Doctor Who

An archive of blog entries about British science-fiction programme Doctor Who.

Friday’s dead TV shows news

22 February 2008 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

Doctor Who

Film

British TV

US TV

UK TV

Review: Torchwood 2×6 – Reset

21 February 2008 Rob Buckley 13 Comments



Way back when the writers and cast for this series of Torchwood were announced, people geeked out about a number of things and rightly so: James Marsters (woo hoo!) and PJ Hammond (woo hoo, but as if said by a ghost chasing after your very soul) are well worth the entrance fee, as they say.

I was probably the only person geeking out over the fact JC Wilsher was going to be writing for the show. Although he’s been confined to more mundane cop shows like Dalziel and Pascoe and The Bill for the best part of 15 years, he’s also the creator of the far better Between the Lines (What? You didn’t know I was one of the contributors to the standard Between The Lines faq?), which was one of the best cop shows of the 90s, despite an awful third series.

So I wasn’t particularly surprised that after a reasonably good episode last week, this week’s, which also took the trouble to introduce Doctor Who companion Martha Jones to the world of Torchwood and do something else that I won’t mention just yet, was actually pretty well written.

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News

Wednesday’s reaching news

20 February 2008 Rob Buckley 9 Comments

Rorschach versus the Swatteam

Doctor Who

  • Interviews with Peter Davison, Louise Jameson and Sophie Aldred
  • Paul O’Grady to cameo in fourth series
  • Martha to be more gutsy next series

Film

British TV

Polish TV

US TV

Tuesday’s news of regrets

19 February 2008 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

Doctor Who

Film

Technology

British TV

  • Beeb to offer shows via iTunes

US TV

Review: Big Finish downloads service

18 February 2008 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

Fingers crossed, I’ll be giving both Bride of Peladon and Catalyst a listen this week, which might mean I review them as soon as… next week.

However, I thought I’d draw your attention to a couple of things first. Number one is that Big Finish now has a podcast. It’s a little bit cringeworthy, but it’s worth listening to since you do get advance information and behind-the-scenes explanation. Most notable in that is the first podcast, in which Nick Briggs explains the rationale behind the pricing structure of the downloads service. Did you realise, for example, that the US pricing of downloads is about $7.99? If you can follow Nick’s reasoning for that in comparison to the £12.99 charge for the UK (which appears to amount to “they’ve been paying over the odds for ages now, so now it’s the UK’s turn”), you’re a smarter person than I.

It’s also got a blog (of sorts. Guys, have you heard of comments? Permalinks?) which occasionally turfs up a bit of news, too.

I’m also producing the next run of Doctor Who Companion Chronicles, which has been a fantastic experience. I’ve chosen the companions and the writers and come up with eight (yes eight – you heard it here first) stories that I hope will please others as much as they please me. Oooh, I wish I could reveal more. I wish I could tell you who is flying into the country in May to return as a character that was such a pivotal part of my childhood but, sadly, for now you have to guess. Likewise I can’t reveal which one star from the last series is coming back this year.

Let the guessing on that one begin.

Over the weekend, I decided to give the downloads service a try, just to let you all know what it’s like. Here were my experiences…

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