Bits and bobs big update Dr who, Steven Moffat, BBC cuts, pod casts and more!!!

Doctor Who Excellent Companion Humour

Doctor Who Twitter — Steven Moffat's Argues with an Internet Troll

Doctor Who Dalek Easter Eggs!

Major BBC cuts to online services... + BBC Doctor Who Site Escapes BBC Online Cuts

'The Minister Of Chance' a new Doctor Who spin-off

Radio Free Skaro #234 – Click here to listen

Staggering Stories Podcast #98: Rex the Dino Runt

End Of Time 3: Booze Control

Episode 12 – The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Paddy Kingsland – Part III – Paddy Kingsland Interview Part II

Colin Baker: "Doctor Who really did travel back in time this week"

Doctor Who’s Fangtastic Foes

Traveling the Vortex Episode 4 - Tragedy Tomorrow, Comedy Tonight

Episode 12 – The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Paddy Kingsland – Part III – Paddy Kingsland Interview Part II

The Doctor Meglos - Doctor Who: Meglos - BBC

Youtube.com

BBC - Doctor Who - Doctor Who Series 6 Trailer

Youtube.com - Thanks to pcjonathan it's on youtube

Seven Years of Torchwood?

John Barrowman has told The Scottish Sun that the BBC and the Starz Network are planning to make seven years of Torchwood.

I have turned down a load of other shows to make Torchwood. We'll be filming it in LA as it's now a collaboration between the BBC and the Starz Network in America. They're planning to make it for the next seven years. So I'll be spending six months a year in Hollywood and six back in the UK.

Source - gallifreynewsbase

Come Fly With Me, Dalek - BBC One

Youtube.com

New Christmas Drama 2010 Trailer - BBC One with Dr who

Youtube.com

Doctor Who will be cloned by aliens in Christmas Special

Doctor Who’s Time Lord will be cloned by aliens in a dramatic episode of the sci-fi drama next year.

An army of monsters from outer space will make a carbon copy of the handsome doctor – who is played by Matt Smith – as they invade Earth.

However, the Time Lord will only discover the clone when he comes face to face with himself as he investigates the alien invasion, and tries to foil the extra-terrestrial beings’ plans to take over the world.

His companions Amy (Karen Gillan) and Rory (Arthur Darvill) also become confused when they can’t work out which is the real doctor and which is his double, and who they should be taking instructions from.

The hit BBC One series returns in the spring after its special Christmas Day (25.12.10) episode, which will be based on ‘A Christmas Carol’ with an alien twist.

Source

Dr who - BBC Christmas Showreel Video

Source

On-stage with Matt, Karen and Arthur

Matt Smith, Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill recently switched on the Cardiff Christmas lights during a spectacular event watched by thousands. But if you missed it, you can enjoy the whole thing now!

Matt, Karen and Arthur took to the stage and chatted to BBC Wales' Jason Mohammad about monsters, memories of the past year, the new series and lots more! You can watch all of their on-stage appearance or if you'd rather just find out what they had to say about the new series or perhaps just view the event's spectacular finale, you can play the edited highlights.

The Big Switch On

The Doctor Who team switched on Cardiff's 2010 Christmas Lights. There were questions from Jason Mohammad, talk of monsters and the new series plus a brilliant, breath-taking climax to the event! Watch the whole thing now!

The New Series

During the Christmas Lights event, the Doctor Who team talked about the 2011 series and were asked about the new monsters the Time Lord would be facing...

Lighting Up the Night

There were a few surprises as the Doctor Who team prepared to switch on Cardiff's Christmas Lights, but in the end Matt Smith pointed the sonic screwdriver into the night sky and the results were spectacular!

Source

Doctor Who – A Christmas Carol: introduction

The thrilling adventures of the Eleventh Doctor (Matt Smith) and newlyweds Amy Pond (Karen Gillan) and Rory Williams (Arthur Darvill) will continue in a Doctor Who fun-filled and heartfelt festive story, A Christmas Carol, this Christmas on BBC One.

In the grand tradition of Doctor Who Christmas specials, this year the show has once again attracted stellar guest stars, as veteran actor Michael Gambon (Harry Potter, The Singing Detective) and Opera diva Katherine Jenkins, in her first acting role, join the Time Lord for what might be his most Christmassy adventure yet!

On winning her part, Katherine Jenkins said: "I'm over the moon to be involved in the Doctor Who Christmas Special – I can't quite believe it as it's a part of the family tradition at the Jenkins household. I heard the news that I got the role on my 30th birthday and it was the best birthday present ever!"

About the series, Lead Writer and Executive Producer, Steven Moffat, commented: "Oh, we're going for broke with this one. It's all your favourite Christmas movies at once, in an hour, with monsters. And the Doctor. And a honeymoon. And... oh, you'll see.

"I've honestly never been so excited about writing anything. I was laughing madly as I typed along to Christmas songs in April. My neighbours loved it so much they all moved away and set up a website demanding my execution. But I'm fairly sure they did it ironically."

The Christmas special follows on from Matt Smith's first series as The Doctor, which attracted huge critical acclaim for Smith, his companion Gillan and lead writer Moffat, from press and legions of fans alike.

Ben Stephenson, Controller, BBC Drama Commissioning said: "Matt Smith and Karen Gillan captivated audiences in their debut series, and Doctor Who's clever twist on the much loved A Christmas Carol will thrill BBC One viewers this year with special guest stars Sir Michael Gambon and singing sensation Katherine Jenkins joining Amy and the Doctor for an unforgettable present!"

Source

'Doctor Who: The Adventure Games' Ep.4 Announced

Doctor Who: The Adventure Games has been produced by a team drawing on the very best talent from TV and gaming. The interactive episodes are executive produced by Steven Moffat, Piers Wenger, Beth Willis and Anwen Aspden (BBC Wales Interactive), alongside Charles Cecil, one of videogaming's most revered creators. The games are being developed by Sumo Digital, one of the UK's best game designers. Stories and scripts are from Phil Ford (co-writer Doctor Who 'Waters of Mars') and James Moran (Severance, Torchwood Children of Earth). The project has been commissioned for BBC Online by the Vision Multiplatform team, headed up by Simon Nelson, and is being driven by BBC Wales Interactive.

Matt Smith and Karen Gillan have been digitally recreated in-game, and have provided full voice-overs. Music has been provided by TV series' composer Murray Gold. An additional cast will portray original characters and classic enemies.

Entitled ‘Shadows of the Vashta Nerada’, this fourth episode sees the first appearance of Steven Moffat’s brilliantly original monsters since their debut in Silence in the Library and Forest of the Dead.

Executive produced by Steven Moffat and written by Doctor Who writer Phil Ford (Shadows of Mars, Torchwood), the game sees the return of Matt Smith and Karen Gillan in digital form – as the Doctor and Amy face their biggest adventure yet.

Kicking off immediately following the cliff-hanger ending of episode three, Shadows of the Vashta Nerada sees The Doctor and Amy materialise just south of London (and about a 1000 miles to the left) inside an aquatic sea-bed colony called Poseidon. The game features a breath-taking plot which surrounds a real-world conspiracy – and, of course, takes place at Christmas.

“We’ve gone all-out for the season finale,” says Steven Moffat, executive producer Doctor Who. “Shadows of the Vashta Nerada takes place entirely underwater – something which would be impossible for the TV series, as water is so expensive. It’s thrilling, terrifying, educational and fun. Just steer clear of those shadows...”

Shadows of the Vashta Nerada will be available on Christmas Day.

James Moran's madcap script takes players on a frantic, funny and altogether surprising adventure which could only be told by a Doctor Who story. With full virtual likenesses of Matt Smith and Karen Gillan, and music from Murray Gold, this adventure is as much a part of the Doctor Who legend as the TV series.

Establishing new forms of drama is exactly what the BBC should be doing. By aiming these 'interactive episodes' at the broad audience of TV show - unique in British television, in that it encompasses at least three generations - we're aiming to encourage the family to gather round the PC or Mac in the same way they do the television. Driving computer literacy is a keystone of the BBC's public service remit and we expect Doctor Who: The Adventure Games to be hugely popular in the homes of Britain this year.

TARDIS will be soon available simultaneously on PC and Mac from the Doctor Who website (www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho). The game will be available for no extra cost to UK households. Users outside the UK will be able to purchase and download it on the same date - details will be put on the Doctor Who website.

Source

7pm for A Christmas Carol?

The Sun reports the Doctor Who Christmas Special, A Christmas Carol, has been scheduled for 7:00pm on Christmas Day.

5.30 TBA
6.30 TBA
7.00 Doctor Who
8.00 The One Ronnie
9.00 The Royle Family
No further information on the two "TBA" entries is known at present, though previous years have seen an edition of Eastenders and Strictly Come Dancing broadcast on Christmas Day.

Scheduling for the period has yet to be finalised, so the times/programmes might change.

Meanwhile, in the Radio Times for the 11-17th December: "Matt Smith reveals the secrets of Doctor Who's Christmas cracker". Though not mentioned in the preceeding issue, recent years have seen a cover dedicated to Doctor Who over the run-up to Christmas (you can see previous covers on the Radio Times website).

Source

Philip Murphy interview: The Doctor Who Experience, Doctor Who Live, and the 50th anniversary

The BBC has just opened ticket sales for its latest Doctor Who event, The Doctor Who Experience, which will be running at London’s Olympia Two from February next year. We got a chance to ask the head of BBC Live Entertainment, Philip Murphy, just what it’s all about…

Can we start with something a bit basic? What is it exactly that you do?

Basically, the Live Entertainment business unit is part of BBC Worldwide, and what we do is put on shows, whether they’re touring shows or one offs. Plus there’s exhibitions, events, attractions, and we do that in relation to a variety of properties owned by the BBC itself. So BBC Worldwide is the commercial arm of the BBC, and we exploit properties to generate profits for the BBC, which we pay back, because the BBC owns all of our shares.

And yeah, we sell the DVDs, we organise live events. We’ve done Doctor Who: The Arena Tour, Doctor Who: The Experience, which we’re talking about today, Top Gear Live, Strictly Come Dancing, Planet Earth concerts.

We’ve got lots of things in the pipeline, all based around giving people the chance to interact in some way in a live moment. And hopefully generate some really exciting memories to do with that property, which they don’t get from watching the TV.



Clearly, Doctor Who has moved firmly onto your radar in the last 12 to 18 months, with the arena tour and the exhibition. I’m assuming from what you’re saying that the interactivity is the key for you?

It’s the thing that most excites us about live events. With TV and radio, you obviously broadcast the stuff out. With digital mediums, you have the opportunity to have people come back to you. And live is just the same.

TV entertainment is changing, the way people consume the products that the BBC is making is changing. One of the things that I’m really excited about, in relation to live events, is creating the opportunity for two-way stuff between the audience and the programme makers.

The Doctor Who Experience, and I know it sounds like marketing who-ha, is a real demonstration of that. The reason for it is fan generated.

When we asked people what they wanted to get from Doctor Who, the number one answer was people wanted to go inside the Tardis. So that’s how we built the immersive adventure part of the Experience from the ground up, to deliver that.

So what we said is it’s not good enough to just have people step inside the Tardis and move on, it’s got to do something. It’s got to be the Tardis. You need to fly it, it needs to take you somewhere. That leads you to the immersive experience part.



I’ve been to a few Doctor Who exhibitions over the years, but my concern with the Experience, with flying the Tardis, is that it’s the kind of thing that sounds, when you get there, there’s a massive queue and you can get nowhere near it, because it’s the centrepoint of the event. What kind of things are you doing to manage the demand, to give everyone a fair crack at it?

It’s a time entry experience, so there’s a limited number of people per hour who can go in. We sell tickets on that basis. If you turn up, you can queue for tickets if there are any available on that date. But there’s no question of you not being able to get inside the Tardis.

We came up with [the story] to enable you to do something with the Tardis, that we then developed with Steven Moffat, who then wrote the script for Matt Smith’s scenes within the adventure.

The general plot, I won’t give it all away, is that the Doctor has been trapped and separated from the Tardis. And he’s got a plan to make sure it’d all be alright, because he saw it coming. But he needs you to fly the Tardis, and Amy Pond is not around. It runs from there.

It wouldn’t be any use if you couldn’t get in there and touch the Tardis.

There's not going to be people preventing you from getting to it. Obviously there will be a lot of people coming through the day, but it is a timed entry thing. Our expectation is that you’ll spend around half an hour in the immersive experience, and then around an hour in the exhibition afterwards. But that’s down to your personal choice, obviously.



It is a two-tier event. How big is the exhibition at the other end of it, which is presumably what’s bringing the legacy Doctor Who stuff in?

What we’ve tried to do really hard is to do stuff that’s fresh and relevant to the current Doctor, and the current production in Cardiff, to cater to the TV viewing audience.

But also we want to cater to fans and uber-fans as well, so the exhibition part is much bigger than anything that’s been done before. Having actual Tardis sets in it, for instance. So the David Tennant set, that was blown up at the end of The End Of Time, has been rebuilt, and it’s right there. We’ve also got the Peter Davison Tardis set. Loads of props. We are also displaying stuff that people will have seen at previous exhibitions, all of which have been much, much smaller than this.

We’re running about 4000 square metres for this thing, which is getting on towards the size of a football pitch. Nothing like this has been done before.

Is the longer term plan to take this around the country, once it’s completed its run in London?

The current plan is that we will move it to Cardiff in 2012, and it’ll have a permanent home there. And when I say permanent, you’ll measure it in years and not months.

The attraction of Cardiff, obviously, is that it’s where the series is filmed, and it gives us access to new props, to cast and crew, and for events. It’s also something that Cardiff as a tourist destination is very excited about, having this connection with Doctor Who.

I’m not anticipating touring it elsewhere. But once we’ve opened our doors and launched this, we’ll be looking at what we do with Doctor Who next.



You’ve mentioned that Matt Smith and Steven Moffat have been involved in the Doctor Who Experience. Is there any involvement from anyone else in Doctor Who past or present?

In relation to the Experience, the existing Cardiff production team were all involved in it, because we had to get it all right. We had to build an exact replica of the Matt Smith Tardis, and lots of people on the technical side have got involved with it.

There aren’t other companions, or actors from the series, involved in that side of it, no.

Can I go back to the arena tour that you ran earlier in the year, and it’s a question of value for money I want to put to you. Because there was some dissatisfaction that even kids were being changed over £40 apiece in some instances to go along to that. And there’s been middling feedback from it.

What do you say to people who do question the price of these events? Because in my view, personally, for all the merits of the arena tour, I don’t think it managed to offer full value for the price that was being charged.

Well, I’m not sure I agree with all of those comments about the arena tour. I haven’t had lots of complaints about pricing. In fact, what I have had is lots of very, very positive comments and compliments from families, because I’d say we created a really great piece of family entertainment, that the families who went to it loved.

Leaving that point aside, there is a big difference between the ticket pricing of the arena show, which as you say is very expensive, with lasers and flying Daleks. You can’t put that on on the cheap.

The costs [for the Experience] are on a different scale, and our ticket prices are on a different scale. Family tickets start at £42 for a family of four for the Doctor Who Experience. It is a very different scale of cost.

I challenge you to go to an arena show, though, and not pay [that amount]. I think the arena pricing was very competitive, and I think that the arena tour, and I think it’s competitive against other attractions on similar budgets.



I suppose I can only relate my point of view here, where I paid nearly £150 to take three of us along, and we walked out wondering if we’d really had £150 of entertainment for that money? But then you must have had an abundance of differing feedback.

We’ve had almost entirely positive feedback, genuinely. With people taking their families to a Doctor Who show, and what a great way it was to experience that. The music, and the excitement, and being in that room with something that a lot of people loved.

Finally, Doctor Who is very much in your crosshairs for the Live element of BBC Worldwide. The Experience is the second big event in two years. What do you have planned next?

Well, it’s fair to say that we have designs on doing more stuff with Doctor Who in the future. But what we don’t want to be doing is hitting Doctor Who fans over the head 18 times a week. We do very much want to develop what we did in live entertainment outside of the UK. A lot of the things we do with Walking With Dinosaurs, for instance, have worked well internationally. We haven’t done much with Doctor Who outside of the UK, and we do have strong audiences there, so we do want to look at that.

And I think we’ve got some good ideas as to what we can do with Doctor Who over the next couple of years. I can’t give anything away about that, but obviously we are coming up to the 50th anniversary, so we’ll need to do something special for that.

So a 50th anniversary event is somewhere in the thinking?

Well, we’ll be doing some more Doctor Who stuff in 2013, but I can’t say any more than that!

Source

A Verity Lambert Biopic

A short film about Verity Lambert and her struggle to get Doctor Who made will broadcast online in early December.

The film is written by two film students from the University of Central Lancaster. Thomas Cowell and Joey Guy have produced the ten minute biopic which will focus on the key stage of production for the very first episodes of Doctor Who between August and December 1963. More details about the production of this film can be found here.

London, 1963. Verity Lambert, the woman in charge of the BBC's new children's show, is facing somewhat of a struggle. Not only has she got to make a TV show with the entire scope of time and space (on a small budget), but she also has to face bitchy co-workers and arrogant male peers.

"Verity" shows how she fought for the Daleks right to exist on TV, battled against jealous co-workers and ended up triumphant with a national success on her hands. It will be broadcast on YouTube in early December.

Source

Moorcock: 'BBC didn't want Amy Pond room'

Michael Moorcock has revealed that the BBC did not want him to give Amy Pond her own room in his Doctor Who tie-in novel The Coming of the Terraphiles.

The author told The Quietus that the broadcaster did not mind him inserting aspects of his own multiverse into the book, which was published in October.

Moorcock said: "The only real problem with Cardiff, as we call the BBC... was, I wanted Amy to have her own room in the Tardis, so I can describe her getting up in the morning and hearing something going on in the main Tardis bit, you know, and coming in to breakfast, or whatever it was.

"They didn't like that, and I think it's because they've got story plans that might not fit. I wanted to have Captain Jack in, but they didn't want me to, again because they kind of save these characters up for a specific purpose.

"It's not really a strong idea they've got, but they know they might want to use it in a certain way. But that's what you get if you do a job for hire."

He added: "I've had fun with it. But in a way it enabled me to reclaim stuff that had filtered into Doctor Who from stuff that I'd originally done. That happens when you're my age and working in popular fiction; it spreads through the genre.

Source

Dr who Series Two for just 99p?

Online video catch up and rental service SeeSaw is offering the chance for fans to vote for the entire second series of Doctor Who to be made available to rent for only 99p.

David Tennant's first season as The Doctor is in competition with Lost, Life on Mars and Only Fools & Horses. The show with the most Facebook 'Likes' by Monday 22nd November at 9am will be available to rent on the Tuesday after for 99p. You will then have up to 90 days to watch the series.

Source

BBC America to show Doctor Who Prom

BBC America have confirmed they will be showing the 2010 Doctor Who Prom on Christmas Day, the same day they show the 2010 Christmas Special A Christmas Carol.

The BBC Proms are an eight-week summer season of daily orchestral classical music concerts and other events which have been held annually since 1895. Taking place mainly in the Royal Albert Hall in London, the BBC took over responsibility for the Proms in 1927. The first Doctor Who Prom took place in 2008.

Source

Barrowman can't wait for 'Torchwood'

John Barrowman has admitted that he is "very excited" about filming the new series of Torchwood in America.

Torchwood: The New World will see Barrowan reprise his role as Captain Jack Harkness two years after previous series Children of Earth.

"I'm going to be moving to Los Angeles for six months of the year from January," he told Chris Moyles on Radio 1.

"We're filming in Wales and Los Angeles as it's a co-production now with the BBC and the Starz Network. I'm very excited."

He added: "It'll be worked out where we're doing the chunk of filming in the Cardiff area prior to going out and then we'll film our chunk in Los Angeles."

Source

Dr who series 6 Episode Five and Six titles and director revealed

Sarah Smart’s CV reveals the titles of the episodes she will be guest-starring in to be The Rebel Flesh and Gangers. Matthew Graham has since confirmed on twitter that he has written episodes five and six.

The episode titles seem to suggest a storyline involving biological experimentation of some form or another with Gangers being a a play on doppel-ganger and the word Ganger which means the foreman of a gang of labourers which was confirmed by Graham in response to this tweet

Source

First sight of Christmas!

Watch an exclusive preview of the new Doctor Who Christmas Special - called A Christmas Carol - on Children in Need on Friday!

As well as the preview, Children in Need also promises to show us what happened to two young fans of Doctor Who, who had their dream come true. We're told it's a very special treat and features Matt Smith himself! To find out more about the evening and how to get involved

Source