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.

Eric Roberts at Gallifrey

I was more interested to see Eric Roberts talk about Heroes than I was about ten-year-old Doctor Who, but still, seeing Eric Roberts meant that I've now seen all of the major actors with the 1996 Doctor Who TV Movie. And he didn't have a whole lot to say about it -- the most I got out was that he did the TV Movie because he had British friends that were familiar with the show.

The TV Movie is not quite a Doctor Who footnote -- the TV Movie had a long shadow and I think you can see elements from the TV Movie being taken on in the new series, as well as elements that are a reaction against some elements of the TV Movie. For many years almost any first Doctor Who conversation I would have would revolve around that film, and it had been the focus of a lot of attention when it was the last bit of Doctor Who made for Television.

I'm disappointed that the greater success of the new series hasn't motivated an attempt to clear up the DVD rights issues with the TV Movie in region 1. I had some hopes that as NBC Universal is a player in distributing the new series on the Sci Fi channel that might make it easier for them to release that as well. It's not classic Doctor Who, but I think it's an important piece of the forty five year Doctor Who story.

The Changing Face of Doctor Who Toys

I've been going to Gallifrey One for ten years now. It's been a mainstay of my convention-going life, and it's been interesting to see the convention evolve from the post-TV Movie environment, through the Big Finish era, and now the era of the new television series.

One of the interesting changes is how there are so many more quality Doctor Who toys. I've never seen so many as there were in the dealer's room this year. I didn't get an after picture, but by the end of the weekend, the entire table had been pretty well picked clean.






Of course, I couldn't resist getting a few toys of my own, including the TARDIS playset and some Daleks.









It's really quite impressive how much better the new series Doctor Who toys have been compared to any previous Doctor Who product. From remote control Daleks to action figures, they've all been solid quality. Even if you're really too old to be buying toys...