BFI Eighth And Tenth Doctor ScreeningsBookmark and Share

Friday, 19 July 2013 - Reported by John Bowman
The BFI today announced details for its celebratory screenings marking the eras of the Eighth and Tenth Doctors - with both happening within a week of each other but in reverse order.

The Tenth Doctor will be honoured on Sunday 29th September at 2pm with the Series 4 two-part finale The Stolen Earth and Journey's End, while the sole TV outing - so far - for the Eighth Doctor will be shown on the big screen on Saturday 5th October at 10am.

The adventures are being shown at BFI Southbank as part of the organisation's Doctor Who At 50 season.

The Series 4 finale episodes - written by Russell T Davies and directed by Graeme Harper - first aired on 28th June and 5th July 2008 respectively, and saw the universe crumbling and a number of planets, including Earth, having been stolen by Davros as part of his plot threatening the whole of reality. Julian Bleach took on the mantle of the Daleks' creator, with all the companions seen in the revamped series uniting with the Doctor to defeat the evil, mad Kaled scientist and the Daleks.

Meanwhile, the big-budget TV Movie - written by Matthew Jacobs and directed by Geoffrey Sax - originally aired in the UK on 27th May 1996 (although it had its global TV premiere in Canada on 12th May 1996, having been filmed entirely in the country) and saw the Seventh Doctor regenerate into the Eighth. It also featured the return of the Master - this time played by Eric Roberts - and a new-look TARDIS interior, in an adventure set in San Francisco on the eve of the year 2000 and with the whole of Earth at stake as the Master attempts to take the Doctor's remaining regenerations.

Tickets to both events will be issued via a ballot system through the members' section. Separate ballots are being held for each event but the same dates will apply for both. BFI Champions can enter the ballots on Monday 5th August and members from Tuesday 6th August. The ballots will close on Friday 9th August and will be run over the weekend of 10th and 11th August, with all entrants being notified on Monday 12th August whether they have been successful or not.

All tickets reserved for Champions and members via the ballots will be held for claiming by them until 8.30pm on Friday 16th August. Any that are unclaimed by then will be released for public sale on Saturday 17th August.

The guests for both events will be announced in due course.




FILTER: - Special Events - UK - Eighth Doctor - BFI - WHO50 - Tenth Doctor

BFI: The Sixth Doctor PanelBookmark and Share

Wednesday, 26 June 2013 - Reported by John Bowman
A video of the guest panel from the BFI's screening of The Two Doctors earlier this month was released today.

Unlike previous panels, though, it has not been uploaded to the organisation's YouTube channel but instead is available to view on its videos page.

The event took place on 15th June to mark the Sixth Doctor's era, as part of the BFI's Doctor Who At 50 season.

Lasting 15 min 34 sec, it features the actors Frazer Hines and Tony Selby, script editor and writer Eric Saward, and visual effects designer Mike Kelt in conversation with season co-curator Justin Johnson.

UPDATE - SATURDAY 6th JULY: The BFI has now uploaded the video to its YouTube channel, meaning it can be watched below:





FILTER: - Special Events - Sixth Doctor - Online - BFI - WHO50

BFI Screenings: Ninth Doctor Stories AnnouncedBookmark and Share

Monday, 24 June 2013 - Reported by John Bowman
The BFI will be showing the episodes Bad Wolf and The Parting of the Ways to mark the Ninth Doctor's era for its Doctor Who At 50 season.

The two stories, written by Russell T Davies and directed by Joe Ahearne, first aired on Saturday 11th June and Saturday 18th June 2005 respectively. They comprised the Series 1 finale, which saw Christopher Eccleston hand over control of the TARDIS to David Tennant after an epic battle against the Daleks.

The screenings are being held on Saturday 24th August from 2pm at BFI Southbank. The special guests for the accompanying panel session are yet to be announced.

Tickets are being issued via a ballot system through the members' section, with BFI Champions able to enter the ballot from Monday 1st July and members from Tuesday 2nd July. The ballot will close on Friday 5th July and be run over the weekend of 6th and 7th July, with all entrants to be notified on Monday 8th July if they have been successful or not.

All tickets reserved for Champions and members through the ballot will be held until 8.30pm on Friday 12th July, and any that are unclaimed by then will be released for public sale on Saturday 13th July.

Although all the screenings in the season so far have been immediate sell-outs, returns and stand-bys are a strong possibility, so it's always worth checking back with the BFI.

The organisation is skipping from the Seventh Doctor's era to the Ninth Doctor's because of guest availability, with the Eighth Doctor event currently planned to be held sometime in September. The precise date plus guests are still to be confirmed and announced.




FILTER: - Ninth Doctor - Special Events - UK - BFI - WHO50

BFI Seventh, Eighth, And Ninth Doctor Screenings UpdateBookmark and Share

Monday, 17 June 2013 - Reported by John Bowman
The special guests for the BFI's celebratory screening of Remembrance of the Daleks next month have been announced.

The sell-out event, part of the BFI's Doctor Who At 50 season, is being held on Saturday 27th July at BFI Southbank to mark the Seventh Doctor's era and will see Sylvester McCoy, Sophie Aldred, Ben Aaronovitch, Dick Mills, and Mike Tucker taking part in the question-and-answer panel.

The BFI is running a competition to win a pair of tickets to the screening, with a copy of the BFI book 100 Science Fiction Films - to be published on Friday 28th June - also going to the winner. Enter via this link. The contest closes on Friday 19th July. Terms and conditions apply.

August's event should have seen the Eighth Doctor's solo TV venture (so far) being shown on the big screen but instead the Ninth Doctor will be honoured that month, with a story screening and guest panel being held on Saturday 24th August.

BFI spokeswoman Liz Parkinson told Doctor Who News today:
Due to guest availability, we've moved our Eighth Doctor event to a little later in the year, so our Ninth Doctor event has been brought forward.
The date for the TV movie screening is yet to be announced, while the story to be shown from the Ninth Doctor's era, and the accompanying guests, will also be confirmed in due course.

Because of the overwhelming demand to attend the monthly screenings, a ballot system is being run to allocate tickets and priority booking for the Ninth Doctor event will take place, as previously, via the members' section.

BFI Champions can enter the ballot from Monday 1st July and members can enter from Tuesday 2nd July.

The ballot will close on Friday 5th July and be run over the weekend of 6th and 7th July, with all entrants to be notified on Monday 8th July if they have been successful or not. Any tickets reserved for Champions and members through the ballot will be held until 8.30pm on Friday 12th July, and any that are unclaimed by then will be released for public sale on Saturday 13th July.

Although all the screenings in the season so far have been immediate sell-outs, returns and stand-bys are a strong possibility, so if all else fails keep checking with the BFI!




FILTER: - Ninth Doctor - Special Events - UK - Eighth Doctor - Seventh Doctor - BFI - WHO50 - Sylvester McCoy

Guests Announced For BFI's Two Doctors ScreeningBookmark and Share

Thursday, 13 June 2013 - Reported by John Bowman
Actors Frazer Hines and Tony Selby plus script editor and writer Eric Saward and visual effects designer Mike Kelt will be the special guests at the BFI screening of The Two Doctors.

The event, which takes place on Saturday 15th June to mark the Sixth Doctor's era, is the latest in the organisation's Doctor Who At 50 season and will start at 2pm.

The screenings have proved overwhelmingly popular, selling out as soon as tickets have been made available, although the BFI has introduced a ballot system to help make ticket allocation fairer.

Returns are always a possibility, though. As such, at the time of posting this news item four tickets were available via the event link. Stand-bys and other returns may also be available on the day.




FILTER: - Special Events - Sixth Doctor - UK - BFI - WHO50

BFI To Show Recovered Dalek Film ReportBookmark and Share

Friday, 7 June 2013 - Reported by John Bowman
The BFI is to show the BBC's long-lost behind-the-scenes report on Daleks - Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D. that was recovered last year.

The feature, lasting about five minutes, was originally included in the edition of teen culture programme A Whole Scene Going broadcast on 16th March 1966 and will be shown on the big screen at BFI Southbank on Wednesday 3rd July during a compilation of reports from various productions.

The BFI event is entitled The Location Report and is itself part of the wider Broadcasting The Arts: Television Looks At Film strand being run by the organisation. Tickets go on sale to the public on Tuesday 11th June.

Although the master tape was wiped by the BBC, a copy of this particular edition of A Whole Scene Going ended up as part of a Welsh villager's collection of films that was eventually sold on. A timecoded and watermarked extract from the programme is available to view via the Tim Disney Archive, with the Dalek film report excerpt starting at 1 min 16 sec.





FILTER: - Special Events - Movies - BFI

Troughton's Hitch In Time To Get Spruced-Up DVD ReleaseBookmark and Share

Friday, 24 May 2013 - Reported by John Bowman
The film A Hitch In Time starring Patrick Troughton as a time-travelling professor is to be released on DVD for high-definition viewing.

Penned by the Oscar-winning scriptwriter T E B "Tibby" Clarke and directed by Jan Darnley-Smith, the 54-minute Children's Film Foundation feature from 1978 will form part of the three-film CFF collection Weird Adventures from the BFI.

In A Hitch In Time, Patrick Troughton plays time-hopping inventor Adam Wagstaff. Discovered working on his time machine by two curious kids, Wagstaff decides to send them back through the ages. But with malfunctions a-plenty, will they be able to make it back?
It also stars Jeff Rawle as "Sniffy" Kemp, a teacher out to spoil the fun. The art direction is by Doctor Who's current production designer Michael Pickwoad.

The other two films in the collection are Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's last collaborative feature The Boy Who Turned Yellow (1972) and Alberto Cavalcanti's The Monster of Highgate Ponds (1961).

All the films have been newly transferred for high-definition viewing from the best available elements in the BFI National Archive, having been out of distribution for a number of years.

Weird Adventures - the third volume of CFF films brought out by the BFI - will be released on Monday 17th June and is available to pre-order.

The CFF was a non-profit-making pan-industry initiative set up in 1951 by the owner of the Odeon and Rank cinema chains to make home-grown entertainment for young cinema-goers to see at the "Saturday morning pictures". Key themes included adventure, mysteries, monsters, science-fiction, shipwrecks, races, and animals, with regional content from Scotland to south-west England.

It became the Children's Film and Television Foundation in 1982, with film production ending in 1987. The CFTF is now known as the Children's Media Foundation, with the film collection preserved in the BFI National Archive.





FILTER: - Merchandise - BFI - Blu-ray/DVD - Patrick Troughton

BFI Screenings: Seventh Doctor Title AnnouncedBookmark and Share

Friday, 24 May 2013 - Reported by John Bowman
Remembrance of the Daleks is the story that has been chosen to represent the Seventh Doctor's era for the BFI's Doctor Who At 50 season.

The four-parter, written by Ben Aaronovitch and directed by Andrew Morgan, originally aired in October 1988 and saw the Doctor return to Coal Hill School and the Totter's Lane junkyard first seen in the show's premier episode in 1963. It also continued the story arc of the civil war between rival Dalek factions and marked the last appearance of the Daleks and Davros in the original run of the show.

Remembrance will be getting its big-screen showing on Saturday 27th July at 2pm, with priority booking for tickets being subject to a ballot via the members' section.

BFI Champions can enter the ballot from Monday 3rd June and members can enter from Tuesday 4th June.

The ballot will close on Friday 7th June and be run over the weekend of 8th and 9th June, with all entrants to be notified on Monday 10th June if they have been successful or not. Any tickets reserved for Champions and members through the ballot will be held until 8.30pm on Friday 14th June, and any that are unclaimed by then will be released for public sale on Saturday 15th June.

Although all the celebratory screenings have been immediate sell-outs, returns and stand-bys are a strong possibility, so if all else fails do keep checking with the BFI!

Guests for the accompanying question-and-answer panel will be announced nearer the time.

UPDATE - SUNDAY 16th JUNE: The BFI has launched a competition to win a pair of tickets to the Remembrance screening, with a copy of the BFI book 100 Science Fiction Films - to be published on Friday 28th June - also going to the winner. Enter via this link. The competition closes on Friday 19th July. Travel is not included, and terms and conditions apply.




FILTER: - Special Events - UK - Seventh Doctor - BFI - WHO50

BFI: The Fifth Doctor PanelBookmark and Share

Wednesday, 15 May 2013 - Reported by John Bowman
A video of the guest panel at this month's BFI celebration of the Fifth Doctor's era is now available to watch.

As part of its Doctor Who At 50 season, the BFI screened The Caves of Androzani, which was followed by a question-and-answer session featuring actors Peter Davison, Sarah Sutton, Janet Fielding, and Matthew Waterhouse, as well as the story director Graeme Harper.


The event, held on Saturday 4th May, saw the discussion led by season co-curator Justin Johnson.

As reported last month, the next celebratory screening - marking the Sixth Doctor's era - will be The Two Doctors, taking place on Saturday 15th June at 2pm. Because demand for all the events has been so high, tickets are now being allocated via ballot.





FILTER: - Special Events - Online - BFI - WHO50 - Fifth Doctor - Peter Davison

BFI: The Fourth Doctor PanelBookmark and Share

Saturday, 11 May 2013 - Reported by John Bowman
A video of the guest panel at last month's BFI celebratory screening of The Robots of Death can now be watched online.

The event, which was held on Saturday 20th April as part of the BFI's Doctor Who At 50 season, marked the Fourth Doctor's era.

The BFI has uploaded a four-minute excerpt featuring Tom Baker, which can be seen below and on its YouTube channel.


The fuller, 32-minute presentation, which also features former companion actress Louise Jameson and ex-producer Philip Hinchcliffe, can be seen here. The discussion was led by season co-curator Justin Johnson.

The BFI says it will be uploading the panel video from last Saturday's Fifth Doctor event next week.

As reported earlier, the next celebratory screening will be The Two Doctors on Saturday 15th June at 2pm. Because demand for all the events so far has been so high, tickets are now being allocated on a ballot basis.





FILTER: - Special Events - Tom Baker - Online - BFI - WHO50 - Fourth Doctor