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Posts tagged ‘Doctor Who’

6
Apr
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Losing the ability to just sit back and be immersed?

There may be a couple of spoilers for Doctor Who: Eleventh Hour starring Matt Smith in this blog post – if you haven’t seen it and don’t want to be spoiled don’t read on.

Like many of the posts I’ve been writing recently, this one started life in another form – in this case as a Facebook status update.

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14
Jan

Random ideas for the evolution and survival of Top Gear

After an article in the Daily Mail this morning (since removed) randomly suggesting a Top Gear movie involving the lads going around the world in 80 cars.

It looks like this was taken from a suggestion originally posted in an ‘ideas for Top Gear’ thread on Digital Spy a while ago – but the idea is interesting.

I’m not saying a Top Gear movie would be the best of ideas of all time but there is more that could be done with the format.

Especially as it might be useful/interesting for Top Gear to do a Doctor Who/Torchwood and cut things back for a year.

The DW team took a year off from a normal series of the show and instead had a number of bigger budget specials.

Top Gear could do a similar thing – take 2011 off (I’m sure a lot of planning/work/money is already invested in 15/16 for this year) and instead of two series which is about 14 episodes – have four specials.

One could go out around Easter, one in the summer, one around October and another at Christmas – I’m sure a Christmas Day Top Gear special would do well.

Then, with car news, information and ideas brimming from a year of having to come up with fewer ideas – the lads could start again properly with series 17 in 2012.

In fact I think they’d do well taking the same approach as other BBC shows and maybe having one 8 episode series a year (maybe running from May) and then a special around Christmas.

I love Top Gear and there has been some great stuff over the years but spreading the money and ideas over fewer episodes I think would help keep it going for longer.

10
Nov

What a night of television heaven with Top Gear and Doctor Who

So the Sunday night will kick off at about 19:30. I’ll get the youngest children to bed and then sit down to watch Doctor Who (slightly delayed thanks to Sky+) with my daughter.

Then I’ll get her to bed before switching to the recording (in progress) of BBC Three‘s Doctor Who Confidential for a look at how the episode was made and the chance of a glimpse at the new series/Christmas special.

Then it’s back to BBC Two in time for the start of series 14 of Top Gear where the lads will investigate a famous Romanian road.

And if that wasn’t enough BBC Four has a Mars night with a Horizon guide to Mars, To Mars by A-Bomb and the Sky at Night Exloring Mars – so Sky+ will be working pretty hard all night.

I’m putting the details of the episodes I’ve mentioned above below so you can decide to skip it if you want to stay spoiler pure.

The Top Gear episode features an Aston DBS Volante, a Ferrari California, a Lamborghini Gallardo Spider and Ramania. James is on the track in power limos and a Bananananana.

In Doctor Who the year is 2059, the local is Bowie Base One and the planet is Mars. The message ‘don’t drink the water – in fact – don’t touch it either’.

In addition to all of that brilliance both will be available on BBC HD, so if you have a HD TV/box you’ll be able to go from Doctor Who, through Confidential and then on to Top Gear without even changing the channel.

For me, I’ll be able to make my second watch a high quality watch on my 22 inch monitor from a BBC iPlayer HD download – beautiful.

Which means Monday will be equally impressive – I’ll have the Spooks from Friday (yes I gave in and watched the ‘next episode’ on BBC Three), a repeat of Doctor Who and Top Gear – not to mention the mass of other shows I’ve recorded or downloaded including Family Guy, How I Met Your Mother, Big Bang Theory and Stargate Universe.

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10
Nov

Give the grown-ups a go

Every year Blue Peter runs some form of Doctor Who related competition or another – whether it be to design an alien for Peter Kay to dress up as in an actual episode or to re-design the TARDIS interior.

In fact that is the most recent competition from the age old children‘s magazine show – a competition to design a new look for Matt Smith‘s TARDIS – at least one that will appear in an episode of the new Doctor Who.

The Blue Peter team provided all the info you need including a template, Do’s and Dont’s, a couple of example designs and even a video.

They tell the children (or the Dad’s doing the work anyway) to use the template, include notes on features, use any method you like and to use things from around the house in the design.

This is all very interesting in a number of ways – firstly it means there will be more than one console design in the new series as this only appears in one episode and more importantly – it means we’ll HAVE a new console/TARDIS design.

But the kicker here for me though is the age groups it is open to, the age groups these things are ALWAYS open to. There are three groups (and I have a child in each) the 6 and 7s, the 8, 9 and 10s and finally the 11s and 12s.

But what about the 20-30s, the 30-40s and up? What about those of us that aren’t children but still love Doctor Who, that would love to have a design used in Doctor Who – where is the competition for Grown-Ups to have a go?

I’m writing this now for two reasons 1) I’ve just realised that The Waters of Mars is on this Sunday and the competition closes on Thursday.

I’ve been very good this year and have managed to avoid more or less ALL spoilers for The Waters on Mars to the point that I didn’t realise it was on until I read a tweet.

Still – Sunday is going to be GOOOD.

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24
Mar

Dwarf takes virtual twist

I’ve resisted posting every snippet of information that has come out of the Red Dwarf team at Dave – but this one was too good to not talk about.

You already know that the show is coming back – for a three part special called Back To Earth, I’m not going to talk anymore about the specifics of the episodes.

What I am going to talk more about is the ‘Alternate Reality‘ element that seems to be springing up around the show.

There are already two very good official Red Dwarf web sites/sections – the first is the official Red Dwarf site and the second is the Dave Red Dwarf pages.

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But now, much like the BBC did with Doctor Who and Torchwood, there will be ‘in programme’ website created as part of a AR Red Dwarf game.

There are already about six sites live and three of them have the first stage of content up.

Lister is coming home (listeriscominghome.co.uk)

This seems to be the starting point of the game, it’s basically a flash video with a postcard for Kryten from Lister with Indian music in the background – the front seems to be photos of Brick Lane Tandori restaurants.

Anyone the postcard talks about the boys being seperated on Earth in the 21st Century, spilling vindaloo on the comms unit and talking to someone about building a replacement Rimmer hologram.

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The guy they want to talk to runs a website called scanningjupiter.co.uk (try it – it’s live and part of the game) and within the postcard is a link to a pdf that includes a graphic you hold up to a webcam on the right flash video to get more information.

Scanning Jupiter is the website of Professor Bob Giles who is doing research into storms around Jupiter and is writing a paper on hologram technology.

The point of this site seems to be as a communications point for the Red Dwarf boys to talk to each other – with garbled messages and snippets of information. Look out for Krytens to get to the next site.

At the moment the next site along (I’ll let you find it for yourself) has a seven minute video on the making of the new episodes of Red Dwarf with interviews with all the cast and behind the scenes snippets.

I haven’t gone any further than this yet – mainly because I don’t think you can – but I wait by my inbox with baited breath for the next installment of the game and wait by my Sky+ remote for 3 April – the day I can set the first episode to record.

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6
Jan

Videos of Matt Smiths work

When I wrote my first ‘Matt Smith is new Who’ post on Saturday evening there were VERY few video examples of his work, his Wikipedia page was fairly limited and his IMDB profile didn’t even have his date of birth.

Obviously that’s all changed now – the world of Who fandom responds and reacts very quickly – even if certain parts of it don’t agree overly favourably with what they’re responding too.

There still aren’t THAT many video examples of his work though – but I’ve pulled together what I have been able to find on YouTube so far.

First the DW Confidential interview with Matt – the one where I think he shows himself as true Doctor material.

Now the show I remember him from – Party Animals.

Matt sleeping with Billy Piper in Secret Diary of a Call Girl.

Here is Matt Smith in Ruby in the Smoke again alongside Billy Piper



Also in Shadow in the North

And finally the BBC News report on him being announced as the 11th Doctor.

3
Jan

New Who is younger than me!

Matt Smith as Doctor Who

I think I finally know what ‘getting old’ feels like – I’m only 27 (born in 1981) but having just watched Matt Smith (26) announced as the new Doctor Who – I feel old.

Steven Moffat
Image by ewen and donabel via Flickr

He’s only a year younger than me (born in 1982) but when someone is announced as the main character in one of the biggest and most established shows on television – and that someone is younger (even if it is only a year) than you – it kind of hits home a bit.

But to be honest I’m pretty pleased with the choice – having seen and loved him in Party Animals (the only show he’s been in that I’ve actually watched) I think with Steven Moffat at the helm he will be able to pull both a dark and flipsiided whimsy of a Doctor out of his hat.

Actually I really hope he has a hat – I think the time has arrived for a Doctor to have a hat – nto sure what type of hat as long as it isn’t a baseball cap – actually I think he needs old fashioned clothes – something you wouldn’t expect a twenty-something year old to wear.

Anyhoo – I have to make tea for my wife so I’ll leave you with a few YouTube videos until I can process the information further and bring you more of my thoughts.

Roll on Spring 2010 and the fifth full series of Doctor Who – but we still have four Doctor Who specials in 2009 complete with David Tennant and Russell T Davies.

Oh and there is the new Torchwood miniseries in 2009 as well – a week long special. Not to mention the books, audiobooks and eighth doctor radio series.

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19
Nov

Doctor Who Collection

I know a number of people disagree with me on this one, and I’ve actually had in person arguments over it, but I like the collection based way the BBC is releasing and publishing the contents of its archive.

Doctor Who Archives

I like this for several reasons but the main one being findability – if everything could have been released en mass it would have taken some serious semantic technology and data navigation to make it all easily accessible.

This way, releasing it in topic related chunks (which I’m assuming can be tied to /topics) makes it easy to find, easy to use and even easier to navigate.

It also makes it easier to blog about and use in research. But back to /topics for a minute.

There isn’t a topics page for Doctor Who at the moment – so this archive isn’t a good example of how it could be used – but there is one for the NHS and there is also a very good, very extensive and detailed archive collection for the NHS (or at least the birth of it).

NHS

The /topics page for NHS (automatically generated) currently includes an editors choice set of links – including one to the BBC Archive as well as external links, audio video objects and links to BBC News stories.

NHS Topics

But where an archive collection is a avaiable I think that should be included as a seperate object as well. It could be structured similar to the news object – with top feature and related a/v content.

Anyway back to the Doctor Who Archive.

First off – it isn’t full of old Doctor Who clips, there are plenty of those elsewhere on the web and even elsewhere on the BBC site itself – but there is some cool stuff in the archive collection.

This specific collection is about the start of Doctor Who – how the whole thing got going so has a few photos of early Doctors (publicity and set) as well as some interesting text based documents.

There is a report into whether the BBC should be doing SciFi at all, a copy of a radio times article, concept notes and a audience research report.

Its a great early research tool and resource and in a position that could easily be expanded as rights are cleared.

The way the collections are structured (on a specific area of a big topic) means that they could easily be contained within (eventually) a larger topic directory.

So for instance I can invisage a top level group of archives – that could even be attached to BBC Topic pages.

We’d have the current NHS beginnings within a general NHS category along with something like ‘before the NHS’, ‘funding the NHS’ etc…

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