Christian Cawley's Blog, page 12

Yes, Matt Smith WOULD Work For Big Finish!

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.

Matt Smith has said he’d definitely consider returning to the role of the Eleventh Doctor for Big Finish… but he’s not been asked yet!

Following the audio company’s acquisition of material up to and including The Time of the Doctor (2013), Big Finish has released a number of fantastic boxsets, including UNIT: Extinction, The Diary of River Song, and The War Doctor, but the most exciting proposition is, of course, the return of Christopher Eccleston, David Tennant, and Matt Smith as the Time Lord.

This summer sees Tennant playing the Tenth Doctor once more opposite Catherine Tate’s Donna Noble across three new audios… but will we ever see the return of the Eleventh Doctor? Matt was questioned about this, and he replied:

“No one’s asked me! If they asked me then I guess it’s yeah, I don’t see why not.”

Of course, he might be lying. Maybe Nick Briggs et al. has approached him and we’ll hear the bow-tie-wearing alien very soon. Maybe he can’t say anything until an official announcement is made, which is unlikely to happen for a while so as not to affect The Tenth Doctor Adventures‘ reception.

Or maybe he really hasn’t been approached.

As for whether Eccleston would work for Big Finish… Well, don’t hold your breath, but he does seem a really nice bloke, so maybe that’s not entirely out the question.

In the interview, Matt also says he’s 100% behind Chris Chibnall as showrunner (they worked together on The Hungry Earth/ Cold Blood, Dinosaurs on a Spaceship, and The Power of Three), adding that he “writes the Doctor really brilliantly.”

So if Matt does act for Big Finish… Would you like to see some solo stories for the Eleventh Doctor? Or prefer him to be joined by Amy, Rory, River, and/or Clara?

The post Yes, Matt Smith WOULD Work For Big Finish! appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

Series 10 Begins Filming in May… But Who’s The Companion?

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 Radio Times has revealed that Doctor Who Series 10 will begin filming this May… but that auditions for the role of companion have yet to begin!

This upcoming run will be the last with Steven Moffat as showrunner before Chris Chibnall takes over the series for 2018’s Series 11. After Moffat hinted that his final will be the 2017 Christmas special – he noted how he has 14 episodes of Who left to oversee – there’s been some question over the future of the show: certainly the next year will feel like a turbulent time. Indeed, some have wondered what would be happening with Series 10 after filming failed to start when expected: January, just after the Doctor Who Experience‘s TARDIS Tours concluded.

This was followed by the announcement that we’d only get one episode of the programme this year – the festive special, which will presumably go in front of the cameras either at the start of this filming run or at roughly the same time as previous Christmas episodes (around July). Might Doctor Who be filming at the same time as Class?

It’s troubling to consider that not only has a new companion been cast, but that, according to a Radio Times source, they’ve yet to kick-off auditions!

This might be the production crew considering if they want someone who will either stay just for one series (and leave with Moffat), or stay to help usher in Chibnall’s era. Or perhaps they’ve not begun auditions because they’ve already got someone in mind.

There’s been some concern about Twelfth Doctor, Peter Capaldi, particularly over how long he’ll stay, so hopefully, we’ll hear some positive news soon! Of a new companion to replace Jenna Coleman’s Clara Oswald, Capaldi said:

“We’ve just had some brief talks about it, we haven’t actually chosen someone yet — that I know of. I would expect that I would meet them before we finalised all that… we’re looking for someone different.”

I know this year seems pretty grim, but at least we’ll glimpse behind-the-scenes photos soon…

The post Series 10 Begins Filming in May… But Who’s The Companion? appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

Big Finish’s Doom Coalition Reviewed!

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.

When the new Doctor Who boss arrives, wouldn’t it be brilliant if there was a Doctor Who/Broadchurch crossover!? It such an obvious and amazing idea if you think about it! So I’m going to make it my business to ask Chibnall if it’s going to happen at every opportunity for the whole of his tenure. And call him an @rs*hole if he doesn’t cheer, agree immediately, and commission a three-hour TV special. The tw@t.

Not as tall as RTD (#chibnallmustgrow) without the coarse wiry hair sported by The Moff (#chibnallmustgoat). . Yes, Your Chibness, you’ve got some big shoes to fill (presuming that it’s a requirement of the job to always wear Russell T Davies’ size 14 brogues). Maybe that’s why the-usually-consistently-brilliant Moffat occasionally put a foot wrong, his tiny hairy Hobbit feet clomping about in those whoppers.

But, before we get to review Doom Coalition (stick with me, and – yes – I expect YOU to contribute) the main thing we need to confirm is what we will call the next showrunner? CTC? The Chibb? We only have 24 months to decide. And 12 of those will be WITHOUT DOCTOR WHO ON TELLY. But before you take a hammer to your flat-screen, you do have options and most of them start with Big Finish. Which you play on a music player anyway, so smash away, kids!

One way you can fill your time is by reading all of the 45,386 articles (45,386½ if you include this one) on the Internet about what you can do to sate your insatiable appetite for more and more and more Doctor Who before Capaldi comes back at Christmas. All of them (including this one) will invariably include two of the most frightening words in the English language…

DOOM COALITION. Where’ve you gone? Come out from behind the sofa, stick your trousers under the hand dryer and take a sniff of RTD’s inner sole… ‘Doom’ speaks for itself, but ‘coalition’ has only recently joined the pantheon of the universe’s scariest words. Or at least it was there early last year when the Big Finish Top Brass sat ‘round discussing how to top Dark Eyes. If they were brainstorming titles today they would surely come up with the (far more terrifying) DOOM MAJORITY GOVERNMENT.

…

Unnh… Shoes, must find RTD’s shoes… Unhand me, madam… Sorry, blacked out there for a second. Now, at the risk of this review being a series of seemingly off-topic asides. Oh ye of little faith (don’t you just hate it when people say that?). I want to let you in on a secret which will surely mean I am cast out of The Magic Reviewers Circle for revealing our dark arts. Before anyone writes a review of anything they always read other reviews written by other people first. For example, before I sat on my golden Review Throne and attached the mind probe, I Googled ‘Doom Coalition reviews’ to see what lesser mortals thought of the latest McGann offering.

And, by and large, people really liked it. Probably more than me, granted, but everyone’s entitled to tell everyone in the whole universe their own unchallengeable opinions (have you ever met the Internet?).

My next step was to take a quick peek back at DWM 494 to see what the trusty people from the premier Who publication thought of Doom C. And, somewhat surprisingly, the reviewer seemed to place it alongside Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, Shakespear’s Hamlet, In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust, and Be Here Now by Oasis as one of the greatest cultural achievements of all time. ‘The Eighth Doctor’s latest outing is proper edge-of-your-seat, nail-biting drama… After Dark Eyes I hoped for a miracle. And that’s what I got. Incredible.’

Flip back two pages and this is how the same issue summed up one of the most astonishing runs of Doctor Who, Series 9: ‘But in 2015, at last, we had the Doctor again. Just the Doctor in all his glory. Same old, same old – but never business as usual.’

Spot the difference? I mean if you had somehow managed to survive on planet Earth never having experienced Doctor Who before (a tear, Sarah Jane?) and picked up DWM 494 to find out where to start you’d bin the Capaldi Blu-Rays, put your headphones on and reach for DC…

And, I’m guessing, you might be slightly disappointed. Yes, it’s a good run of episodes: a solid start, a scary and brilliant second, bit average third and… What a mess of a final episode. Which almost everyone else seemed to love. Unconditionally. Is there a hidden hypno-track that didn’t download properly for me?

Cast your mind back to reviews of Heaven Sent… Such a brave, disturbing and flawlessly performed piece of television that, if it was a one-off drama on BBC Two, The Moff would have had to duck to protect his coarse wiry hair from people throwing BAFTAs at him. Yet some fans employed the unthinking Who fan’s favourite hashtag #worstepisodeever just like the silly twits do every week.

Yet, I haven’t see one review that mentions how so very disappointing the conclusion of the Doom Coalition season closer, The Satanic Mill, is. Without spoiling the ending. Oh, never mind you can’t spoil something that’s rotten in the first place… So, WITH spoiling the ending:

The story so far: The Doctor is trapped, about to be killed, ejected into a star which will take the whole of Earth’s solar system with it. Then we hear the sonic screwdriver buzz and he disappears and materialises back in the safety of the TARDIS. His companions (and we listeners) are curious as to what just happened.

Liv Chenka: Just one thing.

The Doctor: Anything.

Liv Chenka: What happened back there? How did the TARDIS find you?

The Doctor: You didn’t think I’d walk into what was clearly a trap without an escape plan. Did you?

Liv Chenka: Of course not.

The Doctor: You did.

Liv Chenka: Well, it wouldn’t be the first time.

The Doctor: Oh ye of little faith.

Helen Sinclair: But how did you do it?

The Doctor: Given the number of times I keep losing her lately I programmed the Sonic Screwdriver with the commands necessary to automatically send the TARDIS to find me. Sort of a ‘return to sender’ setting…

Yes, the Doctor pressed a magic button and he escaped. Incredible. And from now on, whenever he is in any danger in the future, the Doctor can just press the same magic escape button, so we don’t have to have all those annoying adventures ever again. Except if he forgets to press the magic escape button from now on. Then he would have to resort to using his intelligence, guile, ingenuity (and, occasionally, his bloody fists for four and a half billion years) to escape.

Can you imagine if RTD or The Moff had ended a series like that? The Internet would literally explode in a perfect oncoming storm of righteous anger, ham-fisted bun-vending hyperbole and smug self-satisfaction, with the phrase Deus Ex Machina repeated endlessly by people who neither knew nor cared what it meant.

But somehow The Satanic Mill got away with it despite all the pesky kids with their blogs and smartphones. So, my advice to Chris C is to make Doctor Who using a tape recorder. Then you can get away with pretty much anything.

The Doctor: I’m glad you asked how I did it, Roxy, because there’s no way the viewers at home would have known otherwise, there being no foreshadowing of this in the script. You see, three weeks ago in an untelevised adventure, before I rescued you from the Ogron Space Brothel, I made a magic science potion so that if I used the code word ‘tranny’, Missy would turn back into a man with man-parts and the universe would be put back to rights. Hooray for me!

So, there you have it. What do you mean, ‘it’s not really a review’? I told you I’ve been thrown out of The Magic Reviewers Circle, and about time too. So I’ve basically got to find another outlet for my Doctor Who ravings. Do you think Big Finish would let me pitch a script? No, you’re probably right. DWM? Yeah, them too. Well, there’s nothing for it but I’ll have to escape to the universe as a Renegade Reviewer. Do you wanna come with me?

(Now, as promised, it’s time for YOU to contribute.)

You: Just one thing. You mean you’re deliberately choosing to go on the run from your own people, in a rackety old Review Throne?

Me: Why not? After all, that’s how it all started… Now, I may get into danger, so I must remember to make myself a magic escape button. Hooray for me!

[Correction: after this article was published, Kasterborous was alerted to the fact that Russell T Davies did not actually wear brogues during his time as Doctor Who showrunner. We apologise for any distress this error may have caused.]

The post Big Finish’s Doom Coalition Reviewed! appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

Jemma Powell Stars as Barbara Wright in Big Finish’s Early Adventures!

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.

Later this year, the First Doctor and his companions return for a set of four full-cast audio adventures… one of which features a future regular enemy!

Big Finish’s Doctor Who: The Early Adventures comes back this September, with new tales starring Carole Ann Ford as Susan, William Russell as Ian Chesterton, Maureen O’Brien as Vicki, Peter Purves as Steven Taylor, and Jean Marsh as Sara Kingdom. And rather excitingly, Jemma Powell will play Barbara Wright, a role she also undertook in the 2013 anniversary docu-drama, An Adventure in Space and Time! Producer, David Richardson says:

“I’ve always needed a great deal of convincing to recast the Doctor and companions on audio, but after our success with Tim Treloar as the Third Doctor and Elliot Chapman as Ben Jackson, I became more open to recasting Barbara, who was played so wonderfully by Jacqueline Hill. Really there was only one choice – Jemma Powell, who had played Jacqueline (and played Jacqueline playing Barbara) in An Adventure in Space and Time. Her arrival at our studio was enthusiastically embraced by her co-stars, who were so admiring of her performance in Mark Gatiss’s brilliant special.”

The first series of The Early Adventures featured stories involving the First Doctor, while the second series revolved around the Second Doctor. This third series returns its focus to the Time Lord portrayed by William Hartnell, kicking off with The Age of Endurance by Nick Wallace, in which the TARDIS lands aboard the Vangard, a deep space vessel which in turn is boarded by the forces of the military dreadnought Endurance. The crew are fleeing a race known as the Shifts – and the travellers become embroiled in this battle for survival. The guest cast include Gethin Anthony (Game of Thrones, Aquarius), Andy Secombe (Star Wars: The Phantom Menace) and Rachel Atkins (The Archers).

Then, in Philip Lawrence’s The Fifth Traveller, there’s a new addition to the TARDIS team in the form of Jospa, played by James Joyce – who listeners will recognise from UNIT: Extinction. The cast also includes Elliot Cowan (Beowolf: Return to the Shieldlands) and Orlando James, who played Lord Bentham in The Day of the Doctor.

Next comes The Ravelli Conspiracy, an historical story set in Florence in the year 1514, in which the First Doctor encounters Renaissance writer, politician, and diplomat, Niccolo Machiavelli (Mark Frost). Written by playwrights, Robert Khan and Tom Salinsky, the tale also stars Olivia Poulet (The Thick of It), and Robert Hands, who fans will know as Algy from The Empty Child/ The Doctor Dances (2005).

And to round off the series: The Sontarans by Simon Guerrier, starring Dan Starkey as… well, you can probably guess! Richardson further teases:

“It’s established in The Time Warrior in 1974 that the Third Doctor has encountered the Sontarans before. One line of dialogue fired up our imaginations, and Simon’s thrilling script is the result – a full-blooded war story set in deep space.”

We’ll have to wait until December for that – and after that, Series 4 is expected to revert to stories with the Second Doctor!

You can pre-order the entire Early Adventures’ Third Series from the Big Finish website today.

The post Jemma Powell Stars as Barbara Wright in Big Finish’s Early Adventures! appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

What John Barrowman Thinks About Chris Chibnall Showrunning

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.

A lot of fans have been begging for the return of John Barrowman to the role of Captain Jack Harkness – but what does the appointment of Chris Chibnall as showrunner mean for the character? Chibnall did, after all, work extensively on Torchwood…

Barrowman was asked about Chibnall at the Heroes & Villains Fan Fest, and revealed that he’d asked Chris to be a showrunner on a new show John himself has been thinking of doing. He didn’t get a response, and now he knows why!

Chibnall, of course, hasn’t written Captain Jack in Doctor Who, but he did further the character considerably across the first two series of Torchwood, so it wouldn’t be a great surprise if Harkness did make an appearance in upcoming series. Or maybe he’ll think the past best left where it is, and move onwards and upwards?

It’s a bit too early to guess what Steven Moffat’s successor will bring to the show, and as Barrowman notes, he’s dedicated to Arrow right now; nonetheless, it’s fun to consider Jack’s return, especially as he’s not been given anything remotely close to a Proper Send-Off. (No, Journey’s End doesn’t count. It was more of shrugging off companions than a real farewell – apart from poor, poor Donna. And Miracle Day DEFINITELY  doesn’t count.)

The post What John Barrowman Thinks About Chris Chibnall Showrunning appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

Review: Smile on Your Face by Michael Troughton

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.

“People often ask me, ‘what makes a good Doctor?'” Matt Smith once said. “My answer is simply, ‘Patrick Troughton.'”

There’s something very special about the Second Doctor, and that’s down to Patrick Troughton who infuses every sentence with a unique joyous, contemplative quality. If you’ve watched anything from his tenure as the Time Lord, you’ll understand. But Troughton was a lot more than just the Doctor, and I fear that many don’t know much of his wider work – myself included.

Five years ago, his son, Michael Troughton (who you’ll recognise as Professor Albert from Last Christmas) published a brilliant biography of Patrick and helped amend the oversight of many fans. One of the most interesting aspects of the book was the images of his father, littered throughout to add that personal touch.

It’s this idea that Smile on Your Face, Michael’s new book, expands: a ‘photographic journey through time’ charting Patrick’s wonderfully varied career through professional stills and behind-the-scenes photographs from their family archive – accompanied by brief captions to give us greater insight.

Needless to say, it’s a fascinating book.

It’s a landscape hardback, filled with stunning pictures, about half of which are black and white. Presented as a photo album, it could very easily be classed as a ‘coffee table’ book, one of those large presentations intended for readers to flick through casually, but that perhaps does this a disservice.

It’s not something frivolous to while away your time; it deserves your full attention. This is a pictorial study of a compelling life, an incredible actor, and an admirable man.

The hardback is split into seven sections, from Post-War to theatre, Doctor Who to conventions. The first segment details the late 1940s and is the sparsest of the book; nonetheless, these glimpses at his early work on television feel extraordinary. It’s somewhat like a brief look into another world, albeit it a recognisable one where the staples of performance – Shakespeare plays – persist. We start with rehearsals for Edward II before moving to King Lear and Hamlet. Images from R.U.R. and Rose Without a Thorn (both 1948), meanwhile, were taken from Patrick’s mother’s TV set during live transmission!

The sections generally span a decade of work, so particularly interesting productions from the 1950s (“Live Telly!”) include The Scarlet Pimpernel (1956), The Count of Monte Cristo (with a gloriously comical snap of a cross-eyed Patrick), and 1950’s Chance of a Lifetime; while the 1960s (“TV, the Real National Theatre”) includes Jason and the Argonauts (1960), The Old Curiosity Shop (1962), and The Viking Queen (1966), which looks to be the last show he starred in before Doctor Who.

Fans will be pleased to see the publicity shot used in Robot of Sherwood (2014) of Troughton as Robin Hood in the 1952 production of the same name.

Many will undoubtedly turn immediately to the pages concerning Doctor Who, and they don’t disappoint. You’ll see plenty of shots you recognise, but also some you’ve likely never seen before. Particular joy comes from seeing images of those missing stories – notably The Highlanders (1966), 1968’s Fury from the Deep (which is afforded three pages of on-location photography, showing the close-knit bonds between Patrick, Frazer Hines, and Deborah Watling), and The Wheel in Space (1968).

Five pages are dedicated to The Abominable Snowmen (1967), again location filming showing a confident and brilliant TARDIS team enjoying themselves despite the shocking Welsh weather.

I scour the Internet for images to use; I read books and magazines and comics – but still, Smile on Your Face includes photos I’ve never seen before, including two from Blue Peter for which Patrick sifted through children’s monster designs to find a winner.

By 1970, however, his career had regenerated, and so we get colour pictures seeping into The Scars of Dracula, Hawkeye the Pathfinder (1973), and The Omen (1976). When it comes to 1972’s Jason King, I can’t believe how alike Troughton and Peter Wyngarde look! This 1970s-centric section is surprisingly packed; for far too many talented Doctor Who stars, work dries up after leaving the show, but this goes to show how in demand Patrick was.

Everyone knows Patrick’s advice to Doctors: spend three years in the role, or risk being typecast. The 1980s part (“”A New Life”) shows how fond he was of Doctor Who. Only two pages cover The Five Doctors – quite a few shots of him alongside the other Doctors, and a particularly lovely snap of him with Nicholas Courtney, on location in Ffestiniog, Gwynedd – but coverage of The Two Doctors (1985) is pleasingly extensive.

The team clearly had a wonderful time in Spain, and Troughton and Colin Baker obviously got on marvellously. We get some great glimpses into their leisure time alongside images of them at work. There are even rare shots of producer, John Nathan-Turner.

The following section, “Stage: All That Shouting in the Evening”, is a real gem, though. The first shot comes from a school play in 1937, Bees on the Boatdeck before we move onto plays in London, New York, Buckinghamshire, and the Edinburgh Festival. Patrick appears to take centre stage in all of these, whether he’s playing a humours role – Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream – or an altogether more serious one, like an aging Hitler in a 1950 play, Eva Braun.

You get a scale of Patrick’s talent and diversity throughout the book, but it’s the final section (“Conventions: Water Pistols at Dawn”) that most fans will take pleasure from. He was a very private person, but he appeared to have warmed to his public presence. In fact, that’s exactly the feeling you get: warmth.

Patrick never comes across as anything less than a fun, intriguing, thoughtful, and approachable character whose legacy should be greater than simply Doctor Who. Take a look at his , and you’ll discover his credits are far more extensive than even Smile on Your Face showcases.

This should be a must-have item, not just for fans of Doctor Who or of Patrick himself but also for anyone interested in the changing face of performance, theatre, and especially television.

Thank you to Michael Troughton, for giving readers this treasure: it certainly left a smile on my face.

Smile on Your Face is available from Amazon UK now, priced £29.99.

The post Review: Smile on Your Face by Michael Troughton appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

Matt Smith: “I’m Forever Grateful to the World of Doctor Who”

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.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a new film starring Matt Smith.

I miss Matt. Fortunately, he’s not one of those stars to simply fade away after Doctor Who (sadly, that happens all too often). He’s carving a very successful career out for himself, and his latest work is with his partner, Lily Collins, in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

In the farcical take on Jane Austen’s classic novel, Smith plays Parson Collins, a most unsuitable suitor trying to get the attentions of Lily Collins’ Elizabeth Bennett. Pretty much all the reviews say he steals every scene, so there’s no surprise there. And Smith says he really is a fan of the genre:

“I’ve always kind of been into zombie movies. I think 28 Days Later is the seminal zombie work, as it were. Obviously, this is a slightly different tone to that movie. Yeah. Sadly, I didn’t get to fight many zombies in this one.”

When asked if he joined the move as part of a career-building plan or because it just looked fun to do, he responds:

“I haven’t got any great strategy, really. I just try and base it on what is the interesting part and what I think will be the best challenge. With this, I thought there was a challenge in it and I had an idea about the character that I thought could work. So I sort of ran with it, really.”

This film (and book by Seth Grahame-Smith) is obviously a comedic take on the novel, and Matt’s keen to do similar humourous roles:

“I love comedy. Hopefully it’s funny in this movie. I never sort of set out for it to be a comedic role, as it were. I thought it could always be, I guess I suppose in many ways he’s sort of the fop of the piece, isn’t he somehow? He’s sort of the clown. I guess I’m quite interested in the clowns and the aliens and the outsiders. Parson Collins is very much an outsider in that world. He doesn’t know where he fits in, which made him appealing to play.”

He rightly says he’s proud of his time as the Eleventh Doctor (from 2010 to 2013, including the 50th anniversary special, The Day of the Doctor):

“I just think you’ve got to choose things that challenge you in a completely different way, and hopefully the Doctor and Parson feel different. Also, I think going back to theater is quite a good choice to really just get better as an actor.

I mean, I’m playing Prince Philip at the moment, who’s very different to the Doctor as well. So it’s just about choosing work that feels like it’s going to challenge you in a different way. And it has a slightly different form to it, I suppose. But you can’t get too held up in over-considering these things. I think you’ve just got to take what you’re going to want to live in at the end of the day. You know what I mean?”

Finally, he’s asked how it feels to have such an incredibly dedicated fanbase, Whovians who will follow his every move and support his projects, to which he says:

“I mean, the Doctor Who fans, I owe a great debt to. They’re wonderfully loyal, incredibly supportive. I’m just very proud to have been part of that show. It’s a fantastic part. And again, a bit like Parson Collins or even Hamlet or something, it’s a part that has been played before, but allows you to reinvent, if you can be inventive with it. So I’m forever grateful to the world of Doctor Who.”

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is out now at cinemas.

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ReaKtion Round-Up: What You Thought of The Husbands of River Song

David Power 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.

“24 years on Darillium doesn’t sound too bad actually. Doctor Who will probably be back on telly by then.”

Well, we’re finally here, the last Reaktion Round-Up of 2015’s Doctor Who offerings. There was laughter (I hope), there were tears (mostly mine), and I’m not gonna lie, I’m kinda surprised we made it this far. Anyway, it’s Christmas time, sort of, and it’s a time for the annual Who Christmas Special where whole families have gathered round their television sets to watch, mostly because their food comas have left them incapable of rolling away.

What story do you do when you know this’ll be the first Who episode some people see? How about the return of a character whose storyline is confusing even for those who’ve watched since her story started 7  years ago? This means your Christmas evening will be spent surrounded by befuddled family members. So no different to your average Christmas then. Anyway, The Husbands of River Song:

My proposal: The best Christmas special so far 24.62%  (97 votes) 

Festive Fun – a proper cracker! 46.45%  (183 votes) 

Enjoyable but forgettable 16.75%  (66 votes) 

Not sure it’ll handle post-Crimbo analysis 5.58%  (22 votes) 

I’m glad I was off my face 6.6%  (26 votes)

You all seemed to enjoy that quite a bit, as did I! But not initially. Firstly I didn’t know why they were bringing River back; she’s had two farewells already. Then the episode started and I felt it was quite rough around the edges. Those warrior monks were very cheap looking, and their battle cries made me feel like I was watching a bad ’80s Kung Fu movie. And not one that’s so bad it’s good. Murray Gold’s comedy music has returned after a double feature of composed emotion, and this time you can feel the word “wacky” dripping off of it, so much so that it’s actually quite distracting at times. I suddenly felt like I was back in Series 7, where pacing didn’t mean a thing and scenes flew by faster than I could comprehend. But then we got to the restaurant scene and things got infinitely better from there on in. But before that, there was many other things to enjoy.

Firstly, it’s always fun to see the Doctor bouncing of characters from a previous regeneration. And this time’s no different, with Alex Kingston and Peter Capaldi having wonderful chemistry together – they’re a joy to watch. Speaking of actors, it’s about bloody time Greg Davies had a role in the show, and you could tell how much fun he was having as the giant King Hydroflax. The idea of a cyborg’s body independently deciding that the human head was the interchangeable part of the being was a great idea, although I partially wish it was fleshed out in a different story and not a Christmas special.

Also, the Doctor performing his ideal reaction to entering the TARDIS for the first time was one of the best and funniest scenes in the shows history, hands down.

So, to the real meat of the episode. “When you love the Doctor, it’s like loving the stars themselves. You don’t expect a sunset to admire you back.” And suddenly the largest spotlight was shone onto River Song as a character. A new insight into someone who up until now had had a complex story, rather than a complex character. Line after line, we realise how tragic River’s life really is. “The man who gave me this was the sort of man who’d know exactly how long a diary you were going to need.”

And then, the ship starts to crash and we’re at Darillium! This is when it clicked with me why they brought River back. It was proving the Doctor had actually learned something at the end of Hell Bent. He had learned to let go. Out goes the clunky comedy, and in comes a surprising amount of sincere sentiment. It seems that Moffat’s tidying up before he hangs up his pen, with Clara’s ending, and now with him concluding River’s story in a nice bow. Don’t believe me? Check it out for yourself:

Ratings were still on the up and up this time. The overnights rose from 4.8m for Hell Bent to 5.77m for The Husbands of River Song. Overalls rose from 6.17 to 7.69m, which was the best by Series 9 standards, but it was the worst by Christmas special standards, being rated the lowest out of all the Christmas specials – even lower than The Feast of Steven. Fortunately, the Appreciation Index score stayed the same at 82 for both Hell Bent and Husbands.

So what did our jolly K-readers think of this years festive escapade?

 

And just like that it’s over! It all just disappears, doesn’t it? Gone in a moment, like breath on a mirror. But at least we’re all caught up on Who before this year’s series of- – What? Oh. Uhhh. Reaktion Round-Up Klass anyone?

The post ReaKtion Round-Up: What You Thought of The Husbands of River Song appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

Kasterborous Contributes to the Latest Celestial Toyroom (Ish)

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.

Older readers may remember an aged gentleman from the North in charge of Kasterborous. This gambler, alcoholic, and founder of the site, Christian Cawley, moved on last year, but continued the PodKast with a K alongside former-associate editor, Brian Terranova, and our Big Finish reviewer, James McLean.

But Christian and James aren’t slacking, oh no! They’ve contributed to the latest issue of Celestial Toyroom, the monthly fanzine from the Doctor Who Appreciation Society.

Celestial Toyroom #453/4, edited by Alan Stevens, is fronted by a Frax-smoking Mandril, draped in a decidedly-cool scarf. Christian’s responsible for The Doctor Who Conspiracy, which examines when conspiracy theories crop up in Doctor Who, like Reptilians, an idea made popular by writer, David Icke, who reckons shape-shifting reptile-like shape-shifters secretly control the behind-the-scenes of Earth; their presence on the show can be felt with the Silurians, Draconians, and even the Zygons if we consider the aliens’ recent Series 9 serial.

Meanwhile, James’ Doctorin’ the Timelines argues that Ian Chesterton is responsible for the Time War by introducing morality to the Doctor! The First Doctor did go through quite a transformation from the grumpy guy who was perfectly happy to thrust a rock into a caveman’s head in order to get back to the TARDIS, to a grumpy guy who stood up to untold evils like the Daleks, WOTAN, and The Ballad of the Last Chance Saloon.

Celestial Toyroom #453/4 also includes:

I Know Your Business, But I Don’t Know Your Name!
The 51st Story to Watch before You Die
Sci Fi Lullabies
Cool Things – Castrovalva
Do K9s Dream of Electronic Bones?
Jon the Second
Bows and Arrows Against the Lightning
Universally Challenged
Colour Cover

Head over to DWAS, which celebrates its 40th anniversary this year, to find out how to grab your copy and become a member.

The post Kasterborous Contributes to the Latest Celestial Toyroom (Ish) appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

Ian McNeice To Appear At Eastbourne Wyntercon

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.

Winston Churchill himself Ian McNeice has been confirmed for the third annual Wyntercon convention at Eastbourne later this year.

Other than his recurring role as the Doctor’s close and powerful friend with a line in staunch defiance and cigars, McNeice has appeared in more than 90 films and TV shows during his career including Bridget Jones’ Diary and Second World War drama Valkyrie.

His television appearances include all seven series of Doc Martin, in which he plays Bert Large, and as the newsreader in the historic epic, Rome.

He joins a growing list of confirmed guests including fellow Doctor Who cast Sophie Aldred, Julian Seager and Simon Fisher-Baker.

The convention returns to Eastbourne Winter Garden on October 1 and 2.

Early tickets are available at www.wyntercon.com

You can pick up the first volume of Doctor Who: The Churchill Years via Big Finish now for £20 via CD and download.

The post Ian McNeice To Appear At Eastbourne Wyntercon appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.