Doctor Who News, Articles, Cast and Crew Interviews

[Alan]

BBC reveal midnight announcement
Tuesday, 06 September, 2016 - Reported by Chuck Foster

http://www.doctorwhonews.net/2016/09...916172008.html

The BBC have posted a teaser for a forthcoming announcement at midnight tonight via their Facebook page:

app-facebook
Doctor Who
about an hour ago
Something is materialising very soon... Check back at midnight UK time to find out!

Visit Doctor Who News after midnight for more details.

[BruTak]

Midnight?!?

I'll be in my bed then. Asleep.

Got to be up and about by half past five to get ready for work.

[Teddybrown]

Class trailer? Season 10 airdate, as Capaldi might have already accidentally said? Something else???

I want to stay up but I have work...

[rushy]

The Power Of The Daleks is coming out in animated form! Absolutely brilliant!!

[Teddybrown]

Couldnt sleep, so came on to find out, is that the news?

[Alan]

Further to the above posted trailer...

The Power of the Daleks: 50th Anniversary animation
Wednesday, 07 September, 2016 - Reported by Chuck Foster

BBC Worldwide has officially announced the first full story featuring Patrick Troughton as the Doctor, The Power of the Daleks is to be released as a new animated version on the 50th anniversary of its first broadcast:

It's one of the Doctor’s most celebrated adventures and yet no complete film recordings of The Power of the Daleks are known to have survived. The master negatives were destroyed in an archive purge in 1974.

BBC Worldwide has announced that a brand new black and white animation based on audio recordings of the programme using the original cast, surviving photographs and film clips will be released 50 years to the minute after its only UK broadcast on BBC One.

The six half hour episodes feature the regeneration, or as it was then called ‘renewal’, of First Doctor William Hartnell into Second Doctor Patrick Troughton, as the Time Lord and his companions Polly (Anneke Wills) and Ben (Michael Craze) do battle with the Daleks on the planet Vulcan.

Doctor Who: The Power of the Daleks is being produced by the team behind the highly successful animation of lost Dad’s Army episode A Stripe For Frazer, first released on BBC Store in February this year. The producer and director is Charles Norton, with character designs from acclaimed comic book artists Martin Geraghty and Adrian Salmon.

Charles Norton says:

The Power of the Daleks animation is the most ambitious Doctor Who archive restoration ever attempted and we’re all very honoured to be a part of such a an exciting project. Intelligent, suspenseful and magnificently staged, Power of the Daleks is one of the great lost classics of 1960s television and a superb example of the black and white era at its finest.

Paul Hembury, Executive Producer, BBC Worldwide says:

Charles and his team are remarkably talented and passionate about Doctor Who and we are thrilled that fans will soon be able to enjoy this rather sinister but wonderful, classic story.

Doctor Who: The Power Of The Daleks will initially be exclusively released on BBC Store, with episode one available from Saturday 5th November at 5:50pm, and the others released on consecutive days thereafter. Readers can register their interest in the download at the BBC Store.

The story will become available online more widely from the 14th November, and will also be released on DVD in the United Kingdom on the 21st November (no other regions have been announced at present).

BBC Trailer, via YouTube

---

In addition to the story's release on the 5th November, there will be a special screening of the first three episodes at the BFI in London, which will include a Q&A with Anneke Wills, Charles Norton and Frazer Hines. Further information will be available from the BFI website from Monday 19th September.

UPDATE
BBC America has confirmed that Doctor Who: The Power of the Daleks will be screened on the channel shortly after its U.K. Release. The animated serial premieres Saturday, November 12 and will be available the following day to stream on BBCAmerica.com and on the BBC America app.

[BruTak]

I'll wait for the DVD.

[Alan]

Doctor Who will return "in April", reveals Peter Capaldi
We’re finally getting some specifics for the Time Lord’s return

https://forum.gateworld.net/newreply...treply&t=25886

[Alan]

Does the Doctor Who filming schedule mean Pearl Mackie will debut this Christmas?
We could be seeing the Doctor’s new companion a lot sooner than we expected…
By Huw Fullerton
Wednesday 7 September 2016 at 1:50PM
http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2016-...this-christmas

We still don’t know much about what to expect from the next Doctor Who adventure to hit our screens, a festive special due to broadcast this Christmas – but at least now we know the reason why.

This week Doctor Who head writer Steven Moffat revealed that work on this year’s special was only just beginning, taking place after the filming of around four series 10 episodes despite those stories not airing until much later (around April, as it turns out). So the reason no information had been announced is because there was no information. Simple.

But you may now be asking yourself, why was the filming staggered in this way? Why not film the Christmas special before the next series (as is usually the practice), instead of jumping ahead when there’s no real need to?

Well, there are a few possible explanations. One is that special location filming (including trips to Spain) was needed for the 2017 episodes, which were time-consuming and more pressing than the Christmas episode (which might involve less travel). Alternatively, it could just be that it worked out this was the most efficient schedule – the Christmas special normally films around this time of year, so perhaps they thought they might as well just fit the rest of the series’ shooting around it.

Peter Capaldi and Pearl Mackie filming series 10 episode two in Valencia, Spain in July

Both of these or neither could be true (the fact that four entire episodes have been filmed rather than bits of several doesn’t seem to suggest targeted location work) – but either way there could also be a hidden motive behind the unusual schedule.

You see, back in 2009 when filming Matt Smith’s first series of Doctor Who, the production staff decided to shoot a few of his later episodes first (The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone to start) so that he could really get a handle on the character, shooting his first story The Eleventh Hour later on when he’d really “warmed up” as the Eleventh Doctor.

Could it be this new back-to-front schedule is an echo of this, allowing another series newcomer to adjust to a major role before making a good impression in their first appearance? In other words, could we be seeing the first appearance of new companion Pearl Mackie this Christmas?

Sure, it has previously been stated that Mackie’s character Bill won’t appear this Christmas, but that could just be a smokescreen for her to make her big entrance – and in any case, plans could have changed since those statements were made. Jenna Coleman's Clara was one of the series' longest-running companions, after all, so producers would want Mackie at the top of her game to convince fans she could fill her shoes.

And the more we think about it the more this makes sense – Mackie is already on set and filming episodes, so it’d be easy for her to slip into the special (perhaps alongside fellow companion Matt Lucas, whose character Nardole could be appearing in both the Christmas special and 10th series as well). If she’s left out, the actress would be left twiddling her thumbs for weeks while the Christmas episode shoots.

Plus, considering fans have already been introduced to the character with an announcement scene earlier this year, it would make sense for that momentum to be continued by properly introducing the character this December, rather than welcoming a one-off companion who’d leave within the same episode. Fans want to see more of Bill, and making them wait until April to do so could be a missed opportunity.

Of course it could be that we’re reading too much into this, and that there are perfectly legitimate organisational reasons as to why filming has been done in this way. But even if that’s true, it’s still created a perfect opportunity for Pearl Mackie to make her debut this year – and if we don’t see her in at least one small cameo this Christmas, we’ll eat our Santa hats.

Doctor Who will return to BBC1 this Christmas, and in Spring 2017 for a full series

[Alan]

Why The Power of the Daleks is the holy grail of lost Doctor Who episodes
Ben Lawrence
7 September 2016 • 5:40pm

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/on-demand...st-doctor-who/

Patrick Troughton's Doctor in the newly animated Power of the Daleks Credit: BBC Store

Of all the classic British TV shows which have been wiped from the archives, one of the most sorely missed is the Doctor Who story The Power of the Daleks. First shown between November and December 1966, this six-part serial marked the first time the Doctor regenerated (although in this story it is referred to, rather charmingly, as “renewal”) and William Hartnell turned into Patrick Troughton.

A still from the original 1966 adventure Credit: BBC

Now, BBC Store are to release a newly animated version of the story, to go live on Bonfire Night, exactly 50 years after the original had its only airing on the BBC. The character designs have been created by acclaimed comic-book artists Martin Geraghty and Adrian Salmon. The animated action is set to the original audio files which still exist. See a trailer below.

The Power of the Daleks is widely regarded as one of the greats of Sixties Doctor Who, not least because it provided such a good showcase for Troughton, now seen as the finest actor to play the Time Lord in the series’ original run. Initially, he did not make a favourable impression with the few critics who deigned to review the programme who saw his incarnation as too clownish and whimsical (compared to the serious Hartnell).

Patrick Troughton in his first outing as the Doctor Credit: BBC

Nevertheless, the story is talked about with hushed reverence by fans today with a particular frisson emerging from the fact that the Daleks are pretending to be meek servants in a human colony on the Planet Vulcan. Their creepy chant of “I am your servant” is one of the great coups de theatre from the early days.

The Daleks as they will be seen in the new animation Credit: BBC

For years, rumours have persisted that The Power of the Daleks might exist somewhere. The master tapes were wiped in the late Sixties while the copies that were reserved by BBC Enterprises for foreign sales were destroyed in 1974. Hopes for the survival of the original six-part series are faint because of restrictions on Dalek sales by the Terry Nation estate. Nation created the pepperpot killing machines (although this story was written by David Whitaker) and strict stipulations, set up in 1968, meant that only two countries purchased the serial – Australia and New Zealand.

There are currently 97 episodes of Doctor Who missing from the BBC archives and The Power of the Daleks is one of 10 serials which is entirely absent. Listed below are some of the prized lost treasures in the history of Doctor Who.


Five lost Doctor Who stories every fan wants to see

Marco Polo (1964)

This historical adventure from the very first season is an epic seven-parter which, in part, fulfilled the Reithian brief to educate. Scripts and the audio file show this to be a full-blooded, intelligent adventure as the Doctor and his companions encounter the Venetian traveller at the court of Kublai Khan, the Mongol conqueror.

Mission to the Unknown (1965)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=P...&v=iToSs2HW89Y

This curate’s egg remains the only story to feature neither the Doctor nor any series regular. Instead, Edward de Souza takes the lead as a spy who discovers that the Daleks are forming a great alliance with other alien governments to wipe out mankind. This one-off episode was a prelude to The Daleks’ Master Plan which began a month later.

The Massacre (1966)

Once referred to as Doctor Who’s answer to The Wire, this beautifully written adventure by John Lucarotti proves that that statement is only partly hyperbolic. It deals with the Massacre of St Bartholomew’s Eve 1572 as tensions between the Protestants and Hugeonots reached fever pitch in Paris. The story is remarkably adult in tone, treating death seriously and also philosophically. The existing audio files hint at a superb performance from Peter Purves as the Doctor’s companion Steven, who deserts the Time Lord when he becomes overwhelmed by all the senseless slaughter.

The Macra Terror (1967)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iA7k6lgKCLk

OK, so the idea that a human colony is run as a holiday camp by giant crabs doesn’t sound too promising. But this is actually a groovy, hippy-dippy parable about mind control and the need for freedom of expression, man. All very 1967. Had the creators of cult Sixties show The Prisoner been watching?

Fury From the Deep (1968)

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x19...age_shortfilms

Again, the idea of a seaweed creature sounds laughable but Victor Pemberton weaved a tight and chilling plot around workers at an oil refinery who, when stung by the creature, become its parasites. The Gilbert and George style duo of Mr Quill and Mr Oak, servants of the creature who exhale poison gas are, frankly, terrifying.


The Power of the Daleks is released on BBC Store on November 5.

[rushy]

Now seen as the finest actor to play the Time Lord in the series’ original run.

That is arguable at best.

[Alan]

Torchwood return stalled by “certain egos” says John Barrowman
Five years since it last appeared on screen, the Doctor Who spin-off may not be coming back – but the former Captain Jack Harkness hasn’t given up hope

http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2016-...john-barrowman

By Huw Fullerton
Friday 9 September 2016 at 11:35AM

While new Doctor Who spin-off Class is soon headed to BBC3, the status of original sister series Torchwood (last seen on air five years ago today in 2011's Miracle Day) isn’t looking rosy according to star John Barrowman.

The actor, who played roguish Time Agent Captain Jack Harkness in Doctor Who before starring in the Cardiff-set spin-off, recently revealed that he had a phone meeting scheduled to talk about bringing Torchwood back to TV – but he now says that the call didn’t quite bring about the outcome he was hoping for.

“I was told that there are some obstacles to overcome, and every time I tried to talk about a way around them, it was almost like there was another obstacle,” Barrowman told RadioTimes.com.

“And this is a personal thing for me, this is not anything that was discussed, but I find it really a little disheartening that a company like the BBC can’t just say ‘Put your egos aside, we’re gonna go forward with this.’

“I travel all over the world, and I see the popularity of Torchwood. But when it comes down that it’s not being done because of people’s egos, I find that really difficult.”

He concluded: “There’s a lot of politics involved, and the people that are close to it, I think would love to see it done, but there’s just certain egos in the path that are just standing in the way. That’s all I’ll say.”

Barrowman with series co-star Eve Myles in 2011's Torchwood: Miracle Day

However, despite the knockback Barrowman says that he hasn’t ruled out a return for Captain Jack Harkness and his team – even if it is ultimately a doomed mission.

“I never say never,” the actor told us.

“I think obstacles are things that you have to work through. And you know, if it is a never scenario, it doesn’t mean that I’m gonna stop trying, as will a lot of other people on my side.”

“My sister and I, we’ve been asked to write the new Torchwood, the comic book, because they’re trying to give us other things to do that we can do. We do the Big Finish audio plays and audio stories that come out. They all sell incredibly well worldwide.

“I just don’t understand then why someone very high up can’t say ‘This is gonna be done. I don’t care.’”

John Barrowman hosting the 2013 National Lottery Stars

For now, then, the status of Torchwood is under a big question mark – but at least its leading man won’t be left clicking his heels, with Barrowman currently starring in US superhero series Arrow and about to return to British TV screens for his sixth year presenting The National Lottery Stars (a yearly search for the UK's favourite lottery-funded good causes) to be aired next week.

“We try to make it a fun night, so it’s not so much of a critique or a critical type of evening,” Barrowman told RadioTimes.com. “With all the stories that are being told, with all the people that are being celebrated, everybody’s there for the same reason, and it’s just a massive celebration.

“The reason I come back every year is because I’m also amazed at how people come up with these ideas. I mean it’s just phenomenal. For instance, who would have thought that a bunch of people would get together on bikes and motorbikes to help deliver blood by themselves? That’s just an amazing thing to do.
He added: “If you want to see what great things the United Kingdom is doing on a human basis, where that lottery money is going, and to see what great people are living in your cities and neighbourhoods and the great things they’re doing, then tune in – because you will be truly inspired.”

John Barrowman presents The National Lottery Stars 2016 on Monday 12th September at 10.45pm on BBC1

[Alan]

Christopher Eccleston wishes he'd stayed on Doctor Who
THEN PLEASE JUST COME BACK

http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2016-...who-for-longer

By Thomas Ling
Monday 12 September 2016 at 8:34AM

Christopher Eccleston – the frowny and “FANTASTIC!” ninth Doctor, fan of all things Rose, leather jackets and shouting at daleks to die – has said he regrets not staying on for a second series of Doctor Who and doing more with the character.

Speaking to radio show Drive on Melbourne’s 774 ABC, Eccleston said he didn’t have creative control of the character:

“It was kind of tragic for me, that I didn’t play him for longer. He’s a beautiful character and I have a great deal of professional pride and had I done a second season, there would have been a marked improvement in my performance. I was learning new skills, in terms of playing light comedy. I was not known for light comedy and, again, production did not allow for that.”

https://soundcloud.com/774-abc-melbo...th-raf-epstein

That’s right, if Eccleston had stayed in the TARDIS we would have seen more ‘light comedy’. Which we’re presuming would mean more of this:

However, this isn’t the first time the northern Time Lord has spoken about his departure and the show’s creators. Last year, Eccleston told the Daily Record: “I’d had enough. I wanted to do it my way, they wanted something else. We were never going to compromise so it was best to be straight about it and just go.”

But don’t worry, although keeping his distance from the show, Eccleston has said he’s always “there in spirit”.

Then why not come back, Chris? There’s bound to be some timey wimey explanation to it all (there always is).

[Alan]

John Barrowman has a special deal to help him return to Doctor Who
The former Captain Jack Harkness would be back “at the drop of a hat”
By Huw Fullerton
Monday 12 September 2016 at 1:30PM

http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2016-...-to-doctor-who

It’s beginning to look like there won’t be a revival for Doctor Who spin-off Torchwood any time soon, with star John Barrowman recently telling us that “certain egos” were preventing the series making a comeback.

However, there could still be a chance for Barrowman’s Captain Jack Harkness to return to parent series Doctor Who – and apparently the actor has made a special deal to help make that dream a reality.

When asked if he’d return to the sci-fi series, Barrowman told RadioTimes.com: “The answer is always absolutely. It’s a show and genre that changed my life; I love it dearly and if I’m asked I would do it at the drop of a hat.

“And also my producers here in the US for the show I’m on at the moment, Arrow, they’ve said if that did happen we’d let you do it.”

He added: “I would love to do it, and I do know that there’s a huge fanbase.

“The first question I’m always asked is, ‘When are you coming back to Doctor Who?’ or ‘When is Torchwood coming back?’, ‘Would you get involved?’”

So there you have it – Barrowman’s on board, his US producers will give him all the time off he needs, and there’s a new series of Doctor Who currently filming. Ball’s in your court, BBC…


John Barrowman presents The National Lottery Stars 2016 on BBC1 tonight (Monday 12th September) at 10.45pm

[Alan]

New Doctor Who spin-off Class now has a logo
But what does it mean?

http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2016-...now-has-a-logo