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Month: June 2014

Confession #63: I Wonder If the Doctor Gets Vacations

Do you suppose the Doctor’s vacations ever go to plan?

There have been a few times here and there where we’ve witnessed him taking his various Companions off to some particular (intended) place and time for the sole purpose of relaxation and recreation. Most often, the results are less than ideal, as the TARDIS crew gets pulled into some brand of local trouble.

For example, in the eponymous tale, the Fourth Doctor took Romana II to the Leisure Hive to make use of its famous facilities. Of course, they find themselves smack in middle of serious political machinations instead. More recently, Ten took Rose off to New15 York in New Earth, only to discover something seriously wrong with the medical research facility. Even when he merely takes a moment out of his otherwise full schedule to fish (see, e.g., The Androids of Tara or The Two Doctors), things soon go all wahooney-shaped.

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Confession #62: I Hate Spoilers

Fans are notorious for, shall we say, extreme enthusiasm in anticipation of new material. It’s a key characteristic, no matter the fandom. Along with that fervor, though, comes a more controversial byproduct: the spoiler.

The Internet really seems to have changed the way we interact with our media of choice. Whether it be film, television, books, or any other format, fans now have near-instantaneous contact with both creators and other fans. Creators, who are still accustomed to the traditional idea that they can control how their stories are presented to their audiences through the specific publicity they sanction, have sometimes had difficulty adjusting to the new realities of cyberfanaticism.

This issue is especially prevalent in visual media, like Doctor Who. Instead of images, potential plot points, and other juicy details coming directly from the production team when and as they see fit, eager fans (or unscrupulous insiders) tend to leak them to social media, where they spread like wildfire. Such spoilers change the intended narrative, and sometimes ruin what were meant to be surprises carefully crafted over as much as months. Thus, as you might expect—and like absolutely everything else in fandom—spoilers tend to polarize fans.

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Nu-View #18: Special Surprise

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Planet of the Dead (Series Four Special; 2009)
Viewed 03 Jun 2014

Doctor/Companion: Ten, Lady Christina de Souza
Stars: David Tennant, Michelle Ryan
Preceding Story: The Next Doctor (Ten, Jackson Lake)
Succeeding Story: The Waters of Mars (Ten, Adelaide Brooke)

Having finished the Ninth Doctor’s tenure last time, the Ladies and I are ready to leap into the Tenth Doctor’s debut. Fate is, however, against us.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2009 BBC

It turns out that my Doctor Who evangelism is as disorganized as the rest of my life right now. Around New Year’s I’d loaned my DVDs of Series Two to a friend whose kids were just getting into Who, and never asked for them back. I only discover this oversight for our WhoFest viewing plans as the Ladies are setting themselves up with wine and snacks.

Not to waste one of our increasingly rare opportunities to spend time together with each other and the Doctor, we decide to postpone our watch-in-order exercise for another time and select an episode that we collectively know less well, at jE’s request. It’s an unexpectedly good choice; not only has jE seen it only once, but we discover that jA has never seen it at all! (I’m not sure how this egregious error came about; it’s good we’re correcting it now!)

So off we go on the Lonely God’s last “romp.” First we meet our bored, aristocratic cat burglar as she takes advantage of the “worst security system ever” (as jA puts it). For someone who’s meant to be so clever, Christina’s a bit of a dullard for ripping off her identity-concealing mask whilst still inside the museum she’s in the process of robbing.

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Confession #61: I Want a 50th Boxed Set

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Over the weekend, reports surfaced that The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot; the unofficial-but-officially-sanctioned half-hour special written and directed by Fifth Doctor Peter Davison and co-starring Colin Baker (Six), Sylvester McCoy (Seven), and (briefly) Paul McGann (Eight); would at some point be released on DVD. The source of this information is apparently C. Baker himself, sharing the news at a Doctor Who Appreciation Society event. Details are ridiculously sketchy, pretty much only including the fact that it’s slated to happen and that it will be part of a “special set” focused on Matt Smith.

Folks are already speculating wildly about what will be on this rumored set, though most (like me) seem to have settled on the idea that it will be something 50th anniversary-related. My favorite overly enthusiastic and admittedly too optimistic list of items that might be included encompassed everything from the Proms to Hurt interviews to a specially created farewell to Eleven.

Admittedly, if it does turn out to be an anniversary set, there is a lot of material from which to choose. A lot of material was only available in one part of the world or another (e.g., the aforementioned Proms, or the Doctors Revisited series which didn’t make it to the UK until mere weeks before the anniversary). But how likely do we really think it is that BBC Worldwide would include videos of panel interviews, for instance? Realistically, there’s a pretty short list of what they’re likely to use.

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