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LEGO My Titles
Lego has always been about letting your imagination run wild, but frankly some imaginations are better than others. For instance, we could never have come up with this:
The intro to the Doctor Who expansion of Lego Dimensions is simply ingenious – not only are all of the gears and spiralling clocks and everything else in the 12th Doctor’s opening titles remade with the toy bricks, but you can spot his previous incarnations messing around at the sides of the frame.
We know what we want for Christmas. (Radio Times)
The Doctor Who level pack for Lego Dimensions is released November 6th for £26.99 (UK)
In the US it’s available NOW! (at least the starter pack) More to come in 2016. $30 (amazon)
January 19th: Cybermen & Dalek: http://www.amazon.com/Dr-Cyberman-Pack-Not-Machine-Specific/dp/B010R2RHGU/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1446636974&sr=8-2&keywords=lego+dimension+doctor+who
So what are you waiting for??
Marketing Already…
![Doctor Who - Series 9 Part 1 [DVD]](https://i0.wp.com/ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/71bNXMhoPgL._SY679_.jpg)
The Good News and The Bad News
This was heartbreaking when I read it.
Missing episode hunter Philip Morris, the man responsible for recovering nine missing episodes of Doctor Who, has told fans at a convention that he also located the missing Episode Three of The Web Of Fear, only for it to be stolen before it could be returned to the United Kingdom.
Greed and corruption hit Doctor Who fandom. Some private collector out there has one very important episode, and who knows how many more. They are more important than worldwide fandom.
Sad.
Previously missing episodes 1, 2, 4, 5, and 6 of Enemy of the World were recovered in 2013, alongside episodes 2, 4, 5, and 6 of Web of Fear, two stories from the fifth Season of Doctor Who, originally screened in 1967/8. The films had been found gathering dust in a store room at a television relay station in Nigeria.
These finds completed the two stories, with the exception of Episode Three of The Web of Fear, an important episode in the history of the series as it introduces the character of the Brigadier. At the time it was claimed that this episode was not located with the other finds. The third episode was reconstructed by the BBC Doctor Who Restoration Team, for the DVD release of the story.
However, speaking at the Pandorica 2015 convention, being held in Bristol this weekend, Philip Morris announced that when he initially located the episodes, episode 3 was indeed part of the collection.
The negotiations for the return of the episodes took over six months, and when the episodes were finally returned to the UK, episode three had vanished. Morris said he believed that after word of the find leaked out an offer was made to a member of staff at the Nigerian station, and that the episode had been sold to a private collector.
Currently 97 episodes of Doctor Who remain missing from the BBC archive.
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But some good news, for those that didn’t see it in the theatre or just wanted a copy of it.
![Doctor Who: Dark Water/Death in Heaven 3D (BD 3D / BD / DVD) [Blu-ray]](https://i0.wp.com/ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51ApCUCWsqL._SL210_.jpg)
BBC Worldwide America have released a Blu-ray + DVD Combo release of the 3D version of last year’s season finale of Doctor Who: Dark Water / Death in Heaven
The release comes hard the heels of the recent cinema event, Doctor Who: Dark Water/Death in Heaven 3D, which saw the two-part season eight climax shown in movie theaters across the United States.
Special features on the Blu-ray 3D + DVD combo pack include The Doctor’s Meditation – the special prequel scene to the first episode of season nine – and a 45-minute extended interview with Doctor Who stars Peter Capaldi and Jenna Coleman, hosted by Wil Wheaton of Star Trek fame.
I got mine at Target for $17.00
Review: Witch’s Familiar
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Well, what can I say, but that was not what I was expecting.
I guessed well enough that the Missy and Clara were teleported, rather than exterminated.
But the Evil Laurel & Hardy doubt act was fascinating.
Michelle Gomez is full on bonkers. She has no shame whatsoever. She plays it to the hilt and beyond.
They come to pit…
Clara: “throw a rock down there” to see how far it is.
Missy just pushes her off the edge and there’s an abort startle and a thump.
Missy: “20 feet”.
HILARIOUS!
And these are one set of Sewers the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles never want to visit. 🙂
‘Between us and him is everything the deadliest race in all of history can throw at us. We, on the other hand, have a pointy stick.’– Missy
Last week Clara was a “puppy”. This week “every miner needs a canary”.
Just in case in between the laughs you forgot Missy is beyond insane.
The conundrum at the cliffhanger: The resolution was predictable. But it was well played as the last scene in the episode (which I figured would be the case) after all that had gone on. It had to happen that way, for everything to work itself out in the end.
The Doctor did not create Davros. He merely influenced him. But he influenced him in a good way. It will never be enough to out way the sheer evil of the man, but it gives him some humanity/Skaro-manity. It’s an infinitesimally small bit of good in a universe of bad.
It also brings to mind the scene in which a Doctor begs River for mercy…
I wonder where they learned that from? 🙂
When Davros asked The Doctor, “Am I a Good Man?” that was chilling. It brings to light that Davros may be an evil genius and a mass murderer like no other, but ultimately he thinks he’s a good man because he help protect his “children”.
But Davros, yet again, missed a critical part of his plan.
Where is the Doctor?
Right Behind you, and 1 Step ahead! 🙂
Julian Bleach is to be commended for a Bravuro performance the likes have not been seen in 40 years. Michael Wisher done proud today.
The Doctor And Davros, share a laugh together!
WOW!
Oh, and Clara Oswald, was a Dalek Again!
HILARIOUS!
But this one doesn’t dream of Souffle’s.
And the psychology of a Dalek, not that was truly enlightening.
“I love you” = “exterminate”. Most emotions end in “exterminate”.
“I am a Dalek!” (when she tries to have an individual identity).
And Missy, rather mischievously, tried to get The Doctor to kill his own companion. When he figured that out all he said to Missy was “Run!”. Not to get away from the Daleks, but get away from him before he kills her. At least that’s how I saw it.
Missy though has no grand scheme in this two parter, it’s largely seat of the pantsuit. She proves why she is sooo dangerous.
Also The Sonic Screwdriver has bit the big one. Not at the hands of a Terileptil‘s weapon though.
Sun Glasses are cool!
And finally, they used a Classic Who solution to the TARDIS being “destroyed”. It gave my fan boy geeky heart a good turn.
The HADS makes it’s reappearance.
I Love a Classical solution. Take that NuWho’ers!!
Fascinating episode overall, and it did delve into may psychological aspects and was a cracker of a story.
Well, played Moff. Well Played.
But I have a question for Maisie Williams– The Master’s Daughter?? 🙂
Time will tell, it always does.
Review: The Magician Apprentice
If you missed it or don’t get BBC America: http://www.bbcamerica.com/doctor-who/extras/season-9-premiere-full-episode-the-magicians-apprentice/
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Ok, you have been warned…
Game Maker
Want to travel through time and space with the Doctor and Clara Oswald? The BBC’s new Doctor Who Game Maker will let you set out on an adventure of your own creation on your computer or smartphone.
The Doctor Who Game Maker is what it sounds like — a tool you can use to create custom levels of a simple game based on the BBC show “Doctor Who,” by adding items to collect, obstacles to avoid and enemies to EXTERMINATE! Once you’ve crafted a level, you can then select a character to control as you move, jump and use your sonic screwdriver or other weapons to blast your way through.
The levels you can create can be pretty detailed, and you can even navigate the TARDIS itself as you fly around and save the universe from another evil plot from one of the Doctor’s common enemies.
You can see the promo video for the Doctor Who Game Maker above, then get started crafting your own custom levels on the BBC’s Web page.
Could this be a pre-cursor of Series 9?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/25S0qlFVD98csfFrvXcLhcr/the-doctor-and-the-dalek-game
Unfortunately, it’s a game restricted to the UK in this case. 😦
Oh well, these things happen. Apparently, a lot of Brits are mad about “The Doctor’s Meditation” because the BBC says there are no plans to show the short over there.
They aren’t missing much, see yesterday’s review.
Oh well, approximately 53 1/2 hours to go until The Season Premieres it airs in Britain.
10 Things about “Day of The Doctor”
From BBC America…
1. The original title for the story was “The Time War.” This, it was felt, might’ve given too much of the game away before the story had even got started, and so the title was changed during production.
2. There are an astonishing amount of hidden references to Doctor Who—classic and modern—littered throughout the story. Never mind that all 13 Doctors make an appearance, there’s Foreman’s scrap yard, where the TARDIS was first discovered in 1963, Coal Hill School with Ian Chesterton (the Doctor’s first companion) as the chairman of governors; Headmaster W. Coburn (a combination of W for Waris Hussein, who directed the first ever episode, and Anthony Coburn, who wrote it)… and that’s all in the first few minutes.
And Ian Chesterton was mentioned on the sign as well.
Also: The activation code of Captain Jack Harkness’s vortex manipulator is 1716231163. Which is the time and date of broadcast (17:16 on the 23rd of the 11th, 1963, using the British convention of arranging dates in day/month/year order) of “An Unearthly Child,” the very first episode of Doctor Who.
3. There are also nods to the future. Particularly the quote Clara is teaching as her lesson draws to a close at Coal Hill. It’s from Marcus Aurelius, the Roman philosopher that we will later find out—in “Deep Breath”—she’s so partial to he was the poster she had on her wall as a teenager. And what does the quote say? “Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.”
Which would be a decent response to the question the Twelfth Doctor asks her at the end of “Into the Dalek,” namely: “Clara, be my pal. Tell me: Am I a good man?”
4. The dialogue in which the three Doctors remind themselves of the Doctor’s core principles is based on this section from the 1976 book The Making of Doctor Who by former Who script editor Terrance Dicks: “He never gives in, and never gives up, however overwhelming the odds against him. The Doctor believes in good and fights evil. Though often caught up in violent situations, he is a man of peace. He is never cruel or cowardly.”
5. As the true name and circumstances of John Hurt’s character had to be kept totally under wraps, he was named on the call sheet for his first day’s filming as “Omega.” This was the Time Lord villain battled by the First, Second and Third Doctor’s in 1973’s 10th anniversary adventure “The Three Doctors,” a reference guaranteed to get fan tongues wagging should the secret have leaked out. The same trick was employed when Paul McGann turned up to film his prequel “The Night of the Doctor.”
And the character was necessary when Christopher Eccleston turned down an appearance in the episode.
6. In Steven Moffat’s first draft, Clara rescued the Doctors from the Tower of London by pretending to be a witch and scaring their jailor. The door the three Doctors were attempting to open was the entrance to the Black Archive, and inside the archive itself was a photo of Peter Cushing, who played a (non-canonical) version of the First Doctor in the movies Dr Who and The Daleks (1965) and Daleks: Invasion Earth 2150 AD (1966). Kate Stewart even referring to those movies as being the work of the Doctor’s former companions, which is partly true (in a timey wimey way) since the second one starred a young Bernard Cribbins.
7. The section in which all of the Doctor’s previous selves report for duty uses audio and video footage taken from episodes from all eras of Who history. The First Doctor’s face is from “The Daleks”—with the voice provided by mimic John Guilor—while the Second Doctor’s face comes from “The Tomb Of The Cybermen” and voice from “The Seeds of Death.” The Third Doctor’s face comes from “Colony In Space” and his voice from “The Three Doctors.” The Fourth Doctor’s face is from “Planet of Evil” and the Fifth’s is from “Frontios” while his voice from “The Five Doctors.” Both the Sixth Doctor’s face and voice come from “Attack of the Cybermen” and the Seventh’s come from “Battlefield,” while the Eighth’s face comes from the 1996 TV movie Doctor Who. Which just leaves the Ninth Doctor, whose face and voice came from “The Parting of the Ways.”
8. Despite there having been a lot of music composed especially for “The Day of the Doctor” by Murray Gold, the production team elected to use some well-loved musical themes for certain sections. This meant some of the music came in handy for future broadcasts. So the theme called “Song for Four,” which had been intended for the moment when the Curator meets the Doctor towards the end of the story, was instead used in “Deep Breath” when the Twelfth Doctor and Clara return to the modern day and she receives a phone call from the Eleventh Doctor.
9. All three of the main Doctors in this story regenerate soon after it is finished (as far as we, the viewers are concerned, anyway): The War Doctor almost as soon as he gets into his TARDIS; the Tenth Doctor must have experienced these events while on his “farewell tour” in “The End of Time,” as he arrives talking to Ood Sigma about Queen Elizabeth I at the beginning of “The End of Time,” which ends in his regeneration; and the next time we see the Eleventh Doctor, he’s heading for Trenzalore.
10. “The Day of the Doctor” was shown at the same time around the globe on November 23/24, 2013. It was shown in 94 countries and in 1,500 theaters worldwide. The Guinness Book of World Records certified it as the largest ever simulcast of a television drama.
“The Day of the Doctor” airs on BBC AMERICA on Saturday, September 5 at 8:00 pm ET.
So relive a classic (even with the bloody commercials)…
A Universe without The Doctor?
The question
The Doctor has fallen, and the Daleks have managed to EXTERMINATE all other life in the universe except themselves. What happens next?
(by Radio Times Staff)
A cosmos without the Doctor scarcely bears thinking about….
He’s like fire and ice and rage.
He’s like the night, and the storm in the heart of the sun.
He’s ancient and forever.
He burns at the center of time and he can see the turn of the universe.
And… he’s wonderful.
The background
Misery loves company, and the Daleks are certainly bloody miserable. A genetically engineered race hell-bent on universal extermination, their only aim is to wipe out all non-Dalek life.
Thankfully, the Doctor’s constant vigilance has meant the Daleks have (so far) never achieved their ultimate aim of becoming the sole, supreme race in the universe.
But if, in a bleak far-off possible world, the Daleks were to finally prevail, what would they do next? After all, this isn’t the sort of species to put their metal skirts up after a hard day’s exterminating.
The Time War was supposedly created by the Time Lords because they did see a time in the distant future when the Daleks would reign supreme and they wanted to stop it.
For all Creation…
It’s hard to think of the Daleks without their age-old enemy, but when we take the Doctor and all other life forms out of the equation it gets even more intriguing.
In-fighting over the purity of the race has already scarred Dalek history; the Daleks of the New Paradigm didn’t have any problem smoking what they considered to be “impure” Daleks, while back in the classic series “Imperial” and “Renegade” factions of the species engaged in a violent civil war.
Perhaps this suggests that once all other life has been obliterated, Daleks would turn on each other in a ferocious post-apocalyptic kerfuffle about who is truly a pure breed Dalek?
Very Possible.
Ah, but hang on: in Asylum of the Daleks the Dalek Prime Minister says they do not wish to destroy all their mad, bad, malfunctioned brethren house in the Dalek loony bin. “It is offensive to us to extinguish such divine hatred,” the big tentacled cheese tells the Doctor.
Then they do it anyways. That’s a Dalek for you.
And then there is that brilliant line from the most recent series, where the ‘damaged’ Dalek in Into the Dalek tells Capaldi’s Doctor, “You are a good Dalek!”. Maybe the Doctor doesn’t even have to be exterminated for this nightmare Dalek-only vision to become (science fiction) reality?
The Doctor, The Master and The Daleks, Three Sides of the same Coin?
Hmmmm… Worth thinking about…
Fansided- The New Generations
A piece I submitted to the site “Fansided” today (so I might as well use it). It was done extemporaneously.
🙂
Let’s talk about classic monsters in the new era. I am what I call “Classically Trained” in Doctor Who, meaning I have been a fan since 1982 so I was ‘raised’ as it were on the Classic era of the show though back then it wasn’t “classic” yet.
So I am a fan who was raised on the “shaky sets” and “wobbly monsters” with the zipper up the back. I am more of a concept kind of guy rather than special/visual effects oriented fan.
The Myrka and The Skarasen excluded.
So I approach the re-introduction of Classic Who Monsters into new era much like sharing a favorite childhood toy or memory with the next generation. You want them to love it just as much as you did.
Re –introducing The Daleks I think is easy because they are just so perfect an idea. Though, then facts of their origins in World War II Cardiff are long since gone except by old timers like me, the concept is still understandable and just as frightening today. The context of an enemy that has no remorse and is relentless and ruthless is just as powerful an idea now as it was about the Nazis bombing Cardiff in World War II which was the inspiration for them by creator Terry Nation.
The Daleks are quintessentially Doctor Who. The ultimate bad guys. The ones that will always be. The Daleks will likely be in the 100th Anniversary Special in 2063. They are that strong an idea.
The Cybermen, equally so. Dr. Kit Pedler’s nightmare of people replacing their bodies with mechanical devices and eventually losing their humanity is strangely more relevant today than it was in 1966 when the Cybermen debuted because of the advances in technology and the very real possibilities that this could come true in the not-so-distant future.
They are the cautionary tale that is very relevant to today’s generation.
The Macra less so. When they appeared in “Gridlock” I had to really wonder about that one. Who in their right minds except an extreme fan boy like me would get a kick out of this appearance? You know what, I think that was the point. It really was just a thrill for older fans, the newer generations wouldn’t understand it in that context but they might want to check out Classic Who because of it.
And I think that is the best use of Classic Monsters in the new era, to get the jaded HD TV generation to sit down and enjoy a little rubber monster zipper action. To understand the joy and the wonder of a great idea and an ambition way above its means. That is Classic Who to me.
The show could not compete in budget, back in the day, but it was as boundless as Time and Space with its ideas and that since of child-like wonder and creativity should be shared with the current and future generations.
Monsters
What is more essential (pun intended) than the Monsters in Doctor Who? 🙂
The latest of the “Essential” special edition magazines from the makers of Doctor Who Magazine has been published, focusing on the monsters of the series.
Horror has been Doctor Who’s most consistent genre since the Daleks first threatened viewers in 1963. The metal-cased mutants are still notorious, but the programme’s shadows are occupied by many equally grotesque and disturbing creatures.
This is a comprehensive guide to the monsters that have been haunting our nightmares for more than 50 years. Everything from the Abzorbaloff to Zygons is covered in a richly illustrated, encyclopaedic format.
Says editor Marcus Hearn:
Doctor Who: The Secret Lives of Monsters
MY Doctor Who 