Christian Cawley's Blog, page 144

Listen to Episode 1 of Gallifrey: Intervention Earth – for Free!

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.

Fans of Big Finish’s ever-popular Gallifrey series can listen to the first part of an upcoming boxset right now – and completely free!

Gallifrey: Intervention Earth is the seventh ‘series’ of an ongoing story that began all the way back in 2004! And as a special treat for Whovians, Big Finish’s latest podcast features the first episode of next month’s boxset, as well as a behind-the-scenes chat with its director, Scott Handcock, and its cast.

This features a new Romana, as played by Juliet Landau (who appeared in the previous set), alongside Sophie Aldred as Ace, and Stephen Thorne as Omega! Here’s what to expect:

“Times change…

Romana is approaching her final term of office, and hopes to leave her world in a state of peace and harmony. Narvin is concerned about the implementation of a controversial Precog programme, one that seeks to predict the Time Lords’ future. Ace is an operative for the Celestial Intervention Agency, having learned the art of interference from one of the best…  

And somewhere, across the stars, an ancient force is stirring: one of the Time Lords’ greatest heroes is returning to our universe. But he may also prove to be their greatest threat.

When the history of Earth is threatened, and an ancient conspiracy reaches the heart of Time Lord government, can even Romana’s closest allies truly be trusted?

Time will tell… but by then, it may already be too late.”

Yesterday, we announced another set in the Gallifrey series, Enemy Lines, is to be released next year; it’s great to see that Big Finish are continuing this loved title.

Listen to the full podcast over at Big Finish, then come back and tell us what you think! And don’t forget to pre-order the CD at a discount price of £14.99 (or £12.99 as a download) now.

The post Listen to Episode 1 of Gallifrey: Intervention Earth – for Free! appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

David Tennant Given Special Recognition Award at NTA 2015 [VIDEO]

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.

In a surprising turn of events, this evening’s National Television Awards saw former Doctor Who star David Tennant win the Special Recognition award.

Perhaps a bit young, you might think, the truth is that David is obviously a very popular chap, and in a video clips package that featured Catherine Tate, Billie Piper, Russell T Davies, Richard Wilson and Tennant’s father, it was quite obvious just how much he is loved by those that know him. Presented the award by his friends The Proclaimers, Tennant then talked and thanked various people, accepting his award most graciously.

As you can see in the video above, Tennant was genuinely shocked by the award.

Meanwhile at the event, former Eighth Doctor companion Sheridan Smith arrived late after being stuck in traffic on the way to the wards ceremony, where she had already won the Drama Performance for her superb portrayal of a young Cilla Black in Cilla.

Finally, the Drama award was incredibly won by Downton Abbey, which managed to overcome not only Doctor Who and Sherlock, but also this year’s favourite, Cilla.

The post David Tennant Given Special Recognition Award at NTA 2015 [VIDEO] appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

Doctor Who: The Tenth Doctor #7 Coming Soon

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.

Covers and interior art from next month’s Tenth Doctor adventure from Titan Comics, as the David Tennant continues his adventure with Gabby in No Man’s Land during The Great War… surrounded by Weeping Angels!

Written by Robbie Morrison and with art by Daniel Indro, this is set to be an adventure to remember…

Trapped in a field hospital in No Man’s Land, the Doctor and Gabby are surrounded on all sides by a force of starving Weeping Angels. Their only allies – a handful of experienced soldiers, the friendly-but-exhausted Corporal Jamie Hamilton, and beds full of the walking wounded.

As the siege stretches on and watchful eyes grow weary – who will be the first to blink?!

Check out these pages to get you in the mood.

With two covers to collect (a photo version and art alternative by Verity Glass)!

Doctor Who: The Tenth Doctor #7 is 32 pages long, costs $3.99 and is released on Wedneday, February 4th 2015.

The post Doctor Who: The Tenth Doctor #7 Coming Soon appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

Women in NuWho: Stereotypes, Archetypes, Femmes Fatales and Steven Moffat

James Lomond 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.

Someone’s dropped the S-Bomb on the Moff.

Again. In fact it’s the third accusation of sexism from this particular chap… Heavy-duty blogger, Alex Gabriel, has given a rather damning appraisal of women in Moffat’s writing – and not just in Doctor Who. This will be familiar ground for most Kasterborites.

Showrunner and BAFTA award winning writer, Steven Moffat has been charged with portraying women in an inherently sexist, or even misogynist, manner before. Previous attacks have pointed out how many of his female characters seem to deliver one witty one-liner after another following a sassy-feisty-sexy format. In short they’re not real women.

Gabriel delivers a broad survey of different Moffat templates for “women” linking back to two previous articles where he outlined his complaint in more detail. His visually-enhanced summary notes there are such marked similarities between Missy, the latest incarnation of the Master, and previous central female characters in Moffat’s writing, in Who and beyond, that they are essentially the same character.

Or rather they’re not characters at all – instead he sees them as tropes. Missy, River Snog [no typo], Tasha Lem, Sherlock’s Irene Adler among others and characters in 2007’s Jekyll are all versions of the same…

“…feisty, morally ambiguous adventuress and femme fatale with a murky past who flirts with everything and controls men through sexuality, boasting a hands-on relationship with the Doctor.”

River flirts like a trooper and borrowed toxic lip-stick from Poison Ivy (comic book femme fatal par excellence), Missy force-snogs, Tasha Lem effectively invites the Doctor to her bed and Amy causes temporal disasters by wearing the wrong skirt over a glass floor. And by George he’s spot-on when it comes to Irene Adler! [Gulp]

He also refers to other characters that amount to repeats of the other basic moulds. Osgood and Sherlock’s Molly Hooper are intelligent women underminded by their idolisation of the leading man. Madam Korvarian, Miss Kizlet and Sherlock’s Miss Wencelsas are power-dressing executive ball-breakers. In an earlier article he states,

“it’s not that writing women requires some special or distinct approach. Moffat’s women, with the odd exception, are just tropes rather than characters, and often repetitions of the same tropes.”

So the charge it that he IS using a distinct approach to writing women. The accusation is that he is consistently writing them as tropes or pre-packed characters – vampish, saucy and manipulative mysteries in lippy and heels. The corollary is that he’s failing to represent them as real characters with actual personalities. Gabriel does also imply, though doesn’t state outright, that there is something pervasively negative about Moffat’s take on the female sex.

Insidious Sexism?

Gabriel refers to a “casual sexism” in much of Moffat’s writing – like the Doctor’s comment on River Snog in Let’s Kill Hitler, “it all makes sense to her. She’s been brainwashed. Plus she’s a woman.” There are other examples we can call on – In The Bells of St John, when asked by a loitering monk whether an evil spirit is on the other end of the TARDIS phone in the 13th Century, the Doctor explains, “it’s a woman.” This prompts a protective sign of the cross from the monk. Similarly in The Wedding of River Song, when Churchill asks what has happened to all of time the Doctor ominously replies – “a woman…”

I think it’s fair to say we are –in part– supposed to be laughing at the Doctor’s or the monk’s trepidation towards the female sex. And I definitely did laugh at the monk’s shock. I thought it was a lovely character moment – fear or alarm at a woman is more understandable and palatable in a 13th Century monk. It was almost mocking historical institutionalised attitudes towards women. Almost. I feel less comfortable with the Doctor – a role model – viewing women as mysterious, troublesome or difficult to understand. They’re not a species – they’re *people*.

I don’t think I’m misreading the dialogue and performances in these moments when I get the impression that we’re also supposed to side with the Doctor/ Monk to an extent. And this wouldn’t be an absurdity on the part of Moffat’s men as the central female characters he writes are deliberately alarming – in Song’s own words she’s a “psychopath” with a gun and Clara’s volcano-trip in Dark Water was truly chilling.

Those Legs Eleven

Now I think it’s very easy to level a claim of sexism at Moffat and I’m not entirely convinced on all sides. But there is something up. As a wise man pointed out over the interweb the other day, there’s no denying a significant change in the wardrobe of the companions as soon as Moffat took over as showrunner from Davies. Take a look at this line up…

What happened to trousers? And there’s no getting around the fact that after Moff’s first contribution to regular female characters (after the gun-wielding archeologist in Louboutin’s) is the only Doctor Who character to come out as an action figure in a kissogram costume. In fact I’m still not sure how he managed to sneak that one into a child-friendly show about time travel…

The Male Gaze

So, dear reader, the question is whether women are written as borderline or frankly sexist cyphers instead of real people in Moff’s Who. A helpful concept in thinking about Gabriel’s criticism is the “male gaze”. This is the idea that when our cultural products reference women e.g. a film, television or book, they tend to do so from the point of view of an heterosexual man. And let’s make no mistake, Moffat has made it clear as far as character goes, the Eleventh Doctor, far from the lofty aspirations of “Space Gandalf”, is an heterosexual man. The Classic era Doctor’s disinterest in sex was transformed into a fear or anxiety over his own very human sexuality – at the end of Nightmare in Silver the Doctor has a moment of fantasizing about Clara before appearing to mentally tell himself off. There are no two ways about it – this is a character designed for straight men to relate to. I’ve argued before that while sex in Doctor Who is well and good, it should be kept away from the Doctor. You never saw Gandalf rubbing his knees at Galadriel for a reason.

The idea of the “male gaze” cropped up in feminist academic, Laura Mulvey’s 1975 essay on “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” In this she discusses a psychoanalytic approach to how women are used in cinema – both visually and narratively. While I’m not proposing a full-scale Freudian deconstruction of gender in Who (but do let rip in the comments below) it helps to set out one basic concern about how misogyny can appear in television and story-telling.

A “male gaze” implies a narrative might be told from a masculine perspective typical of the patriarchy that produced it. In a culture where women are explicitly or implicitly devalued, e.g. as sex objects or obstacles, they will be presented in that manner. Somehow the story tells things from a male point of view. The Doctor doesn’t congratulate Amy with a “good on you mate” despite being his best friend – he congratulates the man who’s got the girl. Mulvey’s essay quotes American film director Budd Boetticher on how this is supposed to work,

“What counts is what the heroine provokes, or rather what she represents. She is the one, or rather the love or fear she inspires in the hero, or else the concern he feels for her, who makes him act the way he does. In herself the woman has not the slightest importance.”

And that’s coming from a director of American Westerns who had spent time as a boxer, American Football player and BULLFIGHTER!

So while I’m cautious about full-on accusations of misogyny (it’s clear that Amy does have importance in the narrative) it does look as though Moffat writes with something of a male gaze. And of course he is an heterosexual man – to an extent this might be expected. But he’s also part of a profession that must take responsibility for the portrayal of stereotypes (negative or otherwise) in media designed for mass consumption.

I’m mindful of not making over-the-top claims or wilfully misreading what is put on screen. But sexism can operate on very subtle levels – the whole point of the male gaze argument is that it becomes the norm for how people see the world. Whether you’re a man or a woman, you are surrounded by sexualised images of women in advertising and long traditions of story-telling where men act and women are acted on or for. Very few fairy tales involve a heroine rescuing a bloke in distress, and the Doctor could have said “good on you mate” to Amy – she’s his mate and she’s just bagged a guy who waited 2000 years for her. But he doesn’t. In Moff’s Who, the Doctor behaves and sees the world as an heterosexual male.

Handbags and Fisticuffs

So what? Why is this potentially a bad thing at all? My feeling is that Gabriel might be on to something in his summary of several female templates in Moff’s writing and this is all part of the same approach to gender in story-telling. It does seem as though in the world of the Eleventh Doctor, where two principle characters are of opposite sex, this will lead to, or is simply code for a power-struggle.

Of course there are always power dynamics between any two characters appearing in a narrative, but repeatedly there seems to be a law that that a man and a woman in a room together will start flirting, competing and vying for power. With the Doctor and River Snog this almost becomes a fight to see who can be the greatest self-sacrifice (the man wins, of course).

The potential problem here, as I see it, is not even necessarily that the Moff might use gender as a battleground – it’s the way in which so many of his women use their sex as a means of combat. There’s frequently a tension between blokes and birds in this era of Doctor Who and you get the sense we’re supposed to be siding with the man. Women are somehow dangerous – look what they can do to all of time! This would be fine if the women weren’t simply repeating tropes – shallow impressions of women from the male perspective.

But is this really true about Moffat’s writing? One way to assess Gabriel’s claim would be to see if we can produce a similar list of male tropes and repeating collections of character traits. It’s certainly interesting that both Sherlock and the Doctor are ultimately isolated super-intelligent men who have difficulty maintaining non-hazardous relationships with women and their male side-kicks (Watson and Rory) both get mistaken for being gay.

But after a brief survey of Moffat’s episodes (far from comprehensive – please set me straight if I’ve missed things) I can actually find very few principle male characters at all save for a handful army General types and briefly glimpsed panto villains. None of these get as much screen attention (nor interaction with the Doctor) compared to River, Tasha, Miss Kizlet, Madame Korvarian etc.

In fact Moffat writes oodles of women’s parts again and again. And it surely should be acknowledged that this in itself is quite the opposite of one kind of misogyny prevalent in television for decades. That’s not to say that the parts themselves are unproblematic, but in an industry where female actors are underrepresented and valued less than their male colleagues, this is most definitely a good thing.

To briefly, briefly touch on the issue of “strong” female characters: it’s frequently implied that sexist story-telling represents women as weak and passive in contrast to more dynamic and active men (who the audience are intended to empathise with). But just because a character is active, socially powerful and clever, doesn’t mean sexism can’t still be there. The concern here, as Gabriel’s article indicates, is that making women strong by writing them as using their sexuality to gain power over men doesn’t really achieve gender equality.

BLINK AND YOU’LL MISS IT

But something I had been forgetting and was pointed out to me by the same wise man with the action figures, was the female protagonist in Moffat’s earlier episodes. Nancy in The Empty Child is a quiet heroine with a complicated internal struggle. She’s gutsy and argues with men but she doesn’t flirt or use her sexuality to do it. Sally Sparrow in Blink is similarly one of the most reasonable and sensible characters on screen while the men are almost caricatures. And while the Doctor is ultimately the saving factor in both episodes, both stories also rely on the choices and courage of a central female character without her becoming totally besotted with the Doctor.

This contrasts with Gabriel’s complaint that River, Amy, Clara and even Reinette in the Girl in the Fireplace are women who became infatuated with the Doctor as little girls and end up “part companion, part love interest to the detriment of her own life.”

So it looks like there are some clear examples of Moffat writing excellent leading ladies – but there has been a bit of a vampish run for a few years. It should also be pointed out that when a writer produces as much material as Moffat has, it’s hardly surprising that themes and character traits will be repeated.

I’ll leave you with these final thoughts. Series 8 has given us a new Moffat leading man – and Capaldi’s wonderful Doctor seems to subvert some aspects (if not all) of the male gaze. This Doctor can’t tell whether Clara is attractive or not, doesn’t care and certainly won’t need to tell himself off for having impure thoughts about her tight skirts. And, barring some over-enthusiastic slapping (which our own James McLean has called “irrational female anger”) the impossible plot device has had some much needed character development. Have we turned a corner with our new TARDIS team? Have we reached Space Gandalf?

So what do you think, dear readers – is Gabriel’s complaint justified? Does Moffat write with a male gaze? Are his women mere tropes and negative ones at that? Or is this a skewed view and Moff’s Who has given us far more rich and engaging female characters that a lot of shows out there? Let battle commence…

The post Women in NuWho: Stereotypes, Archetypes, Femmes Fatales and Steven Moffat appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

Big Finish Announces Gallifrey: Enemy Lines!

James Lomond 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.

Big Finish has announced that there will be an 8th instalment in their highly regarded Gallifrey range, titled Enemy Lines. This will follow the already announced seventh series Gallifrey: Intervention Earth, which is released next month.

The series to date has followed the adventures of Time Lady and one-time companion to the Doctor, Romana in several incarnations alongside future-savage Leela who left the Doctor to remain on Gallifrey with the original K9. The new stories will also follow the later development of the Seventh Doctor’s companion, Ace, starting in the Seventh series released next month. This ties in with developments in both the UNIT: Dominion and Bernice Summerfield ranges that completed the character arc planned by Script Editor, Andrew Cartmel before the premature end of the Classic series with Ace training to become a Timelady on Gallifrey.

Producer Scott Handcock revealed the episodes will form “a self-contained standalone thriller, pushing our characters into new and unexpected directons along the way.”

The Series had tied up various plot lines during the Sixth installment and the cast are evidently glad to be back. Lalla Ward, returning as Romana said, “I’m delighted that you are doing a return to Gallifrey and that Louise and I will have a chance to work together again on what was such a happy experience first time around, with a company as lovely as Big Finish.”

Louise Jameson, reprising her role as Leela commented, “Having kissed goodbye to Gallifrey and thinking it was all over (with a small lump in the throat), I feel a bit like I’ve been given a trip in the TARDIS and am welcoming working with the team again with open arms.”

Gallifrey: Enemy Lines will be released as six 30 minute episodes across 3 CDs and available as a download in February 2016. It’s available for pre-order at a reduced price of £14.99 on CD and £12.99 as a download. Enjoy!

The post Big Finish Announces Gallifrey: Enemy Lines! appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

The PodKast: RTD’s Doctor Who Movie & Moments That Made Us Laugh

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.

Russell T Davies would write a Doctor Who movie, we learnt this week – but should we let him? Christian Cawley, James McLean and Brian A Terranova are on hand to offer their thoughts on this and several other topics concerning the adventures of the Time Lord we know as the Doctor.

Also, look out for an update on Contradiction, the new interactive movie game starring recent podKast guests Rupert Booth and John Guilor, as well as Blake’s 7 star Paul Darrow, which is out now.

Kasterborous PodKast Series 4 Episode 50 Shownotes

Contradiction game, and the Contradiction CultCast with John Guilor and Tim Follin
Cult Britannia moves to Kasterborous
Russell T Davies’ Doctor Who movie plan, the mad Michael Jackson casting rumour remembered
Pardon the pun
Funny moments in Doctor Who
Moments that weren’t quite right
Netflix keeping Doctor Who
Recommendations: Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows , Primeval: Series 2, The Fall Series 2, The Musketeers Series 2
The X-Files reboot rumour

PodKast introduction by John Guilor. Theme tune by Russell Hugo.

Listen to the PodKast

There are several ways to listen. In addition to the usual player above, we’re pleased to announce that you can also stream the podKast using Stitcher, an award-winning, free mobile app available for Android and iPhone/iPad. This pretty much means that you can listen to us anywhere without downloading – pretty neat, we think you’ll agree! (Note that it can take a few hours after a new podKast is published to “catch up”.)

What’s more, you can now listen and subscribe to the podKast via our Audioboo channel! Head to http://audioboo.fm/channel/doctorwhopodkast and click play to start listening. You can also comment and record your own boos in response to our discussions! Meanwhile you can use the player below to listen through Audioboo:

You haven’t clicked play yet?! What are you waiting for? As well as our new Stitcher and Audioboo presence you can also use one of these amazingly convenient ways to download and enjoy this week’s podKast.

Use the player in the top right of the Kasterborous home page, or visit the podKast menu link.
Listen with the “pop out” player above, which also allows you to download the podKast to your computer.
You can also take advantage of the RSS feed to subscribe to the podKast for your media player, and even find us on iTunes, where your reviews will help the show considerably.

 

The post The PodKast: RTD’s Doctor Who Movie & Moments That Made Us Laugh appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

Don’t Forget To Vote Doctor Who in the 2015 NTAs!

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.

It’s almost time. As we reported previously, the final round voting has opened for this year’s National Television Awards where Doctor Who has been nominated for Best Drama.

As the NTAs are decided by members of the public, Doctor Who needs your support to win, so we urge you to vote now!

You may recall that Doctor Who won the award for Best Drama in 2014 and once again faces stiff competition, most notably this time from Cilla (which starred Sheridan Smith) although Sherlock could also be in with a shout. Votes can be cast until noon on Wednesday, 21 January, 2015, which doesn’t give us a lot of time as the results will be revealed at a ceremony at the 02 London that evening, with the event broadcast live on ITV from 7.30pm.

Head to the National Television Awards website to cast your votes NOW!

The post Don’t Forget To Vote Doctor Who in the 2015 NTAs! appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

Don’t Miss Doctor Who: Legacy’s Fan Area Appreciation Week!

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.

Awesome Doctor Who mobile jewel-crunching RPG Doctor Who: Legacy has declared this a Fan Area Appreciation Week.

Beginning Wednesday night, players who unlock the Fan Area will find a week long 150% experience bonus and 150% time fragment drop rate, along with 3 new levels based on the brilliant Titan Comics books which will reward them – when completed – with a costume for each of the three most recent Doctors and a new ally, ARC, from the Eleventh’s comic book series!

Confession time: I’ve recently been playing a different game (one with transforming robots and angry birds) but I might just switch back to Doctor Who: Legacy for this. After all, it is a very different game to most other free titles. As the developers explain: “We don’t coerce our players to spend money with energy meters, pay walls, and tricks. We simply make a game that celebrates our love of Doctor Who and enables over 1.5 million Doctor Who fans to do the same. We also have tried to trail-blaze by adding new content continually — aiming for weekly — and we’re now up over 60 hours of gameplay, we have every Doctor from the series and over 100 allies from both classic and modern Doctor Who!”

They continue: “We do this because a core group of our players get the value here — that we’ll never force them to spend money but if they do help us out by buying a handful of time crystals, we can keep this game going and growing for years. And we thank them for doing it by having a special area packed with exclusive ally and costume rewards and bonuses.”

So, make sure you’re spending time on Doctor Who: Legacy this week to enjoy access to the Fan Area! If you want to find out more about Doctor Who: Legacy, either install it from your preferred app store, or download a copy of Kasterborous Magazine #2, our video game special which is now FREE, and features an interview with lead developers Susan and Lee Cummings.

The post Don’t Miss Doctor Who: Legacy’s Fan Area Appreciation Week! appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

Doctor Who Series 1-8: The Story So Far…

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.

Just say you’ve got this friend, and they kind of want to start watching Doctor Who, but are intimidated by the 50+ years thing. You’ve got them to at least thing about starting with the past 10 years, but even then, it’s all a bit “Hmm, not sure about this…”

Well, YouTube – specifically user TheFallofTheEleventh – has come to your rescue with this amazing video, running to an amazingly compact 5 minutes and 15 seconds, which neatly summarises Series 1 through 8. It highlights Doctors (Ninth through to Twelfth, as well as the War Doctor), companions, villains and themes throughout the run, but admittedly it does ignore story arcs.

This is a must-have link for anyone who wants to draw their friends into the show, but doesn’t know how. Simply, it is a Doctor Who fan conversion kit in a handy 5 minute session.

Start sharing, and welcome the new Whovians!

The post Doctor Who Series 1-8: The Story So Far… appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

The Seventh Doctor & Ace At Herne Bay’s Sci-Fi by the Sea!

James Lomond 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.

Sunday, June 21st 2015, the BayPromoTeam – a group of vounteers from the Herne Bay community – are bringing you Sci-Fi by the Sea 3 (the “SeaQuel”!) This looks to be a great family event on the North coast of Kent boasting an array of props, events and celebrities including Seventh Doctor, Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred who played his erstwhile companion, Ace in the late 1980s.

You can also expect to see props from Doctor Who alongside the Batmobile, a range of superheroes, Disney characters and Titan the Robot – a novel (and slightly terrifying) way of delivering sample-based stand up… Check out their Facebook page for photos of previous events. Plenty of Sci-Fi characters to be seen!

Tickets are available either from local retailers or at the event website for Children £5, Adults £7 or a Family of Four group ticket at £20. Oysters are available in nearby Whitstable (in fact I’ll wager you can get them in Herne Bay itself) and Canterbury is

Head to baypromoteam.co.uk/sci-fi-by-the-sea for more details.

The post The Seventh Doctor & Ace At Herne Bay’s Sci-Fi by the Sea! appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.