Sarah Jane Adventures – Sarah’s wedding. (spoilers)

 

Watch Sarah Jane Adventures Prisoner of the Judoon Part 2

Post Impressionist Who? (SPOILER)

Richard Curtis has let slip a few details about his script for the 2010 run of Doctor Who - a run that will see the Eleventh Doctor Matt Smith teaming up with companion Amy Pond, played by Karen Gillan.

It was revealed several weeks ago that the writer - Britain's most successful movie scriptwriter in recent years - was penning an episode, which he attributed to a need to impress his son.

Talking to industry magazine ShortList, Richard Curtis has revealed a few interesting pieces of information:

"I am writing a new episode of Doctor Who, which is great. I wanted to write something my kids would like.

"So I'm doing a Doctor Who that will be on TV next February. I've got Van Gogh stabbing a monster."

He added: "Someone from the BBC just sent me a picture of my monster. I had to decide if it was yellow enough."

Vincent Van Gogh, Post-Impressionist artist, with a monster? Brilliant!

But hold on.

February?! Isn't that a bit, well, soon?

Don't rule it out though. Richard Curtis certainly knows and understands how TV shows are made (Blackadder, Vicar of Dibley, to name just two of his classics) so don't jump on the "he doesn't know what he's talking about" bandwagon...

Watch Sarah Jane Prisoner of the Judoon here

Exclusive Preview!

See a premiere of The Sarah Jane Adventures featuring a special appearance from David Tennant as the Doctor in Liverpool this half term.

CBBC is bringing one of its top shows to premiere at ODEON Liverpool ONE on Saturday 24th and Sunday 25th October. And you are invited along!

You could see an episode of the hit series from the makers of Doctor Who before any of your friends, and take part in a question and answer session with stars from the series Tommy Knight (Luke Smith), Anjli Mohindra (Rani Chandra) and Daniel Anthony (Clyde Langer).

Alternatively drop in to Liverpool ONE shopping centre for more free activities from 10am. Meet a replica of legendary supercomputer Mr Smith, robot dog K-9, be filmed in front of a virtual Sarah Jane green screen, have your face painted and much more.

Tickets for the free screening must to be booked in advance. For more information visit the BBC's tickets page (see the link to the right) and don't forget to visit the SJA website for the latest lowdown on The Sarah Jane Adventures!

Sarah and the Doctor

As you probably know, The Sarah Jane Adventures returns this week with the two part story Prisoner of the Judoon - and later in the series, David Tennant joins the show for highly anticipated crossover story The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith!

Having Tennant appear as the Doctor in one of the spinoff shows is of course pretty marvellous - and also sees the character return to the traditional 25 minute format of (the majority of) the classic series.

The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith stars Lis Sladen as Sarah Jane, David Tennant as the Doctor and the usual cast of Tommy Knight as adopted son Luke, Daniel Anthony as Clyde Langer, Anjli Mohindra as Rani Chandra. Veteran actor Nigel Havers appears as Sarah's fiance Peter Dalton...

We'll not give too much away until closer to the date - in the meantime, here's a smashing photo of the Doctor and Sarah Jane!

(Via Den of Geek)

Doctor Who Museum to Close

 

 

Experience Design have announced the last chance to see the classic collection of Doctor Who items at the Doctor Who Museum in Blackpool, which will close on November 8th after 5 years.

 

With the Museum - the biggest Doctor Who exhibition in the country - closing its doors for the last time at the end of the traditional Blackpool visitors season, some of the collection will be re-distributed to other Doctor Who Exhibitions around the UK.

The Doctor Who Museum in Blackpool features a unique collection of props, monsters and costumes from throughout the long history of Doctor Who, Britain's best loved Science Fiction Drama. Closing the museum marks the end of one of the UK's two permanent museums to Doctor Who and potentially the end of a long relationship between the series and the North West seaside resort which dates back to the original exhibition opening on Blackpool's Golden mile in 1974.

The Exhibition will be open every day from 10.30am to 8.00pm until close on the 8th of November.

Sadly, although there is a shop on site, none of the display items will be made available for sale.

Find out more by visiting www.doctorwhoexhibitions.com.

(Thanks to BBC Worldwide)

Sonic Screwdriver Explodes (SPOILERS?)

 

On-location snaps of Matt Smith recording Doctor Who last week revealed a key moment in the life of the sonic screwdriver. 

It's had so many shapes over the years that it would be foolish to try and list them all here - however it's fair to say that there have been two key designs.

In the original series, the Doctor's faithful tool - first seen in the hands of Patrick Troughton's Second Doctor - was a silver device similar to a GP's otoscope.

With the return of Doctor Who in 2005 however, the Time Lord had found the time to rebuild the device into a porcelain tube with a blue light and a variety of uses way beyond opening locks.

Fans are generally in agreement that the location work in Llandaff in South Wales recently is the Eleventh Doctor's first episode - and if photos published in the Daily Mail are anything to go by, he has a bit of trouble using the multi-function sonic tool.

Given that we've already seen Smith and Karen Gillan snapped on earlier location shoots with Alex Kingston - who appeared in 2008's Silence in the Library as Professor River Song - could this mean the end of the famous sonic screwdriver as used by the Ninth and Tenth Doctors and the beginning of the "future sonic screwdriver" we saw in that story...?

and a awful lot of running to doooooooooooooo ooooo oooooooooo

Harper on Waters of Mars

October 6, 2009

Christian Cawley

Top Doctor Who director Graeme Harper has been revealing all on the next installment of the Tenth Doctor's adventures - The Waters of Mars airs before Christmas, and SFX have an interview with the man who directed 1980s classic The Caves of Androzani as well as many more recent adventures including the 2008 series finale.

Naturally, "the Guv'nor" isn't giving anything away - obviously we're not going to either. If you want to read the interview, hop over to the SFX website and take it in. Some choice cuts here, however, beginning with Graeme Harper's thoughts on whether or not The Waters of Mars is scary...

“I’m not sure if it’s as scary as Blink, but it’s quite frightening – because it’s so real, I think. I hope so!”

Harper also gives an overview on how the water is made to fire out of the monsters mouths and hands:

“There was a very complex system of tubes and piping that they all had to wear within the prosthetics – and water was squeezed and pressurized through the tubes to give the volume of water we required to come out of the actors’ mouths on a continuous basis.”

Finally, an insight from the director of the penultimate David Tennant era adventure of what's going through the Doctor's mind...

"...here he’s terrified. But I think that’s good, and I think most people will be interested to see how he gets out of this one. That what I think they think every time. But here, he really is in a very fearful state – and doesn’t want to die, obviously.

"I don’t think he wants to regenerate..."

We don't want him to either...

Post Regeneration Threads (Mild Spoilers)

The first look for Matt Smith's Eleventh Doctor Who is a long way from the tweed and bow tie we were introduced to in July, if recent snaps from location shooting in South Wales are anything to go by.

SFX have feature a small selection of images of the new Doctor on location, kitted out in what appears to be the last wardrobe change of the Tenth Doctor.

Faded Converse, pinstriped trousers, blue shirt and swirly blue tie - all torn and singed, suggesting that the recent regeneration has been a close call.

That's an interesting expression on his face too - I wonder that the Doctor is thinking...?

It certainly seems as though the current production block features the first episode of the Eleventh Doctor's run, with Smith appearing alongside a Karen Gillan kitted out in a rather fetching interpretation of a policewoman's outfit.

Of course, the real question is how do the two of them get thrown together? We'll have to wait until 2010 to find out...

The New Logo!

A new era means a new logo - and the Steven Moffat era of Doctor Who continues to take shape with the unveiling this morning of a new graphical identity for the show.

And here it is!

Combining a 3D design with the serif-bound authority of the Patrick Troughton era logo, this is the new look for Doctor Who embodied in visual form!

It looks pretty good, especially in it's mirroring of the Paul McGann colour scheme.

Plus, it isn't orange!

Get ready to see this new visual shorthand for Doctor Who on merchandise, books, Doctor Who Magazine, duvets and everything else that fans of the series like to spend money on - and expect it to instantly date the current "taxi cab lozenge" design.

Graeme Harper On "Waters Of Mars"

Just how scary is The Waters of Mars?
Graeme Harper: “I’m not sure if it’s as scary as Blink, but it’s quite frightening – because it’s so real, I think. I hope so!”

How on Earth do you go about making water scary? And what were the challenges of shooting with that volume of water?
"I hope you think it is [scary] when you see it! It was very, very difficult. We had a difficult time trying to work out how to do the water… can you imagine, the volumes of water that we required, in a studio setting? How d’you get rid of it? If you want to do retakes, how do you get everything dry again?

“The kind of water effect we wanted was sort-of mystical, almost organic – well, it is organic, obviously! – so the difficulty was deciding with the visual FX guys which one out of the effect they were offering us was the right one. They came up with five or six different kinds of pipes, hoses and systems. And eventually there was one that we all – head of Drama Julie Gardner, Russell T Davies, Phil Collinson and I – all said, ‘That’s the one.’ There was a uniform yes to one particular effect, and that was the one we used.

“Now, how do you make it creepy? It seems to be alive, the water, by the way it follows the characters in the story. Sort of – we didn’t make a big thing of it in the story, but that’s how I shot it, so it was chasing people, following them and trapping them. The best effects you can get come out of seeing the enormity of the water, the relentlessness of it. I think where it becomes really creepy and you get the fear, is when it continues draining out of characters’ mouths.

“There was a very complex system of tubes and piping that they all had to wear within the prosthetics – and water was squeezed and pressurized through the tubes to give the volume of water we required to come out of the actors’ mouths on a continuous basis.”

“Waters” is going out in November, when the evenings are darker than during the regular series run. Did you have that in the back of your mind when you were deciding on the tone of the show?
“When I first read the script, it was originally going to be put out on Christmas Day, I think! I was quite worried that this dark, deep story, which is… well, I don’t know that it’s part of a trilogy, but it certainly will lead you into the finalé. You know something horrible’s going to happen after this story, involving the Doctor – but you don’t know what. I thought it was very dark – I mean, really dark, for Christmas. That’s not the reason they changed their minds to put it out in November – I think that was the controller of BBC One, deciding that maybe as we had three more to go, then one could be in the latter part of the year so that there wasn’t such a long gap between when the first special went out and Christmas. But when I knew it was going to go out earlier in the year, I was able to think about it in a much more dark way, rather than trying to keep the Christmas spirit!”

There seem to be some elements of foreshadowing in “Waters” – the stuff about the “four knocks”.
“I have to tell you, I haven’t seen, I haven’t read – in fact, I probably wasn’t allowed – to know how the next episodes, the final two-parter for David, starts and ends. I’ve no idea what it’s about! It’s going to end, obviously, with him regenerating into Matt Smith – but I’ve no idea what happens in it! So I don’t know to what extent the horror is in that two-parter. I knew about and read the previous script, I knew about the four knocks thing, so I understood what was going on, and what had been and what’s coming, and so on – in terms of the, “when four knocks happen, you know he’s going to die,” kind of thing. So I played on that, but I didn’t know quite what that meant and how it was going to happen in the last two episodes – and I still don’t!”

And the Doctor’s scared himself in this episode, which is a pretty unusual situation…
“Yes, but I think – with some exceptions, obviously – most fans of Doctor Who will know and feel sad and be hurt and worried and concerned – and wonder, is this the Doctor we’ve always known and loved, this ancient mariner traveling through the universe and helping people to help themselves, and being good and worthy and whatever, and showing them the way. And here he’s terrified. But I think that’s good, and I think most people will be interested to see how he gets out of this one. That what I think they think every time. But here, he really is in a very fearful state – and doesn’t want to die, obviously. I don’t think he wants to regenerate – I think he feels he’s got more to do, so how that gets resolved… well, I’m going to watch as well.”

You can read more of this interview in What Satellite And Digital TV issue 281, out on 29 October and the next SFX Special out on 18 November

You can read more about Graeme Harper’s association with Doctor Who in the book Calling The Shots.

Check out some fantastic new pics of Karen Gillan filming Doctor Who here

MORE GREAT PICS! Matt Smith this time!

Following on from our great set of Karen Gillan pics, now SFX has managed to secure some shots of Matt Smith, Doctor 11, in action. He’s in a seriously knackered-looking version of Doctor 10's costume, so presumably this is from his first full episode. But with Moffat you never know. Could be a flashback ion episode eight, or a timey whimey anomaly in episode 12. But we're still betting it’s episode one…

And don’t miss our all-new interview with director Graeme Harper discussing the making of "Waters Of Mars” here.

Karen Gillan Filming Doctor Who Today (05-10-09)

Here is Karen Gillan as a policewoman, in the village of Leadworth, but did the Police have skirts that short, so a stripagram maybe?

Jelly Babies on the Train

If you haven't yet paid a visit, I would strongly advise adding www.tom-baker.co.uk to your favourites list - the official website of the Fourth Doctor Who is marvellously entertaining with both archive material and wonderful "newsletter" style updates providing glimpses into Tom's remarkable world.

A case in point comes in Tom's second newsletter, midway through September.  In it he recalls a recent signing for the Hornet's Nest CD launch, and was asked by a young boy named Harry if he had any Jelly Babies.

Upon discovering that Tom had none, the boy vanished - only to reappear later on with a large box of the sweets.

He’d run all the way to Hyde Park Corner, I think.  I thanked him and he kindly autographed the box.   Thanks again Henry.  I also did about 12 radio interviews for Hornets' Nest.  On the train home I ate some of Henry’s jelly babies and offered them around. One man ate seven.

It's marvellous stuff and the whole site is a wonderful way to get a regular dose of The Great Man if DVDs of Doctor Who and recordings of guest appearances on Have I Got News For You aren't enough.

New K9 Spinoff Trailer

 

Park Entertainment, Australian producers of the upcoming K9 series currently in post production, have released a new trailer for the Doctor Who spinoff on their website.

Featuring the voice of John Leeson - a man whose career has been defined by a robot dog - K9 comprises 26 half-hour episodes.

You can view the trailer at Park Entertainment's website, or right here: