Doctor Who Online

The SciFiNow Guest Blog - January 2012

James Hoare — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 10:02:00 +0000

Being Human is back, having controversially parted ways with two of the three regulars and parachuted in a new vampire and werewolf.

Why this is relevant, aside from SciFiNow going behind the scenes on the new series – as recounted in the latest issue by the stunning scribblings of our senior staff writer Jodie Tyley – and Toby Whithouse dropping a few Doctor Who Series Seven nuggets in there, is that the backlash to the casting change instantly draws comparisons to another slab of BBC telefantasy with a devoted following.

One of the voices proclaiming that the series should just end rather than replace its original cast had for his Twitter icon an image of Matt Smith. The irony alarm had to be unplugged it was making so much noise.

I know, I know, that’s a bit unkind. The ability to change the core cast of Doctor Who is central to the concept, and that’s not the case for Being Human, but you have to remember that it wasn’t always so, and change was just as alarming 40-odd years ago as it is now.

William Hartnell left, perhaps because of his glove habit (+10 Who Points if you laughed at that), and the production team were left with a number of options: they could find another crotchety old character actor, kill the show dead, or cast a radically different new face into the same rough chassis of the old one, while inventing some guff about the Doctor’s alien race needing periodic renewal to smooth over the cracks.

How would you have reacted in 1966 when you heard the cult show of the day was just sweeping the previous three years under the carpet? “Pffft, a new Doctor!?” you might have screeched on whatever passed for Twitter in the Sixties. “You might as well change the police box into a rocket-powered Cadillac, because it’s clearly not going to be the same show.”

It wasn’t the same show. Well, it kinda was, but it also wasn’t. The concept expanded and matured, and the dynamic shifted radically, and then in 1969… they did it all over again!

There’s a lot we can still learn from Doctor Who. A show with this sort of lengthy and cluttered history, with incredible highs and lamentable lows, is a good vantage point from which we can look down at the rest of science fiction and fantasy.

Like the Doctor himself with his centuries of perspective, our love for a show that is nearly half a century old is a wondrous aid for putting things into perspective. There’s a new vampire in Being Human? Pffft, whatever, my favourite show replaced its lead actor ten times!

SciFiNow Issue #64 is out now, with a massive behind the scenes feature on the controversial new series of Being Human, and an eight-page Complete Guide to the Second Doctor. You can buy it digitally from the Apple Newsstand, or online from the ImagineShop. Check it out at www.scifinow.co.uk.

The SciFiNow Guest Blog - November 2011

James Hoare — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 15:59:00 +0000

Don't fear the Doctor Who movie reboot!

"A television series which embraces both the ideas of parallel universes and the concept of changing time can't have a continuity error—it's impossible for Doctor Who to get it wrong, because we can just say 'he changed time.'”

That quote, from current showrunner Steven Moffat at 2008’s San Diego Comic-Con, probably won’t salve the open wound that is talk of a movie reboot currently tearing Twitter [www.twitter.com/scifinow] apart like the opening of the Eye of Harmony. But it’s certainly worth remembering.

A Doctor Who movie reboot is nothing to be scared of, because appropriately for a series about time travel, it’s already happened twice.

In 1965 we were introduced to a kindly old inventor, Doctor Who, and his family, and they took off to battle the Daleks on their dead planet. It was all very thrilling, and in glorious COLOUR! no less. Then in 1996 the Doctor discovered he liked girls in the yucky way, and that he had a human mother. The former and its sequel are rightly appreciated as a historical curiosity, a testament to grand storytelling chops of Terry Nation, and celebrated for its strong cast – I quite like to pretend that Bernard Cribbins is reprising his role from 1966’s Daleks: Invasion Earth 2150AD as the avuncular Wilfred Mott, however ridiculous as that is to consider – but the latter gained enormous traction. Paul McGann was the Eighth Doctor; he felt and looked like one, he was magical, serene, passionate and alien, and so future writers of books, comics and audiobooks took that and rationalised away or just discarded the things they didn’t like.

More significantly, though, we’re ostensibly treated to an reboot with every new creative team to take on the series itself as the tone shifts and different priorities come to the fore. As Paul Cornell argued in this piece [http://www.paulcornell.com/2007/02/canonicity-in-doctor-who.html], the ad hoc and idiosyncratic nature of Doctor Who has always resulted in inconsistency. Like many other creaky old British institutions, it simply evolved and changed, without anyone setting down the law.

Arguably this freedom is what has given the show such incredible longevity, as producers, writers and assorted other creatives simply advanced tirelessly into bold new territories and media, taking in fantastic highs and pitiable lows. It doffed its cap to the past if it served a story or established a point, and ignored it if it didn’t, treating canon as a toybox rather than a set of yellowing scriptures to be grimly intoned in a dead language.

The nature of the show helps too, as the Moff said way back at the beginning of this piece. If the Earth Cybermen are the Mondasian Cybermen of that universe, why can’t luckless '60s copper Tom Campbell be the Wilfred Mott of a London without Motts? Or Peter Cushing’s doddering old Doctor Who in a world without Time Lords? Or Dimensions In Time have taken place in some sort of meta-fictional world where Doctor Who is merely a TV show produced by the same national broadcaster as a ghastly Cockney soap opera?

The Time War helpfully erased all sins when the 'new series' kicked off in 2005, and who knows what brave new world or great galatic reset Time War II will usher in.

And if you don’t like it, then the things you do like will still be there, along with some things you didn’t like and some things you didn’t care about either way. And how much luckier and richer for that are we when you look at the sort of George Lucas-enforced mandatory drivel Star Wars fans have to put up with?

SciFiNow Issue #60 is out now, check it out at www.scifinow.co.uk.

The SciFiNow Guest Blog - July 2011

James Hoare — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 07:12:00 +0000

Regardless of your take on Season Six, the Matt Smith era, the Private Eye controversy, or even the entirety of ‘New Who’, you can’t escape how remarkable it all is.

Ten or fifteen years ago, when all we had to go on were audio books, tie-in fiction and rumour, it was utterly inconceivable that you’d be seeing one of the Doctor’s companions clutching a baby on the cover of almost every TV guide in the land, that Sandman author Neil Gaiman would have written an episode, and that children would be gushingly relating the plot to the latest episode with enthusiasm usually saved for Harry Potter, Pokemon or Ben Ten.

Being a Whovian used to be such a lonely pursuit, but not an unpleasant one. The wilderness years between 1989 and 2004 were like a long winter spent in front of the fire, snowed in away from civilisation, but with plenty to keep us entertained in the shape of such a vast, rewarding canon to analyse, dissect, rediscover and bask in. Since Doctor Who’s return, though, it’s become a genuine sensation; one that transcends genres and interests as a half-way house in popular culture.

The Monday morning following ‘A Good Man Goes to War’, I found myself in an animated discussion about the episode (you’ve no doubt found yourself in a few of these since), clustered around the kettle with the office’s resident Who fans, when someone who’d previously shown no interest in the series – or in sci-fi at all in fact, leapt in – opining on the Amy/Rory dynamic and the story arc with impassioned fervour.

Doctor Who is no longer this dusty old suitcase we found in the attic, full of brilliant relics and snapshots from another era; it’s something that’s very much alive, constantly shifting and growing. It might still frustrate, disappoint, delight and excite us, but it doesn’t belong to us alone. It belongs to everyone, and that’s its single greatest gift.

Ten or fifteen years ago, you wouldn’t have been able to talk about Doctor Who at work. Now, you can’t get away without talking about Doctor Who at work.

SciFiNow Issue #55 is out now, featuring a Captain America exclusive and a whole cosmos of sci-fi, from Green Lantern and Cowboys & Aliens, to Falling Skies and True Blood. Check it out at www.scifinow.co.uk

The SciFiNow Guest Blog - May 2011

James Hoare — Fri, 20 May 2011 08:56:00 +0000

It’s thanks to the Hand of Omega that I’m editing SciFiNow...

The link between the super-powerful, world-toppling Time Lord doohicky from 1988’s Remembrance Of The Daleks, and my career as an opinionated keyboard basher isn’t as tenuous as you might think. One of my earliest memories is of watching the cliffhanger to Episode One, in which a Dalek ascends the stairs to close in on a cowering Seventh Doctor with my dad, whose own enthusiasm for sci-fi began with the Journey Into Space radio serial of the F ifties.

That was the start of a lengthy obsession that has yet to abate, but it also sparked off my enthusiasm for publishing. Fairly soon after that moment of almost religious awakening over the anxious face of Sylvester McCoy (don’t picture that), I received my first fanzine.

This was the result of a recent remarriage, an event not unlike the opening of a booster pack and laying out the random pick and mix of new cousins, aunts, uncles and uncategorisables. In this pack was the foil-plated, hand-numbered card of your dreams, the Penny Black of the New Family CCG. My cousin Paul had just returned home to Grimsby after university, where, as far as I was concerned, he’d obviously enjoyed immense popularity as king of the world with his own Doctor Who fanzine, the roughly photocopied Hand of Omega. I vividly remember my mum driving over to his parents with me in tow, and him slowly descending the stares to nonchalantly hand me the only two issues he had remaining.

It was without doubt the most exciting thing I had ever experienced; I think I actually boasted about this at school. I wasn’t popular at school, but I’m not sure in retrospect if there’s a correlation.

I wanted to be that awesome. I didn’t understand the concept of a fanzine, but like a loveable alien attempting to mimic mankind, I did a damn good impression of it. I produced my own zine, one of the features pasted directly from his – an interview with the chap who played Sutekh in ‘Pyramids Of Mars’ – a couple of articles photocopied directly from Doctor Who Magazine, and the cover was my own felt tip rendering of the cover for the Target tie-in of Doctor Who and The Dalek Invasion of Earth.

I stapled together about a dozen copies and sold them in the school playground, shifting about three over dinnertime.

Plagiarism aside, it was an auspicious start.

SciFiNow issue #54 is out now, featuring Neil Gaiman talking extensively about ‘The Doctor’s Wife’, his childhood fear of the Fourth Doctor and bringing Sandman to the small screen. Check it out at www.scifinow.co.uk

Getting Interactive...

Sebastian J. Brook — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 06:48:00 +0000

After nearly a year in development, DWO are proud to unveil our new DWO iBar. But what is the iBar? Well, it's very much like the Facebook bar, which enables you to keep in touch with your friends via a handy chat bar. But DWO have gone that bit further by offering more than just a chat...

Whilst chatting to your friends, you can also play games with them, use smilies from our database, hand-write messages with each other, and if one-on-one chat isn't enough for you, the bar is also plugged directly into the main DWO Chat.

Also available on the iBar, are a set of icons to the left hand side that give you instant access to the DWO homepage, the DWO Forums homepage, the DWO Chat, the DWO Apps section, as well as social features like Facebook, Twiiter and ShareThis. You will also be notified of important DWO announcements, as well as being able to scroll to the top of any page, and even change the look and feel of the bar itself via our skins.

And the best part is it's available on every page of the site, and more importantly - it's FREE! All that is required, is for you to register a FREE account on the DWO Forums, which will enable you to login to the bar, and if you're a member already, the ibar will already be working for you.

We hope you like our new addition, and think you will agree that it brings a whole new level of interactivity to the site, and indeed Doctor Who fandom.

DWO would love to hear your feedback on the iBar, and encourage you to email it to us at: feedback@drwho-online.co.uk.

Happy Who Year!

Sebastian J. Brook — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 11:10:00 +0000

It's 2011, and what a year we have ahead of us...

DWO have some very exciting projects coming up, but more on that later in this entry. Our favourite TV show returns this Spring, albeit slightly differently than previous years, as we embrace our first 'New Who' split season.

For five years now, we have been used to watching Doctor Who from Easter through to Summer, but this year, we finally get to enjoy the show in an Autumn timeslot - a slot, which many Doctor Who fans (us included) believe the show was made for.

Turn the clock back a few years to when the original series aired...ok...a lot more than a 'few', but this was a time when we had Doctor Who throughout the year. Yet, for the DWO team, its the stories that were broadcast in the Autumn that we recall most fondly. Picture the setting... It's October. The cold, dark nights are drawing in, you've just put the kettle on for a cup of tea or hot cocoa, and then the theme tune that we all know and love, whirls away. Suddenly we are drawn into the world of time travel and monsters - but it's just that bit darker, and that bit scarier, as the outside world effectively shuts itself down bringing the focus into your living room.

If fact, new series fans need not cast their minds back too far. Remember The Waters of Mars? Granted it was a brilliant story in its own right, but how much more apt was it, that we got to watch it during the Autumn season? The airing of this particular episode felt a little different. Most of us were not used to watching Doctor Who at this time of year, and yet it felt so right.

Steven Moffat has promised us a big 'game-changing' climax to the first half of the season, but rather than having to wait until Christmas, we instead get to look forward to more new adventures in just a few months after a short break. Hurrah!

We talked briefly about some new projects at DWO that we are working on this year, the first of which is a much-needed overhaul to our Episode Guide. We aim to have the new guides all finished by Easter with interactivity with our Forums and the Reviews section, as well as direct price comparisons to merchandise through our CompareTheDalek.com site.

2011 will also see the relaunch of our popular VORTEXTRA section, which goes beyond the Doctor Who adventures we see on our TV screens by finding out what happened before and after each episode, through submissions from our team of writers. VORTEXTRA will also be there to offer post-episode features as they air, including Voting, Quizzes, Q&A's and more.

DWO will be bringing you a new series of Time Tales (our popular Doctor Who diorama series), in which The 11th Doctor will feature in some truly fantastic adventures, written and shot by Malcolm Orr.

We plan to revamp our popular Chat room, with added functionality as well as linking it to the whole site, so you can chat to all your buddies from any page of DWO, Facebook style!

The DWO Forums continue to grow with well over 35,000+ Members to date - with as many as 50,000+ expected by the end of the year. We will also continue to bring you more celebrity guests from the show who will take part in Q&A's.

Well...we've got our work cut out for us right now, so perhaps this is a good point to end this entry. No rest for the wicked and all that! We will post regular DWO Blog entries to keep you updated with our progress as well as to let you know about even more site features, competitions and such.

Until then, have a very Happy New Year from all the DWO team!

It's Christmaaaaaaaas!

Sebastian J. Brook — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 19:05:00 +0000

Well here we are at the end of another year - and what a year it's been! Can you believe its been a year since we said our farewells to David Tennant's 10th Doctor, and welcomed in Matt Smith's 11th Doctor? We've all watched Series Five come and go, as it was met with glowing reviews and promises of a new exciting direction in which to take our favourite Science Fiction television series. Steven Moffat really has done us all proud, and surely deserves a virtual glass raised in his honour this Christmas season.

But wait... it's not over yet! After the present unwrapping and over indulgence of food, we have a brand new Doctor Who story to watch at 6:00pm on BBC One this Christmas Day. It promises to be a thoroughly entertaining hour, and from what we've seen, it certainly won't disappoint!

After A Christmas Carol has aired, DWO visitors can pop on over the DWO Forums to rate and discuss the episode, where we will also be giving away 1 copy of the Series Five DVD Boxset to one random member who posts feedback for the episode.

In the meantime, we have some pre-Christmas treats for you...

- A festive Time Tales diorama is now online, where The Doctor meets John Lennon in 'So This Is Christmas'.

- You can check out our recent Interview with YouTube video blog sensation and Doctor Who Confidential Reporter, Charlie McDonnell.

- DWO recently travelled to Utah; USA to record a special Doctor Who inspired documentary, looking at alien landscapes in the state. You can now view The Sands of Time on the DWO YouTube Channel, as well as an accompanying Blooper Reel.

- Finally, on Christmas Eve, DWO will be offering a special video on our YouTube Channel, showing you how to make Dalek Sugar Cookies!

We hope you enjoy our festive offerings and would like to wish every one of our visitors a very Merry Christmas!

Happy Anniversary!

Sebastian J. Brook — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 09:20:00 +0000

I bet you'd thought I'd forgotten, didn't you? After 47 years, Doctor Who celebrates its 47th anniversary today. Who'd have thunk that way back in 1963, this TV show, which has become an institution, would be going strong all these years later?

Ok...so we had a little blip between 1989 and 1996....ok, and maybe another one between 1996 and 2005, but we got there in the end didn't we?

But maybe we forget that as fans, we all had a big part to play in the shows triumphant return. For it was all of us that kept the fire alive in those 'wilderness years'. All those polls and letter writing to the BBC, those fanzines and those fan-made audio adventures.

Then we have people like Nicholas Briggs and the Reeltime Pictures team, who helped take things that bit further with video productions that used some of the cast from Doctor Who, together with fans of the show. It's no surprise that some of those very same 'fans' went on to become successful producers, writers and editors.

And then we have Big Finish Productions, who helped raise that flame even higher with official audio productions. Headed by Jason Haigh-Ellery and Gary Russell, the company has been producing unique, original Doctor Who content for over 10 years.

Since Gary's departure, Nicholas Briggs took over the mantle as Executive producer, taking the company in a new, exciting direction that has seen the completion of missing seasons of Doctor Who, whilst dipping back into the series' past to bring back some truly classic monsters and characters.

As editor of a 'fan site' I myself have seen so much creativity, love and enthusiasm from our visitors over the past 14 years that we have been online. I've been blown away by your pictures, your fan fiction and your utter devotion to this show we all love.

So I raise a virtual glass to all of us, and to this show that brings us all together, and to the fabulous production team who are doing such a tremendous job taking Doctor Who to adventures new.

Cheers!

Seb. x

Redecoration

Sebastian J. Brook — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 17:01:00 +0000

Apologies for the lack in blog updates as of late, it's been an incredibly busy few months both on the site and off the site!

On the site...we have been planning an upgrade of the DWO Forums, which will see vast speed improvements and the banishment of the dreaded 'Time Out' error message that rears its ugly head from time to time. We hope to have this applied over the weekend.

You may noticed a brand new DWO logo (we do hope you like), which is part of a planned redecoration to the site, of which the key aim is to simplify the presentation of content, whilst maintaining our visual brand.

The DWO News page is set to have a major facelift shortly, as we streamline the latest web technologies with the interactivity of our Forums, and social networking utilities, enabling full interactivity.

Off the site... My wife and I recently (June) celebrated the birth of our daughter, Amelia (no who connection, promise!), which goes some way to explain any time where there has been a slight delay in updates. Everything is on hand now, and we are fully manned on the site going forward.  Well that's it for now, embrace the changes, and we will keep you posted with some exciting new developments here at DWO towers.

Something Old, Something New

Sebastian J. Brook — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 08:26:00 +0000

Well there we go... Series Five is over, and what a way to go out!

Over the past 13 weeks, DWO have had the privelage to preview what can easily be labelled the best New Series of Doctor Who to date. It's a series that had to be brave, bold and refreshing, and together with a truly fantastic cast and production team, succeeded on so many levels.

The fabulous Russell T. Davies, left us with a new legacy, one which built up everyone's appreciation in Doctor Who, not to mention the BBC's own trust and belief in the brand. The question on all our lips was "Where will it go next?". Then we found out who was taking over the helm...

Steven Moffat has not only done himself proud with this series, but the entire brand of Doctor Who itself, pulling together the finest writers, directors and actors that the BBC budget can muster. It's fair to say he took some risks, but how fantastic they were, and with a CV like Moffat's to go on, sometimes there are leaps of faith that we can all grab on to, and know we're in safe hands.

Before the first episode aired, some newspapers and online sites were referring to new Doctor, Matt Smith, as 'the credit crunch Doctor', and referring to his age as a barrier to the potential success of the series. Not only has Matt proven the doubters to be utterly wrong, but he has taken the role of The Doctor, and totally owned it. In fact, by the time the titles came up at the end of 5.1: The Eleventh Hour, he had already owned it.

Matt wasn't the only Actor to be bathed in the proverbial sunlight of success, however. Karen Gillan's Amy Pond, was an inspired pairing that took the Doctor/Companion relationship down a totally different, and exciting path. Her lust for adventure, and...yes...sometimes The Doctor, together with her charmingly loyal boyfriend Rory, played so affectionately by Arthur Darvill, created a new classic TARDIS team, the likes that we haven't seen since The 2nd Doctor Jamie and Victoria.

So what if all the questions weren't answered from this series? What a great way to propel us into Series Six! You cannot help but be reminded of the way the early classic series episodes lead into one another, keeping you gripped to see what happens next. Once more, Moffat has drawn upon a winning combination. Rewritten it. Redefined it. And more inportantly, relaunched it.

Call him what you will...The Grand Moff, The Mofferator, Moffer Theresa - DWO claim credit to that one ;-). However, there is one tag in particular that seems to fit the bill where Moffat is concerned...'The right man for the job'.

What did you think of 5.13: The Big Bang?

Don't forget to log on to the DWO Forums to Rate / Discuss the episode. If you're not a member of our Forums, joining is fast and FREE, and within minutes you can be part of our 30,000+ strong community.

A quick shout out for our Twitter group, which has over 11,000+ followers! If you aren't yet following us, you can do so at: http://www.twitter.com/drwhoonline.

The DWO YouTube Channel is also doing very well, with over 700 subscribers and a number of videos that include vlogs, exclusive documentaries as well as trailers, interviews and more! Check it out at: http://www.youtube.com/drwhoonline