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It took me an hour and a half after the episode aired on BBC America before I could turn in a blog post about “The Bells of Saint John”…

So along with statues, shadows, clocks, gas masks, cracks in the walls and Lord knows what else, now we have to be afraid of our Wi-Fi networks.  Damn you Steven Moffat!  DAMN YOU!!

(But he sure knows how to run Doctor Who like nobody’s business, doesn’t he?)

Three months after we last saw The Doctor (Matt Smith) in the 2012 Christmas special “The Snowmen”, our hero is again sulking in solitude: this time at a monastery in England circa 1207.  Considered mad by his fellow monks (not the first no doubt), we find the last Time Lord contemplating, perhaps obsessing, with the newest enigma of his long life: Clara Oswin (Jenna Louise-Coleman, in her first regular Doctor Who episode as ...

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Found out some sad news yesterday: Frank Thornton, an amazing British actor who shone in every part he played but will forever be most remembered as the unflappable Captain Stephen Peacock on the BBC’s legendary comedy series Are You Being Served?, has passed away at the age of 92.

(Does this mean that Peacock is now spending an eternity listening to Mrs. Slocombe prattling on about her pussy…?)

I know that 92 is a good run but still: Thornton made millions laugh during the very long run of Are You Being Served? (along with its sequel series Grace & Favour) and he will be sorely missed.  Of the original cast, only Nicholas Smith – who played Mr. Rumbold – is still with us.

Frank Thornton leaves behind his wife of 67 years.  I found that to be pretty dang remarkable in this day and age.

So ...

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During the first afternoon of Mysticon in Roanoke this past weekend, following the opening panel with Peter Davison there was a special treat(?) presented by the good folks at Gallifrey Pirate Radio.  This was the last time that all of the then-surviving Doctors were brought together for a story.  Although as you can see the canonicity of this is debatable (okay, pretty much null and void) and you’ll no doubt notice how William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton are resurrected with all the glorious CGI capability that the early Nineties had to offer, it’s still a fun lil’ vignette for Doctor Who fans…

Fourth Doctor: “Mayday! Mayday! This is an urgent message for all the Doctors. It’s vitally important that you listen carefully to me for once. Our whole existence is being threatened by a renegade Time Lord known only as the Rani! She hates me. She even hates children!

...
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Sherlock, BBC, Benedict Cumberbatch, Martin Freeman, Sherlock HolmesI will admit: last month when my girlfriend started swooning and gushing over the BBC series Sherlock, telling me that “you have to watch this!” my internalized reaction was something akin to “oh geeeeez… NOT another Sherlock Holmes adaptation.”

No disrespect intended but seriously: how many times can one go to 221 B. Baker Street and not know what to expect?  I’ve probably watched all the Sherlock Holmes movies with Basil Rathbone, along with 1985’s Young Sherlock Holmes (does John Lasseter’s computer-animated stained-glass knight still astound, or what?) and everything in between.  Even The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother.  Be it straight adaptation or screwball comedy, when it comes to Holmes I’ve seen it all.

But Kristen wanted to share that weekend together watching the six episodes comprising Seasons 1 and 2 of Sherlock.  Quietly resigned to anticipating nothing to write home about, I settled ...

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HOLY &#@$!!!

I was prepared to write up a review of 2012’s edition of what has become a much-anticipated holiday tradition: the Doctor Who Christmas special. And then showrunner/writer Steven Moffat louses it up by making everyone‘s job at writing about it ridiculously almost impossibly hardcore crazy difficult.

So on this side of the pond “The Snowmen” just finished transmitting on BBC America.

Good. Lord…

“The Snowmen” has done what no other Christmas special before has done: it has sent Doctor Who COMPLETELY off the rails like a highballing freight train. The lever is broken and the brakes are GONE, bay-bee!!

Halfway through the story I was already set to declare “The Snowmen” to be not only the best Christmas special we have yet seen, but to be one of the best Doctor Who stories ever. This was a Doctor (Matt Smith) we have never witnessed before ...

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In six days “The Snowmen” cometh. And it’s just been announced that they’ll be voiced by Ian McKellen (yup, Gandalf himself).

And the Doctor will be waiting for them. Not just in new threads but a whole new control room for the TARDIS…

The Doctor Who Christmas specials have been very hit-or-miss for me. One one hand we’ve had “The Next Doctor”, “The Doctor, The Widow and the Wardrobe” and the beautiful tale that was “A Christmas Carol”… and then there have been turkeys like “Voyage of the Damned” (right up there with “Love & Monsters” as one of the all-time low points of Doctor Who history). But I’ve a ridiculously good feeling about “The Snowmen”.

Anyhoo, the more I look at this redesign of the TARDIS console/control room, the more I’m digging it. And apparently that really IS a whole new costume for the Eleventh Doctor! Matt Smith describes ...

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“Spoilers”? I doubt it. By the night it aired everyone and their tin dog knew all too well that “The Angels Take Manhattan” would be the episode that saw wife-and-husband companions Amy and Rory (Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill) taking their bows from Doctor Who.

So what did this blogger think of the second Doctor Who story that the BBC has filmed in the United States?

I think that writer and showrunner Steven Moffat gave Amy and Rory a fine and fitting close to their part in the Doctor’s epic mythology, with as much happiness as two people in love with each other could possibly have. At the same time, with more and more time passing since watching it I can’t help but think that this story felt too fast-paced and blurring, especially toward an event which by every measure should be forever burned into the gestalt consciousness of ...

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Before getting into the review, I wanna say from the getgo that I thought this week’s episode further demonstrates a theory I’ve had for the past few years: that the Doctor is an unconscious agent of God. Last year’s “The Doctor’s Wife” might have supported that notion, but I mean, c’mon: how is it that the TARDIS is always landing in a time and place that the Doctor is needed? How else… unless there is a Higher Power guiding the Doctor, whether he is aware of it or not?

Anyway…

In spite of the beautiful special effects work (along with the reunion of Harry Potter alums Mark Williams and David Bradley, each of whom turned in fine work) I found last week’s “Dinosaurs on a Spaceship” to be somewhat lacking. Maybe that’s because it came on the heels of this season’s Doctor Who premiere “Asylum of the Daleks”, which was ...

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Is it just me, or has Doctor Who suddenly become a bigger presence in American pop culture than ever before? Every Barnes & Noble I’ve been into lately has an entire table devoted to Doctor Who books and other merchandise. Matt Smith as the Eleventh Doctor was on the cover of Entertainment Weekly earlier this summer. A friend in Roanoke spotted a comic book store this past week: the marquee outside said “TALKING ABOUT REGENERATION” to advertise Doctor Who stuff inside.

I’ve been watching Doctor Who since the winter of 1981. But in more than thirty years I’ve never seen the Doctor and his mythology as wildly popular on this side of the pond as it is now.

It’s been almost a year since last season’s finale “The Wedding of River Song” and more than eight months since “The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe”. However you figure it, this ...

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Or is that Season 33? I mean, look at this new promo art that the BBC has released for the new season of Doctor Who…

That’s darn nearly every model of Dalek since the show first began in 1963! If you look toward the left there’s even the Special Weapons Dalek, first (and until now last) shown in the 1988 story Remembrance of the Daleks back when Sylvester McCoy was the Doctor.

You can click on that image for a much larger version, bringing every detail of the Eleventh Doctor’s grim, bloody visage into stark clarity. To say nothing of Amy Pond unconscious in his arms.

And as awesome as that pic is, well… here’s the trailer which hit the Intertubes yesterday:

The first episode of the new season, said to be “Asylum of the Daleks”, doesn’t have a transmission date yet but widespread word is that it’ll premier ...

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