Friend of DWO and Doctor Who fan / designer, Jason Charles Onion, has made available a brand new, exclusive script extract and print set from ‘An Unearthly Child’.

There are ten prints, six are A5 size page extracts from the scripts and one is a promotional piece of A5 size artwork, one of these has been signed by the 6th Doctor Who himself - Colin Baker. The other three are A4 concept clock artwork prints designed by Jason Charles Onion in 1997 for the then BBC Enterprises and are signed and numbered to a limited run.

These are from Anthony Coburn's first drafts from the genesis of the show from 1963 of 'An Unearthly Child' They were discovered in 2013 in 'Herne Bay' in the lead up to the 50th Anniversary. Further information here - https://vimeo.com/132858357

Fans can order them directly from Jason’s eBay page, here, for just £29.99, and for a limited time, postage and packaging is FREE!

[Source: Jason Charles Onion]

Luken Communications has announced the highly-anticipated debut of Doctor Who on Retro TV coming this Monday 4th August. Beginning with the very first episode of the series, “An Unearthly Child,” American fans of the science fiction classic can find two episodes of Doctor Who back-to-back every weeknight at 8:00PM ET/PT on Retro TV.

Retro TV will be showcasing the series’ classic run, featuring the first seven incarnations of The Doctor: William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton, Jon Pertwee, Tom Baker, Peter Davison, Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy.

Matthew Golden, Luken’s Vice President of Production, said:

“We’re excited to set a fixed point in time for the arrival of classic episodes of Doctor Who on Retro TV. These meticulously restored episodes will bring the history of the Doctor to the U.S. in a way that viewers have never seen before.” 

In addition to the weeknight schedule, a two hour encore block will air on Saturday evenings as part of Retro TV’s new Sci-Fi Saturday. Starting at 6:00PM ET/PT, viewers can enjoy the supernatural anthology One Step Beyond, Doctor Who and Mystery Science Theater 3000.

For more information on Retro TV or to find a Retro TV affiliate in your area, please visit www.watchretrotv.com. Everyone at Retro TV is dedicated to expanding the network’s footprint. If you do not yet have a Retro TV affiliate in your area, you can help by contacting your local TV stations to request that they add Retro TV to their subchannel lineup. Retro TV can be found on Facebook at www.facebook.com/watchretrotv and on Twitter at www.twitter.com/watchretrotv.

[Source: Retro TV]

To celebrate Doctor Who's 50th anniversary, fan of the show Lewis Christian has been putting together an epic fan-collaborated/written celebratory book, Celebrate Regenerate.

Over the past 9 months, fans from all over the world (and of all ages, races and species) have been invited to submit positive reviews and articles for all of the televised episodes, right from An Unearthly Child to the current run of episodes, to be published in the book.

The project, a mammoth undertaking, is still in progress, though most of the book has now been edited. Lewis is currently accepting submissions for Series 7B, and you can get involved! For more information about 7B submissions, check the book's website here: http://celebrateregenerate.weebly.com/series-7b-info.html

On the site, you can also find out how to get your name listed in the book, and you can view lots more details about the project so far. You can also follow the links below for more information, sneak peeks and anything else to do with Celebrate Regenerate!

The book, once finished, will be published via Lulu.com and there will also be a free PDF version, allowing everyone to get hold of a copy. At over 300 pages (one story per page is the rule), it'll make for great summer reading. 

At present, there is no precise launch date, though the book is expected to be released in August 2013.

+  Website: http://celebrateregenerate.weebly.com
+  Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/CelebrateRegenerate
+  Twitter: http://twitter.com/lewis_christian

[Source: Lewis Christian]

The Ultimate-TV, BBC Home Entertainment, and Columbia College are bringing Doctor Who screening to Chicago beginning Saturday 26th January 2013.

The screenings will be held at Columbia College Chicago, 600 South Michigan Avenue from 1pm – 4pm in the Ferguson Lecture Hall, on the first floor. 

To kick off the 50th anniversary celebration of Doctor Who, there’ll be a special screening of the very first episode; 'An Unearthly Child' starring William Hartnell, Carole Ann Ford, Jacqueline Hill and William Russell. 

Immediately following the screening, there will be a Q&A, trivia quiz; costume contest and special prizes will be given away, courtesy of BBC Home Entertainment. 

This event is FREE to the public and will be held on the last Saturday of the month.

+ To register, go to http://theultimatedrwho2.eventbrite.com/ - seating is limited, first come, first seated. 

[Source: The Ultimate-TV]

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

Day Four - The Firemaker (Episode Four)

Dear diary,

I'm only four days in, and watching Doctor Who in this way is already having an effect on me. I'm used to watching the 'classic' series in one sitting, or at least a few sittings across a single day/weekend. My pattern for the last nine years has been to buy the DVD, rush it home and watch it, for the most part.

But on the way back from work earlier on, pondering what to cook for dinner before sitting down to watch The Firemaker, I realised; I was ready to move on from the whole cave man set up and see something different. Not that I've not been enjoying it - I have - but I've just had enough of this setting.

It feels as though I've been watching this particular story for absolutely ages, rather than just a few days. It's a strange sensation, and I'm not sure I entirely dislike it. It's far closer to the experience of watching the programme week-by-week on first transmission. I'll defer to older fans for this, as I wasn't born until the show's dying years in the 1980s; did stories seem to stretch on for ever? This would have taken a month to watch in 1963, and the next story would have taken almost two!

I've therefore spent much of the afternoon wondering why I'm feeling this way. As I've said above, I'm still enjoying this story, despite the slight blip in Episode Two, but at the same time, every time Za and Her come on the screen, I just want to move onto something different.

I'm wondering if it may be the weight that this story holds? This is the very first story, so obviously it has to do an awful lot. It establishes huge swathes of the series (and the next story makes another huge contribution to that), but it's quite unlike anything else the series has ever done.

The more I think about it, the more I realise that the cave-men-looking-for-the-secret-of-fire storyline is mere window dressing. This whole story is about the Doctor and Ian, and the way that they interact together. Ian tells the tribe that he is not the leader of their group, but there's an on-going power struggle with the Doctor right up until the end of the story and their return to the TARDIS.

The story is very much about these characters and the way that they interact with each other. I've commented before that the first episode of the series didn't feel especially distinct from a lot of 190s telly, and this is true to some extent as far as this episode. Yes, we've been through time and space to get here, but it's still not particularly 'out there'.

With the next tale standing at almost twice the length, I'm interested to see if I'll end up with the same feeling of simply wanting to move on with things.

Now comes the interesting bit, where I'm going to have to sum up my thoughts on the story over-all. I've been rating episodes individually as I go, which was the main reason for doing this marathon an episode a day. I'm interested to see how I react to stories where one episode lets them down, or picks them up.

Taking the ratings for An Unearthly Child, The Cave of Skulls, The Forest of Fear and The Firemaker, I'll be giving this story (which I'm titling over-all as An Unearthly Child, no arguments, please);

Do expect some graphs and charts and figures once we reach key stages in the marathon. Love a bit of figure analysis, me. There'll be some thoughts about my ratings system at the bottom of today's post, too.

I think, on the whole, I like An Unearthly Child, but it's just not Doctor Who as we know it. I like a lot of it because of the history and what it begins. I've mentioned a few times that people often say it's one episode, followed by three mediocre ones, but actually, there's a lot to love.

As I seem to keep saying, these episodes are about the characters themselves. Doctor Who characters aren't often given as much thought and development as our quartet are in this story, and it's lovely to see. At the end of these few episodes, I feel I know the Doctor and Ian well enough, though Barbara has had little to do overall.

My main complaint, I guess, comes down to format. I stated yesterday that Episode Three avoided the trap of being 'capture-escape-capture', but looking back, that's very much the whole story. They're captured by the tribe in Episode Two, escape for Episode Three, are re-captured for Episode Four, before making another escape.

It's not the end of the world, though, and I'm glad to say that I'm excited to be moving on to a new time and space, so perfectly teased in the final moments of this story…

* * *

And now, a word on my rating system. Often online, I see ratings of '9' or '10' being thrown about far too easily. I've seen it said in some forums that people wouldn't rate a story below a '6'.

To me, though, this simply defeats the point of rating something out of ten in the first place! Surely '10' is the absolute pinnacle, '1' the nadir, and '5' just pretty average? I've been rating these episodes as I go along purely on gut instinct. An Unearthly Child, for me, contains a couple of episodes that are little more than average, and a couple that rise above that.

So, this is my scale of '1-10' ratings. I'll be using these definitions in my mind as I continue in the marathon…

10 - Perfect. The absolute pinnacle.
9 - They don't get much better than this.
8 - Fantastic!
7 - Well above average.
6 - Above Average.
5 - Average.
4 - Below Average.
3 - Poor.
2 - Dreadful.
1 - Why am I doing this, again?

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

Day Three - The Forest of Fear (Episode Three)

Dear diary,

A lot gets made in this episode about the moment that the Doctor prepares to kill a caveman to make his escape. So much is made of it, in fact, that in my head it's this big moment where he picks up a large rock and holds it above the man's skull.

Of course, in actual fact, it's little more than the Doctor picking up the stone and turning it in his hand. His intention is clear, and when Ian asks the Doctor what he's doing, neither one of them says it aloud, but they're both aware of what could have happened. It's better this way, than the version in my head. Far more subtle. The entire interaction is sold on the skills of Hartnell and Russell, their interaction and the direction of the brief scene.

This is a stronger episode than the last - far more enjoyable. Even the scenes with the cave people were more to my taste, and I wonder if it's simply because I'm getting into the story more? It's certainly not got the problems that many later Doctor Who stories develop in Episode Three, where it becomes little more than a sequence of capture-and-escape.

Here, we're presented with an episode mostly involving our heroes running away from their enemies, and then coming around to help them. It may not sound all that far removed from a traditional Episode Three, but here we're treated to a hefty dose of character development.

It's often held up as something that the modern incarnation of Doctor Who does very well, but here it's in evidence just three weeks in. The Doctor and Ian are still suspicious of each other, but they've softened. The Doctor is being stubborn for the sake of it, and Ian simply refuses to let him get away with it.

But the Doctor is already warming to his new companions. He tells Barbara that 'fear makes companions of us all', and that's certainly in evidence here. He agrees with Ian that they must remain hopeful of an escape, and he tries to comfort his fellow travellers before they're set free from the cave.

He reverts somewhat to being less helpful when faced with the prospect of helping the cavemen. Having watched as his would-be-captor is mauled by a wild animal, he's very willing to use the opportunity to escape for freedom. Ian is of the same opinion - it's Barbara and then Susan who convince them otherwise.

Like the sequence with the stone, much gets written about how the Doctor at this stage in the series is so very far removed from the hero figure we know and love from much of the show's history. This is the first example of why it's Ian and Barbara that turn him around, teach him to be more forgiving of others and more willing to help.

We'll see this theme coming up more and more over the next few weeks, but it's nice to see that it's already begun as early as this.

Next Episode: The Firemaker

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

Day Two - The Cave of Skulls (Episode Two)

Dear diary,

The common conception of An Unearthly Child as a story is that it's a brilliant first episode, followed by three instalments of dross. I've always riled against this - I love to be a bit different, after all. That said, the scenes with Kal and Za fighting over leadership of their tribe are bloody dull.

The first few minutes of the episode, following an extended reprise of the fabulous cliffhanger from yesterday are just boring. There's no other word for it. Watching Za (The son of the great Fire-maker, don't-cha-know) rub his hands above a pile of sticks, while promising that today is the day the Great Orb will show him the secret of fire is… well…

I should explain. I've set myself a few rules for this marathon, aside from the whole 'no more than one episode a day' thing. One of these rules is that I'm not allowed to play with my phone at all while I watch. If I'm busy playing Angry Birds, then I'm not realign getting the full benefit of watching through, am I? Anyway, the point is that it's not a good sign if three-and-a-half minutes into an episode, I'm glancing toward my phone and wondering if it's too early to break that rule.

Things do pick up once we join our four time travellers in the TARDIS, though. Yesterday, I commented that there would be plenty of time to praise these four, and this seems like an ideal opportunity. The Doctor and Ian confronting each other around the TARDIS console is a marvellous scene; Ian simply refusing to hear what the Doctor is telling him (he almost goes full-on Victor Meldrew when Barbara tells him she's willing to accept it!), and the Doctor treating him as a child in return.

Hartnell and Russell really have a great time with this material, though you do rather side with Ian on the debate. Yes, fair enough, they've just entered a police box in a junk yard and found it to be bigger on the inside, but that's no reason to simply believe that they've actually moved just because the TV on the ceiling shows an image of a desert. For all Ian and Barbara know, the Doctor could be watching an episode of Zoo Quest.

The enjoyment continues outside the ship, when the travellers set off to explore. I love that the Doctor carries a bag with him, and that Susan insists he'd never go anywhere without his note book. The Doctor really comes across as a scientist, here, taking his geiger counter outside and seeming positively thrilled by the chance to study the rocks and find out where they are.

He spent a while in the last episode telling us how much he disliked being settled in 1963 (though he tolerates it), and so he's clearly enjoying the freedom here and now. His concern that the TARDIS hasn't changed shape to blend in with the surroundings is one of the lines from this story that's often quoted, but I've never noticed how much it's set up as a mystery.

I've always taken it for granted that the TARDIS looks like a London police box because it was stuck that way after a time in the junk-yard, but you forget that it's explained away like that so early. Susan later draws attention to it, commenting on how unusual it is to have not changed. It almost feels like they're setting this up as an on-going mystery, though I'm not sure if that's the case. I've never noticed it before, so I'll be interested to see if it's brought up again, or forgotten after this point. 

Now, Susan. I'm going to have to address this topic at some stage, so we might as well do it here, because it's already started. Susan really gets on my nerves. She's fairly hysterical in this one, when she finds the Doctor has gone missing, and there's a lot of shrieking, and jumping on cave people's backs.

Be warned. There's likely to be more than one moan about Susan over the next couple of months…

Next Episode - The Forest of Fear

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

Dear diary,

Hello! Happy New Year. 2013 - surely this is the year to be a Doctor Who fan? Anyway, resolutions made (same as ever, I promise to visit the gym more. I'll go later. Or maybe tomorrow.), and it's time to settle down to watch the first episode of my marathon.

Now, let's be under no illusions, right here from the start. I'm not coming to 'classic Doctor Who cold. Not even slightly. Since I saw my first episode way back in 2003 (weyhey! it's been a whole decade. I've only just noticed that!), I've seen a large chunk of televised Who. There's a few select stories that I know nothing about, but for the most part, I know what's coming.

This is especially true of An Unearthly Child. It's hard to imagine, with this year seeing the final few releases for the DVD range, but there was a time I didn't have (almost) the entire series sat on my shelf in shiny disc form. I didn't get to see this first episode until 2006, when the 'Beginning' box set was released. Since then, I've seen it plenty of times.

I like that I had to wait to watch it way back when! I can still remember picking it up from Woolworth's on my way to college, and some of my friends looking at it in a lecture. We'd had the Ninth Doctor by this point, but Doctor Who still wasn't 'cool' among most of my friends at the time. It took David Tennant to bring many of them into the fold.

But they were genuinely interested! Because here was a Doctor Who DVD of a story made some forty-three years earlier! Yes! It had that much history! Brilliant! Fantastic! And their excitement only made me more excited! It was bad enough that I had lectures and classes all day, I wanted to get home and watch the first episode!

Of course, the mistake I made upon actually getting home was to select 'play all' from the menu, so I watched the pilot episode first, assuming it was the first episode, then got very confused when the second instalment was the same thing with some subtle changes to it.

Since then, though, I've seen it plenty of times. It must be up there with The Five Doctors in terms of how often I've sat down to watch this episode. There's a common conception among Doctor Who fans that these 25 minutes are bloody brilliant, and some of the best the show has ever produced.

And you know what? Much as I'd love to be all contrary, they're right!

It's quite hard to watch this story in isolation. 50 years of history have attached a significance to this opening episode that it just wouldn't have had on its first television outing. I've read plenty of blogs that describe the opening shot, which tracks from a policeman in the fog, through the gates and unto the mysteriously humming Police Box as being 'iconic', but it simply wasn't. Not then, anyway.

We've given in this meaning in the years that have followed, because we know that 25 minutes later it'll be stood on a rocky plain, and then in a few weeks it'll be on Skaro, then captured by Marco Polo, before being sent off to Marinus, etc, etc. It's bloody difficult to take this episode for what it is; just another piece of TV.

This time round, though, I'm in the right frame of mind. Just before Christmas, Network DVD had a massive sale of their archive titles. I've spent the last few weeks sat in front of episodes of Danger Man, The Saint, 1960s episodes of Coronation Street and The Army Game. Just a few weeks ago, I was watching William Russell ride a horse around Camelot as Sir Lancelot!

My screen has been more black and white than it has been colour in the last month or so, and you know what? This episode fits right in. It doesn't feel ground-breaking. It's not iconic. It's just another piece of drama. It's very good drama, don't get me wrong, but in the context of the day, it's just another half-hour programme.

But you know what? It's better for that! I've never enjoyed this episode more than i have tonight. I've never seen it so detached from the weight of what's to come. There's plenty of good dialogue, and the four main cast turn in performances which I'm sure I'll be praising over the next few months, but it's a surprisingly low-key start to this most famous of series.

It's so very tempting to move right on. I know many people who watch this one episode and then skip the next three, but this first cliffhanger is a great one. This first episode might be little more than normal, but the last few seconds promise something bold and different to come…

Next Episode - The Cave of Skulls

The latest issue of Doctor Who Magazine reports that AudioGO and Big Finish are teaming up for a series of 11 Doctor Who Audio Specials spanning all 11 Doctors for the 50th Anniversary year in 2013.

The series will feature one Doctor per month, and will be overseen by John Ainsworth, with AudioGO’s Michael Stevens and Big Finish’s Nicholas Briggs and Jason Haigh-Ellery executive producing.

The first story, Hunters from Earth by Nigel Robinson is read by Carole Ann Ford and Tam Williams, and is set in that little-charted period after The First Doctor and Susan have arrived on Earth in 1963, but before they depart with Ian and Barbara at the end of An Unearthly Child.

The second story, Simon Guerrier’s Shadow of Death, features The Second Doctor, Jamie and Zoe, and is read by Frazer Hines and Eve Dawnay.

As well as marking the first time that Big Finish have tackled stories for Doctors from the current version of the show, it will also be the first time that an original story for The Ninth Doctor will be released on audio.

[Source: SciFi Bulletin]

DWO are thrilled to announce the return of our popular VortExtra section.

VortExtra began back in 2007 as a way of providing post-episode features that take the televised stories beyond what you see on screen. We continued the section for 2 more years before giving it a rest as we concentrated on other areas of the site.

In 2011, the DWO team discussed the options of reviving VortExtra, and after much deliberating, we decided to go in a new direction with the feature. We all know what happens in the televised stories, but we never really find out what happened just before or just after The Doctor's involvement in each adventure, as so began our quest to provide fans with just that; a Prologue and an Epilogue for every televised story - complete with Episode Guide entry links.

Roll forward to Easter 2012, and as of today, we have officially relaunched VortExtra, starting with the very first televised story; An Unearthly Child. Each Prologue and Epilogue will contain accompanying illustrations from some of the finest artists and illustrators around (who also happen to be Doctor Who fans), together with narration options and interactivity links.

Each week we will bring you a brand new VortExtra in random order from the shows 49-year history - including Classic and New Series adventures. We have also encouraged some established Authors and Writers to take part (some very well known indeed), in the hopes that maybe just a few of them *might* be up for taking part in the project [you don't ask, you don't get, right?]. We are also looking for fans with experience in writing to send in their submissions to us. A selection of the best material will make it through to have their stories made into VortExtra's with accompanying artwork and narration.

If you wish to take part, please E-mail the DWO team, together with a sample of your writing / artwork to: vortextra@drwho-online.co.uk.

+ Check Out VortExtra!

[Source: Doctor Who Online]