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 I say FORGET IT!

From the good ol’ days when a Doctor Who Christmas special really MEANT something.

I shall properly preface this post by noting that when the franchise has gotten so bad that Disney+ has washed their hands free of it, you know things are dire and not apt to get better anytime soon.

The BBC announced today that Doctor Who is still viable somehow and that there will be a Christmas special next year.  But according to the article, Russell T. Davies is still in charge of the show.

Like I said, forget THAT!!

As long as Davies is calling the shots, this show is dead and it’s not regenerating.  Although I will confess that the twisted little “id” creature within me is harboring morbid fascination about what the ’26 Christmas special will entail.  Because the last time we saw anything of Doctor Who, Ncuti Gatwa’s ...

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It was fifty years ago today, on March 8th 1975, that the BBC transmitted part one of the Doctor Who story “Genesis of the Daleks”.

It has since gone on to be regarded as one of the very best Doctor Who tales in the history of the franchise and one of the greatest science-fiction stories ever committed to the visual medium.  “Genesis of the Daleks”, written by Terry Nation, packed a lot!  The part that I most often think about is when The Doctor (the Fourth, played by Tom Baker) is agonizing over the choice that is his to make: to either destroy the Daleks before they can become the universal menace he knows them to be, or to save them and let history run its course.  It was pretty strong stuff for a show still considered at the time to be made primarily for young audiences.

So it ...

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The Doctor – the titular hero of the long-running BBC series Doctor Who – has had many, many enemies in his sixty years of saving the universe.  Everyone from Cybermen to The Master to the Weeping Angels to… well just about anything you can come up with has been a potential threat.

But there is one foe who is above and beyond the rest: Davros.  The insane creator of The Doctor’s oldest nemesis, the Daleks.

From his first appearance in the 1975 Tom Baker-era story “Genesis Of The Daleks”, Davros has gripped viewers as few Who characters did.  Bound to a life-support vehicle, only one usable arm, his natural eyes blinded necessitating a cybernetic replacement… Davros is someone who sought to perpetuate himself through his creations.  And he never cared who got in the way.  That one mechanical hand of his is stained with the blood of trillions of ...

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…Doctor Who returned.

“Run.”

The first episode since 1989 was titled “Rose”. London shop associate Rose Tyler stumbled across murderous store mannequins and then came to be rescued by The Doctor. Christopher Eccleston was the first actor of the revived series to portray the legendary Time Lord.

In those early days before Doctor Who became a true global phenomenon, its loyal base of die-hard fans were doing anything to watch the new episodes immediately, instead of waiting a year or so before they aired outside of England.  A lot of us learned how to download via torrent because of that first new season of the show, I’m telling ya.  We would not be denied our Doctor!

Ten years.  Wow.  Who would have thought that a full decade later, the Doctor Who mythos would be as world-renowned as it has become?  Being a fan since watching the Tom Baker episodes ...

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We will soon have a TARDIS officially rendered in LEGO…

That pic is just the proof of concept from two guys who submitted their design through the LEGO Ideas page and have had it approved.  The actual sets will probably look somewhat different.  But even so… we’re getting BBC-approved Doctor Who LEGO sets y’all!!

Nerd Approved has a lot more about this awesome news.

I wonder if the little Weeping Angels minifig moves when you’re not looking at it…

“Everything is Awesome!” ...

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To: Steven Moffat
From: Christopher Knight
Subject: This week’s new Doctor Who episode “Dark Water”

Dear Mr. Moffat,

You have crossed a terrible, terrible line with this episode.

The same was said of what we came to know as the War Doctor.  This, somehow, is far more insane and certainly the boldest thing yet seen on Doctor Who.  So bold, that you may have finally gone too far.

I hope you know what it is that you’re doing.

Sincerely,
Chris

p.s.: do NOT consider doing this to the Doctor himself.  The consequences would be disastrous.  I could see someone of the opposite gender in the role, but not the character himself.

p.p.s.: I am compelled to state for the record that what you did is actually better and truer to that particular person than happened on Russell T. Davies’ watch and that “Missy” is a fine addition/extension of the Who ...

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It’s been 45 minutes since the transmission (heh-heh-heh, did you see what I did there, saying “transmission” like they always do in Britain?  That’s all I got…) on this side of the pond of “Flatline”.  And with each passing minute I’m coming to be convinced more and more that this episode of Doctor Who may be one of the very best since the legendary “Blink” of David Tennant’s era.

Yes.  It’s that good.

“Flatline” was classic old-school mystery/horror and along with the past few episodes I’m reminded a lot of the more terrifying stories from the Tom Baker years.  This was no exception, and along that trend “Flatline” is the finest of the bunch.  In fact, I would even go so far to say that this was the greatest episode of Peter Capaldi’s run we’ve seen so far.  There were some real “hiding behind the sofa” moments in this ...

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Two things have been the focus (okay, focii) of my faculties in recent weeks.  The first, of course, has been working on my book.  Chapters 1 through 11, as well as the preface and the prologue, are now locked-down and pretty much finished apart from some, shall we say, “supplementary material” that is going to provide a very intimate look into the mind of a manic-depressive.  Those chapters constitute Part 1.  I’m going to start writing Part 2 tomorrow.  And the chapters for Part 1 aren’t the only ones already finished: the first several that I wrote haven’t been assimilated into the main manuscript yet.  Those will add substantially more material.

But yesterday afternoon I took some time to read the preface, the prologue, and Part 1.  I made note of how long it took to read all of that.  It took a little over two hours.  Factoring ...

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More than any other Doctor previous, it seems like there was no initial “sinking-in” period when Peter Capaldi made the transition from Matt Smith during “The Time of the Doctor” almost two weeks ago.  Maybe it had to do with how the Twelfth Doctor flashed into existence instantaneously before our eyes, rather than have a lengthy regeneration sequence.  One moment I was on the verge of tears watching Smith’s beautiful departure, and then WHAM!! without warning it’s Capaldi ranting about his kidneys and screaming “DO YOU HAPPEN TO KNOW HOW TO FLY THIS THING?!?”



 
It’s not a pic of him yet after he picks what will become his signature look (in fact he’s still wearing the clothes that Matt Smith’s Eleventh Doctor was wearing) but the BBC has released a photo of Capaldi (along with Jenna Coleman) on his first day on the set for a Doctor Who story ...

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It’s “The Empty Hearse”, and it’s the first new episode in almost two years.

And it is bloody, gob-smackingly brilliant!!

This is television of the highest calibre. Better than most big-budget films at the cinema, definitely.

Okay, I’m gonna watch it again. After the work I pulled off today, I’ve earned the respite 🙂

(And maybe soon I’ll afford myself time to finally watch this season of The Walking Dead.)

Well done, Moffat and Gatiss and Cumberbatch and Freeman. Well done indeed....

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