Kopic's Doctor Who & Torchwood News |
| Posted: 01 Jun 2008 12:15 PM CDT In the latest issue of Doctor Who Magazine (number 396, out now priced £3.99) Russell T Davies confirms in his "Production Notes" column that scripts are coming in from a number of different writers for Torchwood's third season. The production team are working on the series, which is still unofficially confirmed, with filming set to start later this summer. It seems we'll be in for a number of changes - format, cast & crew, approach to story telling - but the lovely Mr. Davies won't spill the beans on any of these changes just yet... He has confirmed in the "Production Notes" column that a new Producer for the show has been appointed, in the absence of Richard Stokes. Meanwhile the Blu-Ray (and HD-DVD) release of Torchwood's first season is now 30th June. When the release was first announced, a number of sites reported June 2nd or 16th as a possible launch date. Well... they were wrong!! The complete second series DVD boxset is also out on the 30th and, sadly, doesn't contain any commentaries whatsoever. Apparently there just wasn't enough time (or money) to produce them for the boxset. Shame. Special features for the release do include, however, outakes; deleted scenes; Torchwood Declassified; and, not to mention, a 20 minute featurette on the many deaths of Captain Jack Harkness. More news when we have it! (Oh, and I've collected the results of the Reader's Season Awards in - and we have a clear winner! Who? Find out when I post the results later on this week, amigos!)  | ||
| Doctor Who: Silence in the Library Posted: 01 Jun 2008 05:49 AM CDT  That's more like it! Steven Moffat to the rescue with another of his complex tales of horror and relationships. It's interesting is that almost every commentator is saying the same thing: that Moffat's stories are the best, and it's not hard to see why. With 'The Empty Child'/'The Doctor Dances' (WW2 horrors, gasmasked children and zombies, and, of course, 'Are you my mummy?'), 'The Girl in the Fireplace' (creepy clockwork men from a spaceship in the future stalking 18th Century France, and white horses jumping out of mirrors) and 'Blink' (statues that will come and get you if you look away or so much as blink) Moffat has made the art of great television his own, drawing on various primal fears and delivering scripts which make you think as well as adding a laugh or two alongside some well judged shocks and scares. What is strange is that although almost everyone who offers an opinion would claim that Doctor Who is at its best when it's being scary, Russell T Davies seems to believe the opposite and likes to present more lighthearted runarounds.I suppose on the plus side, this lighter, fluffier fare shows just how brilliant the darker tales are - consider whether 'The Girl in the Fireplace' would have stood out quite so much had it been bracketed between 'Human Nature'/'The Family of Blood' and 'Blink' rather than between 'School Reunion' and 'Rise of the Cybermen', but it does seem that this preference towards comedic runarounds is at odds with what everyone, critics and viewers alike, actually want. And when your entire audience is waiting for Steven Moffat's story, and that everything before it is just some sort of prelude, well the balance can't be right can it? Just as with his earlier tales, there was little really known in advance about 'Silence in the Library', except maybe that it featured a library ... so when we open with a little girl seeing said library in her imagination, floating about within it like Christopher Walken in a hotel lobby, we are immediately on guard ... what has this to do with anything? In fact, this feeling persisis throughout the episode as the little girl, her father and the mysterious Dr Moon discuss the girl's imaginary library, though this is where the Doctor and Donna arrive, and where the girl seems to communicate through a security camera. There are no answers forthcoming, except that Moon seems to be more deeply involved in whatever it is than initially suspected. The structure of the opening is interesting as well ... starting pre-credits with everything from the Girl's point of view and then, post-credits, backtracking a little in time to show the Doctor and Donna's arrival. I wasn't sure this worked at first, but on re-watching, it seems to be a good shorthand to get everyone in place. The Library, it seems, is the biggest in the universe ... it occupies an entire planet. The core hollowed out to house the index computer, and newly printed copies of every book ever in shelves and buildings on the surface. My first niggle came when the Doctor and Donna wondered why the place was deserted. According to the computer, there were just two humanoids on the planet (being the Doctor and Donna) but when the Doctor looking for any lifeforms, there were over 1,000,000,000,000 reported. This seemed to puzzle the Doctor but, I wondered, why? If you take microbes and bacteria as being life forms (and they are) then you would get the same reading on Earth - and you can't hear or see microbes and bacteria. I found this so obvious myself, that I didn't understand why the Doctor made a big thing of it. We're introduced to the Nodes (which become important later). These are information points dotted around the Library with human faces. Shades of the Neil Gaiman/Dave McKean film Mirrormask I thought. The first one had an annoying nasal voice but I like the straight reporting of the log entry, complete with 'Argh!' This leavening with humour is important as it helps to maintain some sense of light when things get dark. They are also given a warning: stay out of the shadows ... There is some lovely lighting in this story. Sometimes on television, all the director seems to want to do is to light their sets blanket-style. Blasting every nook and cranny with light ... but here the lighting is important as the play of light and shadow is integral to the plot, so great care has been taken and it shows. I loved the interiors, dark and light and musty and filled with menace. Very nicely done indeed. The plot kicks up a gear when the Library is invaded by a group of space suited archaeologists. There is River Song (the leader), Strackman Lux (the financier), Proper Dave (the pilot), Other Dave and Anita (roles uncertain) and Miss Evangelista (Lux's PA). These people have come to investigate the Library and to find out why it closed 100 years earlier and where all the people there at the time had gone. Lux is set on keeping the secrets there intact (like, for example, who or what CAL is - referenced on the computer systems), his PA is nice but dim, and the others are all nicely characterised with what little screen time they each get. It all gets a little confused now as there's so many people all of a sudden, but the Doctor has realised that they are under attack from something called Vashta Nerada, literally, 'the shadows that melt the flesh'. These are minute voracious flesh eaters which swarm and attack and target other creatures, and which can strip them to the bone in a microsecond. Moffat has really latched onto it this time ... fear of the dark and shadows, and why we should really be afraid of these things ... and it's brilliant stuff. As the teleplay unfolds, Miss Evangelista is the first to be killed, and the aftermath of her death is poignant indeed. The idea of her data ghost persisting in the neural communicator is brilliant and horrific and very, very well handled by all involved. Her final, looping, words of 'Ice Cream' being horrifically memorable. Next to go is Proper Dave who inherits a second shadow before he too is consumed in a microsecond, leaving behind a space-suit inhabited by his grinning skeleton, and then motivated by the Vashta Nerada to chase after everyone else. Meanwhile the Doctor has determined that the only defence against the creatures is to run and so he whizzes Donna off to the TARDIS via a handy teleport, but the process seems to fail. 'Donna has been saved' intones the little girl ominously. Lo and behold Donna's face turns up on one of the information nodes when the Doctor tries to find her location having realised that she did not make it to the TARDIS. But this surely means she is dead? River Song (what a daft name) is something of an enigma. She knows the Doctor well (very well) in the future but he hasn't met her yet. So who is she? Is she his wife? A future companion? Professor Bernice Summerfield - also an archaeologist - masquerading under a different name? Hopefully some answers will be forthcoming next week. The implication is that she is something like this anyway. So we leave the episode with everyone in the Library. The lights are going out, Donna is apparently dead, and there's an ambulatory skeleton made of flesh-eating microbes in a space suit asking who turned the lights out ... what a brilliant climax! I loved this episode. It all felt right. It was well paced, not too much running about and light on flippant humour (though Donna got on my nerves a little as she is want to do most episodes). The horror was well handled, and the ideas simply burst from the script in great waves of brilliance. I cannot wait until next week to see how it all, hopefully, resolves. According to the 'Next Time' trailer, we have the planet cracking open like an egg, trying to save CAL (whatever that might be) and spoilers!  | ||
| S4: Episode #8 - Overnight Ratings Posted: 31 May 2008 10:52 PM CDT S4: Episode #8 - Overnight Ratings The Overnight Ratings are in for 4.8: Silence in the Library. Overnight Ratings show that the episode achieved 5.4m viewers with a 25.4% audience share. Doctor Who was the fifth most-watched programme on Saturday. [Source: Andy Parish]  | ||
| Silence in the Library - Overnight Ratings Posted: 31 May 2008 10:15 PM CDT Doctor Who suffered at the hands of the ITV1 hit Britain's Got Talent with unofficial figures showing that episode eight of Series Four, Silence in the Library, was watched by 5.4 million viewers, giving it a 25.4% share of the total television audience. Britain's Got Talent got 11 million viewers for the main show, with the results programme getting a massive 13.1 million. Doctor Who was only the 5th most watched programme for the day and the...  | ||
| Posted: 31 May 2008 09:02 PM CDT After winning a Sony award for The Chain Gang, his serial for BBC7, Robert Shearman (DALEK, The Chimes of Midnight) has been nominated for two major awards for his short story collection Tiny Deaths. He's on the shortlist for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize, awarded in July, one of the highest honors in the UK for single author collections. Last year's nominees included Neil Gaiman. Tiny Deaths is also longlisted for the Frank O'Connor International...  | ||
| Rob Williams interview: spin-off fiction Posted: 31 May 2008 08:00 PM CDT In SFX magazine recently we've been considering franchise fiction, and the creation of shared universes. In the second of our Q&As on this topic, comics writer (and occasional SFX contributor) Rob Williams talks about the "balancing act" of working on...  | ||
| Phobia Corner: Statues - 'Doctor Who' Posted: 31 May 2008 07:00 PM CDT Find out why statues aren&os;t looked upon affectionately by Doctor Who fans.  | ||
| TV Review: Doctor Who: Silence in the Library, BBC One, Saturday ... - TV Scoop Posted: 31 May 2008 04:22 PM CDT
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| Jodie wins final vote in Nancy role - Leigh Journal Posted: 31 May 2008 03:15 PM CDT
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| Jodie wins final vote in Nancy role - Crewe and Nantwich Guardian Posted: 31 May 2008 03:14 PM CDT
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| Jodie wins final vote in Nancy role - Hereford Times Posted: 31 May 2008 03:13 PM CDT
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| Jodie wins final vote in Nancy role - Preston Citizen Posted: 31 May 2008 03:12 PM CDT
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| Whatever Happened to Blake's 7? - Digital Spy Posted: 31 May 2008 02:07 PM CDT
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| Ex-Walford star in Doctor Who cast - The Press Association Posted: 31 May 2008 01:50 PM CDT
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| Phobia Corner: Statues - 'Doctor Who' - Digital Spy Posted: 31 May 2008 01:08 PM CDT
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| EXCLUSIVE Is DOCTOR - WHO star geek or chic? Our ViP girls decide ... - Sunday People Posted: 31 May 2008 11:34 AM CDT
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| BBC1 plans 'Survivor' remake for autumn - Digital Spy Posted: 30 May 2008 05:26 PM CDT
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| Max Beesley to star in new BBC drama - Mirror.co.uk Posted: 30 May 2008 03:53 PM CDT
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| JOHN BARROWMAN - BARROWMAN: WE ALL HAVE OUR OWN IDEAL NANCY - Contactmusic.com Posted: 30 May 2008 12:17 PM CDT
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| Crunch Time For Nancy Hopefuls - Glasgow Daily Record Posted: 30 May 2008 11:37 AM CDT
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| COMMENT: Doctor Who, omnisexuals and penis envy - PinkNews.co.uk Posted: 29 May 2008 07:18 AM CDT
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