Christian Cawley's Blog, page 42

Blair Shedd Shows You How to Draw the Ninth Doctor

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 how to draw Christopher Eccleston’s Ninth Doctor? Well, your prayers have been answered!

Artist, Blair Shedd has shared this astonishing time-lapse video of how he created a panel from Titan Comics’ Ninth Doctor miniseries, which is coming to its conclusion very soon.

Shedd used a Wacom Cintiq 12wx in Manga Studio EX 4 to actually draw the Doctor and then added colour using Adobe Photoshop CC 2015; the actual picture took roughly two hours to complete, so you can tell how much intricate work goes into every page of every comic. Blair’s an alumni of the Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art, one of the finest artistic institutions in America.

Keep an eye out at comic stores for The Ninth Doctor: Weapons of Past Destruction.

Have you ever drawn the Ninth Doctor? point us towards your pictures on Deviant Art – we’d love to see your stuff!

The post Blair Shedd Shows You How to Draw the Ninth Doctor appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

Where Does John Frobisher Fit In Twelfth Doctor Face Theory?

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.

We’ve already had the explanation to the thing that really didn’t need to be explained but what about the ‘other face’ – that of Torchwood’s John Frobisher – where does he fit in with Russell T. Davies’ plan hatched years ago?

Last month, the show cleared up the mystery of why the Twelfth Doctor has the face of Caecilius, the friendly Roman rescued by David Tennant’s Doctor in 2008 adventure The Fires of Pompeii. According to The Girl Who Died, the Time Lord uses Caecilius’ face as a reminder to always try to save people, no matter what the personal consequences.

However, it didn’t settle the mystery of where Frobisher, the civil servant in 2009’s Torchwood: Children of Earth, comes into the theory. Well, now Steven Moffat has elaborated – with the help of former showrunner Russell T Davies – on just where his face fits.

“When I first cast Peter Capaldi as the Doctor I remembered that Russell had said to me that he had a plan to account for the fact that Capaldi turns up in both Doctor Who and Torchwood in different parts,” Moffat told attendees at the Doctor Who Festival. “So I wrote to him to ask, ‘look, what’s the plan? And does it fit?’ He said, ‘yes! I’ve worked it out!’

“He said that it’s about – as the Doctor says – asserting his right to save people. His plan was that in the Torchwood episode – which we couldn’t really reference as it would have been difficult in that scene – is that the Doctor asserts himself over time by saving Capaldi’s character in The Fires of Pompeii and time re-asserts itself by ending that bloodline in the Torchwood episode [when Frobisher finds himself in a situation that forces him into suicide]. And the Doctor says, ‘to hell with you time!’ And takes that face and brings it back again. It’s the Doctor’s eternal battle with doom and destiny.”

So does that mean that Caecilius and Frobisher are related?

“Yes,” said Moffat. “And remarkably there’s a level of genetic throwback in that thousand years to make them identical!”

It certainly serves a fan theory but it doesn’t really add anything to the on screen drama – Lord knows what anybody who has no idea who Caecilius is made of the explanation. Perhaps it didn’t help that Moffat kept referring to the Russell T. Davies theory, as though it was going to break new ground; rather than just underline a personality trait that perhaps would have served better to be addressed in the previous series when the Doctor was raw and wrestling with his conscience.

So is the Frobisher explanation satisfying? Did we need an explanation when we’ve already seen numerous characters return in different guises, including the Doctor? Were you happy with the explanation in The Girl Who Died?

The post Where Does John Frobisher Fit In Twelfth Doctor Face Theory? appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

Moffat: New Paradigm Daleks ‘A Mistake’

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.

It was the most controversial decision of the modern era of Doctor Who – to meddle with the design of near perfect Daleks. Battle-hardened, tough and dominating, Russell T Davies had brought the Dalek’s bang up to date and, what’s more, all driven by story.

When RTD departed, there was a need to stamp this new phase of Doctor Who’s revival with something distinctive, something decidedly more colourful – enter the ‘new paradigm’ Daleks, launched in Matt Smith’s Eleventh Doctor adventure Victory of the Daleks.

It’s fair to say, they never caught on with fans with some dismissing them as Teletubbies or Power Rangers. Now showrunner Steven Moffat has admitted the change was a “mistake”.

“Well I suppose if I’m completely honest – and it’s all my fault, no one else’s fault – I don’t think that was a great idea,” he told an audience at London’s Doctor Who Festival. “When I looked at them in person I thought ‘my god, the new Daleks are awesome. They’re so huge and powerful, they’re brilliant.’

“But I learned a grave lesson: which is that when you put them on screen, of course, they don’t look bigger, they just make all the other Daleks look smaller.”

Following reactions from fans, the old models quickly made a comeback. The ‘new paradigm’ were entirely absent from The Magician’s Apprentice, which led to speculation that they had been consigned to history’s dustbin.

However, according to Moffat, that’s not the case.

“So I revised my plans and I now consider them an officer class of Dalek,” he explained. “You do seem them about from time-to-time. It just became a little bit mad in The Magician’s Apprentice because there were so many different Daleks in there that I didn’t want to confuse the eye.

“They haven’t gone away. We still have them. But that’s the answer. The answer to most questions I find is that I’ve made a mistake.”

So are we happy to see, if not the back of them, then less of them? Was their inception flawed? Were they a case of new design over necessary change?

 

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Michelle Gomez: I Want Missy Who!

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.

We’ve had Torchwood, The Sarah Jane Adventures and we’re about to go back to school with Class but could there be room for another Doctor Who spin-off based entirely around a certain female Time Lord?

The Rani?

No, Missy!

If Michelle Gomez had her way, we soon could see the adventures of Missy Who…Yeah, that title needs work.

“Yes. There should be a Missy spin-off, that’s correct – I’m available for that, and why not? Missy Who,” Gomez said at this weekend’s Doctor Who Festival in London, though adding the cautionary note that “not many spin-offs tend to work.

“Apart from Frasier, obviously. That was very good.”

Toss salads and scrambled eggs aside, there’s the small matter of resolving Missy’s fate following the events of The Witch’s Familiar. The last time we saw Missy she seemed to strike a deal with her Dalek captors; so will we see her again before this season draws to a close?

“I just don’t know,” Gomez said. “I’ve asked, obviously, a lot. Insisted upon. But yeah, I dunno. Hope so.

“I’m doing everything I can – now it’s over to you.”

Gomez, who resides in New York, is still flabbergasted by the international success of Doctor Who.

“I don’t know whether it’s the sort of thing we Brits do, self-deprecation,” she said. “We feel like perhaps it’s more parochial, that it’s ours, that it’s maintained in this tiny island, and then it’s a surprise to find fezzes all over the world. And it’s just brilliant.

“This product, if you like, is able to really reach across the pond. And it doesn’t seem to have any cultural problems there, with regards to [viewers] being able to really enjoy it. It doesn’t seem to just be British. Or maybe it’s the Britishness they really enjoy. But yeah, it’s really successful.”

Do you miss Missy? Will she return for the finale? What other characters deserve their own spin-off?

The post Michelle Gomez: I Want Missy Who! appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

Christmas Special: River Won’t Recognise the Doctor

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.

Two time crossed lovers reunite this Christmas when River Song steps back into the Doctors timeline. When David Tennant’s Tenth Doctor first met River, she’d already lived through an entire romance. However this time, the tables are turned.

“That’s how the Christmas special begins,” showrunner Steven Moffat revealed to fans at the London Doctor Who Festival, “she doesn’t know it’s him.”

Now, hang on. Surely if Matt Smith’s Eleventh Doctor was there when River regenerated into her Alex Kingston form, then the Christmas special can’t take place before they’ve met. Could it be that River simply doesn’t recognise the Doctor?

“It’s an opportunity for the Doctor to find out the terrible truth: what his wife gets up to when he’s not looking,” Moffat cackled. “No one should ever go through that!”

Previously Moffat promised that this year’s Christmas special would focus on ‘Mr & Mrs Who’ when the TARDIS is tucked away in a snowy village, cover in icicles, awaiting the next adventure. Which makes it sound very similar to The Snowman, where the Eleventh Doctor was locked away in mourning for the loss of Amy and Rory. With Clara about to depart, could the Twelfth Doctor be similarly afflicted?

“The last time the Doctor saw her she was a ghost,” said Moffat on this year’s Christmas special back in September. “The first time he met her, she died. So how can he be seeing her again? As ever, with the most complicated relationship in the universe, it’s a matter of time …”

Are you looking forward to the return of River Song?  Will River and the Twelfth Doctor will breathe live back into their relationship, which had run its course.

The post Christmas Special: River Won’t Recognise the Doctor appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

Mark Gatiss: I Learnt My Moral Code From Doctor Who

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.

We are all shaped by our hero figures. Through their actions, be they fictional or real, they provide a barometer by which we measure our own standing. They can inspire us both in our lives and in our work – that goes double when you just so happen to be writing dialogue for your hero too.

Mark Gatiss, writer of Sleep No More as well as former League of Gentleman cohort and Sherlock co-creator, has sat down with the Radio Times to discuss just how his own moral code has been shaped by the Doctor. Speaking passionately about the ratings furore which has been the dominant conversation this series, Gatiss said the show should return to its traditional tea time slot.

“Put it on at a proper time, put it on where it should be, when Pointless Celebrities is on,” he said.  “That’s where it belongs, otherwise you are almost perversely cutting off your key audience, which is children.”

And there’s a personal reason why it should be returned to that slot.

“I learnt my entire moral code from Jon Pertwee [the Doctor, 1970–74], and also what TV still should be about, which is a very Reithian thing,” he said. “I learnt so much from TV in the best kind of osmotic way. I absorbed morality, I absorbed a kind of scepticism and enjoyment of story, and oddness, and narrative. These days it’s so hard to get those things through; it’s almost become a dirty word to say ‘culture’. Education should be so much more than getting a good job.”

It’s this blinkered results driven culture that seemingly drives the conversation about ratings too.

“The ratings system is insane and iniquitous. I’ve seen grown men crying because their show got 6.3 million [viewers] instead of a hoped-for 6.5. They make a difference to a person’s career.”

But having listened to the ‘ten year low’ overnight ratings headlines, Gatiss is having none of it.

“This is nuts. Everybody watches television in a different way from the way they did four, five years ago. Yet the people who make a fuss about overnights are the same people who go home and watch TV in an entirely different way.

“That’s the modern world we live in and I’m not being defensive, but when you add everything together – time-shifting, plus iPlayer – [Doctor Who’s] ratings are the same as they ever were. But there is no capital in saying ‘Doctor Who’s ratings remain roughly the same’, so people make a story out of it.”

Even the ever-present Great British Bake Off with its year high total of 15 million viewers, cannot change his mind about the built in obsolescence of overnight ratings.

“Those episodes of Bake Off or The X Factor, and their virtues are manifest, will never be watched again. Yet Doctor Who will be watched in 50 years’ time, 100 years’ time. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. I love things to be popular, I want things to be watched, but this sort of scrutiny is deadly.”

You can read more about Mark Gatiss’ career, his childhood and his love of horror over at the Radio Times.

The post Mark Gatiss: I Learnt My Moral Code From Doctor Who appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

Mark Gatiss Has A Sequel Planned For Sleep No More!

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.

Spoiler warning! If you’ve not seen Sleep No More, stop reading!

The most divisive episode so far, Sleep No More, has polarised fans with its intriguing conception and underwhelming execution – its mixture of found footage techniques and familiar Doctor Who tropes has at least one ‘eye-catching’ idea – the sandmen, outer space bogeymen made from the sleep in the corner of your eye.

And it’s thanks to these monsters that Doctor Who got what it hasn’t had for a long time, an unhappy ending.

It’s something that delighted Mark Gatiss as he chatted to the Radio Times during the Doctor Who Festival in London.

“It does have an unhappy ending, yes,” Gatiss said. “Earthshock might be the last time that happened. The Doctor loses.”

So why did he decide to end the episode on such a downer?

“In my head the episode has a paranoid 70s bleakness to it, and all those films ended on an unhappy ending,” he explained. “I thought it was fascinating to do that, and obeying the rules of found footage, it needed a final twist. As with the whole format of the episode, it’s to ring the changes.

“It doesn’t mean they’re going to win eventually. The Doctor knows something’s wrong, so he’s not fooled…and I do have a sequel planned.”

A sequel! Now that is horrifying. So will it involve the Doctor tracking down the infectious footage, a ‘The Ring in Space’ as the Radio Times points out.

“The Ring in Space is a good name! Like The Ark in Space. I’ve got a good idea. Pleasing my inner fan, the idea of doing a pairing, like the Yeti stories, is rather lovely. It pleases my Doctor Who self.”

So would you like to see a sequel to Sleep No More? Where you underwhelmed by the experiment? Should Doctor Who tackle more tropes of the horror genre?

 

The post Mark Gatiss Has A Sequel Planned For Sleep No More! appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

Michelle Gomez To Appear in Gotham

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.

Michelle Gomez is swapping all of time and space for just one specific place, namely Gotham, where she’ll be playing a mysterious character called The Lady.

Gomez will appear in the next episode, A Bitter Pill to Swallow, which airs on Monday November 16th stateside on Fox.  Staring alongside son of former Time Lord Jon Pertwee, Sean Pertwee (who play’s young Bruce Wayne’s butler Alfred), Gomez took to Twitter to reveal just The Lady will look like.

The show focuses on young Bruce Wayne growing up in Gotham City just some familiar rogues begin their own rise to power – the second season, which goes under the title Rise of the Villains, includes younger versions of well-known villains such as The Joker, The Riddler, Penguin, Catwoman and Harvey Dent.

Little is known about The Lady but, if we were locked in an interrogation room with Batman and he’d just slammed our head on the table, we’d put our money on her being Lady Vic – an assassin who is descended from a line of wealthy English aristocratic mercenaries (and let’s face it, you can’t walk down Regent Street without bumping into at least 12 of those) who wields the heirlooms of her descendants trade.

Speaking to the Metro, Gomez confirmed that she was involved in the show with the suggestion that it may be more than a one shot appearance.

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Face The Raven: Next Time Trailer and New Promo Image

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 BBC have released a new promotional image for next Saturday’s episode, Face the Raven.

Written by Sarah Dollard and Directed by Justin Molotnikov Face the Raven sees the Doctor (Peter Capaldi) and Clara (Jenna Coleman) reunited with their old friend Rigsy (Joivan Wade) as the trio find themselves in a magical alien world, hidden on a street in the heart of London.

Sheltered within this street are some of the most fearsome creatures of the universe…and Ashildr (Maisie Williams)!

With a death sentence hanging over their heads, not all of the intruders will get out alive.

What’s more, there’s the ominous TV trailer. It looks like Clara will have to be brave…

Face the Raven is due to be broadcast on Saturday 21st at 20:10 on BBC 1.

The post Face The Raven: Next Time Trailer and New Promo Image appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

Doctor Who Festival Day Two: Quotes and Gallery

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.

It’s the second day of the Doctor Who Festival and in attendance was soon-departing companion Jenna Coleman – who joined the chorus of cast and crew members who want to see the show return to its traditional tea time slot.

Currently the show is being buffered around the schedule with it usually airing around that other Saturday juggernaut, Strictly Come Dancing – with the show ending around 9pm – which is too late for young children.

Speaking to The Express, she said: “There’s not many programmes that you can watch as a family.”

she added that she thought the show should be moved back to earlier in the evening.

 “I think so. It is a family show and it should be watched as a family. But it’s not really for me. I don’t deal with the TV schedules.”

Coleman also added that the show was ‘really good for kids because of the imagination it inspires and the creativity’.

With all that inspiration and creativity, you wonder why you she’s departing. However, having considered her decision, and delayed it a year, when it didn’t feel right, now is the right time for her to go. So was Jenna ever worried about being typecast for the rest of her career?

“That never worried me. It never has,” said Coleman as she appeared at the huge Doctor Who Festival at London’s ExCel centre where around 15,000 fans – many in highly-elaborate costumes – gathered.

“I look at the bigger picture. I don’t think you can really base your decisions on ‘if I stay another year what will my gravestone say’?

“It was more a personal decision of how do I want to spend the next year, how much am I enjoying my time on this job, how much do I love working with Peter, how good are the scripts that Steven is providing and is it the right time to walk away?

“I stayed another year because it wasn’t.”

However, she hasn’t ruled out a return to the show in the future – and laughed off a suggestion that she could be the first ever female Doctor.

“Clara would like to think of herself as the Doctor – minus the 2,000 years of experience that he has. She’s got a long way to go.”

She said she would miss the close relationship built up with Capaldi – saying it was very much like the “unlikely friendship” between their characters.

“In the way that Clara and the Doctor is, it’s such an unlikely friendship but we are really similar and we love each other. He is a lovely man and a really great friend and it isn’t every day you get that. It’s quite rare.”

If you want to relive some of Clara Oswald’s best moments then Doctor Who Series 9: Part 1 is available to buy on DVD and bbcstore.com

 

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