Christian Cawley's Blog, page 344

An Adventure In Space And Time @ BFI Southbank

Rebecca Crockett 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 part of their celebrations of the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who, the British Film Institute will be hosting a special preview screening on 12 November of the new drama An Adventure in Space and Time about the beginnings of the beloved TV show.

An Adventure In Space And Time, from writer Mark Gatiss, stars David Bradley (Dinosaurs on a Spaceship, Harry Potter, Broadchurch) as the First Doctor William Hartnell, as well as Brian Cox (RED 2) as BBC Head of Drama Sydney Newman, who is credited with creating the show, and Jessica Raine (Call The Midwife) as the series’ first producer, Verity Lambert.

The movie tells the story of the beginnings of the show, what was involved in bringing the show to life on the BBC 50 years ago, and about the people that were behind it all. Mark Gatiss has said,

This is the story of how an unlikely set of brilliant people created a true television original. I’ve wanted to tell this story for more years than I can remember!

The event is scheduled for 8:20pm 12 November at BFI Southbank. Tickets are being allocated in two separate ballots for BFI Champions and Members but you’ll need to hurry – the ballot closes at 12:00 on 4 October.

I am quite looking forward to seeing this movie. I’ve really enjoyed all of these looks back into the history of the show that we’ve been gifted so far this year and this seems like the biggest gift of all!

(via BFI Southbank)

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Hand Drawn Peter Capaldi Sketchcard on eBay!

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.

Many of you may not recognize the name, but I’ll bet you recognize the artwork behind it, Many of her images regularly pop up on Facebook such as the recent ‘minions as the Doctors’ piece that has been doing the rounds on numerous news feeds.

Carolyn Edwards is a freelance artist, based in the UK and has worked in the trading card industry since 2007 with her incredible work appearing on many top TV and film memorabilia sets. She’s also appeared here on Kasterborous on a couple of occasions, most recently in our ongoing Whispering Gallery feature on notable artists and illustrators.

And now you can have the opportunity to own a very special, one of a kind piece of Carolyn’s art in the form of a specially created Peter Capaldi card. This card is regulation 2.5 x 3.5 inch trading card & ACEO size and is painted with acrylics, on a personally designed blank sketch card, which is signed on the back and comes with confirmation that you own an original piece of Carolyn Edwards artwork.

This really is a one of a kind card and will no doubt take pride of place in the winning bidder’s collection. Will any of you be bidding on this item, or do you have a view on the Doctor Who art industry as a whole? Leave us a message and let us know, or if you are the winning bidder, bring it round and let us have a look… aw go on.

If you’re interested in owning the sketchcard, head to eBay now to place your bid!

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Sophie Aldred Exhibition Signing on Saturday!

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.

If you’re like us and somehow hadn’t already heard about the amazing exhibition featuring previously unseen photographs of Sophie Aldred, then it is time to act!

The exhibition, The Unseen Photographs, is by Steven Cook and is based around images that have only been rediscovered by the photographer. Starting on September 5th, the exhibition runs until Monday, September 30th – but this Saturday, September 28th the Ace actress will be attending to sign autographs. A closing party follows at 7pm.

Cook told SFX:

It’s such a relief to have retrieved these negatives after 22 years. I thought they’d disappeared down a wormhole or something! We had such fun doing these photos. It was just the three of us: myself, Nina Gan the make-up artist and Sophie in her various guises. They show just how versatile Sophie can be!

The exhibition is at Orbital Gallery, 8 Gt Newport St. London. WC2H 7JA – head to the Orbital Comics website to find out more.

(With thanks to Steve Cook)

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Original TARDIS Set Floorplan Revealed!

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.

The original studio floorplan for the TARDIS and other key sets for the very first Doctor Who story have been revealed in a new BBC book – and you can see them now online!

Sourced from director Warris Hussein’s personal collection, the plans are an insight into production of the pilot episode fifty years ago this very week.

The document, impressively intricate and actually rather beautiful, shows the careful positioning of the familiar hexagonal consol and four colour coded cameras. It also demonstrates the inventive lengths gone to to circumvent the limited budget, with a ’40 foot artist cloth’ standing in for  a wall and photographic blow ups of circular indentations. That’s not to say they weren’t ambitious, though – the wonderful canopy from the early episodes, which evidently proved to be too impractical for regular use, is also there.

The plans also show how sets for Totter’s Lane, Coal Hill School and the Junkyard were crammed into the limited space available at Lime Grove.

The prints are well worth a look as transmission of An Adventure in Space and Time approaches and will soon appear in Doctor Who: The Vault by Marcus Hearn, a souvenir anniversary tome to be published in October.

Now on sale at Amazon UK, and with an RRP of £30, The Vault can currently be pre-ordered for less than £20!

See more of the floor plans at RadioTimes.com, where they’re presented with some words from director Waris Hussein, who chaired the first Doctor Who serial.

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PodKast: Critiquing Fan-made Opening Titles

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.

What might the Doctor Who opening titles for the Peter Capaldi look like? We discuss a superb fan-produced effort this week, as well as some other recent news.

James McLean and Brian Terranova manage to run the Good Ship PodKast this week without any interference from Captain Christian Cawley who has phoned in sick claiming some nonsense about meeting deadlines.

In addition to the fan-made Peter Capaldi opening titles, we also chat about Steven Moffat hinting at big revelations at Christmas and the confirmation of the running order for the Doctor Who Figurine Collection.

There’s also news of an interview with Christian about Kasterborous Magazine issue 1.

Ready to listen? Click play!

Kasterborous Series 3 Episode 34 Shownotes

Steven Moffat Hints at Christmas Revelations
Doctor Who Figurine Collection Running Order Confirmed
Fan-made Peter Capaldi Opening Titles
Kasterborous Magazine Interview
Kasterborous Magazine Issue 1

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!

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National Media Museum: “Make your own light up TARDIS!”

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.

Bradford’s National Media Museum will be hosting a Doctor Who themed event, geared at younger fans of the series. Beginning October 26th and running through November 3rd, the museum will feature an “extravaganza” of Who themed events and activities.

According to a museum spokesman, attendees will be able to:

“Make your own light up TARDIS and moving Dalek to take home. Come face to face with the Doctor’s greatest enemy in the Science of the Daleks and test your knowledge of all things Doctor Who in our family quiz.”

Entry to the museum will be free, as well as most of the events. There may be an additional fee associated with the activities, but let’s be honest: any time you get to take home a Dalek and a TARDIS, the fee’s going to be worth it. Anyone up for building a Type 40?

(Via Bradford Telegraph and Argus).

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Nick Courtney Archive Interview Coming Soon!

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.

This weekend we’ll be bringing a rarely-seen archive interview with Nicholas Courtney – best known to Doctor Who fans as UNIT’s  Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart – conducted for a US fanzine in the 1980s.

Previously published in the February-March 1988 issue of The UNYT Times, the interview was conducted by Dave Rudin who had travelled from the USA to attend a convention in Swindon and spend a bit of time in the UK – which enabled him to interview Nick while he was appearing in The Mousetrap in London’s West End.

Naturally we’ll have more background and context and even an introduction from Dave when the interview goes live this weekend.

Don’t miss it!

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Will the Experience Win Tourism Award?

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.

Cardiff’s Doctor Who Experience is a finalist at the National Tourism Awards for Wales 2013 in the Regional Tourism Award category.

It faces competition from tourist businesses from across Wales, including the Welsh Whiskey Company, the National Showcaves Centre for Wales, and the Llwyn Helyg Country House.

The tourist attraction, located next to the BBC Wales studios in Cardiff Bay, opened last year in a specially-built centre that’s quite possibly bigger on the inside. The Experience includes an interactive tour in which you help out the Eleventh Doctor, Matt Smith, followed by a free-flow exhibition with original props, costumes and sets.

The site recently added the facsimile First Doctor console made for the biopic, An Adventure in Space and Time, alongside the Ninth and Tenth Doctors’ console room, the make-shirt TARDIS from 2011’s The Doctor’s Wife, the Silence’s TARDIS and the Fifth/Sixth/Seventh Doctor’s console.

There’s also a Cyberman timeline, and a display showing the evolution of the Daleks – then there’s Skaldak and a restored Ice Warrior costume from 1967; the Great Intelligence; Weeping Angels; the Doctor’s crib; K9 – – and loads more! It’s a Whovian’s dream.

The National Tourism Awards for Wales 2013 ceremony and dinner takes place just two days before Doctor Who’s big Five-Oh celebration in November – so here’s hoping for great news to kick off the party!

(Thanks to The Doctor Who Site.)

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Big Finish’s Early Adventures in 2014

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

In September 2014, Big Finish starts their exciting new range of past Doctor stories with Doctor Who: The Early Adventures and the first four tales sound so mouth wateringly good that a whole year seems just too long to wait!

The four episode tales build on the Companion Chronicle format by having the First and Second Doctor’s friends narrating the stories but the new house style for these adventures has the added bonus of full cast production values. David Richardson, the producer of the range, explained a little more about the new audio range:

Anyone who has heard our First and Second Doctor Lost Stories will be familiar with this format…except here we have pushed the format to make these productions sound as much as possible like full cast drama.

The first release is Domain of the Voord by Andrew Smith (writer of 1980 Fourth Doctor adventure Full Circle). The story pits the TARDIS crew against Terry Nation’s creations the Voord (not the Daleks, pay attention) who were last seen in the First Doctor story The Keys of Marinus (1964), on a world that is largely covered with water. William Russell and Carole Ann Ford star as Ian Chesterton and Susan Foreman. The guest cast includes Daisy Ashford (daughter of Caroline John, who played Liz Shaw) and Geoffrey Beevers, who briefly played the Master.

Next up is a purely historical story in October with The Doctor’s Tale by Marc Platt (writer of Seventh Doctor story Ghost Light from 1989). Maureen O’Brien and William Russell provide the narration and acting duties as well as Vicki and Ian. The supporting cast includes Gareth Armstrong (The Masque of Mandragora), Alice Haig and Joseph Kloska.

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All together now: “He’s behind you!”

The third offering is The Bounty of Ceres by Ian Potter, in which the TARDIS travellers find danger in the future on a base on a dwarf planet in the Solar System. Maureen O’Brien returns as Vicki and is joined by Peter Purves as Steven Taylor. The cast goes on to include Richard Hope ( 2010’s The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood), Julia Hills (2point 4 Children) and Peter Forbes.

Last but not least, The Early Years first series ends in December 2014 with An Ordinary Life by Matt Fitton. This time around the stars are the legendary Jean Marsh and Peter Purves who will be playing Sara Kingdom and Steven Taylor. During this story the TARDIS breaks down on Earth in the 1950s, the Doctor is incapacitated and the two companions must decide whether or not to settle down and lead an ordinary life. But something else more sinister has the same idea as well…

So there you are; a whole new range of exciting adventures to look forward to from Big Finish next year. You’ll just have to wade through all of the other brilliant stuff they’ll provide before these stories before you can get to them.

It’s a hard life sometimes…

For more details on Doctor Who: The Early Adventures visit Big Finish.

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042 Fury From The Deep

Barnaby Eaton-Jones 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 title of this 1968 serial alone sounds suitably scary, so it’s pleasing to state that this is one Doctor Who ‘classic’ that just about lives up to its name; with the dangers and horror on a par with the rest of the stories that surround it (Yeti and Cybermen and Ice Warriors, oh my!). At times, creepy, at times, unsettling, it’s not as tension-filled as it should be – which is probably down to it being a six-parter and, therefore, requires padding to expand the relatively simple storyline – but it manages to unnerve on several occasions.

Of course, if you’re a Doctor Who fan of old, you’ll know that this is one of the many missing stories that the BBC, in their infinite wisdom, ‘junked’. So, aside from a few recovered clips that had been trimmed by censors to make it less scary for an Australian broadcast (and, really, who would have thought they would make their programmes less scary? They gave us Neighbours and I still haven’t mentally recovered after watching so many mullets in one suburb), this is mostly an audio only affair. However, there are ‘telesnaps’ (photos of the broadcast that were taken at intervals during the show), which show what characters, sets and the monster of the week look like. So, although it is a lost show, it does have visuals and audio to show us exactly what we’re missing!

This is the story that introduces us to the Sonic Screwdriver, a device that the Doctor will come to be synonymous with. It’s a sort of throwaway thing, which makes it quite astounding that it’s brought back and beefed up time and time again. Here, it simply unscrews an inspection hatch on a gas pipe. Whereas, nowadays, it emits a green light, has doubled in size and is whipped out more frequently than a companion falling in love with the Doctor.

I’m sure there’s an allusion to be made here for what it is a substitute for, as it also cures virtually every one of Matt Smith’s problems as the Eleventh Doctor; so it’s safe to say that size does matter when it comes to your handy tool.

The story starts off, as most Second Doctor stories do, with the Time Lord and his companions (in this case Jamie and Victoria) getting captured. You’d think, by now, they’d just walk out of the TARDIS with their hands held high, expecting the inevitable. But, being as the TARDIS lands hovering on the sea, they’d have met with a watery greeting. Instead, they use a rubber dinghy to row to the shore. There’s a nice little exchange in the conversation about how they are always landing on Earth, targeting England in particular, which shows that the programme was already addressing regular fans and second-guessing what they would be thinking; just that simple bit of dialogue proves that they were aware the audience were not just children too, as it would more than likely be the adults pointing out such things.

We are into the story pretty quickly, as our intrepid trio come across a large gas pipe which appears to be emitting a heartbeat (this creepy sound effect is used brilliantly throughout). It’s then that they are captured and taken to the refinery itself, as the beach was private property. Exposition abound, they are soon witness to the real problem here and then treated to the perpetual ‘base under siege’ plot that Patrick Troughton’s Second Doctor stories seem to love so much.

Giant, living seaweed may not sound like the most exciting of monsters but it’s realised brilliantly by tons of foam, a hauntingly disturbing electronic sound-score by Dudley Simpson, and by the actions of the actors who come into contact with it. Whilst fans seem more desperate to see other stories recovered that have been lost, the clamour for a discovery of Fury From The Deep should be very vocal. The small clips alone are disturbing and shocking, especially as this was televisual family entertainment on a Saturday teatime. By the look of the clips and the existing telesnaps, you can tell that Hugh David (the Director) really put some thought, imagination and verve into this story.

All of the cast are well-cast and give strong performances, which helps elevate the script by Victor Pemberton. (I always wonder why those writers who have written ‘classics’, and who are still alive, haven’t been approached to at least attempt a ‘New Who’ story, regardless of whether it was used or not. Obviously, the pace and timing of the story is different from the truncated, squeezed form that the Ninth to the Eleventh Doctor have received but a writer who can write well is usually able to adapt and change to the medium they choose).

Patrick Troughton (Second Doctor) and Frazer Hines (Jamie McCrimmon) are often overlooked in any reviews of their stories but I think that’s because they are universally excellent throughout all their stories. An instant camaraderie and friendship on-screen was mirrored off-screen too and it really shows through. Nowadays, TV companies would be snapping them up to work together again after Doctor Who but, sadly, they never seemed to cross paths professionally again. It also helps that they are very natural actors, who are at ease with serious melodrama or silly comedy. Deborah Watling (as Victoria Waterfield) isn’t so easy to like but I’ve never been sure whether that was the actress being inexperienced or the one-note characterisation of the role. She exists simply to get into scrapes and to scream at anything and everything. I always imagine she must wake up screaming every morning. Either her nerves have been rubbed raw with sandpaper or she’s got a serious psychological disorder that causes her to be frightened of her own shadow. In fact, she’s almost like a little child, looked after by her father and brother in the TARDIS.

But, ironically, it’s this incessant screaming and fear of the unknown that becomes the selling point of this story, as it is her amplified vocal reverberations that cause the seaweed to retreat and return to the sea. She also gets a dignified exit too, as she decides to stay on Earth with her adopted guardians, Frank and Maggie Harris (played by Roy Spencer and June Murphy, as the characters who you engage with the most aside from our TARDIS trio); having said how much the travels have affected her. Unlike many of the other companions in the ‘classic’ series of Doctor Who, she has a proper arc to her disaffection with her travels and her decision to stay somewhere (and with a substitute set of parents) that makes perfect sense. At least she didn’t get married off to a minor character on a whim or killed off pointlessly trying to eradicate the dinosaurs.

The stand-out performances of the remaining roles are definitely John Abineri as Van Lutyens and Margaret John as Megan Jones, both outside officials who come into the situation and try to sort out what’s going on. Their battles with the authority within are well-realised and intriguing – both seemingly impotent to stop what’s happening.

But, all in all, it’s Mr Quill and Mr Oak who steal the show completely (both infected by the seaweed and acting as its agents, breathing poisonous gas out of their mouths and generally sabotaging everything they can get their hands on), played by Bill Burridge and John Gill respectively. They sound like a pair of James Bond villains and they certainly could have been well utilised pitted against 007. Fury From The Deep has a spy thriller feel to it, with high-speed chases, helicopters and oil rigs a-plenty. It’s like a black and white forerunner to Diamonds Are Forever, with the Second Doctor’s woollen hat in place of James Bond’s woollen wig. The little and large nature of Mr Quill and Mr Oak, and their heavily expressive faces (augmented by make-up that almost makes their faces look like theatre masks of the Commedia Dell’Arte style) proves to be a winning combination. They loom and creep and attack like the living embodiment of the foaming, enlarging seaweed.

In the end – spoilers! - and unusually for a Doctor Who story, everybody lives. It might be a great line from a joyous Ninth Doctor story (“Just for once, everybody lives!”) but it’s very relevant here, especially as we see so many people taken over by the weed and turned into walking zombies; assuming them to be the walking dead. Victoria, whose screams defeated the monster that so terrorised them all, is depressed in defeat and it’s the final scenes that show real adult poignancy and drama as she leaves with the Harris’s, abandoning the Doctor and Jamie on an already abandoned beach.

They’ll soon pick themselves back up again, with the arrival of Zoe to make them a trio again but, for now, the sparse dialogue and beautifully framed final scenes show how much they’ll miss their frightened friend.

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