Kopic's Doctor Who & Torchwood News |
| Photos of Freema in The Doctor's Daughter Posted: 05 May 2008 02:00 PM CDT This week Martha's got some new clothes and new baddies to fight! Better "stock up" on Freema! Sadly this weekend is the last time we will see her for several more weeks…  | ||
| Posted: 05 May 2008 09:17 AM CDT Elisabeth Sladen appeared on Saturday night's edition of Doctor Who Confidential, talking about classic series monsters the Sontarans, who returned to the show for a special two parter this weekend just gone and the Saturday before, too. Sladen appeared alongside Sontar's finest in two 1970-era adventures, "The Time Warrior" and "The Sontaran Experiment". A special Sontaran DVD boxset (containing the two aforementioned stories, plus "Invasion of Time" and "The Two Doctors") called "Bred For War" was released today. Order it now! Talking of DVD releases, the BBFC has released classification details for the entire first series of "The Sarah Jane Adventures" - indicating that the show will receive a "Complete series one" boxset sometime in the near future! DigitalSpy's Tube Talk backs up this claim, stating that a SJA boxset is due September time, to tie in with the new series! Series 2 has now entered production, according to the latest issue of Doctor Who Magazine. Filming is underway on production block one, which comprises of episodes 3/4 (Adventure Two - by Phil Ford) and 5/6 (Adventure Three - by Gareth Roberts). Ford's adventure guest stars Bradley Walsh, whilst Russ Abbott appears in Robert's latest story. Further cast details have emerged. A new family will be moving to Bannerman Road! Meet the Chandras! Headed up by mother Gita (Mina Anwar), father Haresh (Ace Bhatti) and - last but not least! - daughter Rani Chandra (played by newcomer Anjli Mohindra). The new cast members were chosen by casting director, Andy Pryor. Congratulations guys, and welcome to the team!  | ||
| Dragon Releases Limited Edition Mike Giant Calavera - Transworld Surf (press release) Posted: 05 May 2008 08:59 AM CDT
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| Posted: 05 May 2008 08:42 AM CDT We've gone, we've seen, we've conquered. We've been promised access all areas and been denied it at the last minute, and we've chatted with Richard Franklin about politics. We've got bladdered at the bar, met a bird who bedded a popular Doctor Who cast member, as well as met up for the first time in one place with Prof Peach and Charlie Croker. In fact while Anthony Dry and mine's weekend of booze, Whooze, and taking the wives out for dinner was punctuated by viewings of Return of the Saint and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Yet there's a bad taste left in the mouth. A hint of disappointment, of broken promises, of bad decisions, and a heavy whiff of sloppy organisation and self-serving masturbation when the punters have paid £25 a head. Cattle markets are for the big events - the previous air of grace and intimacy that made the 2007 cavern event a success has been lost. You can't use certain loaded statements in emails to individuals and then deny them or ignore them when the time comes. Certainly not when they're going to write about it later. It's not on - its bad form, bad karma, and bad manners.  | ||
| Doing a roaring trade - Messenger News Posted: 05 May 2008 06:51 AM CDT
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| Doctor Who - The Sontaran Stratagem Posted: 05 May 2008 06:37 AM CDT  My overwhelming feeling after watching this episode was one of familiarity. I had seen it all before. This is not good for a television series as soon people will stop watching and turn over as the drama didn't deliver what was expected.New Doctor Who seems to have fallen into a very predictable pattern ... and this is after only four series. It makes you appreciate even more the first 26 years of episodes where, good, bad or indifferent, it always felt different. For Series Four we have a light hearted opening episode, a historical, something set on an alien planet which is a little off the wall, a two parter re-introducing an old monster ... and later on we apparently have something scary from Stephen Moffat, a Doctor-lite episode ... and a conclusion which brings lots of old faces back onto the screen. This pattern has been repeated for the last three years, so little wonder that it's not feeling new any more. But back to 'The Sontaran Stratagem'. The modern technology being used by evil aliens is ATMOS, a device connected to cars which gives them zero carbon emissions. Oh, and it also runs the sat nav as well. It cannot be disabled, and can also literally take control of the vehicle! Did no-one notice the extensive modifications which would be needed to all vehicles to make this able to happen? No-one questioned it? This is just too hard to believe and so totally fails as a dramatic device on this occasion. There is a principle of technology that the user must always feel that they are in control, so it can always be turned off. To have something which quite blatantly tells you it cannot be disabled is something I'm sure that most people would not buy into. But a nosy reporter, Jo Nakashima, is killed in the pre-credit sequence and we know that something is up at the Rattigan Acadamy and that young Rattigan is in league with the returning baddies (who we already know all about thanks to the Radio Times). Meanwhile the Doctor is giving Donna driving lessons in the TARDIS and the music is stupid and annoying. Cue the Doctor's mobile phone - it's Martha and she wants him to come back to Earth. As soon as we see Martha, her dreary theme music kicks in ... it's really rubbish that they feel the need to underpin every character with a theme and then to ram this down our throats every time they appear. It's really not necessary and some subtlty is needed once in a while. I dread to think - really dread - what the final episodes will be like if we end up with all the rumoured characters appearing. Snatches of their themes here and there, a veritable collision of sound and character. We shall see. So the Doctor and Donna arrive and Martha orders Operation Blue Sky to start, this being the invasion of the ATMOS factory by UNIT troops. I smiled when they announced 'This is a UNIT Operation' to the workers as though they'd know what it meant. But then I realised that UNIT must be a well known organisation as even the Journalist's sat nav at the start knew where to take her when she asked it for UNIT HQ. The Doctor meets Colonel Mace and learns that ATMOS is believed to be behind the deaths of 52 people worldwide, all at exactly the same time. While the Doctor is looking into this, a couple of UNIT troops exploring the basement (on their own?) stumble across a secret lab and find a casket-like object inside containing a partially-formed humanoid creature before being disabled and 'processed' by Staal the Sontaran. This sequence was very nicely handled. Lots of tension and wonder, and the half-formed clone was excellent. A really spooky design and I loved the partially closed mouth on it as well. Now we get to see the Sontarans, and I loved how small they were. That was a great concept and was pulled off well by all concerned. They did look rather like toys and this gave totally the wrong impression to those they faced. The costume design worked well, and the helmet of course retained the 'classic' look - a nice piece of reinventing and updating by the design team. My only complaint was that, good though Chris Ryan was, he sounded as though he was speaking lines of dialogue rather than it being natural. He also sounded too human wheras Kevin Lindsay (who played the Sontaran in their first two appearances) managed to make the creature sound alien. Makes you appreciate Lindsay's performance all the more that no-one since him has matched the power and effectiveness of his performance. Back to the plot, and the Doctor heads off with a UNIT soldier called Ross Jenkins to see Rattigan at his Academy while Donna goes to see her mum and grandfather. Martha meanwhile carries out medical checks on the staff at ATMOS, apparently not noticing that they don't blink, and speak in a hypnotised monotone. Some doctor she is! But she's soon marched off by the processed UNIT men to the underground lab. The scenes here are very well directed, and her scream echoing as all the lights go off was very effective. The Doctor soon realises that Rattigan has access to some hi-tech kit, including a teleporter, and he pops up to the Sontaran ship only to come racing back again with Commander Staal in hot pursuit. Now we see the face of the Sontaran (well, assuming you'd not got the Radio Times) and it's well done indeed. Very alien and effective. I liked the Doctor using the ball and racquet to hit the ball to bounce off the creature's probic vent - very imaginative ... and of course nothing like using a satsuma to disarm a Sycorax. So Rattigan and Staal head for the Sontaran ship where we discover that Rattigan thinks Sontarans all look the same when it's obvious that they don't - Commander Storr (why, oh why wasn't he a General!) has a Madonna-like gap in his teeth for a start. Meanwhile poor Martha is strapped to a table and her memories used to finalise a clone of her to be used to create havok amongst UNIT. When Storr arrives and oversees the last part of this, his line about the female having a weak thorax ... oh please! Apart from the fact that the dialogue makes no sense in context, this joke of writer Terrance Dicks, whereby every Sontaran is contractually bound to make a reference to females of the human species having different larynx structures from the males, was old ten years ago! So we're into the endgame now ... and the Doctor and Ross arrive back with Donna as Staal puts his plan into action, sending Sontarans down to Earth in space pods (Why? They have teleports!) and activating the true function of ATMOS - to emit a gas from the car exhausts. But first the Doctor has to endure some RTD baggage in the form of Wilf and then Donna's mum, Sylvia, recognising him. So Wilf ends up locked in a car as the gas floods out and the Doctor can't open the door - what about breaking a window then? As if this wasn't all exciting enough, the Sontarans, for no discernable reason other than to provide something to put on T-shirts, launch into a Maori-like Haka of 'Sontar-Ha!' while smacking their fists into their hands. I shook my head in disbelief here ... it's obviously rubbish, but they take it all so seriously. So the Doctor looks into the distance as the air is filled with gas, and Wilf collapses in the car ... and we crash into the end credits. As I said at the start, it all seemed so familiar and rumbled by without really registering on the excitementometer at all. The shock of the Sontaran appearance was diminished by good old Radio Times in shades of the CyberController and the Dalek Sec Hybrid, and the themes of modern technology gone bad was done before in 'The Age of Steel'/'The Rise of the Cybermen' as well as 'The Idiot's Lantern' and 'The Lazarus Experiment'. UNIT seemed to have turned into a generic army unit - even their name has been changed from the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce to the UNified Intelligence Taskforce. But why? Sounds like a dollop too much of political correctness to me. I notice that Robert Holmes was credited for the Sontarans at least. So will Wilf live? Will the chanting, dancing midget Sontarans take over the world? Will evil clone Martha turn out to have a goatee beard? Tune in next week for the answers ...  | ||
| Watch movie trailers online [FURTHER UPDATES] Posted: 05 May 2008 01:45 AM CDT Some new film trailers available for you to watch on the internet right now! Current favourites... The Incredible Hulk Iron Man Hellboy II 10 more must-see SF,...  | ||
| S04E06: 'The Doctor's Daughter' Posted: 05 May 2008 12:21 AM CDT Who&os;s the Daddy? Read on for a few hints about The Doctor&os;s encounter with his offspring.  | ||
| Top 10 TV picks: May 6-12 - Stuff.co.nz Posted: 05 May 2008 12:07 AM CDT
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| News: The Doctor's Daughter Preview Posted: 04 May 2008 11:35 PM CDT Who-bending insanity will be upon us on Saturday, as Doctor Who crash lands at 6.45pm on BBC One and throws its hero into the path of his daughter! The wheres, whyfors, who, whats, whats whats and whats can wait for now - the fact is that the Doctor appears to have a daughter ("Hello Dad") who is played in a clever piece of casting by former Doctors daughter! Georgia Moffett is of course the daughter of Peter Davison and his first wife Sandra Dickinson, and appears next week in an...  | ||
| News: Sontaran Director Interviewed Posted: 04 May 2008 11:17 PM CDT Douglas Mackinnon - guiding hand behind The Sontaran Stratagem/ThePoison Sky - has chatted about his experience on the show, breaking the TARDIS, and enjoying Doctor Who as a child. The director was very pleased to be working on Doctor Who with Tennant, Tate and Agyeman, while he also got the chance to sow his kids around the BBC Wales studio at Upper Boat, and show them the treasure chest that is the prop store - but tha's small fry to actually breaking the TARDIS... "During filming I...  | ||
| Dannii's secret cancer pal pain - The Sun Posted: 04 May 2008 10:39 PM CDT
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| Posted: 04 May 2008 09:00 PM CDT PG • 135 mins • 9 May Directors: Andy and Larry Wachowski Starring: Emile Hirsch, Susan Sarandon, John Goodman, Christina Ricci, Matthew Fox Rating: Buckle your seatbelt, don your sunglasses and pack the Ritalin, the filmmaking...  | ||
| Posted: 04 May 2008 08:37 PM CDT
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| Ingleby Barwick woman's art on display - GazetteLive Posted: 04 May 2008 08:23 PM CDT
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| Lizo reviews sixth episode of Dr Who - CBBC Newsround Posted: 04 May 2008 07:54 PM CDT
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| SciFi Edits, week 4, and a little something else Posted: 04 May 2008 04:41 PM CDT Before I get started with Friday's episodes-this week Yasmin Paige will be reading The Elves in the Shelves by Joan Aiken for BBC7's Big Toe Books (7:00-8:00am each morning) Unfortunately BBC7's daily schedule doesn't seem to indicate which day she will be on. Yasmin also read two other books by Joan Aiken- A Necklace of Raindrops and The Cat Sat on the Mat, which are available to listen to from the Big Toe site until Friday, May 9th. Now onto Friday's cuts: Eye of the Gorgon, part 2 Considering all the Jackson family scenes that were cut last week, I gotta hand it to SciFi-they managed to cut out even the smallest instances that would refer back to the cut scenes from part 1, so the viewer would wouldn't be left saying, 'Now where the heck did that come from?' 1. After the nuns leave Sarah Jane's house, Maria walks up to her dad and apologizes for yelling at him. 2. Just before Maria says 'Everything was fine before we moved here...', she says 'Mum was right about you'[Sarah Jane]. 3. Snipped scene: Sarah Jane driving up to the abbey after dropping Maria off to talk with Bea. 4. Baaaad cut coming back from commercials to the scene with Maria and Bea. However, after thinking about it-I don't think anything was missing from the beginning of this scene-I also noticed that SciFi seemed to be having trouble coming back from commericals with Doctor Who and Battlestar Galactica as well-the transitions weren't as smooth. 5. Chrissie discovers the statue of Alan in Sarah Jane's living room, and comes in through the window. She thinks Sarah has really lost it-she can't have the real thing, so she makes herself a statue! Chrissie then has a heart-to-heart talk with the "statue" of Alan- 'It's come down to this, has it?' She says that she may not be the best mother in the world, but she does what she can. As she is leaving back through the window, the camera focuses on Alan's face, and you can see a single tear falling from his eye. *awwww....* 6. After Alan wakes up in Sarah Jane's garden, he heads back home, only to be confronted by Chrissie. He says he must have been really tired, because he went looking for Maria, sat down and fell asleep in Sarah Jane's garden (yes, he has forgotten what happened to him after the Gorgon turned him to stone). Maria comes running across the street from Sarah Jane's, and Chrissie says, 'Ah, look, it's another one of the missing Jacksons. Come with me, you will not believe what that crazy woman has in her living room-a statue of Dad!' She takes Maria by the hand and heads accross the street, Alan not far behind. 7. Luke and Clyde are in the living room doing their homework as Sarah Jane walks in with the Jacksons, claiming she has no idea what Chrissie could be talking about. Chrissie insists that there was a statue of "her Alan" right there in the middle of the room. Maria calmly tugs at her mother and tells her that she should come home with them. As they are leaving, Alan says, 'it's a shame really, I think I would look good as one of those Greek Statues' and does a mock pose as one*giggle* Maria tells him she likes him just the way he is. The scene ends with a shot of Sarah and the boys chuckling after them. 8. After the Jackson's return home, Maria is hugging Chrissie goodbye as Alan puts her bags in the cab. Chrissie tells Maria that she may not live under the same roof, but she still worries about her and wants to look out for her. Maria says she understands and will always be there for Chrissie, no matter what. Alan says the meter is running, and Chrissie gives Maria one last hug and kiss, then gets in the cab and waves goodbye from the back seat. Warriors of Kudlak, part 1 1. In the beginning, just before 'I can't even begin to imagine what the last three days have been like...', Sarah Jane is looking around Lance's room while his mother is talking about him. She hands Sarah a picture of Lance and Sarah sits down on the bed next to her. 2. After running after Luke, Clyde meets up with him on the swings of a playground. Clyde refers to Lance as 'the corporal'again, and Luke tells him not to say it anymore-and that he didn't mean for it to be cruel. Clyde also apologizies to Luke for grassing on him, and Luke wants to know what 'grassing' means. 3. I think some of the scenes with the kids during their lazer tag game were either cut out or cut short. I think I may have mentioned this before-lots of running is fun to watch, but it doesn't hurt to cut some of it out if it means more of the story can be left in. 4. When Sarah Jane and Maria first walk up to the ticket counter at Combat 3000, the lady behind the counter begins her little monologue (with a very bored look on her face, I might add), 'Welcome to Combat 3000, the warriors of the future.' After Sarah and Maria leave, the next two in line walk up to the counter, the lady resumes the bored look on her face, and starts the speech over. 5. The beginning of Mr. Grantham's speech, explaining the 'new level, new arena' was snipped. Those seem to be the only cuts I noticed in this episode, which seem rather small in numbers. I can't imagine that there was enough time saved in the cuts that I found, so if you happened to remember something I may have missed, please mention them in the comments!! Thanks!  | ||
| Dalek points the way to Dr Who exhibition - ic Wales Posted: 04 May 2008 03:25 PM CDT
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| ‘People are our best asset but they’re an asset in short supply’ - ic Wales Posted: 04 May 2008 03:25 PM CDT
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| Shakespearean costumes on show - Northampton Chronicle & Echo Posted: 04 May 2008 03:21 PM CDT
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| 'I Didn't Think I Had a Brain at All' - RedOrbit Posted: 03 May 2008 09:52 PM CDT
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