Christian Cawley's Blog, page 384

Should More Female Directors Work on Who?

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.

With all of the recent debate that’s been happening regarding whether the Doctor should transform from a man into a woman during one of his regenerations, gender equality has been something of a hot topic within the world of Doctor Who.

Doug Barry, writing an article for Jezebel has looked behind the camera for Doctor Who to take this particular issue and open it up a little more: there were no female directors on Doctor Who at all during Series 7 (2012-2013).

Now, could this be a matter of complete coincidence or is Barry completely correct when he talks of institutionalised sexism within this particular industry?

Certainly over the years that Doctor Who has been on screen, the number of male directors compared to female has been far larger but when we are lucky enough to get a woman in the director’s chair, we normally end up with Doctor Who gold dust. For example: Paddy Russell (Pyramids of Mars and Horror of Fang Rock), Fiona Cumming (Castrovalva, Snakedance and Enlightenment) and Hettie MacDonald (Blink).

Considering that Doctor Who was brought to life and gathered immediate popularity through the bravery and intelligent choices of a woman, Verity Lambert, should it be time that the show’s producers gave more women the opportunity to work behind the camera?

You can read Doug Barry’s full article, which doesn’t just single out Doctor Who, and see if you agree with it here.

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If Steven Moffat Leaves, Who Should Replace Him?

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.

Doctor Who head honcho Steven has been running the series since the first Matt Smith episodes went into production 2009. That’s four years at the top – and that doesn’t count his previous four years as the brains behind some of the most popular stories of the revived show.

The Empty Child, Blink, The Girl in the Fireplace and Silence in the Library must have all been massive efforts to put together, never mind things like The Eleventh Hour, The Pandorica Opens, A Christmas Carol and other immensely timey-wimey adventures. Put simply, The Moff must be getting tired, and with his leading man on the way out of the door in November/December, there is surely a good chance that he too might move on.

But if Steven Moffat does decide to leave Doctor Who, what happens next? Who should take over as executive producer? To be honest, we can’t settle on a unanimous choice here at Kasterborous Towers, so thought that our esteemed readers might like to help out…

Take Our Poll

Voting concludes on Sunday, so get your votes and comments in and we’ll revisit them next week!

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Achieve It! 50th Anniversary Magazine

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

Character Options is to support a very special 50th anniversary project.

The Doctor Who toy licensee has given its backing to Achieve It!, a Doctor Who fan magazine written, designed and published by the enterprising pupils of Ysgol-Pen-y-Bryn school.

The Swansea school educates 114 pupils with a wide range of specials needs.

Each year the Sixth Form run a variety of Enterprise Projects to gain new skills, learn about enterprise and gain an Agored Cymru Qualification in (Running an Enterprise Project).

With this year being the 50th anniversary, the group decided to create a one-off magazine based around the Doctor’s adventures, collected an impressive roster of interviewees including David Tennant, Tom Baker and Peter Davison and approached Character Options to help fund production, which the company was more than happy to help with.

Mark Hunt, Brand Manager at Character Options, commented:

“We are delighted to be involved in Ysgol-Pen-y-Bryn’s Enterprise project. Looking at the work they have achieved to date, we know it’s going to be an amazing magazine that will be enjoyed by all that are lucky enough to own one. It’s packed with nearly 100 pages of facts, features, interviews and graphic work and the quality that has been achieved is remarkable. We are therefore proud to fund the print production which we know in this auspicious year will be in high demand.”

James Williams, Community Co-Ordinator at the school said:

“We are delighted to be working on this Doctor Who project with Character Options. Many of the pupils have an affinity with the series especially as its home is just down the road in Cardiff, and I am extremely proud of the work they have created. But like all projects, funding is required and this allows us to give our pupils new experiences and learn new skills that they can take on with them to college. We therefore would like to thank the team at Character Options for their incredible support, not only financially but also their knowledge of Doctor Who. Over the next few weeks a great deal of work needs to be achieved and we look forward to working even closer with the team in seeing the final magazine come to fruition.”

The school’s magazine was launched on 3rd July 2013 at an event at the Doctor Who Experience in Cardiff Bay.

The magazine is available from the school now and costs £3.50 (100 pages).

All enquiries to Ysgol-Pen-y-Bryn school

Proceeds from this very special magazine will go to the Wales air ambulance service.

(via The Doctor Who Site.)

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Unite against Cancer with Fourth Dimension

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

Fourth Dimension – a collection of Doctor Who fan fiction and reviews first published in the early 1990s – has been re-released to raise money for UK cancer charity, Unite against Cancer.

The book, which collects together twelve short stories and 31 reviews that were first published in various Doctor Who fan magazines between 1992 and 1996, is written by Steven Miscandlon – a regular contributor of fiction, articles and illustrations to well-respected fanzines such as Capitol Spires, Mandria, Silver Carrier, Metamorph and Shadowsphere.

The stories, which feature five of the original seven Doctors, range from short, fun pieces to darker and more thought-provoking tales; while the reviews not only cover a selection of televised Doctor Who stories, but also novels and other spin-off media released in the early nineties. Also included is The Gallifrey Incursion, a previously unpublished novelette-length story written in 1995.

Offering a snapshot of just what Doctor Who fans got up to in the hiatus, Steven said:

“It seems that the programme has never been more popular, and yet in some ways its fan base is very different to that of 20 years ago. I hope people enjoy the various writings that make up Fourth Dimension, and that they will give an interesting insight into the frustrating but exciting world of Doctor Who fandom in the early nineties.”

The book is available as both a paperback and a PDF ebook from Lulu.com, and other ebook formats are also available directly from the author.

All profits from sales of the book will be donated to UK charity Unite Against Cancer, which was set up in 2012 to fund research into new cancer treatments.

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Doctor Who: Many Happy Solar Returns

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.

It’s sometimes quite easy to be analytical with certain Doctor Who stories. Some of them are simply so good that viewing them with an eye to discussing their deeper meaning is impossible to avoid.

But what if you wanted to look at Doctor Who in a completely different light? What if you could take the show and study it by its astrological meanings rather than contextual? It would certainly be a difficult task for many of us to do but some brave souls just won’t take no for an answer.

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“Ah, an existentialist!”

And so welcome to the world of Doctor Who, Mr Robin Calvert, who has pieced together, from a chapter by chapter release in the Blackpool Northern Lights Astrological Society’s ICARUS newsletter, a book entitled Doctor Who: Many Happy Solar Returns, a series-by-series look at Doctor Who from an astrological perspective.

Taking the applied methods of Natal (birth chart to you and me), Progressed (one day from date of birth to forecast each successive year), Transiting (planets, as in transit van) and Solar Return (themes of a year) Charts, the book will examine the content of each series.

Looking at some of the content that Calvert has covered already, from the 1960’s to 1972, it certainly proves to be a very interesting read and will surely delight Doctor Who fans who like to get rather existential when discussing the Daft Man Who Ran Away In A Box.

For more details about how to get a copy of Doctor Who: Many Happy Solar Returns, please email the author Robin Calvert at robin40s@yahoo.co.uk .

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The Seventh Doctor and the Daleks Meet in Malorie Blackman’s EShort

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

The new Children’s Laureate and acclaimed author of Noughts & Crosses Malorie Blackman has been chosen to write the Seventh Doctor Who short eBook – The Ripple Effect – which sees the Seventh Doctor and Ace come face to face with his greatest foes: the Daleks!

…but there’s a twist:

“When the TARDIS lands on Skaro, the Seventh Doctor and Ace are shocked to discover the planet has become the universal centre of learning, populated by a race of peace-loving Daleks. Ever suspicious of his arch enemies’ motives, the Doctor learns of a threat that could literally tear the universe apart.”

Forcing the Doctor to confront his own fears and prejudices, Malorie couldn’t wait to get to grips with the ‘fascinating’ Seventh Doctor:

I have always loved Doctor Who. From the time I was a child and the Daleks used to make me run and hide behind the sofa, to Saturday morning pictures when I first saw the Doctor Who films featuring Peter Cushing, right up to the current Doctor with Matt Smith. So when I was asked to write a Doctor Who story featuring the Seventh Doctor, I didn’t even need to pause to think about it. My answer was an immediate yes.

I’ve always found Sylvester McCoy’s Doctor fascinating because of the way his character developed from a bit of a clown to a Doctor with a more Machiavellian streak.

The short eBook is available now to pre-order from Amazon for release on July 23 for £1.99.

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New Books Reveals Bizarre Doctor Who Movie Casting

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

The Sifto Salt Mine in Goderich, Ontario, Canada is one of the largest salt mines in the world and yet it would struggle to haul the almighty pinch of salt needed for the news that Michael Jackson was apparently considered for the lead role in a proposed Doctor Who movie during the eighties, a new book has claimed.

Charles Norton’s Now On The Big Screen: The Unofficial And Unauthorised Guide To Doctor Who At The Cinema alleges that Paramount Pictures was interested in taking the Doctor to the big screen – with the King of Pop their number one choice.

But don’t worry, if they couldn’t land their first choice the studio had a great number two lined up to take his place – Bill Cosby – because if you can’t have Michael Jackson, it’s Cosby all the way. I mean if I’d tickets to see Michael Jackson and he cancelled but the promoter announced: “Don’t worry, we’ve got Bill Cosby!” that would be totally fine.

It also works in the opposite direction too. The Cosby Show was a monster hit during its eight series run, which had an estimated audience of over thirty million households in the US during 1986-87. But you know what it didn’t have?

Michael Jackson.

Sure it had that episode where Sondra and Elvin went to a Michael Jackson gig and the man himself appeared on The Bill Cosby Show but imagine what the ratings would have been like if he had the title role!

“Can we get Michael Jackson?” must have been the default casting suggestion uttered by every movie executive in the eighties for every movie during the height of his popularity.

On paper at least the two suggestions make sense for an admittedly dicey proposition for a movie studio in the 80’s; both of them were riding on the crest of a wave in terms of critical and commercial success.

However Michael’s previous acting experience was limited to say the least; with only a role as the Scarecrow in The Wiz and the music video anthology movie Moonwalker to his name –as well as the never- realised, bizarre-sounding fantasy movie called MidKnight, to be written by Edward Scissorhands scribe Caroline Thompson and directed by Batman designer Anton Furst.

As well as unearthing unlikely casting suggestions the book weaves a narrative from the colourful world of the Peter Cushing movies – Dr Who and the Daleks and Daleks – Invasion Earth: 2150AD – through the unending torment of ‘Development Hell’, right up to the present day with new interviews with those involved.

The book also contains never before published paperwork from the British Board of Film Censors, telling the difficult story of Doctor Who’s tumultuous relationship with the silver screen.

Charles Norton’s Now On The Big Screen: The Unofficial And Unauthorised Guide To Doctor Who At The Cinema is available now from Telos for £15.99 for the paperback and £30.00 for the hardback edition, and we’ll have a review for you soon!

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Daleks’ Master Plan 6: Counter Plot

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.

Rick Lundeen’s frankly awesome adaptation of The Daleks’ Master Plan continues this evening on Kasterborous, with the Doctor, Steven and Sara Kingdom finding themselves transported to the mysterious planet Mira…

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You can now download the PDF version from the Kasterborous Store, with CBR and CBZ due soon. Also, thanks for all of the kind comments, Tweets and emails about this series. We’re certainly considering following it up…

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The Name of the Doctor ReKapped! (Part Two)

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.

Read Part One .

Deep within the dead TARDIS, Vastra and Strax wake up. Jenny, however, doesn’t. She’s dead: a complete cardio-collapse, induced by shock. Strax holds his medical scanner over her and releases an electric pulse – and Jenny starts breathing again. “The heart is a relatively simple thing,” Strax says. And Vastra replies, simply: “I have not found it to be so.”

The Great Intelligence is behind them; Doctor Simeon, surrounded by his Whisper Men. The creature lives on – a mind without a body, merely using the husks of the Whisper Men as his puppets.

The Doctor and Clara – the latter having been told by River that she is, in fact, dead, but saved in the biggest library in the universe – try to find their way to their friends, but the telepathic circuits are leaking and reawaken some of Clara’s memories. Ones she lost when the Doctor pressed a Big Friendly Button. Time leaks back through: her and the Doctor by the TARDIS’ snarl, right on the edge of the cliff. “Why do I keep meeting you?” she remembers him saying. “The Dalek Asylum. There was a girl in a shipwreck and she died saving my life. And she was you.” She tries to shake it off, but it keeps coming: “In Victorian London there was a governess, who was really a barmaid, and she died. And she was you.”

She was you.

- The girl who died he tried to save/ She’ll die again inside his grave.-

The Whisper Men suddenly pursue them. Run!

“Welcome to the tomb of the Doctor,” the Great Intelligence says, and the Time Lord and his companion join them. There’s only one way to open the doors to the Doctor’s tomb, though: “Doctor, what is your name?”

He won’t say, of course. So the GI instructs the Whisper Men to stop his friends’ hearts. The creatures advance, their hands phasing through the chests of Strax and co. The Doctor begs, but the GI shows no mercy.

And then the tomb opens.

“I didn’t do it. I didn’t say my name.”

“No, but I did,” River says. The TARDIS can still hear her, despite only being an echo, a ghost. They are linked, though, River being the child of the TARDIS.

The group enter as the cloister bell booms. In the control room, the central column has been ripped away, to leave only a gleaming slice of light, reaching out in spikes and scars. This is the Doctor’s grave: not his body – bodies are boring and he’s had loads of them – but as the trail of his tears. “Time travel is damage. It’s like a tear in the fabric of reality. That is the scar tissue of my journey through the universe. My path through time and space from Gallifrey to Trenzalore,” he explains. “My own personal time tunnel. All the days: even the ones I… Even the ones I haven’t lived yet.” The paradoxes are too much for him – and he collapses.

This is the Great Intelligences’ time to shine though: “I can rewrite your every living moment. I can turn every one of you victories into defeats. Poison every friendship. Deliver pain to your every breath.”

And he steps into the Doctor’s time stream, scattered forever throughout all his days.

The Whisper Men fade away and the Doctor screams in agony. The Great Intelligence is everywhere, attacking his entire timeline. He’s dying on Gallifrey, on Iceworld, in the Dalek Asylum, on Androzani, in Victorian London.

“The Dalek Asylum?”

Local star systems start vanishing. The stars are going out. All the worlds, all the people the Doctor saved. Jenny vanishes. Strax fades away. Undone.

And Clara, linking up the Dalek Asylum and Victorian London with what the Doctor had said about her dying over and over again, approaches the scar in time. The Doctor begs her not to go: it will destroy her. “But this is what I’ve already done,” Clara says. “You’ve already seen me do it. I’m the Impossible Girl, and this is why!”

“The time winds will tear you into a million pieces,” River begs her too. “A million versions of you, living and dying all over time and space, like echoes.”

Clara: “But the echoes could save the Doctor, right?”

River: “But they won’t be you. The real you will die. They’ll just be copies.”

Clara: “But they’ll be real enough to save him. It’s like my mum said. The soufflé isn’t the soufflé, the soufflé is the recipe. It’s the only way to save him, isn’t it?”

River nods, sadly, looking at the man she loves.

“Spare me a thought now and then,” Clara tells the Doctor. “In fact, you know what? Run. Run, you clever boy, and remember me.” And she steps forward.

I don’t know where I am! I just know I’m running. Sometimes it’s like I’ve lived a thousand lives in a thousand places. I’m born, I live, I die. And always, there’s the Doctor. Always I’m running to save the Doctor, again and again and again. And he hardly ever hears me. But I’ve always been there.

GALLIFREY. A VERY LONG TIME AGO…

The First Doctor and Susan bustle into the TARDIS – but there’s someone behind them. “Sorry,” Clara, the Impossible Girl, says. “But you’re about to make a very big mistake… Don’t steal that one, steal this one. The navigation system’s knackered, but you’ll have much more fun.”

Right from the day he started running.

A flash of a colourful jacket; a scarf; a cliff on Iceworld; Bessie speeds past; a ponce in a frock coat; a clown in a fur coat; a cricketer; the Dalek Asylum; Victorian London; and a man, with crazy hair and a sharp suit.

Back in the Doctor’s tomb, he fixes his bow tie. Jenny and Strax are restored. But Clara is gone. There’s only one thing he can do to save her.

“There has to be another way,” River yells silently at him. “Use the TARDIS, use something – save her, yes, but for God’s sake be sensible!” Her echo reaches out to slap him – and he catches her arm. “You are always here to me,” the Doctor tells her. “And I always listen. And I can always see you.” She’s should’ve faded by now. He can’t say goodbye to her though. He just can’t. So he says it the only way she’d accept: like he’s going to come back.

He kisses her. “See you around, Professor River Song.” And she disappears.

I don’t know where I am. I don’t know where I’m going or where I’ve been. I was born to save the Doctor, but the Doctor is safe now. I’m the Impossible Girl, and my story is done.

Clara falls to the bottom of his time stream, all his bodies running past her. A leaf falls from nowhere: the most important leaf in the universe. And her bow-tie-wearing Doctor reaches out for her, grabbing her, hugging her. “Clara! My Clara!”

But there’s one face there that she didn’t see: a man who isn’t the Doctor. He’s one of his bodies – but he is not the Doctor. The name you choose is like a promise. And this is the one who broke the promise.

“What I did,” the other Doctor says, “I did without choice – “

“I know.”

“- In the name of peace and sanity.”

“But not in the name of the Doctor.”

TO BE CONTINUED… 23RD NOVEMBER 2013.

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So What’s All This #thefourth ?

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.

A curious video has appeared on YouTube, featuring props and quotes from the Fourth Doctor era (1974-1981) – but what’s it all about?

At present it is all something of a mystery. It probably has nothing to do with the 50th anniversary special, although there is a chance that it alludes to a feature on the upcoming Terror of the Zygons DVD.

More than likely, however, we suspect it is connected to the Doctor Who Celebration event, in which Tom Baker, Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy will be joining Matt Smith. Will we see more trailers for the Sixth, Seventh and Eleventh Doctors? Will other Doctors be announced?

Time will tell – it always does…

(Thanks to Paddy)

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