SyFy (formerly known as the SciFi Channel) has acquired the US broadcast rights to the K-9 solo series, produced in Australia in 2010.  They will run the entire 26-episode series in a 13-hour marathon on Christmas Day.

Featuring an updated K-9 design and a new group of characters, the series has been shown in many countries since its initial premiere.  The US is one of the last regions to see the series on TV.  The series is live-action, featuring a streamlined CGI K-9, voiced by John Leeson, the original voice of the “tin dog”.

K-9 is one of the most popular companions from the classic series of Doctor Who, with two different “models” traveling with The Doctor from 1977 – 1980, and making quite a few appearances afterwards..  Making his first appearance in the Bob Baker / Dave Martin adventure The Invisible Enemy, K-9 was the creation of Professor Marius, who built him as a replacement for his own dog back on Earth.  After the adventure, Marius asked The Doctor to care for K-9, as he was returning to Earth and would not be able to take him on the ship.  The original K-9 traveled with The Doctor and Leela for some time, and chose to remain with her on Gallifrey after the events of The Invasion of Time.  The Doctor built a new model almost immediately, and he was a companion of The Doctor and fellow Time Lady Romana for another three years, until they chose to remain in E-Space with Romana at the end of Warrior’s Gate.

A third K-9 unit was sent to Sarah Jane Smith as a gift from The Doctor, and became her adventuring confidant for many years, up until she met The Doctor again in School Reunion.  K-9 Mark III sacrificed himself in that adventure, but The Doctor was able to salvage enough to build a mark IV, which he left behind for Sarah Jane.  The spin-off series The Sarah Jane Adventures was green-lit almost immediately after this adventure, but Bob Baker had already made the deal for this new series, which is why K-9 appeared only in limited cameos for the first two series of SJA.

K-9 has had quite a few appearances in the prose and Big Finish audio adventures as well.  In the Gallifrey series of adventures, Romana returned to her home planet with her canine companion, and came to meet Leela, and HER canine Companion.  K-9s Mark I and II, humorously, did not get along, and often argued with each other.

While Doctor Who cannot be explicitly be named, the K-9 of the new series is clearly the same K-9 from the original. Specifically he’s K-9 Mark I, who survives and escapes the Time War, and winds up on late 21st century Earth.  After a brief fight where he is seemingly destroyed, he “regenerates” (a new system apparently installed for him by the Time Lords” into a new streamlined design.  There’s a second series of the show in the planning stages, in which the producers have promised another redesign, responding to feedback from the fans.

Creators Bob Baker and Dave Martin collaborated on all the Doctor Who TV scripts, as well as numerous other projects in British television.  Dave wrote four K-9 solo adventure novels in the early 80’s, and passed away in 2007. Bob Baker has had some small success away from Doctor Who as well – he co-wrote three of the Wallace and Gromit shorts, as well as the feature film The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.

With K-9’s appearance, we’ve seen every Doctor Who-related series in the US, save for the aforementioned Sarah Jane Adventures, starring the glorious Elisabeth Sladen.  While there’s no news of that show being picked up, needless to say it’d find a welcome audience.

The K-9 marathon runs Christmas Day from 10 AM – 11PM. The show is not yet scheduled for a regular time slot after the marathon. More info about the series can be found on its website, k9official.com.

Using the new Doctor Who Limited Edition Gift Set, your noble author will make his way through as much of the modern series as he can before the Christmas episode, The Snowmen.

Children are disappearing on a suburban street, and a certain being seems intent on making us…

FEAR HER
by Matthew Graham
Directed by Euros Lyn“I can’t stress this enough – ball bearings you can eat…masterpiece!”

Three children have vanished in the course of a week, cars are cutting out in the middle of the street, and everyone has been reduced to paranoid panic.  Not a good state of affairs for the day of the opening ceremonies of the London Olympiad.  The Doctor and Rose arrive just in time to help, luckily.  There’s an odd residual energy in the spots where the kids have vanished, which suggests it’s not some common human crapsack.  One girl named Chloe stays indoors and draws.  She draws the other children in the street.  Just before they vanish.  …yeah, The Doctor and Rose made the same assumptions…

An alien creature, the Isolus, has latched onto Chloe and used her raw emotions from a lifetime of abuse from her father (now dead a year) to try and get back to its family.  The alien is too weak to do so, and Chloe doesn’t know how to help, so she draws the kids in the street, who get teleported to a nondescript somewhere else, to attempt to assuage the alien’s loneliness.  She has the power to create things in her drawings as well – she angrily crosses out over one drawing, and the scribble comes to life, and a huge and choked thing with the emotion of her abusive father is gaining power in the back of her closet.  The Doctor has several goals – save the trapped kids, separate the alien from little Chloe, help it get back to space… and crash the Olympics?

This episode is…bad. It’s a weak shadow of the classic Twilight Zone episode It’s a Good Life, with no real sense of direction. The alien is innocent and unaware of its effects, and we end up being more afraid of Chloe’s father, who’s been dead a year. The scene with them collecting up al the pencils and crayons in the house as if they’re knives is ridiculous, is immediately surpassed by the scene where Chloe reveals she’s got pencils hoarded inside her dolls like Ray Milland hid whiskey bottles. The acting’s good, the music is great, but the premise is just so blah, and the look of the crayon monsters so silly that there’s no surprise that this is universally considered the worst episode of the new series by a long length: Doctor Who Magazine did a poll of the 200 most popular stories of the show’s run, and this one came in 192nd, only barely beating out Paradise Towers.  By contrast, Daleks in Manhattan, the story that resulted in the Daleks getting put in the cupboard for two years, came in at 152.  Of course, that just beat out the sublime Love and Monsters, so I imagine no poll is perfect.  Even  the idea of a living scribble was even done before, and better, on an early episode of Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends. In the episode The Trouble with Scribbles, it’s learned that scribbles are the almost universal form of babies’ first imaginary friends, and they mount up quickly.

There’s a bit of fun in the beginning of the episode – the idea of 2012 being the “Near future” gave them a moment to to skewer new X-Factor winner Shayne Ward with a poster for a Greatest Hits collection.

But it was this episode that fueled Doctor Who fandom’s hope… nay, belief that David Tennant would be carrying the Olympic torch at the 2012 ceremonies.  Even after Matt Smith started it off in the relay, the desire for Ten to close out this little time loop was unassailable.  Indeed, in Danny Boyle’s spectacular opening ceremonies, there was originally to be a sequence featuring Doctor Who; each of the living actors had to authorize the use of their photos, but it was dropped.  The whooshing sound of the TARDIS, barely audible over the din of the mix, is the only mention.

Yes, it’s time for Rick, Lori, Carl, Merle, Daryl, Glenn, Maggie, Hershel, Michonne, and even that mean ol’ Governor to learn the true meaning of the holiday season in a post-apocalyptic zombie wasteland! So come along and join us now in what is sure to become an annual tradition that ranks with shooting your eye out with a Red Ryder BB Gun… it’s The Walking Dead Christmas Special!

Perhaps this was the real reason Glen Mazzara left as showrunner for next season?

And don’t forget to check back here in seven weeks for the Dexter/Homeland Valentine’s Day Spectacular!