Doctor Who Vs. Bleak House (1998)

The BBC dramatised Charles Dickens' epic novel, Bleak House for Radio 4 in 1998. This award winning five-part series last aired on Radio 7 in 2007 and 2008, and starred six Doctor Who guest actors:

• Jean Marsh (Miss Flite) first appeared in the 'classic' series as Princess Joanna in The Crusade (1965), then as short-lived companion Sara Kingdom in nine episodes of The Daleks' Master Plan later that year, and finally as Morgaine in Battlefield (1989) - the role of space agent Kingdom was reprised by Big Finish for The Companion Chronicles releases, Home Truths (2008), The Drowned World (2009), The Guardian of the Solar System (2010), The Five Companions (2011), and The Anachronauts (2012), then for the 'lost' story The Daleks: The Destroyers (2010) - Marsh also voiced Maria for The Wishing Beast (2007)
• Robert Portal (Carstone) voiced Marshal Ney for The Curse of Davros (BF, 2012) and Reggie for the recent The Auntie Matter
• Charlie Hayes (pictured with her mother, 'classic' series actress Wendy Padbury) voiced Jade for Master (2003), Jenny for The Seven Keys to Doomsday (2008), Gatlin for Bernice Summerfield and the Criminal Code (2010), Jen for both of The Companion Chronicles releases, Memory Cheats (2011) and The Uncertainty Principle, Death for Love and War (2012), and Veltreena for the forthcoming Lords of the Red Planet 'lost' story - all from Big Finish
• Ellie Haddington (Miss Hortense) was Professor Docherty in Last of the Time Lords
• Michael Attwell (Krook) was Isbur in The Ice Warriors, and Bates in Attack of the Cybermen
• Michael Fenton Stevens (Skimpole) voiced Mr Seyton (alias Shakespeare) for The Kingmaker (BF, 2006) and Brooks for The Raincloud Man (BF, 2008)

Great Doctor Who Quotes #32

"Oh yes, I can [remember my family] when I want to. And that's the point, really. I have to really want to, to bring them back in front of my eyes. The rest of the time they.. sleep in my mind and I forget. And so will you. Oh yes, you will. You'll find there's so much else to think about. To remember. Our lives are different to anybody else's. That's the exciting thing, that nobody in the universe can do what we're doing."

- The Doctor, The Tomb of the Cybermen 

Written by Kit Pedler and Gerry Davis

Doctor Who Series 7 News

Production commences next month on the thirty-fourth season of Doctor Who, and rumours concerning the return of 'classic' era monsters have surfaced online again.

After being afforded only a cameo role last year, the Daleks may well feature in the 2012 run, but I hope that Mr Moffat prolongs their 'rest' until the Anniversary.

A more welcome prospect would be the supposed return of the Great Intelligence and it's cohorts, the Yeti. These robots were first linked with NuWho when Peter McKinstry's concept art (for the DVD Files partwork) was released in 2010. Excluding a brief appearance in The Five Doctors, the Yeti were last seen in The Web of Fear way back in 1968, and they are surely due a rematch with the Doctor.

Personally, I'd love to see a Genesis of the Cybermen-type adventure too, showcasing the (non-Cybus) Mondasian variant. I think that Cyber stories work best when injected with body-horror.

Missing Doctor Who Episodes Recovered!

The Doctor and Vicki in a scene from Airlock

The official Doctor Who website has revealed that two lost episodes have been recovered, restored, and unveiled in London today. The BFI's annual Missing Believed Wiped event at the National Film Theatre has shown Airlock, the third part of Galaxy 4 (originally broadcast September 25th 1965), and part two of The Underwater Menace (January 21st 1967).

The complete, black and white episodes were bought by film collector Terry Burnett at a village fete near Southampton in the early 1980's, but he was unaware that the canisters contained missing BBC material, and the classic footage was loaned to the BBC archives earlier this year. Screen shots are available to view here, and you can read a BBC News report here.

There are currently 106 episodes from 27 serials, still missing from the archives. Three stories have no surviving footage at all - Marco Polo, Mission to the Unknown, and The Massacre. This new find comes seven years after episode two of The Daleks' Master Plan was recovered, and the last, whole story to be unearthed was The Tomb of the Cybermen almost 20 years ago.

The Doctor Who Experience: A Review

I was lucky enough to visit the UK's latest Doctor Who exhibition recently. Situated at Olympia Two in Kensington, I had quite a trek from Earl's Court station, but did get to see a real Police Box which is stationed just outside. A more direct route is offered from Hammersmith tube station.

Visitors first walk into the 'vortex' and enter a waiting area, which holds some Series 5 props: a Smiler, a Winder, Silurians, and an Ironclad Dalek. You are then ushered into the first viewing room (basically benches facing a wall-screen). In specially shot footage, the Doctor (Matt Smith) here delivers a lengthy "mad man in a box" commentary to what is effectively an extended trailer to his first season. As the music fades, a huge crack-in-time becomes vertical, flares white, and slowly opens to form a darkened doorway, through which you are guided. You now find yourself in the National Museum aboard Starship UK, and monitors flicker on to reveal the Doctor, again trapped inside the Pandorica! Using his sonic screwdriver, he summons the TARDIS, which actually seems to materialise in front of the visiting 'shoppers'. Passing through those famous double doors into the impressive console room, the Doctor now appears on the scanner, and instructs his new companions to pilot his ship. Leaving by the 'back door' takes you into a control room where three paradigm Daleks threaten you with extermination, until the Doctor intervenes and you move on again.

From a dark and dry-iced corridor, the Weeping Angels menace your passage to the next level of the interactive Experience. Now provided with 3D glasses, 'shoppers' stand in a mock Underhenge chamber (complete with stone Dalek), and watch a brilliantly effective short film that features more monsters, like the Cybermen. The Doctor is then freed from his prison and banishes his enemies back into the swirling vortex.

The second stage of the Experience is more akin to the traditional Doctor Who exhibitions, such as Blackpool, which I last visited shortly before it closed it's doors permanently in 2009. On exiting the 3D show, visitors are now permitted to use their cameras as you start to view props, costumes, monsters, sets, and even workshops, from the 'revived' then 'classic' eras.

All eleven of the Doctor's costumes are displayed near the current TARDIS prop, and a (rather poor) Matt Smith waxwork. The outfits are complete originals, except those of the First and Second Doctors, which no longer survive (McCoy's jacket and later, Captain Jack's coat, are quite tatty). The Tenth Doctor's regeneration scene is played on a loop on a large, reconstructed and very impressive 'old' TARDIS set (last seen in The Doctor's Wife). Another console room (introduced in The Five Doctors) is presented nearby, with recent companion and TimeLord costumes, K9, the Melkur, and the Tom Baker era TARDIS prop. Another extensive hall displays a collection of Cyber-heads, and Davros here presides over the 'evolution' of his creations, from a 1963 Dalek to a paradigm Eternal.

Also present are the Abzorbaloff, a Slitheen, an Ice Warrior, a Zygon, a trio of Sontarans, Cat nuns, the Empty Child, Robot K1, the Silents, the Hath, Judoon, the Face of Boe, a Ganger, a Sycorax, an Ood, and even Idris' costume with the 'junk' TARDIS. One of the best concepts here is a documentary that examines Delia Derbyshire's legacy, and other workshops include choreography in NuWho.

The Experience has just extended it's residence in London to next February, then it moves to Cardiff as planned. For visiting times and ticket prices see here.

Doctor Who: The Doctor's Wife Preview

Neil Gaiman's Doctor Who episode, The Doctor's Wife, is probably the most anticipated script of Series 6. This acclaimed writer (pictured left) has hinted that his character Idris (Suranne Jones, pictured centre) is an "old acquaintance with a new face" and the story is a "love letter to the fans". Gaiman also told DWM that his adventure begins with something or someone we have not seen since The War Games (1969). The official BBC press release provides this synopsis:

"The Doctor receives a distress signal from an old friend. Could there really be another living Time Lord out there? Hopes raised, he follows the signal to a junkyard planet sitting upon a mysterious asteroid in a Bubble universe, populated by a very strange family, as the time-travelling drama continues.
The Doctor, Amy and Rory are given the warmest of welcomes by Auntie, Uncle and Nephew. But the beautiful and insane Idris greets them in a more unusual fashion – what is she trying to tell the Doctor? As the Doctor investigates, he unwittingly puts his friends in the gravest danger."

So who or what is Idris, and can she really be the Doctor's wife? In Welsh mythology, King Idris was a giant whose seat was Cader Idris, a mountain ridge in Snowdonia. He was an astronomer who had the power to mete out madness, death, or even poetic inspiration. Idris was also an Islamic prophet (known as Enoch to Christians).

The name itself is of Celtic origin (Latin=Idrus, English=Ider), meaning "ardent" or "righteous". Of most interest to Whovians, is the literal interpretation of this boy's name: "running lord" could easily apply to the Doctor himself. Indeed, at the top of the new season opener, The Impossible Astronaut, the Doctor declares that he's been "running" all his life.

There has been much speculation that Idris is a TimeLady. Then who, or how? Or is she in fact a manifestation of a/the TARDIS? Remember the proto-TARDIS travel machines employed by the WarLord's race for their War Games? The acronym SIDRAT was used just once in that mammoth story, and it's meaning was only revealed 10 years later in Malcolm Hulke's novelisation: Space and Inter-Dimensional Robot All-purpose Transporter.

If they survived the fate of the unnamed Aliens, did the SIDRATs end up on Gaiman's scrapyard planet? Or did the TimeLords confiscate the rogue time capsules and augment them with TARDIS technology to create an advanced, organic version (akin to the Type 102, see below), codenamed Idris? Why bother? Did they just scrap these inferior models, which were the result of stolen tech, and short-lived anyway?

The BBC Books' Eighth Doctor adventures (EDA) range (1997-2005) featured a companion, called Compassion. She was born on 26th century Earth as Laura Tobin, and her race, the Remote, were originally human. Compassion first met the Doctor in Interference: Book One, and by the time of her final story, The Ancestor Cell, she had evolved into a living TARDIS (the Type 102). The Doctor and Fitz even used her to flee the TimeLords via her own Randomiser, and built-in weapons system.

The revelation that Idris is in reality a time-machine in humanoid form (or even a reengineered stellar device) doesn't seem so outlandish then (what became of the Hand of Omega after destroying Skaro)? However, in Rise of the Cybermen, the Doctor says that his was the only surviving TARDIS in the universe, and we last saw secret TimeLord tech when the Daleks stole the Genesis Ark.

The Doctor's Wife is broadcast on BBC1, on Saturday May 14th, and features the return of the Ood.

The cast also includes Big Finish co-star Adrian Schiller (Uncle), Elizabeth Berrington (Auntie), and Michael Sheen (voice of House), who also appeared in The Deal (2003, Channel 4) as Cherie and Tony Blair. Their co-stars were Who guest actors David Morrissey, Ian Hanmore, John Normington, and Clare Clifford.

Doctor Who Target Book Reprints

An initial package of six classic Target book titles are to be republished this summer, all complete with their original and iconic Chris Achilleos covers. Currently long since deleted and much sought after, these reprinted Doctor Who novelisations will appeal to old and new readers alike.

Released by BBC Books in July and priced at £4.99 each, the titles are as follows: 

• The Daleks by David Whitaker was the first TV serial to be adapted as a novel, and was published in hardback in November 1964, less than a year after the story was shown. Paperback editions were then issued in 1965 (Armada) and 1973 (Target).
• The Crusaders (based on serial P) also by Whitaker was first published in 1966.
• The Cybermen (based on The Moonbase) by Gerry Davis, 1975.
• The Abominable Snowmen (based on serial NN) by Terrance Dicks, 1974.
• The Auton Invasion (based on Spearhead from Space) also by Dicks, 1974.
• The Cave Monsters (based on The Silurians) by Malcolm Hulke, 1974.

The novels include new forewords from writers Neil Gaiman, Charlie Higson, Gareth Roberts, Stephen Baxter, Russell T Davies, and Dicks, respectively.

The Invasion Revisited

42 years after The Invasion was shown, Cybermen returned to London this week to publicise the new Doctor Who Experience, which opens at Olympia next February. Promoters recreated one of the programme's most famous sequences, when Cybus-men revisited St. Pauls.