General Chat

[Theta Sigma]

A heads-up:
g,uest at the DWCA forum said that he saw an ad for Bye Bye Pluto which will be shown tomorrow night on SBS on Australian TV and says it has a clip of Tom Baker as the Doctor and Louise Jameson as Leela. Since the program is about Pluto, it is most likely that this clip comes from the 1977 serial The Sun Makers.

Yep it was indeed from the Sun Makers with the Doctor saying they have landed on Pluto which then had K-9 saying that it is the ninth planet of the solar system. Well as we know now it is not anymore.

 

[Theta Sigma]

Suburban Shootout which debut on UKTV last night had a Doctor Who reference. It occurred when the character of Pam walk into a house and she commented on its size by saying: "It's like a TARDIS in here."

 

[Theta Sigma]

David Tennant and Doctor Who gets a mention in the television section of yesterday's Sydney Sunday Telegraph written by Phillip Koch:
"Timelord time up?
He has attracted a whole new generation of fans to Doctor Who but could Scots timelord David Tennant be about to pull the plug on the Tardis?
"It's judging the right moment to go," admits Tennant, 35, who is currently filming his second season as the Doctor. "Anything can happen and everything can change."
The brilliant actor, who showed Heath Ledger how to play Casanova with class, hinted he may leave after it was revealed BBC1 had offered him $2.5m to stay."

First of all, Koch got it right about David playing Casanova.

As to when David will leave as the Doctor, since it is now understood that anyone who is playing the Doctor should do so for three years, it could be possible that David was thinking of whether he should step down in 2008 (assuming the programme comes back that year) as it would be his third year as the Doctor. I think this is much more likely than David quitting next year.

 

[Theta Sigma]

William Franklyn who guest starred in the Big Finish story The Roof of the World has passed away after a long battle with prostate cancer at the age of 81.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6102224.stm

Not mention in the article is that he had appeared in the Hammer movie version of Quatermass 2. (Coincidentally Quatermass creator Nigel Kneale died just two days before him. I posted news of Kneale's death at the Miscellaneous Sci Fi section.)

 

[Theta Sigma]

Some weeks ago I bought from DWCA, the DVD of The Tomorrow People: A Rift In Time which has the commentary moderated by Dalek/Cybermen voice Nick Briggs and which guest stars Sylvia Coleridge as a scholary figure similar to her Amelia Ducat character she played in Doctor Who in the 1976 serial Seeds of Doom. Well I recently finished watching this story and this morning I read the notes about the story included on the DVD and it incorrectly says that she was in Seeds of Death (a Troughton story). A case of getting Seeds of Death & Seeds of Doom mixed up.

Another similarity that this particular Tomorrow People story has with Doctor Who is that A Rift In Time was directed by Darrol Blake who directed the 100th Doctor Who serial Stones of Blood in 1978. A Rift In Time was the only story that Blake directed on The Tomorrow People just as Stones of Blood was the only one he did on Doctor Who.

 

[Theta Sigma]

Tonight's season 9 finale of Stargate SG-1 on 7 at 11:20pm is definitely one that Who fans should see. Watch carefully and you will understand why.

 

[Theta Sigma]

Yesterday while watching The Long Game on UKTV came this ad which started off with a clip from Bad Wolf which shows The Weakest Link in the future with the Anne Droid disintegrating a contestant. The voiceover said that game shows might look something like this. At this time I thought it was strange this gets shown now since Bad Wolf isn't scheduled to be screened on UKTV until four weeks from now. Then the ad shows Anne Robinson in person. It was an ad for The Weakest Link (as it is today) with the voiceover said that until then, the future, we the viewers have to settle for the real thing ie the non-robot, non-disintegrating type of game shows.

 

[Theta Sigma]

In Season 4, Episode 5 of Teachers shown last night in the ABC, Doctor Who came up in the conversation in the opening pub scene when the teachers were talking about reincarnation and how the regeneration in Doctor Who was like that with Damien mentioning Tom Baker turning into Peter Davison. Unfortunately the way the topic of Doctor Who came to an end had Bob saying "It is nothing like Doctor f**king Who". Of course the guy who plays Bob, Lloyd McGuire would know what Doctor Who is like since he himself has appear in Doctor Who playing Lugo in The Face of Evil.
Another thing is that this episode was originally broadcast on November 23 2004 which just happened to be Doctor Who's 41st anniversary.

 

[Theta Sigma]

On Sci Fi, the channel has small features between programs called Front Row which look at behind the scenes of the shows they are showing and three hours ago just before Earth 2 they showed an interview with David Hewlett from Stargate Atlantis about his character on that show. It was during this interview that he mentioned that he grew up watching sci fi and it was mainly Doctor Who! Now I knew that he is a Doctor Who fan but this is from what I read on the Internet. So therefore this is the first time I have heard him mention Doctor Who and it was quite a lovely surprise.

 

[Theta Sigma]

Last month it was reported that an Andrew Simpson built a Dalek to scare off students:
http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/article.html?in_article_id=28101&in_page_id=2

Well this piece of news was reported in The Scoop which I saw on Sci Fi today. The Scoop is hosted by Jonathan Llyr and he reports on news in a comedic way. When he reported this news about the Dalek he expressed amazement about the British students reactions to it by saying "This is British students that we are talking about" or something like that.

I don't exactly remember in detail what he actually said as it really took me by surprise.

 

[Theta Sigma]

An apparent Doctor Who reference in the free preview DVD from 10 that was available in yesterday's Sydney Sunday Telegraph.

The DVD had an introduction from two people from The Wedge with one of them being Mark who has trouble reading things from a piece of paper. It was during this introduction that Mark said "Doctor Who-sie" when he was suppose to say Dr House!!!

 

[Theta Sigma]

Found out from the mX newspaper that Sports Tonight anchor Brad McEwan is a Doctor Who fan as he named both Doctor Who & the Goodies as his all-time favourite shows. However on the question of current fave show, it is not the current Doctor Who series but House.

 

[Theta Sigma]

Last night I was preparing to record Desperate Housewives on 7 for my sister and I caught the last few minutes of The Rich List when all of a sudden Doctor Who came up.

Host Andrew O'Keefe asked the contestants to name television actors who played Doctor Who. The contestants decided to name three. The three that they came up with were Tom Baker, Jon Pertwee and Bill Hartnell. One contestant had Peter Davison's face in his mind but had trouble thinking of his name and said instead Stephen Donaldson!

When the other Doctors' names were shown on-screen O'Keefe pronounced Pat Troughton's last name as "trot-ton" instead of "trout-ton".

The fact that none of the contestants mentioned either Chris Eccleston or David Tennant makes me to come up with one conclusion - they have not been watching the current series.

 

[Theta Sigma]

Tonight's episode of Supernatural, Episode 11 of season 2 on 10 in Australia at 8:30pm is the first of two episodes that should be of interest to Who fans based on remarks made at the Supernatural thread at the Gallifrey forum.
The other episode is the one that comes after it, however that won't be on next week as a repeat will be shown instead.

 

[Theta Sigma]

For those who did not see Supernatural last night, the episode Playthings featured a little girl called Tyler who has a grandmother called Rose. Someone at Gallifrey thought this was a reference to Rose Tyler. If this was a coincidence then it is an amazing one as it was Tyler who first mentioned Grandma Rose!

 

[Theta Sigma]

In answer to a question about when the 2007 season of Doctor Who will be shown on the Australian ABC, TV WEEK responded by saying that the ABC doesn't have the licence to air it until June and it's possible that it may screen the season closer to the end of the year.

 

[Cylon]

I watched episode 3 last night, it was pretty good but the "face of Bode" contredicts himself a bit

 

[Theta Sigma]

Tonight's episode of Supernatural, Episode 11 of season 2 on 10 in Australia at 8:30pm is the first of two episodes that should be of interest to Who fans based on remarks made at the Supernatural thread at the Gallifrey forum.
The other episode is the one that comes after it, however that won't be on next week as a repeat will be shown instead.

The other Supernatural episode will be on tomorrow night Monday April 23 at 8:30pm on 10.

 

[Theta Sigma]

For Aussies who did not see the Supernatural episode this week, a Cyberman appeared coutesy of a magazine cover.

From TV.com:
"Magazine Cover
The cover of the Fortean Times that Resnick shows the Winchesters has a picture of a Cyberman from the newest Doctor Who series, and the headline "Birth of the Cybermen.""

Despite the word Cybermen on the magazine cover, Resnick called them mandroids and he thinks they were made by the Chinese!

I think I mentioned earlier the documentary series Sci Fi Saved My Life on Discovery Channel which looks at how certain sci fi films have an impact on reality and two of these episodes had Doctor Who references. Well in the episode about Stargate shown for the first time the previous Saturday April 21, it featured a picture of two TARDISes with one coming out of one wormhole and another TARDIS coming into another wormhole. This was shown after the narrator asked how wormhole travel was possible. People who haven't seen it can still catch it as it will repeated on Friday April 27 at 1:30pm and Saturday April 28 at 7:30am.

 

[Cylon]

its the second part of the dalek episode tonight, should be good

not sure the daleks plan makes alot of sence though

 

[Theta Sigma]

On Australian TV:
Doctor Who got mentioned briefly and on a rare occasion so was Doctor Who creator Sydney Newman in The Einstein Factor last night.

Sydney Newman got mentioned first when contestant Diane Hesse whose special subject was The Avengers, which Newman also created, was asked who created The Avengers. However she passed on the question and hence Peter Berner mentioned his name.*
Then in the bonus true/false question state that there were no surviving episodes of season 1. It was here that one of the Brains Trust, Tony Moclair mentioned that Doctor Who had missing episodes and were even tracked down to New Zealand (undoubtedly a reference to the discovery of The Crusade Part 1 - The Lion there in 1999).

So for those still interested in that Avengers question, the answer was false. As Peter Berner stated to the audience there are now two and a bit episodes left from that season.

Also interesting but not about Doctor Who itself but about guest star Honor Blackman who was Cathy Gale in The Avengers. In the final round, Peter Berner asked that after Honor was seen in the James Bond film Goldfinger, the Avengers episode that was shown afterwards had John Steed reading out a Christmas card from Mrs Gale from where. The answer was Fort Knox which was also featured in Goldfinger.

Honor had left the Avengers to work on Goldfinger. I actually saw that Avengers episodes years ago but didn't know until The Einstein Factor last night that was meant to be an in-joke of her joining the Goldfinger cast.

*Thank goodness the answer wasn't Brian Clemens, a mistake that a lot of people have made in thinking that he was The Avengers creator.

 

[Theta Sigma]

Mark Gatiss' first non-Who novel The Vesuvius Club will be adapted on television by the BBC.

More on this here:
http://www.twitchfilm.net/archives/009825.html

 

[Theta Sigma]

There was a Doctor Who reference in The Simpsons episode Springfield Up which I saw last night.

From Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Springfield_Up
"Homer seems confused by the concept of Declan's documentaries and mocks his English accent, eventually concluding that the disparate filmings are unified by time travel, and that Declan is actually Doctor Who."

 

[Cylon]

The latest Doctor who episode "Blink" was probably one of the best so far.
It definatly was the scarest of the new episodes.

 

[Majestic]

The concept of another Timelord has peaked my interest.

 

[Majestic]

I guarantee once Doctor Who starts up again on TV, I will be going to the sites and digging into the spoilers, I just can't help myself.

 

[Cylon]

well saturdays episode was good first part of a three parter
In this episode we see the retern of captain jack and anouther character drom the original series, who was played ver well at the end of the episode by the guy from life on mars

 

[Cylon]

only one more episode left, the second part was good too.

*Removed Spoiler* - Use Spoiler Tags in future.

 

[Theta Sigma]

In The Real Hustle on Lifestyle on Australian TV, a BBC show about real life scams, it included a scam of selling fake memorabilia. Among the items that were sold was a picture of Tom Baker as the Fourth Doctor. The picture of Tom was real but not his signature that was on it. That was a complete fake.

Interestingly The Real Hustle narrator Dean Lennox Kelly had recently appeared in Doctor Who as William Shakespeare in the season 33 episode The Shakespeare Code.

 

[Theta Sigma]

Last night I finished watching season 33 ahead of the Australian ABC broadcast and I can honestly tell people that you are in for a ride.

As well as finishing season 33, I have already finished with Torchwood season 1 a while ago although I do intend to watch the episodes as they come to air on television out of fan loyalty.

Therefore the first new thing chronologically out of the Whoniverse I am looking forward to now is the full series of the Sarah Jane Adventures.