Martha Jones has a blog

And it is on myspace.

It Takes Who

Just in time for series three of Doctor Who airing in the UK, a Madison, Wisconsin based parody rap artist Luke Ski has done a new song in tribute to the modern incarnation of the series called It Takes Who. It is available for free on theFump.com.

One of the nice things over the last year or so is that the new Doctor Who series is generating a lot more interest amongst the general community of American science fiction fans than Doctor Who has had in many years. We're seeing that both in Doctor Who recognition amongst the Hugo community and in songs like this.

Extermicake!

The Blue Peter site has instructions on how to make a Dalek Cake. The instructions here are over 40 years old, as they've got a classic version of the instructions on The Dalek Invasion of Earth DVD set.

The Doctor Who Hugo trend continues

For the second year in a row three Doctor Who episodes having been nominated for a Hugo. And I know if I was a voter The Girl in the Fireplace would definitely have my vote.

Map of the World

This isn't, I suppose, Doctor Who content, but it might be interesting to see where people are coming to this site in the week before the new series starts on the BBC.

Of course, I could mention that I saw the same sort of map on Paul Cornell's site, and the youtube video he linked to was enjoyable as well, mashing up old-series and new-series footage in a way that feels a lot more natural than you might expect.




Create your own visitor map!

Counting Down

freemaagyeman.com has been great about counting down and collecting clips about the launch of
Series Three, including giving a bit more context behind Mr. Saxon, obviously this year's Bad Wolf.

The rumors behind Mr. Saxon are really out there in full force now, and I suspect by the time things get over here we won't really have any surprises left on that (if you haven't heard them already)

All of the trailers I've seen look really good so far.

Sylvester McCoy scheduled to perform at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis

The Guthrie Theater here in Minneapolis is going to be one of the destinations of King Lear in October. While seeing Ian McKellen perform will be interesting to science fiction fans because of his excellent work in the X-Men and Lord of The Rings film series, this production will be especially interesting to Doctor Who fans because seventh Doctor Sylvester McCoy is also part of the production.

I've seen a couple of excellent Shakespeare productions at the Guthrie over the years. I've seen Sylvester McCoy several times over the years (including helping with the Doctor Who conventions in Minneapolis that he mentions) but I've never seen any Doctor Who actor do a live theater production before. That may be something that's more common place in the UK, where I get the impression that there are always ex-Doctor Who actors doing one production or another, but not in the US generally, and certainly not Minneapolis specifically.

Doctor Who after Russell

Another article about Russell T Davies -- and this one also goes on about what Russell will do after Doctor Who.

I think it's an interesting question -- is this new Doctor Who so defined by Russell T Davies that it'll go back into hibernation when he has told all of the Doctor Who stories that he wants to tell?

I'd like to think that Doctor Who can just continue on and on -- and I believe that it is an ever green concept, like Superman, Batman, James Bond, Robin Hood, or Sherlock Holmes, that will be brought back on a regular basis and every "generation" deserves their own version.

At the same time, best to enjoy it while it is here.

Martha Jones on the Sun and Moon

Ok, that's just a silly title since the latest publicity shot on the BBC has a picture of Martha Jones on the moon.

I'm never quite sure how accurate interviews in the Sun are, but this is one of the more interesting interviews, and the picture of the Doctor, Jack, and Martha is excellent.

The Ten Doctors

It looks like my last comment about The Ten Doctors by The OFFSTAGE Theatre Group getting a name check sounded a little bit harsher than I meant, as I enjoyed the production and certainly can appreciate the challenges of doing a one-off-staging at a convention a continent away. Especially one as ambitious as The Ten Doctors.

I was especially impressed by how well all of the Doctors' vocal styles were captured. Scary at times.

I have too many friends and acquaintances that do original stage comedy in theater to want to sound like doing comedy isn't "serious" theater.

My intention in the original post was more that The Ten Doctors wasn't an original, official, licensed dramatic production of Doctor Who -- which is the impression the Telegraph article gave, and it was more that the comment showed the article to be the product of a writer who spent a couple minutes reading the front page of Outpost Gallifrey than anything else.

My apologies for sounding harsher towards the OFFSTAGE Theatre Group than I intended!

Seeing the future

A couple of interesting thoughts as I read this interview with Russell T Davies in the lead up to series three.

First of all, there's the (unsurprising) news that a fourth series has been commissioned. But I wonder if that'll be the last series of the Russell T Davies era. There are certainly hints that could be the case -- "This is one of the reasons why Davies is ready for a new challenge" and "If you stay too long somewhere you start missing out on chances like that."

And while we've proven that the new series can comfortably change Doctors, and I am sure that we'll show that it can change companions with the next series, the big question will be whether it can change lead writers. I don't think there's any reason to believe that Doctor Who needs to end with the departure of Russell -- it is a series designed to run and run, constantly refreshing itself.

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One other amusing thing about that article is how they over-play The Ten Doctors play as a stage production at Gallifrey One this year. It was amusing, but it was by no stretch of the imagination a serious stage production of Doctor Who. There have been a few "serious" stage productions over the years, and I've imagined that one could do something like Tomb of the Cybermen very effectively as a stage production, but that wasn't what we saw at Gallifrey.

Canadian Airdates

I saw a message on the DWIN mailing list that the third series of Doctor Who will air in Canada starting in June. That's the same timeframe as it is airing on the Sci Fi channel -- and I suspect that will also mean that we get a near simultaneous release of the inevitable series three DVD boxedset as the UK.

Perhaps more interesting is that the CBC have given a fall airdate for the first series of Torchwood. It is typical for new UK tv series to take about a year to cross over, and that looks to be similar with Torchwood even with its relationship to Doctor Who. My suspicion is that's going to end up to be the same timeframe as any American distribution deal, because the Region 1 DVDs are unlikely to be one country only.

Doctor Who Tube

The BBC has worked out a deal to put some video clips on YouTube, and that includes David Tennant's Dr Who Video Diary 1 and Freema Agyerman in the other.

And thankfully, this is something that's not UK only, so the quality is much better than we're used to seeing on video posted on the BBC site...