

58 years ago tonight...

Flux: Village Of The Angels

November 21st has a stronger date-specific episode than Halloween.

(Not quite hitting the anniversary on the 23rd, so not set around 1963.)

Not as standalone as the Sontaran one.

And the third episode in a row where the party gets split across time, though at least this time Yaz and Dan are together.

Flux: Once, Upon Time

And Flux episode 3 was the ongoing plot, with a chunk of the old Timeless Child bit, mixed with a nice adventure idea about time travellers being stuck in their own distorted memories. That bit is a great basis for an episode.

Also the second episode in a row to start with the travellers together and then being pulled apart into different times.

(And a character we never met before got the gratuitous Dalek and Cybermen cameos.)

Flux: War Of The Sontarans

The Halloween Apocalypse felt less like the first episode of a six-parter and more like sex pre-credit sequences, and the one with Sontarans was the start of this.

Sontarans in the Crimea! And in the present too.

Sontarans still mostly funny, so having them massacre people feels a bit jarring.

“Also, I wanted to ride a horse.” I was expecting the Doctor to just agree there.

The Doctor being angry about a human attack on a retreating enemy, but in this case letting it go.

The floating crooked house looks more Halloweeny than anything last week.

Vinder and the engineer arriving along with Yaz, and poor old lantern guy.

A planet called Time where all time runs through the Mouri and hang on is this Logopolis?

And okay, turning people to dust, but also snapping fingers threateningly? Although Passenger looks like Darkseid, the model for Thanos...

The Bad Wolf news is... hmm.

Flux: The Halloween Apocalypse

Halloween joins Christmas and New Year in having a special episode, which feels long overdue.

Although it’s not very Halloween-ish, apart from the bit with Di. One of several teaser scenes that made this feel less like part one of six and more like the pre-credits of six stories...

I like a Thor Ragnarok opening as much as the next viewer.

The Han Solo guy and the Chewbacca guy don’t start out together.

How’s the rampant speculation about Claire looking a bit like Clara going?

Don’t you just hate when someone you don’t know comes up and says they’re your archenemy? Take a ticket, blue guy.

Doctor Who: Flux

This year we get one serialised multi-part story, and now we know its title: Flux.

Starting Halloween.

Not to be confused with Doctor Who Fluxx.

One possibility for the second Davies era - spinoffs?

Russell T Davies noted that he had three Doctor Who shows on at once, and at times two behind-the-scenes shows, and that was really weird then but pretty much normal now with streaming services. So should we hope for more...?

The Second Davies Era

They pressed the Davies Button for the 60th anniversary in 2023 “and series beyond”. Feels weird.

The Einstein Engine, a free adventure for DWRPG second edition

Doctor Who And The Einstein Engine, a 22 page adventure. Not a quickstart, so knowing either first or second edition will be required.

It starts with the body of a clone of Einstein found in a mine in 1980s Australia. And yes, there is a Young Einstein reference.

First edition RPG and Doctor book bundles

At Bundle Of Holding, a collection of first edition rules and sourcebooks with the basic for twenty dollars, and the twelve Doctor sourdebook PDFs for just over two dollars each, for the next three weeks.

Next Doctor, next showrunner, next year

Jodie Whittaker and Chris Chibnall to leave after a BBC centenary special in 2022. Mixed feelings.

Second Edition PDFs and book preorders

Doctor Who: The Roleplaying Game second edition PDFs are here along with preorders for books.

RPGnet thread with a quick summary of some of the changes, like And and But being moved onto the dice getting 1s or 6s and Advantage and Disadvantage meaning rolling 3D6 and picking the best or worst.

Hold on to something!

Dan Slott's Silver Surfer was very Doctor Who but...

Comics writer Dan Slott has always said his run of Marvel’s Silver Surfer with artist Michael Allred was a love letter to Doctor Who and a number of the plots could inspire Whovian adventures, but one of the thirty stories started as a Who pitch...

One big adventure

From the Doctor Who Comic-Con panel, a teaser, a look at John Bishop in action as Dan, an introduction to Jacob Anderson as Vindor, possibly an Egyptian tomb, and news that this season will be a serial.

Doctor Who Roleplaying Game second edition

Cubicle 7 confirmed today that the Doctor Who Roleplaying Game second edition is on its way. Hardback not a box, 13 on the cover. A revised and streamlined system (how much more streamlined can it be - I would guess more unified Traits) and a bigger section of creating TARDISes and other time machines.

Darker Hue Studios on Doctor Who

Chris Spivey of Darker Hue Studios (Harlem Unbound, Haunted West, V5 Chicago By Night, Scion: Masks Of The Mythos) looking back at a 2015 post about the Doctor Who series he would write.

Loki

Now that was a fun episode of Doctor Who.

Random list of new Doctors

And of course Tilda Swinton

Happy birthday Jodie Whittaker!

Operation Time Fracture, an immersive Doctor Who adventure

Operation Time Fracture launches today in London. I would like to go to there. 

It looks to be on the interative end of immersive theatre, with the hashtag #BeTheHero. Not quite a LARP but bumping into that area. Fifty quid a go.

(English Civil) War Of The Daleks

A thread on Lead Adventure planning to make fanart floating Dalek miniatures... and set them against each other with Puritan and Royalist factions.

Eleven at Eleven

On this day eleven years ago was The Eleventh Hour, beginning the Moffat era in a surprisingly whimsical manner.

The Ninth Doctor Adventures preview

To celebrate the Ninth Doctor’s anniversary, Big Finish gives us the first audio preview of The Ninth Doctor Adventures: The Ravagers.

“So, you lied to her.”

“I meant what I said.”

Rose at 16

The new era of Doctor Who began sixteen years ago tonight. It’s been back longer than it was away. I talked about how that felt six years ago here.

The 90s comics Doctor that never quite was

Via Vworp Vworp! -

In 1997 Matt Bookman came up with a proposal for a BBC SF magazine with Doctor Who, Red Dwarf and more comics, called The Sci-Files and then Robot. It got as far as a dummy issue, with a new Doctor design.

The look is very “character actor in a mismatched historical costume” as DIY Doctors often are. The likeness started out (to me) looking quite Christopher Plummer, and then a bit Alan Rickman, and ended up kind of a blond Peter Wyngarde without the moustache.

And I like that opening. “I only know I’m running. I don’t know when I started, or where I’m going...” Of course it starts with running.

World Book Day

Celebrate World Book Day! The kid-centric one, not World Book Night.

Russell T Davies interview

Russell T Davies talks to Hollywood Reporter TV’s Top 5 about It’s A Sin, TV writing, LGBTQ+ representation, SF, and more. Starting at 49:40, going to 1:41:27. Thanks to Johanna Koljonen for the heads up.

Walker

Over on the main daily blog I'm doing a Character Creation Challenge for January, and today did Doctor Who as a number of other participants did versions of it in the last two days as well.

Eleven plots from David Bowie's Hours

David Bowie’s 1999 album Hours comes in part from the soundtrack for The Nomad Soul - which also absolutely works as an adventure hook. It was the first album by a major artist to be released online ahead of its physical launch.

“I mean, what a disappointing 21st century this has been so far, you know...”

David Bowie quoted in The Last Five Years

After ★, The Next Day, Reality and Heathen, adventures based on the album’s song titles...

Thursday’s Child

Thursday’s Child has far to go. Surely the Stranger was born that day. Maybe more than once. And what of the pupils of The Man Who Was Thursday, agents of a revolutionary cell with no real members? Where are they now?

Something In The Air

An unknown gas causing outbursts of raw emotion. Declarations of love, howls of sorrow, shrieks of fear and curses of fury. What is causing this?

Survive

Charged with a crime by an alien justice system and exiled onto a desert island with nothing but the clothes on your back. You have to survive for nine days. And something there is determined not to let you.

If I’m Dreaming My Life

Everything goes just right for one of the travellers. Suspiciously so.

Seven

Days, Sins, Samurai, Brides for Brothers? There are a lot of ways that ‘seven’ could matter.

What’s Really Happening?

The traveller from “If I’m Dreaming My Life” wakes up to find they’ve been abandoned by everyone, including the TARDIS. But have they really woken up?

The Pretty Things Are Going To Hell

The latest craze on the scene, cloning and telepresence allowing the idle rich of the 33rd Century to drop onto deathworlds, disaster tourism on a planetary level. And of course something goes wrong, following the clones’ mental link back to the source...

New Angels Of Promise

“Be not afraid...” says the herald, a firestorm of wings and eyes. What does it promise? Is it salvation, or an apocalypse? And if so, for who?

Brilliant Adventure

The Stranger is asked for an autograph by a small child. After saving a children’s author, she has become a much-loved story. But they haven’t met the author yet, and at least one the stories is about to happen.

The Dreamers

The traveller who believed they were abandoned in “What’s Really Happening?” finally tracks down the those responsible, but the TARDIS crew will have to fight to retain their sense of reality to stop them!

We All Go Through

The travellers find themselves at a vast gate, with figures sitting in judgment. Will they get a fair hearing, are there some bureaucratic tricks they can employ, and are the judges really going to let the Dalek Inquisitor bear witness?

The Master at 50

The Master first appeared at around 5:15 p.n. on this day fifty years ago, at the beginning of Terror Of The Autons. It also introduced Jo Grant and Captain Mike Yates.

(I just got that the radio telescope in Logopolis ten years later may be a callback to the Master’s first act here. Or maybe he just really likes radio telescopes.)

Revolution Of The Daleks

Revolution Of The Daleks was fine, a reference I could have missed notwithstanding. Very 2019.