The Torchwood Institute - A Doctor Who and Torchwood Blog

Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Series Three Pictures

There are some nice pictures from the shooting of an upcoming a historical episode of Doctor Who. It's rather impressive to see just the front of just a small bit of building looking historical with the modern surroundings around it.

Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Doctor Who Hugo Award

Someone posted the Hugo award cermony where The Empty Child and The Doctor Dances wins the best Short Form Dramatic Presentation Hugo onto YouTube. It's rather nice to have a place where the award cermonies for events that aren't high enough profile to be broadcast on cable to end up...

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Sunday, August 27, 2006

Spiked

In one of the places I wouldn't really expect Doctor Who to show up, the American cable channel Spike TV is having a "Scream Awards" that is celebrating the best in Horror, Sci Fi, and Comics, and Doctor Who is up for best television series. Go Vote.

Hugo Breakdown

Here is the voting breakdown for the Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form. The Doctor Who two parter, The Empty Child and The Doctor Dances wins.

It is also a great example of the way the Hugo voting is calculated -- I saw some comments from people unfamiliar with the voting procedures were concerned that having three Doctor Who episodes against each other would mean that they would compete against each other and something else would win. And if they had only looked at first place ballots, that would have been the case. But they consider the full ranking of people's ballots, so there didn't have to be any conspiracy about deciding which of the three Doctor Who episode was best before voting amongst all of the people that top three picks were Who episodes.

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Everybody Lives!

I haven't yet seen the official press release or news story yet, but according to a cell-phone based report I saw, The Empty Child & The Doctor Dances won the best dramatic short form Hugo.

More later...

Saturday, August 26, 2006

Torchwood Interactive

According to this Digital Spy report, there will be an interactive online component when Torchwood launches in the UK in a few months. I know that most of you reading this are UK residents (after all, we've only had one reference to Torchwood aired in the US so far, and only two references in Canada). But hopefully most of the content will be accessible to the rest of the world as well..

Good luck to Doctor Who at the Hugo ceremony tonight!

Thursday, August 17, 2006

David Tennant Arrives

Besides being on Doctor Who this fall on the Sci Fi channel, the role that is basically his auditon piece for the part of the Doctor, Casanova, will be on Masterpiece Theater this fall.

You might not see how playing the so called world's greatest lover would connect to a character that is traditionally seen as a sexless character, but it does make some sense. And I think one of the important things is that while the Doctor doesn't tend to go around the universe and seduce someone regularly, he has frequently been a very romantic character, in that he is always adventuring and exploring. And I think that's been especially true with the character over the last decade or so.

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Sales

This press release about series two on Sci Fi confirms something that we probably all knew instinctively, and that's the Series One boxed set is the most popular Doctor Who DVD release ever. And given that information, my expectation is that we'll see a Series Two DVD release shortly after it airs on Sci Fi (and CBC in Canada.)

It's still not clear to me whether we'll get all of The Christmas Invasion or if it'll be heavily cut to fit into a single hour. I'm hopeful that the two hour slot means that it won't be cut, but I won't hold my breath. We'll find out in time..

Thursday, August 10, 2006

Confirmed

Both SCI FI and the BBC have confirmed what has been rumored for weeks. Doctor Who will start airing on Sci Fi on September 29th. Thankfully, they are starting with The Christmas Invasion. It's not really seasonal, but it's important for the order of the series. Besides, The Unquiet Dead was also Christmassy and that's never aired anywhere at Christmas time.

This also means that yes, Doctor Who and Battlestar Galactica are back to back. It's something that I've wanted since I was first aware that both series are in production, and as both series are such solid recreations of classic Sci Fi brands, it's a great, great combination.

Friday, August 04, 2006

All But Confirmed

The schedule posted on the NBC site lists two new hours of Doctor Who on September 29 and says that it is the second series premiere.

Of course, the question is, are we getting The Christmas Invasion or are we jumping straight to New Earth.

Of course, schedules can change -- but it certainly looks like September is when it will start, and we'll then have both Battlestar Galactica and Doctor Who.

I feel I must correct my correction on a posting on the Behind the Sofa blog then. At any point, it looks really really likely that we'll see Doctor Who and Battlestar Galactica back to back. It is common for some people to try and set it up as Doctor Who vs. Battlestar Galactica... but this just shows that they're allies, not rivals. Two exceptions to the usual rule that revivals are pale reflections of the originals.

Updated 6-Aug-2006: Outpost Gallifrey has more about this as well.

Thursday, August 03, 2006

Relative Dimension

If you, like me, have Doctor Who as part of your life story, you'll appreciate this entry on DoctorWho.TV It's much like Neil Gaiman's Doctor Who observations.

The cliche is that fans (Doctor Who specifically, but also true in general) are a solitary lonely bunch -- but it's really these examples that point out how much these things bring people together. And that's especially true in the internet era.

Wednesday, August 02, 2006

Relative Time and the Long Tail of Doctor Who

I haven't had a chance to comment on some things recently.

First of all, on the Torchwood side of things, the torchwood archives is a great looking site filled with several images that are now a part of my ever-rotating desktop image selection. The images that I've seen from Torchwood look excellent. I'm really optimistic about the series.

In the Doctor Who in America side, it's really interesting that Sci Fi is listing the last eight episodes of the 2005 series on September 29th. Christmas could come a little early this year. It's quite interesting that they haven't listed what Doctor Who they will air that evening.

The news that Sarah Jane Investigates might be the long-rumored kid-friendly Doctor Who spin-off is interesting. I'd be interested to see how that's different from the poorly-remembered K9 & Company, But then, perhaps someone at Big Finish might have an idea.

In my non-Doctor Who reading I've been reading The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More (or see here), and perhaps it is only fitting that I'm seeing the same pattern in the world of Doctor Who. We've obviously got the main, modern television series sitting at the head, and then as you follow down the tail you have previous series and DVD releases, the various spin-off series like Torchwood and this Sarah Jane Investigates, and then also all of the other parts of the Doctor Who cottege industry. The Big Finish audios, primary and spin-offs; all of the huge varieties of Doctor Who novels that have been published over the last decade and a half. You've got spin-off lines from those books, like Faction Paradox and Bernice Summerfield.

It used to be possible for a Doctor Who fan to keep up with everything -- that's been impossible for several years, even before the new television series, but now it really is impossible.

And we're seeing a variety of different spin-offs from the main trunk for different audiences. Sarah Jane Investigates looks to be a true children's series. It might be interesting to see how they work it when Elisabeth Sladen is old enough to be the grandmother of the target audience, but I imagine that'll be addressed by other cast members.

And Torchwood is obviously the sexy adult spin-off. And that leaves the primary Doctor Who series as something that is the hit, designed for the entire British public. Of course, that means that it isn't designed for the entire American public -- it is off in a niche here, by being British.