Christian Cawley's Blog, page 164

John Guilor Celebrates 51 years of Doctor Who With Morfo!

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.

Regular readers will know that we’re not keen on the pointless celebrations. A 37th birthday really isn’t relevant and certainly not as big a landmark as, say a 50th anniversary.

However, it might be argued that 51 is still one year more impressive than 50, despite the lack of similar landmark celebration. With this in mind, we’d like to share with you a fun monologue from the First Doctor, provided by friend of Kasterborous John Guilor. Click play above to view it.

John, as you may well know, provided the voice of the First Doctor in the famous “all of the Doctors!” scene in The Day of the Doctor, the amazing 50th anniversary special that aired on this day in 2013.

Yes, it was a year ago since I posted this:

The Day of the Doctor cinéma queue in Middlesbrough pic.twitter.com/IGp6WuM5If

— K Doctor Who News (@kasterborousdw) November 23, 2013

While we’re on the subject of Kasterborous celebrations, here’s a little tribute to The Day of the Doctor, from our own Brian A Terranova:

Happy 51st #DoctorWho ! Here's a little tribute to the 1 year anniversary of the 50th from @kasterborousdw pic.twitter.com/rdiwQRWACl

— Brian A. Terranova (@Terrasolo) November 23, 2014

So, there’s the digression finished. Now back to John Guilor.

Because he’s such a big Doctor Who fan, that clip of the First Doctor above isn’t all John’s done today. Indeed, the actor has put us all to shame,finding the time to go through several incarnations…

Jon Pertwee


Jon Pertwee apologises


Tom Baker


Peter Davison


Colin Baker

John made these amusing shorts with Morfo, an app for iPhone and iPad and Windows Phone although curiously not availabe for Android.

We think they’re great, and it’s fascinating to see what people are up to today to celebrate 51 years of Doctor Who. How are you celebrating?

The post John Guilor Celebrates 51 years of Doctor Who With Morfo! appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

Is Jenna Coleman Leaving Doctor Who Or Not?

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.

Doctor Who fans have been accepting of the fact that Jenna Coleman may be leaving the show soon. Following Clara and the Doctor’s goodbye in Death in Heaven, it seemed that we would no longer see her riding in the TARDIS (unless we’d already heard that Jenna was cast in the Christmas special).

However following the recent clip for the 2014 Christmas special, it seems that the Doctor and Clara will be reunited, at least for a short time. But what if she was to be holding on a bit longer?

What if Clara wasn’t leaving the TARDIS?

A recent interview with Digital Spy features Jenna explaining something about the experience of travelling with the Doctor, which she describes as “Totally addictive! And I think she’s addicted to him and the life and the TARDIS and I don’t think there’s really a way back for her now that she’s had a taste of this life and him. I don’t really think she could go back to just having a normal life again.”

Now, this could mean that Jenna is leaving following as part of the Christmas special… or that she might be leaving in Series 9.

We’d recommend you check the link out in full, actually, as there is plenty more to discuss, not least the retconning of the Doctor’s life in The Name of the Doctor… “…one of my favourite things about her is her sense of loyalty to the Doctor – she’s really the person who’s been with him right from the beginning, from Hartnell and all the way through, I think that’s pretty amazing, getting to work with Matt and Peter and a bit with David [Tennant], so that for me is a wonderful side to her.”

It’s strange that one of the best actresses to play a Doctor Who companion should be saddled with being a source of much resentment among certain groups of fans (with respect to the plot device nature of the Impossible Girl and the way in which Clara has been introduced as an element woven throughout the Doctor’s life) but it would seem likely that she will leave sooner rather than later.

What do you think? Would you like to see Jenna return for Series 9.

The post Is Jenna Coleman Leaving Doctor Who Or Not? appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

Doctor Who Pop-Up Shop Is Back In Melbourne!

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.

Australian fans rejoice! Just in time for Christmas, the Doctor Who pop-up shop has rematerialised in Melbourne!

From November 20th through to January 4th, the pop-up shop, which follows the overwhelming popularity of previous stores in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane, can be found at Shop E09/10, Galleria, 343 Little Collins Street, Melbourne.

The shop stocks a host of Doctor Who products, including a brand new TARDIS print fashion range, exclusive to Australia and New Zealand, which includes a skirt, shirt and skater dress.

Also available is a range of Christmas gifts for Doctor Who fans, including K-9 & Cyberman or Dalek & Sontaran cookie cutters, as well as all things TARDIS, with products such as TARDIS toothbrush holders, teapots, creamers and sugar bowls.

Fans can have a Whovian Christmas with the miniature Doctor Who Christmas tree, TARDIS stocking and Weeping Angel Christmas tree topper.

In addition to Doctor Who merchandise, the pop-up shop will have a ‘Sherlock Corner’, with a range of Sherlock goods including ‘Consulting Detective’ and ‘High Functioning Sociopath’ mugs, and ‘I’m not a Psychopath…’ t-shirts.

Fans also have the chance to step inside the famous blue box with the TARDIS photo booth, where they can have their photo taken on a choice of three backgrounds to share with friends via social media.

Meanwhile, if you can’t get to a popup shop, there’s always the Internet. Thanks to BBC Worldwide you can celebrate Christmas with the Doctor and treat yourself or a loved one to a Doctor Who gift. From games, clothing and homeware to concert tickets, DVD’s and toys, there’s something for every Doctor Who fan.

The brand new range of TARDIS print clothing, exclusive to Australia and New Zealand, is perfect for the fashion-conscious Whovian and includes a skater dress, skirt and shirt. Accessorise your outfit with a TARDIS pendant necklace or charm bracelet from the jewellery range.

For the home, fans can freeze themselves some tiny TARDISes and Daleks with the Doctor Who ice cube Tray, or serve their morning coffee from the Doctor Who espresso box crockery set, complete with matching saucers.You can even step inside the TARDIS, if just for a few minutes, with a TARDIS shower curtain, or brush your teeth with the Sonic Screwdriver electric toothbrush.

There’s a host of toys and games to keep aspiring Time Lords busy at Christmas, including the Tumbling TARDIS Tower and the Doctor Who version of Risk: The Dalek Invasion of Earth, which sees Dalek armies descend from the skies, seeking to destroy one another and conquer the world.

Just in time for Christmas is Doctor Who: The Complete Eighth Series on DVD and Blu Ray, which finds Peter Capaldi at the controls of the TARDIS as the Twelfth Doctor in a brand new set of amazing adventures. Fans can also get their hands on a limited edition featuring special TARDIS packaging, complete with soundchip.

There are many other products available, including mugs, stationary, figurines, and of course, the ultimate Doctor Who gift – the Sonic Screwdriver.

Products are available from the BBC shop online at: www.bbcshop.com.au.

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Some Listening You Might Have Missed: Hunters of Earth

Meredith Burdett 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.

Doctor Who isn’t on TV tonight. Nor next Saturday. While you might opt for the Horror Channel in the UK, their own screenings of classic Doctor Who are about to come to an end. The result, dear reader, is to embrace some other form of time travelling adventure with the Doctor, such as audiobooks – specifically, the rather wonderful 50th anniversary series opener from Big Finish and AudioGo, Hunters of Earth…

“It’s coming Grandfather… It’s in your future – your destiny – and you can’t escape it.”

So utters Susan Foreman to the First Doctor at the end of this story, setting up what will surely be one of the most epic Doctor Who stories that Big Finish and AudioGo have ever concocted for the Doctor and the TARDIS.

Destiny of the Doctor will, for the next eleven months, offer us one story per month for each Doctor that we know and love. Starting with the First Doctor in Hunters of Earth and culminating in November 2013 with a story for the Eleventh Doctor. How are these stories intertwined? We have to find out one by one!

Hunters of Earth finds the First Doctor and Susan on Earth in Shoreditch 1963, a short time before they flew off in the TARDIS with Ian and Barbara to meet Daleks, Sensorites or Voord. But if you thought that the Doctor was keeping himself out of trouble before the events of An Unearthly Child, then you were dead wrong. Because the people around Coal Hill are acting very strangely indeed, turning quickly from placid, well-meaning individuals into vicious, small minded thugs. And they seem to aiming their vitriol at Susan and the Doctor. What is instigating this horrific change in people? And how exactly is the mysterious School Master at Coal Hill School, Mr Rook, involved?

Form the very start, Hunters of Earth is a pitch perfect recreation of the First Doctor’s era. The sound design, the character backgrounds are all wonderful homages to Doctor Who’s beginnings. Carole Ann Ford acts her socks off in this tale and Tam Williams as her new friend Cedric helps to show not only Susan’s vulnerable side but also her alien one as well.

Nigel Robinson, the story’s author, is no first timer to writing for the First Doctor having written several Target novelizations from televised adventures and also editing the range back in its heyday. Here he manages to take us all the way back to the beginning without missing a step. It also helps that he’s kept the Doctor mysterious in this adventure. No references to Gallifrey or Time Lords, no speaking about two hearts or Susan’s origins. Rather than pandering to a fan audience, he has written a story for anyone who wants to get involved with fiftieth anniversary fever.

One of the best points however in Hunters of Earth, is a very small but very important evolution for Big Finish and perhaps AudioGo as well. You’ll have to find it yourself and listen carefully but there’s a small moment when the Doctor goes shopping and, with one name mentioned, old Doctor Who finally meets new Doctor Who. It’s something that Big Finish has never wanted or needed to do but with this new joint venture with AudioGo, they finally have. As stated, it’s a small, tiny event but the Doctor did once state to a Cyberleader that that is what life can be all about.

Hunters of Earth gets the Destiny of the Doctor series off to a wonderful and fulfilling start with a few odd references that may have deeper meaning as the stories continue.

Destiny of the Doctor: Hunters of Earth is available from www.bigfinish.com now.

The post Some Listening You Might Have Missed: Hunters of Earth appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

Matt Smith’s New Movie, Doctor Who Stats, Lego & BIg Finish Nominations

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.

Time for another news-based Blasterpiece and this time the Earth braces itself for Matt Smith’s next cataclysmic Sci-Fi role, Who fans are collated, The Light at the End gets shortlisted, Doctor Who LEGO is taken apart, Sonics get constructed and Martha lands in Milton Keynes.

Matt Smith Joins Cast Of Patient Zero

He fought off prisoner zero, now he’s Patient Zero! Yes, it seems like Matt Smith just can’t stay away from sci-fi. He’ll be appearing alongside Game of Thrones‘ Natalie Dormer in the fight against a global pandemic in a post-apocalyptic world, where a super strain of rabies has turned most of humanity into “Infected,” a new, violent species.

A human survivor, immune to the virus and possessing the ability to speak with the Infected, will lead the hunt to find a cure for his wife and the rest of the world. Sort of like a ‘rabiescentative’ of the damned then?

Stefan Ruzowitzky (Deadfall) will direct the script written by Mike Le (Dark Summer).

Smith will also be appearing alongside another Game of Thrones alumna Emily Clarke and ‘Papa T’ himself Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator: Genesis or to give it its correct title Terminator: Geneizyzyz%&£54s.

It’s All About You, Who

So, let’s talk about you. How are you? What have you been up to? Is that a new hat? A Giant green foam Stetson? Bold choice, bold choice.

Hat’s aside, The Mirror have been collating their data, and by their data, I mean YouGov’s data, to determine what else Doctor Who fans, enjoy.

Rather than sticking to a general overview of what makes up the teeming mass of Whovians in the UK, the results have been split into the difference between fans of the different actors to play the Doctor over the fifty plus years the BBC show has been running.

And the results are…well…just look at them.

Highlights include: Patrick Troughton: the Right’s favourite Doctor, the Fifth Doctor fans love of Chocolate Muffins, the Facebook habits of Tom Baker fans (who ‘like’ both Star Trek and 80’s prog rock band Marillion. Rumours that they enjoy both activities while dressed in a Pseudo Silk Kimono, Alone Again in the Lap of Luxury, inside The Opium Den remain to be confirmed) and the inner workings of Peter Capaldi fans, whose thoughts include: “Time is more important than money” and “I like to experience new food and cuisines.”

So don’t go to that new Syrian restaurant with them or you’ll end up footing the bill (unless by time, they mean watches. I’ve heard Nando’s accept Casios in lieu of payment).

Deserved Nominations For Big Finish

Doctor Who 50th anniversary adventure The Light at the End – which featured all the surviving actors to play the Time Lord, up to and including eighth Doctor Paul McGann – is among the nominees for Best Online/Non-Broadcast Audio drama in this year’s BBC Audio Drama Awards.

The drama is up against Doctor Who spin off Jago and Litefoot: Encore of the Scorchies, Hood: The Scribe of Sherwood, The Child, Survivors: Revelation and The Manbuycow Podcast 2.9 – Treason.

Finalists will be announced on Tuesday 6th January 2015, with the winners revealed at a ceremony to be held on Sunday 1st February.

Doctor Who Lego Rejected!

Doctor Who fans, it’s time to pack away those dreams of a Who-based LEGO set (have you ever trod on one of those dreams, hurts like hell) for another round of submissions and offer good natured congratulations to Thomas Poulsom, the creator of The Big Bang Theory set now being immortalised in plastic bricks.

For those out of the squared, angular blocky loop, Lego invites its fans to create and submit original designs to the company, posting their concepts on the Lego Ideas page.

Once a design reaches 10,000 online supporters, it is ushered into an internal company review process. A board of specialists – including set designers and marketers – reviews each concept for playability, safety and overall fit within the Lego brand. The chosen few become sets that the toy company offers alongside mainstay themes like Star Wars, Ninjago and Lego City.

The BBC news site has a full account of Poulsom’s winning entry, including his life-long love of all things LEGO, but there are also a few rousing words from Glen Wadleigh, a co-creator of the one of the Doctor Who concepts, who encourages fans to keep voting for further Who based concepts when they appear on the LEGO ideas page: “One of them will hit the right formula someday,” he said.

We can only hope…

While you’re waiting for LEGO to give the go ahead, why not build your own replica of The War Doctor’s Sonic Screwdriver – amongst many other Doctors – courtesy of Enzdude over at Instructables.

Freema Agyeman In Milton Keynes

And finally, Martha herself Freema Agyeman attended this year’s Collectormania at the ArenaMK, Milton Keynes – where alongside Stargate’s Amanda Tapping and Leeds United legends Eddie Gray and Norman Hunter (yes, really) – she posed for pictures and signed autographs for awaiting fans.

The con also featured a game zone where people could play video games as well as the usual stalls selling unique items such as rare comic books, merchandise from the likes of The Walking Dead and the Batman films, comic book artists, memorabilia from great films, toys and even a sword stand.

The post Matt Smith’s New Movie, Doctor Who Stats, Lego & BIg Finish Nominations appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

Dear Eaglemoss: You’re Simply Not Good Enough

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.

We’ve recently received several messages on social media asking why we no longer cover Eaglemoss’ Doctor Who Figurine Collection. After some deliberation, I decided to revive and complete a partially-written post from late summer which should answer the question perfectly..

You, like me, may have been spending money on the Doctor Who Figurine Collection. Well, following the arrival of a fourth poorly-painted Dalek, I decided to stop.

Note: this is, I’m sorry to say, a bit of a rant. I’ve kept faith with this partwork since it launched in 2013, but after 19 issues in (plus one special that doesn’t fit in the binder) I decided to cancel my subscription. I may be emotive in the following sentences, but hopefully you’ll understand why as you vew the gallery of stills and video of the figures I’ve received in the collection.

Over the months, you may have heard me discuss the Doctor Who Figurine Collection on the podKast. You may even have followed various snaps and video clips on the Kasterborous Instragram feed. It genuinely pains me to say, that after several months of investment in this collection (for completion and admiration rather than anything financial) I decided to cut my losses. It’s not that the moulds or the designs weren’t up to scratch – they were rather nice, and displayed a consistency in artisitic style – but the paint jobs were shoddy at best on humanoid figures and monsters alike (although usually on the Dalek figurines.)

Below is a short film of several Daleks, none of which is perfect.

I’m sorry to say this, but BBC Worldwide should immediately rethink their relationship with Eaglemoss. The popular partwork company is making a mockery of its Doctor Who fan customers, and poorly serving the licence.

Below is a Dalek from the original Dalek serial from 1963. You’ll notice that as well as a wonky plunger arm, the paint job looks as if it was applied by an amateur (or someone asleep on the job). The silver finish is rough, and the hemispheres patchy.

 

Not all figures are poor. This Judoon was one of my favourites, with absolutely nothing to complain about. The detail is excellent, as is the finish. But why would I display this alongside a shoddy Dalek or Davros?

Here’s a more in-depth look at the collection, again focusing on the Daleks.

Some of the superior humanoid figurines now, where you can see considerable improvements over the pepper pots.

Perhaps the biggest disappointment of all was the realisation of the Dalek Emperor from 2005’s The Parting of the Ways. While it would seem audacious and rather excellent that a company should finally get around to producing a replica, the excitement soon wears off when you discover just how basic the design is. What was a huge, intimidating presence on screen fails to translate into figuringe status, largely due to the design reducing the detail of the original.

It has been several weeks since I parted company with my collection. Incomplete purely due to the fact that the magazine is still running and issuing figurines, it did at least reach something like 60% of the purchase price. Small mercies and all that.

Reports online suggest that the quality of the painting in the Doctor Who Figurine Collection continues to disappoint. I can only sympathise. However I would draw attention to the point I made in a podKast. Eaglemoss run a lot of licensed partworks. My wife collects the Disney Cakes and Sweets partwork, which contains a lot of custom-made moulds, tools and icings, all styled in the House of Mouse.

Do you think Disney would be satisfied with poor quality character reproductions? Of course they wouldn’t. There’s no reason, therefore, for BBC Worldwide to allow this, and certainly no reason for Doctor Who fans to accept it. Not in this day and age.

It pains me to say that my experience with the Doctor Who Figurine Collection puts it on a par with the Dapol range of action figures in the 1980s. Since Doctor Who returned nine years ago all manner of merchandise has been licenced, some good, some utter crap.

Eaglemoss’ Doctor Who Figurine Collection promises so much but fails to deliver, and at £7 a fortnightly issue, this simply isn’t acceptable.

http://www.superherofigurineforum.com...

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Daleks, Impossible Girls, The Mastress, Death of Osgood and More

Drew Boynton 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.

More focused than a Dalek eyestalk, less complicated than a board full of chalk, and full of lots and lots of talk, it’s the Kasterborous News Blast!  In today’s influx of cybernetically-enhanced news, Jenna picks her favorite Doctors (uh oh!), Missy’s secret is out, BBC America loves the Series 8 ratings, and Steven Moffat doesn’t know how to keep quiet!  Let’s go!

Daleks appear only when they want to!

There is a legend… a legend sewn through the mists of time… that the Daleks must appear once a year!  Steven Moffat has flatly denied the old rumours that the Daleks are contractually obligated to appear at least once per Doctor Who series.  While at the Royal Television Society gathering, the Moff explained:  “You certainly don’t wheel the Daleks out because you’ve got a contractual obligation to provide Daleks… For a child, a year between Dalek stories is an eternity – I remember as a kid saying ‘Why haven’t they done the Daleks for ages? It’s been four or five weeks!’”  Moffat then laughed maniacally, saluted with his robotic right hand, and sped off in his anti-grav wheelchair.

The Impossible Girl picks… who?!

In a recent interview with the Radio Times, Jenna Coleman courted disaster by actually naming her two favorite Doctors!  The Clara Oswald actress said, “My favourite Doctors are Tennant and [Tom] Baker… I worked with them both, too! [in The Day of the Doctor] Well, I never got to work with Tom Baker, but I was on set with him. Me and Steven [Moffat] came in to watch his scenes.”  But what about the Eleventh and Twelfth, Impossible Girl?  “You can’t ask that!  That’s like saying who do you like better, your mum or dad? They are both very dear to me… The energy that you’re working with between the two is very different… Matt’s Doctor will come out to the room, and he’s like a tornado that goes round, whereas Peter’s Doctor is much more contained and enigmatic. He kind of draws the room into him.”  Oh my, Clara!

I am the Master… You will vote for me!

At the Question & Answer session at the DVD launch party (they have those?), Michelle Gomez compared being chosen as the first female Master to being elected as the first female US President. “I thought: ‘my god, being like the first female Master is up there with being Hillary Clinton running for female presidency’. It’s like that big in my household!”  Well, we’ll see how the election turns out in a couple of years… but hey, wasn’t the Master already the US President once (and everybody else on Earth, as well)?

Old news is still old news?

At the very same DVD launch, Peter Capaldi “revealed” that he had a chance to audition for the role of the Eighth Doctor–which of course, went to Paul McGann–but couldn’t face the disappointment of it.   “I knew I wouldn’t get it… Because I knew it was an American pilot, and I knew they would go for somebody who was well-known – which Paul was, and he was fantastic. So I didn’t go along for the audition. I said to my agent ‘Thank you very much, but I don’t want to go along.’”  Although this story and Capaldi’s response picked up some traction in the press, it wasn’t exactly new news by any means, as we here at Kasterborous covered this months and months ago…

Meanwhile, at BBC America…

The US home for Doctor Who is happy with both the Twelfth Doctor and the reveal of the female Master, and all of the rest of Series 8, for that matter!  BBC America revealed that ratings for Peter Capaldi’s first series as the Doctor were up a whopping 23% over Series 7’s figures.  And as mentioned on Digital Spy, “… [The] series opener Deep Breath was the show’s highest-rated series premiere ever on BBC America.”  Who would have thought that Americans would so gladly embrace a grumpy old Scotsman?  Well, OK, one that’s not Sean Connery, then?

Steven Moffat talks about stuff.

At the Royal Television Society’s recent special event, Doctor Who: Anatomy of a Hit, Steven Moffat answered questions (…or did he? Bwah-haha!) for nearly two hours, and here are some of the more… interesting, shall we say?… answers he gave to the audience, according to Digital Spy:

On casting the first female Master: “…I found a list [of actors] for another part and Michelle Gomez was on the list, and I thought, ‘My God – that’d be brilliant. Michelle is the person. I can write it now, I know what she’s going to be like!  …She’s alarming, she’s scary, she’s extremely funny – and you still vaguely side with her even when she kills harmless, likeable, defenceless people!”
And on keeping Missy’s true identity a secret: “We had her say she was a Random Access Neural Interface – ‘I’m the Rani!’ – we thought everyone was bound to overhear that. Ya deaf bunch!  When we did ‘The Day of the Doctor’, we went to the trouble of having John Hurt’s character referred to as Omega throughout, but nobody’s stealing scripts these days!”
On killing off Osgood (Boo! Hiss!): “I thought if we were going to bring that character back, she’s got to kill somebody you really like in the most merciless, horrific way. You’ve got to lay it on the line that she’s a truly awful, evil person – otherwise she’s just a comedy alternative Doctor who’s a little bit naughty!”
On the Series 8 episodes that were leaked early:  “…to be honest, I don’t blame the guys who went and looked, ‘cos I would’ve – I would’ve as a fan… It would’ve ruined it for myself, but… a new Doctor… I would’ve had to go and look!”

On just getting Doctor Who made, period:  “There’s money – we don’t have enough – and there’s time – there’s just no time, [because] every two weeks, we’re making a new one! I don’t think anyone feels that this is a limitless world, but it’s [about] trying to conceal those limits, trying to work intelligently within them.”
On the possibility of a new non-21st century companion:  “We absolutely could vary it [but] the times they’ve varied it, it’s made them work hard – Leela was a great character but they had to civilise her fast, ‘cos it was getting hard to fit her into stories…”
On the health of the show:  “Shows don’t die when people say, ‘I don’t like it now!’ – shows die when people say, ‘Oh, it’s quite good, I quite like it’ …That’s when a show dies – when people think it’s fine, that it’s okay, and it’s reliable like a pair of slippers. People might say, ‘I’m appalled by the new Doctor!’ – yeah, but you’re watching it every week!”
And finally, on the possibility of a “Who-lock” crossover episode:  “Sherlock Holmes exists as a fictional character in the Doctor’s universe – he’s even dressed up as him! …I’ve always been moderately more in favor [of doing a crossover] than anyone else, but I think Mark Gatiss is right when he says it would just never be as good as you think it’s going to be.”

Well, Kasty Blasties, that’s the expanded Blast for today!  Remember, keep your TARDIS socks firmly planted on the ground, and keep reaching for all the stars in the universe!

The post Daleks, Impossible Girls, The Mastress, Death of Osgood and More appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

The TARDIS Edition Soundtrack To Be Released 24th November!

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’s been a long wait, but this will be worth it. Anyone who pre-ordered the TARDIS Edition of the Doctor Who soundtrack, celebrating the show’s 50th anniversary, will be excited to know that shipping will begin in the next few days!

Originally available through a limited pre-order window from April to May 2014, the Silva Screen Records set is described as “the ultimate limited edition collector’s box” because they’ve only made the amount ordered! And you’ll get to know exactly how many were made as the set will be complete with a numbered certificate.

The set features 11 discs in a specially-made wooden TARDIS box, charting the adventures of the first eleven Doctors, including music from the unaired pilot An Unearthly Child. That’s not all:

“The eleven discs will be packed in DVD-style digipacks and then inserted in individual slipcases. There will be a 52 page booklet with a history of Doctor Who music, details of the sources of the audio masters, notes from fourteen of the composers who worked on the programme and detailed track listings for each disc… The TARDIS is mainly painted wood, with a flashing light on top and it makes the TARDIS Materialization noise when the door is opened.”

The TARDISes are now at the distribution warehouse and are ready for shipment on Monday 24th November (which of course means you’ll get charged imminently too!).

Have you pre-ordered one? Or did you miss your chance? Hoping to nab one off eBay afterwards? Let us know below!

The post The TARDIS Edition Soundtrack To Be Released 24th November! appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

Moffat: “Santa Is Both Real And A Christmas Hero!”

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.

Parents concerned that their children will be confronted with the idea that Father Christmas is, in fact, evil need not switch for the remote control when this year’s Doctor Who Christmas Special comes on. Writer, Steven Moffat has assured everyone that he’ll remain “a Christmas hero.”

At the launch of the Series 8 DVD and Blu-ray (which is released on Monday after being held back a week), Moffat said:

“Santa could never be evil, for heaven’s sake! Santa is both real and a Christmas hero… No, don’t worry any parents who were worried about that. Santa is presented, as he is in real life, as a great Christmas hero.”

That’ll be a relief for anyone who watched the brief scene shown on last Friday’s Children in Need in which the Doctor gave the red-suited figure a bit of a frosty (sorry) reception. Speaking of which, he also spoke about Nick Frost, joking that “he actually is the real Santa. He’s been faking it up until now. For the first time he’s allowing the natural colour of his beard to show through… You could figure it out, y’know: Nick Frost/Nicholas Frost… You see?”

Still no confirmation that it’ll air on Christmas Day (though we all expect that tradition to continue), or if Jenna Coleman’s actually leaving – heck, we don’t even know the special’s name yet!

All will be revealed over the next 35 days…

(Via DWTV.)

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Doctor Who Series 8: The Ultimate Poll Results Thing

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.

Lies, damned lies and statistics! How you rated Series 8…

Attention, Kasterborites. You have been scanned. Assessed. Understood… your limits and capacities have been extrapolated.

Well not exactly. And we don’t have a Pandorica waiting for you. BUT we have had an obsessive rummage through your voting habits and some interesting factoids have emerged…

We recently asked you to vote your top 3 stories from Series 8 and this has given us a good idea of what the *most favoured* few episodes were. We also know that Capaldi heads the list as your favourite actor to play the Doctor of all time (excellent taste, may I say) and his debut season was the one you rated most highly compared to his two predecessors. But when we ask you about your top three, that’s what we’re going to find out. We don’t find out what you felt about the other episodes that you didn’t vote for. There’s missing data! But we have been asking you to vote for each episode as they aired….

The Kasterborous Poll asks you to rate your enjoyment or how good you thought each episode was on a 5 point scale. In saucy Kasterborous style we label each point with tags like “Superb!” at the top and “when is Matt Smith coming back?” at the disgruntled end…

The tags are a whimsical but in general I think most of you will interpret the poll as broadly divided up into: Best / good / average / bad / worst. And being a sci-fi geek, I’m a bit into numbers – juicy, debatable, revealing numbers!..

Running with the idea that you good people use the poll in a vaguely uniform manner, we have sucked some numbers out. This has involved some common sense (I like to think) assumptions whereby I’ve assigned a score out of 100 to each of the 5 voting options. Best = 100, Good = 75, Average = 50, Bad = 25 and Worst = 0.

This allows us to calculate an average score for each episode based on how many people voted for each number. These averages are the Kasterborous Appreciation Index or KAI.

But first a warning. This can ONLY represent how you, goodly Kasterborites, appraised each episode. It’s supposed to tell us something about what the average Kasterborite thinks about each episode. It’s doesn’t tell us anything else.

Secondly, it’s a single number taken from a range of votes – some episodes split opinion with two peaks of “Best” and “Worst” depending on what rocks your world and what leaves you baying for the show runner’s blood. Some of these numbers represent a compromise between a group who really enjoyed and episode and a group that found it mortally wounded their fan-soul. The thing this is best for is comparing how each episode compared week-on-week rather than how people tend to feel about episodes looking back on them.

With that in mind. Here are the scores:

Kasterborous Appreciation Index

Now, there are a few things to take away from this chart. First off, the rankings…

NUMBER ONE:

Your totes-the-BEST episode was Mummy on the Orient Express with KAI 89.4. Head and shoulders above the rest…

NUMBER TWO:

The second episode you most enjoyed at the time of airing was series opener, Deep Breath with KAI 83.9.

NUMBER THREE:

After that, Mathieson nips in for Bronze with his multi-dimensional ode to Banksy, Flatline.

Following in descending order we have Dark Water, Time Heist and The Caretaker all coming in as the *better half* of Series 8, scoring KAIs above the average rating of 71.1.

Note that this contrasts with the Top-3 Poll you recently voted on, taking the whole series into account. The rankings when you voted for your stand-out three were 1st Mummy on the Orient Express, 2nd Listen and 3rd Flatline. Mathieson continues to reign supreme, but people were far more excited by Deep Breath at the time it aired, and Listen seems to be gaining potential “Classic” status now, after a more muted response at the time.

Something else interesting is that the big finale, Death in Heaven, fared much worse at the time of broadcast than the retrospective Top-3 poll. The post-broadcast KAI was the second lowest at 59.7 whereas the poll ranked it 5th out of the whole Series. This may be because people who found something they disliked (Cyber-Brig and Love-Conquors-All were offenders for some) would be more motivated to vote whereas those who quite enjoyed it were less bothered about expressing this online. And we know some of you were really upset(!) It might also be that a bit of time and re-watching allows people to work through things that shocked or appalled at the time and episodes can grow on them. Like a good wine, some episodes may improve with age…

Another interesting thing to note is the sudden drop from Death in Heaven’s KAI of 59.7 to the lowest score of 49.4 for In the Forest of the Night. In fact a score *below* 50% implies that overall the episode was felt to be on the not-very-good-at-all side of things rather than something worth watching. Damning indeed! But we should bear in mind that the script is only the starting point and there are a host of artistic decisions that go into what we see on-screen.

Mid-series science blasphemer, Kill the Moon came in with the third lowest KAI at 61.6. The comparatively poor performance of both Moon and Forest does suggest (going by the discussion they generated) that at least some effort to explain the preposterous is needed to keep us on-side with a story. Seems fair.

But wait! There’s more…

The “Not We”…

The joy of Appreciation Indices (yes, “joy“) is that they are independent of viewing figures and try to get a general feel for how the audience as a whole felt about the episode. If it were a general election and the episodes of Series 8 were in the running (if that was a thing) and, um, if only Kasterborites were voting, these would be the final positions!

But what of the “general public” – this mysterious and unthinkably Who-lite subgroup tend to muscle in on our show and apparently make up a large proportion of the audience.

The BBC calculates an Audience Appreciation Index based on a similar poll but out of 10 and expanded to a score out of 100. It’s similar to the KAI in that respect and is intended to reflect the average audiences enjoyment of a program. The BBC 1 average is 82.2 – anything under 60 is regarded as “poor” and over 85 is “excellent”.

Now – we can’t directly compare the KAI to the AI even though they’re both out of 100. We collect the data in different ways with use different sampling methods (5 voting options versus 10). Also there are a lot more people contributing to the BBC’s AI than the KAI (but quality not quantity, we say!) This may explain why the AI doesn’t seem to vary a great deal compared to the KAI – the AI scores for Series 8 have varied between 82 and 85 – far less dramatic than the highs and lows of your votes! Including a wide variety of people in the AI may lead it to hover around the same area. Though equally it could be that Kasterborites are more empassioned in their response to Who!

While we can’t *directly * compare the scores, we can look at their overall shape across the series – what were the highs and what were the lows? Take a look at this comparison of how you voted compared to the general public.

Week-on-week trend comparison

We’ve *adjusted * the AI figure in the chart below – it’s variation has been expanded so the ups and downs are more obvious. Also the scale has been removed as we really can’t compare them directly – it’s not that we were rating the episodes more highly in general (if anything the average KAI is 10% lower but shhhh! no – they can’t be compared…)

What you can see, is that the general public generally seem to agree with us about what was better and what was not so good… The overall shape – where it goes up and where it goes down – are pretty much the same. They agree that Time Heist was pretty good, they agree that Kill the Moon and In the Forest of the Night weren’t so great, and they agree that Death in Heaven was, overall, not quite as epic as Dark Water. Possibly something to do with a whopper of a cliff hanger that’s hard to deliver on…

In fact the main place where we differ seems to be on how awesome Deep Breath was with the KAI being very high compared to the scores for the rest of the series, than with the equivalent AI.

So there it is, Kasterborites. Your voting soul laid bare! There are, of course, lots of methodological issues with interpreting data of this kind and a limit to what we deduce. But it’s nice knowing what the numbers look like… (Any professional statisticians out there, please be gentle!)

How well do you think the KAI reflects *your* feelings on the show, especially on how each episode compared to the others? Does having some time to digest and re-watch change how you feel about episodes? And is there any anything else you’d like us to do with the numbers? Tell us below…

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