Christian Cawley's Blog, page 352

The Day Of The Doctor – 50th Anniversary Title Confirmed!

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 BBC has finally confirmed the title of the Doctor Who 50th anniversary special – and what else could it be than The Day Of The Doctor?

Revealed as part of a general 50th anniversary announcement, the 75-minute long special is just one part of what’s coming. As Matt Smith says:

Hope you all enjoy. There’s lots more coming your way.

Alongside the special, we’ve also got the following to look forward to:

An Adventure in Space and Time by Mark Gatiss and starring David Bradley as William Hartnell.
A BBC Two lecture by Professor Brian Cox discussing the pseudo-science behind Doctor Who.
BBC Four is running a restored version of An Unearthly Child and the rest of the 100,000 BC serial that kicked off the show back in 1963.
BBC Two’s The Culture Show is to screen Me, You and Doctor Who, hosted by lifelong fan Matthew Sweet.
A 90-minute documentary on BBC Radio 2 asks Who Is The Doctor?
BBC Three will be home to several commissions, including Doctor Who: The Ultimate Guide.

Says Danny Cohen, the Director BBC Television:

It’s an astonishing achievement for a drama to reach its 50th anniversary.

I’d like to thank every person – on both sides of the camera – who has been involved with its creative journey over so many years.

Meanwhile, the man in charge has this to say:

50 years has turned Doctor Who from a television show into a cultural landmark. Personally I can’t wait to see what it becomes after a hundred.

Who could argue with that?

(Via BBC News)

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The Ninth Doctor Discussed at the BFI

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.

Last month’s Doctor Who at 50 event at the BFI saw producer Phil Collinson, director Joe Ahearne and actor Bruno Langley (temporary companion Adam in Dalek and The Long Game) discussing the Ninth Doctor’s era and, you’ll see in the clip below, the return of the show after 16 years.

Also part of the event was a screening of Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways, and if you’re interested in any of the other panels that have been held to accompany these monthly screenings, head to the BFI channel on YouTube to view them!

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TARDIS in Orbit: What Happened Next…

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 rare that someone encapsulates so perfectly how it feels to be a fan… that devoted part of you that lives in the TARDIS, revels in how big, vast and complicated the universe is and knows that some of its corners have bred terrible things that MUST be fought. It’s rare that someone does something so utterly bold and bonkers that it defines that little part of you that is forever Who. But in sending a model TARDIS into *orbit* for the 50th Anniversary, Robert Doyle and his daughter Alex sum-up the bold-and-bonkersness that makes us all fans.

As it turns out, like for those who make the show, pulling off bold-and-bonkers involves hard graft and spreadsheets (shudder). The father-daughter team have used crowd-sourcing website, Kickstarter, to raise enthusiasm and funds for their project.

“Exactly what goes into having a Kickstarter? You might think, ‘oh it’s not that bad, it’s a thirty day campaign and then you get money and then you do stuff’. Incorrect. It is pretty much a full-time job…”

With 3500 emails to respond to, $55 880 to spend and something called a “launch manifest” the Doyles have their very own Doctor Who Monster on their hands. But if you saw their original video pitch, you’ll know that it’s the sheer energy, joy and bold-and-bonkersness™ of this pair that has fuelled interest in the project. Yes the bright-eyes and bushy-tails in their first video now look a little under-slept, but these guys have serious sass. And I like ’em.

The amazing thing about this project is the sense of community that they’ve tapped into. Not only have they raised well over what they needed from the good Who-will of like-minded fans, but in an impossible quirk of fate, their website project manager is none other than Lee Jee Tso, a.k.a. Chang Lee from the 1996 Doctor Who TV movie. Despite logistical hiccoughs and an unexpectedly demanding interview with the Guardian (they wrote something nice – how could you not??) things seem to be on-track. I can’t think of a more audacious and touching tribute to the show which these two clearly love.

The Guardian article makes the point that knowing a TARDIS is up there, hurtling around our planet is reward enough. But what do you think? Is the time, money and effort worth it? Is this a crazy scheme with more imagination than sense or is someone finally putting the TARDIS where it belongs?

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Daphne Ashbrook Joins Paul McGann at BFI!

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.

There are few women who instil such devotion in fans of a certain age as the utterly charming and beautiful Daphne Ashbrook – and she’s just confirmed that she will be at the BFI on October 5th for the Doctor Who at 50 screening of the 1996 TV movie!

Ashbrook – who played Dr Grace Holloway in the movie and would have been the Eighth Doctor’s companion had a TV series arisen – tweeted yesterday:

I'll be at the British Film Institute on October 5th! http://t.co/AzJZE9EXvh

— Daphne Ashbrook (@DaphneAshbrook) September 8, 2013

Via the link to her blog, she continued:

I can’t wait to see Paul McGann, Gary Russell, Jason Haigh Ellory and Andrew Cartmel. And Geoffrey Sax, whom I haven’t seen since we shot the movie in 1996! And I’ll be lucky enough to see my great friend and funny man, Charlie Ross!

I’m getting very excited!

As if there wasn’t already a fantastic reason enough to attend the Eighth Doctor event, now Amazing Grace is on the panel!

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Twelfth Doctor Art Challenge: The Winner Is…

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.

You may remember a little over two weeks ago we reported on a rather nifty art challenge to design your impression of how Doctor number 12, Peter Capaldi, may look in comic book form.

(If for some reason you missed it you can back track and read The Twelfth Doctor Illustrated here on Kasterborous.)

Well the judges have come out of seclusion, and white smoke has been sighted from the chimneys; we have a winner!

(Former Doctor Who Magazine editor) John Freeman, who had the unenviable job of choosing a winner from the stellar entries had this to say about the decision:

When you have a competition that attracted art from the likes of long established Doctor Who artists such as Dan McDaid, Kev Hopgood and Lee Sullivan as well as wonderful entries from the likes of Jamie Roberts, Rob Davis, Neil McClements and many, many more, I’m sure you’ll understand coming to a decision as to the overall winner was no easy task.

But decide he did, and the lucky winner was Australian designer and illustrator Lucas Bowers, whose entry seems to have a nice blend of little nods to past doctors (Troughton’s unkempt collar, Colin Baker’s tie, Tennant’s watch and Smith’s wonderful purple jacket) while still feeling new and original. If Capaldi’s outfit were to come out looking like this, I for one would be rather pleased.

To see the final shortlist that the winner was selected from head over to downthetubes.net. But be sure to come back here and tell us what you think. Did the right design win? Was someone else robbed? Are you just closing your eyes, ignoring it and waiting till Christmas to see the real thing?

Let us know your thoughts!

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Sylv and Sophie at the BFI!

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 didn’t make it to the BFI on July 27th – and most of us didn’t – then you might like to get a flavour of the panel that featured Sylvester McCoy, Sophie Aldred and writer Ben Aaronovitch as they discussed the Seventh Doctor’s era and in particular the featured story, Remembrance of the Daleks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZ9Q4Y...

YouTube blocked at work/college? The clip is worth watching as we find out more about Sophie’s casting as Ace, and how Sylv rewrote the script slightly to address Mel’s (Bonnie Langford’s) departure in Dragonfire.

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Tennant & Capaldi in BBC Drama 2013 Trailer!

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.

Well, there’s no actual Doctor Who in this trailer, but you’ll certainly find David Tennant and Peter Capaldi within this collection of new Original Drama from the BBC!

David Tennant can be seen in new legal drama The Escape Artist; Peter Capaldi plays Cardinal Richelieu in The Musketeers.

And we’ll see at least one of them in the 50th anniversary, of course…

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John Hurt Praises “Charming” Doctor Who Fans

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.

Chatting to The Observer at the weekend, nth Doctor John Hurt revealed his delight at being involved with the 50th anniversary, as well as describing fans as “charming”.

Currently in Hungary shooting the $150m film Hercules: The Thracian Wars with Dwayne Johnson (you probably know him better by his incredibly stupid moniker The Rock), Hurt chats about various things including new film More Than Honey, a documentary he narrates about the threat to bees (which has been going on for years, long before The Stolen Earth/Journey’s End in 2008).

Most interesting to us (beyond Hurt’s attitude to turning down work and avoiding the Soho lifestyle of old) is of course his involvement with Doctor Who. However there is more than one 50th anniversary under discussion – the actor first appeared on the big screen in 1963!

I’d never thought of that, but let’s use it! Oh yes, there’s a huge link definitely. But I had no idea that Doctor Who had got so huge; I just thought, “Brilliant, I’ll be a Doctor!” I was suddenly – what do they call it? You start “trending”. This is all new to me!

Since his surprise casting and appearance at the close of The Name of the Doctor, John Hurt has encountered fans on convention panels – something he was a little concerned about at first…

I was terrified of doing it because I thought they’d all be loonies, but they are absolutely, totally charming as anything. It’s great fun. I’m not saying it’s the healthiest thing – I don’t know whether it is or isn’t – but they are very charming.

Finally, Hurt avoided questions as to his Doctor’s nature, but took time to praise Matt Smith and David Tennant.

Of course you have to remember that the Doctors are all one person, so I’m not outside of that. I can’t talk about it, but I will say I was really impressed when I did it. Both the previous doctors – Matt Smith and David Tennant – boy, are they good at it. Whoa-wee! They are so quick, and there’s a huge amount of learning and no time to learn it in. All that fake scientific nonsense. Terribly difficult to learn.

You’ll find out more about this great actor by reading the article, available on the Guardian website.

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50th Anniversary Collectors Edition Jigsaw Coming Soon!

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.

It seems that the merchandise machine for the 50th anniversary is starting to kick into high gear as November looms ever closer with the latest addition to the list being the 1000 piece collectors edition jigsaw from Winning Moves.

The puzzle features the now iconic painting of the exploding TARDIS, created in the show by Vincent van Gogh in the season five finale The Pandorica Opens, and lets be honest, if you’re going to make a jigsaw you want it to be a challenge and looking at the picture again I think this certainly fits the bill, though I was surprised at just how long it took me to make the relatively ‘easy’ 500 piece puzzle featuring the Gallifrey Eleven; Tennant and Smith’s hair almost finished me off completely. So Rassilon alone knows just how I’ll fare with this beast.

Winning Moves UK’s Head of Marketing, Fiona Hortopp commented that:

Winning Moves UK is proud to be celebrating the Time Lord’s anniversary with these exciting new games. Doctor Who has captured the imaginations of generations of people for the past fifty years and we’re confident these games will appeal to fans of all ages and enhance their celebrations of the Doctor’s half century on the BBC.

The new Doctor Who licensed games will be available to buy on the High Street from a wide range of retailers including WH Smith, Toys R Us, Waterstones, Tesco, Asda, and John Lewis and various online stores.

Released on October 6th 2013, this 1000-piece jigsaw can be ordered now for just £12.99 from Forbidden Planet.

Will you be expecting this for Christmas?

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Doctor Who Figurine Collection’s Ben Robinson

James Whittington 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.

Eaglemoss recently released a rather snazzy new partwork, the Doctor Who Figurine Collection which, over a reported 80 or so issues will build up into an incredibly vast and wonderfully detailed collection of favourite characters from the TV series.

Here Managing Editor at Eaglemoss Ben Robinson chats about this and other titles he’s working on.

What exactly does your job at Eaglemoss entail?

I work across a large number of projects but I have a particular expertise in what are loosely described as ‘genre’ projects. At the moment that means Star Trek Starships, Doctor Who Figurines an upcoming Hobbit figurine collection and the Marvel Fact Files, which is a massive pull apart and file encyclopaedia. In the past I’ve worked on several different James Bond projects – a collection of 1:43 scale cars in movie dioramas, a DVD collection for Japan and a massive buildup DB5, which is the famous car from Goldfinger; Doctor Who and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles trading card collections; the Star Trek Fact Files, which was another pull apart and file encyclopaedia; the official Star Trek magazine in the US; and countless DVD series including Midsomer Murders, Doctor Who and Stargate. I also oversee our Batmobile collection and DC and Marvel Chess series, though I am one remove away on those since my colleague Richard Jackson looks after them on a day-to-day basis.

When I started to work in publishing 17 or 18 years ago I was working at DK on interactive CDs and at the time people were predicting that they would replace books and magazines. It hasn’t happened yet and to be honest I can’t see it happening any time soon.

People like to own things.

What do I actually do? There’s a question. In the very briefest terms, I develop the projects and then supervise the teams that are producing them. In terms of the printed element that’s about working out what kind of content we want to produce and how it should be structured. That can get right down to the detail of what size font we should be using for captions, but it’s also about where to find material, making the best use of it, and sourcing artists. Once the formats are set, I then step back to reading those and making sure things stay on track. On the figurines and model ship projects I tend to stay more involved with the actual models, briefing sculptors and the factories and offering an ongoing stream of feedback.

Since almost all our projects are licensed, I spend a lot of time working with our licensors to make sure that everything we do is fully approved by them and negotiating with them for rights to new projects. All of this involves reporting back to my boss, our editorial director, Maggie Calmels, who sets the editorial direction for everything we do and makes sure that we do the best work we possibly can. She works on 10 times as many projects as I do, across a whole range of areas from women’s interest to hi-tech models and I always know that she’s there whenever we have to solve a problem or just another pair of eyes on things. And, of course, she’s the first audience that sees any of our products. If she likes what we’re doing then we know we’re in with a good chance of making a successful product.

It’s actually somewhat more involved than that, but I’m not sure anybody in their right mind would want to know the rest of it!

How did the Doctor Who Figurine collection come about?

We’ve been working on Doctor Who projects almost since the show came back. I remember going down to Cardiff while they were filming the second season and showing David Tennant his trading card when he was filming his third or fourth and long before he appeared on screen. We have had some kind of Doctor Who project running ever since. We always thought we’d do a variety of different projects as the show’s new fanbase grew older. After eight years and two other partworks, it was time for a figurine collection. Of course, Eaglemoss has enormous experience with figurines – having produced Lord of the Rings, Marvel and DC collections. We really do have the best sculptors and the best factories so it made perfect sense to do the same for Doctor Who, which has such amazing monsters.

Who designed the figures?

The glib answer is the BBC. All the figurines are based on some pretty exhaustive photography and some very intense scrutiny of the episodes. “All” we have to do is specify a pose. That’s done by me and the project’s editor, Neil Corry, who knows more about Doctor Who than most know about themselves. Of course, specifying a pose isn’t actually that easy. You need a strong sense of what will work well – not every pose looks good when it’s replicated as a figurine – and to come up with a pose, and a moment, that sums up the character. When you get it absolutely right you should have a little intake of breath when you see the physical figurine. We’ve got some coming up that really did that for me. In particular the Silent and our first character from the classic episodes, Omega. We use a variety of sculptors, depending on what the figurine is. They all have their own strengths, whether that’s an ability to capture a likeness or an intuitive understanding of the series.

I’ve got to say how amazing our Dalek sculptor Gavin Rymill is. We contacted him because he had already built every Dalek that ever there was as a 3D model. Because of the way we work, we can take those files, run them through a 3D printer and turn them into physical objects. When you look at those figurines, you can just tell that they were produced by someone who loves Daleks. The detail is unbelievably good and no one could put that much effort into something if they were doing it on a purely commercial basis, there’s a love there, as well as a level of skill that takes them to another level. I have just been stunned by how good his work is. Of course, the same is true of a lot of people who work on Doctor Who, but Gav has been a real find.

Are there any Doctor Who characters you couldn’t get the rights to produce for this range?

The only things we aren’t allowed to do are characters from the two Peter Cushing movies that were made in the sixties and that’s because the BBC don’t have the rights. Because we are starting out with a plan of doing 75 figurines there are characters we’ve had to decide to leave out. For example, there is something like 40 companions. It was hard, but we took the decision to leave them out in favour of more monsters.

What changes have been from the trial version to the current run?

There are very subtle changes to Davros and the Cyber Controller. Tiny things like the colour of some of the controls on Davros’s chair and the Cyber Controller’s eyes. The only figurine to get a major rework was the Eleventh Doctor. We just felt that the test version wasn’t the best we could produce and there was a technical problem that meant the figurine was coming out too thin.

How do you bring together a team of writers for the accompanying magazines?

That’s down to the editor Neil Corry. I’ve had the pleasure of working with him for five or six years now and I literally have never met someone who has a greater passion for and more comprehensive knowledge of Doctor Who, although he insists there are lots. The good thing is he knows most of them and knows exactly who to go to on any given subject.

In this digital age, is there still a market for partworks?

I hope so! When I started to work in publishing 17 or 18 years ago I was working at DK on interactive CDs and at the time people were predicting that they would replace books and magazines. It hasn’t happened yet and to be honest I can’t see it happening any time soon. People like to own things. There are amazing statistics about how many people still buy physical CDs or DVDs. There’s something about the physical pleasure of ownership that will never go away. What matters is that you produce something good. Something people have to have. That’s a challenge.

Have any partworks you’ve released not done as well as you’d expected them to and which ones are your best sellers?

You never know what’s going to work. After the fact, you can always come out with a reason why things didn’t work, but you just don’t know. Having said, at this exact moment I can’t think of any really unexpected failures. There are things I would have loved to have gone because I would have loved to have worked on them – the last DVD project I developed was a “grown up science fiction” collection, that started with Alien and The Terminator. Getting the behind scenes material together for those was great. There are few things that make me happier than tracking down hard to find material and interviewing moviemakers. In terms of best sellers – the original Star Trek project I worked on, the Fact Files, is one of the most successful partworks ever. We sold a lot of copies of that!

Which country buys the most partworks that you produce?

There’s no simple answer to that one. A Doctor Who partwork will sell a lot better in the UK than it will anywhere else, but a Russian project might sell 10 times as many copies. We publish in something like 40 different countries. There’s a big tradition of partworks in the Latin countries but their economies are suffering at the moment. We’ve sold incredibly large numbers in Russia and Japan, but we’ve also had hugely successful projects in the UK and Germany.

Can you hint as to what you’re working on at the moment?

Only in a very roundabout way – partworks are a very competitive business. My team launched Star Trek Starships and Doctor Who Figurines in August. We’ve got a Hobbit figurine collection on the way. After that I think you’d have to imagine that there are more things we can do with Marvel and DC and James Bond and even more Star Trek and Doctor Who. And, of course, other parts of the company are doing amazing work with Disney and with Japanese brands and technology and things that only make sense in Russia…

Out in all good newsagents and Forbidden Planet, you can find out more at dw-figurines.com. Many thanks to Ben Robinson.

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