Christian Cawley's Blog, page 291

Free Classic Doctor Who Games Now Online!

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.

If you’re feeling sad about the news of Doctor Who: Worlds in Time‘s demise why not journey back in to a time when life was simpler, there were only four TV channels to choose from and ’mobile gaming’ meant a good game of British Bulldogs or ‘three and you’re in’?

Doctor Who games from the 1980s and 1990s can now be downloaded courtesy of the TOSEC project (The Old School Emulation Centre). If you download a Spectrum emulator you can enjoy The Key to Time, or with the Commodore 64 version you get stuck into Doctor Who and the Mines of Terror and Dalek Attack, all free of charge. Spectrum and Commodore 64 are names to get all dreamily nostalgic about if you’re over 35 or so. For others, probably not so much.

What do you think? A fun bit of retro game play? Or is gaming all about the future?

Incidentally, we’ll be telling you a bit more about Kasterborous Magazine #2 later today, an issue dedicated to Doctor Who video games! Stay tuned…

(Via Life, Doctor Who & Combom.)

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Billie Piper at Awesome Con D.C.

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.

Rose Tyler is headed for a place more awesome than Raxacoricofallapatorius and the Medusa Cascade combined: Awesome Con! Held in Washington D.C. on April 18-20, Billie Piper will be making her first-ever east coast USA appearance there! She will appear on Saturday 19th and Sunday 20th only (almost exactly three months from now!).

It will be a great chance to ask her great questions like which Doctor was her favorite (Ninth, Tenth, Eleventh, or War?) to work with, how Pete and Jackie are getting along these days in the alternate universe, and if Rose was related to Dr. Tyler in The Three Doctors?

Billie joins a very cool list of film and TV guests including Cary Elwes (Princess Bride, Psych), Peter Mayhew (Star Wars), Ernie Hudson (Ghostbusters), Nicholas Brendon (Buffy), and the still-stunning Erin Gray (Buck Rogers). Many other guests are slated to appear, including several cartoon voice actors and at least two Power Rangers!

Prices range from $30 (one-day) to $60 (weekend pass) for the basic tickets. Full tickets prices, guest list, directions, and information can be found on the Awesome Con website HERE.

With a name like Awesome, it has to be good!

(Via Awesome Con D.C..)

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Doctor Who: The Moonbase Animation Sample [VIDEO]

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.

With the January 20th release date almost upon us, the BBC have shared an animated clip from the forthcoming Doctor Who DVD release The Moonbase.

The clip is from the third episode of the Troughton serial which marked the second coming of the Cybermen. Only the second and fourth installments remain intact as aired originally on television. Thus, the BBC commissioned Planet 55 Studios to recreate the missing episodes from off the air soundtrack recordings. You may remember that the studio is also responsible for the wonderful animated reconstructions that appeared on the recent Tenth Planet and Reign of Terror releases.

Based on the released clip, the animation appears to be top-notch and somehow manages to make the early Cybermen even creepier than their live action counterparts; that may be just me, though! So fellow Whovian’s, what do you think about the quality of the animation on The Moonbase? Will you be picking this up?

UK readers can order the DVD from Amazon for just £13.97. Meanwhile American fans can get their copy of The Moonbase from Amazon for $22.48.

(With thanks to Joe)

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Get Your Second Dalek Competition Token in Doctor Who Adventures!

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.

An unmissable opportunity for young fans is available courtesy of Doctor Who Adventures as the magazine gives them the chance to win their very own life-size Dalek!

To enter, readers must collect three tokens, with the current issue 337 containing the second token. Token three will be in issue 338, on sale on 29 January until 11 February 2014. Don’t panic if you missed the first token, as a bonus one will be printed in issue 339, on sale 12 February.

Doctor Who Adventures magazine editor Moray Laing says: “We know that our readers love monsters – and the Daleks are a particular favourite, so we’re really pleased that we’re able to give one away. It’s a big prize for one lucky reader! Please note, the competition isn’t open to Cybermen or Davros…’

The latest issue also contains a fact-packed feature about the Cybermen – and readers are invited to vote for the deadliest Cyberman design.

You may not have won a real Dalek, but what Doctor Who prizes can you boast about?

Issue 337, on sale from 15 – 28 January 2014, priced at £2.99. The issue comes with a free sonic screwdriver – just what the Doctor ordered!

The post Get Your Second Dalek Competition Token in Doctor Who Adventures! appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

Doctor Who Prop Materialises in Sherlock’s Flat!

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.

Viewers have speculated about it in online forums and fan fiction but we now have confirmation that the Doctor and Sherlock Holmes have met. Not only that, but the Time Lord seemingly palms off his old junk on the great detective.

The Doctor’s sheet music from the Tennant era special mini-episode Music of the Spheres, filmed for the 2008 Doctor Who Prom, has found a new home in the 221B Baker Street set of BBC1′s Sherlock. The hit reinvention of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic stories, which has just finished its third series, features a fairly traditional representation of the sleuth’s Baker Street flat, full of clutter collected in a career solving crimes (a 360 degree view of which you can see here).

In comments which one imagines he won’t want to repeat to Scotland Yard, Production Designer Arwel Wyn Jones confesses he ‘may have stolen’ the item from the Doctor Who shelves at BBC Cardiff…

Listen to ‘Sherlock’s 221B Set – Sheet Music’ on Audioboo

Any ideas as to other items belonging to the Doctor that Sherlock might fancy for his flat?

(Via DavidTennantOnTwitter)

 

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Moffat Defends Plot Hole Criticism

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.

Aha! The thick is plottening… Who’s lead writer has given an insight into the mechanics behind the storylines. Last Monday, the Moff went on Chris Evans’s Breakfast show to discuss Sherlock, writing and plot-holes.

The veteran broadcaster and ex-hubby to one Billie Piper asked to what extent writers need to “seal up” any plot holes such as those pointed out in the press. Moff’s reply (above) is interesting.

I think people have come to think a plot hole is something which isn’t explained on screen. A plot hole is actually something that can’t be explained.

Sometimes you expect the audience to put two and two together for themselves. For Sherlock, and indeed Doctor Who, I’ve always made the assumption that the audience is clever.

The issue here is that a writer creates a world they ask the audience to believe in and when something impossible happens, it threatens our belief and might get called a “plot hole”. But of course some things go unexplained as deliberate mysteries and some things go unexplained as they’re part of the genre – is it a plot hole that time travel or dimensional transcendentalism is never clearly explained?

The traditional plot hole is where something couldn’t happen and looks like a writing mistake – something was supposed to happen at night but the sun was shining or someone was in one place and then suddenly turns up miles away. But that’s not the complaint leveled at recent Doctor Who. Moffat’s era from Smith’s debut up to the Time of the Doctor has been blessed and cursed with complexity. The usual complaint is that it’s too complicated for the casual viewer and Moff replies that there are pre-teens who are fully clued-up!

However I’ve got two niggling confusions that the Christmas special didn’t fully “explain” for me.

1)    Why were the Silence building TARDISes and what was one doing abandoned and disguised on top of Craig’s bungalow in The Lodger? And…

2)    Who was Prisoner Zero? How did he/she/it get on the other side of the crack and was there no more significance to him/her/it other than they knew of future events for the Doctor and he/she/it was *passing through*?…

I realise I may never know (but if any of you can explain me out of my misery, there’s good will and imaginary chocolates in it for you!) And as Moff says it’s not that either event was impossible – it’s just been left to us to fill in the gaps. But did the story perhaps imply that the gap would/ should have been filled in?

What do you think Kasterborites? Is it a writer’s *job* to make sure EVERYTHING is explained and upfront on screen? How much should the viewer roll with the unexplained and are there some things that seem so significant they really deserve a denouement? And how well were the plot threads of Matt Smith’s era tied up for you? Tell us below…

The post Moffat Defends Plot Hole Criticism appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

Roger Lloyd-Pack 1944-2014

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.

Kasterborous is sad to relate the passing of popular British actor Roger Lloyd-Pack, who was 69. Succumbing to pancreatic cancer just a few weeks short of his 70th birthday, the actor was well-known on TV screens in the UK as the character Trigger in Only Fools and Horses between 1982 and 2003. Lloyd-Pack was known to Doctor Who fans as the creator of the Cybermen in 2006 two-part serial Rise of the Cybermen/The Age of Steel (a clip from which you can see above).

As well as his most famous role (which he latterly described as “an albatross”), Roger Lloyd-Pack also played a memorable part in The Vicar of Dibley (farmer Owen Newitt, 1994-2007). Following his first appearance on TV in a 1965 episode of The Avengers, Lloyd-Pack can be found turning up in some of the most memorable shows of the 1960s, 70s and 80s, including a sinister turn as assassin Ramos in The Professionals (1978), and in both versions of Terry Nation’s Survivors, in 1976 and 2010.

He could also be spotted in notable movies such as The Naked Civil Servant (1975, opposite John Hurt), 2004′s Vanity Fair, 2005′s Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (as Bart Crouch Sr, father of David Tennant’s Barty Crouch Jr) and 2011′s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Lloyd-Pack was also an accomplished stage actor.

Lloyd-Pack was a campaigner for socialist issues, appearing on televised discussions and at local meetings, but withdrew support for the Labour Party in 2013 in favour of a genuinely socialist movement.

He is survived by his wife, Jehane Markham, a daughter (actress Emily Lloyd) and three sons.

Our sister site Cult Britannia currently features five more memorable Roger Lloyd-Pack moments.

The post Roger Lloyd-Pack 1944-2014 appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

Take a look at “Doctor Who 8-Bit Beta”

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.

Taking the lead from the 50th Anniversary 8-bit Google Doodle or ‘Whodle’; the world of Doctor Who has once again been rendered in the pixelated perfection that is 8 bit graphics in Doctor Who 8 Bit Adventure – a new app currently undergoing Beta testing on Android via Google Play.

And what’s more, Wee Beasts Studios, the company behind the game which sees the Tenth Doctor side-scroll his way through the intentionally blocky universe with just his wits and a Sonic Screwdriver to outsmart his deadliest foes, are currently looking for anyone with knowledge of Graphical, Audio, and GML Coding to get the game finished.

This isn’t the first time the Doctor has been render in glorious 8-bits; Dalek Attack, the 1992 game released on the PC, Spectrum, Commodore 64, Amiga, Atari ST, saw numerous Doctors take on a horde of invading Daleks in this, the last of the Spectrum licensed games.

If you are interested in contributing to Doctor Who 8-Bit Adventure email: theweebeasts@gmail.com. You can install the current version of the game on your Android device via Google Play.

 

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The PodKast: Capaldi’s Costume, Hurt Rewrites & Missing Episodes!

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.

Wow, so much to get through in this week’s podKast, from Peter Capaldi’s first Doctor Who photoshoot to missing episodes – stopping off at the fascinating topic of “was John Hurt cast to replace Christopher Eccleston or not?” on the way.

The podKast team of Christian Cawley, Brian Terranova and James McLean have an interesting hour of discussion for you, and just because we love you, dear listener, we’ve left in a segment in which Christian and James BOTH dry up, with hilarious consequences!

We also have a nice collection of recommendations for you, from Wiffle Lever to Full by Bob Fischer to The Beginning from Big Finish.

Kasterborous PodKast Series 3 Episode 49 Shownotes

Peter Capaldi dressed as Matt Smith
Christopher Eccleston interested in Doctor Who return
John Hurt casting
Wiffle Lever to Full (Kindle)
Doctor Who: The Beginning

This week’s theme tune is “Docteur Qui”, a Bill Bailey-inspired arrangement by Dalekium, found at whomix.dalekbubbles.net.

Listen to the PodKast

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

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

Meanwhile you can use the player below to listen through Audioboo:

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

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

Incidentally, if you are listening on iTunes, please take the time to leave a rating and review and help us to bring in new listeners to the podKast!

The post The PodKast: Capaldi’s Costume, Hurt Rewrites & Missing Episodes! appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

Moffat Planned To Feature Peter Cushing’s Dr Who In Anniversary Special

Alex Skerratt 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.

Lovers and haters of the two Dalek movies from the 1960s will openly admit that Peter Cushing’s incarnation of the famous Time Lord presents something of a problem in the Doctor Who canon. In his widescreen outings, Cushing plays a mad inventor called Dr Who, whose latest invention inadvertently whisks a group of unwillingly passengers into the time vortex where they experience adventures almost identical to the William Hartnell stories The Daleks and The Dalek Invasion of Earth.

Over the decades, many theories have been put forward in an attempt to legitimise Peter Cushing’s place in the Doctor Who universe. Was he an incarnation of the Time Lord from a parallel dimension? Or was he a future version of the Doctor forced to revisit some of his most dangerous exploits as part of a maniacal scheme concocted by the Celestial Toymaker?

Thankfully, Doctor Who‘s head writer has come forward with an intriguing new theory that might just calm a few nerves! Speaking in the current edition of Doctor Who Magazine, Steven Moffat reveals:

“When I started writing The Day of the Doctor I knew I wanted every Doctor to make some sort of appearance… But what about Peter Cushing? Now I love those movies… but they don’t exactly fit with the rest of the show, do they? … You remember that line, in the Black Archive, when Kate is explaining about the need to screen the Doctor’s known associates… She wasn’t supposed to be looking at the Vortex Manipulator – originally she was walking past the posters for the two Peter Cushing movies. In my head, in the Doctor’s universe those films exist as distorted accounts of his adventures… Sadly we couldn’t afford the rights to the posters.”

It would have been great to see. In a 50th anniversary year that saw a new Doctor, a new regeneration cycle, a mass return of missing episodes and an appearance from Tom Baker, a canonised Cushing would have been the cherry on the cake!

Alas, it wasn’t to be. The debate must rage on.

At least until the price of those posters comes down…

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