Kopic's Doctor Who & Torchwood News |
| Record Australian ratings for "Voyage" Posted: 29 Jun 2008 04:56 PM CDT Voyage of the Damned has scored the highest Australian ratings ever for Doctor Who in the modern era. According to David Dale 'Voyage' rated 1,248,000 viewers in the five major capital cities. The record breaking Christmas special, starring Australian Kylie Minogue, was only beaten in its timeslot by Channel Nine's 60 minutes which was the top-rating programme of the day with 1.8 million viewers. The previous highest rating Doctor Who episode for...  | ||
| Posted: 29 Jun 2008 09:01 AM CDT Fan traffic crashes DWO! Excessive site traffic from fans crashes Doctor Who Online. We clocked thousands of you trying to log in to the Forums last night, but unfortunately it proved all to much for our server, so apologies for those of you who were not able to post when you wanted to last night. Although the downtime was a slight issue, the result of having thousands of Doctor Who fans online at one time, is a huge achievement for us, and for that we would like to thank all of our visitors. We expect to break our records next Saturday with the airing of the Series 4 finale, but fear not, as the DWO team will be on-hand to make sure everything is running as smoothly as possible.
Check out the DWO Forums: [Source: DWO]  | ||
| Posted: 29 Jun 2008 06:03 AM CDT The official BBC Doctor Who website has put online a copy of a new trailer for the final episode of the current series. The trailer was first shown on BBC One television this afternoon, and features a speech from Davros intercut with brief excerpts from the next episode, as well as clips from last Saturday's cliffhanger ending. The trailer is also available to view on the BBC's YouTube channel, here. As with all videos on the BBC's official website...  | ||
| Week Twelve: "The Stolen Earth", Minute by Minute Posted: 29 Jun 2008 06:02 AM CDT What I was thinking at the time, even if I didn't add the long words and complicated angst until later. Minute -3. Right. Drink: check. Sausage pasta: check. Empty cola bottle, in case of emergency: check. DVD recorder in full working order, and not likely to blow a sparky thirty seconds before the start of the programme, like it did with "The Unicorn and the Wasp": check. Vague feeling of guilt at the thought that one of the girl contestants on The Kids Are Alright is going to be really, really fit when she grows up: oh, it's not on this week, and they've cancelled The Weakest Link as well. Well, let's hope it's an omen. We're all set for the big Dalek bonanza. Hmm… Bonanza. Dang daga-dang daga-daga-daga-dang daga-daaah-daaaaah, dang daga-dang daga-daga-daga-dang daga-dang daga-dang-dang-daaaaah. Why was a Western series called Bonanza, anyway? "Bonanza" is, in all other respects, a word you associate with supermarket giveaways. Is there time to get the dictionary? Yeah, there's time. Minute -2. I can't believe I managed to make it this far without seeing any of the trailers. I averted my gaze during the teaser at the end of "Turn Left" (a title that still makes me want to sing '…life is peaceful there'), in an attempt to avoid any "Parting of the Ways"-sized spoilers, so all I picked up from the soundtrack was that "The Stolen Earth" involves a giggling Dalek. And a Red Dalek, 'cos I saw it on today's page of the Radio Times. Oh, and Davros, obviously. And probably Bernard Cribbins. On Thursday, daytime BBC1 showed a trailer, then a short news bulletin, then another trailer, as if testing my diving-to-the-floor-and-putting-my-hands-over-my-ears reflexes. Ahhh, a Red Dalek and Bernard Cribbins, all in one package… it's like Daleks - Invasion Earth 2150 AD all over again. I wonder if Wilfred Mott is going to sit on a pudding in an amusing way? Minute -1. Bonanza, sense two: a mine or rich vein of ore, according to the dictionary. From the Spanish "calm sea", hence, good luck. That's ironic, for a series that was set in the middle of a bleeding desert. Why am I thinking about Bonanza, when Doctor Who's about to come on…? Oh, I know: it reminds me of Sunday afternoons spent at my cousin's house in the 1970s, during which period he bequeathed unto me his red plastic Hartnell-era Dalek (minus all three of its stalks) and his hideously defaced copy of The Dalek Book. I'm guessing, or maybe just hoping, that this episode is going to be closer to The Dalek Book than any televised Doctor Who we've seen so far. The Radio Times said something about a "Dalek Freakshow" on the front cover… Daleks on stilt-legs, wading through alien swamps, like in that comic-strip with the two-headed dinosaur on page 73? No, that's too much to hope for. Anyway, they don't even need hover-boats these days, they can levitate. Bastards. I remember the days when a Dalek invasion could be halted by a single mole tunnelling under their landing-strip in Kent. It says so on page 66. Wouldn't it be great if some of the Daleks in this episode couldn't see the colour red, though? Or claimed that "J" is the forbidden letter of their language? Minute 0. Oh, Girl Made of Neon. I was cruel to you, I know: at first, I wanted the BBC to change the channel ident every week, so that our off-air recordings might become a time-capsule of the modern age. But now, I've come to enjoy the way you flirt and tease. After all, you bring me Doctor Who every week, even if it's usually rubbish. No wonder those other neon creatures follow you so eagerly along the embankment, and I'm sure that the knight in armour who rides on the back of the giant hot-dog is pointing his sausage your way. And every week, you lead us to the London Eye, perhaps acknowledging that this is where it all started. Neon may be an inert gas rather than a plastic derivative, but is some form of Nestene Consciousness still buried there, bringing you to life and coaxing you down from your bill-hoarding every Saturday? How I've wished that you might turn out to be the surprise end-of-series villain, although admittedly, that wouldn't make much sense to overseas markets. Invariably, you end up waving your legs out of one of the carriages of the Ferris wheel, like a teenage slapper after too many Cider and Blacks. As if we might look under the hem of your dress at any moment, and see a flashing red sign that says ENTER HERE. Next week, we part, my luminous coquette. Until then… show me the Daleks, whore. Minute 1. Even the announcer is officially referring to this as "the biggest adventure yet", as if Russell T. Davies has turned into P. T. Barnum with an OBE. Oh, here comes the TARDIS. I see the Bad Wolf Effect - which is a bit like the Lynx Effect, except that it makes sexy words follow you around instead of women - has already worn off, although it's nice to see that after so many years of being asked improbable questions by time-travellers, the bystanders of Doctor Who Earth have started responding to queries like "what day is it?" with a direct answer instead of wasting time with "what, you mean you don't know what day it is?". Also nice to see that in England, the first sign of the universe collapsing is bottles rattling on a milk-float, as if creation itself is under attack from the Humphries. Minute 2. Oh, Lord, now Donna's trying to make the Doctor emote about Rose. Luckily, we have the theft of the Earth to distract us, and - for pedants - the question of why the TARDIS doesn't get transported along with the rest of the planet. Maybe the people who've nicked the world have got some kind of spam-filter that stops alien time-machines being picked up as well. Which is a wise precaution, if you're stealing planets in the same universe as the Doctor. [With hindsight, however… this one improbable feature stops us going directly from Minute 2 to Minute 42. If the TARDIS had been taken along for the ride, then this whole episode wouldn't need to exist.] Minute 3. Ohhhhhhh dear. This story isn't going to be set completely on Earth, is it? As we all know, the series has developed an almost morbid fascination with the Here and Now over the last few years, to the point where the end-of-season epic has almost become an exercise in seeing how much havoc Russell can cause in the present-day before the reset switch gets pulled. Nobody seemed to feel that the stakes were any lower in "The Parting of the Ways", just because it was set 200,000 years after the Chav Age. Here, the pretext seems to be that we're watching a "Five Doctors"-style reunion for all the regulars, only… sixteen years too early. Because there comes a point in the life of every "cult" series when the programme-makers lose sight of what viewers actually need as part of their weekly fix, and begin to massively overrate the impact of bringing back old characters. Just as Star Trek: The Next Generation could never quite grasp that nobody wanted to see "funny" episodes involving Gene Rodenberry's wife, and just as John Nathan-Turner refused to listen when Robert Holmes said that he had no interest in writing a script involving the Autons, the Master and the Rani, modern-day Doctor Who hasn't considered the possibility that only people who write Torchwood slash-fic ("tenderly, yet with manful strength, he fisted the pterodactyl to the very core of its being…") will wee themselves with joy at the reappearance of Captain Jack. Minute 4. Wait, that sounds much too unkind. I rather liked Captain Jack in the Eccleston days, and I enjoyed his comeback in "Utopia" a great deal, despite the mediocre pay-off. But apart from appearing in so many light-entertainment shows that it looks as if he's found a way of defying Blinovitch, John Barrowman is now decidedly That Man From Torchwood rather than That Man Who Used To Be In Doctor Who. Once you've seen "Exit Wounds", in which Chris Chibnell's incompetence finally reaches a point of density beyond the event horizon and swallows all light and reason, Jack is simply… tainted. He doesn't belong around here any more, he belongs in a gloomy cellar in Cardiff, pretending to have "issues" with people we don't care about. Either that, or he should be appearing as Prince Charming at the Bournemouth Pavillion. In the wake of Jonathan Miller dismissing David Tennant as "that man from Doctor Who" (we should respond in kind by referring to him as "the one who wasn't funny from Beyond the Fringe" whenever possible), we have to remember that an awful lot of people treat the stars of this show as if they should be doing Panto instead of serious drama, and Big John the Tripod is the showbusiest of the showbiz. Minute 5. Yes, someone's moved the Earth. We get the idea. No wonder the announcer wanted to Big Up the scale of this episode: it'd be perfectly reasonable to do a story about the Earth getting shunted across the universe as a low-budget one-parter (nobody ever made a big hoo-hah about "The Mysterious Planet", thankfully), but the programme needs us to believe that this is something huge. Ergo, we get (1) a massively over-inflated pre-credits sequence, and (2) lots of anxious close-ups of people who regularly witness the impossible as they look at the sky and say "but that's impossible". Oh, and see how they choose this moment to develop the irritating American habit of putting the names of special guest-stars right after the opening credits, just to make sure that we can't be surprised by the return of Harriet Jones or Martha's mum. Minute 6. No, look, it's no good. Despite the whole of last week's episode being a last-ditch effort to make us like her, I still don't know anything about Donna Noble. After the first year of Rose and a year of Martha, they were so familiar to us that we instinctively knew which way they were likely to jump in any given situation: when they didn't do what we expected, it was a deliberate surprise rather than an ugly hole in the characterisation. But Donna remains an excuse for Catherine Tate's schtick rather than a character, an empty celeb-shaped space where the heart of the series should be, which is yet another reason that the Doctor has ended up doing most of the hardcore emoting this year. I have no idea how clever she is, how stupid she is, how strong she is, how vulnerable she is, how acute she is, how gullible she is. I have no idea what she wants from life, what kind of childhood she had, what she might be like on a first date (her approach to men varies drastically from episode to episode, according to the comedy needs of the individual situation), how she might vote in an election, or even why she's so determined to stick with the TARDIS. Yet I do know everything I need to know about her granddad, partly because he's a lot more consistent, and partly because Bernard Cribbins is a much better actor. Donna is an individual whose only defining feature is to be "modern", performed by an actress who's been cast purely because of her showbiz appeal. In other words, she's the nightmare companion… Dodo Chaplet played by Bonnie Langford. Minute 7. I like the way David Tennant says 'I'm taking you to the Shadow Proclamation' as if it's a dodgy nightclub in Aberdeen, and as if he's half-apologising for not being able to take her anywhere classier. Of course, it wouldn't be a proper alien invasion story without fake news footage and Lachele Carl, but I was sort of hoping that this wouldn't be an alien invasion story at all. And while the Richard Dawkins thing is clever, Paul O'Grady always makes me think of the smell of old women. When you remember that he was (inconceivably) given a royal honour on the same day as the executive producer, this programme starts to look like a remarkably camp gentleman's club. "Oh, you must come to my estate in Cardiff next summer, I'm getting two-dozen nubile young catamites to prance around in Ood masks while we shoot apples off their heads." Minute 8. Good God, UNIT is run by that man from Dempsey and Makepeace. Ah! Incoming spacecraft, now we'll get some action. Obviously, it can't be the Daleks who actually stole the Earth, because that would turn this entire affair into just another routine Dalek-based two-parter: we were promised "bigger", so clearly, something vastly more powerful and interesting is throwing the universe out of whack behind the scenes. Since the walls between dimensions are a-tumbling down, I'm guessing that Daleks from parallel universes are swarming in to take advantage of the crisis. So the Daleks will turn out to be secondary villains for once, thus preventing this whole outing from looking no more apocalyptic than "Daleks in Manhattan". Yeah, that must be it. Minute 9. So, faced with 26 new planets in the sky, the people of London… run up and down, screaming. No, really. They actually run up and down, screaming. Since the TV stations have had time to analyse the astronomical data, since they've managed to drag Dawkins away from his Romana-shagging activities for long enough to sit him in front of a camera, and since Paul O'Grady's script has been rewritten to include topical material about the end of the world, it must've been… what… at least a few hours since the planet was abducted? Yet the inhabitants of the capital have apparently spent that whole time shrieking, waving their arms around, and dashing through the streets with no particular sense of direction. Aren't their throats sore by now? Why don't they just go home? What are they screaming at, exactly? Why do all the people in the exterior scenes believe it's time to riot, when the audience of a Channel 4 talk-show are happy to sit in a cosy studio and laugh at jokes about drinking furniture-polish? And why do so many people seem to believe it's Judgement Day, when this is significantly less alarming that what happened in "The Poison Sky"? Has the BBC announcer told them it's the biggest catastrophe so far, as well? Oh, and that's all we need: Rose Tyler threatening people with a gun to make them behave. Remember, kids… guns don't kill people, they just make it vastly easier to kill people. Minute 10. Donna Angst #2. Not only am I still mystified as to the nature of her personality, I don't even know who's supposed to like her. With one exception, none of the Doctor Who fans with whom I regularly chew the Adipose-fat can stand her; my family doesn't seem to want anything to do with her; the kindest things I've heard said about her have been along the lines of 'well, she was all right in "The Runaway Bride", but a whole year…?'; and my extended peer-group finds her ridiculous, which is telling, when you consider how many professional comedians I know. As I've said before, we could have had anybody as This Year's Girl. We could have had Elaine Cassidy, the most companiony actress in the history of time. We could have had Carey Mulligan out of "Blink", at a pinch. Instead, they gave us the female Harry Enfield, with whom almost nobody can empathise. I can't even find it in myself to hate her, I just find it bewildering that someone whose only skills are mugging to the camera and doing silly voices should be somehow mistaken for an actress. And now we have the worst of all possible combinations, Donna Noble in the middle of an overblown sci-fi story-arc. We're supposed to be thinking "ooh, what's the secret of Donna's destiny?", but in fact, we're thinking "please just die". A-hah! The spaceships are sending a message. Is it the people who moved the Earth? Are they going to explain all of this? Oh, wait, there's a thought: maybe they're actually nice, and they've moved the planet in order to save it from the oncoming darkness. Right, the message is… Minute 11. …oh, Christ, no. It can't just be the Daleks who are responsible for all of this, can it? That'd be the ultimate insult in a season full of insults, as if we're supposed to feel a sense of profound doom-stroke-excitement over the return of a monster that comes back every sodding year and never seems to learn anything. I was, after all, only getting worked up about this episode because I thought we'd have freaky psychedelic Daleks from another dimension. And, more crucially, I was expecting them to be just one element in a trans-universal free-for-all. No, wait… no need to panic just yet. Maybe the Daleks are just taking advantage of this situation, like I thought. Maybe they're only menacing the Earth because it happens to be there. Sod it, maybe one of the other 26 planets is their homeworld from a parallel universe, and they're as confused as the humans are. There's a Red Dalek in the Radio Times, so they must be parallel Daleks of some description, they can't be the boring old ordinary kind. Why is Sarah-Jane so convinced that she and her Bane-spawn are going to die, anyway? She's only ever met really rubbish Daleks before now: the ones she saw on Exxilon were so pathetic that they carried cardboard cut-out TARDISes around for target practice, and the ones she saw on Skaro were 'primitive', apparently. Why does she think that a spaceship full of them is such a catastrophe, when she hasn't seen "Bad Wolf" like we have? Minute 12. The man from Dempsey and Makepeace has just said 'ladies and gentlemen…' in a dramatic way. Please don't say 'we are at war'. Please don't say 'we are at war'. Please don't say… bastard. Yeah, go on, bomb his building. That'll show him. Minute 13. No no no no no. Nooooo no no. You're telling me that the Red Dalek - who now gives a "Masters of Earth" speech in front of the obligatory floating-Dalek CGI shot, as if Earth would be of any significance to a species which now has the power to threaten everything that's ever existed - isn't a parallel-universe Dalek, but just their leader? Why would they take orders from a Dalek that camp? It looks as if his subordinates have painted him a funny colour while he was asleep. Gayest. Dalek. Ever. Oh, that's better, we're heading for the Shadow Proclamation Things should kick off now. Judoon, that's what I pay my Licence Fee for. Minute 14. Donna Angst #3. Now she's defiantly putting herself forward as a representative of humanity in front of the Shadow Proclamation, and she's seriously presented as if we're supposed to be shouting "go girl!" like the audience on Ricki Lake, whereas in truth… well, in truth, we're shouting "put a sock in it, you mouthy slag" like the audience on Jeremy Kyle. Only Catherine Tate can be quite so annoying while attempting to be inspirational. They should get her to perform the "make the foundation of this society a man who never would!" speech, just to see whether the universe ruptures itself out of shame and embarrassment. Minute 15. Hold on. To recap… whoever took the missing planets (and I'm still guessing, hoping, praying it's not the Daleks themselves) took twenty-four of them at exactly the same moment, i.e. more-or-less our present. But they took Pyrovilia, Adipose Three and the Lost Moon of Poosh up to 2,000 years ago. Erm… why? If they've got the power to steal planets from anywhere in time as well as space, then why draw attention to themselves by taking two-dozen at once? Or, if they don't care who knows about it, then why waste time-travel energy stealing three of them from the past? I mean, apart from giving the writers a chance to insert pointless teasers into the scripts of "Partners in Crime", "Fires of Pompeii" and "Midnight"? See, I said story-arcs were a bad idea. And how can the entire universe be up in arms about the piddling loss of 24 planets, many of them not even inhabited? It's like the United Nations being concerned about the death of a couple of old tramps in Luton. Top marks for the Judoon's use of the phrase "cold case", though. This obviously presents us with the potential for a Judoon spin-off in the style of Waking the Dead, starring Trevor Eve as a tough, uncompromising space-rhino with relationship issues. Minute 16. Now even the Doctor thinks the Daleks may have been responsible for all this planet-wrangling, assuming that his 'someone tried to move the Earth before…' is a reference to "The Dalek Invasion of Earth" and not "The Trial of a Time Lord". Or that time when the Fendahl got boozed up and tried to knock the planet out of orbit for a laugh, but missed and got Mondas instead. I have an increasingly bad taste in my mouth, which is unfortunate, because I've finished the sausage pasta and it was rather good. On the plus side, the Daleks are twatting the Valiant. But they're also twatting huge swathes of the Earth, which is ominous. There can't be another reset switch at the end of all this, can there? Not so soon after last year's "reversing time" atrocity? Wouldn't it be nice if, just this once, the world saw aliens and didn't immediately forget about them? After all, that's the kind of world we were promised in "The Christmas Invasion", two-and-a-half years ago. Everyone on Earth should be like Wilfred Mott by now. If Torchwood hadn't bottled out with its inane first-episode "my boyfriend says that people only saw spaceships because there was something in the water" blather, then the series might actually have been good: a TV programme set in a version of Britain where aliens are a known quantity would have been a lot stranger, and a lot stronger, than the Men in Black pastiche we ended up with. Since Russell isn't shy about nicking things from comic-books, I might point to what Grant Morrison did on The New X-Men as an example of how you might integrate modern life and non-human pop-culture. But then… Minute 17. …but then, mention of comic-books just underlines the problem I'm having here. I assumed that this story was going to be like Crisis on Infinite Earths, with the dimensions collapsing, parallel universes overlapping, tripodal Daleks from Earth-17 meeting the Evil Nazi Doctor from Earth-76, Victorian Cybermen fighting with Neanderthals from the future, and history itself going to Hell. Instead, it's another f***ing invasion, like "The Last of the Time Lords" with brand-name monsters. Yeah, and with another pitched battle involving UNIT troops, thanks a bunch. And now Martha's been given a top-secret piece of hardware with a scary-sounding name. You know it's going to do something hopelessly trite in the next episode, because Russell isn't even trying to disguise the way he contrives his stories any more. Just as long as the announcer's there to say "this is the biggest thing ever, ever, ever!", he can get away with it. The sad part is that on this evidence, he's not actually very good at "big": he hasn't had a new idea for an epic spectacular since 2006, but he is still capable of turning in solid, well-characterised "little" scripts. The nature of the series, however, demands an endless stream of gunfights and disaster-movie parodies. Or so he believes. Minute 18. This is starting to look less like a narrative, and more like Character Options' 2008 action-figure catalogue. At least there'll be more exciting toys than "Old Woman With No Face" in the shops this Christmas. If they do the job properly, then the Red Dalek  | ||
| Posted: 29 Jun 2008 05:55 AM CDT The good people at Denvention in Denver (August 6th-10th) have plonked me on quite a few panels, across which my knowledge level varies wildly, but that's the joy of it. Post-apocalypic fiction: why is it such a big draw? Wed 13:00 The Greatest Villains in SF.  | ||
| Posted: 29 Jun 2008 05:47 AM CDT  I'm really not sure what to make of this one. I know we were expecting something big, but the sheer scope of this story beggars belief. I can't think of much else on television which would try and get anywhere close to the cinematic and epic quality that this episode presented. I think my main concern is how understandable it might be to those who have not been diligently watching each and every episode (and Torchwood and Sarah Jane Adventures). When Doctor Who came back with a blaze of glory in 2005, a lot of effort was put in to try and make sure that everything was explained, even in a sketchy form, so that the Doctor, the two hearts, the TARDIS, the Time Lord ... all the key concepts were reintroduced in a way that viewers could understand and follow. I get the impression that all this is out the window now, and pretty much anything goes. I think my worries were amplified through the opening scenes, which should have been quick and effective introductions to all the characters. Instead they expected you to just know what was going on. Following on from last week, the Doctor arrives on Earth but all seems fine. No Bad Wolf anywhere. Even the TARDIS was back to normal. So what was all that about then? Just a dramatic episode ending for no reason, apparently. But then the Earth vanishes, leaving the TARDIS behind. Just the TARDIS. Everything else on Earth, right down to a milkman, his float and bottles of milk, were transported across the galaxy with the planet. So why wasn't the TARDIS? Meanwhile ... on Earth ... a group of soldiers and a woman recover from the move. We don't really know who they are or what they have to do with anything. There's little in the way of dialogue to try and establish what's happening here. We are expected to know that this is UNIT and ex-companion Martha Jones (who was so out of water all the way through the episode. Not a good performance at all from Freema Ageyman). In Cardiff, there's some sort of scientific base. Probably Torchwood as that's written on the walls, and some people. We might recognise Captain Jack, but who are the other two? What is Torchwood anyway? Last time we saw them they were running Canary Wharf ... Again, there's no attempt to provide explanations. In Ealing, a woman and her son inexplicably have a giant supercomputer in their house. Erm. This is Sarah Jane Smith who we might recognise from the School Dinners episode a couple of years ago ... In Chiswick, Donna's family, Wilf and Sylvia are amazed at the sky. And then that blonde woman from the last episode arrives with a big gun. And we see that there are lots of planets overhead. We're not in Kansas any more ... So the seeds are sown for a big finale. The Doctor and Donna are puzzled as to where the Earth has gone, so the Doctor heads for the HQ of the Shadow Proclamation - this organisation which every race seems so scared of - and it turns out to be on an impressive asteroid-like space station, populated by female albinos and Judoon! There he figures out that the Earth was moved using something on the same frequency as that used by bees (or something - honestly, if you try to explain this stuff to people they look at you as though you're mad) and he's off with Donna in the TARDIS again to find it. Donna meanwhile seems to hear a heartbeat noise, and one of the albinos comments on there having been something on her back, and how sorry she is for her loss to come ... how do these people know what's going to happen? And if they do, why don't they tell the Doctor or at least warn him! Instead they seem to want him to lead them into war. Of course the Doctor does what any self-respecting Time Lord would. He runs away. Meanwhile, on Earth, the phones still seem to work which would be impossible unless all the satellites were moved along with the planet, and there are loads of spaceships arriving. It's the Daleks again, up to no good, and they start slaughtering and then rounding up the humans for some reason. We seem to be in a bit of a remake of The Dalek Invasion of Earth here, and there's even a cool red Dalek with a Dalek Emperor-like voice bossing them around. But along with the Daleks (which are totally brilliant ... as are the effects of the battles and the Dalek ship and pretty much everything to do with them), there's mention of the Crucible, harvesting humans and lots more. Lurking in the background is another figure who seems to be in league with the Daleks but who superbly remains in shadow. And Dalek Caan, the last surviving Dalek, is also present, though broken open and babbling insanely. On Earth, the problem is that no-one knows where the Doctor is and so as the Daleks attack, so everyone tries to do what they can. Martha makes use of a prototype transporter based on Sontaran technology to escape. The Daleks slaughter anyone who resists, and even Wilf's paintball gun cannot impair their vision (a great fanboy line that). Rose arrives and blasts the Dalek away. Anyway, more surprises come as ex-Prime Minister Harriet Jones contacts everyone using a sub wave network she built using facilities from the Copper Foundation. This sentient software cleverly seeks out everyone who might be able to contact the Doctor. Though how it does that is anyone's guess. Everyone except Rose, it seems, who gets a bit sulky and feels left out. Mighty convenient that everyone has Web Cams as well (except Rose). The plan is to use everyone's combined resources to send the Doctor's phone number (07700 900 461) into space so he gets the message! What! This is utter tosh. It's also the same plot as last year where, if everyone prayed for the Doctor at the same time, then he'd come back to them. So everyone does this, and the Doctor gets the message and realises that the Medusa Cascade (which is where the bee trail led him) has been timeslipped by one second, hiding all the planets there. So he gets the TARDIS synchronised in time via the weakest CGI in the episode, and joins the Friends of the Doctor conference call. But the call is hacked by the mysterious individual with the Daleks - it's Davros, lord and creator of the Dalek race ... and that's all the explanation you get! His reveal was badly handled and disappointing. After all the build up, I was expected and wanted either a slow move of his visage from shadow into light. Or some crash close up/zoom affair. Instead we get a sudden full view from a funny angle. Peculiar. The Doctor knows him as he was unable to save him when he was destroyed in the first year of the time war at the gates of Elyssium when he flew into the jaws of the Nightmare Child. All this flows at speed from the Doctor's mouth ... and leaves you reeling. So much information, too much input!!! Okay, so this Davros character has some connection with the Daleks - he is sitting in a Dalek bottom half after all - and he's cackling and quietly, understated evil and is wonderfully, wonderfully played by Julian Bleach, putting all the other Davroses after the first (played by the late, great Michael Wisher) into the shade. Their little online conference abandoned, everyone decides to find the Doctor. Sarah Jane rushes off in her car. To where I have no idea. How would she know where to go? Anyway, she encounters a couple of Daleks and instead of running them down, she stops and bursts into tears. This is not the Sarah Jane we know and love (even if you knew who she was in the first place). Jack repairs his wrist transporter with coordinates obtained from Martha and heads off, leaving Gwen and Ianto to certain death at the suckers of the Daleks. Again, this assumes we know how all these different characters can do these things ... The Doctor finally arrives on Earth, and sees Rose for the first time since their separation. Cue totally daft and somewhat overlong scene of them running the full length of a road towards each other's arms. But then we knew something would happen ... and a Dalek appears and exterminates the Doctor!!! Jack appears just too late and destroys the Dalek, but the Doctor is dying. So they get him into the TARDIS where Jack knows (not sure how) he can regenerate. Only Rose has actually seen this happen before, but she is being pretty useless and telling him he can't (why?). And so the Doctor starts to regenerate ... and the credits crash in. Well wow. Really. Wow. That was one twist I wasn't expecting. But I can't shake the feeling that it's not what it seems. That the Doctor is not going to regenerate. Maybe he will for part of next week, maybe not. Maybe we'll see James MacAvoy or James Nesbit as the Doctor for part of the time? I think there's more to this. There's a lot going on with Donna and the time beetle ... I wondered at one point if she STILL had a beetle on her back and that what we were seeing was just more alternate-universe gubbins. Dalek Caan said 'everlasting death for the most faithful companion', so who is that? Rose? Donna? The TARDIS? Jack? Sarah Jane? Take your pick really. Or maybe the Doctor really is regenerating and the production team have pulled the perfect blinder on everyone. Fans, press ... everyone. I can't help shake the feeling that there's a great big red reset switch lurking somewhere. Rose will become Bad Wolf again and turn back time to defeat the Daleks (again) or the Time War will restart and time will be reset as part of that ... or this strange key thing that Martha has will do something to reset everything (using ... I don't know ... Krillitane computations). But it's like last year - way too much has happened that it can really all be left in place at the end ... The Earth is in the wrong place in the Universe for goodness sake! Reading back through my comments from this week (and indeed last week), it sounds as though I'm not enjoying the show. Nothing could be farther from the truth. I love it to pieces. Watching this episode back was even better. It is epic on a scale undreamed of. The effects are awesome, and the Daleks and Davros are just the best they have been for many many years. I am concerned that the general public won't 'get' this intense level of continuity fest fun which pushes all the right fannish buttons. I lost count of the number of back references in this episode, everything from Crucibles to Medusa Cascades, to bees vanishing ... to the biggies like Judoon, Daleks, Davros, Shadow Proclamation, Rose, Harriet Jones, Dalek Caan ... And above all, I hope that the next episode doesn't drop the ball. That we don't have a rushed and unsatisfying ending to all this. As the rubbish and crassly done caption at the end of the episode said: TO BE CONTINUED ...  | ||
| Posted: 29 Jun 2008 05:27 AM CDT Last night, Sarah Jane Smith returned to BBC One for her 21st appearence in Doctor Who (if we ignore the nonsensical "Dimensions in Time"; as well as her spin-off adventures) in part one of the two part fourth series finale, "The Stolen Earth". This post contains SPOILERS about the episode!! Elisabeth Sladen had her name in the show's opening credits - for the very first time! She appeared alongside Thomas Knight, who appears as her son Luke Smith in "The Sarah Jane Adventures". The episode explained the absense of Maria Jackson and her Dad, Alan (they were away in Cornwall) as well as Clyde Langer (safely at home... with his Mum!). Alexander Armstrong reprised his role as the voice of Mr. Smith, Sarah Jane's super computer. Sarah encounted the Daleks for the third time - following 1974's "Death to the Daleks" and the following season's "Genesis of the Daleks" (which also featured last night's returning evil genius, Davros). "Genesis" is available to buy on DVD now (via this page) or as a boxset with other Davros adventures (here). During the course of the episode Sarah-Jane encountered two other former Doctor Who companions for the first time - Martha Jones (Freema Agyeman, who appeared throughout 2007) and Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman, who's played the role since 2005 and now stars in spin-off series "Torchwood"). Captain Jack introduced himself to Sarah, saying that he's followed her work for a long while - and then, being his flirty old self: To Sarah, Jack: "Lookin' Good Ma'am" Whoa! The episode ends with Sarah seemingly being exterminated by the Daleks - but we know from the Blue Peter preview clip that she'll be back next week, aboard the Dalek Sphere! "Journey's End" commences next Saturday, BBC One @ 6:40pm. At 65 minutes long... it's quite the epic!  | ||
| Doctor Who's Russell T. Davies Is The Gay Michael Bay - io9 Posted: 29 Jun 2008 05:07 AM CDT
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| Posted: 29 Jun 2008 05:07 AM CDT Last night's episode of Doctor Who ("The Stolen Earth") drew an estimated overnight audience of 7.4 Million viewers. That's roughly 38.3% of the available audience for the night. It was the highest rated programme of the evening. More precise BARB figures will be released in 10 days time. The rest of this post contains SPOILERS regarding "The Stolen Earth"... BEWARE!! The episode offered viewers a look inside Torchwood Cardiff, with the return of Captain Jack Harkness, Ianto Jones and Gwen Cooper. Chronologically, the episode is set some time after the second season finale of Torchwood, "Exit Wounds". The deaths of team mates Owen Harper and Toshiko Sato were referenced on screen. Captain Jack also 'met' fellow former-companion Sarah Jane Smith for the very first time - and couldn't resist an introductory flirt! The Doctor's current companion, Donna Noble, spotted Jack on the TARDIS monitor, and seemed very keen on the man... At long last, too, Captain Jack found himself reunited with his faithful, anti-Dalek Defabricator laser gun! And boy, did it prove more useful than Grandpa Wilf's paintball gun - as it destroyed one Dalek with a clean shot! Alas, Captain Jack was too late to save the Doctor; who was exterminated by said Dalek, and forced into the TARDIS where... ...With his companions around him, the regeneration process started. A trailer for next week's 65 minute finale resides here! "Journey's End" begins next Saturday at 6:40pm, on BBC One. Hankies at the ready, folks!  | ||
| ‘Doctor Who’ blogging: “Forest of the Dead” - Flick Filosopher Posted: 29 Jun 2008 04:52 AM CDT
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| Busy blockbuster schedule for Jackson - The Dominion Post Posted: 29 Jun 2008 04:23 AM CDT
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| Why can't Kylie get Olivier Martinez out of her head? - Daily Mail Posted: 29 Jun 2008 04:14 AM CDT
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| News: Journey's End Trailer UPDATED Posted: 29 Jun 2008 03:26 AM CDT We're on the back foot - we need to know what is happening to the Doctor! Don't expect any real answers in the trailer - but if you're in front of the TV at 1pm today, switch over to BBC One: from the official BBC Youtube channel... A trail for Doctor Who: Journey's End will premiere just before 1pm today on BBC One. Head straight back to let us know what you think. Yes, it will be here. They also have the cliffhanger that left so many viewers - general and fans alike - dumbstruck...  | ||
| What to watch this weekend - The Sun Posted: 29 Jun 2008 02:25 AM CDT
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| Doctor Who finale to be watched by 10 million - Telegraph.co.uk Posted: 29 Jun 2008 12:02 AM CDT
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| Is this goodbye to David Tennant? Doctor Who's regeneration shocker - CV5 Coventry Communities Posted: 28 Jun 2008 11:46 PM CDT
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| Stolen Earth - Overnight Ratings Posted: 28 Jun 2008 09:58 PM CDT Unofficial figures show that episode Twelve of Series Four, The Stolen Earth, was watched by 7.4 million viewers, giving it a 38.3% share of the total television audience. The programme was the highest rated on Saturday, beating Casualty by nearly 2 million viewers. BBC1 had a drop of over 3 million viewers when Doctor Who finished. ITV!'s highest rated programme of the day was Who Dares Sings with 3.7 million. Doctor Who is currently the 7th most...  | ||
| TV Review: Doctor Who - "The Stolen Earth" - Blogcritics.org Posted: 28 Jun 2008 09:18 PM CDT
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| Posted: 28 Jun 2008 08:29 PM CDT Russell T Davies has got us all by the balls. He knows it, and we know it. With Sarah Jane about to be EXTERMINATED, Gwen and Ianto about to be EXTERMINATED and the Doctor seemingly about to be REGENERATED, the cliffhanger to The Stolen Earth - TO BE CONTINUED - lead to much analyzing and wonder, the like of which the Kasterborous Forum has never seen before. Yes, the search for answers brought a helluva lot of people to Kasterborous.com on Saturday evening, where Doctor Who fans young and old discussed how on earth the Doctor and co would get out of this one, but mostly needing answers to the question "Is David Tennant leaving?!" Of course, we don't know. Not really, 100% certainly with no chance of the wool being pulled over our eyes. I mean, over the years we've built a few links, and know people who know people. You wouldn't believe some of the secrets we've kept in the last 3 years. But this time - it's just not clear. We'll look back on this and laugh in a few weeks, and applaud how RTD and co hoodwinked us. Or we'll discuss the success with which James Nesbit has made the role his own in such a short space of time...  | ||
| Posted: 28 Jun 2008 08:01 PM CDT Missed watching the first series of the Sarah Jane Adventures? Or just wanna catch it for a second time? Well you're in luck! The CBBC Channel will be airing reruns of the show every Monday at 5.15pm, starting with Revenge of the Slitheen, Part 1 tomorrow! Be sure to tune in and bask in the awesomeness!  | ||
| Una McCormack interview: spin-off fiction Posted: 28 Jun 2008 08:00 PM CDT In the latest of our interviews about franchise fiction and shared universes, we talk to author Una McCormack. As well as writing two Star Trek: Deep Space Nine novels, Cardassia – The Lotus Flower and Hollow Men , Una has recently contributed a Doctor...  | ||
| Doctor Who sensation! Those series four finale rumours in full - TV Scoop Posted: 28 Jun 2008 07:30 PM CDT
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| Phobia Corner: Bees ('Dr Who', 'X-Files') Posted: 28 Jun 2008 07:00 PM CDT The bees have certainly had a fierce sting in their tail during their representation on certain cult shows.  | ||
| That 'Doctor Who' cliffhanger moment - Digital Spy Posted: 28 Jun 2008 04:37 PM CDT
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| Doctor Who Cliffhanger Teases Endless Possibilities - Wired News Posted: 28 Jun 2008 04:03 PM CDT
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| Phobia Corner: Bees ('Dr Who', 'X-Files') - Digital Spy Posted: 28 Jun 2008 01:10 PM CDT
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| Posted: 28 Jun 2008 01:00 PM CDT Teaser for Series Finale now online.  | ||
| Local priest gets new TV program to spread Gospel - Beckley Register-Herald (subscription) Posted: 28 Jun 2008 11:23 AM CDT
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| Posted: 28 Jun 2008 10:43 AM CDT Is it all over for the Doctor? Is Earth doomed? What is Davros up to? Has Caan gone stark staring mad? Where did Harriet Jones get those computers? It's all to play for as season 30 of Doctor Who reaches its shocking conclusion next week - and it's not always about you, you know... The entire universe is in danger as the Daleks activate their masterplan, in the concluding episode of Russell T Davies's Bafta Award-winning time-travelling drama. The Doctor is helpless, and even the...  | ||
| Posted: 28 Jun 2008 06:39 AM CDT
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| Doctor Who (Saturday, BBC1, 7.10pm) - RedOrbit Posted: 28 Jun 2008 06:31 AM CDT
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| Doctor Who star opens Mortlake fair - Richmond and Twickenham Times Posted: 27 Jun 2008 11:03 PM CDT
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| Posted: 27 Jun 2008 09:35 AM CDT
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| Global Buzz: Why ‘Doctor Who’ Finale Has UK TV Fans on Alert - Wall Street Journal Blogs Posted: 27 Jun 2008 03:09 AM CDT
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| Who are your dream (gay) boyfriends? - Entertainment Weekly Posted: 26 Jun 2008 11:37 PM CDT
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| Kylie Minogue Doctor Who episode 'greatest of all time' - Courier Mail Posted: 26 Jun 2008 09:03 PM CDT
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| Doctor Who interview: Nick Briggs - the voice of the Daleks - Den Of Geek Posted: 26 Jun 2008 04:37 PM CDT
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