Doctor Who

[fish]

Big Doctor Who news today...

I'm still putting up with re-runs on two different channels.
Two different series.
Two different Doctors.
And I've seen them all before anyway.

[Ian]

Picked up the Evil of the Daleks blu ray.

[fish]

I'm watching the new series on pay tv at the moment.
Apparently it's 6 episodes making up one story.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDUvFdGu6JE

I'm up to episode 2 and still trying to work out where it's going.

But I'm enjoying it.

[Ian]

Been some interesting news on the Who front for next year's anniversary celebrations:

David Tennant and Catherine Tate (and Bernard Cribbins) are back
Beep the Meep - a cuddly creature that looks sweet but is actually evil - is making its onscreen debut, having previously only appeared in comics and audios.
American actor Neil Patrick Harris is guest starring as a villain that, judging from set photos released today, looks like being The Celestial Toymaker (a powerful godlike entity previously seen in the Hartnell era, where he was played by Michael Gough). He's been in books and audios since but never back to the tv show before (though was planned to in the original season 23 with Colin Baker before the whole hiatus debacle kicked off).

QI!

[Ian]

Season 2 has been announced as the next Blu ray Collection set, marking the first William Hartnell, 60s and black and white season to be released. Sadly the two missing eps of The Crusade will only be recons. To be fair, it's still 37 proper episodes so they can get away with it here, though heaven knows what they're going to do with season 3 unless they can start doing animations again... I can't imagine many people excited to fork out for 20 odd recons!

Rumours are also mounting about the 60th anniversary specials (apparently there's three of them!), with Tennant confirming that the stuff he and Tate have shot is only a very small cog and that other returning actors have largely been shot in studio or in secret so have been able to be kept secret. Big speculation that Paul McGann, Matt Smith and Peter Capaldi are back, as well as fishy's favourite Karen Gillan (who seems to have been dropping possible hints of such on Instagram). If this is true, together with the Beep the Meep style madness this could end up putting the 50th to shame (not too difficult).

[Ian]

Apparently The Smugglers and The Underwater Menace are to be animated this year.
They're also going to be colourising a couple of 60s episodes "for broadcast", though it remains to be seen how many or if any full stories will be done. Interesting!

[Ian]

The first of the three 60th anniversary specials with David Tennant will broadcast on the 25th of November on the BBC in the UK and Disney+ elsewhere, with the two subsequent specials airing on the next two consecutive Saturdays. There will then be a gap of just two weeks before the Christmas special introducing Ncuti Gatwa as the new Doctor.
The three specials are The Star Beast (a quasi-adaptation of a 1980 comic strip), Wild Blue Yonder (the most mysterious of the three, with little known about it) and The Giggle, which sees US actor Neil Patrick Harris as the powerful and malevolent cosmic entity The Toymaker, a supervillain first (and last) seen in the 60s when he was played by Michael Gough.

In other news, The Daily Mirror is reporting that the mostly-missing first Toymaker story is going to be announced soon to be the next animated recreation of missing eps set to the original soundtrack.