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DARN it!!

There are way too many talented people who are leaving us lately. And just after I had finished noting the passing of Karl Malden, now comes word that Mollie Sugden has die at the age of 86.

I say again: DARN it!!!

It’s just been in the past few months that I have finally gotten into watching Are You Being Served?, the classic BBC comedy series that ran from 1972 to 1985. Every Sunday at midnight I now tune into North Carolina Public Television, and for the next hour I enjoy the mad hijinks of the Grace Bros. Department Store clothing staff.

And Mollie Sugden, as the uproariously bossy Mrs. Slocombe, never fails to make me honk with laughter. Especially all those hilarious double entendres when she talks about “my pussy”!

Sugden was a profoundly talented lady and by all accounts, a terrific person off-camera. She ...

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It was thirty years ago this week that the Sony Walkman – the gadget that gave birth to portable music – made its debut. To commemorate the occasion, BBC Magazine asked 13-year old Scott Campbell (above) to yield his iPod for seven days in favor of a classic Walkman. And young master Scott wrote about the experience…

When I wore it walking down the street or going into shops, I got strange looks, a mixture of surprise and curiosity, that made me a little embarrassed.

As I boarded the school bus, where I live in Aberdeenshire, I was greeted with laughter. One boy said: “No-one uses them any more.” Another said: “Groovy.” Yet another one quipped: “That would be hard to lose.”

My friends couldn’t imagine their parents using this monstrous box, but there was interest in what the thing was and how it worked.

In some classes in school

...
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It’s been awhile since this blog had anything Doctor Who-ish to report. So it’s due for some…

Billie Piper, Catherine Tate and Freema Agyeman will appear in the final Doctor Who episode starring David Tennant as the Doctor. They will reprise their roles as Rose, Donna and Martha, respectively (though how they are gonna bring back Rose and Donna is beyond me). The episode, scheduled for later this year, will also mark the end of Russell T Davis’ tenure as head showrunner (what, you mean “The Stolen Earth”/”Journey’s End” wasn’t a big enough send-off?!). Tennant’s Doctor will face off once again against arch-nemesis the Master before regenerating into the Eleventh Doctor, played by Matt Smith.

And this coming April 12th – Easter Sunday – will be the next Doctor Who special. “Planet of the Dead”, incidentally, will be the 200th Doctor Who story since the show began in ...

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Matt Smith, who at age 26 will be the youngest person ever to take on the role, will be the next actor to portray the Doctor on Doctor Who, the BBC announced today.

This will be the eleventh incarnation of the Doctor since the series began all the way back in November 1963. Smith will take over from David Tennant, who has been playing the Doctor since the finale of the revived series’s first season in 2005. Presumably the changeover will happen during the Christmas special a little less than a year from now.

In case you’re wondering how this happens, the Doctor is a Time Lord from Gallifrey and whenever his current body gets too old or injured (or there’s a contract dispute with the BBC) he has the ability to “regenerate”: giving him a new body and usually a slightly different personality. So it’s been ...

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Before this past week, the last time that Davros had been seen was the 1988 Doctor Who story “Remembrance of the Daleks”. Two decades later and the BBC decided that fiction’s most murderous villain ever deserved an upgrade for the revived series.

The Telegraph in London has an in-depth feature on how Davros was brought back to life. In addition to several conceptual drawings of both Davros and the new red Supreme Dalek, it also talks to the BBC’s artists and engineering team members, who decided early on that Davros’s new look should draw from how the character first appeared in 1975, when Michael Wisher was in the role. From the design of the chair to the sculpting of the prosthetics (which can only be worn once) that Julian Bleach wears for the two-part finale, the BBC staff held nothing back from intentionally making Davros “bigger and scarier” than ...

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