Power Of The Daleks: special edition details discussedBookmark and Share

Monday, 4 May 2020 - Reported by Chuck Foster
Animation director and producer Charles Norton appeared as a guest on last weekend's Time Space Visualiser convention organised by Fantom Events online, during which he discussed the new special edition of The Power of The Daleks with Toby Hadoke. The interview is available to watch online from the Fantom Events YouTube channel.


The Power of the Daleks: Special Edition is due to be released in July.





FILTER: - Animation - Blu-ray/DVD - Fantom - Online

Fury From The Deep animated teaser releasedBookmark and Share

Sunday, 27 October 2019 - Reported by Chuck Foster
Fury From The Deep - Steelbook (artwork tbc) (Credit: BBC Studios)BBC Studios have announced that the next missing Patrick Troughton story to receive the animated treatment will be Fury From The Deep, the penultimate adventure from the fifth season which features the departure of travelling companion Victoria.

The release was announced on the Animations Panel at this weekend's London Comic Con, and as well as all six missing episodes being animated in high definition in both colour and black and white it will also include the surviving clips from the serial, a new Making-Of, and other features still be be announced.

The story is due to be relesed on DVD and Blu-ray (including as a steelbook edition) during 2020, following on from The Faceless Ones, which was announced earlier this year, also for 2020.






FILTER: - Animation - BBC - Blu-ray/DVD - Missing episodes - Second Doctor

Doctor Who: The Runaway - trailer releasedBookmark and Share

Monday, 15 April 2019 - Reported by Chuck Foster
BBC Digital have released a trailer for their forthcoming virtual reality film, Doctor Who: The Runaway:


You’ve been in a collision. You wake inside the TARDIS. The Doctor introduces you to the person, or thing, you collided with. He’s a strange and magnificent ball of living energy called Volta. Part surly teenager, part bomb, Volta is very unstable. In fact, he’s primed to explode. Big time. Unless he can be returned to his home planet, sharpish. The problem is, a squad of galactic busybodies has other plans for Volta. Bad ones. Drawn into a frantic chase, you become the Doctor’s unlikely assistant as she races against time to get Volta home to his parents. Armed with a sonic screwdriver, it is down to you to help the Doctor as she faces the forces of evil, and teenage angst, in this animated 13-minute VR adventure from the team behind Doctor Who Series 11.

Doctor Who: The Runaway (Credit: BBC Digital) Doctor Who: The Runaway (Credit: BBC Digital) Doctor Who: The Runaway (Credit: BBC Digital) Doctor Who: The Runaway (Credit: BBC Digital)

The film will premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival next week, and will be coming to UK audiences in the near future.





FILTER: - Animation - BBC - Online - Thirteenth Doctor

Planet 55 statement regarding Doctor Who animationsBookmark and Share

Thursday, 7 August 2014 - Reported by Chuck Foster
Animation studio Planet 55 have issued the following statement regarding their involvement with creating animated episodes of Doctor Who:

Planet 55 Studios (Credit: Planet 55 Studios)There have been many queries about Planet 55 Studios's work on Doctor Who and whether we are doing any more.

To date, Planet 55 Studios has completed work on three Doctor Who animated reconstructions for BBC Worldwide's DVD range: The Reign of Terror, The Tenth Planet and most recently The Moonbase. We really enjoyed creating those but they are the only Doctor Who stories Planet 55 Studios have worked on and there are no plans to work on any more.

At the moment the company is focused on animation projects completely unconnected to Doctor Who.

The release comes as the status of the last expected classic series DVD, The Underwater Menace, remains uncertain.





FILTER: - Animation - Classic Series - Blu-ray/DVD - Second Doctor

Planet 55 may leave AustraliaBookmark and Share

Wednesday, 12 March 2014 - Posted By Vitas Varnas
The Australian animation company behind the re-creation of Doctor Who stories has told the Australian parliament it may need to relocate to the UK due to difficulties accessing broadband in the country.

Planet 55 Studios, which has animated some of the recent Doctor Who missing stories including The Reign of Terror and The Tenth Planet, told the Senate Select Committee for the National Broadband Network that the lack of bandwidth to the company's headquarters on the Central Coast of New South Wales was seriously frustrating the work of the company.

The organisation needs to move about 30 gigabytes of data per day. Austen Atkinson, the studio's head, told the committee the company had installed fibre to its premises and was paying AU$1,600 per month for a 50Mbps down, 50Mbps up link.
We could do with eight times that but we simply cannot get it. So we installed a line at AU$1,600 a month. We would love to install multiple ones but we cannot because there is not enough bandwidth. I will use any technology that works to get this out. At the moment it is called 'post'. That is what we are having to do. It slows down our productivity massively and costs us serious money. It would add about AU$1 million to transfer, which we could easily have spent on talent here. We could have trained more talent and spent it on animators, which I would much rather have done.
Mr Atkinson said the company was taking on more work for the BBC and so it was considering relocating to Cardiff in the United Kingdom.
The fact is that it is very attractive to look at in the UK at the moment, because the economy is booming again now; it is growing in my sector tremendously. As a result of Doctor Who's success and so forth, there is a huge culture in Cardiff.
Source: ZD Net




FILTER: - Animation - Blu-ray/DVD - Australia

The Moonbase: animation creditsBookmark and Share

Wednesday, 26 February 2014 - Reported by Chuck Foster
The Moonbase - R2 Cover (Credit: BBC Worldwide)Pup Ltd, the company responsible for the classic Doctor Who range of DVDs over the last few years, have reported that several of the lead creatives involved with the production of the animated episodes of the recently released The Moonbase were absent from the credits due to a technical error.

Executive producer Dan Hall has confirmed the following:
As the Executive Producer of the commissioning company I should like to confirm that the following should have recieved credits as Animators on the project:

Chris W Chapman
Crystal Chappell
Sarah Harper
Hayley Parker
Derek Moore
Thomas Barkel
Charlotte Barkel
David Donnelly
Tim Proust
Joshua Wolski
James Marsh

Their involvement was of an important creative level, and was crucial in producing what was both a creative and commercial success for the Classic Doctor Who DVD range.

The Moonbase is available now from our Region 1 and Region 2 Amazon shops.

(with thanks to Dan Hall/Pup Ltd)




FILTER: - Second Doctor - Animation - Blu-ray/DVD

Moonbase animation clipBookmark and Share

Wednesday, 15 January 2014 - Reported by Josiah Rowe
BBC Worldwide's doctorwho.tv site has released an exclusive clip from the forthcoming DVD of the 1967 Patrick Troughton serial The Moonbase. Episodes two and four of this story remain in the BBC archives; episodes one and three have been animated to the original soundtrack for this DVD release. The clip, from the animated episode three, shows Cybermen marching across the surface of the Moon in preparation for their attack on the eponymous moonbase.


The Moonbase DVD will be released on January 20 in Region 2 (Europe, Japan, Middle East, South Africa), on January 22 in Region 4 (Australia, New Zealand, South and Central America) and February 11 in Region 1 (US and Canada).




FILTER: - Second Doctor - Animation - Blu-ray/DVD

First Doctor regenerates in animationBookmark and Share

Wednesday, 6 March 2013 - Reported by Chuck Foster
The Tenth Planet - Episode 4 Animation. Credit: BBC WorldwideBBC Worldwide have released a new clip from the forthcoming animation for episode for of The Tenth Planet, which features the original change of lead actor from William Hartnell to Patrick Troughton:

Talking about the sequence, lead animator Chris Chapman said:
We knew that we had to throw everything at this scene and in fact the whole story is historic, with the first appearance of the Cybermen, so we really worked very hard on it. It was a real pleasure. It has definitely made me a fan of Doctor Who.



The DVD is due to be released in late 2013.





FILTER: - First Doctor - Animation - Classic Series - Blu-ray/DVD

The Reign of Terror: related animationsBookmark and Share

Friday, 25 January 2013 - Reported by Chuck Foster
BBC Worldwide have released a number of videos to tie in with The Reign of Terror coming out on DVD next Monday.

In Animating the Doctor, lead animator Chris Chapman from Planet 55 Studios demonstrates the process of bringing the First Doctor to animated life in his attire as a regional officer from the Provinces. Travelling with the Doctor is a creation by the company of the First Doctor within the TARDIS as he prepares to undertake his travels. Finally, A glimpse inside the First Doctor's TARDIS presents a brief colour animation of the console room as it was imagined during the first season of the show.





FILTER: - First Doctor - Animation - BBC Worldwide - Blu-ray/DVD

The Snowmen: publicity coverageBookmark and Share

Monday, 24 December 2012 - Reported by Chuck Foster



Jenna-Louise Coleman was a guest on BBC Breakfast this morning, chatting about her impending arrival as Clara in tomorrow's The Snowmen, and how this relates to her previous appearance back in September, in Asylum of the Daleks:
The Clara you will meet in the Christmas Special is living in Victorian London, working in a pub, also living a bit of a double life as a governess looking after some children ...

We've already met Oswin in Asylym of the Daleks ... Basically it's what been referred to as "a soft mystery", and if anybody's hoping to get any answers ... it's something that will be ongoing for quite a while and in true Steven Moffat style you won't really get any answers in the Christmas Special, it will just raise more questions, and get more and more complicated and fascinating.
In a pre-recorded interview with entertainment correspondent Liza Mzimba, she said:
It's a mystery. I've met the Doctor once before, which he doesn't quite know yet, and it all begins to piece together and I keep popping up ...

Talking about the interaction between her character and the Doctor, she said:
It's been a really interesting process for me and for Matt how a new companion will change the Doctor and vice-versa, and trying to find our dynamic and how we're going to move forward with the show. It's been really interesting, like Matt said, the kind of days where he would be discovering things and finding ways in which the Doctor is changing and is different with his new companion.
Matt Smith mentioned the relationship between the two to Lizo:
They're figuring each other out, and it's just wonderful to see it at the start, because it reinvogorates the show. You see these two people meeting, and sussing each other out - so it's about learning how they get on together, and seeing them size each other up.

I think there's always a bit of sexual tension between the Doctor and the companion ... so I hope so!
Matt Smith was interviewed in The Independent, where he also commented on the new relationship:
The Doctor under Amy and Rory eventually became like their pet, he was just this sort of strange pet that could talk, that would sweep in every now and then. He's meeting someone new because he presents himself in a hew light and she forces him to be a different version of himself slightly.

As always with Doctor Who, the essence and heartbeat of the show is the same – old alien, hot chick travel through the universe and get into capers. That will always be the heartbeat of the show and it's whether it’s more flirtatious, whether there's more attraction, whether there's more zing, you'll have to wait and find out. I’m sure we'll cover all that territory.
He also explained a little more about the Doctor's grief at the start of the episode:
There's a great deal of time that's passed in cunning story terms. It's great because you kind of go: "500 years later..." but the burden of that loss will always be with him. Like the burden of losing Rose Tyler or whoever it is – is always with him to some extent. But I think particularly for my Doctor it is. Amy and Rory were so significant. But what I would say as well is I always think it's important for the show for that grieving to have its place but move on. I felt it affected Martha's journey quite a lot that he was always talking about Rose, which is completely understandable, because the Tenth Doctor and Rose had such a wonderful connection but the show has to propel forward back into adventure mode.

Videos

Lizo Mzimba's preview of The Snowmen is available to watch on the BBC News website. The BBC have also released an interview with Matt and Jenna as part of their Adventure Calendar.





FILTER: - Matt Smith - Animation - Series Specials - Press - Jenna-Louise Coleman - Series 7/33