Christian Cawley's Blog, page 171

140 Characters: Nicholas Briggs

PJ Edmundson 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.

Who fandom, by whichever titles they go under, has always displayed a level of interest and devotion that is typical of science fiction, but more detailed, more committed and now, more in charge of the show itself. Through fanzines, fan productions evolving into DVD extras and additional Who franchises, Doctor Who fandom has produced a level of art form not replicated to such an extent in the UK and perhaps the world, based on a rolling work of fiction.

140 Characters would aim to create capsule interviews, with a series of short, simple questions, worded like a ‘tweet’ or a single text message, requiring an answer in the same succinct fashion. The questions below are all on or below 140 characters and so are the answers.

This week, Big Finish’s Executive Producer and voice of many a monster, especially the Daleks, Nicholas Briggs.

Have you always been an open fan of the show?

Yes. If you meet anyone from my past, it’d be the first thing they’d tell you about me.

What is the single most important aspect of the show?

The TARDIS. Although the Daleks are the only reason the show is still on.

Is the TARDIS alive?

Yes.

Which is your favourite TARDIS interior and why?

Any version of the classic, white one, although the current late Matt Smith/Peter Capaldi runs a close second: Such a clever design.

Is there an episode that means more to you than all the others?

The single, surviving episode of ‘The Evil of the Daleks’. I remember seeing that story twice. I MUST see it again.

Do you ever find yourself rooting for the bad guy?

I used to root for the Daleks when I was a kid, because they were greeeaaat!

What was your very first episode of Doctor Who?

My earliest, clear memories are of the Celestial Toymaker, although I must have seen the Daleks before Power, because I remember thinking ‘They’re back!’

How would you rate that episode now?

Celestial Toymaker? Very old fashioned.

How long have you been watching Doctor Who?

For as long as I can remember: I remember William Hartnell.

When you first started watching Doctor Who, how old where you and where were you?

I was four or five and I was living in Totton, near Southampton in Hampshire.

Do you see yourself as one of the Doctors and why that one?

Patrick Troughton, because he’s my favourite.

Who was the best Doctor, never cast?

Bernard Cribbins. He would’ve been great, but then we wouldn’t’ve had Tom… and that would’ve been a disaster!

If you could travel with any of the Doctors, which one would it be and why?

The second, because he was the most friendly and reassuring.

Which, if any, companion would you like to be there as well?

Zoe. She was so clever and always happy!

Who would you name as your favourite companion and why?

Leela, because she’s actually the most interesting character.

How should The Doctor dress?

Whichever way he feels comfortable.

Do you ever dress like the Doctor in everyday life?

I have a tweed jacket that I’m rather fond of…

Does the Doctor ever get it wrong?

I think he does everything for the best reasons, but he can never be sure he’s got it right.

When the new series arrived, what was your initial reaction?

Beyond excited.

Nearly ten years on, how do you feel about it now?

Worried that I take it for granted. We’re so lucky to have it.

What is the best thing that being a fan of the show ever given to you?

A career and largely unending joy.

Nicholas Briggs, thank you!

The post 140 Characters: Nicholas Briggs appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

Doctor Who Finale Part 1: Dark Water Poll

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.

OMG! Surely no one saw that coming – did they? The Doctor Who finale is underway with an awesome cliffhanger that will keep us talking all week. But how do you feel after watching Dark Water?

Yes, it’s poll time – vote below in one of the five options, and leave a comment at the bottom of the page. During the week we’ll be revisiting these figures to establish how much you enjoyed the episode.

Or otherwise…

Take Our Poll

This poll will close at 9pm on Sunday evening, so don’t leave it too late – get voting now! You might also consider sharing with your fellow fans who (for some odd reason) don’t visit Kasterborous. The more votes, the better an idea we’ll get, ready for James Lomond to apply his maths wizardry and produce a KAI score…

When commenting, please consider overseas or time-delayed viewers who may not have seen Dark Water yet – keep your comments spoiler free!

The post Doctor Who Finale Part 1: Dark Water Poll appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

Two Notable Doctor Who Anniversaries This Week!

Nick Kitchen 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.

Over the course of the last twelve months, Whovians around the world have had many reasons to celebrate, most notable the 50th anniversary of our beloved show and Time Lord. And while every anniversary cannot be celebrated indefinitely, this week has given us two other anniversaries that we should pause to reflect on; the first a celebration of what has kept Doctor Who fresh and new for half a century and the second, a remembrance of announcement that foretold the exit of one of the most popular Doctors of all time.

Change and Renewal

It’s likely we’d not be writing or continuing to discuss Doctor Who in the same way had Gerry Davis and Innes Lloyd not developed the concept of “renewal” (or as most of us now know it, regeneration) as a mechanism to replace the ailing William Hartnell in the role of the Doctor. Wednesday, the 29th of October, marked the 48th anniversary of the moment William Hartnell’s faced disappeared into that of Patrick Troughton’s.

Twelve regenerations later, Doctor Who is going stronger than ever and is set to begin its two part Series 8 finale this evening. I dare say that without the change from the Hartnell Doctor to the Troughton Doctor, there would be no Capaldi Doctor on our screens today.

This Song is Ending but the Story Never Ends

Wednesday also marked six years since über popular Tenth Doctor, David Tennant, announced at NTA that he had intentions of leaving Doctor Who. Here’s a reminder:

Tennant’s announced departure sent the fandom into mourning and even caused some to say that perhaps the revived series should end with Tennant. Fortunately for us, that didn’t happen and we launched into the incredible Matt Smith era and what has been a pretty great start to the Capaldi era.

Dear readers, raise a glass in honor of these two moments, won’t you? Feel free to join in the conversation below!

The post Two Notable Doctor Who Anniversaries This Week! appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

Hallowe’en Week: The Doctor

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.

HALLOWE’EN WEEK: It’s a time for scares and surprises and things that go bump in the night. Doctor Who should be watched from behind the sofa, swamped in darkness. But how does the show deal with familiar horror tropes? The Final Installment…

Whovians beware: we’re in for a scare.

The Doctor isn’t the most trustworthy of folk. He betrays, he kidnaps, he kills.

But like many monsters, he’s good-intentioned. So that’s okay. Right…?

“You Are All I Have, Monster”

The central character of our favourite was conceived as a mystery and will remain a mystery. We come close to finding important information out about him, but the veil is never fully lifted. We’re teased with his ultimate secret, but are instead lead to his grave – and furthermore, it may not even be his grave, thanks to him cheating death on Trenzalore!

The core question is, of course, Doctor who? But viewers in 1963 were introduced to an elusive, seemingly-cold and bitter man who was, without doubt, an alien.

With this inhumanity, he’s obviously going to have a different set of values: a set of principles and morals born of a different world, a contrasting society.

And he was immediately harsh. In An Unearthly Child, he may be the Doctor, but he’s not quite the Time Lord who would land on a planet, overthrow the Government, defeat the monster under the bed, and disappear again without so much as a goodbye.

That debut serial definitely plays around with Christopher Volger’s well-recognised 12-part Hero’s Journey (an expansion on Joseph Campbell’s Monomyth, a sequence detailing a typical hero’s actions throughout a tale); first and foremost because the Doctor isn’t really the hero! The Doctor is, if anything, an anti-hero, leaving Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright to take centre stage. In a famous scene, the First Doctor contemplates murder when he picks up a rock while looking at the injured Za who is unintentionally stopping them from getting back to the safety of the TARDIS.

“Every lonely monster needs a companion,” the Doctor says in 2013′s Hide. So does the Doctor see himself as something horrific?

In the following story, The Daleks, he is selfish enough to pretend they need to venture into a city on Skaro in order to obtain mercury for the fluid link. The TARDIS team all work against each other in The Edge of Destruction and it’s not really until Marco Polo that we get to know that grumpy man a little better. Nonetheless, his motivation remains getting back to his beloved Time-Space Ship. Gradually over Season 1, he takes on more heroic characteristics, but in The Aztecs (1964), he displays some otherworldly morals: he simply wants to leave the Aztecs to get on with sacrificing each other to their Gods, simply because history has to take its course.

By The War Machines (1966), however, he’s recognisably the Doctor he is today.

Not that today’s hero doesn’t suffer from his own monstrosity: in fact, it’s something that seems to haunt him.

“Am I A Good Man?”

“Every lonely monster needs a companion,” the Doctor says in 2013′s Hide. So does the Doctor see himself as something horrific? Doctors Eleventh and Twelve have both questioned if the Doctor is a good man, and in Flatline (2014), it seems he’s made his mind up.

Why does the Doctor think of himself in such a negative light? Since the Time War, he might’ve thought the atrocities of battle have made him a darker, more tragic figure than before, but he must’ve surely been more upbeat in the instances between the end of The Day of the Doctor and the beginning of The Time of the Doctor.

It might be Trenzalore that has forced the Doctor to reassess himself: after getting over the Time War (at least partly – his family were more than likely killed sometime, though again, we know very little about them), he is slung into another seemingly-endless battle, one which would inevitably end with his own death, sans regeneration.

Thank the Time Lords (and Clara) for breaking some serious science there!

The Twelfth Doctor’s darkest hour to date came in Kill The Moon: he may have seen it as something nice, but it felt ruthless and heartless to Clara.

While the Eleventh Doctor put on a cheery visage in general, there are glimpses into the darkness: he lashes out at humanity in 2010′s The Beast Below; he won’t help Rosanna save an entire species in The Vampires of Venice; he might’ve sacrificed Craig so the makeshift time machine would let go of him in The Lodger; he shows his manipulative side in The Impossible Astronaut/ Day of the Moon (2011); he makes Amy lose faith in him in The God Complex; he is responsible for the death of Solomon in 2012′s Dinosaurs on a Spaceship; and he contemplates sacrificing Kahler-Jex in  A Town Called Mercy.

Things got particularly grim in A Good Man Goes To War (2011), and The Girl Who Waited, and in the following story, The God Complex, the Minotaur describes him as “an ancient creature, drenched in the blood of the innocent, drifting in space through an endless, shifting maze. For such a creature, death would be a gift.”

And he completely betrays his positive outlook after he loses Amy and Rory to the Weeping Angels (and time), turning into a recluse in The Snowmen (2012).

The Twelfth Doctor has expanded on this moody persona, from the get-go questioning his motives and exactly who he is. There are further darker tones in Into The Dalek (2014), in which he doesn’t really bother saving Ross, Listen (which focused on his fears and obsessions and how they can put his friends in danger), Time Heist, showing off his “professional detachment”, and The Caretaker, in which he is appalled that Clara has taken a former-soldier to her heart – perhaps as Danny is too much a reflection of himself.

The Great Intelligence tells Madame Vastra, Jenny and Strax that Trenzalore was “a minor skirmish by the Doctor’s blood-soaked standards.”

Without hesitation, his darkest hour came in Kill The Moon: he may have seen it as something nice, but it felt ruthless and heartless to Clara and at least some of the audience.

But these glimpses at darkness certainly aren’t confined to his most recent selves.

A History of Betrayal

Like it or not, the Doctor kills. That hits home in The Name of the Doctor when the Great Intelligence lists a small number of his victims and tells Madame Vastra, Jenny and Strax that Trenzalore was “a minor skirmish by the Doctor’s blood-soaked standards.”

A notable questioning of his methods comes in 2005′s Boom Town where he has to dine with the woman he’s taking to her death. Whether he actually would’ve delivered her to her executioner remains unknown, thanks to the TARDIS’ timely intervention. It’s an interesting notion, though – certainly because the Doctor has a unique way of undermining his heroic status.

The Sixth Doctor was aloof throughout his tenure, only really showing his affection for Peri in his final story.

In The War Games (1969), the comedic character seems to turn on his companions. It’s a truly shocking thing, mainly as the Second Doctor always seemed so loyal. The First Doctor was capable of this sort of betrayal, but this “new” man showed no signs before. In his final adventure, viewers in 1969 must’ve wondered how far the Time Lord would’ve gone to continue unhindered by his own kind.

The Third Doctor was always saying how insufferable humanity and UNIT were, but his seeming betrayal in 1971′s The Claws of Axos, too, is a surprise. He really was bitter against those who grounded him…

The change from the Fifth Doctor to the Sixth is a huge juxtaposition: in an infamous scene from The Twin Dilemma (1984), he tries to strangle the woman he had saved about ten minutes before!

The Seventh Doctor was a grand manipulator who pushed his main companion further than any previous ones.

In the subsequent tale, Attack of the Cybermen, he does the unthinkable and uses a gun. Mind you, that was against a Cyberman, who are, you could argue (and the Doctor definitely would), already dead. The Sixth Doctor was aloof throughout his tenure, only really showing his affection for Peri in his final story, The Trial of a Time Lord (1986).

We had got used to the idea that those with the same faces as the Doctor could be evil (see The Massacre, The Enemy of the World, and The Face of Evil), but The Ultimate Foe went even further: the Valeyard was the sum of all his darkness, manifesting between regenerations. That the Doctor has a hidden darkness is an idea revisited in 2010′s Amy’s Choice.

Probably the most unpredictable of Doctors is the Seventh: he was a grand manipulator who pushed his main companion further than any previous ones. Ace must face up to her fears in The Greatest Show in the Galaxy (1988-89), Ghost Light (1989) and Survival. In 1989′s The Curse of Fenric, he cruelly forces Ace to lose faith in him (and in that way, she somewhat outgrows him), a move repeated in The God Complex. Both Ace and Amy get their confidence back in the old Time Lord, but it gives the audience a nice reminder of what he’s capable of.

The Ninth Doctor suffered from terrible survivor’s guilt (but notably couldn’t kill a Dalek in cold-blood once Rose talks him down), but it was the Tenth who really took things into darker territory. Such is the way with many incarnations, things grew grimmer the longer the Tenth Doctor lived, and culminated in The Waters of Mars (2009), in which he betrays not only the audience but also himself. He’s had the same morals since his inception, even refusing to help in The Fires of Pompeii (2008), but this was a Doctor whose ego got the better of him.

“They gave him two hearts. And that’s an extraordinary thing. There will never come a time when we don’t need a hero like the Doctor.” – Steven Moffat

Perhaps the Doctor’s biggest betrayal is one he does relatively frequently: regeneration. It’s a necessity to survive (isn’t that, too, what many of his own enemies have argued?), but nonetheless unveils a new layer of himself that he’s kept hidden – to his companions, to the audience. That first ‘renewal’ in The Tenth Planet (1966) must’ve been ground-breakingly shocking, and since then, he has gained our trust, made us love each face and persona – and then he changes.

Time Lord Victorious

Okay, so the Doctor is a bit scary. But let’s not forget what he really is, to all of us: a hero. Steven Moffat said it best:

“When they made this particular hero, they didn’t give him a gun; they gave him a screwdriver to fix things. They didn’t give him a tank or a warship or an x-wing fighter; they gave him a call box from which you can call for help. And they didn’t give him a superpower or pointy ears or a heat ray; they gave him an extra heart. They gave him two hearts. And that’s an extraordinary thing. There will never come a time when we don’t need a hero like the Doctor.”

The post Hallowe’en Week: The Doctor appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

5 Things That May Relate To The Doctor Who Finale…

Jonathan Appleton 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.

He’s a cunning old cove, that Steven Moffat. Forever tempting and teasing the audience, layering in references that can take years rather than weeks to pay off. As we approach the season finale attention has naturally turned to exactly what in creation has been going on with Missy, Danny and exactly where do those unfortunates who don’t make it alive to the end of the episode go when they have, seemingly, breathed their last?

In fairness, Series 8 hasn’t featured quite the level of season spanning arcs as many previous years. The mystery of Missy has taken up no more than the odd minute or two per episode and has sometimes been left out entirely. But, taken together, there have been more than enough set-ups and teasers to get the more avid viewers talking.

Remember that Lost trailer some years back? ‘It’s time for some answers!’ bellowed the voiceover. Turns out it wasn’t, not for another four or five bloomin’ series. But it’s surely unthinkable that anyone watching the Doctor Who finale won’t have their burning questions answered by the end of Death in Heaven. Time for the Kasterborous guide to those burning issues that will simply have to be sorted out between now and Saturday week…

Missy’s Body Collection

First things first: who is Missy, and what’s she up to? She collects an apparently random series of dead people (plus the odd robot), we know that. She shows them her nice garden, serves them afternoon tea, and we now know she has an assistant who helps out when she’s got too much on. Can the tombs referenced by the Doctor in the trailer that got us all talking be where she stores them?

‘The Promised Land’

It’s the place that robots really, really want to get to. At different times we’ve also had references to Heaven and Paradise, not to mention the Nethersphere - are we to take it that they’re all one and the same place? Just to add to the confusion, in Robot of Sherwood it appeared that the Promised Land was an actual, physical location which showed up on scanner screens. At other times it’s seemed to be a much more ethereal kind of place…

Who gave Clara the number for the TARDIS?

Well, the woman in the shop, that’s who – way back in The Bells of St John. On the face of it this is one of the easier riddles to answer, given that we now know that Missy had some hand in bringing Clara and the Doctor together – ‘I have chosen well…’ she says in Flatline. But of course that doesn’t explain the whys and wherefores of Missy’s grand plan…

Who or What is Gus?

John Sessions lent his voice to this monocled creator of mayhem in Mummy on the Orient Express, leading the passengers on a right old merry dance as they tried to escape the terrifying Foretold. And it looks, from a no doubt strategically released photo from the gallery for episode 11, as though he may play some part in the finale. Is Gus some kind of reanimator of dead things? Consult our guide to Gus for more on this one…

Coal Hill School

It doesn’t appear in the show for years at a time and then there’s no getting away from the place. Yes, this year we’ve seen more of Susan Foreman’s alma mater than ever seemed likely when the TARDIS departed Totter’s Lane in 1963. What with Danny’s yet-to-be-revealed past, kids taking trips in the TARDIS, not to mention Clara disappearing for weeks on end into that stationery cupboard, there’s enough to make for a very entertaining morning assembly. The Skovox Blitzer seemed to have its reasons for targeting the place - will all of this other-worldly activity have a bearing on events as they play out over the next two Saturdays?

Not long to wait now, although somehow I think part one of this season’s big finish will leave us with a whole load of new questions! There’s still time to tell us below just what you think all of these aspects mean before you settle down to watch Doctor Who finale Dark Water – over to you, Kasterborites!

The post 5 Things That May Relate To The Doctor Who Finale… appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

Audience Reaction & Poll Results: In the Forest of the Night

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.

So how did things look the morning after the Forest of the Night? Did Cottrell-Boyce’s script fall on fertile ground or is it for the compost heap? Let’s look at the stats…

The audience appreciation index “AI” is a measure of how much the audience enjoyed a show and is rated out of 100. In the Forest of the Night scored 83 which is about average for Series 8 and a healthy, if not spectacular, figure. In general, figures under 60 are regarded as “poor” and over 85 are “excellent”.

In terms of ratings it attracted a fifth of the available television audience that evening with 5.03 million watching in the overnight figures. This is again average-to-good for Series 8, with a significant increase expected when repeats are included and when the BBC calculates its own Live+7 figures which will include iPlayer views.

So it’s all looking pretty respectable as far as the average viewer is concerned. But what of the average Kasterborite? This is where things get a bit dicey. Our poll showed there was a definite split with only 10% of you rating it “great”, a third felt it was good and wanted more from Mr Boyce, about a quarter ticked the “not so sure” box needing a re-watch. A significant chunk, just over a third, went for either the “ruined” by child actors or “didn’t get it” options.

If -like me- your inner maths nerd finds our poll and the way it rearranges itself into voting frequency order rather than opinion order a bit confusing you’ll want a weighted average. Modelling the 5 point scale as rough scores of 0, 25, 50, 75 and 100%, your votes give a weighted average, or Kasterborous Appreciation Index (KAI) of 48.16%. Compare that to a KAI of 83.67% for the previous week’s Flatline…

So in short – you weren’t that impressed. The bimodal distribution suggests there were two two camps here. Lets see what each was saying in the comments… (if you have an inner maths nerd, I hope it’s feeling better. Mine is).

Ranger dived in with the heavy judgement, “That was truly awful. It was worse than the bad science of KTM and even worse than the Robin Hood episode. At least that made sense. This will ignite the debate over cod-science in DW again.”

Bonobabananas agreed that it “stunk the place out,” and Steve Shelley was unimpressed with the plotting: “Again with the magic reset and everything seemingly back to normal at the end just like the recent moon episode. Not the show for me anymore. What a waste of Capaldi’s portrayal of the Doctor.”

A. Brown summed up a lot of the displeasure pointing out that, “In many ways it wasn’t really a story, more a collection of ideas, notions and philosophical musings that the characters concluded at various points between walking/running/cycling through trees! The fairy tale wolves and William Blake-inspired ‘Tyger’ added a tiny bit of scare, but very little threat. … This story was very much the sister to KTM – it should have been called ‘Repel the Sun’!”

The lack of scientific explanation, the tacked-on missing sibling, the modern discovery of museum sleepovers were all discussed with Chiron pointing out a key aesthetic flaw: “what’s with the title? In the Forest of the Night? The whole episode took place during daylight!” True – there wasn’t much *sinister* going on.

In general the child actors, while better than some, were predictably unpopular. There was praise aplenty for the regular cast though. DonnaM said, “that was a terrifically convincing performance from Jenna, and as usual her scenes with the Doctor just sing. …but Peter Capaldi really is the absolute bee’s knees. Wonderful with his usual sidekick: delightful with the kids, even the most aggravating brats: sensational talking to himself in the TARDIS. It’s a privilege to have him stealing every scene each week.”

Bar sums up the overall feel at Kasterborous Towers: “the plot is thin/predictable and the moral as subtle as a brick, but I still found plenty to enjoy.”

That’s the spirit. Onwards to Heaven!…

The post Audience Reaction & Poll Results: In the Forest of the Night appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

‘Gin’isis of the Daleks: Funny Drunk Reactions To Doctor Who

Nick May 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.

There are some corners of the universe that have bred the most amusing things, things so mirth-inducing they have to be seen to be believed. They must be watched. These include the inebriated musings of the ChiqueGeeks, whose drunken reviews of Who distracted me from the otherwise grown up and serious business of research for work. Thanks, YouTube.

Taking their cue from Funny Or Die’s Drunk History series, where comedians re-enact some hapless lush’s attempts to relate key events from yesteryear (check out Will Ferrell and Don Cheadle in the life of civil rights activist Frederick Douglass), these hammered Whovians have committed their pickled perspectives on the 50th anniversary special, The Day of the Doctor, and Matt Smith’s swansong The Time of the Doctor to video, armed with copious amounts of booze. Amy and Mary, the ChiqueGeeks, offer a different perspective on the new series as it develops, running the full gamut of emotions before one or both of them ends up a bit tearful. I was the same when K9 got beheaded in Full Circle, though in fairness I was only four at the time…

What’s great is that the videos tap into the fun of kicking back with other fans; evenings spent discussing the show and getting distinctly more earnest with each passing pint. I vaguely remember launching into a stout defence of The Krotons (stout being a contributing factor), sadly complete with impressions, on a rare night out with some fellow fans many years ago. Speaking of which, it would be great to let the girls loose on the classic era, though God knows what state they’d be in after drinking their way to the end of Inferno.

Lest we forget, this means of critique has serious academic pedigree- the historian AJP Taylor famously delivered his ‘How Wars Begin’ lectures on the BBC without a script and under the ‘fluence of a sherbet or two. The girls have recently uploaded their take onInto the Dalek. Let’s hope their livers hold out for a good few episodes yet…

The post ‘Gin’isis of the Daleks: Funny Drunk Reactions To Doctor Who appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

Soundtrack Incoming: The Day of the Doctor/The Time of the Doctor!

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.

Great news if you’re a fan of Murray Gold’s stunning soundtracks: a further CD will be released next month, collecting together scores from last year’s 50th anniversary special and the Eleventh Doctor’s swansong.

The 2-disc soundtrack will feature 41 tracks from The Day of the Doctor and The Time of the Doctor, plus reversible covers so you can display images from your favourite episode.

It’s been a long time coming, but here’s the track listings:

Disc 1 (The Day of the Doctor)

1. I.M Foreman

2. Will There Be Cocktails?

3. It’s Him (The Majestic Tale)

4. He Was There

5. No More

6. The War Room

7. Footprints In The Sand

8. Who Are You

9. England 1562

10. Nice Horse

11. The Fez And The Portal

12. Two Doctors

13. Three Doctors

14. Somewhere To Hide

15. Rescue The Doctor

16. 2.47 Billion

17. Zygon In The Painting

18. Man And Wife

19. We Don’t Need To Land

20. We Are The Doctors

21. The Moment Has Come

22. This Time There’s Three Of Us (The Majestic Tale)

23. Song For Four/Home

Disc 2 (The Time of the Doctor)

1. The Message

2. Handles

3. The Dance Of The Naked Doctor

4. You Saved It

5. Papal Mainframe

6. Tasha Lem

7. Bedroom Talk

8. The Mission

9. Christmas

10. The Crack

11. Rhapsody Of War

12. Back To Christmas

13. Snow Over Trenzalore (Song For Four)

14. Beginning Of The End

15. This Is How It Ends

16. Never Tell Me The Rules

17. Trenzalore/The Long Song/I Am Information (Reprise)

18. Hello Twelve

Some tracks, like #17 on disc 2, combines music from previous episodes like The Rings of Akhaten and The Name of the Doctor, mixed into a new arrangement for the Eleventh Doctor’s heart-breaking regeneration.

Grab a handkerchief: this will likely be the last soundtrack from the Matt Smith era…

On a personal note, I listen to the previous soundtracks a lot and can’t get over Murray Gold’s incredible score. This release will be a fantastic addition to the collection, bringing together some of the most beautiful music from Doctor Who.

It’s released one day fter the show’s 51st anniversary – that’s 24th November!

The post Soundtrack Incoming: The Day of the Doctor/The Time of the Doctor! appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

Review: Silhouette

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.

It’s smog, snow and Victorian-a-go-go in this mystery caper with some familiar on-screen comrades for the Twelfth Doctor and Clara…

A confession. I have largely avoided the BBC Doctor Who novel range since the show’s return in 2005. That takes some doing as a lot of admired and previously enjoyed authors have written for them. I think my inner child – he is, admittedly, a bit precocious – objects to the chunky hardback covers and publicity-shot artwork. So he’s been sat down and told to get over himself as I sampled Justin Richards’s novel, Silhouette, featuring Clara and Peter Capaldi’s Twelfth Doctor…

‘You’re going to destroy London?’ Clara said, appalled.

‘Well, most of southern Britain, really. Sorry about that. Anyway, I’d better be going.’

The Victorian setting is one that Richards is very at home in. Some of his best Who-related work is on the Jago & Litefoot audio spin-off from Big Finish – well worth a look, as is 1977′s The Talons of Weng Chiang which they’re based on if you’ve not had the pleasure. In fact get hold of it IMMEDIATELY if you’ve not…

The novel features the Paternoster gang of Madame Vastra in her guise of the Great Detective, Jenny, her ninja-wife and Strax, the gender-blind Sontaran obsessed with war. There’ve been a series of murders in a Wintry London and the Doctor and pals are on the case. Richards is evidently familiar and fond of how popular culture has packaged the Dickensian image of that setting and doesn’t hold back. The novel is peppered with descriptions and references that are cosily familiar and helpfully evocative, both of 19th Century London and how Doctor Who fits in to this genre.

The acerbic teasing from the Doctor and Clara’s zesty come-backs are all there – even with that uncomfortable uncertainty over whether Capaldi’s Doctor is joking or not.

And Richards carries it off very well – he doesn’t really overdo it and the pacing is good with just enough time allotted to each of the five main characters to hold your interest and keep things moving. While not quite an Agatha Christie, there are enough twists and mini-twists that you don’t guess what’s around every corner. It feels rather Classic in its structure and MO… almost an homage to the original series. Indeed a very direct homage does make an appearance. This is NewWho through the eyes of a very long-term fan.

One thing he does particularly well is capturing the characters and relationships between the various characters. The Doctor and Clara’s dialogue is remarkably true to their on-screen performance, though odd snippets do veer towards all-out repetition. But the acerbic teasing from the Doctor and Clara’s zesty come-backs are all there – even with that uncomfortable uncertainty over whether Capaldi’s Doctor is joking or not.

The Paternoster gang are equally well handled. The relationships and verbal quirks are all competently recreated though Richards does shy away from the more lustful side of Vastra and Jenny’s relationship. Of course many fans might find that a relief as some felt it got a bit over-done. But if you didn’t know, you might fail to realise they’re a couple from the way they’re represented in Silhouette.

Strax is used for the same comic relief as in his on-screen appearances and stays just the right side of camp (depending where you draw the line) to not distract from the story. There are some delightful moments:

‘A clipper-class scout ship,’ Strax said. ‘Agile but with little protective armament and woefully inadequate countermeasures.’

‘Quod erat demonstrandum,’ the Doctor agreed.

Strax frowned. ‘Not a system I am familiar with.’

The antagonist(s) and their motives are kept suitably unexplained for a good two thirds of the story and are fairly standard Doctor Who fare. Some familiar names appear from the NewWho cannon to lend a bit of scale and context but don’t detract from the adventure at hand. In fact that is one of my chief complaints – while it’s all very competent, there’s not much new ground broken here. There’s something a little unchallenging about Silhouette though it’s still a very pleasant read. And not all Who can be the odd-ball.

A lot of whether you’ll enjoy this will hang on how you feel about the Paternoster gang and how traditional you like your Who. It’s cosy, comfy and written by someone who knows the show inside out. It’s probably fair to say that you need to have some prior knowledge of the characters to fully enjoy it – though I’m sure a curious pre-teen will pick up a dog-eared copy later this century and be so intrigued they’ll dig out some laser-cubes of the old 2D Doctor Who series from 2014…

It’s cosy, comfy and written by someone who knows the show inside out.

Another slight quibble is the mechanics of the threat towards the end of the book. I’m afraid it relies on science-fantasy around *emotions* that will irk if you prefer your sci-fi to include a bit of explanation. It might also not be to your tastes if you’re among those fans who have found love-saves-the-day a bit overdone in recent years. But don’t worry, it’s not Closing Time. If however you’re more into the set-pieces, imagery and paraphernalia of Doctor Who adventure, this’ll be right up your street.

So. Perfectly enjoyable if a bit standard. A competent re-creation of Clara and the Doctor’s relationship and the Paternoster gang if that’s your sort of thing. It’s not boring and it’s not complicated. Feels a bit Christmassy and almost a bit like Classic Who. A sound offering from the Doctor Who novel range’s Creative Consultant that’s very much within his literary comfort zone. If this is ticking your boxes it’s certainly worth a look!

Silhouette is available from Amazon UK and Amazon.com now.

Rating: 3/5

Age Range: 15 and up.

Related reads and stories you might also enjoy: Dreams of Empire (Second Doctor, BBC Books); The Mahogany Murderers (Companion Chronicles, Big Finish); Jago & Litefoot audio adventures (Spin-off with characters from the Fourth Doctors’ era, Big Finish); The Talons of Weng Chiang; Deep Breath (Twelfth Doctor, BBC DVD).

The post Review: Silhouette appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

Hallowe’en Week: Self

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.

HALLOWE’EN WEEK: It’s a time for scares and surprises and things that go bump in the night. Doctor Who should be watched from behind the sofa, swamped in darkness. But how does the show deal with familiar horror tropes?

Mirror, mirror, on the wall, what frightens humans most of all…?

Across a startlingly excessive array of serials, Doctor Who demonstrates distillations of us, horrific intentions behind our own visages. They look like us; they sound like us; they use us; they are us.

Monsters, it turns out, come in many forms.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers

Like Clara, we are all, to some degree, control freaks. But while Miss Oswald likes to control things she shouldn’t have any power over, most of us are content with having control of ourselves.

But there are aliens who seek to take dominance.

Literature is littered with body snatchers, creatures that inhabit our bodies and our minds. Traditionally, of course, body snatchers were humans who would dig up graves, their purpose often being to sell cadavers on for anatomical study, especially throughout the 19th Century. However, when it was frowned upon for physicians to deviate from the work of Galen (whose theory of the Four Humors was practised for hundreds of years), discoveries were made from illegal dissections of corpses, furthering the incredible practises of geniuses like Andreas Vesalius and William Harvey.

Prisoner Zero was prepared to sacrifice not just those whose images he had used but also the entire planet – simply because if it were to die, “let there be fire.”

The Body Snatcher, by Robert Louis Stevenson (best known for The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde), focused on this premise, taking an even more sinister turn when it becomes apparent there is a murderer in amongst the central characters’ clan.

However, since 1955, the term ‘body snatchers’ has become synonymous with aliens, thanks to Jack Finney’s popular, if not exactly critically-acclaimed novel, The Body Snatchers. It was serialised in America but really caught the public’s imagination when a film adaptation, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, was released the following year. Since then, three remakes in 1978, 1993 and 2007 retained the property in our imaginations and spawned the term, ‘Pod People.’

In the book, plant-like pods fall to Earth and replace sleeping humans with perfect duplicates. These live only half a decade and cannot sexually reproduce, so their aim is to move on to a different planet once Earth is barren.

The idea is likely inspiration for 1976′s The Seeds of Doom¸ in which we meet the Krynoid, capable of infecting and digesting the peoples of any planet. “On planets where the Krynoid gets established,” the Doctor says, “the vegetation eats the animals.” The greenery is essentially a virus – which brings us onto a further example of a body snatcher: the Nucleus of the Swarm from the subsequent year’s The Invisible Enemy. Similar to Finney’s “Pod People,” the Swarm’s only aim is to survive.

That, too, is a common trait… not that it’s exclusively a good-intentioned thing.

In Mindwarp (1986), Lord Kiv wanted to outlive his current form as a Mentor, but shed no tears at the expense of others, firstly having his brain implanted in another and once that was outgrown, moving his consciousness to Peri, sporting a newly-shaved head. Prisoner Zero, in 2010′s The Eleventh Hour, was prepared to sacrifice not just those whose images he had used but also the entire planet – simply because if it were to die, “let there be fire.”

Similarly malicious, the Slitheen demonstrated their ruthlessness by using a compression field to slim down into the skins of those they killed in 2005′s Aliens of London/ World War Three. In Boom Town, writer Russell T. Davies let us mull over nature-versus-nurture when Blon Fel Fotch Pasameer-Day Slitheen is given a second chance at life – only after she has realised how accustomed she has become to her human environs. Mind you, she still planned to set a nuclear power plant to destroy Wales.

The Resemblance is Uncanny

Not all aliens enslave our minds and/or bodies, though. Some just look like us, or, in some cases, exhibit what our future might hold.

Mechanical beings that hope to replicate humans appear in The Android Invasion (1975), Androids of Tara (1978), Let’s Kill Hitler (2011), and 2014′s Deep Breath and Robot of Sherwood.

But why do they scare us?

It boils down to an essentially Freudian theory of the “Uncanny,” something familiar yet alien, sometimes associated with cognitive dissonance – that is, anxiety caused from contracting beliefs or ideas in an individual. This generally causes humans to reject or be repulsed by the uncanny. Though it was expanded upon by Sigmund Freud, it was firstly explored by German psychiatrist, Ernst Jentsch, who explained that, in story terms, the uncanny creates effects “to leave the reader in uncertainty whether a particular figure in the story is a human being or an automaton and to do it in such a way that his attention is not focused directly upon his uncertainty, so that he may not be led to go into the matter and clear it up immediately.”

Freud’s example was “the idea of being robbed of one’s eyes” – which is certainly the matter with the Half Face Man, who declares that he “has bad eyes” and thus needs them replaced!

It was further specified by Japanese robotocist, Masahiro Mori as ‘Uncanny Valley,’ linking emotional response to anthropomorphism of a robot, varying depending on movement. He hypothesised that the more life-like and visually similar to a human something not living appears, the greater our negativity towards it.

It might be because they appear halfway between life and death; it might be because they remind us of all those sinister stories about an A.I. overthrowing the human race.

It’s certainly one reason the Cybermen are scary. Neil Gaiman, writer of 2013′s Nightmare in Silver, said:

“I looked at The Moonbase [Cybermen] and they have this weird, impassive, uncanny valley thing of just the two eyes and the mouth, in the position they would be on a human face. It’s just really unsettling, and I wanted that… It’s that effect we’re going for – a very simple circular eye, a slash for the mouth, and they are where they are on a human face. Don’t get creative, because the more creative you get, the more we lose the uncanny valley. And for me there is that wonderful uncanny valley of how little it takes to make you go ‘This is a face’. It just takes two eyes in the right place and proportion, and a little mouth. And it’s absolutely impassive, which makes it really scary.”

Associations with negative experiences perhaps account for our repulsion of 1967′s The Faceless Ones (the unprocessed Chameleons left with burnt-like faces, devoid of features after an explosion on their home planet), and The Empty Child/ The Doctor Dances (2005), with gas-mask ‘zombies’ during the Second World War.

A Reflection of Us

Even more frightening are the serials that reveal something grim either ingrained in our DNA or that we grow into.

The Doctor Who team were brave enough to view us in a less than favourable light very early on: 1964′s The Aztecs mainly focused on the morals of changing time, but the plot was particularly dark with repeated talk of sacrifices and hierarchy. Even though it was presented in a comical fashion, the following Season’s four-part serial, The Romans portrayed the ruthless times, laced with even darker undertones, where slavery and poverty was rife, and murder was easy.

Likewise, Planet of the Ood (2008) notes that, where there’s profit, there’s an ambiguous morality. Quite aside from those selling the Ood, people blindly buying into ignorance are definitely guilty of ignoring the plea of slaves.

Doctor Who has sowed the seeds of doubt, not just in the human race in general but also our heroes: the Doctor is immediately cold and bitter, not afraid to potentially kill a caveman with a rock in An Unearthly Child.

Throughout the Third Doctor era, officials are ruthless and often immoral. The Mutants (1972) is a great example of this, and ably demonstrates the hostility we may feel towards aliens once we venture into space.

Elsewhere, we are heartless in our pursuits of extending our life, whether this be through sacrificing those we love (The Lazarus Experiment) or torturing the innocent, an act so appalling we force ourselves to forget it (The Beast Below). Those instincts are studied in the final serial of Classic Who, Survival, which hopes we can overcome our primal urges, the Doctor commenting that “if we fight like animals, we die like animals!”

J. G. Ballard’s High Rise is often cited as inspiration for Paradise Towers (1987) – they even both feature a luxurious swimming pool on the top floor! The former is a very visceral, threatening examination of devolution, and the latter, while not quite capturing the same mood, nonetheless puts across the general atmosphere of unease and distrust.

Right from the get-go, Doctor Who has sowed the seeds of doubt, not just in the human race in general but also our heroes: the Doctor is immediately cold and bitter, not afraid to potentially kill a caveman with a rock in An Unearthly Child. The tensions between the original TARDIS crew were underlined in 1964′s The Edge of Destruction, which even saw Susan threatening Ian with a pair of scissors. It was a decision the production team regretted, but remains a brave move; none of them are in the right frame of mind, yet it still shows our capacity to lash out at our friends.

Monsters

“Human race,” the Master says in The Last of the Time Lords. “Greatest monsters of them all.”

It’s a sentiment we all occasionally feel: when we hear bad news, when we’re being philosophical, when someone misuses a semi-colon.

It’s rare we really think we’re the worst thing that’s ever happened to the Earth (even though that’s probably true), but Doctor Who is a long tale of the good and the bad. Humans have been blamed for atrocities but we can’t all be tarred with the same brush. Not all reflections of ourselves are bad: Listen (2014) tells us not to be afraid of being afraid, and 2007′s Gridlock shows how faith brings us all together; that not everything is as bad as it seems; that essentially, there’s always light at the end of the tunnel.

The Doctor is pretty quick to judge us anyway, but he’s not got the rosiest of pasts – as we’ll soon discover…

The post Hallowe’en Week: Self appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.