Hotsy Totsy News Blast Featuring Class Warfare and Apples

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.

Gather around, ladies and gentlemen, multi-forms and undecided. For I have news.

What news do I have? Well, maybe you should learn to be patient and I’ll tell you all about it, you little tike. The nerve of these kids nowadays. Fine. A teaser of what’s to come: Maisie Williams. The Radio Times Festival. Amy Pond. And burlesque. Oh, see, now you’re interested. You disgust me.

But first, we start with something downbeat…

Alan Wakeman (1936- 2015)

We’re sad to report that Alan Wakeman, who was commissioned to write an early First Doctor script, has passed away at the age of 79.

Wakeman wrote the synopsis and first script (Airfish) of The Living Planet – literally a serial in which the TARDIS lands on a planet that’s actually a living creature. It’s an idea frequently used in non-canon stories, but this story never made it to screen; Alan was paid a half-fee of £75 for development of the idea, but the Who crew felt it was too adult for the show.

The synopsis and script was reprinted in 2012’s Nothing at the End of the Lane #3, still on sale for £5.99 (plus p&p).

He was also an important figure in the Gay Liberation Front, and took their ideals to student unions in a bid to fight the prejudices he experienced from a young age. Alan’s friend, Andrew Lumsden wrote in his tribute:

“Alan was a vegan from the ’70s, and to encourage others he wrote The Vegan Cookbook with Gordon Baskerville, published by Faber and Faber in 1986 as one of the first such books in its field. It remains a staple volume on the bookshelves of many vegans and vegetarians. He also wrote an English translation of The Little Prince children’s story in 1995, a version admired by the family of the book’s French author, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.”

Wakeman’s autobiography, Fragments of Joy and Sorrow, was released in June.

The Radio Times Festival

The Radio Times Festival is being held next month, and three big names have been added to Sunday’s The Women of Sherlock talk: Una Stubbs, aka Mrs Hudson; Louise Brealey (Molly Hooper); and Amanda Abbington (Mary Watson)!

They join co-creator, Steven Moffat and producer, Sue Vertue in the hour-long session during which they’re expected to chat about the impact of these important characters on the Great Detective’s life. And is the Radio Times hinting that another announcement is due? They state:

“The Women of Sherlock will be in session from 5–6pm, and doubtless have plenty to talk about: the man from 221b Baker Street has been off our screens for 18 months now, and an air date for his much-anticipated Victorian Christmas Special has yet to be confirmed.”

Might the special be confirmed for a specific festive date? Maybe Christmas Eve? Or even over New Year?

In related news, the publication wants your questions for Twelfth Doctor, Peter Capaldi, who will be joining Moffat and producer, Brian Minchin at a Friday panel focusing on everyone’s favourite show! There’ll be an audience Q&A, sure, but the Radio Times wants you to tweet your questions (using the hashtag, #RTFestival) or email them to hello@radiotimes.com.

The best ones will be read out on 25th September!

The four-day event also includes sessions about Strictly Come Dancing, Poldark, and more, and is held at at The Green at Hampton Court Palace, from Thursday 24th to Sunday 27th September. Former showrunner, Russell T Davies will also be the focus of one panel. Yep, tickets are still available!

Christopher’s Class Crusade Continues!

I’ve been rewatching Series 1! Okay, so that’s not news you care about, but it does lead nicely into a great interview with the Ninth Doctor, Christopher Eccleston, who continues his crusade against class divisions in television and theatre. He said:

“Acting was a huge escape for me. But nowadays, if you’re from my background, the door is almost shut. All the classical roles in London’s West End go to white, middle-class males, and we get a culture that resultantly bland. To be honest, I find it very disturbing.”

Eccleston will be playing DCI Leonard “Nipper” Read in Legend, a biopic about the Kray twins. Nipper famously arrested them in 1969, and the pair were sentenced to life imprisonment. And while Christopher doesn’t agree with romanticising the Krays, he said:

“On a psychological level, the Krays were interesting. I myself have identical twin brothers, eight years older than me, so I know how extraordinary that relationship can be.”

Legend, which also stars Midnight‘s Colin Morgan, We’ll Take Manhattan‘s Aneurin Barnard, and A Series of Unfortunate Events‘ Emily Browning, is released in the UK on 9th September and 2nd October in the US.

An Apple A Day Keeps the… Ah, Never Mind

Ah, Amy Pond. How I miss the days she and Rory were dotting around the universe with a mad man in a box. Actress, Karen Gillan revealed that she keeps Pond very close to her heart – or more accurately, in her living room!

I keep this in my living room. Anyone recognize it? pic.twitter.com/JxM6EJIvAg

— Karen Gillan (@karengillan) August 20, 2015

That’s the locket she wore in her final regular appearance in Doctor Who: The Angels Take Manhattan.

The Radio Times points out that Amy wore numerous necklaces throughout time and space, notably the ‘A’ in The Impossible Astronaut (2011), and the apple on her wedding day in 2010′ The Big Bang (identified by RT as a “red… thing”; but yes, it’s an apple, ie. a hint that the events of The Eleventh Hour weren’t completely forgotten!).

Kissing it to Death

It’s burlesque time again. Not something I expected to write today, but there you go.

The Hotsy Totsy Burlesque brings their tribute to Doctor Who to New York’s Slipper Room, 167 Orchard St, (at the corner of Stanton, on the second floor) on 11th September. Featuring performances by Cherry Pitz, Delirium Tremens, Lucky Charming, Mary Cyn, Matt Knife and Miranda Raven, this Who show follows similar tributes to Harry Potter, Mad Men, and Star Wars – as well as a similar Doctor Who show. In addition to corsets and leggings, this is what to expect:

“The Doctor is back! It’s Cherry’s birthday and the Doctor always visits on her birthday, he hasn’t missed one of them in over 90 years! What adventure is it this time? Is it a [Cyberman]? The Vashta Narada – perhaps a Nude [Ood]? Maybe this time nothing will go wrong…maybe this time he will be able to say with confidence “No one dies today.” Or maybe the Doctor is ready to hit the big time; after all in the trailer for the upcoming series he does say, “Every time I think it couldn’t get any more extraordinary, it surprises me, It’s impossible, I hate it, it’s evil, it’s astonishing. I want to kiss it to death.”

Hotsy Totsy Burlesque is New York’s only episodic burlesque show featuring new scripts and rotating cast each month. Tickets for this Doctor Who show are just $10!

Spoilers, Sweetie?

The Girl Who Died/ The Woman Who Lived star, Maisie Williams says she teased the Doctor Who crew with Game of Thrones spoilers if they annoyed her! She told Vulture:

“I would threaten people with giving them spoilers if anyone would wind me up. I would threaten to spoil the next episode. Or I’d go, “I’ll spoil the next season!” And everyone would be like, ‘No! No! No! Don’t! You can’t give any spoilers!’ So that was really, really good. It was a power I had over the whole cast and crew.”

With Jenna Coleman’s former boyfriend once starring in the hit HBO drama, it’s no shock that she watches Games of Thrones!

Of course, if Capaldi and co. casually surf online, they’re bound to unwittingly stumble on spoilers: if you haven’t seen the Season 5 finale, beware – it seemed every news outlet was shoving Jon Snow’s possible fate in your face!

Money Matters: With Peter Purves

Peter Purves aka Steven Taylor, companion to the First Doctor, has been interviewed by the Daily Mail, and in a surprisingly turn of events, gave them more fuel in their anti-BBC machine. Mind you, I suspect that, in typical Daily Mail fashion, it’s been blown out of proportion.

He simply said:

“I’ve never been paid what I should have been paid. The BBC were miserly in the 1960s and 1970s. One or two people seemed to feather their nests but I could never work out how that happened. Doing Blue Peter, we were not allowed to do any ancillary work, which was weird… In my first year, 1967, I was paid 35 guineas [£611 in today’s money] a programme and we did two a week. When I left the show in 1978, I was earning £95 a programme [the equivalent of £528 today]. I wasn’t terribly well paid but it amounted to a reasonable income at a time when many people were not earning much money. It enabled me to buy my first house.”

This turned into a headline underlining the BBC as miserly, and unfairly giving Purves a ‘poor little rich kid’ vibe. It’s not Peter at all, let’s face it. I’ve always had a lot of respect for the actor and pantomime director, but I’m nonetheless surprised he went to the Daily Mail for anything like this.

Cue commenters on the site moaning that he’s now got a £1 million house, and a Bentley (with a hearty dose of ‘tut, the BBC, eh?’).

Tut, the Daily Mail, eh?

That’s all for now! Now, get off my lawn before I turn the sprinklers on.

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