Tagged: Tardis

Alex Kingston Returns to Doctor Who

  • News
  • September 2, 2015

The BBC is giving us all a grand Christmas present – Alex Kingston will return to Doctor Who for the Christmas special as The Doctor’s Paramour and assassin, River Song.

Day one of filming the eleventh Doctor Who Christmas special starts this week and is written by lead writer and executive producer, Steven Moffat, produced by Nikki Wilson and directed by Douglas Mackinnon (Doctor Who, Sherlock).

Award-winning Alex Kingston comments on her reappearance:

“To be honest, I did not know whether River would ever return to the show, but here she is, back with the Doctor for the Christmas special. Steven Moffat is on glittering form, giving us an episode filled with humor and surprise guest castings. I met Peter for the first time at Monday’s read-through, we had a laugh, and I am now excited and ready to start filming with him and the Doctor Who team. Christmas in September?, why not!”

Steven Moffat, lead writer and executive producer adds:

“Another Christmas, another special for Doctor Who – and what could be more special than the return of Alex Kingston as Professor River Song. The last time the Doctor saw her she was a ghost. The first time he met her, she died. So how can he be seeing her again? As ever, with the most complicated relationship in the universe, it’s a matter of time …”

gz7g8-300x240-1622722River Song’s timeline with The Doctor has always been a topic of great discussion among fans.  From her point of view, her first appearance in Silence in the Library / Forest of the Dead was the last time she saw The Doctor, having died and all.  Up until the recent episode The Name of the Doctor, all of River’s appearances have been from earlier in her life / timeline – only in the latest one have we seen her from after the events of that first (well, I say “first”…) meeting.  So there’s no knowing from whence we’ll be seeing her appear this time.

As fans of their relationship know, there’s one very important moment we’ve yet to see – The Doctor has not yet presented her with the souped-up version of the sonic Screwdriver she used with such style in the Library. And considering Christmas is traditionally when presents are exchanged, who’s to say this isn’t when it’ll happen?

Curse you, Moffat, we haven’t even gotten to the premiere of the new season (September 19, as if you didn’t know) and you’ve already got us looking ahead to Christmas.

 

New Who Review – Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS

  • News
  • April 29, 2013

were_going_to_the_centre_of_the_tardis-5302149

She’s the only character on the show to appear in almost every episode.  She’s the TARDIS and she’s as important to the series as The Doctor himself.  So it’s nice when we get a story that features her  in a major way.

JOURNEY TO THE CENTRE OF THE TARDIS
by Stephen Thompson
Directed by Mat King

Trying to get Clara and the TARDIS to get along,  The Doctor tries letting her fly the ship, shutting off some of the higher more complex functions…like the shields.  This exposes the ship to outside detection, and detected it gets, but space salvage collectors the Van Baalen Brothers.  Using an illegal magna-grab system, they grab the TARDIS, causing a massive overload in the ship, one that flings The Doctor out of the doors, and Clara rolling back deep into its corridors.  The Doctor is forced to engage the brothers to help him save Clara, and later, keep the TARDIS from exploding and destroying much of the universe.

The main threat of the episode is effectively a condensed version of the arc plot from Matt Smith’s first series – the destruction of the TARDIS causing a rift in time, and held in stasis by the TARDIS itself.  Even the solution – the Doctor telling himself what to do to fix it has been done in Moffat’s two-part short for Comic Relief Time and Space, and to a more in your face level, the earlier special Time Crash.

THE MONSTER FILES – The TARDIS is both the setting and primary antagonist of the episode, trying to keep itself safe as well as keep the Van Baalen Brothers powerless.  There have been a number of TARDIS-centric episodes of the series, in an attempt to give some glimpse into its workings. The Edge of Destruction was way back in the first series, and was the first opportunity to both open up the backstory of the show, and the first time it was suggested that the TARDIS was at least some form of sentience – it tries to warn the crew that it was heading back to the beginning of time. We got a mini-tour of the ship in The Masque of Mandragora in which we first see the second control room, and a very large boot cupboard.  The Invasion of Time promised a deep look inside the TARDIS as The Doctor must face invading Sontarans- alas, a strike meant that the planned TARDIS sets were never built, leaving them to film in a disused hospital. We saw sevela new rooms, including a wardrobe and the Zero Room in Castrovalva.  Neil Gaiman’s previous episode The Doctor’s Wife showed a lot of the interior of the ship, as well as a major insight into her character. One of the downloadable video games, simply titled TARDIS, gave a look at many of the rooms in the ship as well,

GUEST STAR REPORT

Steven Thompson (Writer) has admitted in interviews that he has a handful of dream episode he planned to pitch for the show, including a way to bring back the Krynoids from The Seeds of Doom. Moffat pithced this story to him, he decided it was a much better idea, and went off to write it. Thompson  has written three episodes of Sherlock, last coming over to Doctor Who for The Curse of the Black Spot.

BACKGROUND BITS AND BOBS – Trivia and production details

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div id=”article-copy”>A WHOLE LOT OF RUNNING – Last seen in the aforementioned The Doctor’s Wife, we get another iteration of the classic “endless corridor” gag in this episode.  Doctor Who is notorious for this set-up – a simple set of two or three corridors, set at an angle to each other, and with a bit of careful cinematography, you can make them look like an endless set of twists and turns.  At least a couple of these corridors were built right along with the new set – we see The Doctor head down one to look for his the garage in The Bells of Saint John.  In the case of The Doctor’s Wife, the corridors were built expressly for the episode.  They also knew the episode was coming, so they left the Tennant control room set standing expressly for its use.…AND A ROOM AND A ROOM – We get a fleeting look at the swimming pool (last seen in Invasion of Time), the library (and a VERY interesting book), and what looks like an observatory.  The Telescope within is very reminiscent to the light collection weapon from Tooth and Claw.  It’s likely that it’s just a quick re-use of the model by the special effects team as opposed to it being the actual device from that episode.WE NEVER THROW ANYTHING AWAY – In that storage room Clara enters we see The Doctor’s (and River’s) crib, one of Amy’s hand-crafted TARDIS toys, a magnifying glass used (among other times) by Donna Noble in The Unicorn and the Wasp, and an umbrella that many presume is Victorian Clara’s from The Snowmen, it actually more closely resembles the umbrella carried by the eighth Doctor in Paradise Towers. VOICES FROM THE PAST – As Bram starts to dismantle the console, we hear voices from past adventures, including Susan, The Third, Fourth, Ninth and Eleventh Doctors, a couple of the Companions, and finally Five, complaining that Ten had “changed the desktop settings”.  Susan was allegedly the one to name the TARDIS, but in later adventures the name seems to be an official one.  Pertwee was the first to use the term “dimensionally transcendental”, techspeak for “bigger on the inside.  Baker’s line is from <a href=”

target=”_blank” rel=”noopener”> the single best explanation of  dimensional mechanics ever, given to Leela in Robots of Death.

“Basic mode? What, because I’m a girl?” – Well, The Doctor tried to teach Rose to fly the ship once, tho just as practice, and if she’d been actually been doing it, she’d have killed them both.  So for The Doctor to actually let Clara try flying the ship at all if quite a gesture of trust.  Glad it went so well.

“Well put – ‘Whoa’ and “awesome’.” – The Doctor describes the TARDIS as “infinite” – likely he’s either just engaging in hyperbole to make a point, or he’s referring to it being infinitely configurable.

“So that’s who…” – The mystery of The Doctor’s name has been a running theme for most of the current run of the show, and has become a major plot thread since the end of last season, supposedly culminating in the last episode of this series, The Name of the Doctor.  Theories have flown thick and fast as to the secret – is he hiding an act of evil in his past, or is he simply keeping it a secret so he can’t be traced back to his youth and destroyed?  In many cultures, knowing an enemy’s true name is the key to controlling or destroying them.

“The Eye of Harmony – exploding star in the act of becoming a black hole” – Mentioned just last week, the Eye of Harmony was first mentioned in The Deadly Assassin as the primary power source of the Time Lords.  Initially described as an actual black hole, here tweaked to be one in the act of a-borning.  Also, while initially described as being buried under the council chamber of Gallifrey, here we see the Eye is within, or at least accessible from, the interior of the TARDIS.

BIG BAD WOLF REPORT / CLEVER THEORY DEPARTMENT –

Many have expressed regret that all of the events have been forgotten by The Doctor’s companion and the Van Baalen brothers, to which I retort, exactly how much have been forgotten?  Gregor doesn’t remember the events of the adventure, but certainly recalls his shred of decency, resulting in him treating tricky with more…humanity.  And Clara says she doesn’t want to forget “all” of what’s happened.  She’s traveled in time enough that she’s potentially able to keep events erased from time in her mind, as The Doctor tries to do with Amy about Rory at the end of Cold Blood.

“What are you? A trick? A trap?” – For two weeks running we get validation that there’s nothing special about Clara, save for being a strong feisty girl.  Here she gets told about her other iterations, and doesn’t know a thing about them.  But again, it’s not known how much of this revelation she’ll remember.

NEXT TIME ON DOCTOR WHO – Mark Gatiss, Diana Rigg, Strax, Jenny and Madame Vastra.  The Crimson Horror, one weekend hence.

Emily S. Whitten: The Little Things

whitten-art-130409-1611694I love tiny things. Love them. Tiny things, filled with tiny details. This is why, somewhere in my closet, I have a box of random tiny dollhouse items that I’ve bought in various places or made myself, despite not ever having owned a dollhouse or the dolls that would accompany it. (My dolls were either baby-sized or tiny. Polly Pocket, anyone?) I have tiny newspapers and books that open; tiny jars of fake Necco Wafers and peppermint sticks; tiny wrapped “Christmas presents;” tiny forks and knives and mugs…I can’t resist them, because they’re just so intricate and cute. And tiny!

It’s also why I own and dote on a tiny Chinese dwarf hamster. Well, okay, so I’ve had bigger pets, too, but anyone who reads Twitter knows Bitty Miss Izzy is like my spirit animal or something, and I am perpetually unable to get over how tiny and cute she and her little paws and little nose and little ears are, which is why I am always photographing and filming her.

It’s also why, in my “spare time,” (haha) I sometimes make tiny models of geektastic things, like a tiny Tenth Doctor (Who) and TARDIS, or a tiny little Toothless from How to Train Your Dragon, or a tiny batch of lembas bread or tiny Rorschach accessories. And, of course, a tiny “Scary Trousers” Neil (Gaiman), based on the drawing of the same name, because who doesn’t need one of those? (Though that one now resides with the real Neil Gaiman, unless he’s given it away or something.)

Aside from the general cuteness of tiny things, I think a main reason I like them is because of the astounding amount of detail that they frequently manage to include, despite size; and as a geek, I’m more than a little inclined to obsess over detail, and particularly the (haha) tiniest details. I like intricacy. And let’s be honest here – I’m not alone. Most geeks are a bit detail-obsessed. Whether it’s every detail of a beloved character’s fictional life or a beloved fictional world, or every detail of a replica convention costume or collectible item, or every detail of minutia about the real-life production process of a favorite show, or trilogy, or what-have-you, we geeks are all about the details.

And being a geek, you know what I really find fascinating? When geekness combines with detailed tininess and produces amazing, awesome, and sometimes useful things. Here are some of my favorites this week:

Via the wonder of 3-D printing (how much do I want a 3-D printer and a 3-D printing pen? So much) I give you: tiny Winterfell.

] from the beautiful, amazing Game of Thrones opening credits. Look at it! Look!! It’s made of plastic and preciousness and precision. It’s under 10 square inches! I want one. (I also adore the entirety of the <a href=”

credit of that show, which feature a clockwork map of the story’s locations that is so tiny and intricate and beautiful and clever that it won an Emmy. You can read a cool piece about how the credits are done here.)

But lest you think that 10 square inches is anything special, there’s also this 3-D printed Wing Commander spaceship that is the diameter of a human hair. (Also, did you know there was a Wing Commander movie starring Freddie Prinze, Jr.? I didn’t! Apparently it was terrible.) A human hair! That’s almost too ridiculously tiny to be real, and yet, there it is, in incredible detail, just ready to be accidentally snorted up someone’s nose while they’re eyeing it up close. It’s adorbs, and I want one, even if I’d lose it immediately. I also see great promise for a nano-printer, in that it could conceivably be used to produce tiny bits for a myriad of helpful scientific or medical things, or even to produce an incredibly tiny Iron Man. You know which one I’d use it for first.

Speaking of robotics, how about this little Festo BionicOpter? Granted, it’s not quite as cute or small as a tiny Winterfell or Wing Commander plane, but it does have the benefit of being potentially a bit more useful. It’s an arm-sized quadcopter that “looks and moves like a dragonfly,” and “despite its complexity, the highly integrated system can be operated easily and intuitively via a smartphone.” Wow. I’m kind of in awe. Watch the video; it’s pretty cool. It also makes me wonder how long it’s going to take Festo (or other quadcopter folks) to make even smaller quadcopters. (Or, in a more sinister vein than the dreamy music of the BionicOpter video would have us thinking, how long until we’re going to be seeing things like the heat-sensing, eye-scanning electric shock spider robots of Minority Report? Eep!)

Despite the possible sinister applications of making technological things smaller (and that sort of thing has been around for years in the spy world, where we have things like the key ring spy camera and the DocuPen scanner, I think the current possibilities of the technology that allows things like the above to be made tiny and real is pretty amazing, and am curious to see what the miniaturization geniuses will come up with next.

Also, I think it’s amusing that we live in an age where miniaturization can also be used for practical jokes. I’m ordering my Micro Spy Remote as we speak. So don’t be too distressed if your TV mysteriously starts changing channels on its own next time I come to visit; and until next week, Servo Lectio!

TUESDAY AFTERNOON: Michael Davis

THURSDAY MORNING: Dennis O’Neil

 

Moorcock to fly the TARDIS

  • News
  • November 13, 2009

Acclaimed novelist Michael Moorcock posted the following statement on his message board yesterday:

“Looks like it’s official. I’ll be doing a new Dr. Who novel (not a tie-in) for appearance, I understand, by next Christmas. Still have to have talks etc. with producers and publishers but we should be signing shortly. Should be fun.”

By “not a tie-in” we presume he means he will pen an original novel featuring one of the Doctors. We find this very exciting news.

While there have been novelizations of television story arcs for decades, the first original novel dates back to just 1986. Led by the prolific Terrence Dicks, who has written adaptations and original prose, the line has seen many top-notch authors write adventures including a number well-regarded series of anthologies.

Review: ‘The Next Doctor’ on DVD

The [[[Doctor Who]]] Christmas Specials have normally been delightful affairs, bridging the events of one season with teases for the forthcoming season. This time, though, The Next Doctor actually kicks off a season of four specials featuring the last time David Tennant will command the TARDIS as the doctor as he makes way for young Matthew Smith in 2010.

When the special aired last December, there was intense speculation whether David Morrissey was actually being introduced early as the replacement. It certainly felt that way as we learned the villains would be the Cybermen and that Velile Tshabalala had been added as Morrissey’s companion, a woman named Rosita, which more than echoes the now gone Rose Tyler.

Clearly, that was not the case and was an interesting premise with so-so execution. In short, while visiting London on Christmas Eve, 1851, the Doctor comes up against a new threat but also a man acting, sounding and even looking like he might be, well, the Doctor. He spoke of the TARDIS and proclaimed to possess a sonic screwdriver but as the men began investigating together, the real Doctor figured out how a poor, mentally stressed man was led to believe he was a Gallifreyan Time Lord.

Along the way, the two have to learn the secrets of the Cybermen’s scheme and then foil it, clearly doing so before St. Nick arrives to dole out gifts to one and all.

The first half of Russell T. Davies’ script is nicely paced by director Andy Goddard and sets things up well but the second half is lots of running, chasing, fighting and noise-making without making an awful lot of sense. The escapade is being released on DVD this Tuesday from BBC Video, oddly timed considering the following special is already available and it’s a wee bit early for the holiday season. Regardless, the story reveals to us that the poor man was accidentally imprinted with details about the Doctor that had been prepared for the Cybermen. As a result, its weeks before he realizes that his family is dead save his young son who must be found and rescued.

Morrissey does a good job as Jackson Lake, adding some nice pathos to the part. He and Tennant also play nicely off one another but Tshabalala has precious little to do and Dervla Kirwan as the villainous Miss Hartigan is a one-dimensional serial villain.

There’s a lot of stuff and nonsense and in the end, the character arcs are truncated in favor of the shouting and jumping around as if everyone discovered they were short on time to properly finish the story. As a result, it’s a good but far from spectacular effort. Being one of the final Tennant episodes, it’s a wasted opportunity.

The delight of the disc, though, is the special feature, the [[[Prom 13: Doctor Who Prom]]] concert that was performed in England on July 27 of last year but aired only in January. The hour-long concert, specifically designed to entice children to the orchestral experience, shone a nice spotlight on Murray Gold, the composer of Doctor Who music since the series’ revival in 2005. Hosted by Freema Agyeman with a cameo from Catherine Tate, the performance included many of the aliens and menaces from the series, walking through the audience and interacting with them. There was also a seven minute “Music of the Spheres” video presentation featuring Tennant aboard the TARDIS which discussed the importance of music. The storyline involved interaction with the orchestra such as the Doctor tossing his sheet music into the air and having it land in the hands of the performers.

Definitely not the way to introduce newcomers to the Doctor but certainly worth having by the diehard fans.

The Religious Implications of ‘Doctor Who’

Various news sites are reporting that church leaders in England are studying the "religious parallels" between the BBC television series Doctor Who and certain themes of Christianity.

According to Telegraph:

They have been urged to use examples from the programme in their sermons in an attempt to make Christianity more relevant to teenagers.

At a conference last week, vicars watched Doctor Who clips that were said to illustrate themes of resurrection, redemption and evil.

It analysed the similarities between the Doctor and Christ, and whether daleks are capable of change.

The reports mention a few other examples, including The Doctor’s time-travelling TARDIS as a representation of a church and, as Wired blog "The Underwire" pointed out, they both appear in Christmas specials. 

Doctor Who in Review: Season Four, Episode #2 – Hot Prophecies

The hit BBC series Doctor Who is now in its fourth season on the Sci-Fi Channel, and since we’re all big fans here at ComicMix, we’ve decided to kick off an episode-by-episode analysis of the reinvigorated science-fiction classic.

Every week, we’ll have our best Who-philes go through the most recent episode with a fine-tooth comb (or whatever the "sonic screwdriver" equivalent might be) and call out all of the continuity checks, names dropped and storyline hints we can find to keep in mind for future episodes. We’ll post our analysis each Monday, so you have ample time to check out the episode once it airs each Friday at 9 PM EST on Sci-Fi Channel before reading our review.

Missed a week? Readers can view past "Doctor Who in Review" features via the links at the end of this article.

Keep in mind, we’re going to assume readers have already watched the episode when we put fingers to keyboard and come up with our roundup of important plot points. In other words, SPOILER ALERT!

Let’s begin now, shall we?

Season Four, Episode #2: "The Fires of Pompeii" (more…)

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