General Chat

[Theta Sigma]

Recently saw on the Catweazle DVD the documentary Brothers In Magic in which Geoffrey Bayldon mentioned Doctor Who.

Before William Hartnell, Bayldon became the first person to ask to play the Doctor but turned it down. In Brothers In Magic he said that he would not have been Catweazle if he had accepted the offer of playing the Doctor.

Bayldon eventually appeared in Doctor Who in Creature from the Pit (1979)and finally played the Doctor as an alternative version of the First Doctor in the Doctor Who Unbound audios from Big Finish.

 

[Theta Sigma]

Last night I saw The Vicar of Dibley episode Love and Marriage and it had a Doctor Who reference. Alice (Emma Chambers) says that for her wedding dress she would draw hearts each featuring a Doctor Who.

Later on in the final episode, Alice dressed up as the Tenth Doctor when she prepared a Doctor Who-themed wedding.

Someone really should give Emma Chambers something to do on Doctor Who.

 

[Theta Sigma]

To Australian viewers:
The Ruby In The Smoke starring Billie Piper as Sally Lockhart will finally be shown on ABC1 this Sunday May 18 8:30pm.

It also features Doctor Who guest stars Trevor Cooper, Don Gilet, Hayley Atwell, Julia Joyce and Martin Jarvis.

Julia Joyce

Spoiler

plays young Sally. She again plays a younger version of a character played by Billie Piper as Julia was also in Doctor Who as young Rose in Father's Day.

 

[Theta Sigma]

I am now going to comment on two stories from Peter Davison era, Warriors of the Deep (1984) & Time-Flight (1982) -

Warriors of the Deep:
Playing Nilson, a villain, is Ian McCulloch and his casting on this story has something to do with the fact that he had worked with director Pennant Roberts on Terry Nation's Survivors. Roberts had directed nine episodes of Survivors including the first one and McCulloch played the regular role of Greg Preston.

Interestingly I am currently reading the Fact of Fiction feature piece of the story by Alan Barnes in DWM 392 and was reminded that Warriors of the Deep also has a character called Preston but not played by McCulloch.

As director Roberts could easily have switched character names with their character descriptions and had McCulloch play Preston the baddie. However it would probably have been too much for Survivors fans to handle seeing McCulloch playing another character called Preston but is a villain.

Time-Flight:
Time-Flight ended with Tegan being accidentally left behind ending season 19 in 1982 even though Janet Fielding was already contracted to appear in the next season in 1983.

I find this similar to what happened with the current TV series in which Martha is no longer travelling with the Doctor at the end of the 2007 season but does come back for the 2008 season even though the initial departures of Tegan and Martha were under different circumstances.

Before coming back to Doctor Who for 2008, Martha appeared in spin-off Torchwood.

I can only speculate had the one-off K-9 and Company shown in 1981 had become a series, would Janet Fielding as Tegan had appeared in that spin-off before appearing again in the parent show.

 

[Theta Sigma]

To Australian viewers:
The Ruby In The Smoke starring Billie Piper as Sally Lockhart will finally be shown on ABC1 this Sunday May 18 8:30pm.

It also features Doctor Who guest stars Trevor Cooper, Don Gilet, Hayley Atwell, Julia Joyce and Martin Jarvis.

Julia Joyce

Spoiler

plays young Sally. She again plays a younger version of a character played by Billie Piper as Julia was also in Doctor Who as young Rose in Father's Day.

Before The Ruby In The Smoke came on ABC1 there was an ad about shows that are coming soon which includes Mansfield Park again featuring Billie. Also in it are her Sally Lockhart co-stars Hayley Atwell and Julia Joyce (both of whom also been Doctor Who guest stars as stated before).

In Mansfield Park, Julia Joyce

Spoiler

once again plays a younger version of a Billie Piper character just like she did in Father's Day and A Ruby In The Smoke.

 

[Theta Sigma]

In time for the ABC1 (in Australia) broadcast of Voyage of the Damned and season 34 today I bought the latest SFX special on Doctor Who which includes the reviews and anatomy of an episode pie chart of season 33 and the aformenrioned Voyage of the Damned as well as the still not yet shown on Australian TV episodes of The Sarah Jane Adventures.

It also includes the Tenth Doctor/Martha novel Made of Steel written by former Doctor Who script editor and Doctor Who veteran Terrance Dicks.

 

[Theta Sigma]

The Shakespeare Code commentary on the DVD release has David Tennant and the lovely Christina Cole (Lilith). It was mentioned that Ms Cole had played another witch prior to The Shakespeare Code. The name of the show was not mentioned so just in case people did not know the show being alluded to it was Hex.

The episode included the Doctor explaining to Martha how the world could come to an end in 1599. The Doctor brought up the allusion of Back to the Future in which Martha says the film. The Doctor then sarcastically says no the novelisation. The Doctor is saying that there is hardly any difference between the novelisation and the source material it is based on.

This dialogue would seem sort of prophetic for Freema Agyeman since she recently joined the cast of the Survivors remake. The new version of Survivors is based on the novelisation of the original show rather than on the original show itself. The novelisation has significant differences from the original show unlike the novelisation of Back to the Future.

 

[Theta Sigma]

Last night my sci fi club had a screening of classic Doctor Who. What was shown were The Three Doctors, Genesis of the Daleks & The Sontaran Experiment (yes in that order). The Tom Baker stories were provided by me while someone else bought in The Three Doctors.

What I noticed with my latest viewing of The Three Doctors is the reference to the invisible man in Episode 2 and I only realised now that seems to foreshadow the revelation that Omega no longer has a body. Since Omega can only exist by the power of his will he is therefore invisible.

With Genesis of the Daleks, one person called Gharman an idiot for telling Nyder the names of people who were plotting against Davros. What I noticed with my latest viewing of Genesis is that apart from the two Thal guards that the Doctor knocked out with their heads after saying that he was a spy, of the three guards that were knocked out in the story only the Kaled guard who was guarding Sarah, Harry and Gharman in Episode 5 was the only one who got tied up. Nobody bothered to tie the two Thal guards who were knocked out earlier on in the story as they were needed to do something afterwards. The first Thal guard pressed the alarm which alerted the attempted escape by Sarah and her fellow prisoners in Episode 2. The purpose of the second Thal guard was to press a button that electronically trapped the Doctor to a fence which served as the cliffhanger for Episode 3.

It would seem the only reason why the Kaled guard got tied up was that there was nothing for him to do afterwards.

 

[Theta Sigma]

To Australian viewers:
Last night in an ad break for Kokoda on 9 saw a Tooheys ad in which the voiceover mentioned going back in time and then a flurry of images came on screen which included the TARDIS!

 

[Theta Sigma]

Last night watched Robot Chicken in which the Fourth Doctor briefly appeared -
From Wikipedia:
"In the Adult Swim series Robot Chicken, the Fourth Doctor made an appearance, standing on the first base of a baseball diamond asking, "Do you get it?", a reference to the Abbott and Costello sketch "Who's on First?"."

This was not the only time that Doctor Who is referenced in the series. Also from Wikipedia:
"In another episode, entitled "Suck It", a student begins to give a presentation about the TARDIS before being berated for his perceived geekiness."

 

[Theta Sigma]

To Australian viewers:
In this month's issue of Stack the free magazine of JB Hi Fi, Pyramids of Mars got an unexpected reference.

It came with their list of 4 Great Mummies and it included the robot mummies from Pyramids of Mars. It says:
"These bandaged servants of Sutekh the Destroyer were actually robots, as Tom Baker's Time Lord discovered."

For the curious the other mummies came from The Mummy (1959), Blood From the Mummy's Tomb & Dawn of the Mummy.

Also "reverse the polarity" was mentioned in Scary Movie 4 shown last night on 7.

Also in the first episode of The Middleman I spotted a device that somehow felt like the sonic screwdriver.

 

[Theta Sigma]

Right on the 45th anniversary date of Doctor Who bought DWM 400. Issue 400 of DWM for the 45th anniversary, very very very good timing.

 

[Theta Sigma]

To Australian viewers:
During an break of 90210 on 10, saw the ad for Freeview which briefly included the opening title sequence of the current Doctor Who TV series.

Nice to be represented here.

 

[Theta Sigma]

Found out that Tom MacRae who wrote season 32's Rise of the Cybermen/Age of Steel had been commissioned to write an episode of season 34 to be broadcast last year but his new script got postponed.

Russell T Davies in his production notes in DWM 391, in the leadup to the broadcast of season 34 in the UK last year, explained that was because MacRae's new script was close in tone to another episode which ultimately was shown in season 34.

Davies did not reveal which of the eventually transmitted season 34 episodes that was supposedly been similar to MacRae's new script, for fear of spoilers for the transmitted episode and MacRae's script. It is still hoped that MacRae's script would still be made in future. It will interesting to find out which episode it is similar to.

 

[phase5]

To Australian viewers:
During an break of 90210 on 10, saw the ad for Freeview which briefly included the opening title sequence of the current Doctor Who TV series.

Nice to be represented here.

Why?

It lasts all of 1 second, tops, for those who haven't seen the ad.
And it's just the logo.

Blink, (tie in), and you'd miss it.

About 100 other programmes, both from the ABC and the commercial networks, both locally made and from over seas were also represented.

As for "Freeview", it's 8 years late thanks to PAY-TV kicking up a fuss over it ruining their business, and from what I'm reading on technically forums it won't be 15 different channels with different programming, and if you're digital equipment is a year or 2 old, you won't be able to access the EPG which the "Freeview" people have decided should use a new and completely different broadcast format. Clever don't you think?

 

[Theta Sigma]

Russell T Davies has left fans to debate among themselves whether the last three episodes of season 33 and 34 respectively, all of which he wrote, was a three parter or one episode that was a distint scene setter that leads to a two-parter.

My position on this is quite clear the season 33 episodes is a three-parter, the season 34 episodes are not.

The season 33 episodes has been about the return of the Master and consequences of it. We even found out what became of the passengers to Utopia in Last of the Time Lords.

The season 34 episodes is quite different as Turn Left just simply leads to a two parter that ends that season.

The main plot of Turn Left has been solved within that episode and not carried through to the subsequent two episodes.

It is like the Sontaran two parter earlier on in season 34 in which the end leads to The Doctor's Daughter and no one thinks of that as a three parter.

To use a non-Who example it is like the final season of the 1960s Batman series in which each episode leads to the next after the main plot of the episode has been solved within it.

Back to the final three episodes of seasons 33 and 34, for the former people have argued it is not a three parter due to two directors, Graeme Harper (Utopia) and Colin Teague (The Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords [although Harper did direct some parts of the latter uncredited]).

So it is somewhat ironic that given my reasoning why the season 34 episodes was not a three-parter, Graeme Harper directed all three of those episodes.

 

[Theta Sigma]

There was a Doctor Who reference in the Leverage episode The Bank Shot Job.

From TV.com:
Hardison: And, I had to re-task two satellites, just to get a lousy internet connection. Took more than an hour to torrent the last episode of Doctor Who.

In Episode 3 of Chocky's Challenge it featured a punting scene at Cambridge. The Doctor did exactly the same thing at the same location in Shada written by Douglas Adams. This may have something to do with the fact that Chocky's Challenge was written by Anthony Read, Douglas Adams' predecessor as Doctor Who script editor.

 

[Theta Sigma]

There was a Doctor Who reference in the Leverage episode The Bank Shot Job.

From TV.com:
Hardison: And, I had to re-task two satellites, just to get a lousy internet connection. Took more than an hour to torrent the last episode of Doctor Who.

There was another Doctor Who reference in Leverage in the episode The Mile High Job shown last night on FOX8.

From TV.com:
"When Nate and Sophie are going through the ID's on hand before getting the airline tickets, they list off four names: Peter Davison, Sylvester McCoy, Tom Baker and Sarah Jane Baker."

The name that Nate ultimately used was Tom Baker as mentioned toward the end of the episode by Eliot. Incidentally this episode was originally broadcast on January 20 2009, Tom's 75th birthday.

The character of Sophie is played by Gina Bellman whose former boss is of course Steven Moffat.

The earlier The Bank Shot Job was written by Amy Berg and she too wrote The Mile High Job.

 

[Theta Sigma]

To Australian viewers:
Sixth Doctor Colin Baker appears as himself in Top Gear on Monday March 16 7:30pm on SBS.

 

[Theta Sigma]

Doctor Who references in Leverage:
The Leverage episode The 12-Step Job was co-written by Amy Berg who had written the earlier episodes with Doctor Who references in it.

In The 12-Step Job, Parker uses the name Rose as her cover. Given it was co-written by Amy Berg this is obviously alludes to Rose Tyler.

Also Nate again uses the name Tom Baker as his alias.

 

[Theta Sigma]

To Australian viewers:
Sixth Doctor Colin Baker appears as himself in Top Gear on Monday March 16 7:30pm on SBS.

As I found out it was an old episode and it had Colin appeared as the Sixth Doctor, the TARDIS, a Cyberman a couple of Daleks and from outside the Whoniverse were a Klingon, Darth Vader and Ming the Merciless. They were involved in a car race which was ultimately won by a Cyberman.

Very amusing when a Dalek exterminated the Klingon, Cyberman, Ming the Merciless and ......Darth Vader.

 

[Theta Sigma]

Found out that Tom MacRae who wrote season 32's Rise of the Cybermen/Age of Steel had been commissioned to write an episode of season 34 to be broadcast last year but his new script got postponed.

Russell T Davies in his production notes in DWM 391, in the leadup to the broadcast of season 34 in the UK last year, explained that was because MacRae's new script was close in tone to another episode which ultimately was shown in season 34.

Davies did not reveal which of the eventually transmitted season 34 episodes that was supposedly been similar to MacRae's new script, for fear of spoilers for the transmitted episode and MacRae's script. It is still hoped that MacRae's script would still be made in future. It will interesting to find out which episode it is similar to.

Reading from The Writer's Tale which is a book of email correspondence between Davies and DWM writer Benjamin Cook about writing on Doctor Who, it would seem that MacRae's script was similar to Midnight.

 

[Theta Sigma]

Alexander Siddig First Star Trek Regular in Doctor Who - Majestic Sci-Fi Central

I recently listened to Sisters of the Flame/Vengeance of Morbius and Alexander Siddig' appearance on Doctor Who (albeit on audio) sort makes up for the fact that his DS9 co-star Terry Farrell had appeared in a Red Dwarf USA pilot.
I mean mixing Star Trek and Red Dwarf together is simply yuck.
My attitude about Red Dwarf is that it is like Taiwan to Doctor Who's China ie China does not like other countries dealing with Taiwan. Therefore anyone who is not into Doctor Who and/or its spinoffs but is into Red Dwarf is something I really frown upon. After all if Doctor Who never existed it is unlikely that Red Dwarf would have existed at all.

I also do not discuss or promote Red Dwarf in a non-Doctor Who related avenue.

This is not an opinion this is the law L-A-W law.*

*For non-Australian members this is an allusion to then Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating in 1993 who in that year declare that an election promise he has made was not a promise but the law L-A-W law.

 

[Theta Sigma]

I realise something from a line that Mickey says early in Doctor Who: Rise of the Cybermen.

Upon finding themselves on a parallel London, Mickey mentions the possibilities of other parallel worlds like one where Tony Blair was never elected.

In the real world Tony Blair almost did not become Prime Minister of Britain (at least not in 1997) due to the circumstances that saw him take the Labour Party leadership three years earlier.

In 1994 the Labour Party had to elect a new leader due to the death of the then leader whose name was John Smith. John Smith is of course the name the Doctor commonly uses. Prior to Rise of the Cybermen, the Doctor last used the name in School Reunion the same episode that Mickey began his travels in the TARDIS.

If that real John Smith had become Prime Minister it is probably unlikely that the Doctor would have used the John Smith name in the current TV series. After all the Doctor using the same name as a Prime Minister would probably be baffling to the audience.

 

[Theta Sigma]

I am currently watching the new version of Survivors and in episode 2 in a shop there are issues of Radio Times with Davros on the cover!

Survivors, like Davros was created by Terry Nation.

 

[Theta Sigma]

The season 16 story The Androids of Tara is the Doctor Who version of the book The Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope.

There have been a lot of film versions of The Prisoner of Zenda and the one that is mention in the DVD commentary of The Androids of Tara is the 1937 version starring Ronald Colman.

During the commentary in Part 4, director Michael Hayes mentioned Douglas Fairbanks doing a particular scene in the 1937 movie. As a point of clarity it is actually Douglas Fairbanks Jr who was in that movie not his namesake father.

Incidentally I share the same birthdate with Fairbanks, Jr - December 9 and December 9 is the original transmission date for Part 3 of The Androids of Tara when it was aired in 1978.

 

[Theta Sigma]

The Androids of Tara featured doppelgangers so one of the special features on the DVD is Double Trouble which looks at the history of doppelgangers in Doctor Who.
When it was mentioned that William Hartnell played dual roles in The Massacre of St Bathrlomew's Eve, two images were presented but neither came from that story. One was from The Crusade & the other The Reign of Terror. Neither of these two stories feature doppelgangers.

All four episodes of The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve are among Doctor Who's 108 missing episodes although images from it do exist. From what I have been told the images that do exist were apparently not good enough to be included in Double Trouble.

 

[Theta Sigma]

In the season 2 finale of MI High, upon hearing Doctor Von Quark's name, Daisy said "Doctor Von who?" A Doctor Who reference perhaps

 

[Theta Sigma]

On The Androids of Tara DVD sleeve, for one of the special features called Double Trouble it says that it includes contributions from Doctor Who Magazine editor Tom Spilsbury. However in Double Trouble itself the on-screen display for Spilsbury says "Assistant Editor, Doctor Who Magazine". The reason for this difference is not because either the DVD sleeve nor Double Trouble made a mistake, it is because of the timing of the R2 and R4 releases.

The Androids of Tara is part of The Key To Time boxset and I have been watching it from the R4 release. The R4 release of the Key To Time came out in November 2007 about three months after the R2 release. In the time between the R2 and R4 releases of The Key To Time, Tom Spilsbury who had been the assistant editor of DWM had replaced Clayton Hickman as editor.

The R4 releases duplicate materials from the R2 releases. It looks like that once the R2s are released, it is really too late to make alterations for the later released R4s.

 

[Theta Sigma]

In the Family Guy episode 420 - after Qhahog has legalised Marijuana.
Brian: Why would we want to re-illegalise pot. People are happier, the crime-rate is down and the ratings for Doctor Who are the highest they've ever been!