Christian Cawley's Blog, page 283

A Stirring Tribute to Doctor Who by the Queen’s Guard [VIDEO]

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.

Since it’s return to our screens EVERYONE seems to want a piece of Doctor Who and the British Army is no exception. The Beating Retreat is a military musical event that precedes the Trooping of the Colour in a ceremony to mark the monarch’s official birthday in June each year. And back in 2009 (how did we miss this one?!) it had a distinctly timey-wimey flavour…

A full rendition of the Gold version of our beloved show’s theme, including the chorus! The military tone and drum beats really show off what a spectacular piece of music Ron Grainer gave us back then – equal to any John Williams score or military pomp.

According to Wikipedia (the Great Source of all Truth), the Beating Retreat was first used in the seventeenth century to call nearby patrols to their castle. And what better way to get them hot-footing it back to HQ than signalling that their favourite telly program is on!

Could this version be in the running for the opening titles? What’s your favourite version of the theme and who would you like to hear perform it? Tell us below!

The post A Stirring Tribute to Doctor Who by the Queen’s Guard [VIDEO] appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

Doctor Who Magazine 470 Recalls Matt Smith Era

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.

The new issue of Doctor Who Magazine is out now, and looks back on Matt Smith’s four years as the Doctor.

“A big part of me wanted to stay because it’s a wonderful job and he’s a wonderful character. My life will never be the same. I’ll never play another part quite like this…”

Also in this issue:

Model-maker extraordinaire Mike Tucker and members of the Model Unit talk exclusively to DWM about creating the visual effects for Doctor Who in 1980s.
Doctor Who‘s new executive producer Brian Michin writes exclusively for DWM in Production Notes.
A detailed look at the Fact of Fiction of 1980′s Meglos.
The Blood of Azrael – the first part of a new comic strip adventure for the Doctor and Clara.

The Time Team welcome Donna aboard the TARDIS as they watch Partners in Crime.
A preview of the recently rediscovered The Web of Fear on DVD.
A review of the newly released Moonbase DVD from Matthew Sweet.
Jacqueline Rayner debates the ethics of telling the truth to her children in Relative Dimensions.
The Watcher his favourite Doctor Who planets, and outs another helpless supporting artiste in Wotcha!.
Reviews of the latest DVDs, CDs and books.
Competitions, puzzles, and much more!

DWM 470 is on sale from Thursday 6 February 2014, priced £4.99.

The post Doctor Who Magazine 470 Recalls Matt Smith Era appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

Ian Levine Releases Trailer For Missing Episode Animations [VIDEO]

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.

In recent years we’ve grown used to incomplete stories being released on DVD with animated versions of any missing episodes, but there are also a number of fans using their skills to produce their own unofficial adaptations.

Long-term fan and former producer’s consultant Ian Levine has now made public a lengthy trailer for his animations of a number of stories. Interestingly he has cast his net quite wide in his selections, including not just episodes missing from the archives but also one that wasn’t completed (Shada) and some that were just mooted or dropped for whatever reason without ever going into production.

It’s fair to say the examples on show are a mixed bunch. Shada, with well-realised Krargs and a very fruity-sounding Tom Baker, is a particular highlight and The Evil of the Daleks and The Daleks’ Master Plan are none the worse for using a somewhat stylised approach. Elsewhere there are some familiar voices to be heard, though we won’t spoil the surprise here.

Levine stresses in his introduction that no infringement of copyright is intended and accepts that full versions may never be broadcast or released, but you never know…

What do you think? Would you like to see full versions available?

The post Ian Levine Releases Trailer For Missing Episode Animations [VIDEO] appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

Stuart Fell Recalls Classic Doctor Who Stuntwork

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.

Doctor Who has never been short on things blowing up and hapless characters falling, fighting or flying through the air! An interview with Who stalwart Stuart Fell sheds some light on what it was like working as a member of HAVOC, the stunt team who made up much of UNIT’s numbers when there were dramatic deaths and action scenes were called-for.

Broadcaster Bob Fischer and freelance academic Andrew T. Smith interviewed Mr Fell as part of their time-team style journey through all 295 episodes of Last of the Summer Wine – the geriatric comedy spanning an impressive 21 years. That’s the kind of obsessive dedication that we Who fans can respect!

From electrician to Paratrooper to medieval Jester, Fell recounts his career and how he got into television stunt work. After catching the eye of comedian Ronnie Barker for his versatility and problem-solving approach, Fell was recruited by HAVOC and appeared in numerous episodes of Doctor Who throughout the 70s and 80s including a stint as a Sontaran.

They gave me some work on Doctor Who, and after that I never looked back. Doctor Who used to work nine months of the year, and I didn’t mind playing monsters. A lot of actors didn’t like playing them, because their faces were covered!

When asked what stunts particularly stood out over the whole of his career, one involving a hovercraft and a Time Lord in a hurry came to mind…

 

 

Take a look. It’s a lovely perspective on working in TV from one of the unsung heroes of tea-time thrills!

(Via Summer Winos | GIF found at http://www.thatchickensite.com/letters/hovercraft/)

 

The post Stuart Fell Recalls Classic Doctor Who Stuntwork appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

Three Great Twelfth Doctor Fan Creations

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.

One of the absolute greatest things about Doctor Who‘s fans is the vast amount of creativity the fandom possesses. From the beginnings of the show, through helping to sustain the fandom during the “wilderness years,” and helping to augment the NuWho revival, the fan creations of Whovians around the world have played an instrumental role in the success the show now enjoys.

One creative outlet that fans have used has been art based on the different incarnations of the Doctor. These increase in popularity as new costumes are unveiled or a new Doctor is announced. Fortunately for those of us who enjoy fan creations, we recently received a freshly regenerated Doctor, with a fantastic new costume, in the form of the Twelfth Doctor, Peter Capaldi.

Three terrific creations have popped up online in the wake of Capaldi’s costume reveal, and dear reader, they are too good not to share!

The first of which comes from the folks at Springfield Punx, who are well-known for reimagining other characters in the style of the Simpsons. Behold the Twelfth Doctor, Simpsons style!:

Next on the agenda is from CraftyIsCool’s Allison Hoffman. If you’ve fancied the opportunity to knit your own Peter Capaldi, you may want to check out the pattern available for her latest creation:

And last, but certainly not least, if you’ve enjoyed the YouTube series, Doctor Puppet (and be honest, who doesn’t lurve them some Doctor Puppet!), you’ll be excited to know that Alisa Stern has unveiled the Twelfth Doctor puppet (adventures to come at a later date):

What do you think? Do you have a favourite? Share with us down below!

The post Three Great Twelfth Doctor Fan Creations appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

Capaldi’s Costume’s Crombie & Doc Marten Confusion

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.

Stop what you’re doing! This is it. Eclipsing any possible missing episode rumours, casting announcements, returning villains: the biggest news story of the year. The BBC incorrectly identified the Twelfth Doctor’s shoes as Doc Martens!

Not only that but there’s some issue with his jacket, described extensively as a Crombie.

But credit wear it’s due (see what I did there?), the BBC owned up to their mistake:

The new boots worn by the Doctor are not Dr. Martens as our expert costume department believed they were but he may wear them in the future.

— Doctor Who Official (@bbcdoctorwho) January 31, 2014

The boots in question were actually made by the British Boot Company, which was founded in 1951. Nick “The Boot” Roumana, who owns the independent company, said:

We get a lot of visitors from France and Germany, all over, and they love the fact that the shop and the boots we sell in it are truly and archetypally English.

They do add a bit of ‘punk’ to Capaldi’s potentially-dark Doctor, as highlighted by the Beeb’s accompanying copy which called the Doc’s new look as “rebel Time Lord.” The Telegraph said the BBC  ”boo-booed big time” – which did make me laugh – but in an otherwise good article specified that the jacket isn’t particularly a Crombie:

First, the coat. It was named by the BBC as a Crombie – which can refer to either a style of coat cut in Crombie cloth, or a coat made by Crombie itself. According to Crombie, the coat Capaldi is wearing in this picture was not made by them – although, confusingly, it has provided several coats to the BBC’s costume department for the new series. These are likely to be its “Retro’’ style, which cost £795 off the rack in black – although to get one in dark, dark blue, and made to measure to yours and the Doctor’s exact specifications would cost £1,600. Expect these own-brand Crombies to be worn either by stunt-doubles or Capaldi as the series goes on.

Instead, the newspaper’s Luke Leitch reckons it’s from Paul Smith – because Capaldi frequently shop there.

I can’t believe the BBC made such a huuuuuuuuuge error. I’m surprised The Daily Mail hasn’t put this on their front page.

I’m switching to ITV.

The post Capaldi’s Costume’s Crombie & Doc Marten Confusion appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

Ben Wheatley Talks Doctor Who Series 8

Danny_Weasel 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.

Everybody relax, it looks like the first episodes of Doctor Who Series 8 are in good hands with director Ben Wheatley. The rising Brit director of Sightseers, Kill List and the spectacular A Field in England has recently been doing quite a bit of talking about being behind the lens for the arrival of Doctor number twelve, Peter Capaldi.

The director, it seems, grew up with Doctor Who, specifically the Hinchcliffe era of the Tom Baker years and was responsible for making the first move to be involved in the show.

It was something I sought out. I got my agent to kind of badger them about doing, because I was a fan as a kid. But also because my kid was a fan of the show and I wanted to make something that he could see, for a change. That was it. And it’s been very geeky indeed.

Directing both the first and second episodes of the new series as we speak, he has his work cut out for him thanks to the notoriously tight schedules for filming, but still seems to be having a whale of a time doing it.

It’s very tiring and it’s a lot of stuff to do very quickly.  Peter Capaldi is excellent and I’ve been able to go into the TARDIS and do all this stuff I always dreamt of doing as a nine year old.  So I’m in the process right now of achieving my childhood dreams.

Unsurprisingly, given his output so far, he is eager to see a return to a darker Doctor citing his love for his Doctor growing up, Tom Baker, and the more gothic episodes they produced.

Generally it’s dark, it’s always been dark. Even in the more modern ones. If you look at the Tom Baker stuff, it’s especially dark. When he leaves Leela — who’s a very beloved assistant — he just laughs after it. There’s none of the [breaking down and crying]. He just laughs, and “on to the next one,” you know…It seems to me the episodes that we’re doing now seem more like classic Who. We’re going back to that style. But you’ll have to wait and see.

So what do you think, would a return to the darker Doctor be a good thing, do you think Wheatley is the right man for the job and if not who would you like to see take the reins for an episode or two? Speak up into the space below and let us hear your thoughts.

(Via Collider and io9.com)

The post Ben Wheatley Talks Doctor Who Series 8 appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

Could Missing Doctor Who Dalek Episodes Have Been Screened In Taiwan?

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.

Could a letter from US Sergeant hold the key to finding the much coveted lost Second Doctor serial The Power of the Daleks?

Doctor Who Worldwide – with a hat tip to The Consulting Detective – reports that contributor Will Barber-Taylor received a tip from The Cult Box from a man who was in contact with a US Armed Forces Sergeant in 1984.

The Sergeant, who was stationed in the Far East at the end of the Vietnam War, and had spent a considerable amount of time in South Korea, Japan (Okinawa), and, more importantly Taiwan, recalled that he’d seen episodes in ‘black and white’ and that at least one episode had featured the Daleks.

He also added that the Doctor for these stories was ‘the guy who looked like Moe (of the Three Stooges)’

What’s interesting about the USAF Sergeants recollections is the possibility that lost episodes may have been aired as part of the Armed Forces Network – the sergeant couldn’t recall if the episodes had been aired on the AFN – but if the episodes did air on AFN Taiwan, it throws open the possibility that the BBC, like they have in other countries, bicycled the episodes between various countries due to the finite amount of programming available for the AFN.

Taking this line of enquiry further Doctor Who Worldwide speculates the episodes that were couriered in this fashion from Asia could have been the ones discovered by Tombraider Philip Morris in Singapore and Nigeria.

While it goes some length to explain why some of the batches of episodes never made it back to their country of origin or why some are missing from those same batches – the episodes could have been supplied to AFN or copied by ABC for the AFN in Taiwan and then the episodes were swapped around various countries.

Regardless, there seems to be an untapped line of enquiry in Taiwan.

Back in December news emerged of Doctor Who fan and lost episode hunter Ian Levine’s quest to unearth missing episodes to Taiwan – where, alas, he was only able to find episodes that had previously been recovered, such as The Dominators episodes 2 and 3 and The Seeds of Death episode 2.

The full list of found episodes included:

The Enemy of the World 6
The Keys of Marinus 6
The Krotons 3
The Ambassadors of Death 1 & 3
The Seeds of Death 2
The Dominators 2 & 3
The War Games 1 & 2

While these finds were noteworthy, what is interesting is the spread of episodes across the Doctors incarnations. Perhaps indicating that they were just a selection of the episodes floating about Asia between the AFN’s.

One flaw in this burgeoning theory is this quote from Eric Loveman, who worked for AFNT Radio at various intervals during the late 1960’s early 1970’s:

“AFNT was just radio. [We weren't allowed a TV station,] the speculation was that the local government didn’t want us competing with the two local TV stations”

However Doctor Who Worldwide countered:

“Jon Preddle meanwhile over at BroaDWcast suggests their broadcast had been “blocked” in 1976 and the episodes existed as part of a package gifted freely to the American Forces, which may suggest the normal groups and chains may not apply. What this package comprised of is unknown, nor whether these were new prints or sent from elsewhere…”

So a new venture with nebulous routes or an interesting footnote in the ongoing search for lost Doctor Who episodes?

(Via Doctor Who Worldwide)

The post Could Missing Doctor Who Dalek Episodes Have Been Screened In Taiwan? appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

Unmissable Doctor Who T-Shirts On Offer At TeeFury Today!

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

Hey Kasterborites, don’t miss these great Doctor Who t-shirts, on offer today for just $11 (plus shipping) from TeeFury!

As part of the weekly TwoFury Tuesday, customers can order either or both shirts. “Doctor Rockwell” (left) is by Creative Outpouring while “The Oncoming Storm” has been designed by jhimmelman.

What’s more, each shirt comes with a Gallifreyan translator! Head to TeeFury forthwith to grab your tees at these awesome prices – you have until midnight tonight!

 

The post Unmissable Doctor Who T-Shirts On Offer At TeeFury Today! appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

Doctor Who Forum Update – Operation Golden Age!

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.

A quick note to all of those who post in or read the Kasterborous Doctor Who Forum – I’ve retrieved a couple of the older boards from the archive!

For the uninformed, the old forum was put on ice while we switched to new software some months ago. Now that the new forum software has bedded in, the older boards – dating back to 2007 – are now safe to return home.

Added so far are the Land of fan fiction board, along with the entire General Chat category that features discussion on music and other TV shows.

Unlike some other forums we’re happy for you to reopen older threads, and in the coming weeks hope to have our original Doctor Who board restored to the forum.

Our forum is becoming increasingly popular and you can keep up with discussions using the “Popular in the forum right now:” sidebar widget, just to the right of this update.

The post Doctor Who Forum Update – Operation Golden Age! appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.