Christian Cawley's Blog, page 37

Heavenly or Hellish? What Did You Think of Heaven Sent?

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.

What happened this week: Capaldi acted his socks off.

I think we can all agree that Peter Capaldi’s brilliant, but what did you think of Heaven Sent? A great penultimate episode of Series 9? Or ultimately a let-down?

Why not vote in our poll, which ranges from ‘Heavenly!’ (or 5/5, let’s say) to a 1/5, which we’re proud to call ‘Let’s draw a Veil over it.’ Yeah, we’re not above cheap puns and if you ever thought we were, you need to reevaluate the Internet.

What did you think of Heaven Sent?

Voted? You’re a good’un! Thanks. Why not expand on your thoughts by emptying your mind out in the comments section below? Why did you vote the way you did? Was it pitch-perfect? Or was something a little off? Would you like Rachel Talalay back again next year? Or are you hankering for Douglas Mackinnon’s Christmas return?

And most importantly, how excited are you for Hell Bent?!

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What the Doctor Who Festival Taught Me

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.

A couple of weekends ago, I was lucky enough to attend the Doctor Who Festival in London. It was an overwhelming experience, and came at just the right time.

Last year was difficult. Series 8 was striving so hard to be controversial at a time when all I wanted was my favourite show to prove itself to be exactly the same, despite a change of the lead man. I needed Doctor Who to be Doctor Who still, a reliable constant that didn’t harm the history of the show.

I’m very sad to say that I was losing faith in it. Slowly, slowly, and nothing to do with Peter Capaldi, a brilliant Doctor. Things were amiss. Clara had seemingly changed character over night. There was this slightly annoying bloke trying to win over her favours – while accusing the Doctor of being a blood-soaked general. Then the moon was an egg, and the Brigadier was a Cyberman, and the Master was a Missy.

Like I said: striving to be controversial.

There were highlights. Of course there were highlights. Mummy on the Orient Express was the big one, but with a healthy smattering of Listen, Time Heist, and Flatline. The Caretaker, too, at a push because the Skovox Blitzer was cool.

Ultimately, however, I realised that this wasn’t the same show and I wouldn’t love it quite the same way again.

Now, Doctor Who is a big thing for me. Click on my profile and see how big a deal it is. I’ve made career leaps thanks to Doctor Who. It informed my decisions. It was a considerable reason I decided I wanted to be a screenwriter. Losing faith in it was immensely sad.

“Times change and so must I.” Matt Smith’s final few words never felt so true.

And then, things changed again.

I wasn’t just lucky enough to be at the Doctor Who Festival; I was lucky enough to be manning a stall there. I’ve attended smaller conventions and events before, but only as a fan. Here I was, behind a table. That was supposed to sound grander. You get an entirely different perspective from behind a table. You don’t just get to see people dressed as the TARDIS, as the Doctors, as Oswin Oswald; you get to speak to them too.

You realise how incredible this little show is. 52 years and millions of fans. These few thousand were a sampler. The wealth of merchandise was all encompassing. Go out the back and you see boxes and boxes of more, just ready to restock the stalls as the items are guzzled up by ecstatic, hungry fans.

Here, a Fourth Doctor fan, finished off with the extra-long 18ft scarf; there, a youngster dressed as Davros; Seventh Doctor devotees; Osgoods; girls who’ve made their own TARDIS and Dalek dresses: they all made up a jigsaw of the show’s half-a-century. Further fans were cosplaying multiple Doctors, like a glimpse into either the future or a parallel dimension.

Actually, it was like taking Clara’s place in The Name of the Doctor, throwing myself into the Doctor’s time stream, and seeing all of him and all his adventures.

There were a few oddities, sure, but you know what? Fans are a lovely bunch. We are! I don’t care if you don’t want to buy something; come talk to me about The Pandorica Opens. And they did! Compliments about t-shirts and bow ties and cricket jumpers and suddenly it was 6:30pm and each day had come to an end.

We have an amazing community, and we’ll never lose that.

But this isn’t all about fans.

On my last day, I got off the stand for a few hours and headed over to some talks. The first was Steven Moffat, Toby Whithouse, and Jamie Mathieson, and it was enlightening and brilliant. A huge hangar was filling up throughout, strobe lighting intermittently passing over captivated faces. We laughed, we cried – well, we laughed at any rate.

And then it was time for Moffat to file in after Peter Capaldi, Jenna Coleman, Michelle Gomez, and Ingrid Oliver. Jenna was quizzed about leaving and all those around her reflected on how they felt after she’d gone. “Aww”, cooed the crowd. This was a week before she would apparently meet her end down a Trap Street.

Mandatory Credit: Photo by Jonathan Hordle/REX Shutterstock (5365618d)
Peter Capaldi with Dr Who fans
Doctor Who Festival, Excel Center, London, Britain – 13 Nov 2015

Someone came up to me at the stand, and echoed my sentiments exactly. “Are you enjoying the Festival?” I asked. And she said: “Of course. It’s nice being around so many people who just get it.”

There it is. You don’t have to explain why you’ve donned a question-mark jumper and are rolling your r’s. We get it, and we love it.

Even in the Shopping Village, where you think everyone will be focused on selling, selling, selling, there’s a deeply-ingrained love for the series. I spoke to the great people at Robert Harrop, AbbeyShot, and Big Finish, and that enthusiasm spills into the event’s behind-the-scenes, just as much as it drives fans to fill London. They came from America, Fiji, and – erm – Scotland because they want to experience something unique.

But it’s easy to be downtrodden. Society doesn’t like people being overly enthusiastic about what they see as a mere television programme. You cried when Donna had her mind wiped, when Matt regenerated, when you learned that there are worlds out there where the sky is burning, where the sea’s asleep and the rivers dream? Why? It’s only television.

Society likes to tell you that episode was rubbish, and the new guy’s not as good as the old guy, and when’s the Doctor going to be female? Ratings. That’s the new thing. In the great history of tabloid agendas, overnights meant something. They meant Doctor Who was going downhill.

It’s nonsense. At the Doctor Who Festival, I realised that none of that mattered. This isn’t just a show; it’s a culture. It’s important to so many people and however many fall in and out of love with it, it will always remain Doctor Who. Those who are entertained and educated by it know how comforting it can be to fall back into the warmth of the series and of the fans. That’s why you’re here: you’re part of this community.

It’s become a bit of a cliché to say this, but only because it’s true: Doctor Who‘s fanbase is bigger on the inside. And now I know that I’ll always be able to put my feet up and join the Doctor in the TARDIS on his adventures in time and space.

The post What the Doctor Who Festival Taught Me appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

Peter Capaldi and Steven Moffat Introduce Heaven Sent

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.

We’re touching distance from the Doctor Who Series 9 finale: tonight, Heaven Sent airs, the very first single-handler in the show’s history.

Here, Peter Capaldi aka the Twelfth Doctor and showrunner, Steven Moffat introduce the episode, a story which will have serious consequences for the Time Lord. “He is literally alone,” Moffat teases.

The writer previously said:

“If you’re not going to try things that scare you a bit, that scare everybody a bit, then it’ll feel what it must never feel – it’ll feel like an old show. I remember when Russell T Davies first brought it back, he said, ‘we can’t ever make it feel old. It always must feel like a brand new show.’ And that worked, and we carried on.”

Heaven Sent will have a longer duration than usual, clocking in at 55 minutes, and airs tonight at 8:05pm on BBCOne.

The post Peter Capaldi and Steven Moffat Introduce Heaven Sent appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

Advanced Review Round-Up: Heaven Sent

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.

The Doctor is trapped. Worse, he’s being hunted.

Heaven Sent. Peter Capaldi is on his own – apart for the mysterious Veil, played by Jami Reid-Quarrel, who we last saw as Colony Sarff at the beginning of Series 9. So is this just a 55-minute monologue? Is it a snorefest? Or does the experiment pay off? Let’s find out, shall we…?

MCMBuzz doesn’t clear much up; assuring us that there’s “the mother of all montages,” Dave Golder says:

“Some people will get it and love it. Some people will not get it and hate it. Some people will get it and hate it. Some people will not get it and love it. By “get it” we don’t just mean “understand it” – although there is an element of that. But also “get it” in the sense of “getting into the spirit of it.””

So it’s typically experimental, and it’s divisive, in the same way as Midnight, Sleep No More, and The Edge of Destruction (and then some) are.

Golder does, however, say:

“[T]he main narrative is clear, strong and ingenious, with a fantastic – epic (in a sense) pay-off. The weirdness is in the margins, the details and a certain storytelling device… The direction from Rachel Talalay is superb; this could have been slow and talky but she keeps it pacy and visually interesting. Sure Moffat has written some magnificent visual to play with, but even in the less “showy” scenes she keeps the episode looking amazing.”

Doctor Who TV agrees, comparing it to Listen:

“It’s deeper, you need to watch it several times to appreciate and it’s completely absorbing. Full of metaphors and open to interpretation, people will get many different things out of it. Some may dislike it for its shunning of a conventional format and strangeness, but for those that it clicks with, it is utterly rewarding.”

Naturally, they too heap praise onto lead man, Peter Capaldi:

“If you thought Capaldi was good in The Zygon Inversion that was just an appetiser. Sustaining a 50-plus minute episode pretty much by yourself is no mean feat, but Capaldi is more than up to the task… It’s also quite distressing at times with the Time Lord physically and mentally tortured with very visible wounds (the Daily Mail will have a field day!).”

Oh, The Daily Mail have a field day at anything remotely controversial on the BBC. Remember the fuss after… erm, just about every episode? At least they’re talking about it! (I guess.)

Cameron K McEwan of BlogtorWho also says the episode has its distressing moments:

“I think younger viewers, and those of a sensitive disposition, may be scarred for a while (never did me any harm, I should add, the Mandrels scared the hell out of me back in ’79 and I turned out ok). We’ve never seen a Doctor so raw and so scared before, it’s absolutely engrossing.”

Thankfully, the darkness is balanced out by a decent helping of humour, which he says includes “a neat dig at gardeners, a cracking corridor gag, and another fourth wall-breaking nod to the audience.”

He further says that this is the Doctor’s personal Hell. He concludes:

“Heaven Sent is a true work of art, fitting for any visual arts museum anywhere.”

Everyone is naturally saying Capaldi is brilliant, but rather refreshingly, Den of Geek credits someone who generally doesn’t get noticed by the mass media:

“Will Oswald has edited episodes of Doctor Who dating back to 42, but this feels like one of his toughest challenges. It’s vital in Heaven Sent that there’s a sense of mystery to it, as well as an ability to actually follow what’s going on. That you can is testament to his abilities too.”

The site also says:

“It’s a shame that synopses seem to be dropping big details, but I guess that’s the nature of the beast now when you’re trying to attract an audience… Heaven Sent is exceptionally gripping television. It’s one thing having such a bold idea for an episode, another managing to pull it off so convincingly as they manage here. Beware, as always, the spoilers. Try to watch it live. Mourn the fact there’s only one episode left of the series…”

The Metro’s Tim Liew isn’t so gushing about its pace, but nonetheless enjoyed it:

“Indeed this is, until its final seven minutes, this year’s most leisurely paced story, with a plot that unfolds gradually and the Doctor spending most of the episode talking to himself. But the final act changes everything. I rather suspect this is going to be one of those ‘Marmite’ episodes that viewers will either love or hate, with no middle ground in between. I loved it.”

So there we have it. Altogether, this sounds like an exceptionally exciting story. And if you weren’t buzzing enough already, Metro has one final tease to entice you…

“The contents of the Doctor’s confession dial are finally revealed.”

I admit: I can’t wait.

The post Advanced Review Round-Up: Heaven Sent appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

Great Black Friday Doctor Who Deals!

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.

In case you didn’t know, it’s Black Friday, so a stupid amount of money is being spent across the Internet on products, supposedly for Christmas but I suspect much of these items are actually intended for the person ordering them. And there’s plenty of Doctor Who goodies.

Big Finish

First off, Big Finish are having an incredible sale largely focused on those metal meanies from Skaro, the Daleks.

For just £5 each, you can get Doctor Who: Plague of the Daleks, with Peter Davison’s Fifth Doctor; Doctor Who: Patient Zero with Colin Baker as the Sixth Doctor; and Doctor Who: Enemy of the Daleks, starring the Seventh Doctor. Davison also faces off against the Daleks in Doctor Who – The Lost Stories: The Elite, also featuring Sarah Sutton as Nyssa and Janet Fielding as Tegan, bringing to life a never-made TV script.

The company’s adaptations of stageplays are also at the discounted rate: Doctor Who: The Ultimate Adventure, Doctor Who: Seven Keys to Doomsday, and Doctor Who: The Curse of the Daleks, which you can either pick up as a physical copy (£5) or as downloads (£2.99).

And if you want to go all-out for Dalek action, there’s 18 CDs available for just £70 (£60 for download), comprising of all four series of Dalek Empire. The stories star many Doctor Who alumni including Maureen O’Brien, Noel Clarke, and even David Tennant!

Or if you’re only missing one or two Dalek Empire stories, they’re £5 each too.

Those offers are just 24 hours only, so end at Noon on Saturday 28th November 2015.

If you’re interested in their Top 20 audios, however, they’re all available at lower rates than usual until Noon on Tuesday 1st December 2015.  The stories selected are a result of listeners voting for their favourites from the first 200 regular Doctor Who Main Range title, so you know you’re ordering the best quality goods! The first six are permanently on sale for £2.99, download only:

14. The Holy Terror by Robert Shearman

16. Storm Warning by Alan Barnes

29. The Chimes of Midnight by Robert Shearman

34. Spare Parts by Marc Platt

43. Doctor Who and the Pirates by Jacqueline Rayner

48. Davros by Lance Parkin

The rest, however, are either download or as a proper CD for £5. If you order the CD, you get a download copy straight away anyway. Just saying…

65. The Juggernauts by Scott Alan Woodard

72. Terror Firma by Joseph Lidster

81. The Kingmaker by Nev Fountain

91. Circular Time by Paul Cornell and Mike Maddox

103. The Girl Who Never Was by Alan Barnes

104. The Bride of Peladon by Barnaby Edwards

123. The Company of Friends by Lance Parkin, Stephen Cole, Alan Barnes and Jonathan Morris

140. A Death in the Family by Steven Hall

149. Robophobia by Nicholas Briggs

153. The Silver Turk by Marc Platt

169. The Wrong Doctors by Matt Fitton

178. 1963: Fanfare for the Common Men by Eddie Robson

194. The Rani Elite by Justin Richards

199. Last of the Cybermen by Alan Barnes

Alternatively, the Top 20 Special Offer bundles gives you those 14 titles on CD for just £60, with free UK postage and reduced overseas shipping. The entire set of 20 downloads can be picked up for just £75.

Their Big 200 survey coincidentally finishes today too.

Lovarzi

The lovely folk who do replica clothing launched their Doctor Who range in 2012 with the Fourth Doctor multi-coloured Scarf. Since then, there’s been plenty of great products for Whovians, their latest being The Pandrorica Opens Scarf.

Two of their Doctor Who items are on special offer: the Fifth Doctor Jumper, which has £10 knocked off, bringing its £39.99 RRP down to £29.99. It’s made from Acrylic so it’s warm and soft.

And then there’s the Fourth Doctor Season 18 Burgundy Scarf, which is modeled on the one Tom Baker wore during his final season as the Time Lord. The RRP was £49.99, but it’s on sale for £29.99 for now!

Zavvi

This is a pretty mental offer. The 50th anniversary Limited Edition Print Set includes 20 stunning prints from across time and space with art by Kasterborous co-founder, Anthony Dry, Chris Achilleos, Adrian Salmon and Lee Sullivan.

The set is limited to just 1,963, complete with a special booklet and certificate of authenticity.

It was originally over £120.

Zavvi has it for £15.99.

Trust me, it’s more than worth it.

They’ve also got a beautiful TARDIS Collector’s Watch for £84.99, a saving of £55, or if you’re into the 1960s Peter Cushing Dalek movies, the Zavvi exclusive steelbook Blu-ray of Doctor Who and the Daleks (the first film) is just £14.99.

Forbidden Planet

Now, you’ve got to be careful with this one because their packaging is often dodgy and your items can come damaged. If you want to risk it, however, there’s some great bargains here…

First off, there are the Maxi-Busts, including Doctors Three, Four, and Eleven, Amy Pond, and the 1980s Cybermen. These are now very hard to get and so greatly sought-after, so Forbidden’s sale – bringing their £59.99 RRPs down to just £29.99 – is more than welcome!

They’ve also got the 50th anniversary audios, Destiny of the Doctor, at £5 each, and two toy sets also at reduced prices: the Enemies of the First Doctor is £9.99 (with a Tenth Planet Cyberman, Roboman from The Dalek Invasion of Earth, and a Dalek variant from The Daleks’ Master Plan); and the Enemies of the Third Doctor (Omega from The Three Doctors, an Auton with Nestene Consciousness Control Sphere, and a Drashig from Carnival of Monsters) is £19.99.

So those are just a few of the deals on offer today for Doctor Who fans. What others have you spotted? And which bargains have you actually picked up?

The post Great Black Friday Doctor Who Deals! appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

Steven Moffat on the Reasoning Behind Heaven Sent

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.

We’re just over 24 hours away from the penultimate episode of Doctor Who Series 9, Heaven Sent, and showrunner and writer, Steven Moffat has given us a hint at how this story came about.

As you’ve no doubt heard, it’s a single-hander – the first in the show’s history – with just Twelfth Doctor, Peter Capaldi, and Jamie Reid-Quarrel as the Veil.

Moffat told Radio Times:

“I’m yet to find out whether I’ve just gone mad or not. It occurred to me that I had just written a huge monologue for him at the end of [ The Zygon Inversion]. Ten minutes. I was typing forever in that. And I just thought, ‘maybe we don’t need anyone else – we don’t need to cut to anyone nodding – it’s just him?'”

The Zygon Inversion, co-written by Peter Harness (Kill the Moon) and Moffat, featured a stunning scene in which Capaldi plays off Jenna Coleman as Bonnie the Zygon, talking her out of war.

If we’re in for 55 minutes like that, Heaven Sent should be astounding.

The writer further said playing with the format was something they’d be striving to do since it came back in 2005:

“If you’re not going to try things that scare you a bit, that scare everybody a bit, then it’ll feel what it must never feel – it’ll feel like an old show. I remember when Russell T Davies first brought it back, he said, ‘we can’t ever make it feel old. It always must feel like a brand new show.’ And that worked, and we carried on.”

Peter Capaldi also was enthusiastic about the episode likening it to a much-loved Second Doctor classic, The Mind Robber:

“I love things that seem to be 100% undiluted Doctor Who. And that’s what this episode seems to be to me. It is challenging because you realise that if the audience get bored with me that’s really bad news. But there are more colours and angles to it than I’m suggesting…”

Frankly, we can’t wait!

Heaven Sent airs tomorrow on BBCOne at 8:05pm, and will run for an additional ten minutes.

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The PodKast Lives!

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.

Just when you thought you had seen the end of Christian Cawley, Brian A Terranova and James McLean, we’ve got some bad news. They’re still out there, podcasting about Doctor Who with their familiar-sounding “PodKast with a K”

I for one was particularly disappointed to find the terrible trio of Doctor Who fandom were still offering their informed, considered opinions about the latest episodes of Series 9, not to mention the revived X-Files series. In fact, the way things are going, there’s a good chance that they might even start rambling on about Star Wars: The Force Awakens (don’t know if you’ve heard anything about that?) and rekindle their love for Ripper Street.

So, if by some bizarre reason you have been missing them (and as almost 9000 people tuned into their podKast on The Zygon Inversion, we think that might be unlikely) you can still find them online at Audioboom, iTunes, Stitcher.com, PlayerFM, RSS feed, and on their brand new home, www.thepodkast.co.uk. They’re everywhere. It’s like a plague but not as pleasant.

Say “hi” from us. Or hurl abuse. In the nicest possible way, obviously.

Seriously, though, we can’t make fun of them too much: James is still writing reviews for our Big Finish section. We can’t help but love Brian for his dedication to cosplaying the Tenth Doctor. And someone accidentally invited Christian to our Christmas party.

We miss those guys nonetheless. Go support their efforts!

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Big Finish’s The War Doctor Volume 1 Out in December! [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.

Everyone at Kasterborous Towers is immensely excited to hear John Hurt’s return as the War Doctor for Big Finish – and it turns out we don’t have long to wait!

The audio company has released a very exciting trailer and further details about the first boxset, Only the Monstrous – and revealed that it’ll be available before Christmas. The set will be out on 14th December!

That’s just from Big Finish, however: if you’re waiting for The War Doctor Volume One to hit shelves nationwide, you’ll have to be patient until 28th February 2016.

Starring John Hurt, Jacqueline Pearce, Lucy Briggs-Owen, Carolyn Seymour, Beth Chalmers, Alex Wyndham, Kieran Hodgson, Barnaby Edwards, Mark McDonnell, John Banks and Nicholas Briggs, this four-disc set encapsulates three stories plus a behind-the-scenes documentary. Here’s the synopses:

1.1 The Innocent

As the Daleks mass their time fleet for a final assault on Gallifrey, something ancient is waiting for them at Omega One. And a sacrifice must be made.

Arch manipulator and Time Lord strategist, Cardinal Ollistra receives shock news of the Doctor’s death.

Meanwhile, on the planet Keska, a parochial war has returned to plague a peaceful civilisation after decades of tranquility. But how can such a war have any connection with the great Time War which, at any one moment in the whole of eternity, could threaten to tear the universe apart?

If only the Doctor were still alive.

1.2 The Thousand Worlds

With the high ranking Time Lord Seratrix behind enemy lines, the War Doctor finds himself assigned to a rescue mission. But any room for manoeuvre is severely restricted by an area of space known as the Null Zone.

Times have changed on Keska, and a countdown to destruction is beginning.

But who are the Taalyens and what is their part in the great and terrifying Dalek plan?

1.3 The Heart of the Battle

Trapped in a citadel swarming with Daleks, the Time Lord rescue force must find a way to overcome insurmountable odds. With the Daleks apparently planning to rule the Null Zone, perhaps their thirst for universal conquest and victory has been quenched…

The War Doctor doesn’t believe so — but how can he prove it without destroying any chance of peace?

As the countdown to the destruction of Keska proceeds, a deadly choice must be made… A choice that will define this Doctor and perhaps forever cast him in the role of ‘monster’.

Written and directed by Nick Briggs (who also provides the voice of the Daleks), the stories are naturally set before The Day of the Doctor (2013).

It comes soon after the release of UNIT: Extinction, Big Finish’s first proper NuWho release, and Jago & Litefoot & Strax – keep your eyes peeled for our reviews of those audios in the near future! The War Doctor is currently set to run to four boxsets, followed by a five-disc prequel, The Eighth Doctor: The Time War – and you can pre-order the lot right away with the Time War Saga bundle.

The War Doctor Volume One: Only the Monstrous is available to pre-order right now for just £20.

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Capaldi on Clara: “Doctor Who is Never What It Seems”

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.

Many of us are still reeling from the events of Face the Raven; meanwhile, excitement for Heaven Sent is increasing. Twelfth Doctor, Peter Capaldi, has spoken about Clara’s exit form the show – and hints that it might not be quite as simple as it seems.

Oh yes, he has a message for fans of a certain Ms. Oswald… And it’s not as upbeat as that sounds. He jokes:

“My message for them would be life is tough. But Doctor Who is never quite what it seems. We haven’t told a lie. The story is the story but the Doctor is not going to rest. He is not going to accept that that is the last time he will see Clara.”

Rumours that Jenna Coleman will be in the Series 9 finale, Hell Bent still abound, and this only adds credence to them.

He also enthuses about potentially working with Lord of the Rings director (and Doctor Who fan) Peter Jackson, saying, “I think that would be great”, though obviously there’s no actual news on that.

Here’s the full interview with Capaldi, talking to NZHerald.

We don’t have long until we find out exactly what the actor is hinting at, do we? While this Saturday’s episode is a single-hander, focused purely on the Doctor and the mysterious Veil (Jami Reid-Quarrell), Hell Bent will actually star other people… Will this include Clara? Who knows? Who. Nose.

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Sherlock’s Abominable Bride Synopsis Promises Ghostly Goings-On!

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.

Ever wondered what Rupert Graves might look like in Victorian times? You’re not the only one.

BBC Worldwide has answered your calls and released five new images from the next episode of Sherlock, The Abominable Bride, one of which does indeed feature Lestrade in the 1800s. What’s more, we’ve got the official synopsis, so we can finally learn a little of what’s going on in the special:

We’ve been here before – but what if this wasn’t the modern day but the late Victorian period? What if the world’s most famous consulting detective and his best friend lived in a Baker Street of steam trains, hansom cabs, top hats and frock-coats?

Welcome to ‘Sherlock’ in 1895!

Some things, though, remain reassuringly the same. Friendship, adventure and especially, MURDER…

Why is Thomas Ricoletti a little surprised to see his wife dressed in her old wedding gown? Because, just a few hours before, she took her own life…

Mrs Ricoletti’s ghost now appears to be prowling the streets with an unslakeable thirst for revenge. From fog-shrouded Limehouse to the bowels of a ruined church, Holmes, Watson and their friends must use all their cunning to combat an enemy seemingly from beyond the grave and the final, shocking truth about… the Abominable Bride!

Ah, sounds like a horror movie at Christmastime! Wonderful stuff!

Starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, The Abominable Bride airs on BBCOne and PBS on 1st January 2016.

(Thanks to CBR.)

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