Doctor Who

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

UK TV

Mobisodes none too popular

16 October 2006 Rob Buckley 3 Comments

TardisodesApparently, those Doctor Who mobisodes (aka TARDISodes) were none too popular. Although 2.6 million people downloaded them onto their home computers, only 40,000 people watched them on their mobile phones.

Iain Tweedale, the new media editor for BBC Wales, points out that the pricing to download mobisodes – £1.50 to £2 – probably put a load of people off, particularly when all they had to do was watch them for free on their home computer. But I think there were a couple of other obvious problems:

  1. They were only a minute long and nothing happened in them really
  2. They didn’t feature either the Doctor or Rose.

So £2 to download something that wasn’t actually very interesting, £26 to download the whole season’s worth. You could get several DVDs for that price. I know which I’d rather watch.

Still, Lost is going to up the ante in the US with mobisodes that star the actual cast members, and Battlestar Galactica‘s webisodes already did more or less the same thing. So maybe next series’ will be better.

News

Attention John Barrowman stalkers

9 October 2006 Rob Buckley 4 Comments

Not sure what to do this Christmas, united stalkers of John Barrowman? Then I’ve the perfect thing for you. A few days at the St David’s Hotel and Spa!

St David's Hotel and Spa

Not only is Mr Barrowman going to be doing panto in Cardiff this year, he’s revealed he’s going to be having Christmas lunch at the hotel with his family, who will be over from Florida.

So get booking (I can recommend it, having stayed there for a couple of nights in July) and start polishing those high-powered binoculars.

Audio and radio play reviews

Review: Doctor Who – The Gathering

5 October 2006 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

The GatheringIf you’re a fan of the fifth Doctor Who and, in particular, of Tegan, you’ll want to listen to The Gathering, since it’s likely to be Janet Fielding’s only return to the role. Set in present-day Brisbane, it catches up with the Doctor’s only Australian companion and discovers what she’s been up to in the last 20 years.

There’s a problem though. There was another Big Finish release in September: The Reaping, also by Joseph Lidster. It turns out that The Gathering is a sequel to The Reaping. But because we’re dealing with time travel, The Reaping is also a sequel to The Gathering.

Curses.

The good news, though, is that it’s perfectly possible to listen to The Reaping without then listening to The Gathering. If anything, you’re better off not listening to The Gathering since it only muddies the waters. The other way round? Not so easy…

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