Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 424: Terror of the Zygons, Episode Four

Dear diary,

Yesterday, I spent a bit of time complaining (well, not so much complaining... ‘musing’, maybe) about the fact that although the spaceship taking off and heading away from Scotland was a fairly good effect, any sense of scale was lost, and that I simply couldn’t get a handle on it. It’s almost as if the story is trying to prove a point, now, by using a few very well done forced perspective shots to show people looking tiny in comparison! I have to admit that I was completely taken by surprise the first time it happened, and even had to wind the episode back a few seconds just to check I hadn’t imagined it.

The extreme close-up means that we get a good look at the model of the Zygon ship - it really is quite a lovely design, isn’t it? There are some spaceship designs in Doctor Who - such as the Jagaroth ship from City of Death, the Sontaran pods, the modern-series Dalek saucers, or even the TARDIS itself - which are pretty well known, and I’m surprised that I’ve not encountered this Zygon one before. My only slight gripe is that it doesn’t match up as neatly with the inside of the ship, and it’s the only weak link in the cohesive ‘organic’design right across Zygon technology. A minor complaint, though, because it’s a beautiful ship all of its own!

While I’m on the subject of model work, I need to bring up the Skarasen. I’ve been swinging slightly between loving it and being less sure right the way through the story, but this episode contains perhaps its most infamous moment. Fans often bring up ‘the Skarasen in the Thames’ when making a list of those effects where the series hasn’t quite got it right, but when it appeared in shot, CSO’d in behind Tom Baker, I was actually quite impressed. I was ready to say that people were complaining over nothing!

And then we cut away to a shot of a hand-puppet Skarasen, sticking its head up above the side of the river, and everything falls to pieces. While something in the design of the creature hasn’t really worked for me all along (it’s still something to do with the face. I wonder if it’s too similar to the dinosaur from Doctor Who and the Silurians?), the model work up to now has been pulled off rather well. This effect just feels a bit cheap right at the end - it does let things down somewhat.

At one point today, when the Doctor has blown up the Zygon ship (in perhaps the serial’s best effect. You see little sections of the ship blow up first, before the whole thing finally goes. It’s very well done...), he turns to the Brigadier and asks if it was a big enough ‘bang’ for him. I was all prepared to make a point about them blowing something big up every time a new incarnation of the Doctor has a second adventure with the Brig, citing this as the example for Tom Baker, the Silurian base as the Jon Pertwee incident (setting up a long tradition throughout that era of simply blowing up the main location at the end), and for Troughton’s second adventure with the Brig, in The Invasion... ah. They don’t really blow anything big up. Darn, I thought I was on to an interesting and never-before- noticed point there. Still, as if on cue to make me feel better, we get a lovely establishing shot of the river, before the camera pans around to show us a shot of the World Energy Conference building... and it’s the former headquarters of International Electromatics! I like to imagine that the government have converted the building since the attempted Cyberman invasion.

Ah, but all of this is simply me dodging a point that I need to make... because it’s the last we’ll be seeing of the Brigadier for a long time in this marathon. It’ll be about another six months of so until I see him again, and for viewers at the time, it was around seven years until his next appearance. I was waiting for there to be some kind of fantastic final line for him, some send-off after so many years of loyal service to the programme (he’s been popping up for well over half of Doctor Who’s life by now, which makes him a pretty important and recognisable element), but it doesn’t really come. Of course, at the time, they didn’t know that this was the end for the character in the short-term - heck, UNIT will be back later this seasonwithout him - so I suppose they didn’t feel any need for him to be given a send off.

I’ve been wondering throughout this story if it’ll feel odd to not have Nick Courtney around for so long... but I don’t think it will, really. Both he and UNIT were far less integral to the Pertwee years than I’d ever realised (even by Season Nine they only really turn up to top- and-tail the seasons), and watching through Season Twelve, in which they only appear for a fifth of the stories didn’t feel particularly as though they were missing. Still, it marks yet another step in the programme’s evolution, as it finally outgrows the boys’ action adventure serial format, and continues its shift into more gothic areas.

Acclaimed British screenwriter, producer and actor Mark Gatiss will be visiting Brazil in March in a special publicity tour for BBC Worldwide to talk about British drama including international TV sensation Sherlock and his work on global hit Doctor Who, which celebrated its 50th Anniversary last year.

Gatiss, who is the co-creator and executive producer of Sherlock which has sold to over 200 territories across the world, has been invited to speak at the prestigious Rio Content Market – an annual industry event for producers, TV content buyers and commissioners in Latin America. At the conference, he will be giving a presentation on his career in British drama with a focus on Sherlock and also An Adventure in Space and Time – the drama about the genesis of Doctor Who which he wrote and produced last year as part of the brand’s 50th Anniversary celebrations. He will also talk about his work writing for and acting in various episodes of the sci-fi series. The event will be hosted by TV journalist Liv Brandao and Brazilian stage director Claudio Botelho.

As part of the tour, Mark will also be meeting fans at two events specially organised by BBC Worldwide. The first will be a screening of The Empty Hearse – the opening episode of the latest series of Sherlock, written by Gatiss and in which he stars alongside Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock’s brother Mycroft Holmes. The screening will take place at Livraria Cultura (Cine Victoria) in Rio de Janeiro on Friday 14th March at 7pm. As part of the event, Mark will take part in a Q and A and signing session with fans.

The second event will take place at Livraria Cultura (Shopping Iguatemi) in Sao Paulo at 7pm on Saturday 15th March. Fans will have the opportunity to ask questions about Mark’s work Doctor Who, Sherlock and the recent drama An Adventure in Space and Time.  He will also take part in a limited signing of Sherlock and Doctor Who merchandise. Further details of both events and how to obtain tickets will be released soon on www.doctorwho.tv/events. Details of the venues can be found at http://www.livrariacultura.com.br/

Commenting on the forthcoming tour Mark Gatiss says:

“It’s fantastic that British TV is being enjoyed all across the world and I’m really looking forward to meeting Brazilian Doctor Who and Sherlock fans!”

Sherlock and Doctor Who have both seen notable growth in Latin America in the last year, with a huge number of fans engaging with both shows on social media. The official Sherlock Facebook page has seen an 80% increase in the number of Brazilian fans in the last year and the Doctor Who page a 54% increase – the highest for any country in the world. Both series air on BBC HD and BBC Entertianment in Brazil which are pay-TV channel wholly owned and operated by BBC Worldwide. They are also both available on Netflix Latin America.

+  Download DWO's 'iWho' Doctor Who App for iOS! 
+  Download DWO's 'iSherlock' App for iOS!  

[Sources: BBC Worldwide; DWO]

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 423: Terror of the Zygons, Episode Three

Dear diary,

This story just keeps on being dark, doesn’t it? I was going to make a point a few days ago about the sinister nurse: she’s so obviously a Zygon, and I was going to say that it was another example of Doctor Who taking a figure that’s usually respected and trusted by children, and turning them into something sinister and frightening (as with the policeman during Terror of the Autons). What I wasn’t prepared for was the sequence in todays story, where shortly after being chased through the woods in its natural form, a Zygon takes back on the shape of the nurse, and then clubs a soldier round the head with a large rock to make her escape.

You don’t see anything, really, and the actual impact is rather muted. It’s not stated whether the soldier was killed in the attack (although, in my mind, being hit round the back of the head with a rock that size wouldn’t leave you much chance), but it’s still pretty sinister. For all my moaning yesterday about the pitchfork scene being a bit too much for Saturday tea times, I must admit to rather enjoying this darker tone for the programme. It’s fantastically watchable, and once again Camfield’s direction is helping to push things that extra mile.

I’m perhaps most impressed by his work with the model spaceship at the end of the episode. It looks good enough in shots at the bottom of the lake, and I love the way the sand kicks up around the base of the vessel as it prepares to take off, but then I did that natural Doctor Who fan thing of preparing myself for the worst. I assumed that one of two things would happen: either we’d not actually see the ship emerging from the loch, or we’d see it and it would look rubbish. In actual fact, it’s... well, I’m not going to lie and say that it was great, because it wasn’t. It was a lot better than I was expecting, and i have to admit that I was really impressed by it, but the longer we spend looking at it, there more I couldn’t get any real sense of scale, so it just ended up looking like a model being pulled out of water. As it flies off, then, it still looks quite impressive, but having already lost my sense of scale, it did bring things down a bit for me.

And I’m still not all that sire about the Skarasen. We get another shotof it lifting a claw, today, which works quite well, and then as it walks away we get to see the tail swishing about from side to side - an unexpected treat and one which works incredibly well. There’s just something about the face of the creature that’s throwing me off, and I don’t know what it is.

Elsewhere, all the human characters are continuing to impress me. I love all of the stuff up at the castle, and the sinister way in which the Duke behaves. He complains that Sarah Jane is smarter than she looks when she stumbles into the secret passage behind the bookcase, but you do have to wonder why he left her alone in the room if there was even the tiniest chance that this could happen! Do the Zygons underestimate us that much?

That same tunnel also provides me with my favourite moment from today’s episode, where the Doctor excitedly heads off into the passageway to see what he can find. We linger on the darkness of the opening, as he’s warned to be careful... and then we simply hear hims scream. Perhaps the most effective part is that we then don’t get to see what’s happened to him - simply that two Zygons emerge into the room. We’re left to speculate as to what situation the Doctor is left in, and I’m wondering if we might get some doubts as to how ‘real’ he may be, when he emerges in the next episode...

Manufacturer: Big Finish Productions

Written By: Alan Barnes

RRP: £10.99 (CD) / £8.99 (Download)

Release Date: February 2014

Reviewed by: Matthew Davis for Doctor Who Online

Review Posted: 26th February 2014

A close encounter with a stray missile leads the Doctor to materialise his TARDIS on a planet that hangs in the dark at the edge of the known universe. A planet so dark that it exists in near-permanent night. A planet that enjoys just a single day’s light once every thousand years…

Exactly what happens on the planet in its rare daylight hours – that’s what a geographical survey headed by Senior Tutor Bengel is stationed here to establish. They, the Doctor and Leela are about to discover that when daylight comes, the White Ghosts rise…

* * *
At the conclusion of last month’s The King of Sontar, The Doctor and Leela had reached a crisis in their relationship. Shocked by her actions, The Doctor felt that it may be time he and Leela were to go their separate ways. Thankfully this does not happen and their adventures continue in this second release for the third season of The Fourth Doctor Adventures.

White Ghosts is that classic of Doctor Who scenarios; the base under siege story, and while there are lovely ideas throughout, it feels let down by its slightly rushed ending.

The main character in this particular story to me is more Leela than The Doctor. The falling out between The Doctor and Leela in The King of Sontar is resolved rather quickly, which is disappointing as I would’ve liked to have seen it continue a bit longer in future stories. Thankfully though the ramifications are not so quickly swept under the carpet and it does inform our two main characters throughout the story.

I like how writer Alan Barnes continues to show the development of Leela, as she has now taught herself to read and uses a book - in this case, one of English fairy tales to make comparisons between it and the events around her. It makes for some lovely metaphors when Leela assesses the danger of the situation the characters in the story are in.

Leela is at the centre of an inspired moment in the story, where we get to see inside her head as she goes into battle. The moment feels like it is from a Companion Chronicle but it helps the scene not only from an audio drama point of view but lets us more inside the character of Leela. It is a stand out moment and one I hope Big Finish use again in future stories.

The cast is very good, especially guest star Virginia Hey (of Farscape fame) putting in an excellent performance as Senior Tutor Bengal. Tom Baker is still as delightfully eccentric as The Doctor and there are some nice supporting characters played by Bethan Walker, James Joyce and Gbemisola Ikumelo respectively.

I like the idea of the Time Lords still using The Doctor to do their dirty work and his dilemma at the end of the story echoes Leela’s previous actions in The King of Sontar. This may prove to be one of the season’s running plot arcs and I hope we see it reappear again.

The story does have an excellent build up but the ending feels rushed especially with the sudden addition of another antagonist from out of nowhere. It makes sense as a creepy addition to the story, but with the constraints of two episodes it feels tacked on somewhat.

I put this down less to the writing but more to the constraints of the two part format, as this story could’ve used at least one more episode to make that conclusion more believable.

White Ghosts is still an entertaining story with some excellent development for our two heroes.

Manufacturer: Big Finish Productions

Written By: Ian Potter

RRP: £8.99 (CD) / £7.99 (Download)

Release Date: February 2014

Reviewed by: Matthew Davis for Doctor Who Online

Review Posted: 26th February 2014

After travelling with the Doctor through time and space, Ian Chesterton is back in his own time. But the mystery of how he and Barbara Wright disappeared in the year 1963 has alerted the authorities – and both are suspected of being enemy agents in the Cold War.

Ian protests his innocence. He has a story to tell about travelling through time and space.

And one adventure in particular – a visit to the city of Hisk…

* * *
A Companion Chronicle with William Russell is always going to be worth my attention but this time around I found the experience to be an underwhelming affair.

At first The Sleeping City feels like it is going to be an exclusively two hand piece performed by William Russell and guest star John Banks. Sadly it only turns out to be a framework for the main story narrated by Russell.

The strongest part of the audio is the framework element as I found the idea of Ian and Barbara being interrogated about their disappearance and the whereabouts of Susan to be far more interesting than the actual story. The audio then cuts at certain moments for the two main characters to comment upon what is happening, and once again these exchanges are by far the most interesting thing about it.

That is not to say main story is bad, not at all, The Sleeping City has some intriguing ideas and is certainly a nice piece of nostalgia for lovers of the Hartnell era. William Russell gives a very good reading but I found the tale personally not very engaging.

The Sleeping City is an intriguing premise but it ultimately feels let down by its ending. Understated though it is, it plays with the notion that John Banks' character Gerrard knows a lot more than he is letting on but the reveal is still a little disappointing.

It does have its moments but overall The Sleeping City is not one of the strongest stories in the Companion Chronicles range.

Speaking at the recent BBC Worldwide Showcase in Liverpool, Steven Moffat talks about the “insane” idea of remaking Doctor Who for international audiences.

When asked if any foreign TV channels had ever enquired about making their own version of Doctor Who, Moffat replied:

"If anyone were to ask me, I'd say it's an absolutely insane idea. You couldn't have more than one Doctor Who in the world. It would just be dreadful."

Despite events like the BBC Worldwide Showcase and the sums of money to be made from selling programmes to foreign channels, Moffat says he does not write shows with overseas sales in mind.

"I don't think creatively it makes any sense at all to try to imagine selling your show to the rest of the world. You'd get it wrong anyway. Sherlock and Doctor Who are both doing rather well but they couldn't be more definitively British. They're obtusely British. They're about as British as it gets. You shouldn't be afraid of being British because that's what you're selling."

[Source: BBC News]

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 422: Terror of the Zygons, Episode Two 

Dear diary,

One of the things that the Philip Hinchcliffe years of Doctor Who are known for is the interest television campaigner Mary Whitehouse took in the programme. I’d imagine that many of my readers will be familiar with Mrs Whitehouse, but for the benefit of those who aren’t: Durung the 1960s, 70s, and 80s (and to a lesser extent, the 90s), Mary Whitehouse fronted a number of organisations who companied for better moral standards on British TV. She took a particular interest in things which she felt were unsuitable for broadcast, and at this point in the programme’s history, Doctor Who became one of her highest profile targets.

She described Genesis of the Daleks as ‘teatime brutality for tots’, and took especial dislike of the cliffhanger to The Deadly Assassin where the Doctor’s head is being held in water. In her autobiography, Elisabeth Sladen jokes that when Mary Whitehouse took an interest in your programme, you knew that you’d made the big time. Generally, Who fans mock her criticisms of the programme these days, but the BBC at the time did take note, and her complaints were part of the reason that Graham Williams was brought in to produce the series from Season 15, being asked specifically to tone down the violence.

And, it has to be said when watching episodes like this one, she did have a point! There’s a sequence in today’s instalment where the Zygon-Harry hides in a barn while being pursued by Sarah Jane. Once she’s close enough to spot him, he gently picks up a pitchfork... and then starts launching it at her, trying to impale her! The subject matter itself is already quite dark for a programme going out in this time slot, but Camfield’s directing really takes it up to the next level. During the attack, every shot of Harry is taken from Sarah’s point of view, so we watch as Ian Marter gives perhaps hisbest ever performance, sneering towards us while forcing the weapon forward.

Even the shots leading up to this one, where Harry peers out from between bails of hay, are laced with a kind of sinister feeling that I’m just not used to from Doctor Who. I’ve been commenting since The Ark in Space that the programme is taking on a darker, more frightening tone, but this is perhaps the best example that we’ve seen of that. Don’t get me wrong - it’s very well directed and acted, and it wouldn’t be out of place in an adult drama or a horror film, but it does feel very wrong to place in a programme going out early on a Saturday evening. As my friend Nick put it; you wouldn’t get away with that sequence on television today!

Something that I do approve of, though, is the design of the Zygons and their ship. In yesterday’s episode, we were treated to several close ups of their eyes and their hands, but today we get to see them in full as they move around their spaceship. I spent so much time during The Ark in Space talking about how well everything worked together on the design side, but I think that the work they’ve put into all the Zygon elements trumps even that. They look right in this setting, and even in those tight close-up shots, the costumes work very well.

Purely by chance, a few weeks ago I watched the episode of Doctor Who Confidential where David Tennant takes control and interviews people about their relationship with the series. At one point, his question is turned back on him and he’s asked which is his favourite Doctor Who monster:

”The one that I loved - and they've never been seen since - is the Zygons. The organic sliminess of them. It just didn't look like a person. This incredible design with a face that's all little and scrunched up, and this huge domed head, and these suckers... It's just a brilliant design.”

It’s hard not to simply repeat that over and over while I talk about the creatures, because he’s right - it is a brilliant design. I’m really pleased that he’s actually been able to work with them now, too, during The Day of the Doctor, because after he’d said this (the episode of Confidential was from Series Three), it seemed a shame that he’d never had the chance. My first experience of the Zygons came with a Tenth Doctor novel (The Sting of the Zygons), and I always thought that would be the closest he ever got to them!

One thing I’m less sure about, sadly, is the Zygons’ pet Skarasen. It’s always been considered the weak link in this story, and I’m not sure yet what to make of it. When it first appeared, swimming past their space ship, I was willing to say that it didn’t look too bad, but then as the story goes on and we get gradually more and more shots of the creature close up... something just doesn’t work about it. I’m not even entirely sure what I’m not liking, but there’s something in there.

We get a few lovely moments (at one stage, we see a shot of the creature move its foot forward, and it’s quite unexpected!), but then sometimes... oh, I don’t know. I’m hoping that as the story goes on, appearances of the creature will be kept to a minimum, with only the very best shots being used. With everything else doing so well, it would be a real shame for this to drag it down.

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 421: Terror of the Zygons, Episode One 

Dear diary,

It’s somewhat fitting that for this, the last of the UNIT stories, we should have Douglas Camfield back in the director’s chair. Camfield was the man responsible for The Web of Fear and The Invasion, so it feels only right that he should be here again at the end of it all*. To tell the truth, I had no idea he was the director of this one. I knew he came back for The Seeds of Death at the end of the year, but not that he’d been part of the series again here, too. It’s so plain to see as you’re watching through, though. Emma was about while I was watching, and I think she was getting somewhat sick of me constantly stating that it simply ‘has to be Camfield’, because no other Doctor Who director of the classic era ever produced anything this polished!

It’s helped by the fact that we’re in such a stunning landscape. There’s several beautiful shots in this episode, where you can really see for miles and miles across land or sea, and it really does open up the story. Genesis of the Daleks gave us some stunning shots of the Doctor and his companions as tiny specs against a larger landscape, but they’re set in quarries and in barren landscape. We’ve never before seen the series take us to such a wide open location, and coming so soon after stories like The Ark in Space and Revenge of the Cybermen, it’s great to see so much space

Oh! And do you know, as I’m typing that I’ve suddenly realised there’s a little voice in the back of my head that’s piping up to remind me that The Sontaran Experiment took us right to the middle of Dartmoor, and I only watched it a few weeks ago! I’ve somehow decided to completely forget about the vistas on display in that story, and I think it might be because this one is proving my point - shooting locations like this on film rather than video really does make a difference. I’ve watched today’s episode at Emma’s on a Blu- Ray player, so I don’t know if it’s the work of upscaling, but the film sequences have never looked better.

I decided to treat myself during this one, so stuck on the ‘director’scut’ of the episode. It only adds in a couple of extra minutes at the start, where the Doctor, Sarah, and Harry arrive in Scotland, but they’re really rather lovely. They’ve also been restored so beautifully. We’ve got more colourisation from Stuart Humphryes to help tie everything together, and the work on the film elements is nothing short of stunning. Disc Two of this release contains the un-restored footage as an easter egg and it shows just how much love and attention has gone into it. It’s not such a big deal to me - this story, plus Revenge of the Cybermen and the upcoming The Android Invasion are all ‘new’ Doctor/Sarah/Harry adventures to me, but there’s something a little bit magical about finding a few extra minutes of this team together after so long.

They’ve never been finer than they are here. There’s a certain comedic element to the Doctor stepping back out of the police box dressed in his Socttish gear, but the real charm is that we get to see his companions tailing him dressed in his regular outfit. Harry rather suits having the scarf draped around his neck, and there’s something about the hat being that bit too big for Sarah Jane which is rather wonderful. These really are three best friends enjoying their time together, and I love that the Doctor gets angry at the Brigadier for calling him back to Earth and interrupting their fun.

That said... they must be shattered! I made a similar observation about Ian and Barbara right back at the start of the programme, but the return to a serial format for Season Twelve and into this story means that the TARDIS crew haven’t had a break since fighting the SRS and that giant robot! From there to the Ark. From the Ark to post-solar-flares Earth. From there to Skaro. From there back to the Ark, and immediately into a tussle with the Cybermen. From there back to Earth of sort out the mystery of the vanishing oil rigs... it’s no wonder Harry leaves at the end of this adventure - he must be dying for a lie down!

I know I spent an awful lot of time during Revenge of the Cybermen complaining about the way that their return to the programme was handled, but it does bear drawing attention to agains here. We don’t know what the Zygons are yet (or, at least, we wouldn’t have on initial broadcast), but since their name is in the title, it’s a given that we’ll be seeing one appear for the cliffhanger. Just as in Revenge, we cut to the creatures in their own base about half way through the episode... but this time it’s all being directed much better.

I don’t know if it’s down to Camfield’s influence, or if the script specifies it, but these moments are all shot in tight close ups. Images of the hands on the organic controls. Close up shots of the eyes staring at their screens. There’s one long scene in which two of the creatures communicate with each other, and we’re basically expected to watch the close ups of them working their machines for a few minutes, but even this is given a brilliant kind of life by being so nicely directed. We take slow fades from one shot to the next,back and forth while those whispery, raspy voices sound out. If you want to build up excitement about the reveal of your alien menace, this is a perfect masterclass in how to do it.

 *Yeah, yeah, some of the UNIT guys will be back later this season in The Android Invasion, but this is the last of the real UNIT stories, for pretty much the rest of the classic series. There’s an attempt to create a ‘modern’ version of them at the end of the 1980s (in Battlefield), but this story marks the end of the format we’ve been so used to for the last half of the programme’s life.

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 420: Revenge of the Cybermen, Episode Four 

Dear diary,

Although not much of the story is catching my interest, something did strike me today (though more from my mind wandering off while the episode played out than because I was inspired by it). I suddenly realised how few female characters there are throughout Season Twelve. Obviously, there’s Sarah Jane on her travels, then you’ve got Miss Winters in Robot, plotting to take over the world, Vira on the Ark, assuming command and preparing to lead her people back to the Earth, Bettan leading the fight against Davros and the Daleks... and that’s pretty much it! All the other speaking characters in the series have been male.

It’s not particularly unusual for the series (I’m sure we must have had an incident or two of it before now... Dot Cotton is the only female in The Time Warrior’s guest cast, Jill Tarrant is alone during Death to the Daleks, and Ruth seems to be the only woman left in London following the dinosaur evacuation during Invasion of the Dinosaurs, for instance), but I can’t say I’ve ever really noticed it before now. I think it’s only cropped up today because I was just going through the motions trying to watch the episode.

I’m sorry to say that - right to the end - Revenge of the Cybermen just hasn’t really grabbed me. Today, I even went as far as turning on the commentary half way through, because I thought I may find it more interesting than the story itself.

It’s a real shame, because there’s actually a few things in here today that I should rather like. There’s the Doctor’s famous line ‘Harry Sullivan is an imbecile’, another one of those things you just know about when you’re a Doctor Who fan, but it’s given more context seen like this, and after a season of the pair bonding and playing off each other so well it comes as a real highlight. There’s some lovely shots of the Cybermen aboard Nerva, illuminated in a blue light (on the commentary, even Elisabeth Sladen picks up on how good this looks). The Doctor fills a Cybermat with gold dust and uses it to attack a Cyberman, in a clever way that parallels the plague being delivered right back at the start of the story...

But for everything that crops up that I do quite like, there’s something else that irritates me. The way the Cyberleader looses all sense of power when he stands over Sarah with his hands on his hips. The Sky-Striker rising from the planet of Voga... where they’ve decided to spend some time (and some of their budget, though I guess that’s not so much an issue for a planet of gold) on printing ‘United States’ on the side (yeah, yeah, I know it’s stock footage). The way that Nerva skimming the surface of the planet looks quite good in a way, with a lovely detailed planet surface... but the roll that they’ve created it on is a bit too small in diameter, so it looses any sense of scale that it really should have...

In the end, it’s all just lost on me. Still, it’s only fair that I find something positive to say... um... well, no, ok. I do quite like the soundtrack. I can’t say that I really noticed it much during the story itself, but the menu clips on both the main menu and the special features one start with some lovely musical cues from the story, and they’ve been looping in the background for a while now, rather pleasantly. Yes, I’m really reaching.

Still, the story is over now. It may go onto the pile of tales to revisit in the future and see if my mood has changed towards it. Stories like Fury From the Deep are on my list to revisit one day, but for now, I simply have no desire to see this one again. I’m sure it has its fans, but I’m sorry to say I’m just not one of them.

Season Twelve on the whole has been a bit up-and-down for me. Generally, I’ve really enjoyed it, but it’s very much characterised by some great highs (The Ark in Space and Genesis of the Daleks) and a few lows (The Sontaran Experiment and this story). Still, I’m completely sold by Tom Baker as the Doctor, and we’ve got a great team as we move forward into the new season. It’s such a shame that they’re only really together for one more story...

Samuel Anderson (The History Boys, Gavin & Stacey, Emmerdale) is set to join the cast of Doctor Who as a recurring character in series 8, which will also introduce Peter Capaldi as The Doctor to millions of viewers for the first time.  Anderson will play Danny Pink, a teacher at Coal Hill School where companion Clara Oswald (Jenna Coleman) also teaches. 

On joining the show Samuel Anderson said:

"I was so excited to join Doctor Who I wanted to jump and click my heels, but I was scared I might not come down before filming started! It’s a quintessential part of British culture and I can’t believe I’m part of it. It’s an honour to be able to work alongside Peter Capaldi and Jenna Coleman and I can’t wait to show people how my character becomes involved with such a fantastic duo!"

Steven Moffat, lead writer and executive producer, added:

"For the fourth time in Doctor Who history, Coal Hill School is coming to the aid of the TARDIS. In 1963 teachers Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright accompanied the First Doctor. These days it’s the turn of Jenna Coleman as Clara Oswald. And very soon now, Sam Anderson as Danny Pink will be entering the world of the Doctor. But how and why? Answers are coming later this year in Peter Capaldi’s first series of Doctor Who!"

Filming recently began on episode 4 of the new series which will co-star Robert Goodman (Gangs of New York, Game of Thrones) and episode 5, co-starring Jonathan Bailey (Broadchurch, Groove High), and Pippa Bennett-Warner (The Smoke, Death in Paradise).

+  Series 8 of Doctor Who will air in August / Early September 2014.

[Source: BBC]

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 419: Revenge of the Cybermen, Episode Three

Dear diary,

Break out the party hats, and bring me a cake. As of today, I am officially half-way through The 50 Year Diary. Sort of. Maybe. Not quite.

Perhaps it would be better to say that I am officially half-way through televised Doctor Who for the purposes of this marathon? The 50 Year Diary will cover every episode from An Unearthly Child to The Time of the Doctor, which is 800 episodes in total. Revenge of the Cybermen falls perfectly in the middle of those two, coming in as the programme’s 400th episode.

I can’t decide whether it feels like way more than 400 episodes to reach this point, or if it feels like we shouldn’t even be anywhere near 400, but it’s exciting to think that I’m somewhere around the middle of the project. I’m not exactly sure, because (as you’ve no doubt noticed), the 400th episode doesn’t necessarily fall on the 400th day. I’ve taken a few side-steps to reach this point, you see. There was the experiment with Farewell, Great Macedon between Seasons One and Two, and the day out to hear Daleks: The Destroyers between Seasons Three and Four. Then those two Patrick Troughton stories arrived back in the archives from deepest Africa, and they had to be slotted in as well.

All those things pushed the number of Diary entries up. And there’s more to come! In the next half of the marathon, I plan to take time out to listen to one of the Fourth Doctor ‘Lost Stories’ (I know people weren’t overly keen on me doing so with Hartnell, but I’ve heard nothing but praise for The Foe from the Future so I’m adding it in), then we’ve got Dimensions in Time, Scream of the Shalka, the Doctor’s appearances in The Sarah Jane Adventures... At this stage, I honestly don’t know how many entries the Diary will run to. I’ve always known that it would be around the 800 mark, just based on the number of episodes, so it’s quite an achievement to be somewhere around the middle. I know I say it a lot, but I really am very surprised (and delighted!) to have made it this far. It’s just a shame that the story this landmark falls in isn’t one of my favourites...

Still, I’ve realised today what my problem is with this story. It’s got Dominators Syndrome, a condition in which – no matter what happens in the story – I simply cannot enjoy anything on the screen. These situations do crop up from time to time. The Dominators has been my most recent example for a while (although The Curse of Peladon was developing symptoms for a while), but the same has also been true of stories like The Highlanders. It means that in my mind, I’ve just completely switched off from the story, and it’s unlikely to pull me back in.

It’s a shame, because it means that I’m not even giving the episodes the attention they deserve. They’re playing out on the screen, I’mwatching them, but I’m just not taking them in. I’m not even really making any notes, just jotting down the occasional bit of dialogue that I find amusing or emotive, because I’m not engaging with the story enough to really care.

Another problem that this causes is that I find myself just being incredibly negative about everything. Yesterday, I spoke of how much I like the way that these Cyberman costumes are such a neat halfway between The Invasion and Earthshock, but today even that’s grown stale for me, and I’m focussing far more on the fact that I don’t like their voices in this one. Sometimes, during the 1960s, they could be quite hard to understand... but at least they sounded alien! These Cybermen sound like guys with buckets on their heads. Oh... wait...

Even the design of Nerva is irritating me this time around. I spent ages during The Ark in Space praising the way that the design of the beacon really held together and worked, but I’m just not liking it here. They’ve added a number of panels to the set – grey with little inset circles – to give the impression that we’ve visiting Nerva at an earlier point in its history. In theory, I quite like this idea. I love buildings being taken over and getting a new purpose, but so that you can still see bits of the history shining through into the new design. Sadly, I’m finding that the design modifications to the Nerva set make it look worse than the version we saw earlier in the season!

I’m guessing that the final episode will have a real fight to try and get me interested in the story again. It’s a shame, after so long without a story like this which really just doesn’t grab me in any way, that this season should limp out rather feebly as opposed to going out with a real bang.

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 418: Revenge of the Cybermen, Episode Two

Dear diary,

For all my complaining about the way that the Cybermen are being treated in this story (and I’m still not keen. The Doctor muses that the Cybermen must be planning an attack on the planet of gold because they’re so allergic to it: it’s treated as a fact we should all know, but it’s news to anyone watching through in order like this!), it does have to be said that their appearance in the cliff hanger is very well done. They emerge from their own ship, board Nerva, and are instantly greeted with a hail of bullets from our human crew. They don’t even leave a scratch. In return, the Cyberleader fires three shots from the gun built into his head – and hits all three targets. It’s cold, and it’s by far the best moment we’ve had in this story so far.

It’s just a shame that this couldn’t have been their first appearance in the story! In my head, I’d prefer an Episode One where there’s a mysterious space ship just in range of Nerva’s scans, but it’s failing to answer any of their communications. The ship just sits there silently, while Nerva’s crew all fall victim to a horrible plague. As the Doctor investigates, he realises that they’re in orbit not far from Voga, the planet of gold. But how are the two connected? Could it be? As the episode rolls on, the ship finally starts to make its approach, docking with the beacon. The airlock opens... and then the cliff hanger plays out exactly as we’ve seen here. The Doctor makes his deduction that it must be Cybermen at the same moment they emerge from their ship, but it’s too late.

I think that’s what’s missing from this story for me – any real sense of tension. We know the Cybermen are involved from the title, but the story is treating it so matter-of-factly that there’s been very littleexcitement in there for me. I want the Cybermen to emerge triumphantly, not for us to occasionally cut back to them stood in their control room with their hands on their hips. Still, I am glad to have them back in the programme, and hopefully now that they’ve arrived properly and taken out the crew (I’m assuming they’ve simply stunned them all, or clipped them?) we can get down to some proper Cyberman action.

I rather like the design of the creatures seen in this story – they feel very much like a half-way house between the models from The Invasion and the ones that we’ll go on to have for Earthshock. The guns in the head is a fairly neat idea, and it does make sense for them to have some kind of built-in weaponry like this. We’ve also got the first appearance of the ‘black handlebar’ design to denote the Cyberman in charge, and that’s something I really like. It’s toned down by the time the Cybermen next pop up in the series, but I was really pleased to see it brought back again for The Next Doctor a few years ago.

Less effective for me is the Vogan prosthetics. I’ve never been a big fan of the design – it’s the ultimate example of ‘man in ill-fitting- rubber-mask’ for me, and I’m finding it quite hard to take them seriously. It’s a story of political power struggles, with factions developing different goals... but whereas a similar story about the established power being overthrown was presented as gripping and, in some ways, adult during Genesis of the Daleks, here the whole thing is failing to engage with me because I can’t stop looking at those masks!

There’s something else that’s drawing my eye, too, and it’s the Seal of Rassilon! Now, I know about many of the fan ‘workarounds’ for little continuity blips like this, but I don’t know of any which explain why the Vogans have adopted the Time Lord’s ceremonial symbol for their own design. It’s not even only slightly part of their culture – it’s on their walls, their tables, their robes... it’s a big part of this society. Now, obviously, I know that in reality, they’ll come to make The Deadly Assassin a couple of years from now and decide that they like this symbol and could re-use it, but when you look back on the series, knowing just how much this will become a part of Time Lord design does make it a bit jarring!

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 417: Revenge of the Cybermen, Episode One 

Dear diary,

It’s odd how this stage of the programme goes through a period of looking back to the people who were involved with it during the early years. Last season we had Paddy Russell returning to directors duties for the first time since Season Three’s The Massacre of St Bartholomew’s Eve, and with The Ark in Space John Lucarotti made his return (to some degree) for the first time since that same story. Glyn Jones, writer of The Space Museum turns up as one of the crewmembers in The Sontaran Experiment, and now we’ve got Gerry Davies back on the scene for the first time since The Tomb of the Cybermen. You’ve also got the old enemies being revived - the Daleks made their return after a five-year absence a few seasons ago, and now the Cybermen follow suit, emerging for the first time since The Invasion, way back in 1968. After this story, they’ll vanish for another seven years. It’s a wonder that they ever made it into the pantheon of Doctor Who’s most famous foes!

And yet, despite the fact that they’re making a triumphant return after more than half a decade away from our screens... it’s treated as just any old monster of the week turning up. I often complain about it during these diary entries, but you do play something of a game with Doctor Who. If the story features a returning villain, then their name appears in the title. You spend that entire first episode knowing that they’ll be revealed - pointlessly - at the cliffhanger... but that’s all part of the fun. Yes, it’s a bit cheesy. Yes, it’s a bit repetitive. But it’s what you expect.

So it’s a surprise when the Doctor twigs half-way through this episode that the Cybermen must be involved with the events unfolding around Nerva. It’s thrown into the dialogue as if we’re supposed to think ‘of course! Who else?’, but really it feels like it should be a bigger deal than this. Not long after, we get a shot of their spaceship while Kellman contacts them, and then we cut directly to a shot of them all stood around in their control room.

Now, I’m watching this and thinking ‘oh yes! It’s the Cybermen!’, but would kids at home be shocked by this revelation during first broadcast? We’re now deep in a period of the programme where the past is more accessible than it has been before - the Radio Times anniversary issue a few years before gave details of the Doctor’s old adventures, and the Target novels have begun in earnest - but it still feels odd to treat their big return after such an absence with such... dismissal.

I think it’s completely put me off the story right at an early stage, and Revenge of the Cybermen may be looking at a real uphill struggle to win me back round. I’ve been looking forward to this one for a while now, since it’s both the return of my favourite monsters, and coming at a phase where the programme has never felt so self-assured. I’m all ready for a Cyberman story told with the kind of edge we see in Genesis of the Daleks, but this first episode has left me almost entirely cold.

It’s a huge shame, too, because we start of with such promise. The Doctor, Sarah, and Harry arrive back on Nerva, but the twist is that we’re a few thousand years before the events from The Ark in Space. They need to make do with waiting around until the TARDIS can come back and catch up with them... but this being the Doctor, he almost instantly stumbles across a corpse and a mystery to solve. Ofcourse he does. He only has to open a simple door to find himself in trouble!

We’re then treated to a return for Nerva’s most iconic piece of scenery - that corridor. This time, though, it’s been strewn with dead bodies. It’s sinister, perfectly in keeping with the tone this programme’s now got, and a great hook for the start of the story. Add to that the idea that there’s a Cybermat moving around unseen amongst the victims, and a spaceship floating just out of reach from Nerva’s scanners... all the right pieces are here for a great story, but I’m just not feeling it. Still, I’m hoping my disappointment at the slightly bungled reveal of our old favourite monsters won’t overshadow the rest of the story, so I’ll be moving forward with an open mind tomorrow...

Our friends over at Movie Figures have been in touch with some fantastic SciFi merchandise offers.

Movie Figures is a UK reseller that sells all kinds of exciting stuff, largely inspired by the movies, but also TV too. Movie Figures focuses on three areas: Statues, Prop Replicas and Action Figures. All are at great prices with FREE delivery.

Check out some of the latest offers from Movie Figures, below:

Prop Replicas including Star Wars lightsabers from Hasbro
http://www.moviefigures.co.uk/prop-replicas-182-c.asp

Lightsabers are pretty tough to find at good prices in the UK, but Movie Figures is comparable to US pricing which is great! They stock Luke Skywalker’s (green and blue), Darth Maul’s and Darth Vader’s. They also stock a load of other interesting prop replicas from movies like Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter,  The Hobbit and Star Trek with more being added all the time.

Statues including Star Wars Characters from Attakus
http://www.moviefigures.co.uk/statues-142-c.asp

These are high-end, limited edition, hand-painted statues made by French company Attakus. You can get 7” or 15” versions which range in price from £55 to £350. Many popular characters have been covered including Luke, Han, Darth Vader and many more. Also they have some of the more unusual characters like the numerous clone troopers, Bib Fortuna and more.

Action Figures Including ¼ Scale Predators from NECA
http://www.moviefigures.co.uk/action-figures-141-c.asp

NECA’s Predator action figures are almost 20” tall and offer stunning detail for the price. With a wide range of articulation, stunning texturing, netting on the skin and awesome weaponry, these guys have to be in any predator fans possession.

As for Doctor Who, Movie Figures have just started stocking some items, which can be found at: http://www.moviefigures.co.uk/zeon-doctor-who-tardis-collectors-watch-1817-p.asp

We particularly like that they are stocking the awesome Doctor Who Tardis Collector’s watch by Zeon. A perfect timepiece for any Doctor Who Fan!

Other benefits of shopping with Movie Figures:

- They offer FREE delivery within 2 to 5 days on all items.
- They have an average review of 5 stars on ReviewCentre!
- They offer a best price guarantee.
- They are a genuine UK company registered at Companies House.
- They carefully pack their items to try and ensure they get to you pristine.
- They offer a item sourcing service.

If they haven’t got what you are after, just email them at info@moviefigures.co.uk and they will do they best to help you.

+  Visit the Movie Figures website at: http://www.moviefigures.co.uk

[Source: Movie Figures]

Publisher: Race Point Publishing

Written By: Cameron K. McEwan

RRP: £18.99

Release Date: 9th January 2014

Reviewed by: Doctor Who Online

Review Posted: 20th February 2014

Now, it’s no secret that we’re good buddies with Blogtor Who owner, Cameron K. McEwan, and when we heard he was coming out with a Doctor Who book that would act as "a whovian guide to friends, foes, villains, monsters and companions", we were very excited indeed - especially considering his vast knowledge and love for the show.

Once you finally get over adoring the beautifully embossed ‘Doctor Who’ lettering on the cover, which also features The 10th, 11th and 12th Doctors (yes that is the correct numbering), you are presented with the simple, yet effective contents page that typifies this straight-up, no-nonsense guide which does exactly what it says on the proverbial tin.

The various sections within the book (The Doctors, The Companions, Friends & Allies, Robots, Time Lords & Ladies, Villains and Aliens & Monsters) are laid out beautifully and clearly in alphabetical order to easily find who you want.

As you thumb through pages and pages of character breakdowns, coupled with pictures and illustrations gloriously brought to life by Andrew Skilleter, you realise just how concise the book is. With over 50 years to draw from you will find information about characters you have long since forgotten (Rita from The God Complex), or even facts about the ones you thought you knew everything about.

The Who's Who Of Doctor Who is essential reading for anyone wanting to know anything from 'Ace' to 'The Zygons', and with over 300 entries to explore, you’ll be reaching for it time and time again.

+  The Who's Who Of Doctor Who is Out Now, priced £18.99.
+  Buy this book on Amazon.co.uk for just £15.77. 

+  Follow BlogtorWho on Twitter.
+  Follow DrWhoOnline on Twitter. 

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 416: Genesis of the Daleks, Episode Six 

Dear diary,

The scene in this episode, where the Doctor holds the two wires in his hands, knowing that he only needs to touch them together in order to destroy the Daleks forever is perhaps one of the most famous moments in Doctor Who history. I’d always assumed it was the very climax to the story - it’s what I thought we were building towards certainly - so imagine my surprise when it actually came along just seconds after the end of the cliffhanger reprise!

There’s no denying that it is a great scene, but I found that its impact was then somewhat lessened by the fact that the story goes on for so long afterwards, feeling artificially drawn-out, before the wires get touched together anyway when a Dalek happens to trundle over them by accident. For me, it takes away from the beauty of that scene, and I think that Genesis as a whole (no matter how much I’ve enjoyed it) would have been better served as a four-part story, cutting out a lot of the padding. Remove things like the giant clams, the Doctor getting strangled by a Dalek mutant, and all the business today where they’re ready to go but - oh no! - they’ve lost the Time Ring again, and you’d have a tighter story. I know it was released as an LP in the late 1970s, as an edited version of the story, and I’m almost tempted to give that a listen when the right time comes along, to see if I like the story even more in a condensed format.

All of this is sounding very negative, but really I have enjoyed today’s episode once again. I made a note early on about how, after effectively building up their numbers throughout the tale, it waspainfully obvious that they only had three Dalek props this time... and then you get that stunning reveal that there’s actually loads of them. I wondered for a while if this was simply some odd direction from Maloney, but I think it’s actually all about making that impact when the screen is suddenly full of them. It’s the first time in a long, long while that they’ve actually seemed scary.

The downfall of Davros is actually very well done, too. In keeping with the rest of the story, it’s very down-beat and harsh, from the moment we see Nyder unceremoniously exterminated onwards. I don’t know what I thought would happen to Nyder. If Davros was to be exterminated, then there was no way his henchman could be allowed to live, after all, but I’d never really considered it. He’s been such a genuinely nasty presence right through the story, and I love that his death is handled so unceremoniously. There’s no fanfare, no build up, and no mourning, he’s simply alive one minute acting as Davros’ lap-dog, and dead the next. It’s so sudden, and it really works.

And then you’ve got the extermination of Davros himself. That we only focus in on his hand when he dies, and not his face, is an absolute masterstroke. It creates a lasting image of his death, while at the same time making him just another casualty of the Daleks. As I mused yesterday, I really do think that this would be a good place to leave his story, but I’ll wait and see how I feel about that by the time that Destiny rolls around.

I said when this story started that I was usually skeptical about those stories that people consider to be absolute classics. Genesis of the Daleks has proven that sometimes, just sometimes, fan wisdom claims a story is great simply because it is. I’m genuinely surprised by just how much I’ve enjoyed this one, but I’m completely thrilled that I have. The next couple of seasons are practically littered with stories that fandom rates very highly, and if they can all be as worthy of their reputations as this one has been, then I’m in for a real treat.

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 415: Genesis of the Daleks, Episode Five 

Dear diary,

Genesis of the Daleks marks a turning point for Dalek stories in the classic series - there’ll be four more before the Doctor and Ace walk off towards new adventures, and they’ll all feature Davros. I’ve already mentioned that I quite like the 1980’s version of Davros, and I like Julian Bleech’s version as seen in the revived series, but the more I watch through this story, the more I wish that the character had simply never returned.

There’s several problems that arise by having Davros around for the rest of the ‘classic’ Dalek stories. Firstly, the Daleks themselves are suddenly that bit less wonderful. Oh, I know I’ve made fun of Death to the Daleks a bit lately (and the further away from it that I move, the more I think of it as being a bit silly!), but when you think back past that story, to the Daleks of the 1960s... they were clever! They were cunning! Remember that scene right back in The Daleks, where they lure the Thals into their city and then all glide back into the shadows in unison, ready to attack? That was glorious! Even past that, when they’re trying to drill out the Earth’s magnetic core (lovely to hear a reference to that in today’s episode), or building their own time machines to pursue the Doctor through all of time and space... The Daleks used to be rather magnificent in their own right, without having their dad around to cramp their style.

Russell T Davies sums it up best in The Writer’s Tale: “I simply can’t bear it when Davros is in charge of the Daleks. They wouldn’t let him; it reduces them to soldiers.” It works for this story, because the Daleks are brand new. We’re watching on as Davros orders the alterations to their brains which will go on to make them ruthless and independent, and while I’ve never seen this story before, I know that it ends with them breaking free of his control and deciding that they don’t need their creator any more... so it feels like a shame to then bring him back time and time again.

After this story, the Daleks disappear from Doctor Who again for another long stretch. They won’t be back again until Season Seventeen, which feels a million miles away from here and now. I’m interested to see how I feel about all of this by the time I get there, though. Will I have reached a kind of nostalgic time where I’m pleased to see Davros again? Once this story isn’t so fresh in my mind, it may be that I rather enjoy him coming back. It’s certainly one for me to look out for, and another reason that watching through like this is such good fun.

As I’ve said above, the Daleks being controlled by Davros really does work in this story, because - really - this isn’t a Dalek story at all. This is a story about their creator, and about the world into whichthey were born. I’m now five episodes in, which means that I’ve watched about two hours of the story, and the Daleks have barely featured. As is traditional, they appear only for the cliffhanger to Episode One, and then they’ve been appearing in ever increasing numbers since (two Daleks in Episode Two, three in Episode Three and so on), but only ever really to glide in-and-out of a room. The most Dalek action we’ve had is the attack on the Thal dome, but even then we only get to see bits and pieces of it.

Maybe that’s why I’m so unsure about bringing Davros back again? This is very much his story, and it feels complete enough for me. I don’t have any urge to seek out the prequel series Big Finish made which led him to this point, and I’d not be sorry to never see the character again once the next episode is over. Genesis of the Daleks feels like a nice, self-contained story, and it would be a shame for anything to lessen its impact...

Marvel have released a 15-second teaser trailer for their upcoming 'Guardians Of The Galaxy' movie, which features Karen Gillan as Nebula.

No it's not the movie about the owls (Legends Of The Guardians) or that one about Jack Frost (Rise Of The Guardians) - this is the movie based on the Marvel Superhero team.

Below is the movie synopsis and trailer.

Synopsis:

In the far reaches of space, an American pilot named Peter Quill finds himself the object of a manhunt after stealing an orb coveted by the villainous Ronan.

In order to evade Ronan, Quill is forced into an uneasy truce with a group of misfits including Gamora, Rocket, Drax the Destroyer and Groot. But when Quill discovers the true power of the orb and the menace it poses to the cosmos, he must rally his ragtag rivals for a last, desperate stand - with the galaxy’s fate in the balance.

Trailer:
[youtube:hbFPyMOHcHQ]

+  Guardians Of The Galaxy hits cinemas on 1st August 2014.

[Source: Marvel]

In a heartwarming gesture, Matt Smith (The 11th Doctor) has filmed a short video message for ill Doctor Who fan, ‘Jack’ from Denmead.

In the video filmed in Texas, America, Matt slowly pans down the camera before singing part of the Doctor Who theme tune.

He then tells Jack he will send him some goodies and try to visit him when he gets back to England.

Jack, who has an inoperable brain tumour, is a massive Doctor Who fan. Since his diagnosis last month, friends and family have rallied around to makes Jack’s wishes come true.

His dad Terry, 47, said:

“Jack was over the moon. Gary Barlow tweeted he had a message from Matt Smith, but we didn’t expect this, thank you Gary. And thank you to Darren Langford, a well-wisher, who said he had also been in contact with Matt. Not sure which person he responded too, but we are grateful that he has.”

Mr Robinson, of Bere Road, added:

“Jack had gone to sleep, but we woke him up to show him the message. His eyes just lit up and he was so delighted. It has made his day.”

Watch the video in the player, below:



[Source: Portsmouth News]

After a successful Kickstater campaign last April that raised over $10,000 in funds (82% over their original goal) and had 300+ backers from 22 different countries; PixelWho is going strong and already looking ahead to new pieces that are in the works.

The newest news is that PixelWho is looking to do another Kickstarter campaign to help fund their 9th Doctor poster creation. The image of the poster will be revealed when they launch the campaign, but for now there are plenty of 9th Doctor poster previews on their Facebook page.

The art project continues to grow in its third year. The PixelWho project is focused on recreating Doctor Who characters in 8-bit art style. The goal of the project is to be the most complete visual catalog and character dictionary for all 50 years (and counting) of Doctor Who in order to celebrate the creativity and dedication of the all the artists who have worked on the program.

The project seeks to document every character, both significant and incidental, from every Doctor's respective move/series runs. The artist, Nathan Skreslet, freeze frames DVDs and scours episode screen captures and publicity photos in order to recreate each character accurately and roughly to scale in pixel form. Every pixel is individually laid by hand; no computer conversion program is used. His art is a true labor of love which requires dedication and time.

Thanks to the successful Kickstarter campaign their newest 4th Doctor poster set was printed and is now available. It covers all of Tom Baker's epic 7 seasons run represented over two posters with over 700 characters in total. The 10th Doctor (David Tennant) and 1st Doctor (William Hartnell) poster prints are also available as well. All the Doctor posters are limited edition and individually hand-numbered, only 500 of each Doctor's posters have been made.

PixelWho has expanded to include smaller prints as well. A print featuring 11 Doctors set against a Gallifreyan symbol print was created, along with collectible character cards, and weatherproof vinyl TARDIS sticker. There's also a Tom Baker face print for 4th Doctor fans. Also don't forget the popular Every Dalek poster which chronicles the changes to the Dalek design from 1963 up to the "Asylum of the Daleks" episode, as well as the various incarnations of Davros. There's also an Every Doctor Bookmark to help keep those book pages in line.

PixelWho has also recreated the Van Gogh Exploding TARDIS image in 8-bit style. As with every art piece they do, each and every pixel is individually placed for this re-creation. Creating a swirly and flowing Van Gogh inspired artwork is not easy when limited to only using pixel squares and half pixel triangles, but it's carried off beautifully. There's even a miniature Vincent Van Gogh in the corner painting the image as a well placed Easter egg.

Interested in owning the latest artworks by PixelWho? Visit their Etsy shop at www.etsy.com/shop/PixelWho and like them on Facebook at www.facebook.com/PixelWho to get updates on their art projects. Nathan is now sharing preview images of the 9th Doctor poster on their Facebook page.

If you'd like to meet the artist in real life, he goes to several conventions a year and a convention schedule is listed on PixelWho's Facebook page. Both he and his wife, PixelWho's manager, love going to science fiction and comics conventions where they get to meet fans in real life, and frequently attend in cosplay themselves. Please help support this independent artist as he strives to be pixel perfect in providing a complete visual character dictionary and illustrated episode guide for Doctor Who fans.

[Source: PixelWho]

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 414: Genesis of the Daleks, Episode Four

Dear diary,

It’s a mark of the quality of this story that when I mentioned it to a colleague at work yesterday, who grew up watching Doctor Who in the 1970s, but only really takes a passing interest in it these days, his face lit up as he declared Genesis of the Daleks to the ‘the best Doctor Who story ever’. It seems to be a really common opinion, and I’m somewhat surprised to see it being shared by even people we’d consider to be ‘not-we’. I guess I shouldn’t be all that surprised, really, since this story has been repeated on terrestrial television more than any other from the classic series’ run – it must be doing something right!

What’s made a mark on me today is just how much you’re tricked into thinking that it really is the end for Sarah and Harry. The Doctor reminds us that he’s sent them off to the Kaled dome and then we’re forced to watch with him as the dome is completely obliterated. As if it needed any extra impact, the Doctor laments that he’s sent his companions into ‘that holocaust’, and seems genuinely defeated, before resolving that he’ll need to carry on with the task he’s been given, so that they’ve not died for nothing.

He then meets Thal, and minutes later saves her from a Dalek attack – it’s done almost in the way of him meeting a new companion for the first time. If I didn’t know that Sarah and Harry go on to have more adventures after this, and I were coming to this story cold for the first time, I think I’d genuinely believe that we’d lost the pair off-screen in the attack. As the episode then continues, we don’t actually see them until around ten minutes in – there’s not even a hint that they could have survived. In some ways it’s quite bleak, but it fits the tone of the story perfectly, and it does provide some great drama.

When my colleague was raving about how much he enjoyed this story, he did manage to inadvertently spoil a bit for me (in as much as you can spoil a story made and broadcast almost 40 years ago!) regarding the scene today where Nyder meets with scientist in the lower levels of the bunker and tricks him into revealing the names of the people who are plotting against Davros. He pointed it out as a scene that’s a little bit silly, specifically in regards to the way Peter Miles snaps back to attention when he’s got the information that he needs and responds with a clipped ‘thank you’. Watching the events unfold, I clearly knew where we were headed, and he was right – that moment is a bit silly. That said, there’s also something really menacing about the way that Davros then emerges from the shadows to greet the pair.

I’m a fan of the 1980s Davros, but the character we see in those three stories has nothing on the one we see here. The Davros of this story is perhaps the cruellest villain that we’ve ever been given in the programme. He’s willing to see his own race utterly destroyed in fire and pain simply because they dared to stop his experiments. He’ll have people killed when needed, and if he still requires their skills, then he’ll simply have their brains altered to support his way of thinking. There’s something really rather brilliant about it all, sinister and evil as it may be.

And yet, we’re starting to see a transition into the version of the character we get in the later Davros stories. Here, we get to witness him ‘ranting’ on more than one occasion, but it feels like the character’s decent into madness rather than simply something that he does. The ultimate rant then comes right in the closing moments, when he demands that the Doctor give him information on every Dalek defeat, so that he can make sure to overcome it. How do you think the Doctor will explain the one where they’re tricked into leaving Exxilon with bags full of the wrong minerals, and then get blown up?

I joke, of course, but this really does feel a million miles away from the Dalek story we were given in Season Eleven. I don’t know how much of this is down to Terry Nation upping his game (Terrance Dicks tells the story that Nation submitted his script for this story and they found it to be a complete rehash of all the ideas he’d used in Planet of, and Death to, so they suggested that he go away and given them something new, possibly about the Daleks’ origins), or how much comes from Robert Holmes’ input as script editor, but something has really gelled – this is in a whole other league.

 Manufacturer: Big Finish Productions

Manufacturer: Big Finish Productions

Written By: Nicholas Briggs, Alan Barnes & Matt Fitton

RRP: £20.00 (CD) / £20.00 (Download)

Release Date: February 2014

Reviewed by: Matthew Davis for Doctor Who Online

Review Posted: 17th February 2014

When the Doctor defeated the Dalek Time Controller and its Time Lord ally, the timelines shifted and events changed... but the danger is far from over. And new threats to the continued safety of the universe are emerging.

Molly O'Sullivan carried on with her life as a nursing assistant in World War One. She probably thought she would never see the Doctor in his 'Tardy-box' again...

From the Dalek occupied planet Nixyce VII through Earth's history and to the very edge of the universe, the Doctor's footprints across eternity are being tracked by foes old and new. But when did it all begin and when will it end? Living his life through the complexities of time travel, the Doctor can never be quite sure if he's experiencing his life in the most helpful order. The only certainty appears to be the advance of the powers of evil and the oncoming threat of a fight to the death against forces that would destroy everything the Doctor holds dear.

* * *

This really is a great period for The Eighth Doctor. After the huge success of the first award winning Dark Eyes, Paul McGann returned to the role of The Doctor in the extremely well-received Night of the Doctor. His brief but perfect performance got many fans unfamiliar with his portrayal very curious. 

Who was this mysterious Doctor who had previously had only one television adventure? And just who were those companions he listed off before turning into John Hurt?

Interest in The Eighth Doctor was at an all time high and Big Finish must have been leaping for joy, for not only being made cannon but I’m sure an increased interest in their excellent output by new listeners.

So it makes me doubly happy to say that the joyous wave for Paul McGann gets even higher with the release of Dark Eyes 2, a brilliant collection of stories that continues to push The Eighth Doctor into new and exciting territory.

Following a non-linear narrative told over 4 parts, Dark Eyes 2 excels in great storytelling and excellent characterisation. Knowledge of the previous Dark Eyes is essential as in some aspects of the main narrative it explicitly harks back to that story. 

But Dark Eyes 2 thankfully does not bog itself down too much in continuity as these linked stories are cracking tales in their own right.

Nicholas Briggs, who held sole writing duties on the first Dark Eyes only takes the first part whilst handing over writing duties of the rest to Alan Barnes and Matt Fitton. 

I shall not to go too much in depth into the storyline as there is so much to enjoy here and far too many surprises. What I can talk about is the fascinating story thread of the character of The Doctor.

The writers have really taken on board the direction of The Eighth Doctor as being the reluctant warrior. Whilst his previous incarnation had been the grand manipulator who had made difficult choices for the greater good, The Eighth Doctor makes them out of reluctance. He has seen so much death, the aftermath of which was explored in the first Dark Eyes, and he just wants to help make a difference to the universe without having to sacrifice anymore of those he cares about. It is a fascinating direction for a character that started out as a more romantic type. In light of what happens to the character in Night of the Doctor, the course taken here in Dark Eyes 2 is perfectly in line with The Eighth’s Doctor’s eventual fate. 

The performances from the main cast are excellent. Paul McGann is fantastic once again in the role and he really develops his performance throughout the stories.

Ruth Bradley makes a very welcome return as Molly O’ Sullivan joined by the excellent Nicola Walker as Liv Chenka, a character first seen in Nicholas Briggs' sublime Robophobia. Both characters are brilliant foils for the Doctor in different ways, and both have their own different experiences of The Doctor in the Dark Eyes 2 which creates some excellent dramatic tension and a unique perspective throughout. Nicholas Briggs steps behind the microphone not only as The Daleks but the delightfully devious Dalek Time Controller making a return appearance after the dramatic conclusion to the first Dark Eyes.

In a series of stories with returning characters, one of the sheer highlights is Alex Macqueen returning as the Master, a role he made completely his own in the excellent UNIT: Dominion.

It is difficult to find any fault with Dark Eyes 2, as a lot of steps have been taken to ensure this has all the quality of its predecessor but pushing it in new and tantalizing directions. 

With a superb cliff-hanger to conclude it, this reviewer cannot wait for Dark Eyes 3.

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 413: Genesis of the Daleks, Episode Three

Dear diary,

You can forget your Davroses and your Daleks. Your Sontarans and your Giant Spiders. Forget all about Ice Warriors and Dinosaurs, because the scariest thing that we’ve seen in Doctor Who during these last few seasons comes early on in today’s episode, when Sarah Jane has to jump a small gap between the scaffolding platform and the rocket.

It sounds like I’m being facetious, there, but genuinely, that’s the scariest that I’ve found Doctor Who in a very long time. It’s not the jump that’s actually worrying - it’s the way that Sarah reacts to it. She is clearly scared of heights. She’s just made her way, with difficulty, up that scaffold. She’s one of only two survivors. Her captors aren’t far behind, and their armed with guns, then then she has to go and look down, and realise just how easily she could fall. People talk about Lis Sladen being a fantastic actress, and I think the way she shakes while preparing to jump is one of the finest performances that we’ve ever had in the programme. There’s no debating it - that’s genuine fear.

And yet it comes in the episode containing perhaps the most infamous part of this story - the Giant Clam. I’ve been in Doctor Who fandom long enough to know that - supposedly - the only blemish on this story’s otherwise perfect six episodes is the presence of a Giant Clam chewing on Harry’s leg. I think I’m right in saying that the clam appears in another scene later on, too, which is even more ridiculous. I can’t say I was all that bothered by it, to be honest. It comes as one of those typically Terry Nation action-adventure-serial moments, where there needs to be some threat to the Doctor and Harry’s journey through the tunnels.

I’m surprised just how much of a team the Doctor and Harry are, to be honest. People always talk of the Fourth Doctor and Sarah Jane, and though they will get their time in the spotlight in the next season-and-a-half, it’s feeling increasingly as though Harry is the Doctor’s favourite. They’re separated off together for much of The Ark in Space, and they’ve been firmly in each other’s company for the three episodes of this story, too. I love the way that they bounce off each other, with Tom and Ian really gelling together. I’m drawing closer to the end of Harry’s travels in time and space now than I am to the beginning of them, and that’s a great shame, because he works so well as a companion. I’m hoping he’s given a few more chances to shine before the season is out.

There was a moment in today’s episode, when the Doctor’s exploring ways to sabotage the Thal rocket and the guard begins to come round again, where I wondered if we might get our first Pertwee-style fight scene for the new Doctor. He engaged in armed combat with Styre during the last story, but I thought we may be in for a bit of Venusian Akido here. This is a very talk-y story, though, with a lot of focus being placed on the dialogue. That the Doctor and Harry made it through to the Kaled leaders to have a proper conversation with them really surprised me - I fully expected them to go through some more chasing, capture, and escape. Indeed, there’s a moment when Ronson is told that they’ve made it to the dome and into a meeting with the leads where I fully expected that to be a trick, a way to force him into slipping up and admitting his guilt. I rather like that the Doctor’s approach to stopping the creation of the Daleks is to talk to the people with the power rather than simply go in and fight his way through - it really is something that sets him apart from other heroes.

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 412: Genesis of the Daleks, Episode Two

Dear diary,

Since Lis Sladen joined the series with The Time Warrior, I’ve been taking the opportunity to listen to the audio book of her autobiography again. I’ve heard it all before when it was first released a couple of years ago, but having her turn up in the show has given me a real desire to hear all of her anecdotes again. There’s one she tells about this story, and specifically about the filming of the sequence in today’s episode where Sarah Jane and the other prisoners make a break for the scaffolding in an attempt at freedom.

She talks about David Maloney’s desire to make the scene the best that it could be, so while she’d expected it to be a short day filming a simple climb up the scaffolding, they were up and down all day until they had the scene just right. Sladen’s biggest complaint is that the bars of the scaffolding were that bit too far apart, which made it more of a struggle to climb, and even more exhausting than it might have otherwise been. You can see that, watching the finished scene, and she really does have to struggle to reach every new rung during the climb… but it’s so effective! Had the bars been closer together and the actors were able to climb up just like a ladder, it would have made the escape attempt look too easy. As it is, you can really see them having to work for it, and it adds a certain layer of realism to the proceedings.

It also helps that it’s such a lovely set. Right from the first forced perspective shot of a model rocket, the whole room simply works. Once we’re onto film for the climb sequence, it just looks brilliant. The lighting is very well done, the direction makes good use of switching from longer shots to close ups… yeah. It’ all just holds together well. It’s something that’s evident right the way through this episode – the sets and the design are all very well done. I spent a fair bit of time praising the way in which everything held together during The Ark in Space, but then this is just on a whole new level.

Everything is drawn from a very muted colour palette. The entire world of Skaro is painted in blacks, whites, greys, and silvers. Even when we get glimpses of the ground outside, it’s a kind of flat, washed-out brown. Everything from the barren, smokey landscape outside to the reflective corridors of the Kaled bunker conforms to this simple palette, which makes it all the more exciting when the Doctor, Sarah, or Harry arrive on screen (it’s not – ironically – the multi coloured scarf which helps the Doctor stand out, but rather the deep burgundy of his jacket), or when we get our shot from the inside of the ‘incubation chamber’, and the screen is filled with a vivid green light.

It’s almost cinematic in the way that colour is being used here, and you really get the impression that a great deal of work and thought has gone into making it all look just right. The only thing which I’m finding distracting is the Thal’s guns… because they’re the same ones as used by the Drahvins in Galaxy 4! I noticed it yesterday, when the Doctor compares the weapons as being several centuries apart in their development, but assumed they’d just pulled something out of the BBC props store for use in the one scene, but it seems like they’re continuing to use them throughout the rest of the tale, too. I rather like the idea that these props still existed ten years after their initial use, and can be pressed into service once more for the Doctor’s adventures.

When I’m not sat thinking about how good this story looks, I’ve been admiring the dialogue. There’s some really great exchanges scattered throughout these 23 minutes, and I’ve written down far more snippets of conversation than I could ever repeat here in one blog entry without simply replicating the script. All of this great dialogue is helping the cast to turn in some absolutely stellar performances, and once again I find my praise being drawn to our new Doctor. Genesis of the Daleks was the penultimate story filmed during Tom’s first production block (Terror of the Zygons was filmed after this one, but was then held back for Season Thirteen when the start date was brought forward), and you can really see that he’s found his feet by now. I’ve been singing his praises since the very first episode of Robot, but here he’s really managed to get the performance down to an art. The key moment has to be when scientist realises that the Doctor must be from an alien world, and as he spells out the realisation… the Doctor just grins at him. We’ve seen Tom flash his huge smile plenty of times by now, but this is the first time I’ve ever seen it quite like this.

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 411: Genesis of the Daleks, Episode One

Dear diary,

I’m always very weary of any story which gets described as a ‘classic’ for Doctor Who. You know the type - those stories which can do no wrong in the eyes of fandom, and which always appear near the top of ‘favourite stories’ lists. There’s a few titles that spring to mind (The Evil of the Daleks, Fury From the Deep, Inferno, The Dæmons), including this story. Throughout my time doing The 50 Year Diary, I’ve often found that I don’t really agree with the general consensus (Inferno is the only one of those stories which rated very well with me), and usually the knowledge that a story is supposed to be one of The Very Best is enough to ruin it a little bit for me. Ergo, I’m often let down by the finished product.

Over the years, I’ve found that my friend Nick Mellish and I tend to have some very similar tastes when it comes to Doctor Who stories, and he’s always been of the same opinion as me that many of these supposed ‘flawless’ stories are just that bit over sold. I mentioned to him the other day that I was gearing up for another of them - Genesis of the Daleks - and he replied with some encouraging words: “Ah, now I love Genesis! One of the few that lives up to the hype. Avoided it for years and then watched it: marvellous.” Now, I tend to trust Nick’s opinion on Doctor Who more than anyone else’s, so this was a positive sign. I’d been instantly turned from dreading another six-part Dalek story into actually looking forward to it.

Right from the moment the titles faded away and the episode started, I knew that he was right. For a start, we’re back on good old film for the location footage. I know I’ve moaned on about it an excessive amount recently, what with Robot and The Sontaran Experiment shooting all their exteriors on video, but it really is wonderful to be back in this format again. It just adds so much more depth and atmosphere to the proceedings, and I don’t think that this episode would have been quite so wonderful were it shot on plain old video. Those opening shots of the misty wastelands, into which the gas-mask-clad figures emerge is stunning. Watching them go ‘over the top’ and then get gunned down in slow-motion was genuinely gripping, and then to see the Doctor emerge from the smoke looking just as lost and confused as we are… beautiful.

And then it doesn’t let up from there. While there’s plenty to love from the studio scenes, the highlights of this episode really are all the film sequences. We get a real sense of space during these scenes that I can’t remember ever seeing in the programme before - there’s one shot when the Doctor and Harry make their escape from the Kaled dome that’s shot from a very high angle, and the location seems to stretch out for ages in all directions. Equally, there’s shots early on with our three regulars exploring the landscape and you can see bodies, weapons, and rubble strewn everywhere. There seems to be more effort put into this than we often see - it’s certainly one of the best location shoots that Doctor Who has ever seen.

To some extent, it also adds credence to my complaint in an earlier Dalek tale, Planet of the Daleks that adding in more smoke would help the atmosphere of the tale, because this story is dripping in it. When we switch from location to studio, while the change is still evident, the use of such a thick coating of smoke really helps to make it all feel like one shared world. I was going to say that it reminded me very much of The War Games, not just because it has a similar setting, but because of the style of the direction, and it wasn’t until the end credits rolled that I realised we’ve got David Maloney back behind the cameras. He was also responsible for the earlier Planet story, but I’m much preferring his work here.

I think this may also be the best use of the ‘Dalek reveal’ cliffhanger since possibly as far back as The Dalek Invasion of Earth. I’d planned to say that once again their presence in the title (and being mentioned early on by the Time Lord) ruins their reveal, and destroys a lot of the subtle hints and piecing together that we get throughout the episode - A particular favourite is the Doctor musing that K-A-L-E-D is an anagram of… well, yes - but actually, it means that we’re actually anticipating them once again. Watching Sarah Jane’s reaction at the end as once of the pepper pots follows orders is lovely, and I’m surprised by how pleased I am to have them back, considering how little time we’ve had since their last appearance in the programme.

Once again, and I fear this may become a running theme in the Diary over the coming months, you can really see the darker tone the programme has inherited. I’ve already mentioned the opening shot in which we witness people’s deaths in slow motion, but this entire episode is laced with death. They’re scattered around the wasteland. They’re propped up against the sides of the trenches. Following a gas attack, Sarah Jane wakes up amongst a pile of corpses! Can you imagine a scene like that occurring at any previous point in the programme’s history? Doctor Who is actively embracing the new horrifying image that it’s taken on, and it’s not difficult to see why Mary Whitehouse started sitting up and taking real notice around this time.

The last few Dalek stories have been set against a background of super-intelligent touch-screen cities, jungles where the plant-life is more animal than vegetation, and a futuristic world in which they use gorillas to do their bidding. Here, they’re simply pitted against a completely bleak background of death, and destruction, and there really is no feeling of hope to be found anywhere at this stage. As with the programme itself, the production team are trying to make the Daleks scary again, and if the tone of the story continues on in this style, then there’s a good chance that they may well succeed!

It has to be mentioned at some point, and here is as good as anywhere else. In recent years, it has been suggested that this story represents the first shots of the Time War being fired - thus making the Time Lords responsible for their own later destruction (or not, as the events of Day of the Doctor now show us). Although I’ve not watched the story before, I’ve always known that Genesis involves the Doctor being sent back to Skaro’s past by the Time Lords to avert the Daleks creation, but I’ve never really given it so much as a second thought.

Having now watched through the Pertwee years, in which missions for the Time Lords became something of a common plot device (even though some stories didn’t mention it directly, there was usually enough evidence to suggest their hand in events), it’s quite interesting to see where we’ve ended up. All their previous missions seems decidedly low-key in comparison to this one, and were it not for the presence of the Daleks lurking in the background, the Doctor would have been completely against it. But this now marks the start of yet another ‘loose story arc’ that I’ll be tracing fro now on - the build up of the Time War. Obviously, it wasn’t the intention at the time, but with retrospect, it is hard not to see this as a declaration of war against the Daleks, even if it’s being done in a slightly sneaky way and somewhat under the table.

So… One of those stone-cold, Doctor Who classics… And perhaps the first one to really resonate with me. This episode is the first non-Troughton one to achieve a perfect score - 10/10. I’m stunned by how much I’ve enjoyed today’s episode, and I was really tempted to simply move right onto Episode Two, without even pausing to write up this entry! I’ll be a good boy, though, and hope that the next few days will prove to be very enjoyable indeed…

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 410: The Sontaran Experiment, Episode Two

I really like the idea of Sarah watching our Sontaran friend emerging from his spaceship, and removing his helmet, while thinking that it’s Lynx. As she rightly says here, it can’t be him, because she saw him blown up during her first trip in the TARDIS, but it creates such a great moment of surprise, and it’s a shame again that the title of the episode somewhat gives the game away. But then the cliffhanger is already ruined to some extent by the fact that the Sontaran mask has been redesigned since their first appearance a year earlier.

There’s nothing wrong with this new mask – indeed, it’s quite well done once again – but it just doesn’t have the same impact as the last one did. It looks more like a mask than before, and that takes away from the effect a little bit. It also somewhat spoils the idea that the Sontarans are all identical (which is something done so nicely when we’re put in contact with the general via video phone), and Sarah’s assertion that he’s so similar comes across a bit silly. This was the main topic of conversation during our earlier commentary for the episode, where both Alex and me lament the difference in the mask.

Thankfully, though, Styre is just as ruthless as Lynx – if not more so. There’s a lovely moment here where he spits at Sarah with ‘You are nothing, do you understand? You are a mistake and therefore must be eliminated’. He’s very brutal, perhaps more than we’re used to in the series – it seems to be another sign of the programme moving into slightly darker territory with the introduction of a new producer.

The biggest cause for disappointment for all of us watching on the commentary from 2009 was Styre’s pet robot. The spaceship crew all live in fear of this machine (more because of what happens after it’s captured you, in fairness), but it’s just a bit… well… pathetic, isn’t it? The moment when the Doctor manages to disables the machine and I tell my assembled friends that the moment was ad-libbed on location, because the robot prop collapsed during the middle of a take, and they decided to incorporate the footage into the story. Perhaps unsurprisingly everyone simply replied that it seemed likely! I told them that I’d been joking, but the general consensus seemed to be that the prop probably did fall apart more than once during the filming!

Perhaps the thing that people know most about this story is that Tom Baker injured himself during the filming, and broke his collar bone. Of all the places to do so – the middle of Dartmoor is probably about the furthest away from a hospital that he could have been! I don’t think it impacts on his performance greatly, but if you know what you’re looking for, it’s quite obvious which scenes have been filmed after the accident, because his arm is always held in the same position! If anything, it makes the final shot of him departing in the middle of the transmit ring all the more unusual, because he’s able to use his arms freely again, having held it static for such a long time!

Ultimately, I think The Sontaran Experiment has just suffered from that age old issue – I’ve spent a while expecting to not really enjoy it all that much, and so no matter what it did, I was never going to be impressed. It’s not a bad story, by any means, but it’s neither here nor there, and it’s simply failed to really capture my imagination.

It’s been a bit of an odd experience over these last six episodes, listening to commentaries featuring myself on them, among a few friends. I’m most surprised by just how little we actually say in the recordings – I don’t know how I ever really thought that they would be of much interest to anyone. I know my plan at the time was to write them up and do something with them, but I can’t imagine that being very popular! I’m really glad that we’d done it, though, because it’s been a really interesting experiment to copare my thoughts from five years ago with what I think now.

It’s strange just how much I’d forgotten about these stories in the last five years – I couldn’t have told you how The Ark in Space ended, for example – and even stranger to see just how much I’d missed first time around. I’m still most stunned by my earlier assertion that the lighting on Nerva was rubbish, considering how much I loved it this time around! I suppose it brings to mind some of the Eleventh Doctor’s final words, where he talks about the way we all change, right the way throughout our lives. If anything, it makes me keen to repeat this ‘complete marathon’ experience a few years on from now, using The 50 Year Diary as my chronicle of what I thought here and now: I’d love to see how my opinions on Doctor Who stories change in the future…

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 409: The Sontaran Experiment, Episode One

Dear diary,

The episode select screen seems so bare with just the two episodes on there - we’ve not had that since The Rescue almost a full year ago! It’s also been worrying me a little bit as today’s worn on, because I really couldn’t remember much caring for this story. In my mind it was a bit throwaway and dull, with a spaceship crew that I wasn’t keen on, and a robot design that just didn’t work for me. It’s one of those days - the first one in a while, actually - where I wasn’t excited to be sitting down for my dose of Doctor Who.

Which is odd, frankly, because I really rather liked the last story to feature a Sontaran, and this marks the first time they’ve gotten their name in an episode title, which makes them officially one of the Doctor’s most popular foes. Unfortunately, as the episode wore on, and I realised that we were heading for a cliffhanger reveal (in true … of the Daleks fashion) of the titular monster, I couldn’t help by feel even more that the story boils down to very little. The return of a Sontran was planned partly because they had the costume in the cupboard (although they’ve had to recreate the mask, so it’s not quite the cost-saving measure they’d planned), but also partly because of how well received they were last time around, so it seems a shame to have all the Sontaran action confined to a single episode.

I think we’re in one of those awkward situations, where I’ve spent such a long time thinking that I’ll probably not like a story, that no matter how much good there is, I just can’t get myself interested in it. I started my notes today by commenting how nice the opening tracking shot across Dartmoor looked… and then went on to wish that they’d shot this entire serial on film (like Robot, it’s been recorded on video), because everything comes across looking just a bit flat. I visited Dartmoor a few years ago, and my main memories are driving down the roads where you’ve just got these stunning vistas laid out before you. It’s a beautiful landscape, and while some of the bits we see cropping up in this episode are quite nice, it seems a shame that so much of the story feels very confined, and you don’t get a real good look out across the vistas very much. Filming miles and miles away from anywhere should mean that they use the remoteness of the location as an advantage, but that feeling just doesn’t come across.

My then-partner sums it up best on our five-year old commentary for this episode, when Sarah says that this doesn’t feel like Earth at all: ‘she’s obviously never been to Dartmoor’. I then go on to muse that if they’ve supposedly landed right in the remains of Piccadilly Circus (it’s not clear wether the Doctor is joking or not), it would have been nice to see one or two bits of evidence. Something like a crumbling Nelson’s Column in the distance, for example, just to make the landscape feel that bit more alien.

So: time for something a bit more positive, I think. As younger me points out, I rather like the ‘serial’ nature of Season Twelve, where very story leads directly into the next one. There’s a very clear through-line from Robot (or, if I’m honest, Planet of the Spiders) to around Terror of the Zygons - though I think I’m right in saying that some of the other Season Thirteen serials link back in, coming one-after-the-other, too. It’s not something I’d like all the time, as it has the danger of making the Doctor’s life seem that bit shorter, but it’s nice as an occasional one-off. It also means that this story retains several links to the previous one, leading to…

The ‘legend of the lost colony’. I love this whole idea. Nerva has been floating about in space for 10,000 years now, carrying a subset of the human race. It’s completely over-slept the alarm clock, and has been all but forgotten about. Vira is somewhat thrilled to learn during The Ark in Space that other pioneering attempts from her own time to reach out into the stars proved successful (even if they did lead to the war against the Wirrn), and it’s great to see some of these other areas of humanity, to whom the Ark is a legend older to them than even the Bible is to us. Of course it’s slipped into obscurity and myth. It also leads to my favourite line from this episode: ‘you’ve done nothing for 10,000 years, while we made an empire!’

The only bit of all this which doesn’t quite ring true with me is the idea that Nerva has never been found. The model shots in the previous story showed it floating in space not all that far from the planet - even if this group of humans managed to miss it on their way in (they may have landed on the wrong side of Earth, but even then you’d expect their ship to pick up on it), surely enough people must have seen the station over the millennia? Maybe Nerva sightings in the future are the same as bigfoot sightings currently, and everyone considers them to be fakes? I’ve got images of people creating a Nerva model out of washing up bottles and stringing it up next to a photo of Earth to try and fool their friends…

I’d completely forgotten this whole aspect of the story, but it’s a lovely little link, and adds a nice dimension to the whole Ark storyline. Harry goes on to mention that they’ve got no end of animals and fauna aboard the station, ready to bring back to Earth, and I’m somewhat surprised that we’ve never had a follow-up story showing the inhabitants of Nerva starting to re-establish the Earth. Big Finish have given us stories set during the Wirrn Wars and which return the Doctor to Nerva… maybe a follow-up could be the next story they tell us in this ‘era’?

To celebrate the release of recently recovered missing Doctor Who adventure The Web of Fear on DVD, a marathon screening of the story, and preceding adventure The Enemy of the World has been announced by BBC Worldwide and Prince Charles Cinema, in association with BFI.

The twelve 25-minute episodes will be shown back to back at London's Prince Charles Cinema on Saturday 22nd February at 11:15am. Tickets will go on sale from 9:00am on 14th February 2014 from www.princecharlescinema.com, and are priced £14 (£11.50 Prince Charles Cinema members).

The screening will be followed by a 45 minute Q&A session with key cast members from the episodes as well as a member of the Troughton family. The panel will be chaired by writer, actor and Doctor Who fan Toby Hadoke.

Nine of the episodes from these classic stories were missing and feared lost forever before they were returned to the BBC by television archive expert Philip Morris in 2013, after he located them in Nigeria.

+  Download The Enemy Of The World for £9.99 via iTunes in the UK.
+  Download The Enemy Of The World for $9.99 via iTunes in the USA.
+  Order The Enemy Of The World DVD on BBC Shop for just £13.99!

+  Download The Web Of Fear for £9.99 via iTunes in the UK.
+  Download The Web Of Fear for $9.99 via iTunes in the USA.
+  Order The Web Of Fear DVD on BBC Shop for just £13.99!

+  Follow Doctor Who Online on Twitter (@DrWhoOnline)!

[Sources: BBC Worldwide]

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 408: The Ark in Space, Episode Four

Dear diary,

I’ve been trying to find the right word to describe what we’ve seen of this story (and thus, of the Hinchcliffe producership so far), and I think I’ve worked it out today: it’s confident. I thought it by about the time Episode Two of Robot had rolled around, but it’s hard to think that Tom Baker hasn’t been playing this part for years already. He’s just so sure of the performance, and I’m completely sold on his version of the Doctor.

It also has to be said that the style of the show has already started to assert itself very strongly. This is possibly the biggest tonal shift that we’ve seen the programme attempt up to this point, and yet it’s doing it with such bravado – there’s no gentle easing into this new format of Doctor Who. I was mentioning this to a friend earlier today, who pointed out that it’s no greater change than any other regeneration. But I think we’re prepared for the way the Troughton yers begin because The Tenth Planet is something of a template for his era, and we’re prepared for the Pertwee years by the presence of stories like The Web of Fear and The Invasion. Although the Third Doctor had started spending more and more time away from Earth as his era went on, the adventures he had out in space were of a different style to the one we’re seeing here. To put it bluntly, they simply weren’t as scary as this story.

The Wirrn themselves are a great design, and I’m really surprised that they haven’t turned them into an action figure yet – they’d look great on the shelf! My only complaint about the costumes is that they’re too dry. That sounds a bit odd (and it probably is), but it feels as though they should be at least shiny, if not slightly dripping with goo. It’s not the first time that I’ve felt this – I thought the same about the maggots in The Green Death, a great design, but one that’s let down by the fact that they’ve been so obviously created for a television programme, and they don’t seem to have anything making them look a bit more… natural.

I’ve seen it said over the years that the one moment which lets this story down is the Wirrn crawling their way across the surface of the Ark in an attempt to reach the rocket. I’ve known, therefore, that such a shot was coming up, and I’d been sort of dreading it. With everything else pulling together so well in this story, I didn’t really want it to be let down in a few seconds of screen time during the final episode. I rather liked the shot, though! It’s certainly not the worst model effects that we’ve ever seen in the series, and it may even be the moment where I find the Wirrn most effective! When it comes to the full-size models, younger me on my commentary recording makes a point of describing them as not being the most mobile of creatures, and I think that thought holds true now. It’s a lovely design, but a bit… bulky. No wonder they couldn’t follow Sarah down the ventilation shafts!

I think I sort of lost track of what was happening at this point, because when the Wirrn suddenly find themselves blasted off into space I was completely stumped by it. I’d not registered that they’d entered the shuttle at any point, and figured that they were just making their way towards our heroes to try and cut them off before… oh, I don’t know. I’d just sort of lost my place with things. Still, it’s nice to see Noah retaining some of his human spirit right until the very end of the story, and that’s something that younger me had picked up on, too (even if I’d forgotten all about it by the time of this viewing).

It’s been interesting listening to the commentary I recorded for this story five years ago as I’ve made my way through – mostly because I’ve completely forgotten everything about it. I’ve know that I’ve watched this story right the way though to the end before now – and I’ve even got the audio recording to prove it! – but I couldn’t have told you anything about what happens at the end here. I’ve got a commentary recording for The Sontaran Experiment, too, and I’m hoping it continues to be a novel experience for me to listen back to them. I’ve been struck so far by how little we’re actually saying on the commentaries, but there’s steadily more coming out with each passing episode. I think we’re finding our feet with the process as we go along!

At the end of today’s recording, the title credits play out and I make a point of asking Alex and Stevie what their favourite moments from the story were. Alex’s answer is jokey to begin with (he plumps for the little blue ‘splat’ effect when a gun is fired early on) before deciding that he was rather fond of the Doctor teasing Sarah Jane in this episode to spur her on in a moment of need. Stevie simply liked the moment when the Doctor got punched for his own good, and I decided that the best bit of the story was that moment in Episode Three where the door opens and we find Noah in a half-infected state on the other side.

While I’d still single that out as being a fantastic moment in the story, I think I’d like to change my answer now. This time around, I was more struck by Kenton Moore’s earlier performance in Episode Three, where he wrestles against his infection to try and warn Vira that she needs to get off the Ark while she still can. It still stands out as being one of the greatest performances we’ve seen in the programme, and I’m surprised I didn’t say much more about it the last time I watched the story – I think I was too busy looking at the bubble wrap!

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 407: The Ark in Space, Episode Three

Dear diary,

The Ark in Space has always been something of a fan-favourite in the world of Doctor Who. Russell T Davies has cited it as being his favourite ‘classic’ story, while Steven Moffatt has hailed it as the best of all the Tom Baker stories (perhaps a worrying sign for me, so early into his tenure - will it all be downhill from here?), and for as long as I can remember, it’s been one of those Doctor Who classics that you just can’t fault.

I think a lot of the praise for this has to be given over to the story’s casting. There’s a scene early on in this episode in which Kenton Moore, in the role of Noah, has to struggle against his spreading infection, and try to send a warning to the rest of his waking crew to get them away from the possible danger. The only way I can think of to describe the scene is that we’re watching a proper actor at work - he’s taking it all very seriously. If you can overlook the bubble wrap hand that he’s sporting throughout the scene, it’s possibly the closest to real drama that we’ve seen the programme attempt in a very long time. It’s being played as scary, and serious, and even though Tom Baker grins his way through much of the episode, it’s got a far darker tone than anything the show’s given us since probably Season Three.

Later on, the Doctor and Vira encounter him in the corridor, and he’s been significantly more overtaken by his Wirrn persona. The design on this ‘phase’ looks significantly more effective than the earlier hand effect, and it’s possibly the scariest bit of the transition. While the hand and the larvae don’t really work for me (though bubble wrap would have seemed more alien in 1975, by 2014 it’s just that bit too common place to really have any effect on me!), this half-converted Noah really does do the trick. This same scene has a bit of awkward editing where they’ve cut a line of Noah begging to be killed, and based on the performance being given elsewhere in the story, I’m not surprised it was cut.

It’s amazing, too, how simply changing the lighting setup can make this previously huge, white, open set feel small, and claustrophobic. It’s like getting up in the middle of the night in a house you know so well… and suddenly finding it strange and not how you remember it. I get the sensation whenever I visit the farm back home - I grew up in that house for 17 years before moving out, so I know it like the back of my hand, but if you get up in the middle of the night and make your way to the bathroom with very few lights on, the whole place feels different. It’s great to see this being put into practice with the Nerva set, and especially after I spent so long yesterday praising the way the set looks. Here, we’re given a whole different viewpoint on the place.

Ironically, listening to the commentary I recorded five years ago for this episode with some friends, only one thing stood out to me. Once I’d heard it, I couldn’t really pay much attention to anything else, because I’d somewhat shocked myself! My then-partner points out how the bubble wrap looks so much better when it’s being used for the half-converted Noah compared to when it was just on his had. I thought that was a fairly good observation, and indeed I’d made the same one in my notes while watching today. But then younger me cut in on the commentary; ‘I don’t think the bubble wrap is helped by the fact that this set is lit like it’s from the mid-1980s’.

Within Doctor Who fandom, it’s generally accepted that during the mid-80s (Some of Colin Baker’s stories, and Warriors from the Deep in particular) suffer because they’re lit so bright and flat throughout. There’s not much room for atmosphere, because you can see every nook and cranny of the set. I’d not really considered the fact that his set is being given the same treatment during my current watch-through, though as Alex then says on my old commentary: ‘I think it’s supposed to be lit like this, though. That’s part of the style’

He’s right, of course, and I’m surprised that younger me was so dismissive of the lighting during that watch. I can’t remember ever being anything less than loving of this set (especially when - as I said yesterday - I used to use it as my default ‘space’ set when thinking of Doctor Who), so I was really surprised to hear myself saying this. Assuming it is me, of course. I’m convinced that I don’t really sound like that, but Emma assures me that my voice hasn’t changed in the last five years. She seems to find it quite amusing.

Despite my shock at the statement, it’s exactly the kind of thing that I was hoping for these recordings to throw up. I genuinely can’t recall ever thinking that about these sets, and as my entry yesterday praising the design of the Nerva station will attest, it’s certainly not something that I’d agree with now. I love seeing just how much my opinions have changed over the years, and I can’t wait to revisit some stories in the future and see how my views then compare with the ones I record in this diary now. It’s a great time capsule, and I really am enjoying this chance to revisit my earlier feelings on things…