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Doctor Hue – The Changing Colours of Evil

Bar Nash-Williams is a writer at Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews - All the latest Doctor Who news and reviews with our weekly podKast, features and interviews, and a long-running forum.

Pictures paint a thousand words, and it’s not just artists like me who ‘read’ Who through its colours. Fans’ heads are full of iconic images of the good, the bad, and the downright weird. So what colour do you most associate with monsters and evil? Hands up who said ‘green.’ Some ’70s fans even thought ‘Swarfega’ or ‘bubble-wrap’. But I guess plenty of you said other colours: yes there’s loads to be seen that’s deadly and green, but it’s usually more complicated than that. Green is often merely the symptom: the underlying cause is evil of a different hue. Have a look at these familiar images sorted by colour, and see what they make you think of. How might those colours reflect individual fears, and changes in society’s fears?

‘I’m pretty sure that’s Chroma.’

Let’s just get this out of the way first: Colour Separation Overlay – or Chroma Key, as commonly known – influenced the colour of evil, especially in the early experimental 70s, but not all effects are intentional.

“If any part of an actor or prop is colored the same as the background, that part will disappear… The original run of Doctor Who used green or yellow backgrounds even when blue was the most common color at the BBC, because a large number of its effects shots involved the TARDIS. The problem with using yellow was that foreground objects and actors always had a prominent yellow fringe around them.” http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ChromaKey

That yellow-green glow was as accidental as the bits of the giant Robot that disappeared because of its reflective surface. Accidents aside however, when there’s something weird, alien or ‘Other’ in Who, there’s

an awful lot of green.

‘Doctor, the thing’s right up your street. The fellow’s bright green apparently. And dead.’

Sydney Newman didn’t want BEMs – but he got them, second story! As Doug Adams put it:

Arthur: ‘And the bug-eyed monsters?’ Ford: ‘They’re green, yes.’

‘Group Captain Gilmore: What am I dealing with? Little green men?

Seventh Doctor: No, little green blobs in bonded polycarbide armour!’

Kaled mutants may be green, but their world is black and white, grey, colourless and soul-less, reflecting their clinical and dogmatic ideology. Early Doctor Who was broadcast in black and white but it has never thought in black and white. The Doctor always championed nuanced, complex thought over polarised forced simplicity. The thought patterns and attitudes of the baddies are more likely to be characterised by ‘us and them,’ permitted and forbidden, & dogmatic right and wrong. Look at the contrast here, Nyder in Naziesque black, Harry and the Doctor are full colour, and Sarah Jane’s bright green added to the good guys’ side.

Inferno’s another good example – the world which still has some hope has colour; the doomed one is much more monochrome. The green goo is merely ‘the planet, screaming out its rage:’ the problem is the hands it’s in. The 70’s fear of messing about with the elemental forces of the planet, let alone nuclear ones, could only be tamed if we trusted the people in charge. Can you imagine the Brigade Leader or his world’s Stahlman accepting that they might just be WRONG?

Yes I’m green; but I’m one of the nice ones.

The Galaxy 4 Rill are green and ugly, Maarga and co are beautiful but monochrome. Guess who turns out to be good? The Ice warriors challenge to the Doctor’s prejudice is one of the highlights of the Curse of Peladon. The Creature from the Pit is just an unfortunate hostage (it’s been suggested he reflects Freudian fears but I’m not going there!). The Draconians are noble, and the Doctor in the midst of them is green too:

The Silurians are the most extended example of a green ‘monster’ who are not necessarily bad. The Doctor extends the hand of friendship, but the Silurians are as divided as the humans; some xenophobe, some friendly. Other colours are used as clues to show their nature, for example the red tint to skin and clothes of the warriors. They DON’T all look alike to us! Mme Vastra’s fierce explanation of veil and prejudice in Deep Breath shows that fear of the ‘other’ is not as far behind us as we’d like to believe.

Green may be the colour of nature and ecology/environmentalism, but it’s also the colour of gangrene, fungus, pus. So we see stories featuring fear of contamination, infection, loss of control over our bodies.

Which is scarier – totally Alien green Wirrn, or One of Us using alien life for his own ideology? The Seeds of Doom Krynoids are invasive and powerful, but the real baddie is the one whose obsession turns our values on their head: we eat plants, he feeds us to them…

Kenton Moore as Noah really sells this in The Ark in Space

Note the black, white and grey.                       All together now: ‘I could play all day in my green cathedral.’

Unpleasant body horror recurs in Who, but its emphasis changes. Meglos or Arc of Infinity shows green taking over someone we trust. The Slitheen and Absorbaloff are also body snatchers, but rather than being frightening they are ludicrous, unpleasant, and grossly overweight. At least by Partners in Crime society’s latent prejudice against obesity is marginally better handled: the Adipose are popular cute and cuddlies – even if the story still focuses on the fear of what our lifestyle is doing to us.

The nature of threat and the threat of nature

It looks like the rural/urban shift has changed our attitude to green:

In early Who we had petrified jungles as evidence of apocalypse. When things go wrong green gets hurt and the population suffers. The ‘70s most environmentally conscious story is titled as though green is itself the threat, but the underlying evil is a red, mad supercomputer BOSS of a global corporation. Clifford and friends ‘in tune with nature’ are the good guys.

Colony in Space is from an era when green was good, and the ‘goodies’ are green and brown earth-colour colonists. It was written by Mac Hulke, a politically ‘red’ author, but the planet-raping mining corporation baddies wear red and black! It’s possible to read it these days as green = naïve, and red and black = power; for society to work, you need both sides. In Mark of the Rani we see Luddites opposed to industrial progress, and ‘nature’ attacking Peri. But that nature is weaponised by the Rani as is the industry: neither is bad in itself, only how it is used.

21st century attitude to green is different: yes, environmentalism and ecology are paid more than just lip-service, but literal rather than metaphorical green is more and more alien. Torchwood’s Countrycide had Owen expressing modern urban revulsion at actual green things, and the team terrorised because they are helpless beyond their man-made/controlled, city home.

In Flesh and Stone a forest is artificially created inside a spaceship to provide oxygen for an immensely high-tech world. It is the spooky backdrop to the threat, but contained, controlled.

That use of forest as spooky backdrop in Hide had even the Doctor saying ‘I am afraid.’

By In the Forest of the Night that green was NOT man-made, contained or controlled: it was taking over the urban environment, even the TARDIS! The fact that it turned out to be the Earth’s salvation doesn’t change the feeling of actual green stuff being threatening. I’d love someone to tell me it was taking over the City’s Square Mile as a reference to the Occupy Movement, but I don’t see it myself. Just like KTM, a great big event happens then everything goes back to just the way it was. Speaking of which…

Why can’t there just be a big red button?

Red pulses with extremes: blood is both death and life, fire both dangerous and vibrant.

There’s nothing warm about the Axon’s embrace, nor comfort about the blanket from Listen.

The anti-matter monster from Planet of Evil warns of the danger that lurks in the id, the red robes glow with passionate devotion – to the wrong thing.

The Moment’s obliging creation of a BRB brings no more joy than the red balloon – this one isn’t the little girl’s from the Family of Blood; it’s the clown’s from The God Complex. We all know clowns are no laughing matter!

Underlying some of these lurk fears of power, anger (‘seeing red’) or loss of control. Red suggests not the fear of death, but the sticky, gory, painful process of violent death. This (in)famous scene from Attack of the Cybermen was too much for some, but what exactly was it that disturbed us? Would we fear most being agonised Lytton, or the unfeeling Cyberman – our possible future.

As to the tentacles, well if you are interested in the representation of weirdness, do look at Jack Graham’s serious stuff here http://shabogangraffiti.blogspot.co.uk/p/skulltopus.html

We might associate red with danger, but rarely real evil, especially when alongside scary red images, we have so many bright and shining companions: there’s some femmes fatale here too, but more often the colour highlights the connection to life, passion, & warmth which keeps the Doctor going.

Red eyes bring up the issue of what happens when good people and evil combine:  a timeless fear of being taken over; or someone we love being replaced by something totally Other. But the eyes aren’t always red, and the scariest possession of all is…  …blue.

Blue Shift

How could the colour of these possibly be evil?

(pause as some of you go off to a happy place…)

Before the Eighties we had very little blue in Who; the TARDIS rarely had competition. Metebelis leaps to mind which wasn’t evil in itself. But since the Candyman, and the Destroyer from Battlefield, blue has been deadly. No political implications there, I’m sure…

In the post 2005 series, blue lights up some seriously scary people, but can be friendly too. Maybe it’s the updated version of green faces – with the moral ‘don’t judge a look by its colour.’ We’ve got so used to green aliens in Who that we need something even more alien to disturb us, and blue fits the bill. For now.

Hey, Who turned ON the lights?

I said at the start that Who evil was influenced by the tech they had to create it, and the 21st Century is no different. The cheap, ubiquitous, strong blue light of LEDs has made a significant impact, whether merely reflecting the shift in the built environment we know, or using them to create certain effects.

Whether there are 21st century fears here I’m not convinced. The computer-crash Haiku we loved at the start of this century may be out of date already, but the frustration with unreasonable tech still applies:

Windows 2000 has crashed:

I am the blue screen of death.

No-one hears your screams.

We might associate blue with cold, logical tech, the sort that doesn’t make allowances for human warmth or weakness, and certainly many of these baddies are the epitome of merciless. There’s also a scary element of insanity in these images; the lights are on, but nobody’s home. There’s no-one to reason with.

Blue may turn out to be a passing hue for evil, so let’s return to a classic one.

Mwah ha ha ha…

Some of these stereotype images support the ‘Moffat is sexist/can’t write women’ brigade, but he doesn’t do the costumes. There’s always been a panto element in Who that means the villains have to wear black – from the Meddling Monk to Missy.  And even the Doctor was menacing at the start in his black hat and cloak. None as menacing as the chilling Mr Madoc in The War Games – speaking so softly he doesn’t need to carry a stick at all. The epitome of ‘wait till the boss/your father finds out…’ Authority can still scare, and bring out the guilty kid in us. Contrast with the pantoesque War Chief in purple, and ineffectual Security Chief in green. We may have to watch it in B&W, but the cast and crew had these colour references.

Sutekh’s gift of death is delivered in a black package, and the black hats of the Valeyard and the gunslinger hint at executioner, not just ‘bad guy.’ It’s the colour of funerals (in the country and culture that created Doctor Who), body-bags, the grave…. If Who is going to be scary it has to push the buttons that say ‘This person could kill you.’ Whether they keep their menace in an era of ‘Everybody lives, NOT just once, everybody lives’ I doubt. Back in the Buddhist days of Barry Letts re-incarnation meant something; and that included loss, grief, and the end of that actor appearing. If death is no longer an end at all, just a hiatus while the fans speculate HOW that character/actor will return, then black is, frankly, just a bit camp.

But beyond the short-hand ‘black is evil’ idea there’s some more complex stuff the Doctor has to deal with. The Black Guardian is of course, only half of the picture – alone he represents imbalance and chaos not just villainy – and the Doctor isn’t convinced by the Time Lords’ take on the problem. The Valeyard… well; what do you say? How many of us secretly like the Doctor’s Dark Side? Ursula le Guin wasn’t the only one to suggest we acknowledge our shadow lest it hound us for ever.

Other black images show ‘good gone wrong.’ Evangelista is just a glitch in the tech, the black-hat outlaw a person-turned-into-a-weapon-turned-into-a-guardian. Jek’s black AND WHITE unpredictable polarities terrify Peri, but what drove him mad? Even Davros has a past which might account for his personality. Maybe these are a warning of what people become if we don’t take care of them.

White as a Sheet

What better image of taking care of people could there be but a nurse’s uniform, or a scientist’s white coat?

But clinical can be cold, scientists can be mad (‘nusink in ze verld can stop me nooooooow!’), and in a world with amazing developments in drug, bio and gene technology we still fear that whatever is intended to help us might kill us – all. “The trouble with the scientific approach, thought the Brigadier, was that it left you at the mercy of your scientists.”  ― Terrance Dicks, Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion

The Girl Who Waited is a particularly chilling whitescape, because along with the science kill/cure, there’s that blank, empty, directionless, void reminiscent of The Mind Robber and Warrior’s Gate. What can we do when our usual reference points are gone? In the earlier examples our heroes work it out with others. In our densely populated cities and 24/7 social network connections, is our real nightmare like Amy’s? What are we, who are we, if we are totally ALONE?

The traditional white skulls, ghosts and fear of death get plenty of outings in Who, but the emphasis shifts. One theory of ghosts is that they represent (literally re-present) something we’ve repressed, buried in our psych because it’s traumatic. The Ood are a great example of this – slaves, trafficked people, something we can’t free ourselves from until we’ve freed them. Other ghost/skull images hint at a shifting view of death. The ghostly Watcher turned out to be the necessary preparation for death, whereas Simeon’s henchmen are part of his attempt not just to kill the Doctor but to eradicate his whole lives’ experience and influence in the universe. The Silence eradicate our memory/experience even when alive. Annihilation isn’t related to Nihilism for nothing… the unspeakable fear that we might not mean anything, in the next life or this.

The ‘Host,’ the Destiny disco bots, Light, even clowns are wolves in sheeps’ clothing, the white apparel is a lie. The android angel is literally two-faced here – try covering the right side of the image, then the left. The lighting even brings out the skull shape – arghhh! If we can’t trust the ‘white hats,’ who can we trust?

Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead is another glimpse of 21st century belief. The Vashta Nerada are explained as a rational fear of the dark, in a society that hardly ever experiences real darkness – but what happens if power rationing does turn out the lights?

The ‘saved’ archaeologist team are dressed in angelic white, with River even lit with a heavenly glow. Moffat’s unwillingness to actually kill anyone turns them into ‘guardian angel’ figurine lookalikes, throwbacks to a meaning modern western society has made sentimental.

Grey Men – ‘You will become like us.’

The development in Cyberman images are another glimpse into modern culture. The cyber-moondance is delightful, but the early fabric-faced monsters were scary because they were us, with most of what makes us human torn away, but just enough left to warn us. By the Age of Steel every hint of uniqueness or human origin is gone, so they are robotic (note the blue light on the modern ones).

Isobel’s photo of fallen cybermen contrasts beautifully with the regimented soldiers behind her, and with the social-media trending event staged my Missy. We’ve gone from identity to identical, then Self-less to Selfie. They’re hollow men and hollow threat. So the reveal of CyberDanny and the contentious CyberBrig is a disturbing move – they’re not hollow or identical or un-human after all, but re-animated corpses. Yet another way of bringing back dead characters, but no resurrection any of us would choose.

The mummies in Pyramids of Mars aren’t really walking dead, but Marcus Scarman is, and therefore much scarier – he’s more like us, so we could be like him. The Foretold ends up being a creature we feel sorry for, in contrast with the evil ‘Gus’ shown only as a blue-lit screen. Weeping Angels beat all ‘monsters with a heart of stone’ but note the repeated contrast with the companions’ colours: we need to assert our difference from them. The cosplay ‘Amy’ shows this fear well – what happens if we become them?

Thinking of that other classic grey monster, note how much colour has warmed up Sontarans recently –  contrast the pasty grey heart-of-stone baddie, to the shiny blue ally with flesh tones so much closer to our own… In some ways we seem to have turned the Cybermen’s threat around, saying to the monsters: ‘you will become like us.’

Talking of our own flesh, the grey adipose tissue becomes cute, and so irresistibly re-creatable with marshmallows. Just as death seems to have been annulled, threat is tamed.

The Waters of Mars is an interesting contrast – the people get greyer as they are taken over, but by the end the scariest part was Him: as Adelaide says, ‘the Time Lord Victorious is wrong.’ The Time Lord victorious is … Rassilon!

Back to the red of power gone mad…

Power gone stale is beautifully played by Martin Jarvis in Vengeance on Varos, and ruthlessly pilloried by Bob Holmes in Carnival of Monsters. And here the contrasts are brighter than ever.

Sometimes the message is intended to be profound, like the Third Doctor’s ‘daisiest daisy’: ‘All bleak and cold, some few bare rocks with some weeds sprouting from them, and some pathetic little patches of sludgy snow. It was just grey. Grey, grey, grey. …suddenly I saw it through his eyes. It was simply glowing with life, like a perfectly cut jewel, and the colours… the colours were deeper and richer than anything you could possibly imagine. Yes, it was the daisiest daisy I’d ever seen.  … ‘I found that the rocks weren’t grey at all. They were red, brown and purple gold. And those pathetic little patches of sludgy snow, they were shining white. Shining white with sunlight…’

Occasionally the message is pretty simple: It’s what’s inside that counts.

The baddies in The Mutants were black to the core, whereas that Mutts were merely waiting to mutate…

Nobody likes Tangerine

Bright is not always right, however…

The less said about the Victory of the Daleks the better (except that it’s hard to take multicoloured evil seriously). Toys can be scary, but they have to be a lot more menacing than this.

The tartrazine Happiness Patrol glowed with pink, but was BOTH extolling The Blues (feeling blue and expressing it), and satirizing the Thatcher Tory administration. The big bad was the ideology that sought to control/use people’s emotions. Much like the Rani in Mark of, and the Mara (Kinda/Snakedance).  Yellow and orange evil are as rare as pink. Terror of the Autons does stand out, for these guys and the daffodils. Vincent’s sunflowers are an interesting angle: ‘Always somewhere between living and dying. Half-human as they turn to the sun. A little disgusting.’

There seem to be quite a few Doctor Who baddies/monsters that are brightly-coloured, but wearing masks; anything that superficially appealing must be fake; tempting but bad for you. Under the fantastic plastic cheap consumer goods lies the hungry Nestene consciousness which will swallow you up.

All these sweetshop colours hint that we’ll be sick later – ‘it’ll all end in tears.’ In The Happiness Patrol the sweets kill you; in Autons the consumer goods consume you; rich seedheads of sunflowers are ‘disgusting;’ The Axon tempts earth with an all-you-can-eat magic porridge pot, even in the concourse scene of The Long Game you get that theme of what happens if we over-indulge in whatever tempts us, that led to Adam’s rejection by the Doctor. 11 let the Akhaten pumpkin ‘have it all,’ but he wasn’t only using over-indulgence to kill the monster, he was jettisoning some stuff he’d been carrying too long. When you put images of Gallifrey alongside you do wonder if part of what the Doctor was purging was his less pleasant memories of home. I hope when he finds it again there’ll be something worth restoring.

So, there’s a starter for ten, from one perspective. How do others read the hues of Who, which colours still evoke an emotional reaction, and do any images still have the power to disturb?

The post Doctor Hue – The Changing Colours of Evil appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

The Sixth Doctor in KANSAS!

Josh Maxton is a writer at Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews - All the latest Doctor Who news and reviews with our weekly podKast, features and interviews, and a long-running forum.

Are you ready for something that has not happened for 25 years? Fans will gather to celebrate the Doctor this October, and the Doctor will be in the house! The fan groups of Kansas Doctor Who Corporation, the Whovians of Wichita, and ICT Cosplay Gallifrey have organized the Time Eddy convention, which will take place from October 2-4, 2015.

The Sixth Doctor himself, along with several companions from the classic series, will be flying into Wichita (or in the Doctor’s case, landing his TARDIS in Wichita). Celebrity guests include Colin Baker (the Sixth Doctor), Katy Manning (Jo Grant), Nicola Bryant (Peri Brown), Deborah Watling (Victoria Waterfield), Peter Purves (Steven Taylor), Victor Pemberton (creator of the sonic screwdriver), and more.

The fan gathering will also celebrate the 50th anniversary of the twelve-part First Doctor story The Daleks’ Master Plan. Unfortunately, all but three episodes of this story are missing. Convention host Peter Pixie and the rest of the crew will try to give fans a feel of the story in a few different exciting ways. It’s always sad when a classic episode of Doctor Who is declared lost. So, many fans have taken up the task of recreating the episode in many ways. You can find a few parts of the adventure on YouTube, or even in this fan-made trailer for episode ten of the story.

Early bird ticket prices for Time Eddy are still on! Get there now before prices go up! I will be attending the convention, so more info about the convention will be shared as it becomes available.

For more information on the Time Eddy convention, go to www.kansasdoctorwho.com.

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Hello! It’s Jenna Coleman [CELEBRITY NEWS BLAST]

Andrew Reynolds is a writer at Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews - All the latest Doctor Who news and reviews with our weekly podKast, features and interviews, and a long-running forum.

In perhaps the only time you’ll ever care about polo, Jenna Coleman has upped the ante in the meteorological-based dating analogies and unleashed the ‘flirtstorm’ on the unsuspected media after she was pictured getting close to Prince Harry.

At an Audi sponsored  polo party in Coworth Park on Saturday attend exclusively by sources, Prince Harry was pictured with his hand on Coleman’s knee, however, a royal source who wished to remain anonymous so we’re just going to assume he was a horse, insisted that there was nothing romantic or flirty about the evening.

The horse said: “They were just two young people on a night out chatting. Jenna was honoured to meet Harry, but the pictures make their chat look a lot more intimate than it was.”

Must have been the ‘romantic misunderstandings’ filter on Instagram.

The horse went on to add: “They were at a party and were surrounded by friends. It was not flirty and the whole conversation has been blown out of proportion.”

Ignoring all proportion, the Mirror went on to speculate about Jenna’s potential availability after ‘it could now reveal’ that Jenna had split up from long-term partner and Game of Thrones star Richard Madden and that he didn’t attend the polo party and that he was probably watching the Champions League final, a source we just made up confirmed.

Before it all gets a bit too Jilly Cooper, a friend of the couple who wished to remain anonymous so we’re just going to assume they are the potted plant Jenna and Richard forgot to water in 2012 said: “They will always be friends and have been through a lot together. When they first dated they were both jobbing actors, now they are both global stars.”

A BBC Spokesman who wasn’t at the polo party but once stood next to a horse at Newmarket confirmed that Jenna wasn’t needed on set that day and that ‘We do not discuss her personal life.’ Perhaps that’s why the source wasn’t invited to the party.

“But,” I hear you cry, “What did the Daily Mail make of this?” Well my friend, they loved her off-the-shoulder dress and, it’s pretty stunning. So stunning in fact, we’ve brought our very own fashion correspondent to reveal the secrets behind her beautiful summery look.

So Sutekh, what did you make of her ‘chic off the shoulder bob’?

“Kneel before the might of Sutekh!”

Okay, er, how about how she paired the elegant cream dress with blue and white striped wedge sandals and completed the look with round sunglasses and a black bag; what did you make of that?

“In my presence, you are an ant, a termite. Abase yourself, you grovelling insect!”

I feel we’re getting a little side-tracked. So how can readers of this article emulate the look with say, high street brands? How can we get the look for less, almighty Sutekh?

“Where I tread, I leave nothing but dust and darkness. I find that good…”

Right… so while the Mail couldn’t be drawn on a Harry as a potential suitor for Jenna, What are your thoughts on Harry? What advice do you have for the Prince?

“I can, if I choose, keep you alive for centuries, wracked by the most excruciating pain. Since your interference has condemned me forever to remain a prisoner in the Eye of Horus, it would be a fitting end. You would make an amusing diversion.”

It seems that they have a little history there, we’ll leave Sutekh to get back to work on his comprehensive look at the history of sandals and get back on track with the Radio Times take on the whole event, which is, to attempt to out-Sun, The Sun with a puntastic challenge of its own.

Can you come up with anything better than ‘Dr Woo’ or “do Who come here often?” and “I’m no Lord but I’ll give you a good time” and keep your soul intact? Then why not give it a go! And as for inspiration, here’s mine: “If I gave you the key to my heart, would you throw it into molten lava if I wouldn’t travel back in time and save your dead boyfriend?”

I don’t think I’ve understood this game…

And finally, normality is restored as Jenna herself shares her favourite childhood book, and no it isn’t about the girl who fell in love with a Prince and had the media speculate over nothing that really matters at an Audi sponsored party while missing the real question that matters to Doctor Who fans: just what she was doing at the party if the rest of the cast is still filming?

 

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Go Ood Crazy in Doctor Who Adventures #3!

Christian Cawley is a writer at Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews - All the latest Doctor Who news and reviews with our weekly podKast, features and interviews, and a long-running forum.

Details for the new issue of Doctor Who Adventures have been released. Set to materialise on planet Earth on 18th June the DWA team are getting ready to go Ood Crazy!

In Doctor In A Bottle, Clara opens a strange looking bottle and unleashes the power of the Djinx on the city of London. With the Doctor taking the Djinx’s place, imprisoned in a bottle, it’s down to Clara to save London from destruction. With glorious illustrations by Russ Leach and a full-on colour storm by John Burns, Doctor In A Bottle is a must for all Who fans!

FRIENDS OR FOES

We also access the TARDIS data core to find out all about the mysterious and enigmatic Ood.

CLARA’S CRAFT STUDIO

Next up, we join Clara in the Craft Studio and prepare for a party you will never forget as we show you how to make your very own Ood piñata, guaranteed to make your party go with a bang!

UNIT ALIEN ARCHIVES

The UNIT Alien Archives will give you all the lowdown you need should you come face to face with the Clockwork Droids on your travels! Whatever you do, don’t wind them up or you’ll be in trouble.

STRAX’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY

Strax continues his guide to the galaxy as he introduces you to the delights of Gallifrey, the Ood-Sphere and Demons Run!

THE PATERNOSTER GANG INVESTIGATES

The Doctor makes a guest appearance in The Giant’s Heart, a Paternoster Gang story, which sees our heroes guarding a mysterious diamond in the Tower of London.

Also in this issue, you’ve got the chance to win a brand new Doctor Who Cluedo game, you’ll face brain-tingling puzzles and get to play Lost in The TARDIS! All this and much, much more!

Issue 3 comes with a Free Giant Poster and your very own Dalek Patrol!

Doctor Who Adventures #3 is on sale 18th June 2015, price £3.99.

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Reviewed: Suburban Hell

Peter Shaw is a writer at Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews - All the latest Doctor Who news and reviews with our weekly podKast, features and interviews, and a long-running forum.

We asked some very special guest reviewers to take a listen to Suburban Hell, the fifth release of the fourth series of Fourth Doctor adventures from Big Finish. Ladies and gentlemen, it’s only Keith and Candice Marie Pratt from Mike Leigh’s Nuts in May!

Last seen on screen camping out in Dorset in 1976, we had to convert the CD to 8-track cartridge so they could play it in Keith’s beloved Morris Minor (still going strong). We catch up with them nearly 40-years later, exiting the M3 at junction 13, toward Southampton Docks/Bournemouth…

Keith: (SWITCHING OFF THE CAR STEREO) What did you think of that, Candice Marie?

Candice Marie: I’m still covering my ears, Keith!

Keith: Not very effectively, Candice Marie, as you can clearly still hear. How did you enjoy the audio drama production?

Candice Marie: I shall be having nightmares, Keith. All that screaming and cruelty. I thought it was lovely at first with all the neighbours coming over for a party. But when the beastly blue monsters started shouting… it was horrifying! I shan’t be able to close my eyes in the tent tonight, Keith. Even when I cuddle up with Prudence.

Tom Baker and Louise Jameson have a ball with the very funny script, but their performances never slip into the extremes of Graham Williams-era silliness.

Keith: Yes, I don’t think it’s recommended for people of a very nervous disposition. But the horrific elements are quite tame, in my opinion, particularly for this form of pulp science fiction adventure. I found the story a pleasant enough diversion as we travelled along the M3 towards Basingstoke/Southampton, with a brief comfort break at the Fleet Services between Junction 4a and Junction 5. Although the eerie thick fog has set our schedule back somewhat today.

Candice Marie: I preferred it when we listen to the New Seekers, Keith. We always listen to the New Seekers.

Keith: As I like to remind you, Candice Marie, it’s good to experience new things, as it helps to broaden one’s mind. And we have listened to We’d Like to Teach the World to Sing for the last 43 years, every time we take the approximately three-and-a-quarter to three-and-a-half-hour journey (depending on traffic) from Croydon to the Corfe Castle Camping and Caravanning Club Site.

Candice Marie: That’s because it always makes for a jolly start to our holidays, Keith.

Keith: There was a certain level of observational humour in this audio presentation to lighten the spirits, Candice Marie, chiefly derived from the interactions and relations between the characters. Particularly, the juxtaposition between the two alien beings and the suburban neighbours from the 20th century. Personally, I prefer the world-weary musings of Anthony Hancock of 23 Railway Cuttings, East Cheam…

Candice Marie: Or the Goons!

Keith: We have discussed this, Candice Marie, and I believe we agreed that their form of surreal and ultimately juvenile humour has very little long-term cultural value…

Candice Marie: (SUDDENLY IN DISTRESS) Keith! Keith! Watch out!

KEITH MAKES AN EMERGENCY STOP, WHEELS SCREECH.

Keith: What sort of prize lunatic leaves a great blue box in the middle of the dual carriageway just off the Merley Roundabout?

Candice Marie: You could have killed us, Keith. Why didn’t you stop earlier?

Keith: Because it appeared out of nowhere, Candice Marie.

Candice Marie: You said things didn’t just appear out of nowhere! You said that there are physical laws which govern the universe that can’t be contravened!

Keith: I know perfectly well what I said, Candice Marie! There are physical laws which govern the universe, and this object is in direct contravention of those laws. I’m going to discuss this with the clearly irresponsible individual who owns this box.

Candice Marie: Don’t get so cross, Keith. Remember, what Doctor Peterson said, you need to find healthier ways to express your anger. And it says ‘Police’ on that box, we can’t afford another incident!

Keith: Stay strapped into the passenger seat, Candice Marie. I’ll deal with this…

***

Sorry, we seem to have lost Keith and Candice Marie, so maybe I should finish this review?

It’s no secret that Suburban Hell is Alan Barnes’ homage to everyone’s favourite (apart from the writer/director himself) 1970s Play For Today, Abigail’s Party. It’s always a risk to attempt to ape a much loved classic (see above), but Suburban Hell is pitch perfect in that regard. It has very clear (and clever) echoes of the lauded source material but still manages to fit some great twists in the mix. I don’t want to spoil the surprise, but things really aren’t as simple as they first seem.

Tom Baker and Louise Jameson have a ball with the very funny script, but their performances never slip into the extremes of Graham Williams-era silliness. Annette Badland and Katy Wix shine as Thelma and Belinda, respectively. However (spoiler alert!), I prefer Badland’s choice to keep her Estuary English accent when she reveals her alien origins, whereas Wix switches to RP when transformed into an alien queen. I’m sure Badland’s accent decision would get the Eccleston seal of approval.

I enjoyed Alistair Lock’s sound design and music too, a clear homage to mid-70s Dudley Simpson, with an appropriate twist of Sapphire and Steel thrown into the mix. It really does take you back to tea time on Saturdays, beans on toast, Subbuteo, Etch A Sketch, Trev and Simon… Hang on, that last nostalgic reference was a bit of an anachronism. It’s like someone’s messing about with time…

So, before I blow the whole plot, I’ll just say feel free to purchase Suburban Hell with my wholehearted recommendation. If you love it too, please PM me via Kasterbourous and we can trade our favourite lines. If you don’t, feel free to email Big Finish with your concerns.

It’s much harder to review a release you really enjoy. Let’s face it, it’s easier to lay into something at length that you don’t think is much cop. And you fear if your review just says: great dialogue, fab story, excellent performances and so on, then it would be a little bit of a dull piece to read.

I’m sure there are ways to make a gushing review a bit more entertaining, I’ll have to think of a device to keep the interest up. But until then, I can say I heartily recommend Suburban Hell.

Ooh, we’ve just located Keith and Candice Marie…

Candice Marie: Put the branch down, please Keith! He’s much bigger than you! And his lady friend looks fearsome!

Keith: No, I don’t want a jelly baby. Get away from me! I’ll knock your head off!

The post Reviewed: Suburban Hell appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

Big Finish Reveals Full Team for UNIT: The New Series

Christian Cawley is a writer at Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews - All the latest Doctor Who news and reviews with our weekly podKast, features and interviews, and a long-running forum.

Hey you! Yes, you! You that’s confused about Osgood coming back from the dead! Prepare for more confusion. Fans of Osgood will be delighted to hear that bowtie-clad scientist portrayed by the fabulous Ingrid Oliver will be teaming up with Jemma Redgrave (Kate Stewart) for the Big Finish UNIT spin-off.

The stories (four in this boxset) will feature the Autons, along with what appears to be an octopus? See for yourself, above. Perhaps it’s a Nestene…

Written by Andrew Smith and Matt Fitton, UNIT: Extinction will also feature Warren Brown (Luther, By Any Means, Good Cop) as Lieutenant Sam Bishop, Ramon Tikaram (Big Finish’s Voyage to the New World, as well as Stella, Fortitude, Game of Thrones) as Colonel Shindi, and James Joyce (Big Finish’s Charlotte Pollard series, plus Downton Abbey, The Musketeers) as Captain Josh Carter. Says Big Finish producer David Richardson “We’re so happy to have Kate and Osgood joining us at Big Finish. This team has been so captivating to watch on TV, and we’re looking forward to throwing some deadly challenges in their paths in these kinetic new episodes.”

David is clearly pleased with the cast, too, noting “Ramon also is busy on so many great things, but we’ve tempted him to the ranks of UNIT! He’s a lovely man to have around, and an extraordinary actor. “We’ve worked with Warren several times before,” says David, “and even though he’s one of the busiest leading men around, he’s said he’ll be there for Big Finish. So we’ve created a principle role in UNIT especially for him, and he’ll be an essential member of the global team.”

UNIT: Extinction sees Kate and her team confront an alien invasion by the Nestene Consciousness and its army of plastic Autons. The box set is release in November 2015 and is available for pre-order now. Following this, three further UNIT releases will appear at six monthly intervals. How excited are we?!

(Additional material by Josh Maxton)

The post Big Finish Reveals Full Team for UNIT: The New Series appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

Last Chrismas Guest Faye Marsay Wants Shona Return

Christian Cawley is a writer at Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews - All the latest Doctor Who news and reviews with our weekly podKast, features and interviews, and a long-running forum.

Popular Last Christmas guest star Faye Marsay – currently appearing in Game of Thrones alongside Doctor Who Series 9 guest Maisie Williams – has revealed that she wants to work on the show again.

Speaking to the Radio Times at the Sky Arts South Bank Awards (ostensibly about being written out of the next series of Fresh Meat), the North Yorkshire actress enthused “I would absolutely love to go back into Doctor Who because everyone on it, down to the person who cleans the trailer, is lovely.”

Marsay continued:

“It’s a universally appealing show, and I had a great time on it. I just got to play myself basically, which was quite nice. If they asked me to come back, I would do it in a heartbeat, but if they don’t, I’m lucky to have done it in the first place.

Before finishing (embarrassingly?)

“And Peter Capaldi I totally fancy. I would snog his face.”

We don’t know if Ms Marsay had been at the sherberts.

The post Last Chrismas Guest Faye Marsay Wants Shona Return appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

Monday’s News Is Covered In Food

Philip Bates is a writer at Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews - All the latest Doctor Who news and reviews with our weekly podKast, features and interviews, and a long-running forum.

Ah yes! It’s you! I remember you. Yes, please do come closer. I won’t bite. Unless I don’t like you.

It’s Monday, isn’t it? You want to shake off those Monday Blues? Hmm. Well, okay, let me tell you all about what’s going on in the Doctor Who world. What’s that, you just came here looking for nude photos of Karen Gillan? Shut up and listen, you insolent little – –

Doctor Who Makes It Digital

This Summer, Make It Digital, an initiative by BBC Learning and BBC English Regions, is going on tour – and will teach kids all about new digital realms. And this educational event will, of course, feature Doctor Who, alongside other instantly-recognisable brands!

Touring across 13 cities from the end of this month to late September, Make It Digital comprises of several workshops, and the head of BBC Learning, Sinead Rocks, said:

“By using popular TV programmes such as Doctor Who and the weather, we hope to demystify the digital world for the thousands of people we will meet face to face across the summer. This will all be backed up by iWonder guides and school activities as we move into the autumn.”

It begins at Plymouth Hoe on 27th June, and visits Belfast, Cambridge, Bristol, Sunderland, Nottingham, Blackpool, Bournemouth, Cardiff, Hull, London, Dundee, and Birmingham across the Summer.

The Beeb gets a lot of unfair shtick, but these sorts of programmes are never mentioned by anyone debating its future – and that’s simply wrong.

I Am The Cover of the Year?

Voting for the Cover of the Year event, held at the PPA awards, has now closed.

The Radio Times‘ I Am The Doctor, featuring a stern Peter Capaldi looking straight at us, is nominated, but faces tough competition from, amongst others: The Big Issue‘s disabled solider, urging us not to forget the war that is going on right now; Elle‘s celebration of Emma Watson as the new face of feminism; and Shortlist‘s Evolve Your Style, combining men’s fashion with… Dawn of the Planet of the Apes!

The awards celebrate consumer and business brand recognition in the UK magazine’s world, and the Cover of the Year is the only one voted for by the general public.

We have to wait until 9th July to find out if the Radio Times wins.

Eggs-Term-Inate

You know what you need during a healthy discussion about Daleks, literary genres, and communism? A hearty meal!

Chris-Racheal Oseland has paired up with a fellow Who fan, Tom Gordon, to cook up the Dining with the Doctor: Regenerated recipe book. Made after an unsuccessful search online for Doctor Who-related things to cook (ready for The Day of the Doctor), Chris-Rachael concocted her own, and decided to self-publish the result. She says:

“I decided what the heck – I’d publish it using CreateSpace [Amazon’s Print on Demand service] and the 300 people who bought it will throw the world’s most kick-ass watch parties. Instead of 300 copies, in the last 3 years it sold closer to 30,000!”

And a new ‘regenerated’ edition is being funded via Kickstarter, with 370 backers pledging over $14,000. She hopes to make this cookbook internationally-available, but until then, you can read her blog or try out some special recipes over at the Radio Times.

Big Box, Blue Box

Finally, let’s briefly look at what the Doctors are up to.

Tom Baker, aka the Fourth Doctor, has recorded the narration for ITV’s Big Box Little Box, a six-part show in which five houses accept the delivery of packages of the newest gadgets and technologies, ranging from a home sauna to the latest spray-tanning equipment. They then give their honest opinions on whether they’re worth buying or not. So yeah, all about consumerism. Sounds riveting, doesn’t it?

Meanwhile, Christopher Eccleston, the Ninth Doctor, is fresh off promoting Safe House, a drama in which he starred opposite Bad Wolf‘s Paterson Joseph, and reflects on having to do a horrible amount of swimming in the freezing Lake District:

“…[It] was cold but it was also exhilarating and I’m very proud that when I’m an old man can look back and say I did that. And it’s good for the crew, they can look and see the lead actor is chipping in and getting involved because they’re working in those conditions so why shouldn’t I? It only comes round once so you might as well do it… I would say if you’re going to shoot up in the Lake District you’ve got to utilise it. It becomes a secondary character in the piece and can define the mood, the weather, the way the cinematography comes to light. We thought if we have a beautiful landscape we should use it.”

Eccleston’s now working on Legend, a film in which he plays policeman Nick Reed – acting opposite Tom Hardy as the Kray twins. He describes it as “a psychological investigation of their relationship and the era itself and the character I play is based on a real person who pursued the Krays and eventually arrested them.”

And that’s yer lot for the day. Now go on – get off my lawn!

The post Monday’s News Is Covered In Food appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

Doctor Who: Four Doctors Trailer Released

Christian Cawley is a writer at Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews - All the latest Doctor Who news and reviews with our weekly podKast, features and interviews, and a long-running forum.

Exciting – Titan Comics has released a motion trailer for Doctor Who: Four Doctors, the forthcoming 5-part weekly event written by Paul Cornell and illustrated by Neil Edwards

The weekly event, running through August and September 2015, in place of the ongoing series, features all three Doctors from Titan’s regular ongoings, as well as John Hurt’s War Doctor from The Day of the Doctor, and is the thrilling next chapter in Titan Comics’ bombastic Doctor Who publishing saga.

The first issue releases Wednesday August 12, supported by the global Doctor Who Comics Day on Saturday August 15.

As you may know, writer Paul Cornell has penned modern classics, the Hugo-nominated Father’s Day and Human Nature/Family of Blood, as well as Virgin-era Doctor Who novels, strips in Doctor Who Magazine and more recently has enjoyed successful comic book runs on titles such as Wolverine, Action Comics, Demon Knights, and Captain Britain and MI:13.

Doctor Who: Four Doctors follows straight on from the issue #15 conclusions of Year One, with the second years of the Tenth, Eleventh and Twelfth Doctors beginning after the event’s blistering finale!

Four Doctors, three companions, one action-packed mystery!

The post Doctor Who: Four Doctors Trailer Released appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

Gaiman and Ishiguro Discuss Genre

Philip Bates is a writer at Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews - All the latest Doctor Who news and reviews with our weekly podKast, features and interviews, and a long-running forum.

The Doctor’s Wife scribe, and well-respected novelist, Neil Gaiman has spoken to fellow author, Kazuo Ishiguro, about genre boundaries.

Ishiguro’s new book, The Buried Giant, prompted the discussion, with the pair debating whether it’s fantasy or not, and if these genre categories have any meaning. “I don’t have a problem with marketing categories,” Kazuo says, “but I don’t think they’re helpful to anybody apart from publishers and bookshops.” Gaiman’s novels have similar conflicting genre elements: The Ocean at the End of the Lane, a title partly inspired by Doctor Who, is considered fantasy, but that doesn’t quite cover it.

Neil argues that Charles Dickens wouldn’t have been criticised for becoming a fantasy writer during his day when he wrote A Christmas Carol. He also explores how fans of specific genres get satisfaction from the cliches:

“[T]here are things that people who like a genre are looking for in their fiction: the things that titillate, the things that satisfy. If it was a cowboy novel, we’d need the fight in the saloon; we’d need the bad guy to come riding into town and the good guy to be waiting for him. A novel that happens to be set in the Old West doesn’t actually need to deliver any of those things – though it would leave readers of genre cowboy fiction feeling peculiarly disappointed, because they have not got the moments of specific satisfaction.”

This is especially interesting to Doctor Who fans: just think how many genres our favourite TV show ventures into. Let’s look at A Town Called Mercy – we’re not really questioning whether it’s good or not (I love it; many others don’t) – or The Curse of the Black Spot (same applies here). Both go into their respective topics with gusto. Gunfights, swordfights, showdowns at midday, walking the plank… They really give you what you’re expecting. Doctor Who, however, throws something new into the mix, hence a war criminal and a cyborg, and a sexy siren and alien ship. Classic Who similarly draws on all the familiar traits, but doesn’t always add something inventive in there. The Gunfighters, for example. A guilty pleasure of mine, but I fully admit that it: 1. gets loads wrong; and 2. doesn’t deviate.

So what gives Whovians satisfaction (don’t look at me like that)? I guess our enjoyment at least partially depends on how much we want the show to deviate, and how much we want it to fulfill our ideals of each genre.

But I don’t know. Just a thought. What do you think?

Aside from that, Gaiman says the horror genre was dying a few years ago:

“Genres only start existing when there’s enough of them to form a sort of critical mass in a bookshop, and even that can go away. A bookstore worker in America was telling me that he’d worked in Borders when they decided to get rid of their horror section, because people weren’t coming into it. So his job was to take the novels and decide which ones were going to go and live in Science Fiction and Fantasy and which ones were going to Thrillers… It definitely faded away as a bookshop category, which then meant that a lot of people who had been making their living as horror writers had to decide what they were, because their sales were diminishing. In fact, a lot of novels that are currently being published as thrillers are books that probably would have been published as horror 20 years ago.”

He also remembers when he approached his editor about Coraline – and was told it wasn’t publishable. Why? Because it was a horror tale that straddled kids and adult fiction. “They knew which librarians bought what and how things got reviewed, and this was simply not something that they could have sold,” he says. “It wasn’t until much later, when I was in a world in which the Lemony Snicket books had happened [A Series of Unfortunate Events – a truly fantastic series], and Philip Pullman [His Dark Materials] and Rowling were being read, and the idea of crossover books aimed at both children and adults existed, that it was published.”

Oh! And Kazuo turns his attention to the ever-changing creature that is Doctor Who:

“I think if you did a big study of Doctor Who, you’d see that the essential story has actually changed to serve the different climates of the times. It’s clear that the Daleks started off as Nazis and the Cybermen were communists. But my daughter was saying that, for their generation, the Cybermen represent the people being turned into mindless wage slaves in the 21st-century workplace. Now the fear of the communist takeover of the world has receded, the Cybermen can become almost the opposite – something that represents a unit of the rampant capitalist culture. I wonder if Doctor Who will turn out to be one of these creatures who live for a long, long time, as a story that will be a hundred-year-old being, a 300-year-old being.”

Never thought of the Cybermen like that, but yeah, I suppose it works!

It’s a fascinating conversation – well worth a read.

The post Gaiman and Ishiguro Discuss Genre appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.