The Finished Product - Issue Nine

The latest issue of the unofficial Big Finish fanzine, The Finished Product, has now been released, with a cover by Vworp Vworp's Colin Brockhurst.Contact thefinishedproduct@hotmail.co.uk for more information.

Fanz

A new geek based sitcom, Fanz has been released on audio CD from ComedyPunkz.

To accompany the release of this story, ComedyPunkz are running two competitions, one each on Twitter and Facebook. See website for details.

Possibilities

The short fan-film Possibilities, which was mentioned in the Doctor Who Fanz documentary, is to be shown at Phoenix Comicon this coming memorial day weekend. The film will be shown as part of the fan-film presentation between 10.30 and 1.30 on the Friday of the event.

The 15-minute film was filmed at familiar locations around London in late summer 2004 and is a collaborative effort featuring the students from Realtime Pictures Megeve Experiment and directed by award-winner Neil Oseman, also principal photographer on Daemos Rising.

The full film has been viewable on YouTube for a while and an accompanying making-of feature is now available.

The Television Movie

The co-executive producer of the 1996 Television Movie Philip Segal has passed on several items from his collection to fan Paul Salamoff, the owner of the 1996 TARDIS console. Salamoff was part of the team behind the recent restoration of the Paul McGann TARDIS which was visited by Segal at the Gallifrey One Convention in February.

Items passed on include the Doctor’s bag (with props), an original sonic screwdriver prop, one of the staffs from the Eye of Harmony and a stunningly beautiful Doctor Who chess set made in 1993 by the Danbury Mint.

The Doctor Who story The Doctor's Wife has won the Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation in this year's Nebula Awards, the annual event held by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.

Although Doctor Who was nominated for the same award last year, this is the first time the programme has been successful. In winning the award the team beat several Holloywood movies including Martin Scorsese's Hugo and Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris.

The Doctor's Wife was the fourth episode of the 2011 series of Doctor Who. It was written by acclaimed author Neil Gaiman and directed by Richard Clark.

In accepting the award, Neil Gaiman paid tribute to the creators of Doctor Who. Posting on twitter he said
Richard Clark also took to twitter to express his delight at the award.
Show-runner Steven Moffat congratulated the team

Steven Moffat, Executive Producer and Lead Writer on Doctor Who, is to be presented with a special BAFTA award in recognition of his outstanding creative writing contribution to television.

The British Academy of Film and Television Arts is honouring the writer with the award, presented in memory of the playwright Dennis Potter, at the Television BAFTA's which take place at London's Royal Festival Hall on May 27.

Moffat began his television scripting career on Press Gang, the ITV Children's drama, in 1989. Since then he has gone onto to work on a wide variety of programmes including Stay Lucky, Joking Apart, Murder Most Horrid, Chalk, Jekyll and Coupling.

Steven Moffat was one of the first writers approached by Russell T Davies when he was planning the return of Doctor Who in 2005, leading to Moffat writing one of the most critically acclaimed stories of that first series, The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances. Moffat went on to write several more episodes of the show, creating aliens such as The Weeping Angels and characters such as River Song. When Davies left the series, Moffat was the obvious successor, taking the helm of the show for the introduction of Matt Smith as The Eleventh Doctor and creating the characters of Amy and Rory.

Running parallel to the success of Doctor Who, Moffat has, in collaboration with Mark Gatiss, created Sherlock, updating Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's stories and placing Sherlock Holmes and Dr John Watson's firmly in the 21st century.

In announcing the special award Tim Corrie, Chairman of BAFTA, said
Steven Moffat said he was thrilled with the award.
The award was won by Russell T Davies in 2005. Other recent winners include Alan Plater, Stephen Poliakoff and Lynda La Plante.

The BBC wants you to help decide which figure from history the Doctor should meet next.

Over the years the Doctor has met some of the most influential figures in the history of the planet Earth. He has travelled with Marco Polo, flirted with Madame de Pompadour, had his tooth extracted by Doc Holliday and played Hide and Seek with the Emperor Nero. He has met the authors HG Wells, Agatha Christie and Charles Dickens, and even helped William Shakespeare with some of his ideas. He has debated with Winston Churchill, helped out Richard Nixon and rescued Queen Victoria from a werewolf.

Recently the BBC website asked which real person the Doctor should meet next and Doctor Who's Executive Producer Caroline Skinner was so delighted with the response and imagination in the replies that she decided to commission a Doctor Who writer to write a short story based on the best suggestion.

The story will appear on the BBC website, where suggestions for the character involved can still be made.

UPDATE - 18th MAY: The BBC has now stopped accepting suggestions after it was inundated with e-mails.

Last week saw the final scenes recorded on location for the characters Amy and Rory, aka Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill - the latter who comes 'full circle' as the location at St. Cadoc's Hospital in Caerleon was where he filmed his first day on location back in 2009!

Their last scenes to be filmed come from the penultimate episode for the Ponds, the fourth of the next series. Their departure on screen will be in the following episode, the fifth, which was recorded last month. After the final shots were completed Karen Gillan tweeted "And that's a wrap! Bye bye from the ponds. We love you."

The final scenes were observed by several of the production team past and present, including lead writer Steven Moffat and former executive producers Piers Wenger and Beth Willis, with a party taking place afterwards to celebrate.

Another 'closure' took place on Friday, with the final day's production at Upper Boat. The studios, located in Pontypridd just outside Cardiff, have been home to Doctor Who since the third series and have also been the base for Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures. The complex was the first BBC studio centre totally dedicated to drama, and was set up in the wake of the success of Doctor Who following the series' revival in 2005. Production will now continue in full at the new purpose-built studios at Roath Lock in Cardiff Bay.



With Karen and Arthur's final scenes recorded, the "handover" to new girl Jenna-Louise Coleman will begin filming shortly, though as with previous introductions her first story to be recorded may not be her first story on screen!

Doctor Who has returned to Finland, with all episodes from the first appearance of the Ninth Doctor in Rose through to the 2011 Christmas Special, The Doctor, The Widow and The Wardrobe, scheduled for transmission.

The revived series was first shown in 2005 but was not successful despite acquiring a dedicated fan base in the country, and the show was dropped from the schedules after The Christmas Invasion.

The series is now being shown with Finnish subtitles on the YLE TV2 channel, airing at 8pm on weekday evenings. Following transmission, each episode will be available online, but only inside Finland.

The Doctor Who Experience in Cardiff is to open its doors to the public on Friday 20th July, it was announced today. Tickets for the attraction will go on sale at 10am on Thursday 14th June.

Originally based at the Olympia Two exhibition, conference, and event centre in West Kensington, London, it has been moved next to the Roath Lock drama studios at Porth Teigr, where Doctor Who is now made. With the construction having finished, internal fitting can now take place, moving in props, sets, and memorabilia from the show.

Items going on display for the first time in Cardiff will include the Doctor's cradle from A Good Man Goes to War, the Silence spaceship, and the Doctor's sonic cane from Let's Kill Hitler. Many more items are being kept under wraps until the attraction opens.

Philip Murphy, the managing director of BBC Worldwide Live Events, said:
The interactive exhibition ran for a year in London, closing in February this year. It was originally planned to open in Cardiff this spring, but that date got pushed back and instead the Official Doctor Who Convention was held in the Millennium Centre. The Cardiff "incarnation" of the Experience, which is in a 3,000 sq m building, is scheduled to be in situ for five years.

The attraction covers the entire history of the series, with exhibits changing as new episodes are shown, and Paula Al-Lach, BBC Worldwide's head of exhibitions and events, said:
Ken Poole, Cardiff council's head of economic development, said:
Up to a quarter of a million people are expected to pass through its doors every year.


[BBC News and BBC Media Centre, 14 May 2012]

The third in our occasional series marking the 50th anniversary of events leading to the creation of a true TV legend.
 
The initial seed had been sown with the suggestion by Eric Maschwitz, Assistant and Adviser to the Controller of Programmes, that the literary merits of science fiction be looked into for short, single adaptations.

BBC Head of Script Department Donald Wilson, who had set up a Survey Group to keep an eye on other media and to look for ideas that the department could develop for television, gave this task to drama script editors Donald Bull and Alice Frick. They reported back that there was just a small number of suitable works and writers but were unable to recommend any particular stories.

Bull and Frick also stated that any adaptations should be written by TV dramatists and not SF writers. One copy of the report was sent to Wilson, to be duplicated and circulated with the next minutes for the Survey Group, and another was sent to Maschwitz.

On 14th May 1962 - exactly 50 years ago today - a memo was sent to Maschwitz by Donald Baverstock, the Assistant Controller of Programmes for BBC TV, thanking him for the Survey Group report, which he had seen. Baverstock wrote: "HSDTel" stood for "Head of Script Department, Television", ie, Donald Wilson. The next day - 15th May 1962 - Maschwitz sent Baverstock's memo to Wilson, including with it a hand-written note expressing his own "admiring thanks".

Just days later, Frick and her colleague John Braybon, pictured right, were tasked with putting together another report specifying sci-fi stories that would suit being adapted for television. This follow-up would be presented to Wilson on 25th July 1962.

Earlier in the month, on 1st May 1962, Bull had sent a letter to SF author John Christopher's agent, Jean LeRoy, to express his gratitude for the stories by Christopher that she had sent him. He said there were "considerable immediate opportunities . . . for using John Christopher's specialised knowledge and talent in conjunction with our future schemes, possibly in collaboration with a skilled TV dramatist" but he also stated that TV audiences were generally unready yet for "the more fanciful flights of SF" as displayed in such stories as Christopher's Christmas Roses.

In the meantime, rival channel ITV was preparing to broadcast the sci-fi anthology series Out of this World - the first of its kind on British TV and a programme greenlit by ABC drama supervisor and sci-fi fan Sydney Newman, who was working out his notice at the commercial network before joining the BBC as its Head of Drama later in the year. This 13-part series would start airing on 30th June 1962.

Actress Katy Manning is seeking sponsors for a 10-kilometre charity walk in London later this month.

She will be part of the Gay Times team aiming to raise cash for the Terrence Higgins Trust to support people living with HIV in poverty.

Walk For Life takes place on Sunday 20th May, starting and ending at Potters Field Park in Tooley Street. The theme is Kings and Queens and the route will take in some of the capital's most iconic and regal landmarks. The walkers will be checking in at the park from 9.30am, heading off at 11am, and arriving back about 2pm.

It is not the first time the actress - who played companion Jo Grant from 1971 to 1973 and was a guest star as the married Jo Jones in spin-off series The Sarah Jane Adventures in 2010 - has lent her support this way. In June 2010, she and the Gay Times team raised more than £1,100 on the Crusaid Walk For Life.

Her sponsorship page for this year's walk can be found here.

The two recovered Doctor Who episodes Galaxy 4 - Air Lock and The Underwater Menace episode 2 were shown to an appreciative audience in Cardiff on Wednesday evening.

Both episodes were recovered from a collector last year and their existence was revealed at a screening at the BFI in London last December. The episode of The Underwater Menace was shown in full at the Missing Believed Wiped event but only an excerpt of about 10 minutes from Galaxy 4 was played, making the Cardiff screening the first time the whole episode had been seen in the UK since its initial transmission in September 1965.

The event was attended by Peter Purves, who played Steven in Galaxy 4, along with Anneke Wills and Frazer Hines, who played Polly and Jamie in The Underwater Menace. Following the screening, all three joined current show-runner Steven Moffat to answer questions about their time on the programme.

The panel was hosted by Gary Russell, and the event was attended by many other luminaries from the Doctor Who world, including some of the Restoration Team, who were greeted with much applause.

There is no news as to when the episodes will be released on DVD, although the BBC has said it is considering releasing them on iTunes.