Christian Cawley's Blog, page 33

The Working Angels: What is it Like to be A Doctor Who Monster?

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.

If you’ve ever looked at a Dalek, Morbius monster or Zygon and thought ‘Christ, I bet it’s hot in there’ then, my friend, you’re already fifty percent of the way there to understanding the pain of being a Doctor Who monster.

Someone who turns their personal discomfort into our personal pleasure is  Louise-Marie Bowen, who has been sharing with BBC News just what it’s like to bring the iconic monster to life. In her time on Doctor Who, Bowen played a number of different monsters and filmed in the TARDIS, spaceships and in caves in Monmouthshire.

Bowen played a Weeping Angel when they made an appearance in the 2013 Christmas Special, The Time of the Doctor, with Matt Smith as the Eleventh Doctor, and of all the monsters she has portrayed, they were her favourites.

“It’s a very believable monster and one that everyone can relate to because we see them in our lives,” she said. “As a child, we’ve probably thought ‘what if that statue comes alive?’

“If you look at statues in graveyards, their posture is very upright, so I think they wanted to portray very angelic, quite beautiful statues but which have menace. So the girls who were hired were all dancers.”

However, playing a Weeping Angel meant an arduous day for the performer charged with bringing stone to life.

“It was fantastic, don’t get me wrong…You’re in a skirt that doesn’t move and you can only move your upper body.

“You’re on your feet for the best part of 15 hours a day, it takes two-and-a-half hours to get ready and then about one-and-a-half hours to get it all off again. So the crew goes home and I’ve got to stay another hour-and-a-half. But it’s great, it’s really good.”

So good in fact, they outrank all the other monsters in term of a visceral fan reaction that she has played.

“I’ve been a Silurian, a peg doll and a handbot,” she said. “But Weeping Angels are my favourite as you get most reaction – although peg dolls are very scary and as a child I was afraid of peg dolls and rag dolls.

“I once did a Doctor Who convention and dressed up as a peg doll and had to jump out and scare people, which was fantastic – I couldn’t do that as a Weeping Angel and connect with the real-life audience.

“But when I tell people I was a Weeping Angel they don’t believe me until I show them a photo – or they joke that I’ve got the best Halloween costume.”

 You can read more about the origins of the Weeping Angels and Bowen’s Doctor Who experiences over at BBC News.

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Mark Gatiss: Sherlock And Doctor Who Crossover will Happen ‘Over my Dead Body’

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.

Brace yourself fandom; basically it’s not happening.

Sherlock co-creator, writer and actor Mark Gatiss has dismissed any suggestion that one day, Peter Capaldi’s Doctor and Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock will team up.

Spreading a little Christmas misery, Gatiss told Entertainment Weekly that any ‘WhoLock’ crossover would happen ‘over my dead body’.

“I’m not being horrible but I just don’t see the point,” he said.

While his fellow writer and creator Steven Moffat has largely been in favour of a cross galaxy crossover, saying that it would be a ‘laugh’.

“I work with boring people on both shows,” joked Moffat during an interview with EW at Comic-Con this year. “I’d do it, ‘cause it’d be funny. It’d just be a laugh. But the rest of them, frankly, the grownups — ‘No, you can have too much sugar.’”

Gatiss remains resolute; the two programmes will never meet and it’s for a very specific reason.

“First of all, they are entirely different shows. But I think there’d be so much excitement among certain members of the fan community followed by massive disappointment that it wasn’t the version they had in their heads.

“And, just personally, I’ve never been [a] fan of these kind of mash-ups.”

So there, they’ll be no potential credibility-shedding banana skin for both shows (not to mention the impact time travel would have Sherlock’s canny deductions) but as long as there are creative fans who do want the pair to solve a universe hopping mystery, there will be outstanding creative work wowing both sets of fans and perhaps even melting the heart of one of the co-creators…

Sherlock: The Abominable Bride airs New Year’s Day on BBC One at 9pm and The Husbands of River Song airs Christmas Day on BBC One at 5.15pm.

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Hell Bent Overnight Ratings

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.

Despite being the series finale, Hell Bent only gained a slight increase in overnight ratings.

4.8 million viewers tuned in to see the culmination of the Doctor and Clara’s time together placing the show fifth overall for Saturday, behind Pointless Celebrities which had 5.5 million.

Hell Bent figure was slightly inflated by the late running of Strictly Come Dancing which was top for the day with 10.5 million watching. ITV managed 7.7 million for I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! which was ahead of The X Factor which had 6.8 million viewers.

The episode had a 21.5% share of the total television audience and an AI (Audience Appreciation Index) score of 82. For those not in the know, the AI is a measure of how much the audience enjoyed the programme. The score, out of a hundred, is compiled by a specially selected panel of around 5,000 people who go online and rate and comment on programmes.

But ‘don’t panic!’ as the highest AI score for that day was a repeat of Dad’s Army on BBC 2 which scored 88.

So looking at the whole of Series 9, the overall picture is:

The Magician’s Apprentice 4.58m (overnight) 6.54m (final) AI 84
The Witch’s Familiar 3.7m (overnight) 5.71m (final) AI 83
Under the Lake 3.7m (overnight) 5.63m (final) AI 84
Before the Flood 4.38m (overnight) 6.05m (final) AI 83
The Girl Who Died 4.85m (overnight) 6.56m (final) AI 82
The Woman Who Lived 4.34m (overnight) 6.11m (final) AI 81
The Zygon Invasion 3.87m (overnight) 5.76m (final) AI 82
The Zygon Inversion 4.13m (overnight) 6.03m (final) AI 84
Sleep No More 4.0m (overnight) 5.61m (final) AI 78
Face the Raven 4.42m (overnight) 6.05m (final) AI 84
Heaven Sent 4.51m (overnight) TBC (final) AI 80
Hell Bent 4.8m (overnight) TBC (final) AI 82

Conclusions to draw from this: well, they’re consistent which implies the core audience isn’t going anywhere. However, that decline from past heights and an apparent lack of new viewers tuning will undoubtedly be a concern to the powers that be.

Of course, new viewers need a fix air date too – preferably, if such things are available to choose, something earlier in the evening for younger viewers – if parents still believe the show is suitable for younger children, which is a whole other debate in and of itself.

In terms of the other experiment this season – the two-parter format – it’s interesting to see that the concluding part of each pair out-performed its preceding episode.

The bump in final figures is encouraging but, without any tool in place to measure how many of them are new viewers or simply fans trying to unpick each episode a second time around, it’s difficult to draw any major conclusions from it.

This and the out-performing second part might give a better impression of viewer habits; you can easily see an audience using the catch up iPlayer service to watch the first part before tuning into the concluding part – it makes you wonder why this wasn’t pushed in terms of marketing the show; perhaps in its own disingenuous and contradictory way, this would explain why the BBC were so keen to spoil everything in their official synopsis for each episode.

So now Series 9 has flown away in its own Diner shaped TARDIS what do we make of the overall ratings picture? Is there any cause for concern? Do audiences still think overnight ratings are important or do they only matted to those in charge? Is that a good thing? Do we want panicking execs? Who exactly is the core Doctor Who audience now?

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Play Along With the Doctor to ‘Clara’

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.

Clara! You’ve got me on my knees, Clara!  I’m begging darling please….

Guitarists have answered the call laid down by the Twelfth Doctor’s bit of fourth wall breaking strumming and have tabbed the heartbreaking ‘Clara’ song.

It’s been awhile since we’ve heard the sweet, sweet sound of strumming here at K towers – not since former editor Christian Cawley met a devil at a crossroad and sold his soul to the blues.

Ah, those were the days; not an evening would pass without him stood astride the twin K towers bellowing out a blistering, face melting rendition of Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Oh Well’ (scoring fan points for its inclusion in Spearhead from Space) while Blogtor Who threw shoes at him and told him to keep it down.

It’s all changed now, someone at K now plays the Bass; so its jazz funk fusion all night until Parliament make the Mothership Connection (scoring fan points for the reference in The Zygon Inversion to Dr. Funkenstein).

The guitarist in question, fan AbeLincolnFroman, has taken the time to transcribe the Doctor’s song “Clara”, which he played to say goodbye (again) to his longtime companion as she left him forever…sort of…

So if you can read tablature – a sort of bluffer’s guide to picking up songs by simply listing the position each finger is placed on a corresponding string by number; so E 2 would be the second fret on the E string – it’s a handy way to memorize songs, learn covers and a way to avoid learning to read music or playing by ear if you’re lazy.

Although if you are watching fingers, be warned, some bands like Queens of the Stone Age used to delight in showing clips in their music videos of their hands in completely the wrong positions (although if you are tabbing from a music video, you are asking for trouble.)

Which sort of implies that Peter Capaldi was playing live and not miming along with his hands in any old position; how awesome is that! Or that the guitarist mapped it by ear which makes you wonder why no one has done this before.

Still, now you can relive the worst day in the Doctors life again and again! You could even form your own Doctor Who themed bands! Although by government mandate you also have to learn this.

Don’t blame me, if you don’t like it, why don’t you write to…Parliament (nailed it).

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Alex Kingston: “The Doctor Has to be a Guy”

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.

As The General regenerated in Hell Bent so too did the debate on whether there could be a female Doctor.

Regardless of your opinion on The Generals change from male to female in a Doctor induced bout of face changing (That’s a whole other debate in itself) – personally, it worked right up to the point where Moffat threw in a couple of jokey lines: surely this must have happened in at least once in the whole of the Time Lords existence? Why would they still be shocked about it? Surely a simple ‘Sir…Madam’ line to cover the initial shock (and let’s face it, the Time Lords are both masters of time and decorum – they wouldn’t get flustered on principle) would have sufficed – but, anyway, it’s another sign that the issue isn’t going to go away.

One person who isn’t keen on changing the gender of the Doctor is Alex Kingston.

“It’s difficult – I would imagine that, if anything, the [next] Doctor might be of a different race than gender,” she told Digital Spy. “I can’t imagine, myself personally, the Doctor being a different gender. I just think that too many men have played that role.”

Elaborating, she added that: “if one goes back historically, ​Doctor Who ​has been a little boys’ show.”

“Women are going to hate me for this!” she laughed. “But I do think the Doctor has to be a guy – I do. Though it might be very interesting for River if it was a woman!”

As much as one can gender as show, Doctor Who has skewered more towards male audience members but gender is a lot more fluid than demographics suggest – as much as you may tailor a show towards a specific gender, it doesn’t follow that they’ll be the sole viewer, so it doesn’t really hold any water to site historical precedent of a ‘boy only’ club – and in fact, I’m not even sure this is true any more – to keep a male lead.

It’s a little beyond our and Alex’s remit to decide whether young boys can identify more or less with a female lead – if we are sticking with the idea that the show is mostly for young boys – but it’s an interesting idea to explore.

It’s just going to take someone with a hell of a lot of chutzpah to start experimenting with gender in hero worship on a prime time, historically viable Saturday night show – that’s not to say it won’t happen, but you can understand the trepidation.

That said, Doctor Who is nothing if not fearless…

One idea perhaps not up for exploration is the race of the Doctor – if she was worried about the ire of female Doctor Who fans, it’s probably not best to start throwing canon destroying words around for a lark – although, it’s probably not fair to ask a prominent guest star to wade into such a delicate debate and to make her contribution as entertaining as possible at the same time, but such is the nature of the beast.

River will return this Christmas in The Husbands of River Song – pairing her and Peter Capaldi’s Twelfth Doctor together for the first time – on Christmas Day at 5.15pm on BBC One.

 

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Jenna Coleman Reflects on her Time with the Doctors

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.

Clara’s time with the Doctor is well and truly over… Probably. Okay, so I had to be careful not to say her time in the TARDIS is up, but still, she’s likely out of Doctor Who for good. Proper this time.

She’s played Clara (or splinters of her) since 2012 and was announced as the new companion in May of that year, so what does she think of her time on the show.

Being the considerate organisation that they are, the BBC gave her just over 30 seconds to reflect on adventures in time and space. Uhm, yes. Less than a minute to talk about the Ice Warriors, the Great Intelligence, Starship Alaska, the 50th anniversary, numerous Doctors, a couple of Christmases, Akhaten, Zygons, the Raven, and ghosts. You spoil us, ambassador.

Never cruel nor cowardly: it’s Clara Oswald.

What did you think of her time on the show? What was her best series? Or her best story? Let us know below.

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The Churchill Years Vol 1 Coming in January [TRAILER]

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.

After Christmas, what do we do? KBO, of course, Keep Buggering On!

Yep, the continued adventures of Winston Churchill, played by Ian McNiece, are chronicled by Big Finish, with Volume One of The Churchill Years. The boxset is released in Januray 2016, and tells four stories from Churchill’s viewpoint – opposite the Ninth, Tenth, and Eleventh Doctors as part of the audio company’s NuWho license.

The tales also star Danny Horn as Kazran Sardick from 2010’s brilliant festive special, A Christmas Carol, and Holly Earl as Lily Arwell from the following year’s The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe.

Featuring a distinguished guest-cast, including Emily Atack, Michael Gould, Derek Riddell, Phil Mulryne, Jo Stone-Fewings, Amerjit Deu, Stewart Scudamore, Alistair Petrie, Laura Rogers, Carolyn Seymour, John Banks and Nicholas Briggs, Doctor Who: The Churchill Years Volume 1 is available to pre-order today for just £20 on CD or Download. It’s exclusive to the Big Finish website until 31st March 2016.

Listen to the trailer above, and here’s the synopsis:

The Oncoming Storm by Phil Mulryne

Late 1939. Britain faces the might of Germany. Winston Churchill serves as First Lord of the Admiralty. But Churchill soon finds himself facing a more immediate threat than the looming Nazi menace. A ‘Stone’ with the most mysterious properties is discovered in the Thames’ sands, and soon oddly spoken soldiers are creeping round London ruthlessly trying to acquire it. Who are they? Can Churchill and his new secretary Hetty Warner defeat them? And what about the man in the battered leather jacket that Hetty meets? Churchill feels sure they can rely on the Doctor to help them! Except that this Doctor seems to want to stay hidden in the shadows…

Hounded by Alan Barnes

In the dark days of 1941, Britain is in the midst of war. Churchill must stand strong against the might of the enemy – but he is plagued by a darkness in his own psyche. Something he calls ‘the Black Dog’.

Can a visiting Swami hold the answer to his troubles? And can Hetty Warner prevent the Prime Minister’s adversaries from taking advantage of the situation?

Across London, the Tenth Doctor’s arrival may be the nation’s only hope – but the Time Lord’s plan to help his friend is endangered when he finds himself declared a traitor by the agents of the country he has come to protect…

Living History by Justin Richards

Finally given the chance to travel in the TARDIS, Winston Churchill cannot resist the opportunity of meeting Julius Caesar. But the trip does not go quite as planned. With the TARDIS gone, and Churchill stranded in ancient Britain with a young man he barely knows and who comes from the future, it seems things can hardly get any worse.

Until he is captured by the invading Romans.

Still, at least that means Churchill will meet Julius Caesar after all. But then Churchill learns of the Bronze God, feared and worshipped by the Ancient Britons. A god that he recognises as anything but divine when he meets it.

The Chartwell Metamorphosis by Ken Bentley

Comfortably retired to his home at Chartwell, Churchill plans to live out his days in peace, in the company of his butterflies – if his attendants would just leave him alone.

But it isn’t simply Lepidoptera breeding in the gardens, as a far more sinister species is about to emerge from its cocoon – and is ready to feast on something more than just the shrubberies.

Surrounded on all sides, the former Prime Minister must put a life’s worth of experience into action in order to win the day. Can his new nurse Lily Arwell offer her assistance?

A special New Series bundle is also available for purchase from their site, comprising Doctor Who: The Churchill Year Volume 1 along with The Diary of River Song: Series 1 and Doctor Who: Classic Doctors, New Monsters.

The NuWho stories began with UNIT: Extinction, continued in Jago & Litefoot & Strax, and then with this month’s The War Doctor Volume 1: Only the Monstrous.

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A Closer Look at the New Sonic Screwdriver!

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.

Woo! The Sonic Sunglasses seem to have disappeared, replaced by the one and only sonic screwdriver!

Well, I say ‘one and only'; as we all know, it’s the same software, with a different case – so that’s it’s seventh major redesign.

The previous sonic was given to the Doctor in The Eleventh Hour (2010) by the TARDIS, and lasted until this year’s opener, The Magician’s Apprentice/ The Witch’s Familiar (2015), the Twelfth Doctor then abandoning it after throwing it to a young Davros. That model was the longest-serving, having served alongside the Doctor on Trenzalore.

He then converted to ‘wearable technology’ in the form of the sonic sunglasses, which divided fandom – but then, so does the screwdriver, so frankly, the production team can’t win!

But we saw last night that Peter Capaldi’s incarnation of the Time Lord was granted a new one – finally! – by the TARDIS too.

In the above video, Capaldi introduces the new device, and we get a brief look at the blueprints for the model.

The screwdriver will be back at Christmas in The Husbands of River Song – while Rover will seemingly have a sonic trowel. No, really.

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BBC Store Releases A Beginner’s Guide to Doctor Who Bundle

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.

Which stories would you recommend to someone who wanted to get into Doctor Who for the first time? It’s okay; you can take some time to think about it… Tricky one, eh?

The folks at BBC Store have been putting together their own list (or as they put it ‘curating a very special collection’) of episodes aimed at introducing new fans. BBC Store is the corporation’s new online service which allows users to buy and download classic shows, so buyers will be able to get started on catching up with the Doctor’s history without even waiting for the postman to arrive.

As BBC Store’s Simon Farquhar says:

“Some people might feel a bit overwhelmed by Doctor Who and not know where to start exploring it. If you’ve ever found yourself wondering about the history of the Whoniverse and how it evolved, then our Beginners’ Guide is here to help audiences navigate time and space across the most imaginative world television has ever created. We’ve tried to select stories that exemplify the different eras the show has gone through, from the eerie black and white beginnings to the Gothic horror of the mid-Seventies and the fast-paced furore of today’s series . It’s been difficult with so many episodes and Doctors to choose from, but this collection is a fun way to begin exploring Doctor Who.”

That list of stories in full, then:

Tomb of the Cybermen
Spearhead from Space
Genesis of the Daleks
The Talons of Weng Chiang
Earthshock
Rose
Blink
The Day of the Doctor
Mummy on the Orient Express

Opinions will always vary on which stories belong on this type of list, of course. At first glance, BBC Stores curators have undoubtedly picked some of the programme’s true classics from a spread of different eras. Perhaps the most glaring omission, though, is the absence of anything from the First Doctor. Not to acknowledge the man who first brought the part to the screen feels like an unfair snub. Maybe The Time Meddler, a type of story which it’s not too difficult to imagine the programme doing today?  Surely An Unearthly Child, with that remarkable first episode, would have been an ideal jumping on point? But it’s not present at all on the Store. BBC Worldwide said:

“The first story is a regrettable omission but yes, it still is not cleared.”

Fans of Doctors Six, Seven and Eight will also be disappointed to see their eras unrepresented. In terms of Doctor Who’s greatest hits, its most enduring and recognisable characters and monsters, it would have been a major surprise if the Daleks and Cybermen had not featured. Some people will raise an eyebrow (in a very arch way) that there’s no place for the Master – maybe The Daemons would have been worth a place?

It’s worth remembering that the stories featured here are not so much intended to reflect the best ever but more to introduce new people to the series. With that in mind the inclusion of Spearhead From Space and Rose makes perfect sense given both were intended to relaunch the series in different eras. It’s questionable whether The Day of the Doctor, with its assumed knowledge of the series’ continuity since 2005, really qualifies as a starting point for new viewers, significant though it was for what it represented in the anniversary year.

Do you agree with BBC Store’s choices? Which ones would you have picked? Let us know!

You can find the full list and buy the stories at BBC Store.

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Torchwood is Back in Business in 2016

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.

Yep, it’s baaaack – thanks to Big Finish!

In February 2016, Gwen Cooper will return to Cardiff Bay and a new era will begin. Torchwood Three – aka the best-known one in Cardiff – is up and running once again!

After the events of the recently released Torchwood: Forgotten Lives, Gwen Cooper (Eve Myles) is on a mission to rebuild the Hub – and she’s not going to let anyone stop her!

Written by Guy Adams (Sherlock Holmes: The Breath of God) and starring Richard Nichols as Roger Pugh, Torchwood: More Than This is the explosive series finale to Big Finish’s first series of Torchwood audios.

Gwen Cooper has triumphed against impossible odds before, but now she’s finally met her match: Roger Pugh, Planning Officer for Cardiff City Council.

Mr Pugh doesn’t believe the world needs Torchwood. Gwen sets out to prove him wrong. For Mr Pugh, it’s a day that’ll change his life. If he can survive it.

As an extra special treat for the series finale, the episode will also contain a cameo from a Torchwood legend – one that fans will need to listen carefully to discover! Producer, James Goss says:

“Someone was campaigning very hard to be in the new series. And we were only too happy to get them in at the first available opportunity. They’re great.”

And don’t worry: Torchwood will return for a second audio series!

Keep a look out for our reviews of each monthly adventure.

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