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October 28, 2009

And once again, Doctor Who as an anime

This time, with UNIT fighting Cybermen. Seriously the BBC should give this guy a job!

previously: Doctor Who Anime - yes, I realise it's still halfway down my main page. I am so terribly slack of late.

Posted at 5:48 PM | Comments (1)

July 26, 2009

Doctor Who Anime

Making a Doctor Who anime, part 2:

Smashing work!

Posted at 12:24 PM | Comments (0)

April 16, 2009

The Next Doctor/Planet of the Dead

Gee, blink and half the month goes by!

Good Monday was good because it brought me The Next Doctor on Prime (which I'd already seen) and Planet of the Dead, which I hadn't. The problem with Doctor Who doing a year with just 4 specials in is that there's not as much lee-way when you get a duff story. Planet of the Dead, the Easter special, is a bit duff, and it's all we're getting until some vague date in November.

Spoilers follow...

Continue reading "The Next Doctor/Planet of the Dead"

Posted at 10:16 PM | Comments (1)

January 24, 2009

Prisoner and Doctor Who themed comics

I have two links!

Back in the Village - an ongoing comic based on cult series The Prisoner

and

The last couple of weeks of Player Versus Player - have been full of Doctor Who goodness.

Posted at 6:47 PM | Comments (0)

December 22, 2008

Doctor Who versus Transformers 2: This time it's canon

A while back I wrote about a fan-designed Police Box Transformer. I was unaware at the time that there was actually a canonical (in Transformers canon anyway) Doctor Who related Transformer. In a 1989 UK comic drawn by Lee Sullivan (who's not unknown in Doctor Who circles, having drawn Abslom Daak strips for DWM), one of the ruling Decepticon triumvirate, Octus, is quite clearly meant to transform into a Dalek.

Sadly Octus has never had a toy, but considering we've recently had the Transformers toyline cross-over with Marvel's Avengers, Star Wars, and Mickey Mouse of all things, I think it's time for Hasbro and the BBC to strike up a deal and bring us a toy version.

Although I'm not entirely sure how the transformation would work!

Posted at 7:59 PM | Comments (0)

December 20, 2008

TSV 61

TSV 61 came out in December 2000 and featured the aforementioned article on the New Zealand performance of Seven Keys to Doomsday. It also featured one of my favourite TSV covers ever. See if you can spot which movie it's based on!

Festively, you can also read The Karkus and "the Two Santas".

I remember there was a version of this cartoon which appeared in RTP around the same time, featuring that 'zine's Cyber-guy character.

I had two audio adventure reviews in TSV 61 (by then I'd stopped getting the books): The Spectre of Lanyon Moor, featuring the sixth Doctor and Evelyn, and The Fires of Vulcan, featuring the seventh Doctor and Mel. Both great stories!

Also very interesting: Jamas' article on Religion in Doctor Who, which is a somewhat more complete overview of the show's history of the treatment of religion than previously published in the 'zine.

Next time, interviews with Colin Baker and Gary Russell, Beyond the Sofa tackles The Tenth Planet and Attack of the Cybermen, the first of a series of articles by David Lawrence on the New Adventures, and reviews of the Pertwee era on Prime TV.

Previously: TSV 60
See also: Entries by Paul and Jamas.

Posted at 7:52 AM | Comments (1)

December 14, 2008

Seven Keys

Must. Keep. Up. Blistering. Post. Rate.

So anyway, back in 2000, when I had an ISP which actually supported Usenet, someone posted a question in rec.arts.drwho about a production of the 1974 stage play Seven Keys to Doomsday which was put on in Wellington some ten years later. The question sparked memories for me of both an old newspaper clipping I'd kept, and of seeing a news item about the play on the evening news. Unfortunately I hadn't gone to the play itself (in fact, I have a vague memory that I turned down an offer by my parents to take me, as at the time I didn't think it'd be as good as the TV show). Don't regret what you do, only what you don't do, as the saying goes.

Surprisingly, the 1984 performance of the play wasn't common knowledge, and Wellington fan Graham Howard tracked down director Brian Hudson for an interview which appears in TSV 61. As it happens TSV 61 is the issue I'm currently getting ready to put online, so watch out for that within the next week.

Posted at 12:39 PM | Comments (2)

November 19, 2008

Guess the Doctor Who title!

Another wave of Robot Heroes has turned up, so it's time to play guess the Doctor Who title!

Can you guess the Doctor Who story title represented in this picture?

Robot Heroes

Edit: The answer was "The Unicorn and the Wasp", as represented here by Unicron and Waspinator (Not to scale).

Posted at 5:36 PM | Comments (3)

October 30, 2008

Who will be the new Doctor Who?

So, it's less than a week until the American elections, and I'm currently wondering more who will be the next actor to step into the role of the Doctor than I am who will be the next US President. Because David Tennant has announced he's stepping down as of the end of next year.

That means for series five we'll have a new producer, new Doctor, and likely a new companion. That hasn't happened when the show's been an ongoing prospect since 1970, when Jon Pertwee took over. That's kinda scary.

OTOH, the Moff's a genius, so I'm sure he'll do well.

Posted at 5:47 PM | Comments (2)

October 22, 2008

TSV 60

TSV 60 went live on the NZDWFC site last night. Originally printed in mid 2000, this issue features, amongst many other very good things, some stuff written by me. Primarily an article on Tetraps, which on reflection I should have waited until after the release of audio adventure "The Rani Reaps the Whirlwind", as it had a bunch more Tetrap lore in it (though I wrote a sequel article for TSV 63 anyway).

Interestingly this issue also has an article about the Doctor Who references in "Queer as Folk", one of the series Russell T Davies did before reviving Doctor Who. If you look at a QAF character list, you may notice that two of the protagonists of that series share last names with Rose Tyler and Martha Jones. Hmm. If crossover articles are your thing, there's also one called Star Wars Connections, which notes actors who've been in both Doctor Who and Star Wars.

This cartoon makes me snicker every time I see it.

Next up, TSV 61, which has one of my favourite TSV covers ever!

Previously: Doctor Who and the City of Death
See also: comments by Paul and Jamas.

Posted at 8:07 PM | Comments (0)

September 6, 2008

The Judoon Song

Via TARDIS Television:

Posted at 11:12 AM | Comments (1)

August 25, 2008

Doctor Who and the City of Death

So, last time I made noises about putting a "coming soon" tag on the last novelisation to curb the "are you going to put City of Death online?" emails. In the end, I did, and got "when are you going to put City of Death online?" emails instead. Hehehehehe!

Doctor Who and the City of Death is the last of the TSV novelisations to go online, so all the holes left by the Target novelisation range have been (unofficially) filled. It's written by Wellington fan David Lawrence, who's a long-time contributor to TSV and has has most recently been writing a series of articles on the BBC eighth Doctor novels. He's also working on a commentary for the novelisation, which will go online at a later date.

In addition to getting the last novelisation up, I've been slowly working my way back through the archive, converting issues to the new site scheme. While I've been doing so, I've also been cleaning things as necessary - mostly making the cover images a tad bigger, putting in fancy quotes (‘’ instead of ''), tidying up some of the formatting, and so on.

Previously: TSV 59
See also: comments by Paul and Jamas

Posted at 9:44 PM | Comments (1)

August 21, 2008

Tiny Plastic Chairs of Rassilon

So partway into Invasion of Time, there's these tiny green plastic chairs:
[plastic chairs]

Why are they there? Can you see any self-respecting Time Lord actually sitting in one of those?

Can it be... actual physical evidence of Time Tots?

(Thanks go to Jeff for pointing those out...)

Posted at 12:10 AM | Comments (2)

August 18, 2008

TSV 59

TSV 59 - the first issue of the new millennium to go up (unless you're pedantic and insist the millennium started with 2001). It has one of my favourite TSV covers - a Curse of Fatal Death piece inspired by the cover of the Five Doctors novelisation.

Peter Adamson puts in two great articles: the first on Cyber-conversion (in the new series it's just "Scoop, splat, off you go") and the second on the much maligned Greatest Show in the Galaxy, plus he and Alistair Hughes view Revenge of the Cybermen for Beyond the Sofa. There's also part one of a lengthy interview with Andrew Pixley, he who did the archives in Doctor Who Magazine, which also includes a postscript update to some of what was originally said.

On the reviews front, this is the first issue to have reviews of Big Finish audios, starting with Sirens of Time, Phantasmagoria, and Whispers of Terror. Amazing that those have been going for 8 years now - longer than the Virgin New Adventures did - although as Paul mentions in the editorial, it'd still be nice to have the TV series back anyway... Oh, wait, we do!

Also added on the site recently is an index of the comic strips we have up, in series chronological order. The latest addition, of course, being Alistair Hughes' Our Final Battlefield.

Previously: TSV 58
See also: Paul, Jamas.

Posted at 9:21 PM | Comments (0)

August 16, 2008

Time's Champion Review

You can order Time's Champion from here, although currently the first edition is sold out and they're contemplating a second...

Time's Champion, as previously mentioned is Craig Hinton's last Doctor Who book, completed by Chris McKeon and published with the proceeds going to charity. It's a direct sequel to Craig's previous sixth Doctor and Mel books, The Quantum Archangel and Millennial Rites and, as you'd expect from one of his books, is chock full of continuity references to many many television stories as well as Virgin and BBC novels. It's also a little over 400 pages, well deserving of the label 'epic', so I'm sure had it been published as part of the BBC books range, it would have been severely cut.

As a random piece of trivia - this is the first time Mel's appeared on the cover of a book (and it's one cracking cover!) since Millennial Rites and Head Games back in 1995...

Anyway, as the story starts, the Doctor and Mel are attending Benton's 70th birthday party in 2008, along with a couple of returning characters from The Quantum Archangel. In 1908, George McKenzie-Trench is attempting to work on his latest book, Time's Champion, while in 9908 another George McKenzie-Trench is working on a computer supervirus to defend his world against an impending attack by the Cybermen.

I'm going to try to avoid spoilers and keep things vague for the rest of this review, but just in case, I'm hiding it under a cut anyway.

Continue reading "Time's Champion Review"

Posted at 12:40 PM | Comments (3)

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