New venues for exhibitions

Saturday, 20 January 2007 - Reported by DWNP Archive
Manchester and Land's End have been announced as new locations for Doctor Who Up Close exhibitions this year.

The official exhibitions site says the Manchester display, running from March 31 to November 5 at the Museum of Science and Industry, will be the "largest ever Doctor Who exhibition". People will reportedly have the first chance to see some of the creations from Series Three there.

The museum's website says there will be props, costumes and monsters on display, while 24hourmuseum reports that among them will be items from "The Runaway Bride".

The Manchester attraction's site also has details of a Foto Fun event taking place between February 12 and 18 in which people can have their picture taken fighting a Dalek.

The museum is in Liverpool Road in the Castlefield district of Manchester.

Meanwhile, Land's End will have its own Up Close exhibition from Easter 2007, according to the official exhibitions site, although no more details are available as yet.

(With thanks to Steve Layton.)




FILTER: - Exhibitions

Netflix needs the Doctor

Saturday, 20 January 2007 - Reported by Jeremy Bement
According to tvshowsondvd.com, several Netflix customers noted that their rented copies of Doctor Who: The Complete Second Series disc one had a problem.

Apparently at the 32-minute mark of New Earth the episode switches to a rather gruesome scene from "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning". Along the same lines, the special features section of the disc does not work.

Once the BBC were contacted and made aware of the issue they quickly responded with a statement that yes, there was a problem with the discs in question.

Only Netflix copies of disc one were affected and not those for purchase in stores. While the BBC works on replacing the faulty DVDs, Nexflix has pulled disc one as being available for rent until the situation is resolved.

UPDATE: The Sun picked up on this story in its January 26 edition, claiming it was an exclusive.

Headlined "The Tardis Chainsaw Massacre", it has a mocked-up picture of a Dalek armed with a chainsaw and quotes a BBC insider as saying: "It's very, very embarrassing. Doctor Who's a family show and the most scary thing is probably a Dalek, yet the Texas Chainsaw Massacre films are among the most frightening ever made."

A BBC spokeswoman is quoted as blaming a "manufacturing problem" and says: "We apologise for any distress we may have caused. We are doing our best to rectify this problem."

(Additional reporting by John Bowman.)




FILTER: - Blu-ray/DVD

Torchwood on Spanish TV

Friday, 19 January 2007 - Reported by Benjamin Elliott

Trade magazine Variety is reporting that the Spanish network Cuatro has purchased Torchwood, along with a number of US dramas.





FILTER: - Torchwood - Broadcasting

Doctor Who Singles Chart battle

Friday, 19 January 2007 - Reported by Chuck Foster

The BBC children's news programme Newsround is the latest to report on plans to put Love Don't Roam by Murray Gold into the UK Singles charts.

Reporter Lizo Mzimba commented: "It's all happened because of a change in the rules on how the singles chart works. Now any song, whether it's a single or an album track, whether it's in the shops or only by downloading, can make it into the singles chart if enough people buy it. That's what a group of Doctor Who fans have tried to take advantage of. They've spent the week trying to persuade people to download a track featured in the Doctor Who Christmas Special, in the hope that the song Love Don't Roam - which was never intended to be a single - will actually make it into the singles chart next week."

He went on to say: "If you think it's ridiculous that a Doctor Who song could be popular enough to get into the charts, think again - a few years back this song (Doctorin' The TARDIS), inspired by Doctor Who, not only got into the charts, it got to number one!"

The item was entitled "David Tennant vs Billie Piper" as, in addition to above and as we previously reported, BBC Radio One DJ Chris Moyles is also attempting to get a track into the charts - Honey to the Bee by former Doctor Who actress Billie Piper.

Newsround have also invited viewers to vote on which song they'd like to see make it to the top of the charts their website - though you can't vote for both!

Though not referenced by name, Outpost Gallifrey made it into the item, used as an illustration of one of the sites where the download is being discussed (see above picture).

(Billie Piper was also mentioned on this morning's Entertainment Today, talking about her new play Treats, but also to comment that she was on their first ever show, some 250 editions ago.)





FILTER: - Murray Gold - Audio - Press

Battles in Time Expansion

Thursday, 18 January 2007 - Reported by Jarrod Cooper
GE Fabbri has announced a new expansion set to the Doctor Who: Battles in Time magazine and collectible card series. The new set, The Annihilator Series, will feature 100 new card designs. The Expansion set, which includes images from The Runaway Bride, will be included starting with Issue 12.
“As well as some terrifying Racnoss Empress cards, there are some amazing moving-image ultra rare cards in this set,” says Battles In Time editor, Claire Lister. “We’re lucky that Doctor Who features several monsters that look very different underneath from what you’d expect on the outside, so look out for a Sycorax Unmasking Card, a Dalek Mutant reveal, and a particularly chilling card where Toby Zed becomes possessed by the Beast!”




FILTER: - Magazines

BBC Chief: Dr Who is our creative future

Thursday, 18 January 2007 - Reported by Kenny Davidson

On the day when the BBC's Director General expressed real disappointment at the Government's final licence fee level settlement, which funds the corporation, he also gavea keynote speech on the BBC's creative future. Addressing The Future Of Creative Content Conference, part of the Media Summit 2007 event taking place in London, Mark Thompson gave a detailed lecture, but highlighted only one programme as an example of how the corporation was making its creative future a reality - Doctor Who. This part of his lecture is quoted below.
But it's incredibly important that we don't define "value" solely around productivity or cost-cutting. One of the fundamental lessons we learned from Creative Future was the value you can grow, the audiences you can build, when you think about projects not just in terms of single linear broadcast windows but across different platforms and media.

It will be much harder to justify very high budgets for content that only gets a single outing on a linear channel. But that's no longer the right way to think about content commissioning. In future major projects should extend not just across TV, the web, radio, and mobile but through multiple windows across time and across different business models.

So: Russell T Davies, Julie Gardner and BBC Wales build a brilliant sci-fi production factory to deliver Doctor Who. And when I say "factory" I don't just mean physical production, I mean ideas, development, brilliant scripts, design as well. A complete creative operation.

The factory of course makes even better creative and economic sense when you add Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures. Doctor Who plays out across BBC and UKTV channels. The Torchwood website is not just commissioned on day one but is out there before the TV premiere. There's a coherent plan in place for the whole audience relationship with the content almost from the start.

Now clearly this kind of 360 degree exploitation could be creatively limiting or tawdry. Commercial priorities could distort the original commissioning intention. But it really hasn't been in this case and that's because we've had totally committed creative leaders at the centre of decision-making at every stage of the process. You'd have to talk to them directly to hear how they've found it, but my sense is that the sheer scale of the possibilities, the potential to link different titles and different platforms has been creatively inspiring and liberating.





FILTER: - Production

Torchwood - Final Ratings

Wednesday, 17 January 2007 - Reported by Marcus
BARB have released figures for the final week of "Torchwood".

The BBC3 showing achieved a rating of 1.23 million viewers and was the most watched programme on BBC3 for the week. Overall it was the second most watched programme on all multi channel TV, being beaten by "Monday night Football" on Sky Sports.

The BBC2 repeat scored 2.14 million and was the 21st in the BBC2 chart.

The final figures show that, after launch, the series settled down with an average audience of around 4 million viewers each week. The Appreciation index for all episodes was above the average for drama and ended with a massive 86 for the final BBC3 programme.

Click on the graphics below for the full details




FILTER: - Torchwood - Ratings - UK

Gunfighters CD release

Wednesday, 17 January 2007 - Reported by DWNP Archive
The BBC has given a few details about the release of the Hartnell story "The Gunfighters" on CD scheduled for 5 February. The release, which features linking narration by Peter Purves, will also include a special interview with Purves on the making of the episode. As a special there is a 10-minute bonus track of the original recordings of Lynda Baron singing "The Ballad of the Last Chance Saloon" from the story. This is the first ever release of the soundtrack that is sure to set the toes tapping.




FILTER: - Audio - Classic Series

Raiders of the Lost Archives

Wednesday, 17 January 2007 - Reported by Chuck Foster
ITV broadcast the first part of their new series, Raiders of the Lost Archive, last night; presented by Paddy McGuinness, the show features clips for famous television personalities that were thought to be lost to the archives.

The programme has been made through searches through industry archives and private collections, and the show has also made an appeal for other shows to be returned, in a similar vein to the BBC's own Treasure Huntappeal. This new more general initiative has its own website to accompany the show, and includes a section for the 50 most wanted television shows - of which Doctor Who is listed (number 12 in the alphabetical list). Says the site: "Over 100 episodes of this ever popular series are missing or part missing – all from the black and white 60s era of the show. Doctor Who fans are particularly interested in recovering “The Tenth Planet” Episode 4 which was first broadcast on October 29, 1966. It was the final story of the first Doctor, William Hartnell’s era and the first story to feature the Cybermen. Patrick Troughton also makes his first, uncredited appearance as the Second Doctor. Many classic gems now survive only as soundtracks and photographs. Additionally, some Jon Pertwee 70s episodes made in colour only survive in b/w. Do you have “The Web of Fear” episodes 2-6 or “Fury from the Deep”?"

The next show will feature a very young David Tennant (above) in an early television appearance!




FILTER: - David Tennant

"Survival" coming to DVD

Wednesday, 17 January 2007 - Reported by R Alan Siler
BBC DVD/2Entertain has announced full details of the DVD of "Survival", which will be hitting the British retail shelves in a 2-disk, heavily specials-laden release on 3 April 2007. The final story of the original Doctor Who series, "Survival" (starring Sylvester McCoyas the Doctor, Sophie Aldred as Ace, and Anthony Ainley as the Master) is also the 40th Classic Doctor Who DVD release.


Special features include:

Disc 1
  • Main commentary withith Sylvester McCoy, Sophie Aldred and script-editor Andrew Cartmel.
  • Second commentary (episode three only). Fan commentary from the winners of a recent Doctor Who Magazine competition.
  • Cat Flap - a two-part documentary covering the making of Survival. Part One covers set-up and pre-production, Part Two covers shooting and post-production. With Sylvester McCoy, Sophie Aldred, Lisa Bowerman, Will Barton, Sakuntala Ramanee and Adele Silva, script editor Andrew Cartmel, director Alan Wareing, visual effects assistant Mike Tucker, composer Dominic Glynn and costume designer Ken Trew. Narrated by Paul Ewing.
  • Deleted and Extended Scenes - material from the first edit of the story that didn't make the final cut, plus comparisons of some of the scenes before and after the video effects were added.
  • Out-takes and comedy moments from the production of the story.
  • Continuities and trailers from the original BBC1 transmission.
  • Photo Gallery - production and behind-the-scenes stills from the making of the story.
  • Isolated Score - option to view the story with synchronous isolated music.
  • Radio Times listings in Adobe pdf format for viewing on PC or Mac.
  • Programme subtitles and subtitle production notes.


Disc 2
  • Endgame - Why was Doctor Who cancelled at the end of Season 26? What might have been in store for the Doctor and Ace if the series had continued into Season 27? With Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred, script editor Andrew Cartmel, writers Ben Aaronovitch and Colin Brake, BBC Head of Drama Series Peter Cregeen, composer Mark Ayres and visual effects designer Mike Tucker. Narrated by Paul Ewing.
  • Search Out Science - a schools programme featuring the Doctor and Ace, with Stephen Johnson and K9.
  • Little Girl Lost - A retrospective look at the development of Sophie Aldred's character, Ace, from her first story, Dragonfire through to her last, Survival. With Sophie Aldred, creator Ian Briggs and script editor Andrew Cartmel.
  • Destiny of the Doctors - Anthony Ainley's last appearance as The Master, in these links from the 1997 computer game.


For complete details on the release, please visit the Restoration Team's website.




FILTER: - Classic Series - Blu-ray/DVD - Radio Times