THE NETHERSPHERE
Hello to all our readers. November will be a busy month for fans with the programme currently screening and, later in the month, for those lucky enough to get to go, there is the Doctor Who Festival. If you can’t get to the Festival we hope that you think about going along to one of the Local Group / fan activities that may be in your area. We trust that everyone is enjoying the return of the 12th Doctor and are excited with what may happen over the next few weeks. We have a bit of a theme this issue on the first two episodes of the new series, with a diverse coverage of them. Special thanks to club member Robert Smith? who responded beyond our expectations when we asked him to do something on his new book Outside In 2 . We suggested rather than doing the usual interview if he had any pieces that were submitted for the book and did not make it, could we print them; or instead could he write reviews of the two mini-episodes that begin the new series. His response was that he would do both, thus we have an issue that is a little longer than expected! We will from this issue be giving, to one contributor per issue, a prize. This issue’s winning contributor is Sarah Guttridge and she gets a choice of one of five signed trading cards. She can chose from David Troughton as Professor Hobbes from ‘Midnight’, Phil Davis as Lucius Petrus Dextrus from ‘Fires of Pompeii’, Stuart Milligan as Richard Nixon from ‘The Impossible Astronaut’, Sarah Sutton as Nyssa or Derek Riddell as Sir Robert from ‘Tooth and Claw’. As always, we love to hear from you; your comments, ideas and contributions are greatly valued. The Nethersphere is your Speakers Corner Soapbox – so stand on it. Let us hear you pitch your piece. Send in all your comments, ideas, articles, drawings, etc. to: the_nethersphere@yahoo.com.au. We’d love to put them in the e-zine. Hi from Dallas: It’s great to be back editing a publication, but without the trials and tribulations of getting it printed and posted, although the quirks of the DTP program I am using can sometimes be a bit frustrating. :-) Just in case you did not know, The Nethersphere ’s sister publication, Data Extract, this month celebrates its 35th anniversary. Yes, 35 years ago I started work on my first Doctor Who publication, little thinking that it would still be going so many years later and that I would still be wearing the hat of an editor of a publication about Doctor Who, be it not Data Extract anymore. •
Initially the UK newspaper The Mirror claimed on the 15th September that Jenna Coleman was leaving the show to play a young Queen Victoria in a new ITV drama. The article stated: "She is thought to have already filmed her final scenes, and will bow out before the Christmas special." The news that Jenna Coleman had ‘quit’ was then published in other British papers including The Independent, The Telegraph and The Guardian . The BBC reported the story on their news website but the Doctor Who production team declined to comment. Jenna Coleman then appeared on Nick Grimshaw’s show on Radio One on September 18th, starting: “I have left the TARDIS. It’s happened; I’ve filmed my last scenes.” She also explained a little about the process of how it came about. “It was emotional but it’s been in the works for a long time. Steven [Moffat] and I sat down a year ago and decided the best way to tell the story and that’s what we’ve done.” She further said “I’m in denial, it doesn’t feel like I’ve left. I did get emotional, I tried to fight against it but you can’t help it. It’s been my life for the last three years.” "I am delighted to be cast as Queen Victoria in this ambitious drama of her life. She is a vivid, strong, inspirational and utterly fascinating woman in British history and I can't wait to tell her story." Subsequently she has said about her last day on set "It was just really weird. We film out of sequence as well so, my last part with Peter, I couldn’t quite look at him because it wasn’t supposed to be a sad part. It’s hard to go into detail without telling you anything, but I was really overwhelmed." She told Entertainment Weekly "I recognise that it’s a special part of my life. The storytelling is so dynamic, and big, and whimsical, and magical. You feel like you’re in a fairy tale and it’s really hard to walk away from that. It’s a lot more than just a job – the friendships I have with the crew and Peter, it’s very hard to say goodbye to it." Curiously, however, the BBC’s official Doctor Who page doesn’t state that she will leave at the end of Series 9. Instead, the term used is "during the new series." Steven Moffat told fans at the Lucca Comics & Games Convention, in Italy, on the weekend of Oct 31stNov 1st. "Clara is gone and will never return, I will not reveal any forecast about her fate. I can only say that what will happen will shock, terrify and surprise. Strictly in that order." The BBC has announced a new Doctor Who spin off series, titled Class, has been commissioned for BBC Three for release in 2016. It will be a 8 x 45 minute episodes from acclaimed author, Patrick Ness. Class will be executive produced by Steven Moffat, Patrick Ness and Brian Minchin. The series will be set in contemporary London and will feature Coal Hill School. It will be filmed in and around Wales from Spring 2016. Publicity for the series states "Incredible dangers are breaking through the walls of time and space, and with darkness coming, London is unprotected. With all the action, heart and adrenalin of the best YA fiction ( Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Hunger Games), this is Coal Hill School and Doctor Who like you’ve never seen them before." Steven Moffat, says, "No one has documented the dark and exhilarating world of the teenager like Patrick Ness, and now we're bringing his brilliant storytelling into Doctor Who. This is growing up in modern Britain – but with monsters!" Patrick Ness says,"I'm astounded and thrilled to be entering the Doctor Who universe, which is as vast as time and space itself. There's so much room there for all kinds of amazing stories, and to work with Steven Moffat and Brian Minchin, to find a place to tell one of my own has been an absolute joy. I can't wait for people to meet the heroes of Class, to meet the all-new villains and aliens, to remember that the horrors of the darkest corners of existence are just about on par with having to pass your A-Levels." May 2016 will see David Tennant returning to his role as the Tenth Doctor, alongside Catherine Tate as his companion Donna Noble in three, hour long, audio dramas for Big Finish. Executive Producer Jason Haigh-Ellery said "I still remember the sense of joy I had when I heard that David had been asked to play the Doctor. We were all so pleased for him – as we knew how much Doctor Who meant to him. And now David comes full circle, back doing Doctor Who with Big Finish – except that this time he’s playing the Doctor! It’s the same but different – it’s wonderful to have him back." Doctor Who: The Tenth Doctor Adventures comprises three full-cast audio adventures. The set opens with 'Technophobia' by Matt Fitton, which is set in London slightly in the future, where mankind is gradually losing its ability to use everyday technology. Next in 'Time Reaver' by Jenny T Colgan where the Doctor and Donna arrive on Calibris – "An entirely mechanical planet. Catch, hitch, fuel, fix, buy, pretty much any kind of transportation in existence. It’s also a world full of scoundrels, where a deadly black market has opened up in a device known only as the Time Reaver". Finally, in 'Death and the Queen' by James Goss, Donna is swept along in a fairytale romance and meets the man of her dreams in the beautiful land of Goritania. What can possibly go wrong? And why has the Doctor never heard of Goritania?
Neville Jason, the actor who played Prince Reynart in the 1978 Tom Baker story ‘The Androids Of Tara’, died on October 19th, 2015. He was born on May 29, 1934 in London, England. He is known for From Russia with Love , The Message and The Duellists. His good looks and bearing had an old fashioned and regal quality that made him perfect casting for the prince, a part that also required him to perform as an occasionally malfunctioning android. The serial is rather splendidly acted and whilst the likes of Peter Jeffrey and Declan Mulholland have all the fun, Jason does a fine job of giving lustre to a potentially dull part: and his innate poise and effortless charm are spot on, fulfilling exactly the needs of director Michael Hayes. Click here for full obituary. Derek Ware died on October 19 2015. He was born on February 27th 1938. He was the stuntman who founded the agency HAVOC and who provided much of the trademark action of the Jon Pertwee era. His association with Doctor Who went back to the very first story, for which he arranged the fight between caveman Kal and Za, as well as doubling for actor Jeremy Young. He subsequently arranged the fights on several 60s stories. For ‘Marco Polo’ he co-ordinated the scimitar fight between Marco and Tegana and in ‘The Aztecs’ he marshalled the climactic cudgel face-off between Ian and Ixta. Sword fights in ‘The Crusade’, ‘The Myth Makers’, and ‘The Smugglers’ followed – in the latter he also took the role of the Spaniard, ruefully noting that the character lost his lines and looks once he had been cast. For Full obituary click here.
The Doctor Who Club of Australia ( DWCA) is celebrating the end of 2015 with a brand new event – so special we had to split it over two days! Look Who’s Talking: Part One will take place on Sunday December 6th from 10am at Burwood Library, 2 Conder St Burwood, located within walking distance of Burwood Station. The day will feature all the usual DWCA fun, including games, discussions and competitions. Most importantly, though, we will be launching 'The Underwater Menace' on DVD – available to purchase from the Club Shop on the day – with none other than Troughton-era costume designer Alexandra Tynan! Alexandra (known as Sandra Reid during her time on Doctor Who) worked on eight stories during the ‘60s, from 'The Tenth Planet' up to 'The Tomb of the Cybermen'. We look forward to hearing how she developed the unique looks of the Second Doctor, the Fish People, and of course the Cybermen! Part One will conclude at 5pm on Sunday, but Look Who’s Talking will only be half over. Look Who’s Talking: Part Two will commence on the evening of Friday December 11th from 6.30pm. This time at 'The City of Sydney RSL Club', 565 George St – a short walk from Town Hall Station. It will be in the club's restaurant on the 2nd floor. This event will be a more laid-back affair – like a bigger version of our regular ‘Tavern’ nights – but will also feature a special guest: non-fiction writer Robert Smith?. Robert has recently released two new Doctor Who-based books: The Doctors Are In and Outside In 2 . The Doctors Are In , co-authored with Graeme Burk, is a guide to the Doctor himself – who he is, how he came to be, how he has changed, and why we love him. Outside In 2 , meanwhile, is a collection of 125 perspectives on 125 New Who stories from 125 different writers. We’re sure Robert will have plenty of anecdotes to tell us about these latest efforts! Entry prices for this special two-part event are as follows: Part One: Adult $25 DWCA member and $30 non-member Concession: $20 DWCA member and $25 non-member Child Under 13: Free Part Two: tickets are completely free for all attendees; however, online booking is essential so we know how many people to expect. Event registration is open now via the DWCA website. The DWCA is very pleased to unveil our brand new online store – your onestop shop for everything Doctor Who! The 'DWCA Shop' carries a variety of officially licensed Doctor Who merchandise, including DVD and Blu-ray, audio dramas, books, toys, collectables and more. Select merchandise is also available for various Doctor Who spinoff programs, along with other cult sci-fi programs such as Blake’s 7, Stargate and Sapphire & Steel . Like the club itself, the 'DWCA Shop' is run by fans, for fans; as a result, we aim to offer the fairest price possible on all items. The shop regularly pops up at both club and third-party events, as well as through the mail order form distributed with our print magazine, Data Extract. Now, it can also be accessed at any time via our website. The online shop allows you to sort by product type, read descriptions, view images, and confirm that items are in stock. A wide selection of merchandise is currently listed, with more items being added all the time. There are also a variety of payment options available, including PayPal, direct debit and cheque. To visit the DWCA Shop, head to http://dwca.org.au/products-page/.
Overnight UK viewing figures were 4.58 million and a consolidated 7 day rating of 6.54 million. The rating puts the episode as the 13th most watched programme of the week on all UK Television, and the 4th most watched programme on BBC One. The consolidate 28 days figure was 6.84 million. The figures do not include those who watched on the BBC iPlayer, where 'The Magician's Apprentice' had over 1.3 million download requests in the week following transmission. This year, the ratings board for the first time, issues a report on the online viewing habits of the UK audience. The report ending 27th September indicates that 'The Magician's Apprentice' was streamed 373,826 times in the eight days following transmission. It had an Audience Appreciation score of 84. In Australia it averaged 653,000 viewers in the five major capital cities. It was the toprating ABC drama of the day and 8th highest rating program of the day. These ratings do not include regional or time-shifted viewers. Including time-shifted viewers it averaged 847,000 consolidated viewers. With 190,000 extra viewers, it was the 2nd highest time-shifted program of the day and the 8th highest rating program of the day. Overnight UK viewing figures were 3.7 million and a consolidated 7 day rating of 5.71 million viewers. The rating makes it the 24th most watched programme on British Television for the week and the 8th most watched BBC programme for the week. It had an Audience Appreciation score of 83. The feature length version of 'The Magician's Apprentice' / 'The Witch's Familiar' had an audience of 0.64 million viewers on BBC One on Sunday afternoon. In Australia it averaged 541,000 viewers and was the 2nd-highest rating ABC drama of the day and the 8th highest rating program of the day overall. Including time-shifted viewers it averaged 734,000 consolidated viewers. With 192,000 extra viewers, it was the highest time-shifted program of the day and the 7th highest rating program of the day. Overnight UK viewing figures were 3.7 million and a consolidated 7 day rating of 5.63 million viewers. The rating makes it the 22nd most watched programme on British Television for the week and the 10th most watched BBC programme for the week. It had an Audience Appreciation score of 84. In Australia it averaged 428,000 viewers and was the 2nd-highest rating ABC drama of the day and 13th highest rating program of the day. Including time-shifted viewers it averaged 501,000 consolidated viewers. Overnight UK viewing figures were 4.38 million and a consolidated 7 day rating of 6.05 million viewers. The rating makes it the 21st most watched programme on British Television for the week and the 8th most watched BBC programme for the week. It had an Audience Appreciation score of 83. In Australia it averaged 511,000 viewers and was the 2nd-highest rating ABC drama of the day and 19th highest rating program of the day. Including time-shifted viewers it averaged 660,000 consolidated viewers. With 152,000 extra viewers, it was the highest time-shifted program of the day and the 15th highest rating program of the day. Overnight UK viewing figures were 4.85 million and a consolidated 7 day rating of 6.56 million viewers. The rating makes it the 21st most watched programme on British Television for the week and the 11th most watched BBC programme for the week. It had an Audience Appreciation score of 82. In Australia it averaged 501,000 viewers and was the 2nd highest rating ABC drama of the day and 13th highest rating program of the day. Including time-shifted viewers it averaged 644,000 consolidated viewers. With 149,000 extra viewers, it was the equal highest time-shifted program of the day and the 10th highest rating program of the day. Overnight UK viewing figures were 4.34 million and a consolidated 7 day rating of 6.11 million viewers. The rating makes it the 25th most watched programme on British Television for the week and the 8th most watched BBC programme for the week. It had an Audience Appreciation score of 81. In Australia it averaged 493,000 viewers and was the highest rating ABC drama of the day and 13th highest rating program of the day. Overnight UK viewing figures were 3.87 million. It had an Audience Appreciation or AI score of 82. In Australia the episode averaged 430,000 viewers in the five major capital cities. It was the highest rating ABC drama of the day and the 13th highest rating program of the day overall.
This accomplished Welsh character actor died on October 8th. His one encounter with Doctor Who came in 1987 – the production team needed someone with a lightness of touch to play a genial Welshman in ‘Delta And The Bannermen’. It’s a story with an odd tone but whilst Don Henderson is a genuinely villainous presence, it is Davies who best straddles the show’s mixture of comedy & drama. It is easy to believe that his character is an old soldier and his innate authority when he commands Gavrock to spare Mel, contrasts nicely with the humour with which he plays the scenes where he discovers the true nature of the TARDIS. It’s a skilful performance, perfectly judged. Burton Burton – as his Doctor Who character was called – was just one small role in an illustrious roster of parts. Click here for full obituary. Duncan Brown died on September 14th 2015. He was a BBC studio lighting designer who worked on four Doctor Who stories. 'Genesis Of The Daleks' benefits hugely from his creation of an alien battlefield sky for the studio rendered exteriors and his use of shadowy corridors for the Daleks to advance through. His final story, ‘The Leisure Hive' has the hive itself a mixture of eerie greens and soft pinks depending on the exact location, and Brown makes great use of shadow again as Stimson stumbles about stalked by a half glimpsed Foamasi. Click here to read more. Died on July 30th 2015 He played the Station Sergeant in the 'The Feast Of Steven' and Major Branwell in ‘The Invasion’ – both for director Douglas Camfield. Camfield was known for demanding authenticity from those he cast in uniform and he got the real thing from Earl, who portrayed a coolly efficient Major who helped the Doctor defeat the Cybermen with help from companion Zoe’s calculations. He then compliments Zoe by declaring that “She’s much prettier than a computer.” Click here for full obituary.
Allora – Fraser Clark allora@drwhoaustralia.org Bathurst – Heather Snitch & Kieron Dorian centralwest@drwhoaustralia.org Brisbane – Steve Glasby brisbane@drwhoaustralia.org Canberra – Ian McAlpine canberra@drwhoaustralia.org Gosford – Chris Collins centralcoast@drwhoaustralia.org Newcastle – Luke Steele Sandford lukejake1982@hotmail.com Sydney – TBA sydney@drwhoaustralia.org Toowoomba – David Riley toowoomba@drwhoaustralia.org Note: All Local Groups apart from Canberra have a group on Facebook to facilitate discussion and publicise meet-ups.
Go to the DWCA Local Groups webpage to get full details of each of the group's activities.
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The group sprung up out of a vacuum in Brisbane fandom after the winding up of the old BDWFC and an abandoned attempt to start what was then called a Social Group. Both myself and Robert Endicott wanted to see what we could do about filling the void of organised fandom in Brisbane. We were pleased to find a free venue partner for our meetings with the Brisbane City Council Library and not only the chance to meet up on November 23 for the 40th Anniversary but also to start meet ups on the eve of the 2003 ABC repeat season of D octor Who. Though we have had the odd get together otherwise, the primary activity of the group has been our bi-monthly meetings. Over the years we have had various different people in attendance along with a core few who have neen there from the beginning, and a group of co-ordinators who have become friends and have been active behind the scenes. For their ongoing or occasional help at various times over the last 12 years, I need to give a shout out to Lachlan, Dan, Andrew (our resident trivia guru), Witold, Rob and Blake, without whom the group wouldn't be the same.
Steven Moffat recently spoke to Variety where he confirmed that Doctor Who will continue to at least 2020. He said "“It is definitely going to last five more years, I’ve seen the business plan. It’s not going anywhere. And I think we can go past that. It’s television’s own legend. It will just keep going.” On Peter Capaldi's return in 2016 Moffat said in the same intervew “Peter Capaldi is going nowhere.” K9 is to become the latest robot star of the big screen! A new look high tech K9 for today's cinema is being prepared. The film K9-Timequake has been written by one of K9's original creators; Bob Baker, a writer of classic Doctor Who serials. Bob went on to co-write with Nick Park the Oscar and Bafta winning Wallace & Gromit series of film shorts as well as the feature film Curse of the Were-Rabbit. The film will be full of dashing heroes and heroines, androids, monstrous aliens and an ultimate foe who will also be familiar to Doctor Who fans everywhere; the megalomaniac Omega. The film is to be a UK co-production with exteriors filmed overseas and studio work planned for the UK. The names of the director and principle cast will be released in the new year. Speaking at the Man Booker Prize ceremony in London on October 13th John Hurt revealed he had recently been given good news by doctors. He said “I had a final scan and saw my oncologist and it’s all gone brilliantly. I am overjoyed, I am thrilled. It all looks great for the future, it’s fantastic.” Friends have said he is wary of using works like remission, even if it is true. FX in India commenced screening Series 9 on October 4th at 11pm. FX has been screening Doctor Wh o daily in India from May this year. Previously BBC Entertainment was screening Doctor Who but it ceased transmission in 2012. The announcement means that India is now the twelfth region in the world to see the new adventures of the Doctor. They are: UK (BBC One), USA (BBC America), Canada (SPACE), Asia (BBC Entertainment), New Zealand (PRIME), Australia (ABC), Benelux (BBC First), Finland (YLE2), Denmark (DR3), South Africa (BBC First) and Germany (FOX). It had been previously announced that ABC physical shops are to close. The club has learnt that the ABC shop in Toowoomba closed on November 5th. In Sydney the Doctor Who Festival has announced further guests, they being Sylvester McCoy, Billie Piper, Dan Starkey and Jon Davey (Jon has appeared inside various monsters over the last 10 years). Photograph and Autograph oppotunities have also been announced and a general idea of the program items for the event have been advised. In London, Jenna Coleman has been announced as a guest for Saturday and Sunday and Mark Gattis as a guest on all three days, plus more information on the program items has also been advised. Philip Morris, the man responsible for recovering 9 missing episodes of Doctor Who, has told fans at the Pandorica 2015 convention in September that he had also located the missing episode 3 of 'The Web Of Fear', only for it go missing, presumably stolen and sold to a private collector, between when it was found and when the film cans were delivered to the central collection point in Abuja, Nigeria. Morris subsequently released a photograph of the 12 film cans which he originally discovered in Jos, Nigeria. The photo was taken immediately after Phil had discovered the film cans and verified that the film reels inside matched what was on the labels. Colin Baker appeared at the Doctor Who Experience in Cardiff on Saturday October 10th where he took part in a Q&A session plus he was available for photos and signings. The appearance was included in the price of the standard entry ticket. The Experience's next event was a 'Dalek Day' event on Saturday October 24th, followed by a week of Dalek half term activities that included: an interactive adventure visiting Skaro; Daleks roaming throughout the Experience; the Daleks that featured in the opening two-parter of Series Nine; a chance to operate a Dalek and take part in a Q&A session with a Dalek operator; the revealing of the restored original Davros by Mike Tucker, part of Experience's refurbishment programme. Previously unseen test antimation for 'The Daleks’ Master Plan' was released to YouTube on September 8th by Niel Bushnell, one of the test reel’s animators. This video was produced, by Chris Chapman, to see how feasible it might be to reconstruct the serial as a mostly animated DVD release, but the proposal was ultimately shelved. In its place, however, was the reconstructed release of 'The Ice Warriors', animated by the same team. The BBC on its Doctor Who Instagram site has released a few sneak peak pitcures from the upcoming Christmas special. This is one of them ---------->
Just in time for Halloween is Conventional, a free short film, written, directed, and starring Karen – telling a tale of a horror actress dealing with her fall from fame. Conventional features some adult themes, so minors beware. Karen has recently participated in #15SECONDSHAKESPEARE, a hashtag started by actor David Finn and casting director Amy Hubbard. It sees people soliloquising famous pop songs in just 15 seconds. Karen Gillan’s contribution to this social media craze was to recite The Proclaimers’ hit I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles). The song has previously hit the world of Doctor Who when sung by David Tennant and the rest of the cast and crew back in 2010. Karen found herself being stalked by a familiar object while on set of her new movie, The Circle, she tweeted this image: ---------> with the following comment. "Just saw this on day 2 of shooting The Circle and got very confused.” The Circle is an upcoming sci-fi thriller with Emma Watson, Tom Hanks, and Patton Oswalt. It's an adaptation of Dave Eggers’ 2013 novel and is an examination of Internet security and privacy. Karen’s character is described as a “goofy but intelligent” employee of 'The Circle'. On Twitter, she said she was “very excited about joining this amazing team”. David Tennant hosted Have I Got News For You? on October 30th. The satirical show features Private Eye editor Ian Hislop and Paul Merton and they were joined by Grayson Perry and the comedienne, Katherine Ryan. David will also be appearing on the next series of Room 1 01 , hosted by 'Mummy on the Orient Express' star, Frank Skinner.' He can be heard on a brand new recording of Sheridan Le Fanu’s gothic horror novella Carmilla . Released just in time for Halloween by Audible, Carmilla , which was first published in 1872, is considered one of the first instances of Vampire literature and pre-dates Bram Stoker’s Dracula by two decades. Entertainment Weekly has an exclusive sneak peek of the audiobook. The first full trailer for Marvel’s Jessica Jones just been released and in it you get a good idea of what Tennant’s character is going to be. It debuts on Netflix on November 20th. Mark Gattis appeared at the Darlington Civic Theatre on Saturday, October 3rd as part of an effort to raise £15,000 for a stone memorial for former police officers who have passed away. He entertained the audience with stories about his fascinating career, with Northern Echo editor Peter Barron acting as compere. Tom Baker could be the ‘Voice of the Dungeon’ in Legend Quests: Live Fantasy Dungeon Adventures, a live fantasy theatre adventure game, created with theatrical props, actors, and illusions. The project tried to gain support through Kickstarter, with an aim of raising £18,500 by October 18th. It was cancelled on October 2nd when only £1,164 was pledged. It is not known at this stage if it will go ahead. Colin Baker was presented with his Honorary Doctorate by Buckinghamshire New University Vice-Chancellor Professor Rebecca Bunting in a graduation ceremony at the Wycombe Swan Theatre on Monday September 7th. He received the Honorary Doctorate in recognition of his international standing, local profile and links to the University’s course portfolio. He said: “To receive an honour like this is something I could never have predicted even in my wildest imaginings when I gave up a career in the law to become an actor five decades ago. It’s even more exciting for me personally than the last time I became a Doctor in 1983.” Colin has written a column for the Bucks Free Press newspaper for 20 years of which two anthologies have been published – Look Who’s Talking and Second Thoughts. He is also Vice-chair of Governors at Wycombe High School, and President of Wycombe Arts Festival, Wycombe Sinfonia, and the Wycombe Society for the Performing Arts. On September 26th Paul McGann returned to his hometown of Liverpool for a special screening of the film Withnail & I at the Odeon in Liverpool One. The film, shown as part of the Liverpool Comedy Festival, which ran until the October 4th, was followed by a live Q&A session where the audience asked Paul about the making of the film, his life and career. On Sunday October 4th Andrew Smith, writer of television story 'Full Circle', ran in the '10k Great Scottish Run' in Glasgow city centre to raise money for the Lily Foundation. It is a charity that works to support research into Mitochondrial Disease, and those families affected by it. Andrew said about the charity “This charity is close to my heart. It’s named in memory of Lily, who would have gone to school with my daughters. Tragically, she was diagnosed with Mitochondrial Disease and died at just eight months.”
– Allora Local Group Meeting Allora QCWA Rooms 51 Warwick St Allora 11 am to 4 pm. Admission FREE. – Newcastle Local Group Meeting Charlestown Library Ridley St, Charlestown 1pm to 3pm. Small admission charge. – Central Coast Local Group Meeting Dark Dimension Comics and Collectables, Shop 6 168 Pacific Highway Tuggerah. From 4pm. Admission FREE. – Canberra Local Group Meeting Dickson Library, Dickson Shops (off Antill St) Dickson 12 to 4 pm. – Brisbane Local Group Meeting Brisbane Square Library Cnr George and Adelaide Streets Brisbane. 10 am to 3pm. Admission FREE. – Sydney Day Event Look Who's Talking With Alexandra Tynan. Burwood Library, 2 Conder St Burwood. From 10 am. Adults : $30, Concession : $25, Children under 13 FREE (DWCA members receive $5 discount on above prices.) – Sydney Evening Event Look Who's Talking 2 City of Sydney RSL, 2nd Floor Restuarant, 565 George St from 6.30pm. This is for dinner with special guest non-fiction writer Robert Smith?. Tickets are completely free for all attendees to the dinner; however, online booking is essential so we know how many people to expect. Event registration is open now via the DWCA website. www.drwhoaustralia.org Please note: All dates and venues are liable to change, with little notice, through no fault of the . All attempts are made to flag any changes as soon as they occur. Please check the website and social media channels closer to the date or email the relevant organising group if unsure.
Members of the Brisbane Local Group
The Doctor Who pop up shop materialised on the ground floor of the Broadway Shopping Centre, 1 Bay St Broadway, on Wednesday, November 4th and will dematerialise in January 2016. The shop will stock a host of Doctor Who merchandise, including the new Twelfth Doctor Sonic Screwdriver Universal remote, a brand new range of Pop! Vinyl figures, apparel such as skater dresses, shirts and t-shirts, stationary, mugs and teapots. The best news of all is that DWCA members get a 5% discount on presentation of their membership card. Sir John Hurt will be reprising his role as The War Doctor for Big Finish in four new audio boxsets each containing three linked, hour-long episodes. The first boxset, titled Only The Monstrous, will be released in December and includes The Innocent, The Thousand Worlds and The Heart of Battle . All the stories will be written and directed by Nicholas Briggs and will guest, amongst others, Jacqueline Pearce. The second War Doctor boxset Infernal Devices will be released in February 2016, written by John Dorney, Matt Fitton and Phil Mulryne. As well as the announcement of the return of the Tenth Doctor, Donna and the War Doctor, Big Finish has also announced the reappearance of a number of other characters from the return of the show in 2005. Two more of the Torchwood alumni have been announced as returning, they being Eve Myles and Kai Owen, as husband-and-wife team Gwen Cooper and Rhys Williams in; Torchwood: Forgotten Lives – third release in the new series of Torchwood Audio Dramas. Forgotten Lives is written by Emma Reeves who is the co-creator and lead writer of robot drama Eve for CBBC. Myles will make a return appearance later in the series. Finally Tracy-Ann Oberman is to return as Yvonne Hartman in Torchwood: One Rule, the fourth release in the new series of Torchwood audio plays. One Rule is written by Joseph Lidster and joining the cast are Dan Starkey as Ross Bevan and Catrin Stewart as Meredith Bevan. Peter Capaldi, Jenna Coleman, Mark Gatiss and Michelle Gomez can be seen in the promotional video for BBC Store, a new service for downloading and owning BBC televisions shows old and new for people in the UK. BBC Store currently features every episode of Doctor Who post-2005 and a fantastic collection of stories from the classic era. You can find themed collections such as "The UNIT Files" and "The Master & Missy" and also Doctor Who related treats such as An Adventure in Space and Time , The Science of Doctor Who, Hound of the Baskervilles, starring Tom Baker, and Hamlet, starring David Tennant. More Doctor Who content will be added over time, including classic episodes and new series episodes (being made available just hours after its UK transmission). Who fans can let the BBC Store know what content they would like to see by tweeting suggestions to @BBCStore. DVD extras, such as documentaries and featurettes, could also soon be hitting the service, to complement the episodes. Doctor Who - The Ten Christmas Specials is a special limited edition boxset that contains all ten
Christmas Specials, plus a set of five graphically illustrated Christmas Cards, an exclusive bonus feature fronted by Rufus Hound which features personal reflections from Peter Capaldi and Steven Moffat and a souvenir booklet. It has been released in the United Kingdom on DVD and Blu-Ray on October 26th for £32.99. In the US the boxset will include a sonic screwdriver.
A collection of handmade, in 925 solid sterling silver, accessories has been released by The London Silver Company featuring two of Doctor Who’s most iconic symbols, the TARDIS and the Cybermen (based on the 'Nightmare in Silver' design). These are available as pendants, pins and cufflinks. The Cybermen features swivel head, arms and legs. Character Options have released a brand new Limited Edition Doctor Who 5.5” scale action figure of Missy. The figure was available in two variants; a purple outfitted version with hat from the series finale episodes; and alternatively in her ‘Heaven’ outfit, hatless with black jacket and manic grin. The figures each have 18 points of articulation and each figure's head can also be swapped so that both heads can be incorporated with either outfit, and they both come with accessories. 4,000 units of each of the two figures were made and retailed at £19.99 each. Subsequently Michelle Gomez did a photo shoot, in New York, with her miniature alter egos. She said "I absolutely adore my new figure! I can just imagine thousands of Missy’s taking over the world one very small step at a time".
'The Underwater Menace' was released on DVD on October 26th in the UK and will be out on December 2nd in Australia. Just a few months ago it was announced that plans to release the story has been cancelled. Before its release in the UK, Annneke Wills, who played second Doctor companion Polly, announced on her website that she would be selling signed copies of the DVD. The DVD includes: fully remastered Episodes 2 and 3 which have restored via the VidFire process; the two missing episodes (1 and 4) represented with restored audio and surviving stills; the existing scenes from the two missing episodes that were recovered from Australian censor clips in 1998; commentary on Episodes 2 and 3 (a traditional commentary with actors Anneke Wills, Frazer Hines, Brian Hodgson, Catherine Howe, and Quentin Mann – moderated by Toby Hadoke); an audio interview with Michael Troughton; archive audio material featuring Patrick Troughton, directors Julia Smith and Hugh David, and producer Innes Lloyd – moderated and linked by Toby Hadoke; A Fishy Tale – a 30 minute making of documentary with Anneke Wills, Frazer Hines and Catherine Howe, AFM Gareth Gwenlan, production assistant Berry Butler and new series writer Robert Shearman, narrated by Peter Davison; The Television Centre of the Universe – Part Two – Yvette Fielding continues her tour of BBC Television Centre in the company of actors Peter Davison, Janet Fielding and Mark Strickson, with contributions from former colleagues along the way including senior camera supervisor Alec Wheal, AFM Sue Hedden, former BBC producer and writer Richard Marson, exhibitions assistant Bob Richardson, production assistant Jane Ashford and videotape engineer Simon Anthony; programme subtitles and subtitle Production Notes. As well as being released on DVD it was also made available digitally via iTunes. The download package includes in addition to the story itself (which comprises the two existing episodes, 2 and 3, which are not VideFired, and the reconstruction of the first and last episodes); the behind-thescenes documentary A Fishy Tale and also both parts of Television Centre of the Universe (the first part of which originally featured on 'The Vistitation': Special Edition). The package is rounded off with a photo gallery. Fantom Films have announced a special project to provide commentaries for 'The Enemy of the World' and 'The Web of Fear'. Who Talk! , to be released in November, will see cast and crew brought together to discuss the two stories, under the guidance of commentary moderation stalwart Toby Hadoke. The commentaries will be released in both CD and download formats, and will feature Deborah Watling for both stories, with 'Enemy' represented by Mary Peach, Milton Johns, Carmen Munroe and Bill Lyons, and 'Web' by Ralph Watson, John Levene, and Derek Martin; production reminiscences are provided by Sylvia James and Roger Bunce. In addition, episode three of 'Web' will also feature former BBC Archivist Sue Malden, who gives insight into the BBC policies of wiping and archiving material, as well as missing television material in general. Please note: these commentaries contain no BBC copyrighted elements and do not feature audio from the episodes themselves – they are designed to be played alongside the official DVD / iTunes releases. Reeltime Pictures have announced the DVD release of the spin-off adventure Downtime for November 16th. It was a direct-to-video production originally released in 1995 and featured the character of Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart, as played by the late Nicholas Courtney. The story includes the return of Victoria Waterfield and Professor Edward Travers, as played by Deborah Watling and her father Jack Watling; it also saw the return of investigative journalist Sarah Jane Smith, reprised by Elisabeth Sladen. The video was also notable in introducing the character of the Brigadier's daughter, Kate Lethbridge-Stewart. It is to be a two disc release with the second disc featuring extras: Behind the Lens – A behind the scenes look at the production with never before seen footage;; Post Production – A glimpse into the editing, sound and visual effects work. However plans to release the drama on DVD have been contested by Hannah Haisman-Hatt, grand-daughter of original writer Mervyn Haisman. She posted on Facebook: ""It has been brought to my attention that Reeltime Pictures and One Media are releasing Downtime, the Doctor Who spin-off film made in 1995, on DVD. This is being done so without my consent or permission. As Executor of the Haisman Literary Estate... I should have been approached over this. Attempts to negotiate have fallen on deaf ears, and my rightful claim has been refuted by [the] producers. I have now been forced to take legal action to protect the copyright of my grandfather, Mervyn Haisman, after their refusal to renegotiate an agreement made twenty years ago for a film made for straight-to-video release only. Reeltime Pictures have disputed her claim saying "Reeltime Pictures has been approached by Hannah Hatt regarding the agreement we signed with her grandfather, Mervyn, in 1995. As we explained to her, the agreement is still in force and covers any exploitation that we might choose to undertake. Certainly no other party involved in the project has raised an issue with their agreements and we have assured her that no renegotiation is necessary. There is little else we can do at this time other than to wait upon any legal representation she might make." In late September BBC Worldwide America released a Blu-ray + DVD Combo release of the 3D version of 'Dark Water' / 'Death in Heaven'.. Special features on the release include 'The Doctor’s Meditation' and a 45-minute extended interview with Doctor Who stars Peter Capaldi and Jenna Coleman, hosted by Wil Wheaton of Star Trek fame.
Nov 8: The Zygon Inversion Nov 15: Sleep No More Nov 22: Face the Raven Nov 29: Heaven Sent Dec 6: Hell Bent
The episodes are repeated on ABC 2 the following Monday at 7.30 pm and five hours later early Tuesday morning at 0.30 am. On Sundays three New Who episodes are currently being screened in the morning. From Nov 8th they are near the end of Tennant's tenure with the screening of 'Waters of Mars' as the first of the three stories on that day. By Nov 22nd, when currently the UKTV's online schedule ends, they will be up to the 'Vampires of Venice'. At this rate the third episode to be screened on Dec 20th will be 'The Doctor's Wife'. Tom Baker screening from 'Brain of Morbius' (Monday Nov 9th) are currently being screened, an episode a day, Monday to Friday at 6.00 am. Peter Davison screening from 'Castrovalva' (Wednesday Nov 11th) are currently being screened, an episode a day, Monday to Friday at 2.30pm. Peter Capaldi's first season is nearing completion of its premier run on SyFy. Episodes are screened on Tuesdays at 8.30 pm and at 8.30 am on Sundays. Series three stories from 'Runaway Bride' (Monday 9th) are being screened at about 5pm Monday to Friday. On Saturday mornings from about 6 am they are currently screening five David Tennant stories from Series 3 onwards.
: Day One : Day Two : Day Three : Day Four : Day Five None currently None currently
Nov: Doctor Who Classics: Volume 1 Nov: An Electric Storm: Daphne, Delia and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop Nov: A Peculiar Effect on the BBC Nov: To Put You in the Picture 1 Nov: Whoniverse: An Unofficial Planet-by-Planet Guide to the World of the Doctor from Gallifrey to Skaro 3 Nov: Doctor Who: Time Lord Fairytales 5 Nov: Doctor Who: Colouring Book 5 Nov: Doctors Are In: The Essential and Unofficial Guide to Doctor Who's Greatest Time Lord 15 Nov: Doctor Who: Silhouette 17 Nov: Doctor Who: The Twelfth Doctor vol 2: Fractures 17 Nov: Heart of Stone 17Nov: Death Riders 17 Nov: System Wipe 17 Nov: More Doctor Who and Philosophy: Regeneration Time 20 Nov: Lethbridge-Stewart: Mutually Assured Domination 24 Nov: Conversation 24 Nov: Doctor Who: The Eleventh Doctor Archives Omnibus: Volume Two 24 Nov: Doctor Who: Official Annual 2016 Dec: Running Through Corridors: Volume 2 – The 70s Dec: Seasons of War Dec: A Time Lord for Change Dec: Faction Paradox: Opus Majus Dec: Red, White and Who – The Story of Doctor Who in America Dec: The Tenth Doctor Sourcebook Dec: The 500 Year Diary: Volume Two (1973-1983) 1 Dec: The Fountains are Forever 10 Dec: Legends of Ashilr 15 Dec: Doctor Who: The Eleventh Doctor Archives: Omnibus Volume 3 14 Dec: After Life 29 Dec: Weapons of Past Destruction 29 Dec: Four Doctors 1 Feb: Mac: The life and Work of Malcolm Hulke 16 Feb: Prisoners of Time (omnibus) 16 Feb: Terrible Lizards 25 Feb: Rain of Terror 25 Feb: The Web in Space 3 Mar: The Comic Collection 3 Mar: Choose-the-Future Book 1 8 Mar: 365 Days of Memorable Moments and Impossible Things
5 Nov: Royal Blood (BBC new series audio) 5 Nov: Deep Time (BBC new series audio) 15 Nov: Torchwood: Forgotten Lives (Big Finish) 15 Nov: Jago & Litefoot & Strax (Big Finish) 15 Nov: Short Trips:The Way of the Empty Hand (2nd Doctor) (Big Finish) 15 Nov: The Early Adventures: The Black Hole (Frazer Hines & Deborah Watling) (Big Finish) 20 Nov: UNIT: Extinction (Jemma Redgrave) (Big Finish) 30 Nov: Shield of The Jötunn (Colin Baker) (Big Finish) 3 Dec: K-9 and Company (John Leeson) (BBC classic series audio) 3 Dec: The Sins of Winter (Robin Soans) (BBC new series audio) 15 Dec: You Are The Doctor and Other Stories (Sylvester McCoy & Sophie Aldred) (Big Finish) 15 Dec: Short Trips: Black Dog (4th Doctor) (Big Finish) 15 Dec: Torchwood: One Rule (Big Finish) 15 Dec: The Early Adventures: The Isos Network (Frazer Hines & Wendy Padbury) (Big Finish) 15 Dec: The War Doctor: Only the Monstrous (John Hurt & Nicholas Briggs) (Big Finish) 20 Dec: Theatre of War (Sylvester McCoy, Sophie Aldred & Lisa Bowerman) (Big Finish) 20 Dec: All-Consuming Fire (Sylvester McCoy, Sophie Aldred & Lisa Bowerman) (Big Finish) 7 Jan: State of Decay (CD Edition) ( Tom Baked, Geoffrey Peevers& John Leeson) (BBC classic series audio) 7 Jan: The Witch Hunters (BBC classic series audio) 15 Jan: The Waters of Amsterdam (Peter Davison, Sarah Sutton & Janet Fielding) (Big Finish) 15 Jan: Torchwood: Uncanny Valley (Big Finish) 15 Jan: The Wave of Destruction (Tom Baker, Lalla Ward & and John Leeson) (Big Finish) 15 Jan: The Diary of River Song: Series One (Alex Kingston & Paul McGann) (Big Finish) 15 Jan: The Churchill Years (Ian McNeice & Nicholas Briggs) (Big Finish)
4 Feb: The Space Museum (novel reading) (BBC classic series audio) 4 Feb: The Memory of Winter (BBC classic series audio) 15 Feb: Aquitaine (Peter Davison, Sarah Sutton & Janet Fielding) (Big Finish) 15 Feb: The Labyrinth of Buda Castle (Tom Baker & Lalla Ward) (Big Finish) 15 Feb: The War Doctor: Infernal Devices (John Hurt) (Big Finish) 15 Feb: Torchwood: More Than This (Big Finish) 3 Mar: Death to the Daleks (Jon Culshaw) (BBC classic series audio) 3 Mar: Shadow in the Glass (India Fisher) (BBC classic series audio) 15 Mar: Doom Coalition 2 (Paul McGann) (Big Finish) 15 Mar: The Peterloo Massacre (Peter Davison, Sarah Sutton & Janet Fielding) (Big Finish) 15 Mar: The Paradox Planet (Tom Baker & Lalla Ward) (Big Finish) 7 Apr: The Invasion (novel reading) (BBC classic series audio) 7 Apr: Amorality Tale (BBC classic series audio) 7 Apr: Time Lord Fairy Tales (Tom Baker, Paul McGann & Sophie Aldred) (Penguin) 15 Apr: Jago and Litefoot Series 11 (Big Finish) 15 Apr: Nightshade (Sylvester McCoy & Sophie Aldred) (Big Finish) 15 Apr: The Legacy of Death (Tom Baker & Lalla Ward) (Big Finish)
26 Feb: Devil’s End Box Set (UK) 27 Jan: 2015 Christmas Special. DVD and Blu-ray (Aus) Nov: The Tenth Doctor: Year 2 #002 4 Nov: Doctor Who: The Eighth Doctor Miniseries #1 4 Nov: Doctor Who: The Ninth Doctor Miniseries #5
12 Nov – Issue 493; 10 Dec – Issue 494; 7 Jan – Issue 495 5 Nov – Issue 8; 10 Dec – Issue 9; 7 Jan – Issue 10 29 Oct – Issue 58 (Auton); 12 Nov – Issue 59 (Necros Dalek); 26 Nov – Issue 60 (The Eighth Doctor); 10 Dec – Issue 61 (Chantho); 24 Dec – Issue 62 (Sensorite); 7 Jan – Issue 63 (Cyberleader); 21 Jan – Issue 64 (Supreme Dalek)
Jenna Coleman & Peter Capaldi: Series 9 Interview – here Series 9 Interviews – Peter Capaldi, Jenna Coleman, Michelle Gomez, Steven Moffat - here An Interview with The Doctor at 2 Nov: Series 9: Part 1 DVD and BluComic-Con 2015 – here ray. (UK) Wil Wheaton Interview with Peter 4 Nov: Series 9: Part 1 DVD and BluCapaldi and Jenna Coleman – here ray. (Aus) Interview with Cath Tregenna – here 9 Nov: The 10 Christmas Specials DVD The Doctor's Finest - Hannah Hart and Blu-ray (UK) interviews Charlie McDonnell – here 16 Nov: Downtime Double DVD (UK) The Doctor's Companion's at Fan Expo 24 Nov: The Christmas Specials Gift 2015 – here Set. DVD and Blu-ray. Includes a sonic Steven Moffat Interview at MCM screwdriver (US) ComicCon London – here 25 Nov: The 10 Christmas Specials Colin Baker & Paul McGann Interview (Aus) at FedCon 2015 – here 2 Dec: The Underwater Menace (Aus) Will Ashildr Be Back? – here Jan: 2015 Christmas Special. DVD and Jenna Coleman On How Best To Enjoy Blu-ray (UK) Doctor Who – here 13 Jan: Series 9: Part 2 DVD (Standard Tenth Doctor & Donna Return – here and Special) and Blu-ray. (Aus) Season 9 Interviews! Peter Capaldi, 26 Feb: Return to Devil’s End (UK) Jenna Coleman & more – here 26 Feb: White Witch of Devil’s End German Doctor Who Interview (in (UK) English) – here
Lego Tardis. A full size LEGO replica
of the TARDIS is to materialise on the grass behind South Bondi Beach on the morning of Tuesday Nov 10th. The LEGO TARDIS will then travel to the Zing Pop Culture Store in Macquarie Park where it will be on display from Nov 10th– 18th. During this time there will be several social competitions held where fans will be offered the chance to win tickets to the Doctor Who Festival. BezerkaCon. Is a brand new tabletop gaming convention to be held on Nov 14th-15th at Balmain Town Hall. DWCA treasurer, Jon Andersen, will be running 2 sessions of Doctor Who roleplaying on the Saturday. Go here for more info. Ritz Sci-Fi Sundays. The Ritz Cinema in Randwick is currently holding a series of SF movie screening on Sundays. Nov 15 – Robocop at 2pm and 7pm; Nov 22 – Predator at 2pm and 7pm and Nov 29 – 2001 : A Space Odyssey at 2pm and 7pm. Go here for more info. Doctor Who Festival. Saturday Nov 21st and Sunday Nov 22nd at Hordern Pavilion, Moore Park. Go here for more info.
Doctor Who Picnic / Timey Wimey Gathering. Monday Nov 23rd from 10 am at Hyde Park. Come along and celebrate Doctor Who's 52nd anniversary. Go here for more info.
WHO, ME. Rob Lloyd's international smash-hit, Doctor Who-themed, comedy show. Dec 3rd - Dec 6th at the Brisbane Powerhouse, 119 Lamington St, New Farm, Queensland. Go here for more info.
Doctor Who Club of Victoria.
Next meeting on Sat Nov 21st is their 'DW 22nd Anniversary and Christmas Party' at the Northcote Town Hall. Doors open at 11am. The following day – Sun 22nd, there will be the '2015 Whovian Parade' through Melbourne. This is the second year of this event. Starting at the Carlton Gardens and ending at the Victoria Gardens, Whovians of all kinds will be walking through the streets of Melbourne. Go here for more info.
The West Lodge: Inside the Blue Box Inc. Next meeting is Saturday
Dec 5th from 12.30 pm at the Collins St Centre, South Perth. For more info go here.
South Australian Doctor Who Fan Club Inc. Next meetings are: Nov 21, Adelaide High Meeting, 3 to 10pm; Dec 5, Buckingham Arms (Tavern), 5pm; Dec 19, Adelaide High Meeting, 3 to 10pm and on Jan 2 2016, Buckingham Arms (Tavern), 5pm. For more info go here.
ASTRAL MAP Finally, we have a Doctor who can do angry. I'm not making any allusions to Scottish discontent, though you'd be forgiven for thinking the Rani's been draining the happy-juice out of people's brains up there, because we'd never had a temper problem before with a kilt-wearing Stewart clansman or even a rrrrubbery faced rrrrubbery accented Scottish Doctor. But since we have those two in mind for a moment, 'Battlefield' was one of those examples where all the wonderful elements were there but it didn't gel; one misgiving was, depending who you'd ask, a short shouty Doctor giving the top of his lungs to do the Big Angry Moment and make everybody settle down for a bit. Now I'm loathed to lay any of this at the feet of an actor – as a director can be very much in control of micromanaging the feel of a scene, give-or-take the very large ego of a lead actor; indeed, we are very grateful to Tom Baker in hindsight (and even a bit apologetic to a number of the other professionals in the room at the time) as all that long-ago angst over creative control has ended up with a corpus of wonderment – Available Now on DVD! Tom Baker often said he was just privileged to be himself on screen – himself in character, not just in style. And we get the same from Michelle Gomez, it now seems: not only is Moffat delighted to let the blood run free, in her moments of dialogue and nondialogue – she is doing her best to tarnish whatever purity Julie Andrews has bestowed upon the world – but Michelle herself said she goes into an "acting coma" for parts like this. At her first ever convention appearance recently, the part she had embodied so fully and was, until now, her favourite career role – Sue White, the batshit-insane and rather bad-at-her-job staff liaison
officer in the hospital comedy Green Wing – she admitted that she just lost herself in that role and woke up when the cameras stopped. It is characters like this that help you understand why actors tend to prefer the evil parts: it allows certain people the luxury of letting it all hang out and behaving the way their animal instincts want them to. Although, in one particular sense, it doesn't hang out at all: Gomez admits that the corsetry, every bit as restrictive as it looks, also funnels a certain type of behaviour onto the screen. Missy does have to become the harsh mistress figure in name and in deed, almost entirely because she is being literally funnelled into that dress. Capaldi, meanwhile, is happily portraying her brother from another mother (or not? we seem to be getting so many token revelations these days – time for a new edition of the Discontinuity Guide ) and is doing, for my money, a very satisfying level of rage: just look at his face as he loses it in front of The Member for Skaro, the Honourable D. Supreme. (Do the Daleks still have Prime Ministers?) (By the way, amongst the Daleks All-Star Spectacular lineup we were given, if you're wondering where all the big colour Daleks went, a very compelling in-universe explanation comes from the Matt Smith-era Doctor Who Experience exhibit in Cardiff. A mini-civil-war video was shown between the different factions – "WE ONLY RECOGNISE THE R.T.D. PARADIGM!!!" "INCORRECT. YOUUU ARE INFERIORRRR." That's not actually what they said; you don't get to quote the Word of God when in-universe. Anyway the gold bling faction won this time. But never mind that: since when does the Special Weapons Dalek speak?! He's meant to be thoroughly brain damaged by the heavy radiation he gets to put up with. Read Ben Aaronovitch's novelisation of his 1988 episode – it's really good). But I enjoyed Capaldi going berko. His face reminded me of a nice friendly old neighbour of mine, and the frown he would pull when his computer started playing up. This flavour of old-age pensioner rage is really the premium single-malt variety of peevishness. I've seen this face in real life and it means they are about to flip, so watch out. What helped it along was an oddly successful dose of jeopardy in the cliffhanger: It can't be easy to manufacture the mortality risk sensation for two characters, one of whom has died before – frequently! – the other of whom has a track record of resurrecting: not to mention it being an Episode 1 of the series. So why did it work this time? It comes down to the Daleks being actually creepy this time. I know Moffat has said, probably more than once, "I want to make the Daleks scary again!" – and I think he's partly failed at it, where the asylum was kookyspooky rather than scary, and 'Into The Dalek' was indeed atmospheric (watch it again in full high
definition to appreciate the sheer elegance of its cinematography) but was not scary either, at least not thriller-scary the way 'The Invisible Enemy' was in Tom Baker's era, the last time we had a shrinkthe-humanoids plotline. This time, however, a simple tactic worked really well. The Daleks were children. Kids, or toddlers even. Kids with guns. And they turned to their bully big brother (eagerly!) for that rarest and succulent permission to have fun. That one moment of them behaving so childishly – not petulant actually, but obedient in fact – was brilliantly devised. Davros's narration of their mind-scape added a layer to this. You really could see the servantile ranks squirming and obsessing in their mind to "kiiilll!! kiiilll!" There is something quite sickening to see a machine that is wracked with emotion – quite worse than an animal or a person – because now you're faced with an unnatural proportion of power versus empathy. My childhood nightmares of a Dalek turning up in the kitchen (going on a couple of years later than it should have) were always around the sheer challenge of negotiating with such a strong force that had very, very few bargaining points onto which to latch an argument or a plea for mercy. Moffat may pulled off portraying that here. It reminded me of the movie Robocop 2 when it examined how a cyborg might behave if it were drug addicted before conversion. One unedifying scene was of a machine 'craving' its fix, behaving quite animalistically, but without the weaknesses of an animal; rather, shielded in armour and armed with bullets. And for these reasons, we felt far more at the heart of an evil empire this time, more than the cinematically larger Parliament of the Daleks. Clara and Missy on the other hand, were literally in the bowels of the empire, so you have to forgive the on-screen continuity for the lack of 'mud' they should have had all over themselves after getting too close to a Dalek with deadly poo squirting out all around. Poor Clara, she had to sit in all that mess; but she came out so clean, so it must've been a supersonic wash. And do we call them Sonic Specs or Sonic Sunnies? Looks like Moffat has finally come around to the same place John Nathan-Turner once found himself, disposing of the 'magic wand' that might be too cliché (even if that problem shouldn't be relevant when you are the trope-maker), but the BBC website informs us they are the Sonic Shades, in fact. I have to let this development pass with my blessing, in fact, since Doctor Who has a remarkably thorough track record of reflecting cultural and technological fads in its episodes, and as a body of archeology through the decades, contains dozens and dozens of similar points to 'wearable tech'! So don't cringe! Nevertheless, the sonic screwdriver may be a bit like sexy companions and double-length stories, coming into and out of fashion like the swing of a pendulum. Russell T. Davies certainly made a strong case for its reintroduction during his tenure. However, one thing we have certainly not explored previously is Davros's immobility and disability, and this viewer, for one, was surprised and impressed at
the idea of taking Davros out of his chair (even if he did look a bit like the Borg Queen, but instead, he was far more helpless and angry – there's the Angry Pensioner motif again, loving it!) The scene with opening his real eyes worked really well on me, and pulled at my heartstrings. Doctor Who is certainly doing old-face makeup better since the Tennant era. You even had the mask revealed, figuratively, with the moment his "evil eye" lit up again. This too, seeing Davros's real eyes is something I never even contemplated we would get, so it has been a tremendous episode for adding to the Dalek continuity. We will never look at the tunnel scenes in 'Genesis of the Daleks' the same way again; did you catch the reference to the 'clam drones' in the opening scene, by the way? If so, maybe you also caught the various snippets of dialogue in part one, those that Moffat lifted from earlier episodes – 'Night of the Doctor', 'The Big Bang', 'A Town Called Mercy', and 'Day of the Doctor', in that order – plus, quite possibly, one throwback to the classic era with 'Silver Nemesis' for good measure. If you can't spot them all, Google for a video called "magician's repeatance" (sic). Since the 50th anniversary, we seem to be well and truly in an era of embracing the show's full past, and that continues with another stunt-doublegrade-only appearance of the fourth and first Doctors. Do bear in mind the show's proudest invention is replacing the lead role without imitating it, so while this is not quite on the level of the 20th anniversary ("let's cast another white-haired old man, who also resembles Albert Einstein a bit, for the whole episode and let's pretend he's the original actor"), this new fad of wig-and-costume cameo seems to be sticking around. I can just hear Colin Baker mock-seething in the corner, how these aren't the 'real' Doctor Who! But the Skaro exterior scenes – both the young Davros and the Missy and Clara scenes – really el-
evated part one, up high in the episode ranks and gave it some marvellous snippets for the season 9 trailer. This looked so good you might ask what new show it was and when is it coming out – now compare it to a Tennant-era season trailer to see just how far we've come. Just merely on the strength of seeing the bows & arrows on the front lines, I was hoping against hope and crossing my fingers, pleading with the TV that this boy would say his name was "Davros"! I admit, the feeling I got on the close-up to the petrified Doctor and his new semi-Pertwee perm probably rubbed off a bit after the 3rd go around – but there aren't many episodes I've watched 6 or 7 times in the week before the next one. This time warranted it. Bravo.
The dialogue was sharp, the plotline flawless, and Missy is one of the best things to happen to the series in years. As Missy says, “One of those was a lie. Can you guess which one?” Arthur Darvill once compared Steven Moffat’s writing to a kid playing with all the toys in his toy box. Darvill was talking about 'A Good Man Goes to War', but the same is also true of 'The Pandorica Opens' / 'The Big Bang' and 'The Time of the Doctor'. Even 'Asylum of the Daleks' had that familiar feel of playing on the carpet with a patchwork Dalek army made up from available action figures. 'The Magician’s Apprentice' has that same madcap toy box feel. The script mixes and matches unlikely characters, props and locations for no other reason than it can. So that Airfix jumbo jet model kit gets to interact with the new Missy action figure and UNIT, while a Dinky WWII tank smashes into the Medieval Lego Castle™ for a showdown with a rubber snake. I laughed, thrilled and nerded out in all the right places as Ohila, Kate Lethbridge-Stewart, the Shadow Proclamation, and all of the inhabitants of the Mos Eisley Cantina (sorry, the Maldovarium) briefly took their turns out of the toy box. But the script spends the first twenty or so minutes introducing and ditching so many characters, locations, props and ideas with such speed that one must wonder whether this is the most efficient way to set up the plot. These episodes might seem jam-packed with story, but there isn’t a great deal of substance underneath all of that eye candy. But what sweet candy there is… Michele Gomez’s Missy is mesmerising to watch. Compared to her predecessors, Missy walks a very different path between barking mad and calculating evil. Plus, for the first time in the show’s history, the Master / Missy is without a premeditated plan or secret agenda of her own. She’s caught up in events just like the Doctor. This makes Missy more unpredictable, filling each of her scenes with ten-
sion and laughs in equal measure. So much so, that the uneasy alliance between Clara and Missy is one of the delights of 'The Witch’s Familiar.' And when Missy does see an opportunity for some mischief, she takes it–almost tricking the Doctor into exterminating Clara’s Dalek purely for her own amusement. While Simm’s Master was tortured, anxious and delusional, Gomez’s Missy is bad just for the sheer fun of it. However, Missy and Clara’s team-up is just a sub plot. The main event is the Doctor’s reunion with Davros, on the back of a cosmic joke so unlikely it can’t be mere chance. Of all the boys on all the planets in all the time zones, the Doctor bumbles into Davros’ most pivotal moment. As Idris tells the Doctor in 'The Doctor’s Wife', the TARDIS always takes the Doctor where he needs to go. Therefore, the TARDIS is playing a very cruel prank in this instance. (Maybe this was the protest that forced the Doctor to reinstate the TARDIS roundels? “If you don’t give them back, next time I’ll drop you on Kroll without your water wings.”) It is the sort of wild 'what if' concept normally found in fanfic. Yet, this isn’t Moffat up to his usual timey-wimey hijinks. The key to these episodes is the morality play performed by the Doctor and Davros as they debate their differences and their similarities. Moffat uses the Doctor’s dilemma to erode his moral high ground so that he becomes the yin to Davros’ yang. These scenes are beautifully written and performed. Capaldi’s characterisation of the Doctor has developed a wide range of light and shade, while Julian Bleach has certainly earned his place alongside Michael Wisher and Terry Molloy. Unfortunately, the plot has to keep moving, and an episode must have a climactic final few minutes. So, the script takes a sudden right turn into a Davros plot so random and bonkers, it would be at home in an Eric Saward script. Davros hopes the Doctor will spontaneously volunteer some of his regeneration energy with no more than a little mea culpa, a sunrise, and a coquettish flutter of his eyelids. The Doctor could just as easily have said, "Hang on, I've got a couple of matchsticks here somewhere..." If you don’t think about them too hard, these first two episodes were fantastic fun. Doctor Who is full of ridiculous plots and silly schemes and I will forever defend 'The Claws of Axos' or 'The Gunfighters' from critics who want to take them too seriously. But I get the sense that 'The Magician’s Apprentice' and 'The Witch’s Familiar' DO want to be taken seriously. Both scripts explore philosophical themes and crackle with such wit that they clearly want to be seen as cleverer, more worthy and 'instant classic-ish' than they actually are. Yet, all of the set pieces and morality plays are no replacement for good meat-and-potatoes storytelling. And that’s why, once the eye candy has gone and the sugar rush has subsided, these two episodes feel far less substantial and satisfying than they should.
N E W C A ST L E " W HO "
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Members of the DWCA Newcastle Local Branch were very excited to get together and watch the season opener as a group. Our group is a real mix of young whovians, maturer aged whovians, new series whovians, old series whovians, whovians with scarves, whovians with bow ties and whovians with sonic screwdrivers. It is fun to have different perspectives and ideas in the club. We met at 6:30pm for some food and conversation before the season opener aired. Everyone brought something to share and so there was an abundance of food – from dips, biscuits, chips chocolate cake to savoury items hot from the oven. Conversation was lively with Doctor Who discussed at length and also other sci-fi shows being hot topics as well (including Star Trek , Star Wars and the new show Humans). Anticipation was high, hoping the new series would deliver all that we had been waiting for. Eagerly we all took our seats to watch the first episode of season nine. Everyone sat enthralled from the beginning to the end. No-one moved from their seats until the final credits were rolling. It was fantastic to sit in a room and watch with other fans – we all laughed at the jokes, were surprised by the same scenes, and someone even quoted the Fourth Doctor (before it was shown in the episode). On a cute side note, I must admit not all were enthralled until the end of the episode, my daughter (the youngest whovian at the gathering – she is 4 years old) was so tired out from the excitement she fell asleep within the first five minutes. Luckily she didn’t snore and disturb the other whovians. Certainly the generally feeling was that the episode was a great opening to the season and left us all with higher expectations of the coming episodes. It was great to see a two part season opener, it allowed the story to really evolve and scope for those funny Doctor side comments which we all appreciated. A really great night was had by all. .
The TARDIS materialised in Honeysuckle, Newcastle's waterfront area, on Tuesday October 20th. No sign of the Doctor, but a Cyberman did arrive looking for him but we managed to scare him off. There was a steady stream of people from 3:30pm to 6pm having their photos taken with the TARDIS. This was part of a competition to win tickets to the Doctor Who Festival in November – so check out some of the photos, search Instagram or Twitter using #DWCapaldiMe. While we were there we chatted to one of the members of the production team that makes the props for the BBC in the Southern Hemisphere. Fun fact – the TARDIS, which was on show, can be de-materialised (or taken apart) in about half an hour – they need to be quick so not to spoil the illusion. Another fun fact – they are only allowed to open the TARDIS doors if they can make it appear bigger on the inside and the light/sound on the top can only be used if they can make the TARDIS disappear. My daughter (aged 4) did her best 12th Doctor Impression, complete with guitar and sonic glasses. We also posed together for a more traditional photo with the TARDIS. Another club member, Dee Newton, took her 12 year old son along, as you can see he was very excited to get a photo with the TARDIS. All photos taken by Sarah Guttridge, except third one from left below which was taken by Dee Newton.
W H O A R E W E
The survey sets out to answer the question "Who are We?" by investigating what fans of think about the show, its spin-offs, its merchandise and the activities that fans indulge in. The 2nd part tabulates the results of the other sections of the survey. The 3rd part will publish the comments of the people who filled in the survey. Anyone else wishing to can also send in their comments for consideration to be published. Please send them to : the_nethersphere@yahoo.com.au • Dallas Jones
0 1-2 3-5 More than 5 No answer
198 170 141 223 1
The Complete Eighth Series 74 50th Anniversary Collectors Edition 62 The Day of the Doctor 55 Torchwood (various) 40 The Web of Fear 23 Sarah Jane Adventures (various) 16 The Enemy of the World 12 Deep Breath 7 5 Votes: The Complete Sixth Series, The Tenth Planet, The Moonbase 4 Votes: K9, Spearhead from Space Blu-ray, The Complete Second Series, The Complete First Series, The Complete Fifth Series 3 Votes: The Seeds of Death, Doctor Who The Movie, The Ark in Space: Special Edition, The Complete Specials, An Adventure in Time and Space, The Complete Fourth Series No answer 254 Comments: There were 40 other DVDs that got either 1 or 2 votes. Some people just nominated a story that has not had a single DVD release and they were not counted. 3 people said "All" and 29 said "None".
0 1-2 I subscribe Most Some No answer
447 92 86 43 63 2
0 1-2 I subscribe Most Some No answer
658 31 8 4 25 7
0 1-2 3-10 More than 10 No answer
546 72 46 62 7
The Light at the End 19 Dark Eyes 3 16 Dark Eyes 1 12 Tom Baker at 80 7 Dark Eyes 2 5 Rani Elite 5 Dark Eyes 4 4 3 Votes: Fifth Doctor Boxset, Highest S Masters of Earth, Widows Assassin No answer 488 Comment: There were 29 other aud that got either 1 or 2 votes. 1 pers "All" and 112 people indicated that t not listen or never heard of Big Finish
0 1-2 3-10 More than 10 No answer
478 124 93 29 10
Engines of War 21 12 Doctors 12 Stories13 Silhouette 7 The Stone Rose 5 4 Votes : Blood Cell, How to be a Tim Shada 3 Votes: Beautiful Chaos No answer 508 Comment: 26 other titles got either two votes. 3 people said "All" and 109 said the did not read recent books people nominated non-fiction books.
Science,
dio titles son said they did h.
me Lord,
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0 1-2 3-10 More than 10 No answer
480 177 65 11 0
Doctor Who: The Vault 28 Doctor Who: The Visual Dictionary 11 Who-Ology 9 Doctor Who: The Secret Lives of Monsters 8 The Official Doctor Who Annual 2015 7 Doctor Who: How to be a Time Lord 7 Wit, Wisdom and Timey Wimey Stuff 6 Doctor Who: The Official Quiz Book 5 The Classic Doctor Who DVD Compendium 4 3 Votes: Essential Guide to 50 Years of Doctor Who, Behind the Sofa, JN-T: The Life and Scandalous Times of John Nathan-Turner No answer 488 Comment: 26 other titles got 1 or 2 votes.1 person said 'All' and 94 people indicated that they did not read non-fiction books. Yes No No answer
482 241 10
Clothing Apparel 384 Figures 327 Games 189 Cards 74 Jigsaws 31 None 57 No answer 156 Comments: Too many other suggestions to list, Popular were mugs, posters, jewellery and sonic screwdrivers.
Yes No No answer
340 388 5
Yes No No answer
307 420 6
Yes No No answer
655 71 7
Yes No No answer
183 546 4
Yes No No answer
253 470 10
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333 392 8
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380 345 10
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67 664 2
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75 654 4
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230 497 6
""DOOCTOR WHO"" — AN AM ERCIANN PEERSPECCTIIVVE M I was asked to do a short article on Doctor Who in America. While I am a fan, I am
really not much of an expert on the topic, so please consider this as one fan’s experiences. While there are some Doctor Who conventions in the States, they are probably less common than in other countries, for reasons I’ll discuss later. So I have never attended one. My background is that I am a retired high school principal. I now teach Mathematics part time at a local college to stay out of my wife’s hair and to pay for travels with her. We live in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. Our most recent trip was to your great country and we had a great time visiting. You have a great country and we thank you for your hospitality and friendliness.
A good place to start is to talk about availability. I stress that this is based on my experiences and may not be completely authoritative, particularly given the pace of change in the video industry. Australia and the UK broadcast current episodes of Doctor Who over the air and provide free access after the airing on line. In Canada, episodes are broadcast on a cable / satellite channel (Space) requiring a subscription to a satellite or cable service. Space.ca also provides free downloads after airing. In the US, things are more complicated. Current episodes are broadcast on the BBC-America cable/satellite channel. Thus it requires a paid cable or satellite subscription. Depending on the cable company, there can be additional charges for the channel. On-line downloads are only available to subscribers, and then there are usually restrictions on downloading. Current episodes can also be streamed from Amazon and similar companies, but these are ‘once and done’ rentals. Once you watch an episode, you have to pay again to re-watch it. Less restrictive availability on DVD or streaming becomes available on other subscription services several months later. Curiously, there is a BBC-Canada, but it does not carry current episodes of Doctor Who. In my experience as a fan, this makes a big difference in terms of cultural awareness. In the US, you pretty much have to learn about the show from friends, blogs, and references from articles. Then you have to take steps to find and watch the program. While travelling in Australia, I was able to pick up a $50.00 set up box from Dick Smith to record it on a USB drive and play back later. The up charge on my local cable network to access and record the program for just the current season would be about the same – and that is for just a few months. As a result, being a fan is a major commitment requiring a degree of rugged independence. Despite this, I find that I encounter fans sometimes in the most unexpected places. I teach at a local college and will toss out references to Doctor Who, the Star Trek and Star Wars franchises and find students who get the reference. I teach a course called ‘Mathematics for the Liberal Arts Major’ that really should be titled ‘Math for those who never want to take Math again’. Some students catch references when I include them, and a red haired girl in my class a few years ago had an email address that included the name ‘Amy Pond.’ By contrast, American programs, such as Star Trek and Star Wars are far easier and cheaper to gain access to – often free over to air. (Fun fact: many “American” science fiction shows have heavy Canadian influences, and are often filmed in Canada. Many people are surprised to discover that Kirk (William Shatner) and Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) in Back to the Future were played by Canadian born actors). On this topic, a Canadian series co-produced by Space and BBC-America titled Orphan Black is a suggestion. The way I got hooked on Doctor Who is interesting. I had never really known that much about the program. Our local public broadcasting station (PBS) shows the early series. If I even turned it on, I may have been expecting something similar to Doctor No, the James Bond villain, and then turned it off. I frequently watched Star Trek episodes from the various series with our daughter when she was little. When she graduated from college, she spent a few years in the Japan Exchange and Teaching Program (JET). While there she met people from the U.K. and became hooked. When she came home for Christmas, we began our first binge-watch of Doctor Who beginning with Ninth Doctor. I was hooked. Over the years (she’s now in her thirties) we’ve enjoyed either watching the episodes together or at least comparing notes since she lives about two and a half hours away. It’s become something of a Christmas tradition. In an interesting note, last Christmas we brought her, her boyfriend and another friend with us on a holiday to Iceland and stayed at a place less than a hundred km from the Arctic circle – what a great place to see the Santa Claus Christmas special set in the Arctic. Well, we also saw the Northern Lights while we were there, but obviously watching The Doctor was the highlight of the trip! I hope you find this interesting, if not authoritative. And again, I thank you and all Aussies for your wonderful hospitality on our trip. Maybe our paths will cross again soon.
This time we’ll take a look at getting your kids interested in the Doctor Who universe. BUT FIRST – on a serious note; Doctor Who can be scary, very scary, so be careful not to introduce The Doctor to them when they’re too young – curb your enthusiasm ma & pa. So – pursuant to the theme of ‘propensity for eccentricity’ here are a few things to look out for (apart from their already, obviously, fanatical parents) in your children’s psyche.
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This multi-part article attempts to list alphabetically all the people who are 'Australians' and who have worked in . What I mean by Australian is; people who were born or who have lived in Australia, for a long period of time. The information has been gleaned from many areas, including my own personal knowledge of some of these people, and is as correct as far as I can determine. If you know of any errors, or people I have missed, please contact me so I can add that information in the last part of this article. • Played Tryst in ‘Nightmare of Eden’. Lewis Fiander was born January 12th 1938 in Kew, Melbourne. He grew up in Melbourne and was educated at Trinity Grammar School, Kew. He is the son of Mona Jane (née King) and Walter Lewis Fiander. He got his first acting role at 14 whilst still at school, with the Australian National Theatre Movement in Melbourne, playing Tom in Accolade . At 18 he moved to Sydney and became a full time radio actor. He appeared in the first Australianwritten television play Sub Editors Room for ABCTV. He later joined the Union Theatre Repertory Company for a season of plays in Melbourne, then returned to Sydney to join the Elizabethan Theatre Trust Players, where he had great success in Ah Wilderness! , A Taste of Honey , Moby Dick – Rehearsed, The Glass Menagerie and The Hostage . In 1961, he went to London with the Elizabethan Theatre Trust initially to appear in the play The One Day of the Year, as Hughe. He was then contracted to H.M. Tennent, and later became a founding member of the British National Theatre Company under the direction of Sir Laurence Olivier. In 1970, he originated the role of John Adams in the London stage production of 1 776, a role he reprised in Australia. Other stage appearances in West End musicals included the roles of Lord Melbourne and Disraeli in I and Albert, Coward in Noel and Gertie and Puccini in Cafe Puccini . Lewis has appeared in many classical plays and musicals for the Oxford Playhouse, Birmingham Repertory Theatre Company, Bristol Old Vic, Chichester Festival Theatre & London West End theatres. He performed the role of Thomas Becket on a cast-album of the musical Thomas and The King . His film début was in 1963 in The Password Is Courage . He appeared in such films as I Start
Counting , Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde , Dr. Phibes Rises Again , The Abdication , Who Can Kill a Child?, Not Now, Comrade , Sweeney 2 , The Doctor and the Devils, Georgia and Paperback Romance .
His first major role on television was Mr Darcy in the BBC serialisation of Pride and Prejudice . In 1974, he appeared as Casimir Dudevant playing opposite Rosemary Harris in the BBC series Notorious Woman . He stayed in England for the next twenty years, working in theatre, film and television. He briefly returned to Australia in the early 80s and finally came home for good in the 1990s. In recent years he has been associated in concert performances with the Australian Pops Orchestra, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Melbourne Youth Orchestra, Welsh Male Choir and the Australian Youth Choir. He has appeared in many plays for the Melbourne Theatre Company, Marian Street Theatre Sydney and the Queensland Theatre Company. In 2004 he contributed the voice for airship engineer Kemp in Anthony Lucas's Oscar nominated animation, The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello. He married Claire Loise Curzon-Price. When cast as Professor Tryst he had discussions with his friend Tom Baker and chose to give the character a hybrid accent as would befit an alien in the future. An extensive list of his Australian stage performances can be found here. A YouTube clip of him reading a children’s book can be found here. Played Tegan Jovanka, companion to the Doctor. Janet Claire Mahoney was born on September 9th 1953 in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. She gained A levels in Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics and went to Queensland University, where she graduated with an Arts Degree in Drama. Janet comes from an academic family, she is the daughter of a doctor and her two brothers attended the same university as herself – one graduating with a degree in Medicine and the other with a degree in Dentistry. Her great-great-great grandfather had been transported in 1820 for stealing a horse and 12 years later his daughter was transported for stealing two geese. After leaving university she worked with an English writer / director, Albert Hunt, who in 1977 took her to England in one of his shows. Here she chose Fielding as her stage name, calling herself after her grandmother (who was also an actress). She joined Ken Campbell at the Science Fiction Theatre of Liverpool and appeared in productions including The Warp and The End is Nigh . Following this in October 1980 she made her TV début in the
Hammer House of Horror episode 'Charlie Boy'
credited as Janet Claire Fielding. At this time it was announced she had been cast as, Tegan Jovanka, a companion of the Fourth and Fifth Doctor between 1981 and 1984. According to John Nathan-Turner when he was thinking of a name for the character, it was either going to be Tegan, after his partner's niece in Australia, or Jovanka, after Jovanka Broz, the widow of Yugoslavian President Josip Broz Tito, so he wrote both down on a piece of paper. Script editor Christopher H. Bidmead mistakenly believed that Jovanka was the character's last name rather than an alternative, and so named her Tegan Jovanka. Janet appeared in 11 stories from Logopolis to Resurrection of the Daleks, with a cameo appearance in the conclusion of The Caves of Androzani . In 1985 she appeared as Tegan in Jim'll Fix It in a Doctor Who related sketch, called 'A Fix with Sontarans', alongside Colin Baker's Doctor. A featurette included in the 2010 DVD release of 'Time and the Rani' reveals that she participated in the auditions for the Seventh Doctor, portraying a villain opposite several hopefuls, including Sylvester McCoy. After leaving Doctor Who in 1984 she appeared in Shelley, Minder, Murphy's Mob and Hold the Back Page on television. Her last television appearance was in 1991 in the episode titled 'The Libel' of the mini-series Parnell & the Englishwoman . She also appeared in theatre production of The Collector and the pantomime Aladdin . In 1991 Fielding gave up acting to take up an administrative position with Women in Film and Television UK. While she maintained the position for only three and a half years, she has continued to work with the group since then, managing the Skillset study on successful women in television in 2009. After leaving her position with the group she then became a director of Marina Martin Associates, an actors' agency, representing amongst others Paul McGann and Elaine Collins, wife of Peter Capaldi. Despite distancing herself from Doctor Who for many years and being vocal in her criticisms of the program, Fielding returned to the role of Tegan for the Big Finish Productions audio drama titled The Gathering , released in 2006. She has since appeared in quite a number of other Big Finish audio plays including: Cobwebs, The Whispering Forest,
The Cradle of the Snake, Heroes of Sontar, Kiss of Death, Rat Trap, The Elite, Hexagora, The Children of Seth, The Emerald Tiger, The Jupiter Conjunction, The Butcher of Brisbane, Eldrad Must Die!, The Lady of Mercia, Prisoners of Fate, The Light at the End, Pychodrome, Iterations of I, Mistfall, Equilibrium and The Entropy Plague . Three new
Big Finish audios in which she will appear have been announced they are: The Waters of Amsterdam, Aquitaine and The Peterloo Massacre.
Fielding has also provided audio commentaries for a number of DVD releases. They are: 'Resurrection of the Daleks', 'Logopolis', 'Castrovalva', 'The Visitation', 'Earthshock', 'Time-Flight', 'Warriors of the Deep', 'Black Orchid', 'Arc of Infinity' and 'Four to Doomsday'. She also appeared in DVD extras for 'Frontier in Space' and 'Planet of the Daleks', where she provided critique on the portrayal of female characters in the serials. She provided linking narration for the BBC audiobook of Doctor Who: Warriors of the Deep and she read Smoke and Mirrors, the fifth story in the Destiny of the Doctor audio series, a collaboration between Big Finish and BBC Audio. She has become Project Co-ordinator for Project MotorHouse, a charity based in Ramsgate, UK which aims to regenerate the local West Cliff Hall building into an exciting mixed-use venue. It was at this time in September 2012 she revealed she was fighting cancer. She organised three Doctor Who conventions, called "Project MotorMouth", to help raise funds for Project MotorHouse. Fielding has also worked as the head of finance for the charity One plus One. Although she has avoided fan conventions in the past (she did appear at an event in Sydney put on by the DWCA back in 1984) she has appeared at two conventions in Sydney, one in Brisbane and recently in April 2012 at the Supanova Pop Culture Expo on the Gold Coast. In August 2013, Fielding contributed to the one off special show Doctor Who Live: The Next Doctor in an interview segment with other companions and Doctors and appeared in the 50th anniversary comedy homage The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot. In 1982, Fielding married Daily Mirror foreign editor Nicholas 'Nick' Davies, notable for later allegations of being an arms dealer and Mossad agent. They divorced in 1991. Their wedding coincided with the filming of 'Mawdryn Undead', and a gag publicity portrait at the time showed Fielding in her bridal gown, wearing the make-up used for the scene in which Tegan and Nyssa are aged rapidly by physical contact with Mawdryn.
Was one of the voices of Xoanon in ‘Face of Evil’ Anthony Frieze was born on November 19th 1965 in Australia. His only acting credit was in Doctor Who. He was a pupil at the school where director Pennant Roberts's wife taught at the time. Philip Hinchcliffe arranged for a recording of his voice to be made shouting, "Who am I?", for the climax to episode three. After the initial recording (in a sound studio), Frieze made a second visit to the set and re-recorded the line. He studied Modern History at Balliol College, Oxford and was a contemporary of British Prime Minister David Cameron and cabinet minister Michael Gove. He was president of the Oxford Union for Michaelmas term in 1987. In January 1988 a campus newspaper claimed Gove and Frieze were among a group of five student politicians who ended up in bed together after a ball. However, in an ‘expose’ of this incident in a 2008 Daily Mail story, participant Flora McClean claimed no such thing occurred. He is now a Conservative Party activist, having stood for the Darlington constituency in the 2005 General Election, placing him second to Labour candidate, Alan Milburn, with 26% of the vote. In 2010 Anthony was mistakenly arrested on suspicion of theft in an incident near the Saatchi Gallery in London, but in actual fact he had been caught up in apprehending the real thief who had made off with a woman's laptop and phone. Police arrested both men at the scene, and Anthony spent the night in a police cell until it was ascertained that it was actually Teejay Moore who was guilty of the crime. He is currently a partner in the new London-based communications agency, Pagefield, where he leads the financial service practice. Immediately before Pagefield, he joined the Conservative Party’s implementation unit advising the Shadow Secretary of State for Education. Played Professor Zaroff in 'The Underwater Menace'. Joseph Fürst was born on February 13th 1916 in Vienna, Austria. He was an international film and television actor, who was lean and distinguished-looking, latterly white-haired and with distinctive dark eyebrows. He was known for his English language roles in Britain and Australia. Though he initially studied law in Vienna, Fürst became interested in acting and was given his first opportunities on stage and TV in Canada. His first television appearance was in seven episodes of the Canadian TV series Encounter from 1953 to 1955. In 1959 he moved to England in search of better job prospects; he immediately got a role in an episode, titled 'Echo from Afar', of the TV series BBC
Sunday-Night Theatre . He eventually found his
niche in British films and on television and is best remembered on screen for playing suave, villainous scientists, invariably of Eastern European, Germanic or Italian ethnicity. Arguably, as to the most prominent among those, look no further than his laser refraction specialist, Professor Dr. Metz, in the James Bond classic Diamonds Are Forever. Fürst occasionally returned to his native Austria for theatrical appearances in Vienna and Salzburg. He regularly featured in UK television drama series of the 1960s and early 1970s with appearances in Counter-Attack , The Saint, The Champions, Doomwatch and The Persuaders! . He also played the role of Schneider in the Armchair Theatre play 'A Magnum for Schneider', which launched Edward Woodward as the character of Callan. He later appeared in an episode of Callan . His notable film appearances included 55 Days at Peking , Exodus, The Brides of Fu Manchu , Inn of the Damned and Diamonds Are Forever. He immigrated to Australia in 1973 and acted in many guest roles on Australian television drama series. His roles included several appearances in the top-rated police drama Division 4 produced by Crawford Productions in the 1970s. He played an ongoing role in soap opera Number 96 in 1976 as deli owner Carlo Lenzi who romanced Norma Whittaker. He also played Heinrik Smeaton in The Young Doctors in 1979 and appeared in Kingswood Country. He starred in four episodes of A Country Practice in the early 1980s and appeared in The Dunera Boys. His last TV appearance was in 1986 in the TV mini-series series Tusitala , about Robert Louis Stevenson’s time in Samoa. He played Von Pilsach, president of the municipal council of Apia. He ultimately retired to Bateau Bay, New South Wales where he died on November 29 2005. Joseph was interviewed by Dwayne Bunney and Dallas Jones for Loose Cannon , shortly before his death, about his career. It appeared as an extra feature for the reconstruction of the missing episodes of the Doctor Who story 'The Underwater Menace'.
Played Ortron in 'The Monster of Peladon' Frank Gatliff was born on December 31st 1927 in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
He was an actor, known for The Ipcress File , Agatha Christie's Miss Marple: Nemesis and Hark at Barker. He began work on Australian television in 1958. His first appearance was in the TV Movie Captain Carvallo for the ABC. He went on to do 10 more TV movies mainly for the ABC and also appeared in the TV series Emergency for GTV 9, before leaving for the UK in 1960. His last role in Australia was an uncredited appearance in movie On the Beach as a Radio Officer. His first role in the UK was in Armchair Mystery Theatre in the episode 'False Witness' as Det Inspector Gale. He appeared in numerous British TV series including Gideon's Way, The Baron , Danger Man , The Avengers, Department S, Strange Report, The Persuaders! , Rising Damp, The Good Life , The Onedin Line , Blake's 7 and Minder. His last TV work was as a regular from 1986 to 1989 in the Thames series C.A.B. as Mr Hellman. His final appearance on TV was after he died, when he appeared in the Frankie Howard comedy series Then Churchill Said to Me which was not screened until 1993 even though it was made in 1982! It did not go to air due to the Falklands War as it made fun of the British Army. He died on June 23rd, 1990 in London, England. Played Kari in 'Terminus' Liza Goddard was born on January 20th, 1950 in Smethwick, Sandwell, England as Louise E Goddard. She is known for her appearances in such TV series as Woof! , Bergerac, Skippy and Take Three Girls. She is the daughter of British producer David Goddard and attended Farnham Girls' Grammar School. She worked at Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, in Surrey during her school holidays. At 13, she begged her parents to let her go to the Arts Educational School. Her father moved the family to Australia when she was 15 upon his appointment as Head of Drama at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. She made early television appearances in Australia, including episode 100 of Homicide and the ABC drama play Romanoff & Juliet and a brief (nonspeaking, uncredited) appearance in the feature
film They're A Weird Mob . However, she is best remembered in Australia for her role as Clarissa 'Clancy' Merrick in Skippy the Bush Kangaroo in which she appeared in 48 episodes of the first two series. After returning to the UK in 1969 she was cast as Victoria Edgecombe in Take Three Girls and then its sequel Take Three Women . She had a supporting role in the 1972 movie Ooh… You Are Awful. Other TV series she appeared in include Minder, Yes Honestly, Watch This Space , Pig in the Middle , The Adventure Game , Woof! , (a Children's ITV programme created by her husband), That's Love , Give Us A Clue , Bergerac and Midsommer Murders. In 2013 she toured with the official Agatha Christie Theatre Company in Go Back for Murder, an adaptation of the book Five Little Pigs. She has been married to David Cobham since January 1995. She was previously married to Alvin Stardust (real name Bernard Jewry) from December 1st 1981 to 1989 when they divorced; she had one child, Sophie Jewry, from that marriage. Whilst pregnant in 1976, she joined the hit TV show The Brothers, and soon after her son Thom, now a film and television producer, was born. At this time she fell in love with one of its stars, Colin Baker. They married within months and somehow the story got out that he was Thom’s father. Liza said: “It was easy for Colin to go along with the pretence. I think I was desperate for a father for Thom and Colin fitted the bill, but I think my mind was unbalanced, having just given birth. We were great friends but should never have married. We moved to the country and I wore tweeds, but it was just a role I was playing. I leapt into the marriage and then I leapt out.” They divorced in 1978. She successfully sued a national British newspaper which printed a story alleging (untruthfully) that she and John Nettles were having an affair, because their characters Jim Bergerac and Philippa Vale in Bergerac were romantically linked. Goddard currently lives near Dereham, Norfolk, with her husband and a home full of rescued animals. Goddard also works with the RSPCA amongst other charities. Goddard suffered and recovered from breast cancer in 1997 and later had to have a mastectomy. She has three grandchildren. In 2011 Apex published her autobiography - Working With Children And Animals. To find out more go to her website here.
He composed the theme music for the show. Ron Grainer was born on August 11th 1922 at Atherton, Queensland as Ronald Erle 'Ron' Grainer. He was the first child of Margaret Clark, an amateur pianist, and Ronald Albert Grainer, who owned the local milk bar and was postmaster. He was on the keyboard from the age of two and considered a child genius, playing concerts for the local community by the age of six. He also showed the first sign of his versatility at the tender age of four when he began to learn the violin, practising for two hours before and after school. In order to develop this talent further, he also studied the piano to such a level that, by his early teens he was a proficient performer on both instruments. During these years he was an excellent scholar and Maths was his special subject, which helped enormously in his orchestrations later on. He studied music under Sir Eugene Goosens at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, but this was interrupted by World War II. He was called up to serve in the army and it was out in the field that a barrel crashed against his leg. He was unconscious for several days before he was given medical treatment, by then ostiomialitus had entered his bone marrow. They wanted to amputate but he couldn't have survived the anaesthetic, so he did not lose his leg but was in and out of hospital for years and received an army disability pension. He returned to the Sydney Conservatorium but he gave up the violin to concentrate on composition. During this time he rented a room from Margot, who became his wife. She had her daughter living
with her who had an aversion to meat and so she and Ron bonded as Ron had become total vegetarian during his treatment. The couple decided to move to England, as a means of raising his international profile. However, on arriving in 1952, with Margot, he initially found regular work as a pianist in light entertainment, touring as part of a musical act – 'The Alien Brothers & June' - with other acts such as Billy Daniels, Guy Mitchell, Frankie Laine, Al Martino and Billy Eckstine. Playing in such exalted company, he was rewarded with no less than three appearances at the London Palladium and also gained something of a reputation as a piano accompanist, often helping out at charity shows organised by Record & Show Mirror proprietor, Isodore Green, the brother of the well-known jazz critic, Benny Green. During this period, Grainer made his first recordings, albeit as an accompanist, backing Irish folksingers Charlie McGhee and Patrick O'Hagan, and was also heard on a Christmas record by Shari. He became fascinated with the sound produced by the antique instruments he had started to collect, and soon developed this interest by writing works for some of them. The virginal, the heckle-phones, the shaums, the tenor comporium, as well as the more modern ondes martinet were amongst those he successfully tackled, and one of these early works was an ambitious jazz-ballet score. After Grainer had divorced Margot, and married his second wife, Jennifer, he settled in Roehampton. He began to act regularly as musical adviser to many gala programmes produced by Associated Rediffusion TV, including those featuring Tito Gobbi and Maria Callas. His 'bread-and-butter' work, however, still lay as a pianist and he was much in demand at the BBC TV rehearsal rooms, which eventually opened a number of important musical doors for him. From this vantage point he was asked to write music for a number of television plays, including The Birthday Party, and also accepted the job as musical adviser to a Julie Andrews series. He made such a strong impression on executive producer Andrew Osborn, that he was commissioned to write both the theme and incidental music for a new detective series – Maigret – based on the books written by Georges Simenon. In using harpsichord, banjo and clavichord, Grainer perfectly captured the Gallic atmosphere and, in doing so, contributed enormously to the ultimate success of the series. This proved to be a major landmark in Grainer's own career. His work on Maigret, which began in 1960 with Rupert Davies in the title role, was directly responsible for him securing his first recording deal with Warner Bros., who issued both a single and e.p. featuring musical extracts from the BBC series. Band-leader Joe Loss also recorded the theme and perhaps surprisingly it was his single which reached number 20 in the charts. Commissions from a wide range of genres poured in: Goon Show silliness ( It's a Square World), oneoff pilots ( Comedy Playhouse ), documentaries ( Terminus), kitchen sink drama ( A Kind of Loving ), quirky domestic sitcoms ( Steptoe and Son ), teen flicks ( Some People ), late night satire (That Was The Week That Was), outpost angst ( Station Six
Sahara ), ballet ( The Kings Breakfast), science fiction ( Doctor Who), psycho killers ( Night Must Fall), children's adventure stories ( The Moon Spinners), patriotic biography ( The Finest Hours), big-budget musicals ( Robert and Elizabeth ), unusual love stories ( Boy Meets Girl), acclaimed dramas (To Sir, With Love ), paranoid escapism ( The Prisoner) and crimecaper movies ( Only When I Larf). Grainer also
worked with the instrumental group The Eagles who recorded a number of his themes. Most of these projects required considerable research, group discussion and creative team effort. These are only a small sample of the works completed by Grainer from 1960 to 1968. He once indicated he felt a “trifle wistful” that so many people just associated him with the Doctor Who theme, the only tune in his extensive portfolio that had its sound dynamics realised by someone else – Delia Derbyshire of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. The time-consuming work commitments eventually contributed to the breakdown of Grainer's relationship with his wife; he and Margot divorced in 1966. Later that year, he married Jennifer Dodds, a member of the cast of Robert and Elizabeth . Their son Damian was born shortly afterwards. In September 1968, tired of London traffic jams and worried about his intensifying eyesight problems, Grainer moved permanently to his former retreat property in southern Portugal. He and Jenny started a farm growing organic fruit and vegetables, undertaking the planting and maintaining of 1,000 peach trees. From 1969 to 1975, Grainer composed themes and soundtracks for an average of around one TV series and one film each year. In April 1974 the Carnation Revolution had prompted Grainer and his family to leave Portugal and return to England until the political climate cleared. Damian went first to boarding and then to day school. Grainer was being offered work again so he set up house in Brighton. In 1976 he and Jenny went through an amicable divorce as she had gone back to Portugal while he decided to stay permanently in London. Over the next five years Grainer had a second round of creativity, achieving respect with the Emmy and Bafta award winning miniseries Edward & Mrs Simpson and the well-received scores for Tales of the Unexpected and Rebecca . 'Skin' an episode of Tales of the Unexpected with the theme of exploitation of the socially vulnerable and a poignant Grainer soundtrack, won the 1980 Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Television Episode. He died of cancer on 21 February 1981 in Cuckfield, Sussex, England, UK He twice won the Ivor Novello Award Outstanding Composition for Film, TV or Radio firstly in 1961 for Maigret and then in 1962 for Steptoe and Son . He was nominated for the music of three TV shows, Flickers, Shelley and Tales of the Unexpected in 1981 for the Bafta for Best Television Music. He was nominated for a Grammy for Best Original Score Written for a Motion Picture or Television Show in 1968 for his work with Don Black and Mark London on To Sir, With Love .
Played a Xeron in ‘The Space Museum’. He later had an uncredited role as a tavern customer in 'The Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Eve’. His one other TV appearance was in an episode of the ITV TV series No Hiding Place called ‘The Grass’ where he played Dusty. He retired to Tasmania and it appears that his mother appeared in Doctor Who during William Hartnell's time as the Doctor. Played Lycett in ‘The Ark in Space’. John Gregg was born in 1940 in Tasmania Australia. He graduated from NIDA and joined Equity in 1961. He has worked continuously since then in theatre, television and radio both in Australia and the UK. He was elected to the board of the Actors Benevolent Fund NSW in 2008. He has a wife and three children. His first work was in 1964 in a short film From the Tropics to the Snow. He appeared in such Australian TV series as Wandjina , Adventures of the Seaspray, Contrabandits, Hunter and Delta . By 1971 he had moved to the UK where his first role was in an episode of Paul Temple . He appeared in such UK series as Doomwatch , Special Branch , The Glittering Prizes, Shoestring and Gentle Touch . His last role in the UK was in an episode of ITV Playhouse titled ‘Out of Sight, Out of Mind’. He also performed for a year for the National Theatre Company under the direction of Laurence Olivier He returned to Australia permanently in 1981, where his career blossomed appearing in such series as Bodyline , Captain James Cook , as Banks, Medivac, Heartbreak High , two stints in Home and Away, Rake and recently in Old School . To see a little of him in action go here.
INSIDE BY ROBERT SMITH? INTRODUCTION
The Outside In series consists of 2 books covering Classic and New Who reviews, but with a twist. Well, technically a gimmick and a twist. The gimmick is that, in each volume, there is precisely one reviewer per story. So, in the first volume, there were 160 writers covering 160 Classic Doctor Who stories (including 'Shada'). In the second (recently out from ATB Publishing), that meant 125 writers for 125 New Who stories. How did we get to 125? We counted pretty much everything! So if it had a title and a narrative, then it was included. Which meant everything from 'Space / Time' to 'Rain Gods' to 'Time Crash' to 'Music of the Spheres'. Not to mention all the televised stories of course. However, while a logistical triumph / headache / nightmare (delete as appropriate), the gimmick is simply that: a way to anchor the collection – making it, incidentally the most diverse professionally published Doctor Who collection in existence – meaning that there are multiple styles. Much like Doctor Who itself, if you don’t like this week’s offering, something else will be along
shortly. The twist though, is rather more delicious. The first volume was created as a reaction to so many reviews of Classic Who stories saying the same old things. So the aim with that one was to say something different. Which, in a way, wasn’t that hard. Doctor Who, like the weather, is endlessly discussable. So pulling out a new perspective on, say, 'The Seeds of Doom', wasn’t all that hard. One of the best things I discovered along the way was just how different some people could be. I was envisioning new insights and clever arguments, but some authors took 'different' to mean precisely that. So they played with the format, giving us a menu, insurance claims and a review of the Quarks as though they were a new iPhone. I loved this. It took my central idea and made it sing. With the second volume, this was a bit more of a challenge. Many of the later stories were only just out, so fan reaction hadn’t gelled into knowing which were the default classics and which were the stinkers. So instead, I decided that the remit this time around was to say something interesting. As a result, I pushed for the variations in format even more. So now we have musical numbers, poems, a choose-your-own-adventure, songs (complete with sheet music), letters to the Daily Mail, you name it. As editor, my job was to a) recruit writers b) make sure they were able to truly say something interesting and c) make each article be the best version of that article that it could be. You’ll have to judge how well I succeeded, although I will note that the early reviews have been uniformly positive. Outside In 2 is not only the book I’m most proud of, it’s (so far) the best-received as well. And that includes one endorsed by Neil Gaiman. To give you some insight into how the editing process works, I’m going to present some 'DVD extras': pieces that were cut or significantly altered, as well as two new reviews. The collection runs up to 'Last Christmas', so we decided to give you two entries for the two prequels to Series 9. Here are the four pieces that didn’t make it, for various reasons. All of the original writers have given their blessing for their piece to be reused here. I’m extremely grateful for that, because it’s not always easy to let the joins show. But one of the sheer joys of doing an Outside In is working with all the different writers, who are invariably lovely, gracious and professional individuals. I’m still astonished at how generous they can be, both with their time and money. (All writers, along with the designer and your humble editor, donated their fees to the HIV/AIDS charity Avert. A percentage of each book sale goes there as well. Check it out at avert.org if you want to make a donation.) This is fandom at its best.
FATHER'S DAY – STORY 7
First up is a piece that was submitted for 'Father’s Day'. I really liked this piece and likely would have used it, had external factors not got in the way. As first drafts go, I think it’s excellent. .
Old Glory
by Michael S. Collins Beware the Doctor. Hidden in the ruins of the old. He destroys. (Film blurb) .
A series of letters on a recent blockbuster film, made public by a disgruntled source
Dear Sirs,
***
I hear you are planning to construct a film out of
the catastrophe surrounding the Doctor. I presume it transpired so long ago as to have acquired a mythical essence.
Dear Professor, As my final response to you,
I’ve caught a glimpse of the studio advertisement: “Eight young soldiers, on their concluding assignment before decommissioning, are delegated to a listless, blue planet in an undisturbed section of time. A simple disinfection routine goes wildly wrong when, one by one, they are picked off by a disturbed individual who seems to walk through time itself.”
1. They fought back, didn’t they? These humans. Doesn’t sound too peaceful to me. Pockets of those infected resisted all across the affected time zone. Our brave boys have sterilised time issues for centuries, and this is notably the only time we have suffered losses.
I spoke to the widow of the sole survivor of this atrocity decades ago, when she was nearly eighty. She still felt her loss, and the loss of seven other families, as keenly then as in the days right after the tragedy. We have a cenotaph to our fallen comrades in the city centre square to mark the loss, and every year I am there to remember them, so to make a film out of this devastation feels a degradation of this disaster.
3. The sole survivor mentioned this in his ramblings too. I took it to be the sign of a diseased mind. I mean, the idea of this all-powerful Doctor needing an equally powerful aide alongside him doesn’t feel realistic to my mind. I am aware also that the sole survivor suggested this female aide was linked in some way to the older man, who committed selfsacrifice in the Doctor’s final destruction of time itself. Audiences like a good bit of sacrifice, so we may use this scene. However, we will have to give it over to one of our own fallen – seemingly, noble gestures among villains are not cinema friendly.
Yours, Professor A.J.H. Academy for Reaping Dear Professor A.J.H.,
***
As director of this documentary, please let me assure you that I understand your feelings acutely. The horror of our communal loss remains potent, even with the passing century. I want this to be an accurate portrayal of what happened that day, without shirking on the details. As a result, I have sent you the draft script to have a look over. Best, Sgt. 4561 Dear Sirs,
***
I have read over the script for this film, and wish to make the following corrections, based on the testimonies of the widow. As you know, her husband didn’t live too long after the event, and his mind was broken, but he did speak something of what he saw. 1. The dwellers of the planet in question seemed to be comparatively peaceful. They ran away a lot, but their weaponry was too elementary. The scene in which a human shoots and injures one of our men is therefore unrealistic. 2. The Doctor arrived in a blue box, not a red one. 3. His companion was female, not male. Some tribes use female soldiers. 4. Whilst the Doctor using a cave makes sense, logistically, I’m afraid the truth is far more sinister. As a base of attack, the Doctor and his team took refuge in what appears to have been a religious institution. Under the Sontar Convention, use of religion as a pretext for attack is illegal. This was not a case of our boys undone by a trick, but actually a war crime. 5. You seem to be playing events as a horror movie. Certainly, they were horrific, as any war event is, but to treat it as titillation is, to my mind, a dereliction of duty. Yours The Professor
***
2. Fair enough.
4. A church in which the Commander of the division was murdered trailing the Doctor’s team. I’m afraid this scene was axed by the censors. It was deemed to make the Doctor too unrealistically villainous. Also, it involved showing our own boys trying to break into the church, which would cause too many moral questions for our audiences. 5. Time itself was collapsing inwards. I find it hard to think of anything more frightful! One by one, every single one of our boys was forced to travel backwards through the time vortex without preparation or protection. That even one survived that is a miracle itself. The film will be released in six months’ time. We are weeks behind schedule and on a strict military timetable. As such, I shall be unable to respond to any further correspondences. However, I am sure the studio would be able to give you a free ticket to the Premiere. Best wishes Sgt 4561 .
.
“Father’s Day” (named after the Day of Remembrance held each year for the squadron) was released on schedule. Critics praised its gritty, unflinching qualities, and the director’s braveness in leaving the Doctor mostly in the shadows so audiences never quite saw him fully. It is unrecorded if Professor A.J.H. saw the film.
Here were my notes back to Michael: • I think there needs to be a bit more here. It took me two reads (with several hours in between) to get what you were doing... but most people will only read it once, of course. • Specifically, I think you need to beef up the professor’s part a bit. As a professor myself :-) we don’t talk like that. We ramble, making long and torturous asides that delve into our own research. He needs to do that here (where his own research can make more points about the episode). E.g. he wouldn’t just mention the Doctor outright, he’d have a lengthy preamble about his theories surrounding this time-active being. • I like the 5 points that get answered, but I think there could be a couple more. If this is from the point of view of time-active creatures, maybe they could be concerned with things like two Rose’s coexisting. • Also, some humour would be very welcome. What about the fact that the Doctor says the reapers attack older things last, but then avoid the bride to attack the much older vicar? We could maybe see this issue from their point of view. • I like the blurb, but maybe give it more substance. Perhaps a whole movie poster or voice-over? (e.g. “If you only see one time-distortion disinfection movie this summer...”) Then end with the blurb (which I want to stress is really good, but I think it’s a punchline, not an opening). • I also need a one-line bio of you. It can be descriptive, funny or related to your piece. • Anyway, the above are all suggestions, not hard and fast rules... but I do think there needs to be more there. Unfortunately, Michael had some health problems that prevented him getting to the revisions. And someone else had requested 'Father’s Day' in the meantime... although that person couldn’t do it either. Fortunately, Thomas Cookson sent me a review of it for The Doctor Who Ratings Guide (a review website I host at: pagefillers.com/dwrg) around the same time, which proved to be perfect. I was particularly interested in including some well-thought-out criticisms of the New Series at some point, so that the book wasn’t simply a love fest. Thomas had an interesting take on that, while nevertheless loving the story, so that worked out in the end. I gave all the authors of rejected pieces right of reply for this article. Michael had this to say about his experience: Coming up with an idea for Outside In was quite in-
triguing. 'Father's Day' arrived early, and the concept of telling it akin to the letters that start M.R. James’ Casting the Runes appealed greatly. As you can see from the extract above, the idea works (well, I would say that!), but the execution needed some fine tuning. A natural occurrence in these matters, but, alas, timing is everything in writing. Yours truly managed to combine the editing process with becoming a father for the first time (a wonderful but knackering experience), and tempus fugit led to the project becoming unfulfilled.
DEATH IS THE ONLY ANSWER – STORY 84
Next up is a piece for 'Death is the Only Answer', a short mini-episode written by schoolchildren. I was a bit reluctant to include all these bits and bobs at first, but eventually decided that there was actually a lot of potential to be mined there. (Mainly for jokes, but that was fine.) I’d held a number of good writers (primarily drawn from contributors to the Canadian fanzine Enlightenment, as I knew they could work fast) in reserve in case other pieces hadn’t worked out... but a lot of those pieces did actually work out, so most of my backup writers ended up writing for minisodes. And they usually brought something quite special, so now I’m really proud of including all the bits and bobs!
Kenyon Wallace is a reporter by day, so he writes very differently to anyone else in the collection. Specifically, he doesn’t mind at all what he writes about and instead asks me to pick a theme and then he’ll do whatever his assignment is. Which makes sense, but it’s quite odd from my position. Back in Outside In 1 , I decided I wanted a piece on music, so he wrote about that for 'Full Circle'. This time around was more of a struggle. I tried to push Kenyon out of his comfort zone and get him to come up with the idea himself. So this is what he came up with.
Time Machine Construction Log
by Albert Einstein (as told by Kenyon Wallace)
.
September 18, 1945 Weather: Light precipitation, regular planetary axial tilt Timeflow velocity: normal I am so beyond words at the moment, I hardly know how to express the strange and wonderful occurrences of today. In short, the task on which I have spent the last 20 years of my life toiling away has finally borne fruit, albeit in a most unexpected way. It all begins with my most mysterious of friends, he of the everchanging face, the blue box, the enigma known only as the Doctor. I began my work today by attempting to perfect the mixture of time ions and particle accelerators, I call it my Bionic Fusion Liquid, a great name there if I do say so myself!, for preparation to be poured into the bicarbonated processing machine. This mixture, when processed, is essentially the fuel on which my time machine will run. I was just about to pour the liquid into the processor when, lo and behold, there sitting on the inner plane of the time 'rotor' mechanism, was my old fez! I thought it was gone for good when I lost it during that business with the Doctor and the Daleks a few years ago (he still hasn't given me back my toothbrush!). But there it sat, so, naturally, I reached in to grab it when, whoosh, the air seemed to shimmer and bend for a second, and I found myself standing in the Doctor's time ship! Somehow, during the 'trip', the fez had replaced itself upon my noggin! As I took in the surroundings of the new console room, the Doctor always seems to be redecorating, the man himself turned to face me, albeit a much younger version! I really must ask him sometime how he does it. There are so many areas of science and physics I have yet to tackle! Anyway, the Doctor explained, rather simplistically so if I say so, that I was transported to his ship via a time window created by the fez. Turns out the Doctor can be a little clumsy sometimes, and he accidentally knocked a lever that sent the old piece of headgear back to me, leaving a time trail leading back to the TARDIS. When I made physical contact with the fez, it returned itself from whence it came and, voila, brought me along for the ride! The Doctor must be able to read my mind because just as I started thinking about how I would borrow his TARDIS for, oh, just a little while, he warned me not to even go there. It suddenly dawned on me that if I were able to travel through time through a window created by a link between two objects over the time continuum, my Bionic Fusion Liquid perhaps wasn't the best way to engage in time travel, let alone a good way to market the stuf f. I
insisted that I carry out the tests on the liquid myself to see just what I had created. For a time ship from the future, I must say the equipment the Doctor had on board could hardly be categorized as futuristic! He never did answer my question about where he kept my other bicarbonated processing machine onboard! I was then seized with the most obvious answer to my questions about how I alone could time travel. If the liquid was calibrated properly, then infusing those ions and particles into my own body would surely allow me to disperse my physical being through the timestream. The theory seems so simple in retrospect! The thing to do would be to simply drink the liquid and see where I ended up. Instead, what occurred opened my mind to the endless seas of emotion, music and energy throughout the universe. Suddenly the thoughts of hundreds of thousands of beings from across the universe flooded my mind, music pulsated in my now pindropsensitive ears. I found I could express my thoughts as speech through a white glowing orb attached to my cranium. It was a most enlightening experience. But then, as my brain became the vessel for an increasing level of emotion and thought, I felt me, my real self, start to slip away. I was becoming one with the universe to the point where there was no individual, no person. Something inside of me urged me to stop this universal absorption and I blurted out the only thing I could think of that would stop it all, death. "Death is the only answer" I told the Doctor, hoping he would understand that individuality is the mother of invention. It seems he was able to parse my meaning and immediately created some kind of forcefield around me that isolated my mind from the beautiful chaos of the universe. Without the infinite stimulation, whatever being I had become could not function. As the creature poured out of me and away from me, I felt my old self returning, the isolated thoughts, the ones we never share with even the dark. I took a step forward and found myself back in the control room of the TARDIS, the Doctor smiling at me and complimenting me on my hair! If only Elsa could see me now! The Doctor described my temporary transformation as ood, not odd, and I thought that odd, but perhaps it was just his pronunciation or my slowly fading hearing, now there's a new project, how to stop the old drums from ringing! Still reeling from my exposure to the energy of the cosmos, I asked the Doctor to kindly take me home. So here I sit back in the lab ruminating over my extraordinary day, a day for celebration. I say that because I now know that the time 'rotor', stole that term from the Doctor, was able to propel me through time when the fez created the window to the TARDIS. My time machine, at least in partial practice, works! Proof that time can be traversed, light can be bent, gravity can be curved, harvested and used to propel oneself through history! But, perhaps most importantly, stories can be told. .
Kenyon Wallace is a reporter for the Toronto Star. He once wrote a story on a mathematical model of zombies that just happened to use the editor of this volume as its focus. So now it’s payback time.
I was initially quite happy with this and accepted it as is. However, Anthony Wilson, my proofreader, had issues with it. Here’s what he had to say:
"Reading this, I am reminded of Lance Parkin commenting that the review of 'Arc of Infinity' in About Time felt like it was longer than the novelisation. Not entirely fair, but this review almost fits that bill! Not that I have any problem with that. Also musing on such things, I note that, whilst my memory of, say, 'The Seeds of Doom', which I’ve only seen twice, and the most recent time about 4 years ago, is flawless, I can’t remember what happened in 'Death is the only Answer' at all. I may have to watch it on YouTube before I can decide quite whether this review is committing that sin of simply being a rehash of the episode as told from the point of view of one of the characters that I so clearly dislike. However, I fear that it is. In which case, I ask the following question (and, actually, I ask this anyway, even if it wasn’t a complete rehash): why, with so very many things that could be discussed here – Einstein in the TARDIS, the ludicrous (and very poor) use of the man and the idea, the fact that this was actually written by children in the ultimate fan-boy dream (and that this one won) and that’s just scratching the surface – would you write a ‘review’ that discussed nothing of the episode whatsoever? Odd. Or Ood. Whatever. 24 hours later… OK, watched it. It’s crap. Which, of course, isn’t the point right now. Where there’s more of a problem is that the events in the episode don’t actually match the review. Not only is it a retelling of the episode, it’s an inaccurate retelling of the episode! Specifically, the fez does not just appear in Einstein’s time machine, but the whole machine starts shaking and juddering, which is not mentioned. Similarly, the Doctor, being the Doctor, doesn’t mention that he hit the lever accidentally, so Einstein would not know that (or at the very least, should state that he has deduced the fact from the Doctor’s obvious excuses). Most importantly, he doesn’t drink the liquid; instead it splatters onto his face and causes his (admittedly utterly inexplicable) change into an Ood. While we’re here, I have no idea what the sentence ‘“Death is the only answer,” I told the Doctor, hoping he would understand that individuality is the mother of invention’ actually means (a fault with the episode which could be brought out in the review but, instead, is actually compounded). And the characterisation of Einstein between the mini-episode and the review are way out. OK, as you might expect, I’m not a huge fan of this one. Somewhere deep inside it, I have a suspicion that it’s been designed to make you realise (should you need to have this prompt) that the whole thing was completely ludicrous and nonsensical, even within the grand tradition of ludicrous and nonsensical within Who. There are no explanations and, to be honest, not even the slightest nod towards the laws of cause and effect and I think the review might, just might, be trying to make that point. But not in any way clearly enough – having the diary entry written as though Einstein is utterly confused by what happened might be closer, and having him actually examine the ridiculous nature of what happened, might be more powerful. As it is, we get an Einstein who is, if possible, more stupid than the one we get in the episode, relating what happened inaccurately
(and for a scientist, there is no excuse for that whatsoever) and not actually drawing any conclusions whatsoever. In short, I don’t see what this review is trying to achieve and I’m certain that, if there was an intent hidden in there, it hasn’t achieved it. I’d get a rewrite on this one. That said, I quite like the last line. " .
Now back with me, Robert: Because I’m dealing with so many essays of so many different styles, I give Anthony veto power over all of them, my own included. (He cancelled 14 pieces from the original Outside In – and quite rightly too, as it turned out.) Anthony has very sharp instincts for what works and what doesn’t and should probably have been credited as co-editor on these volumes! I can’t praise him enough. We have a book in the works that’s coming out from ATB Publishing in a while, so you’ll get to read more of his writing in due course. But still... Anthony Had Spoken, so that was the end of Kenyon’s original piece. However, as I knew Kenyon could write, I sent it back to him for a rethink. Kenyon graciously took this on board, adding ‘I thought I had represented what was on screen, but I guess I need to watch it again. In the paragraph where I describe Einstein’s mind suddenly absorbing the “thoughts of hundreds of thousands of beings,” it was my attempt to describe his transformation into an Ood, without actually saying “I turned into an Ood.”’ I’d actually run into Kenyon the weekend before, where he’d talked about how tough an episode it was to get a handle on, so I think he was quite receptive to this feedback. We tossed around some ideas, this time coming from me. I suggested looking at the science (and lack thereof), which I thought would be a research-heavy piece. But then Kenyon had an utterly brilliant idea and decided to do it as a journalist (which was his day job) interviewing Einstein about the science. This was the lotion in the basket. Suddenly, it all flowed: the jokes were glorious, the format worked and the only tweak I made was to make Kenyon a slightly more aggressive interviewer than he clearly was by day. I should also note that, in the time since Kenyon wrote his bio, I published an academic article that cited his Toronto Star interview with me. So we seem to be on a bit of a professional back and forth about this. In the spirit of which, I decided to grill Kenyon about his writing process by interviewing HIM for a change... What were your intentions when writing the original piece? How did you come up with the original idea?
To be honest, I thought this 'adventure' was little more than a silly indulgence meant to appeal to the very young, and one that made almost no sense. As such, I found it difficult to find an angle from which to approach. I realize now that my mistake was approaching this story from a serious, critical viewpoint. I thought that an interesting way to do this would be to look at the story from Einstein's point of view simply because there weren't really any plot points, moral lessons or unique stylistic elements to hinge a review on. The total lack of any coherent message in the adventure made it difficult to find something worthy to write about. Given time and distance from it, do you think the original piece still has merit?
I do, actually. If the reader can get over the serious tone, the earnestness and the quiet desperation to find something worth reviewing, I think the piece captured what might have been going through Einstein's mind in a passable way. Again, this was me scrounging for something redeeming in the adventure to write about, and, given that there's really not much redeeming in the
adventure, I don't think my attempt at a review is too terrible. How did it feel to get the rejection email?
Fine. I'm used to criticism from editors and actually welcome the opinions of others. It can only help to make the piece better. What was actually more disheartening was knowing that I had to wrack my brain again to find another approach. What's it like to pick yourself up and rewrite the entire thing from scratch? Is that what you do in your day job or is it a completely different process?
I was actually grateful for another kick at the can. I had put so much time into thinking about how to write the first version that I was hoping it wasn't all for naught. Once I realized that the best approach would be to look at the story in a less serious, more playful way, writing the second version was much less arduous. The downside was that it forced me to watch the story a few more times. In my day job, when you have completed most of the reporting and you are sitting down to write, you usually have a sense of what the story is and how you are going to construct it. In my experience, you don't normally have to rewrite a news story from scratch, unless the news changes. Editing plays a big role in my job, so rewriting sentences and re-ordering paragraphs are par for the course. Do you think the revision process was ultimately successful?
I will leave others to make that judgement.
Would you write for Outside In again?
For that tyrant of an editor Robert Smith?!?!?!? You've got to be kidding. Just joking. Of course. .
THE ANGELS TAKE MANHATTAN – STORY 94
The third piece that didn’t make it was by Jason A. Miller, who’s one of my favourite writers. Jason has an ability to take something personal and make it interesting, which is a skill that many people think they have, but few actually do. He’s a proud New Yorker, so when he signed up for 'The Angels Take Manhattan' – which had aired only a few weeks earlier – it seemed like the perfect fit. This was actually the third submission for the book I received... which gave it the dubious distinction of being the first to be rejected. But not for the reasons you might expect.
He Doesn't Like Endings by Jason A. Miller
I hate endings. But I was prepared to make an exception for 'The Angels Take Manhattan'. I'm in love with my co-worker. We'll call her Liz (as in “Sladen”). Not the romantic, New Series 'love', but the desperately platonic Classic Series sense where you just want to have wacky co-ed adventures all day. I've known “Liz” for four years. I trained her when she joined my old law firm, and then, when she left to take a much better job, she took me with her. She was the Sarah Jane to my Fourth Doctor, the Amy Pond to my Eleventh. Then she announced that she'd been transferred to a different city. I couldn't go with her. First thing I did when I got home, the day I heard the news, was put on 'The Hand of Fear' Part Four – where the Fourth Doctor and Sarah finally part company – and, predictably, didn't quite make it through the prolonged departure scene. The night after her last day at work, 'The Angels Take Manhattan' aired. Amy and Rory were leaving the TARDIS, never to come back. Another Steven Moffat epic – grand sweeps of emotion, with lightning-quick ac-
tion scenes and enormous but airtight plot sweeps. Grand, epic, legend. The ending, we were told, would be 'heartbreaking'. I needed that catharsis. Amy and Rory had become to my TV-watching habits what Liz is to my career. I had serious lustful thoughts about Karen Gillan somewhere in the middle of that slow pan up her legs in 'The Eleventh Hour' (i.e., about three seconds after I met her), but within weeks, she was my (desperately) platonic TV girlfriend. When Rory came on board, I was jealous but loved him anyway. I wanted to be Matt Smith in that TV love triangle. I was no more interested in a TV series without Amy and Rory than I was in a workplace without Liz. And 'The Angels Take Manhattan' was filmed in my city. Picnic in Central Park, TARDIS parked under the Brooklyn Bridge, and a scene that appeared written for Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetery, with its jaw-dropping views of the Manhattan Skyline. I live a short walk away, on Greenwood Avenue. Until I found out those scenes were shot in Wales, I thought the TARDIS had landed on my block. So 'The Angels Take Manhattan' was destined to become my personal Doctor Who episode: shot in my city, possibly on my block, written by Moffat and giving closure to the two other edges of my triangle. I wanted to take those lessons and get over the ache of losing Liz, my own work companion. I watched in enraptured silence. By the end, I was in tears, along with the rest of fandom. Then, I sat down to write my review. And it fell apart. The episode, which should have had the brilliant plotting of every other Steven Moffat script ever, became something far less: a weird mix of 'Timelash' and 'Fear Her', illogical and poorly plotted. I'm a New York native and live in Brooklyn (Greenwood Avenue). Geographical errors set my teeth on edge. Detective Garner announces that he's going to an apartment near Battery Park (Manhattan's southernmost tip)... superimposed over a glamour shot of the Chrysler Building (on East 42nd Street). You can imagine the furore if I announced that, for the episode 'Jason Takes London', I was visiting a flat in Brixton... over a shot of Big Ben. And I feel bad bringing up the Statue of Liberty thing, because it's such an obvious target. But you don't come into my town and mess with my landmark like that. Forget about it. The Angels work because the idea is creepy and the rules are simple: monsters that only move when you're not looking. But in this episode it was decided that Lady Liberty was also an Angel. And could, somehow, walk on water from Bedloe's Island to Battery Park. The Statue of Liberty may be the most continuously observed object on planet Earth, not counting Donald Trump's Twitter feed or Karen Gillan's legs. Under the Angels' rules, the Statue should never be able to move. What's that you say? The Angel walked in the middle of the night? Well, they call New York “the city that never sleeps”. What part of “quantum locked” does Steven Moffat not understand? It's not like he invented the term or anything... oh. Wait. He did. The notion of Winter Quay is also, at first blush, creepy. The Angels keep a farm of humans, from whom they derive a never-ending source of temporal energy. Anyone living in the building must stay there until they die and can never, ever leave. But... how do these people eat? What happens to the grocery store delivery boys? Who pays the taxes? What happens to census takers every 10 years? You're not making any sense... Yes, the emotional beats are gorgeous. Darvill sells with calm desperation the scene where Rory attempts suicide by jumping off the roof of Winter Quay. He convinces Amy to join him, and the time paradox works; the
Angels no longer can claim Rory, who had died an old man in Winter Quay. But then the Angels come back for him anyway. When Amy decides to allow the Angel to zap her back in time so she can join Rory in the past, never to return, and tearfully calls the Doctor her “Raggedy Man”, that's when I lost it the first time, as did you... ...until you realise that the director framed the shot in such a way that it appears the Angel zapped Amy with some combination of Amy, the Doctor and/or River staring right at it. The following TARDIS scene shows a dejected Doctor weakly asking River to travel with him; an obvious consolation prize. River refuses, with the T-shirt-ready observation: “One psychopath per TARDIS, don't you think?” That's facile writing. Better for Alex Kingston to have stared down the camera lens and said, “Sorry, you can't afford me 13 episodes a year. Sweetie.” At the end, it's suggested that the TARDIS pays a visit to Amelia, the girl who waited, to give her hope for the future. The final freeze-frame of Caitlin Blackwood looking hopefully toward the sound of the TARDIS is another lump-in-the-throat moment... until you realize that it creates another paradox with 'The Eleventh Hour'. Amelia/Amy turns from “The Girl Who Waited” to “The Girl Who Kept A Previously-Scheduled Appointment”. So we're left with a story with some grand emotional beats, and true moments of heartbreak. The triangle is broken, and the Doctor's all alone at the office... except River, for as many episodes a year as Moffat can afford. But to be truly epic, the episode needed more than just emotion. It needed Moffat's wrapped-like-a-mummy tight plotting; no plot holes, no timey-wimey handwaving. This was supposed to be the Doctor Who episode written exclusively for my own grief. Instead, it delivered a short-term high with a bitter, chalky aftertaste, as if someone swapped out my jelly babies for jelly Cherubs...
Robert, again. I still love this review. But it suffered from a unique problem: I’d written a review of the same story myself just a few weeks earlier for Enlightenment and raised essentially the same points (well, with a little less New York focus). This raised one of the key issues I was having with OI2 : namely, because the later episodes were now airing so close to the writing of reviews, I was desperately worried that the book was going to meld into 'received wisdom' rather than 'outside perspective'. This wasn’t helped by the fact that the first volume of Outside In was now being used as a guide to the Classic Series by newbies. I desperately didn’t want to become Peter Haining. I figured that if I could notice all these points in my first attempt, then so could everyone else. I decided that both Jason and I were still reacting to the episode,
rather than analysing it. So I basically told Jason that I knew he could do better! In the first volume, he’d reviewed 'The Time Warrior' and made the point that this was the first Classic Doctor Who story to be from the point of view of the villains. That insight had made me gasp out loud, and I wanted something similar. Since it was early days, most of the slots were open, so Jason opted to switch to 'A Town Called Mercy'. Instead of using his native geography, he used his day job as a judge to talk about the law, from the perspective of an Old West judge, which was suitably off the wall. Although I did briefly suggest that he rework his 'Manhattan' review into a New York subway map somehow. I have no idea if that would have been doable, but it could have been awesome. I also hosted his review at the Ratings Guide . It might not have quite met the very particular mandate of Outside In , but it was still one hell of a 'straight' review. Afterwards, I cycled through a number of possibilities for 'The Angels Take Manhattan', but everyone seemed to be going for the obvious choices. Which is no failing when something is so new (I’d done exactly the same in my original review). Until Cameron Dixon, editor of Enlightenment, inverted the process entirely, with a review that took the nonsensical aspects of the story and entirely flipped them on their collective head, complete with having a hilarious breakdown in the middle of the review. Now that’s the kind of thing I was looking for. Looking back, though, while Cameron’s piece knocked it out of the park, I’m not entirely convinced I made the right call in rejecting Jason’s submission. It’s quite lovely, and I might have just as easily opted to get him to revise it so that the list of errors wasn’t quite so obvious. I’m happy with how things ultimately panned out, but if submissions as good as Jason’s were the ones that didn’t make the grade, then this was going to be a very special book indeed... Jason had this to say about his writing process: Robert was absolutely correct to reject my 'Angels' piece. It commits the double sin of a) being rather vanilla, and b) suffering from the syndrome of “This Is The Best Thing I’ve Ever Written And You Must Love Me”. I suspect that I wrote the piece more to impress Robert with my cleverness and depth than in an effort to review a story in an interesting and unique way. Bear in mind that I had joined the first Outside In volume very early on in the assembly process, before the book evolved into its final brilliant form, so I still didn’t grasp that my OI2 piece needed to be at a higher level. And so I didn’t take the 'funny' remit into account when I trashed 'Angels', which is painfully obvious to me today. I should also point out that, Robert being an incredibly efficient and visionary editor, he saw through all of those flaws immediately. Let the record reflect that his rejection e-mail came to me within 2 hours of my submission, and worded almost exactly the way that it was for this article. Robert urged me – very kindly – to find something different to say, and then to say it in a different way, which I hadn’t had to do with the first Outside In. So, I took a weekend, stinging from the rejection, and wound up sending him 5 different ideas at once, some of which I think are still viable (I proposed reviewing 'The God Complex' as if I were grading the hotel for TripAdvisor, or 'Fear Her' as if it were a Loose Canon–style recon of a lost 1 968 story that was now considered to be the greatest of all time). Robert immediately seized on the trial-transcript format for 'A Town Called Mercy' and ended up understanding that idea better than I did myself. I think my ultimate submission is still one of the weaker pieces in OI2 , but all credit goes to Robert’s editing genius (and infinite patience!) for guiding me towards drafting a piece worthy of his high standards.
THE NIGHT OF THE DOCTOR – STORY 110
The final piece that didn’t make it was for 'The Night of the Doctor'. I’d asked author J.M. Frey to write something creative and she really took me at my word, as you can see.
Not the Doctor I Was Expecting by J. M. Frey
I am wrong-ways up, and it hurts. My swimming pool has leaked all over the cloister again, and the bottles of the library books are akimbo on their shelves. My Time Lord is not within me. I moan, wheeze futilely, and then open my external scanners wide, and search for the two hearts I cradle within my own. He is so far away. And He is gone such a long time. I wait, because this is what I do. He runs. I remain. When He returns his face is new. Younger. But etched with agony, determination, pain and promise. He wears a bandeau of bullets between His hearts and it makes my corridors quiver with horror. I say to Him the same thing I always say to Him. The thing I’ve been trying to say out loud to Him for eight hundred years. "Hello, Doct—" I stop. Something has changed. I flex my telepathic circuits, a slight shiver and curl, having to work harder than I’ve ever needed to in nearly a millennia. This is my Time Lord. But this is not my Doctor. There is an approaching storm in His head, a void between His hearts. I cannot find Susan in Him. I cannot find Ian or Barbara, Jamie or Peri, Leela, Ace, Sarah Jane or Grace. Even our most recent guests are gone: Charley, C’rizz, Lucie, Tamsin, Molly. They are locked away. They are the beloveds of a man who is not this man, a man whose two hearts are greater in capacity than the sum of the universe, and they do not belong in this head. When the last Him was born, He asked for gun, holding out his hand, palm up, fingers splayed in the San Franciscan rain. This perhaps should have been my first clue. And now He decides to become one. Oh, my Doctor. If we are not healers, then what are we? What is the point of us? When He approaches my console, He does not pet. He does not croon. He does not call me His dear, dear old Girl, His Sexy, and I wheeze in horror. He fights always, and instead, with words. “Please don’t.” “Think this through!” “I can find you a planet, I can take you far from here where no one needs be harmed and you can start again.” “No more!” He pleads, He whispers, He promises, He bullies, He threatens, He warns. And, if that fails, then – and only then – does He fight with something bigger, stronger, sharper and more terrifying. Only then does the great dark anger of Him froth and boil. Only then does He make the decisions that no one else is qualified to make; the choice to amputate to save the Universe, our eternal patient. We have abstained from the Time War, but when lives are at stake, when the universe crumbles, again and again He lifts His palms, splays His fingers and asks, “Please. Please. Give it to me.” What He means, what He always means is: I shall be the weapon.
The truth of my Doctor is this: He will never hold a weapon. But He will always allow Himself to be one. That, always and forever that, rather than let another. It must never be another. He is the Doctor, and He will take responsibility for
being the purgative, the tincture, the radiation, the laser, the cut, the stitch. When it comes time for a blade to be hefted and blood to run, He – and He alone – will wield the scalpel. That is the promise that is hidden in His title. The Bringer of Darkness, the Oncoming Storm, the Predator, the Valeyard, Time’s Champion and now... the Warrior? A Time Lord, yes, my Time Lord. But the Doctor. Always and forever my Doctor. If someone has to make the hard choices, if someone must sacrifice in order to save, my Doctor will always and forever choose Himself first. And when that time is over, when all the genocides committed, when all our hearts have broken and our eyes are sore with the burden of their tears – when the Moment has passed – I shall hope and pray for the return of the Doctor I know and love so well. I shall pray that, when He has finished this terrible, costly surgery, He will become His own patient. That He will return to me, to my open doors, my open halls, and rest. Find joy. Find love, laughter, and guests. "Physician", I plead. "When this is over, please, please come back to me as you were and... heal thyself." J.M. Frey is an actor, award-winning SF / F author and pop-culture scholar. She contributed to Doctor Who In Time And Space , has appeared on Space Channel’s InnerSPACE and is the designer / wearer of the cosplay Steampunk light-up TARDIS gown. www.jmfrey.net | @scifrey
Robert again:This was one that Anthony put his foot down over. His basic point was that it didn’t address any of the truly interesting things about 'The Night of the Doctor'. Which is true... although it did fulfil my remit of being creative. So this became the only piece I’ve ever rejected for being too gonzo. Which hurt a little, but I had to stick to my guns. Fortunately, J.M. was very professional about it and asked me if she could host it on her website at: http://www.jmfrey.net. Which I was very happy about, as it felt strangely more at home with her other creative writing than it did in Outside In . We were right up against our original deadline at this point (as we were originally going to publish the book in February 2014, containing everything up to 'The Time of the Doctor'). So I was in something of a panic and had to find someone very late in the day. I met David Adler in New York on New Year’s Day that year, and he mentioned being in the Paul McGann Estrogen Brigade. A guy in the PMEB? Well, now that was interesting... could he perhaps write about Paul McGann’s appearance in 'The Night of the Doctor'. And do it quickly?
PROLOGUE – STORY 126
One of the unofficial remits I set myself with the Outside In series was to feature contributions from previously
unpublished writers. Partly this is because needing hundreds of writers to fill hundreds of slots naturally lends itself to this practice. But it’s actually because of another books series entirely. My first Doctor Who publications were two books called Time Unincorporated, co-edited with Graeme Burk and published by Mad Norwegian Press. The aim of these books was to feature the best of fan writing, be it from fanzines (these books are the spiritual descendent of Licence Denied) or original commissions. One covers the Classic Series, the other covers the New Series. These books were a miserable failure. It pains me to say it, but it’s true. Oh, sure, they sold some copies and TU3 is available as an ebook, so there’s still a bit of life in it. But they weren’t the runaway success we were hoping for. (Unlike our next book, Who is the Doctor, which totally was. It won awards, sold out of its massive print run and was endorsed by Neil Gaiman and everything.) Personally, I think their content was quite good... not perfect, but quite good. Unfortunately, several of the external factors weren’t right – the title is dull, the subtitle misleading, the cover uninspiring etc. – so nobody particularly cared to see what was inside. I learned some very valuable lessons about the publishing business from these failures. These days, I make sure I have a lot more input into the external aspects of the book. It turns out you can – and so many of you do – judge a book by its cover. However, while I do think the content inside is pretty good, I will note that it isn’t perfect. One of my failings here was that I wanted to feature good writing from fandom (which I did), but I hadn’t mastered the ability to search widely for all the voices that weren’t being heard. So a lot of it is familiar names or my buddies. There’s some diversity in the two books, but frankly not enough. The original conception of Outside In was to force myself to do Time Unincorporated again, only getting it right this time. And I’m very leased to say that I did, in large part, because I mastered the very difficult art of finding new voices. People sometimes ask about this process. I can tell you that: a) I ran out of my contacts after about 50 slots, which wasn’t even a third of the way through the first volume and b) getting the last few is like crawling on bloodied limbs to the final peak of the mountain, screaming in pain, but determined to reach the summit. Every time I finish a collection I need a serious break before starting on a new one. There’s a reason no one had done this kind of thing before. All this is a roundabout way of saying that I’m immensely proud of the fact that these books gave so many people the opportunity to be published. Fandom can sometimes be quite insular; professional fandom doubly so. But to survive, we need to regenerate. Since publishing the first volume of Outside In , several writers have used that as a jumping-off point to launch their own books. I’m avuncularly proud of that. So, as promised, we now present a The Nethersphere exclusive: two brand-new entries that didn’t appear in Outside In 2 , as they aired after the book was published. And, appropriately, the first is from David Black, a writer I’d never worked with before, making his Outside In début...
Sisters Are Doing It For Themselves by David Black .
Friday, 11 September 2015 Prologue
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This week we are delighted to share a guest blog from self-confessed Sisterhood Superfan Ellen Murray…
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Ahead of the new series, a mini-episode has emerged online. Modestly entitled 'Prologue', it serves as a prologue to the latest television adventures of The Sisterhood Of Karn . Karn itself appears against a starry backdrop and is initially labelled simply as “The Planet”. Such is its importance to fans of The Sisterhood Of Karn that it almost doesn’t need spelling out. Where else could we be? 'Prologue' is a two-hander between everybody’s favourite high priestess Ohila, ably played as always by Clare Higgins, and the current Doctor Who, Peter Capaldi. The two work very well together. Higgins asks all the right questions, and Capaldi almost answers them. As we’ve come to expect from Ohila, she sees through the Time Lord’s deceptions and knows him better than he knows himself. Ohila: Why do you always lie? Doctor Who: Why do you always assume I'm lying? Ohila: It saves time. The truth, will you go? Doctor Who is wrestling with a dilemma and naturally Ohila is the only one that can help him. Higgins plays what is essentially a confession scene with aplomb and Doctor Who follows her lead. The lines are delivered like a rally in a tennis match, but with words instead of balls and no net. Or maybe Doctor Who is playing tennis against himself and Ohilia is the umpire. Doctor Who: He and I've known each other a long time. Ohila: You've been enemies for all of it. Doctor Who: An enemy's just a friend you don't really know yet. Sorry. What, was that me being cynical again? Who is Doctor Who talking about? Does it matter? Why is he being so rude to our heroine? Could it be that she has touched a nerve? The umpire strikes back? As we have come to learn from our years watching, discussing and absorbing episodes of The Sisterhood Of Karn , the answers to these questions are not as important as the act of asking them. The revelations that may come will be fleeting, but their ramifications could last a lifetime or more. It’s a scene reminiscent of a similar scene between Sisters Mawea and Canda from the Season 43 finale, 'Warlock!', by Lawrence Miles, and we all know how that storyline turned out, don’t we? Ohila: You are embarking on an enterprise that will end in your destruction. Doctor Who: You could say that about being born. A famous writer once wrote “What's past is prologue”. It was Louis Marks in Season 9’s 'Sunset on the Edge'. What happened before leads us inexorably to what is happing now. Every effect has a cause. It’s a theme that The Sisterhood Of Karn has returned to again and again, most notably in those episodes set in the spaceship graveyard during the nineties. Neil Penswick’s 'Beyond The Mountains' and Kate Orman’s 'Lost Properties' are two obvious examples that have set the stage for recent storylines. Doctor Who may have done something to bring him to Ohila’s door, and eventually we may find out what it is, but personally I hope not. Raika said it best way back in Season 2’s 'The Cave of Secrets': “It is in the not knowing that we truly learn about ourselves.” That the episode is itself missing from the archives and .
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we only have David Whitaker’s script and a sparse number of John Cura’s telesnaps to go on is both ironic and tantalising in equal measure. When is a 'Prologue' not a prologue? Possibly when it takes place within the action of another episode. Rumour has it that this scene takes place entirely within The Sisterhood of Karn ’s season première, 'The Magician’s Apprentice'. Is 'Prologue' still a prologue if it takes place in the middle of the story? Can the middle of a story be a prologue simply if it is presented to an audience first? Isn’t every episode a prologue for the one that follows? That is, of course, except Lance Parkin’s 'Persona Non Grata', for obvious reasons. . Ohila: Wherever you go, there are people who care enough to find you. Doctor Who: Look after the universe for me. I've put a lot of work into it. . Fans are reminded that Doctor Who is no stranger to The Sisterhood Of Karn ’s universe. This is another in a long line of crossovers that have seen the world’s longest running science-fiction series continually lend its credibility to Doctor Who. This began way back with 1975’s 'The Brain of Morbius', which saw Thomas Baker tangle with Cynthia Grenville, rejuvenate the sacred flame but also slay the popular character of Mehendri Solon, played to perfection by Philip Madoc. This controversial act meant that Doctor Who wasn’t welcomed back for over thirty years and, when he finally was, we couldn’t bear to look at him in 2008’s radio episodes 'Sisters of the Flame' and 'The Vengeance of Morbius'. Five years later, Paul McGann returned to Karn again in 2013’s 'The Night of the Doctor' and never left; the episode also featured a youthful reflection of a photograph of John Hurt. Fittingly, it is our leading lady Ohila who is given the last word: “Anyone can hide from an enemy, Doctor. No one from a friend.” The Sisterhood of Karn returns to BBC1 with its record-breaking fifty-third season, and it shows no signs of stopping anytime soon. Don’t make any other plans on Saturdays for the next twelve weeks (and a Christmas special later in the year). Stoke the sacred flame, and make up a batch of stewed apricots, no custard. There is, as yet, no word on whether an Epilogue will be forthcoming. . Posted By: Kalia at 21:47 Tags: DOCTOR WHO, ELLEN MURRAY, GUEST BLOG, OHILA, PROLOGUE, SEASON 53, THE SISTERHOOD OF KARN . No Comments .
David Black is an actor and writer. He has written articles, comedy sketches and scripts for Noiseless Chatter, Cult Britannia, Behind the Bike Shed, Newsrevue and Hat Trick TV’s YouTube channel, Bad Teeth. In an act of extreme arrogance, he was forced to reinterpret The Cherry Orchard and write new Chekhov dialogue. He blogs a blog at http://davewrotethis.blogspot.co.uk.
THE DOCTOR'S MEDITATION – STORY 127
People sometimes ask me which takes more work, writing a book or editing an Outside In . The answer is easy: doing an Outside In is way more difficult! You have to liaise with writers, coax revisions out of people, edit, proofread, suggest alternatives, format sheet music, map out a choose-your-own-adventure, find people who can write even though you’ve asked everyone you know and then some, argh!
It would, in fact, be significantly faster and simpler to simply write the thing myself. So why don’t I, then? The answer is because it’s the diversity of opinion that makes these books. People bring their A-game to the table. And when you only have one slot to make your pitch in, you’d better make it a good one. I’ve seen takes on the series that have made me gasp with surprise or laugh out loud or that break my heart. Yes, it’s a lot more work. But boy is it worth it. With that all said, here, finally, is a piece by some guy with a question mark in his name.
Your Astrological Horoscope by Robert Smith?
The mysteries of the stars hold the key to all our destinies. Invisible patterns that swirl and coalesce, orbit each other and occasionally form faces in the opening credits, are intrinsically tried to our fates. From the very dawn of humanity, people have looked to the heavens and the planets for guidance. The past explained, the future foretold, the present... apologised for.
Aries: You will find yourself attempting to meditate. Good luck with that, because there’s no way you’ll be able to sit in silence for more than about three hours. The digging of wells features prominently in your future, as does a visitor’s centre. On the bright side, you’ve seen your last battlefield, which might come in handy. If an old friend is dying, best to pop off to a rock somewhere for a few weeks to have a bit of a think. If all else fails, spend your time practising the old “which hand is my coin in” trick. This will be in no way offensive for your forthcoming visit to your old friend, unless of course said old friend only has one hand, in which case it might seem a bit insensitive. Lucky number: 12. Taurus: Some sort of doughnut-shape, isn’t it? Maybe a bagel? Either way, your future is clear: you’re going to be eaten, most likely for breakfast. Gemini: You are an idiot. But you already knew that. Still, you’re good at magic tricks. You will find yourself drawn to a tall stranger. Serve him loyally... at least until you find yourself swallowing a snake and being overcome by the inner Dalek agent inside you. That sucks, but, sometimes, sarff happens. But until then, carry scrolls, provide distractions and generally hang around a bit, making it appear that you’ll be a major character in events to come, only to have that rug ripped out from beneath everyone’s feet when that Dalek eye-stalk pops out and your plotline is left entirely unresolved. Presumably you’ll just stand there for all eternity, much like the nearby tank and electric guitar, which will throw a bit of a wrench into archaeology, when it’s finally invented. The celestial heavens move in mysterious ways. Cancer: So... your star sign is named after a disease.
I’m sure that’s nothing to worry about. Nothing at all.
Leo: You enjoy chalices, fire and wearing red robes. Chanting will feature heavily in your future – and your past. You will be entrusted with a friend’s last will and
testament. You know who to give it to. (So don’t go making a terrible mistake and handing it to his worst enemy or anything like that.) Remember: an enemy is just a friend you don’t know yet... unless you’re unlikeable. So keep up the good work.
Virgo: Mrs Sauskind, it’s under the couch. Libra: Getting old sucks. Especially when you’re stuck in the same chair all that time. But remember, you can always go home. Even if that home has been bombed, destroyed, time-looped, retconned, renamed and made invisible for reasons that elude me right now. Still, you’ve got to laugh, haven’t you? Best to send for your oldest living frenemy, because some arguments never seem to end. Scorpio: You are one twelfth of the population. You enjoy breathing, eating several times a day and sleeping. You are often found sitting, standing or lying down. You may find yourself either thinking or doing. Eat nothing except food, and drink nothing except liquids. Sagittarius: You’re a democracy, so vote wisely. But best to avoid the snake-oil sellers, regardless. You’ll find yourself running missions to all corners of the galaxy to find a being who can travel to any place in the universe at any point in its entire history. Your primary means of accomplishing this goal is to stand in a variety of rooms, saying “Where is the Doctor?” You might be doing this for some time. Capricorn: You are the central planet of the twelve colonies of Kobol, the place where the first Cylons were created. No wait, that’s Caprica. And what series are we talking about anyway? Aquarius: You so fine. Remember that friendship is so much better than the reproductive frenzy of the noisy little food chain. Your long-term prospects are looking good, because death is for other people. On the other hand, you’ll discover to your horror that you don’t quite put the 'arch' into arch-enemy. Probably best to avoid air travel in the near future. Pisces: You are much too fat, and you insist on wearing that stupid hat. .
Robert Smith? is the inventor of the academic sub-discipline of mathematical modelling of zombies, a bona fide ambassador of mathematics and a non-fiction writer and editor in all that spare time he has. He lives in Canada, but his roots are in Australian fandom. And they always will be.