Christian Cawley's Blog, page 357

Fans Invited to Appear in Minister of Chance Movie

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.

On Saturday 14th September Paul McGann’s Rocketship will be landing in Chester’s ancient Roman Amphitheatre… sort of.

©Ian Nolan/ Radio Static 2010-12 www.ministerofchance.com

As part of the creation of the Minister of Chance film, the production will be heading to the Amphitheatre to shoot footage of the rocket’s arrival. While the ship itself will be added digitally in post production, fans are invited to come along and appear in the scene which, once completed, will be made available to the world’s media to publicise the film.

The ship will be ‘arriving’ at 11.30am to deliver the prop pistol that will be used by McGann’s character in the movie to the Grosvenor Museum in Chester where it will remain on display until needed for filming. The prop has already been bought by a fan as part of the amazing crowd-funding campaign that the production is employing to raise funds for the production.

Also, to celebrate their nomination (and winning!) of a Parsec award for Best Speculative Fiction Audio Drama (Short Form) this past weekend, anyone buying a perk up until 12 midnight GMT on Weds 4th September, will automatically be entered in a draw to win a Tee-shirt of their choice from the Limited Edition range on the website.

For those of you who don’t know about The Minister of Chance, head to their website where you can find the link to download the entire audio series for free. The series stars Jenny Agutter, Julian Wadham, Lauren Crace, Sylvester McCoy, Philip Glenister, Tamsin Greig and Paul McGann.

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Kit Out Your Virtual Doctor Who World!

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.

Ever fancied living in your own Doctor Who world, having weird adventures and mixing with alien life forms? (Sounds a bit like Kasterborous…) Well now you can with new features on the Doctor Who experience on PlayStation Home!

This is a ’virtual environment’ game which allows you to create your own character in the Who-niverse – think World of Warcraft but with a timey-wimey twist. A second wave of Doctor Who related goods including Daleks and Cybermen has just been released and YouTube bloggers Chris Foxx and J.P. Fox have given their verdict in a newly released clip…

It’s impressive stuff, with a very authentic looking TARDIS console room and ‘make your own movies’ feature. My favourite was the extremely portly Emperor Dalek, who clearly needs to visit the Skaro heath club. I was less sure about the dancing Silence…

What do you think? Doctor Who games have generally had poor reviews over the years, but it looks like this one takes things to a whole new level…

(Via playstation.com)

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Nick Briggs Chats with Benjamin & Baxter

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.

On a lighter note, rather than having to take on nasty aliens or time travelling foes, all Christopher Benjamin and Trevor Baxter have to do this month is take on Nicholas Briggs.

Benjamin & Baxter is a 2 disc interview with the actors regarding their time on Doctor Who as Jago & Litefoot as well as other aspects of their long and successful careers:

You know them as Henry Gordon Jago and George Litefoot, but Trevor Baxter and Christopher Benjamin have a wealth of credits to their names, and plenty of anecdotes to relate about them.

 

In conversation with Nicholas Briggs, both separately and together the pair discuss the ups and downs of their lives and careers, taking in their legendary first meeting on the set of Doctor Who‘s The Talons of Weng-Chiang and on to today and their starring roles in Big Finish’s ever-popular Jago & Litefoot spin-off series.

You can buy the two-disc Benjamin & Baxter release on CD for £9.99 or via download for £7.99 now. Please note that sections of the interview cover adult themes and may be unsuitable for young children.

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New Doctor Who Games for 50th Anniversary!

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 – licensed editions of Trivial Pursuit, Risk and Top Trumps Turbo launched to mark BBC Doctor Who‘s 50th anniversary!

As the world’s favourite Time Lord celebrates fifty years on TV screens, innovative games company, Winning Moves UK, is releasing a range of licensed games to help celebrate Doctor Who’s landmark half-century.

Fans of the hit BBC sci-fi drama can test their time travelling knowledge with a brand new anniversary edition of Trivial Pursuit, indulge in strategic battles between five Dalek armies in a specially reworked version of classic board game, Risk, and enjoy six exclusive new Top Trumps packs in a Doctor Who edition of Top Trumps Turbo. There’s also a 1000-piece collector’s jigsaw which has been commissioned to mark the 50th Anniversary.

Here’s a quick rundown of them again, with a few thoughts:

Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Trivial Pursuit (RRP £9.99, ages 12+, available from September 2013) – a Doctor Who-themed version of the popular quiz game
Doctor Who Risk (RRP £34.99, ages 10+, available from October 2013) – a Doctor Who strategy game! At last!
Top Trumps Turbo: Doctor Who (RRP £24.99, ages 6+, available from September 2013) – after the digital Top Trumps title of 2007, we’ve got high hopes for this one…
Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Jigsaw (RRP £12.99, ages 10+, available from August 2013) – a 1000 piece jigsaw of Van Gogh’s painting of the TARDIS’ destruction.

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 widely available online. All products are also available to buy at www.winningmoves.co.uk and www.toptrumps.com

We’ll be featuring each of these exciting new releases in more detail later in the week.

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Russell T Davies Recalls Doctor Who’s Return

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.

One of the key features on the new Doctor Who DVD The Green Death: Special Edition is the latest installment of Dr Forever!, in which Russell T Davies, Jane Tranter and Julie Gardner recall the events leading up to the 2003 announcement of the show’s return.

 

 

Out in shops now, you can order The Green Death: Special Edition for just £13.97 from Amazon. Look our for our DVD review later this week.

The post Russell T Davies Recalls Doctor Who’s Return appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

Early Tenth Planet Script Found – No Regeneration!

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.

When William Hartnell left Doctor Who in 1966, the decision wasn’t taken lightly. Although the actor loved the role, those he worked for were increasingly concerned about his ability to carry the show as its lead. Eventually, in July 1966, he agreed to move on.

When you consider that a recently discovered draft script of his final story, The Tenth Planet, is dated June 1966, you can imagine why there is interest in the document. In this version of the Doctor’s first encounter with the Cybermen, their creators (Dr Kit Pedler and Gerry Davis) have the Doctor and Polly (Anneke Wills) threatened with conversion towards the end of the story, rather than a tired Time Lord regenerating.

Here’s a snippet of the script:

The script has come to light thanks to the research of Michael Seely, who has written The Quest For Pedler, a biography of the visionary scientist and writer who as well as creating the Cybermen also developed the BBC series Doomwatch. He explains:

I found this script and two more from ‘The Moonbase’ (known then as ‘The Return Of The Cybermen’) among a very large collection of Kit’s papers which one of his children had kept in their attic .As I looked through it, I realised it was the first draft [script editor and co-writer] Gerry Davis prepared when Kit fell ill in June 1966.

The structure is more or less the same, though a lot of the dialogue is different. Some things were cut, especially involving the Cybermen. For example, the Cybermen planned to convert [companion] Polly and the Doctor into Cybermen towards the end of the story, and kept them prisoner in what they described as a waiting room. The most eye-catching difference is what didn’t happen at the end of the episode.

The Quest For Pedler by Michael Seely is scheduled for release early in 2014. Further details can be found at www.miwk.com, or you can pre-order from Amazon for just £19.99

.

(Via SFX)

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Delicious Fan-made Peter Capaldi Doctor Who Titles [VIDEO]

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’s really little we can tell you about this clip, a fan-made Doctor Who opening titles for the Twelfth Doctor. Quality-wise, this rivals the most recent title sequence, with perhaps only the design of the series logo letting things down…

3-D artist NeonVisual - the talented Xander David-Hugh – you can find out more at www.facebook.com/nvxan.

(Thanks to Turquoise Tarquin)

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Reviewed: The Apocalypse Mirror

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.

The Apocalypse Mirror doesn’t have any ‘high selling points’ to attract attention to its release. There’s no return of an unused companion, no reveal of a long defeated enemy and no surprise appearance of a celebrity guest star. But The Apocalypse Mirror doesn’t need these elements to bring it success; all it needs to say on the front cover is the sentence ‘Performed by Fraser Hines and Wendy Padbury.

It’s no secret that these two together help to fully recreate the Troughton era in a way that could not be though possible, Padbury’s infectious performance as Zoe remains as young and as electric as ever, the woman’s lost none of her guile since her last regular television appearance in Doctor Who over forty years ago. Hines not only keeps the Highland spirit of Jamie still burning brightly, as he’s one of those actors that has a voice that defies age, but also consistently delivers a spot on impersonation, or perhaps tribute is a better word, of Patrick Troughton portraying the Second Doctor. Hines’s performance in The Apocalypse Mirror is certainly one of his best Troughton efforts to date, the first few minutes of the adventure especially encapsulating not only a pitch perfect rendition of Troughton but also a wonderful tribute to the Second Doctor’s era as well.

Where the performances are exceptional, the story for The Apocalypse Mirror is perhaps something that leaves a little more to be desired. Landing in the city of Tromesis on Earth, the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe find devastated buildings and deserted streets as they take in their surroundings. They also see ghostly images of the city as it once was, a city before the unnamed disaster struck.

What follows is a story that tries to be ever so slightly wibbly wobbly with its time line but just falls short of the mark in its flow. That’s not to say that The Apocalypse Mirror is a bad story, more one that wishes to be larger but feels slightly condensed in its two episode format, perhaps if this had been a longer tale, given time to breathe and mature, it might have made a grander point. The mysteries that are to be unravelled are revealed all too quickly, losing some of the dramatic delivery that writer Eddie Robson is so good at doing. If, as mentioned, this had been a longer story with more time in the first episode for the Doctor and his friends to explore the ruined city and feed the mystery, the tension would have been delicious.

This adventure contains wonderful energetic performances from the leads, excellent musical cues and a great mystery that becomes solved a little too quickly.

The Apocalypse Mirror is available from www.bigfinish.com now.

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Order the Twelfth Doctor Figure Today!

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

Although we’ve only got the prototype sculpts to go by, the 8-inch scale EMCE action figure of the Twelfth Doctor has generated so much interest that it is already available to pre-order from Forbidden Planet International!

Peter Capaldi’s incarnation hasn’t even stepped out of the TARDIS yet, but already BiffBangPow’s stunning sculpt has set collector’s hearts a-fluttering!

With a £24.99 list price (a 17% saving on the £29.99 RRP) the figure isn’t expected before May 31st 2014, however.

To order yours head to Forbidden Planet today!

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Colin Baker to Guest in Live Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

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.

Our Colin is moonlighting in another sci-fi legend! Later this year he’ll be a special guest star as ‘The Voice of the Book’ in the all-singing, all-sound-effecting Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Radio Show Live!. Those of us who’ve come to know Colin’s Sixth Doctor all-over again through his Big Finish audios know he’ll be fantastic – his oaky tones would reassure the most fretful of galactic travellers. The show assembles the original radio cast from 1978 with special guests as the voice of the guide…

Of course this won’t be Who’s only association with Hitchhiker’s Guide. The author, Douglas Adams, worked as script editor for a season and penned several stories in the 70s including the sadly never-completed Shada set in his alma mater of Cambridge. Douglas himself apparently introduced Lalla Ward (Romana II) to her future husband, Richard Dawkins at his surprise 40th birthday (!) and another Doctor had a starring role as the ‘Dish of the Day’ in the 1981 TV series. ten Kasterborous points if you can work out which of our leading men is offering himself up for dinner…. (answer in the link at the end).

If you’re a fan of Doctor Who you’ll almost certainly be a fan of Hitchhiker’s Guide. They’re irreverent, satirical and share a joy in finding the impossible in the most ordinary of places. I don’t know about you but I found the 2005 film disappointingly lacking in character. The energy of a live stage performance with our imagination filling in the visuals is exactly what Hitchhiker needs. And a dash of Colin.

Dish of the Day

(Via Entertainment Focus.)

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