Alden Bates' Weblog

This time on Doctor Who, things take a turn for the better! Spoilers ahead:

Continue reading "Doctor Who Series 3 (episodes 6 - 9)"

I was watching the latest episode of Doctor Who (3.08 Human Nature) last night and suddenly had a sense of deja vu...

Continue reading "Shooting Stars"

Adam (current editor of TSV) reported on the message boards that Tardis Tales is returning to the fanzine as of the next issue. Tardis Tales is a comic strip which ran in TSV for just about all of its first ten years - most of its run is now online in the archive. It's good to see the strip making a return. I'm sure the new series of Doctor Who has given Graham a lot of new ideas.

With that and the return of Doctor's Dilemma last issue, what's next? More Exegesis? :)

Coincidentally I was actually considering writing a Tardis Tales drabble for the challenge Jamas issued in TSV 74 but it seems kinda academic now...

And a month to the day since TSV 45 went online the next issue (appropriately titled TSV 46) has gone up on the web site.

Issue 46 was the first to feature a flash new version of the TSV logo, not to mention a return to the colour covers. Inside, there's the second half of the Andrew Cartmel interview (which reminds me to go add a link from the first half), another comic strip titled Monkey House, another Tardis Tales featuring the usual mayhem, and boatloads of reviews.

Of course, what I really like about this issue is there's not only pictures of Tetraps, but also a rare piece of artwork of my favourite companion, Mel Bush. Due to the fact they were reprinted from an earlier issue, the review of Time and the Rani aren't actually reproduced here, but they're already in the index as part of TSV 6.

This issue also contains the news that Paul McGann had been cast as the Doctor for a TV movie being filmed in Vancouver. Somehow it's strange to remember that this issue came out more than ten years ago now... I feel old. :)

Previously: Revelation of the Daleks

Thar be spoilers in this post, no doubt, so proceed with caution (if at all). Also, no cartoons like Zeus Blog because I'm not as good an artist as Peter.

Continue reading "Doctor Who Series 3 (episodes 1 - 5)"

Revelation of the Daleks is one of five Doctor Who never published as a novelisation by Target, but which were done as fan novelisations by the NZDWFC. Now, joining Shada and the Pirate Planet, Revelation of the Daleks is available on the NZDWFC site as an eBook here. This should hopefully satisfy some of the many people who've been emailing to ask if the rest of the novelisations were going to be made available online. :)

Next up, TSV 46!

Incidentally, though my internet connection has been behaving itself for a while now, about a week ago it all turned to custard again, and my "always on" broadband has been dropping the connection every ten minutes. This makes for a choppy online experience. Xtra, you still suck.

Aaaaaand I see someone's set up an Xtra Sucks website. They should probably take this as a sign they're doing something wrong.

Previously: TSV 45

TSV 45 went up on the web site today. There's only one feature article this time - Kate Orman's piece on writing Set Piece - and many of the other pieces now online are reviews. Primarily reviews of the six stories in the Key to Time season (which is now out on DVD in the US but not anywhere else in the world, strangely).

There is also Sums over Histories, a comic strip with the fourth Doctor, Romana and K9, which has some spot-on characterisation. I had some problems working out how to include the double-page spread in a form which was legible, and settled for putting it in a scrolling box, and also allowing the user to click on the graphic to open it separately for easier scrolling. Hopefully this doesn't make it too difficult to read. :)

There's also some cool cartoons and lots and lots of Key to Time related artwork (which will come in handy when I start adding artwork and blurbs to the story index nodes.

I didn't have any items in this issue (in 1995 I was working my first year at Pocket Solutions, so that may be why I wasn't submitting more material) but go read it anyway. :)

Previously: TSV 44

There's a community on LiveJournal for everything, including one for Doctor Who companion Perpugilliam Brown. The Peri community is blessed with a talented artist named Paul Mudie, who recently posted this picture:
Peri, dressed as a dominatrix

I probably don't need to mention that's not safe for work. Oh boy.

He also has a deviantART gallery containing some other quite spectacular artwork.

Yes, it's time for another issue of TSV! Now that TSV 44 is online, there are only 20 issues of TSV (45-64) which aren't currently available either online or in print. Issue 44 contains (amongst many, many excellent items): a scathing indictment of the New Adventures, an article on the many and varied hoaxes perpetrated on Doctor Who fans, the making of the Dark Dimension, and a response to the Seeds of Doom article from last issue.

I had two pieces in this issue. A Masterful Life is an attempt to detail the Master's life. I've updated this a bit before putting it online to cover some of the more notable canonical appearances of the Master since 1995. The other piece was this montage of the Master which I did to accompany said article. The only bit of that artwork I'm really happy with is the Cyberman. Ah well, c'est la vie.

Also in this issue is Morgan Davie's Doctor Who story generator, which I've embellished by adding an automatic generator to the bottom using Javascript. Unfortunately I was only able to test it in Internet Explorer and Firefox, so if it doesn't work in your favourite browser, please let me know.

I decided that this, too, needed updating, so I've created an automatic story generator you can use to get started on your script for the new Doctor Who series being made in Wales!

Previously: TSV 43

TSV 43 went online a couple of days ago. The paper version was published in early 1995, which means that one of the participants in Four Writers, One Discussion had yet to write anything Doctor Who related. Paul Cornell, Andy Lane and David Bishop were known at the time for their Doctor Who novels (and have done further work since), but Steven Moffat hadn't yet penned The Curse of Fatal Death, let alone the two stories he's done for the new series.

There's also The Engima Magnet, a comic strip featuring the fifth Doctor, Tegan, Turlough and Kamelion, which started off a regular run of comic strips - unfortunately they're not as common in TSV these days. And one of my favourite pieces of Cyberman art to appear in TSV. And a rare piece of Mel artwork! And this cartoon by Jon Preddle!

I had two pieces of art in this issue: pictures of the first Doctor and the Destroyer from Battlefield. I sent in the latter piece after Paul requested artwork for the Andrew Cartmel interview in TSV 40, but it was held over until this issue, probably because it was similar to Tim Hill's depiction of the Destroyer.

In TSV 44: the other half of Tardis Tales: Yet Another Alien Invasion Story, a look at the aborted anniversary special The Dark Dimension, and there's an article by me about the Master which I should probably update...

Further reading: Paul Scoones on TSV 43, Jamas Enright on TSV 43, David Bishop on Four Writers, One Discussion.
Previously: TSV 42

From Geoff Wessel via the Rustyverse: CBC's archive of character designs for the never made animated Doctor Who series.

Alas, it's got funky Javascript navigation, so I can't link to particular pictures, but there's some interesting image of a TARDIS interior with a very techno-organic console, a hover-converted Bessie, and what appears to be a Cyber-converted supermodel.

When I was in Wellington this evening, my eye was caught by this poster advertising an upcoming gig featuring Wellington band The Ramps:

Onto the first issue for 1995 - TSV 42 would have come out right after I finished university, in fact. Among the major items this time are a guide to the Doctor Who annuals, a script to screen on The Happiness Patrol, and an article on the TARDIS key. There's also a follow-up to TSV 41's Lovecraft article this time examining the Cthulhu references in the new adventure All-Consuming Fire, which makes a nifty counterpoint to an article from TSV 58 which has been online for a while and examines the Sherlock Holmes side of the same book.

I had one item in this issue, a "Dr Hoo" cartoon which no doubt shows off the fact I had no photo-references for the control room from Planet of Fire. Note also that the Doctor is always facing away from us so I didn't have to attempt to draw his face (the Master's a lot easier - just slap a goatee on him) and Tegan doesn't appear at all despite the Doctor mentioning her in frame 1!

And that was the last Dr Hoo strip I did for TSV, though I've done one or two other cartoons - the latest being Dr Who in "The Crap Pun", a collaboration with Jeff Stone which appeared in TSV 73 which you can order in paper form...

Next time, in TSV 43: Andy Lane, Paul Cornell, Steven Moffat and David Bishop; the return of TARDIS Tales, More than 30 Years in the TARDIS, and lots of other cool stuff. :)

Previously: Doctor Who and the Pirate Planet

I've been somewhat lax recently in getting stuff done, and this entry is one of those things. As you probably don't remember me mentioning back in July, there were five¹ Doctor Who stories (from the original series) which were never novelised by Target. All five of these were novelised by the NZDWFC but went out of print last year. In July we put the first of these, Shada, online.

The second book to be put online is The Pirate Planet, the second story of the Key to Time arc season, originally written by Douglas "Hitchhiker's Guide" Adams, and rewritten into book form by David Bishop, author of Who Killed Kennedy, amongst other things.

In the Pirate Planet, the search of the six segments of the Key to Time² brings the Doctor, Romana and K9 to the planet Zanak, which confuses them because they were aiming for an entirely different planet. Equally puzzling is the fact that the ground is littered with precious gems such as diamonds, emeralds, and oolions. The story is peppered with Adamsian humour ("You'll never get it open, it's impossible." "Ha! Impossible? That means it will take 73 seconds.") and touches by David Bishop such as the Pirate Captain's violent premonitions.

There are a few special features such as a guide to the material which is from the original scripts and didn't appear in the televised story (Deleted Scenes) and the original Author's notes from the paper version. The book's also available in PDF format, if that's your thing.

For further reading, check out Paul's entry on the book.

Now I have some time off work, I should be able to catch up a bit on my todo list. :)

¹ Shada's canonicity is arguable since the TV story was never completed and screened, but I give it the benefit of the doubt.
² Which looks like a cuboid puzzle made of crystal and has the power to reshape the entire universe.

Previously: TSV 41

You may remember a while back TV Guide printed a photo purporting to be Billie Piper and David Tennant. The latest TV Guide has a photo purporting to be Christopher Eccleston:

Eccleston isn't from *that* far north...

On the up-side, the same issue reveals that Doctor Who got to 19th place on the reader-voted "Best on the Box" award.