Still catching up

Dec 16 Another trailer. A quick one this time.

Dec 17 A game of Warehouseman! But with daleks! I love Warehouseman!

Dec 18 They've updated the Doctor Who Comic Maker for the upcoming special. I can't get at it, as I am not in the UK. Merry Christmas to you, BBC!

Dec 19 An interview with Russell T Davies, Julie Gardner and Phil Collinson. This is what is known as a "get" because these three rarely do interviews.

Dec 20 A link to the new Voyage of the Damned page in the Episode Guide. Somehow I think this is cheating a little.

Dec 21 Another trailer, which would be excellent if there were footage in it that wasn't in the other trailers that we've already seen.

Dec 22 Another video of the recording of the commentary track, this time for The Sound of Drums. They have a bigger room this time. That's nice to see.

Continuing the catch up

Dec 14 - A minute and a half long promo that makes the Christmas special look like a Die Hard movie. A Die Hard movie on a steamship in space, but still.

Dec 15 - A thing that says "Follow the simple instructions to make a Heavenly Host Christmas Tree Ornament. (I'm presuming that the Heavenly Host is the name of those angel dudes) I can't find the link to the instructions. No ornament for me. Boo.

I play catch up

Dec 9 - A jigsaw puzzle - complete the puzzle and you get to see a painting of the ship from the new story and then you can click through that to get a teensy chunk of script.

Dec 10 - A bunch of wallpaper photos for your desktop. Red pufferfish guy is named "Bannakaffalatta." Geoffrey Palmer looks like he could use a good rest.

Dec 11 - The official site has a podcast version of the DVD commentary, so you can tape the show when it's broadcast then play it again with the podcast synced up so you can hear a commentary. Today we get a video of the recording of the commentary track, so you can see what it looks like. It looks like they're wedged in a closet.

Dec 12 - A Tardis video game. I had no idea what I was supposed to do. So I guess I lost.

Dec 13 - Everyone behind the scenes sings "We Wish You a Merry Christmas." Considering that, as I recall correctly, this was filmed in July, they must have needed a bit of prodding to get into the spirit. Adding CGI snow helps a little.

And on the Eighth day

A 10 second trailer for Voyage of the Damned. There was some concern that this would be unviewable ouside of the UK, but I had no problem.

Boats in space. We don't see enough of those.

The sixth and seventh

For December Sixth, an audio of the choral version of "The Old Rugged Cross" which was, for some reason, left out the latest soundtrack.

For the seventh, the holiday posters that were in the background of the street scenes in the first two Christmas specials.

Christmas Cards!

For December 5, we get a selection of four print-em-out fold-em-up Christmas cards with images from the upcoming special. I'm quite taken with red pufferfish guy.

Americans watch out, you will have to resize the paper.

A twofer

For the third - a selection of "Whospy" behind the scenes pics. I loved these when they were a daily feature on the BBC Who site in the days of the first new season. I wish it would be a regular feature again.

And the Fourth - a companion (or as some might have it, "side-chick" quiz.) I was doing fine until I got to a question with a sound component and bagged, because I had the sound off and didn't want to put it back on. Perhaps later.

Moving along

The tidbit for December 2 is a short story.

I suspect that the powers that be were shooting for a feel like one of the old Doctor Who annuals (I haven't seen a recent one) - Tardis lands, picks up a new companion, goes off somewhere else, meets a new monster, quick bit of tension and the monster turns out to be peaceful. Hoo-rah! The essence of what some people think the show is about distilled down to three pages.

And it's Christmassy, in that it's all wintery. (and topical in that it's all global warmingy)

Oh why not.

The start of December sees another "Advent(ure) Calender" on the official BBC Doctor Who website. What better way to get me back into the habit of posting here than to go through and comment on every dashed one.

For Dec 1, we get a video of David Tennant and Kylie Minogue wishing all the Doctor Who fans a Merry Christmas.

Hey! Wait a minute! The Titanic sank in April! This is actually going to be a Christmas themed story?

Uploaded with Skitch!

A post bleeds from my main blog

Hey look!

Nick Courtney!


He's practically the first guest star on Jason King!

Portmeirion

Portmeirion was the location of Masque of Mandragora as well as the The Prisoner (US,UK). But I think that's common knowledge


It looks like some of the imagery has been updated. Go have a look.

who's that knocking at my door?

testing

just testing

The new season summarized

I summarize the reaction of many blogs to the third season of Doctor Who:

Smith and Jones: "When the Doctor said that he had to expel the radiation, I thought he was going to fart. He didn't. How clever is Russell T. Davies to upend fan expectation that way!"

The Shakespeare Code: "Shakespeare was sort of a dick, wasn't he?"

Gridlock: "The Macra! I had to spend fifteen minutes explaining to my significant other what the Macra were!"

Daleks in Manhattan: "Why pig people? I don't get it."

Further Research - Paradise Towers

I add another bit of value, as I try to post links to works that are related to various episodes. I'll start with a McCoy episode, as he's the last Doctor for me to post about.

High Rise, by J.G. Ballard (US UK)

In the Ballard novel, the inhabitants of an enormous, self-contained residential tower, slowly descend into madness as a result of the average day-to-day problems related to the working of the building: elevator breakdowns, power cuts, air conditioner maintenance, that sort of thing.

Mister X (US UK)

Wikipedia:

Set in Radiant City, a dystopian municipality inspired by the Bauhaus and Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, the series concerned a mysterious figure who purported to be its architect. His radical theories of ‘psychetecture’ were causing the citizenry to go mad, just as he did, and he took on the mission to repair his creation.

Another mystery

According to an entry in the About Time series of reference works, a particularly amusing moment in The Stones of Blood comes when:

Coven leader de Vries, trying to escape the wrath of a goddess, has his twittering acolyte suggest that they drive away. His line - 'Plymouth? For Heaven's sake, Martha!' - became the title of a fanzine, and the core of a scene in The League of Gentlemen.

A couple of weeks ago, finding myself with a bit more free time than usual, I decided to pull out the DVD and have a look for that line.

I spent a good two hours zipping around trying to find it. Considering that the story's running time is a half hour less than that, and the character who delivers the line is killed halfway through the second episode, I start to wonder if there are bits missing from the DVD.

The other thing I wonder is how many episodes it takes in the current series for the Doctor (or anyone else) to turn to Martha Jones and use the line.

I back up and regroup

I failed miserably at putting up a bunch of little posts before the start of the new season, which was about five hours ago.

I am taking advantage of a new Blogger widget on this page here - A Google Video/YouTube Video Bar!

It is on the side there - I think it will explain itself.

Meantime, how about making my new goal the end of the season?

I think I can do that.

A mystery

This is one of those things that has been bounced around in Doctor Who circles for a while, and I am going to try to get it all straight.

Take a look at this picture:


The guy in the back with the handlebar moustache is an actor named David Baron.

In the sixties, when he still worked as an actor, the playwright Harold Pinter was registered with Equity under the stage name "David Baron."

Is that really him? As far as I can tell, the jury is still out.

More proof that I'm not trying all that hard

Here's a couple of Doctor Who locations sites that are so excellent that I want to crawl under a rock.

First www.doctorwholocations.net is fantastically comprehensive and very easy to get lost in. We even get links to the studios where filming was done and the dates that the filming happened. I links to the locations on Streetmap.co.uk, which gives you the map from ordinance surveys.

www.doctorwholocations.org.uk on the other hand is a Google Maps mashup. The interface is sort of clunky, but it's just about as comprehensive. And you can pull their file into Google Earth!

So in case you're interested, here are all the locations (in the UK at least) at once. Now if I post more, I'm just following up.

I hate to feel like I have to post absolutely every viral video that comes my way, but...

Getting the official BBC Doctor Who Newsfeed

I am currently in the process of migrating to a new computer, and so am going through the fun of copying over the news feeds that I subscribe to. I just discovered this handy hint:

If you want to subscribe to a feed of the BBC's official Doctor Who News, the link isn't availiable on the new series news page:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/news/

It's on the news page in the "classic" program area.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/classic/news/

even though it's the same news.