Children of the CircusBookmark and Share

Friday, 3 November 2023 - Reported by Marcus
Sylvester McCoy, with AUK Studios CEO, Paul Andrews (Credit: AUK Studios)

A new audio musical drama, Children of the Circus, is reuniting the cast of the seventh Doctor story, The Greatest Show in the Galaxy for a unique special.

The limited edition CD set will be released on December 14th, 2023, exactly 35 years to the day that the first episode of The Greatest Show in the Galaxy was broadcast on BBC One.

Once upon a time, there was a circus.

A Psychic Circus, to be precise. A glorious haven for the misfits of the universe.

But then, as is so often the way, it was hijacked by a trio of malevolent Gods.

Things grew unpleasant.  

Now, years later, the Gods are gone, but the scars of those who survived the Circus remain. After all, you can't change the past.  

Unless you're the Children of the Circus... and you're willing to sing.

Based on the Season 25 story by Stephen Wyatt, Children of the Circus is a brand-new, original, musical play on audio from AUK Studios; written by Kenton Hall (with songs by Christopher Guard) and based on an idea by Barnaby Eaton-Jones.

The special features the return of Sylvester McCoy (the Seventh Doctor) and Sophie Aldred (who played the Doctor’s traveling companion, Ace). But not as you’d expect. McCoy plays the High Poet; all befuddled charm and with a whisper of duplicity and danger. Aldred gives two magnificently different characters in the form of Captain Gren (the gruff owner of a Time Ship) and AJ (a sentient piece of rust, who navigates the Time Ship).

McCoy himself sums it up 

To return to the worlds of Stephen Wyatt's imagination, but as a wholly new character called the High Poet, means I get to be involved with the Psychic Circus rather than fighting against it! As a lover of the circus myself, juggling this new role was a joy (though I'm sad I didn't get to play the spoons).

What fun to be reunited with all the wonderful cast from 'The Greatest Show in the Galaxy' again, 35 years later, and I hope you'll all enjoy this time-sliding, sidestepping sequel from Barnaby Eaton-Jones and his bunch of clowns!

Toyah Willcox, Ian Kubiak, Christopher Guard, Barnaby Eaton-Jones, Dee Sadler, Kenton Hall, Ian Reddington, and Sophie Aldred (Credit: AUK Studios)Joining the cast in a major role is 1980’s icon (singer/actress/songwriter), Toyah Willcox. It’s long been known she was a fan of Doctor Who, as she appeared in Kevin Jon Davies’ acclaimed documentary 30 Years in the TARDIS, but to get her to create a multi-voiced role as The Band of Infinite Harmony (and get her own solo song, which can heard in full after the end credits as a bonus extra track) was something she clearly relished…
At last, I get to play all four members of the band and still have the last say…. love it. Seriously it was wonderful to play THE BAND and equally wonderful to hear this rather fab story unfold, a rock and roll odyssey of comic proportions.

Ever since producer/director Barnaby Eaton-Jones saw the original broadcast of The Greatest Show in the Galaxy, he was fascinated by the world that Stephen Wyatt had created…

There was such a wild mix of horror, science fiction, music, and fantasy, that it blew my adolescent mind; with images and characters forever stuck in my head. I wanted to revisit some of the characters and introduce new ones. With the permission of Stephen Wyatt (who came up with the title for this new production), and the help of writer Kenton Hall and actor/musician Christopher Guard, we were able to create something rather unique in the audio medium
Kenton Hall himself says:

Like most swinging, modern people, I receive a daily deluge of emails that begin with the fateful words “would you be interested in…” As a result, I have developed a tendency to give them, at best, a brief, withering glare.

In this case, however, it read “would I be interested in playing in the sandbox of Stephen Wyatt’s marvellous ‘The Greatest Show in the Galaxy’?” 

Does the lesser spotted gumblejack smell faintly of cinnamon?

Spoiler: the answer to both questions is yes.

Songwriter, Christopher Guard, who played Bellboy in the original TV serial, added…

As with all the best things in life, I don't remember quite how or when it began. I think I'd sent some of my songs - recent and ancient - to Barnaby just as he was dreaming up a sequel to ‘The Greatest Show in the Galaxy’. It was more a shooting star than a light bulb moment. Irresistible synchronicity had struck, and ‘Children of the Circus’ was a THING!

It was just a question of time. Or timelessness.

Stephen Wyatt blessed us, Kenton Hall seized his cosmic pen, and the rest is mystery. Unravelled. With music.

How amazing to act and sing with so many of the original cast, to slip into Bellboy's loons once more, and to travel seamlessly beyond our wildest dreams.”

 

Starring Christopher Guard as Bellboy, Dee Sadler as Flowerchild and Ella, Sophie Aldred as Captain Gren and AJ, Toyah Willcox as The Band of Infinite Harmony, Ian Reddington as Delios and the Chief Clown, and Sylvester McCoy as the High Poet.

With Daisy Dunlop, Verity White, Kim Jones, Kenton Hall, Barnaby Eaton-Jones and Ian Kubiak.

Special guest appearances by Ricco Ross as The Ringmaster, Jessica Martin as Mags, Chris Jury as Deadbeat, Deborah Manship as Morgana, Gian Sammarco as Whizz Kid, Daniel Peacock as Nord, and Dean Hollingsworth as the Bus Conductor and Station Announcer.

Produced and directed by Barnaby Eaton-Jones, for AUK Studios.

A preview can be heard here

Limited Edition CD available to pre-order now





FILTER: - Seventh Doctor

Doctor Who Magazine - Issue 565Bookmark and Share

Wednesday, 26 May 2021 - Reported by Marcus
Doctor Who Magazine - Issue 565 (Credit: Panini)

This month's Doctor Who Magazine unveils the secrets of the Seventh Doctor

Highlights of this issue include

  • The story behind the discovery of Season 24’s previously unseen footage.
  • An interview with 1980s production secretary Kate Easteal, who shares her memories of producer John Nathan-Turner.
  • Margaret Toley describes her role as secretary to Doctor Who’s story editors in the 1960s and early 70s.
  • An in-depth preview of the new Season 24 Blu-ray box set
  • Inside the comic-book sequel to the Season 24 story Paradise Towers, with comments from the original story's writer, Stephen Wyatt.
  • Some of Doctor Who’s key visual effects designers reflect on their time working on the show in the mid-1980s.
  • Collectivity explores the miniature world of Dapol, the company that launched the first range of Doctor Who action figures.
  • A tribute to the late Frank Cox, one of Doctor Who’s first directors.
  • Apocrypha looks back at the 1989 comic strip Who’s That Girl!
  • The Fact of Fiction continues its analysis of 1970s The Ambassadors of Death.
  • Sufficient Data crunches Doctor Who’s numbers.
  • Previews, reviews, news, prize-winning competitions, Time and Space Visualiser and more.

Doctor Who Magazine Issue 565 is on sale from panini.co.uk and WH Smith from Thursday 27 May priced £5.99 (UK).

Also available as a digital edition from pocketmags.com priced £4.99.





FILTER: - DWM - Seventh Doctor

Script Doctor ReprintBookmark and Share

Sunday, 31 January 2021 - Reported by Marcus
Script Doctor (Credit: Ten Acre Films)
Script Doctor, Script Editor Andrew Cartmel's inside account of the final years of classic Doctor Who returns for a limited reprint.
 
‘There are worlds out there where the sky is burning, and the sea’s asleep, and the rivers dream. People made of smoke and cities made of song. Somewhere there’s danger, somewhere there’s injustice, and somewhere else the tea’s getting cold. Come on, Ace – we’ve got work to do!’
 
Andrew Cartmel was the script editor on Doctor Who from 1986 to 1989. During his time on the show, he introduced the seventh Doctor (Sylvester McCoy) and his companion Ace (Sophie Aldred) and oversaw 42 scripts written by eight writers new to the series.
 
With a clear mission to bring proper science fiction back into Doctor Who, he formulated what was later termed ‘The Cartmel Masterplan’, reintroducing the mystery to the character of the Doctor as the series celebrated its 25th anniversary and beyond.
 
Script Doctor is his memoir of this time, based on his diaries written sometimes on set and sometimes not even in the diary itself but on the backs of script pages. 
 
With an introduction by modern-era Doctor Who showrunner Steven Moffat, a foreword by Sylvester McCoy, and an afterword by Sophie Aldred, this book is illustrated with 32 pages of photographs, many never published before. It is a vivid account of life in the Doctor Who production office in the late eighties.
 
The book can be ordered online
 
 




FILTER: - Books - Seventh Doctor - Production

From the Doctors... to all doctorsBookmark and Share

Thursday, 23 April 2020 - Reported by Marcus
From the Doctors... to all doctors. A thank you to the NHS and all frontline workers.

As seen on the BBC One programme The Big Night In

The Doctors Say Thank You | #TheBigNightIn




FILTER: - Eighth Doctor - Eleventh Doctor - Fifth Doctor - Fourth Doctor - Seventh Doctor - Sixth Doctor - Tenth Doctor - Thirteenth Doctor - Twelfth Doctor

Doctor Who: Dark UniverseBookmark and Share

Tuesday, 21 January 2020 - Reported by Marcus
Dark Universe (Credit: Big Finish)The latest audio release from Big Finish, the Seventh Doctor crossover story Doctor Who: Dark Universe is released today.

Sylvester McCoy, Sophie Aldred and Mark Bonnar star in a brand new story that picks up the threads of the relationship between the Doctor and an older Ace, in her now grown-up role as CEO of A Charitable Earth,.

Doctor Who: Dark Universe is available now as a collector’s edition CD or on download at the Big Finish website from £12.99.
The Eleven has a plan. A grand plan. An appalling plan. A plan that endangers all life in the cosmos.

With Ace working against him, the Doctor must rely on scheming Time Lord Cardinal Ollistra for help. The stage is set for an epic confrontation.

Because the Doctor has a plan to stop the Eleven. A grand plan. An appalling plan. A plan that endangers all life in the cosmos.

Whichever one of them wins, the Dark Universe won’t want to lose
Mark Bonnar returns as the Eleven, a Time Lord psychopath in his eleventh incarnation who retains the personalities of all his previous incarnations, in his first chronological meeting with the Seventh Doctor.

Producer, David Richardson, said
I’d long planned that if ever I was in a position to make it happen, we’d do a story with the Seventh Doctor and the Eleven, and tell the lead-in to the first scenes in the Eighth Doctor series, Doom Coalition. So when Emma Haigh and I took over as joint producers on the Seventh Doctor stories this year, I leapt at the opportunity and asked script editor Matt Fitton to commission a script.

There’s a lot in Dark Universe – not only does it return to the Eleven’s story, it also shows what happens to Ace in her later life. And it features Ollistra and Rasmus, two characters who are important to our ongoing Time War series, plus it sets up other things too... It’s actually a pivotal release, for so many reasons.
Actor Mark Bonnar said
I was really pleased with the script as it gave a bit of the Eleven’s backstory. When I first played the Eleven, Sylvester was the Doctor who caught him. I’d met him previously because Sophie Aldred is a pal of mine, but it was really good to work with him as we hit it off pretty much straight away.

I really enjoyed being the Eleven with another Doctor this time – I hope there are plans to have him meet some of the other ones!
Doctor Who: Dark Universe is available now as a collector’s edition CD or on download at the Big Finish website from £12.99.




FILTER: - Big Finish - Seventh Doctor

School Produces Doctor Who ProjectBookmark and Share

Friday, 13 December 2019 - Reported by Marcus

Pupils at a special needs school in Wales have produced their own episode of Doctor Who, narrated by Seventh Doctor, Sylvester McCoy.

Ysgol Pen-y-Bryn is a school based in Swansea, for pupils aged 3-19 years, with a wide range of special needs.

Throughout the past year, their film enterprise group have been filming around Wales and making their own props for a special Doctor Who project.

Today sees the launch of the completed episode (just under 40 minutes in length) on the school's YouTube channel for free.




FILTER: - Fan Productions - Seventh Doctor

Doctor Who: At Childhood’s EndBookmark and Share

Friday, 1 November 2019 - Reported by Marcus
Doctor Who: At Childhood's End (Credit: Penguin Random House UK)Doctor Who: At Childhood’s End, the first novel from Sophie Aldred who played the Seventh Doctor’s companion Ace, is to be published 6th February 2020.

Once, a girl called Ace travelled the universe with the Doctor – until, in the wake of a terrible tragedy they parted company. Decades later, she is known as Dorothy McShane, the reclusive millionaire philanthropist who heads global organisation A Charitable Earth.

Dorothy is haunted by terrible nightmares, vivid dreams that begin just as scores of young runaways are vanishing from the dark alleyways of London. Could the disappearances be linked to sightings of sinister creatures lurking in the city shadows? Why has an alien satellite entered a secret orbit around the Moon?

Investigating the satellite with Ryan, Graham and Yaz, the Doctor is thrown together with Ace once more. Together they must unravel a malevolent plot that will cost thousands of lives. But can the Doctor atone for her past incarnation’s behaviour – and how much must Ace sacrifice to win victory not only for herself, but for the Earth? Past or future, which path do you choose?

Sophie Aldred said
I was thrilled and honoured to have been asked to create this opportunity for the Thirteenth Doctor and Ace to meet each other. I had always hoped to be able to offer classic fans an encounter between Ace and a current Doctor in some form or other and I hope fans of the present team will enjoy the blending of two eras of the most amazing programme in the Universe.
Doctor Who: At Childhood’s End by Sophie Aldred is published by BBC Books on 6th February 2020. RRP £16.99.

It will also be available as an audiobook in CD and digital download narrated by Sophie Aldred.




FILTER: - Books - Seventh Doctor

Season 26 Blu-ray ReleaseBookmark and Share

Tuesday, 3 September 2019 - Reported by Marcus
Season 26 (Credit: BBC Studios)BBC Studios have announced that Season 26 will be the next instalment in the DOCTOR WHO: THE COLLECTION Blu-ray range

Released on Monday 23rd December is the acclaimed final season from the series’ original run, starring Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred:

Doctor Who – The Collection: Season 26
  • BATTLEFIELD
  • GHOST LIGHT
  • THE CURSE OF FENRIC
  • SURVIVAL
In 1989, Doctor Who was on a creative high, with the Seventh Doctor and his companion Ace revitalising the programme for a new generation. Season 26 featured four epic adventures traversing a future Britain invaded by inter-dimensional knights, a strange Victorian house haunted by ghosts from Ace’s past, an alien world populated by Cheetah People and a 1940s army camp under siege from monstrous vampires.

With guest stars including Nicholas Courtney (Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart), Anthony Ainley (The Master), Jean Marsh, Nicholas Parsons, Anne Reid, Ian Hogg, Sylvia Syms and comedy duo Hale & Pace, this fondly-remembered set of stories saw the end of an era for Doctor Who, and set the stage for its hugely successful revival.

With all episodes newly remastered from the best available sources, this Blu-ray box set also contains extensive and exclusive special features including:

Rare Restored Extended Cuts
  • The Curse of Fenric VHS Extended Version
  • The Curse of Fenric DVD Special Edition
  • Battlefield VHS Extended Version
  • Battlefield DVD Special Edition
5.1 surround sound & isolated scores
  • On all 14 broadcast episodes, plus 5.1 sound on all extended versions of The Curse Of Fenric and Battlefield.
Behind the Sofa
  • New episodes with Sylvester McCoy, Sophie Aldred, plus companions Janet Fielding, Sarah Sutton, Anneke Wills and Jodie-Whittaker-era writers Pete McTighe & Joy Wilkinson.
Showman - the Life of John Nathan-Turner
  • A feature-length look at the life and career of Doctor Who’s longest-serving producer, who fought to keep the programme on-air during the 1980s. Contributors include Peter Davison and Colin Baker.
Making ‘The Curse of Fenric’
  • A brand new documentary featuring Sylvester McCoy, Sophie Aldred, Tomek Bork, Nicholas Parsons, Cory Pulman, Marek Anton, Ian Briggs, Andrew Cartmel, Mark Ayres and Ian Collins featuring unseen behind-the-scenes footage and photographs.
In Conversation
  • Matthew Sweet chats to companion Sophie Aldred.
The Writers’ Room
  • Ben Aaronovitch, Marc Platt, Ian Briggs, Rona Munro and Andrew Cartmel discuss their work on Season 26.
Becoming The Destroyer
  • Actor Marek Anton and prosthetics designer Stephen Mansfield recall the creation of one of Doctor Who’s best ever monsters.
The seven-disc box set also includes hours of special features previously released on DVD.

Pre-order on Amazon.

On Saturday 23rd November, the BFI Southbank will be screening Doctor Who: The Curse of Fenric (from the Special Edition Blu-ray) and holding a Q&A with actor Sophie Aldred and script editor Andrew Cartmel. Tickets are available from the BFI on the following dates:
  • Monday 16th September – BFI Patrons and Champions
  • Tuesday 17th September – BFI Members
  • Tuesday 24th September – public booking




FILTER: - Blu-ray/DVD - season 26 - Seventh Doctor

Black Archive #34: BattlefieldBookmark and Share

Thursday, 15 August 2019 - Reported by Marcus
Black Archive - Battlefield (Credit: Obverse Books)The latest in the series looking in detail at the making of Doctor Who, Black Archive, has been published by Obverse Books

Edition #34 looks at the seventh Doctor story Battlefield and come from range editor, Philip Purser-Hallard.

Often seen as the black sheep of the final season of 20th century Doctor Who, Battlefield also happens to be one of Purser-Hallard's favourite Who stories, but he's not allowed that fondness to blind him the serial's faults - though fair to say he doesn't pan it either.

Battlefield (1989) sees a clash of mythologies, as the progressive, anti-racist, sporadically pacifist Doctor Who of the late 1980s takes on Britain’s authoritarian, chivalric national myth of King Arthur. With a script by Ben Aaronovitch, now a bestselling urban fantasy novelist but then only the writer of the previous year’s acclaimed Remembrance of the Daleks (1988), it forms with its predecessor a ‘philosophical pair’, replacing its 1960s setting with an imagined 1990s and showing a Doctor dealing with the repercussions of his future actions, rather than his past. Even as a script Battlefield falls short of complete success, yet it remains an emotionally literate, politically engaged and thematically complex piece. It finds areas of overlap between Andrew Cartmel’s radical conception of Doctor Who and Arthurian myth in the legend of a past golden age, represented by the return of Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart and UNIT, and in the identification of the Doctor – always presented by the series as a wizard, a prophet and a mentor – with Merlin. It interrogates the patriarchal attitudes of both the Arthurian myths and 1970s Doctor Who from a contemporary perspective, and questions the attitudes to war found in both.

It also does an exemplary job of worldbuilding, sketching in a convincing near future based on a handful of lines, and presents a complex, questionable, even sympathetic villain motivated by a value system alien to our own. Finally, it raises questions of predestination: through the other characters’ foreknowledge of the Doctor’s future; through the fate apparently decreed for Ancelyn and Bambera; and, perhaps, through the Brigadier’s survival of a story whose structure seems to demand that he should die.

Philip Purser-Hallard is the founding editor of the Black Archive range, the author of The Black Archive #4: Death in Heaven and co-author of The Black Archive #13: Human Nature / The Family of Blood.

He has published five novels, including a trilogy of near-future Arthurian urbanfantasy political thrillers, The Pendragon Protocol, The Locksley Exploit and Trojans, and a Sherlock Holmes novel, The Vanishing Man.

Link to Website




FILTER: - Books - Seventh Doctor

Black Archive #23: The Curse of FenricBookmark and Share

Saturday, 25 August 2018 - Reported by Marcus
Curse of Fenric (Credit: Obverse Books)
The latest in the series of Black Archive books, detailing the seventh Doctor story, The Curse of Fenric will be released on 3 September 2018.

The Curse of Fenric is one of the last stories of Doctor Who’s original 26-year run and the first to make use of a Second World War setting.

Complex and thoughtful, the story and its various extended editions draw on a range of sources and responds to a variety of social and cultural contexts. It explores themes of history, maturation, progress and collective action

The story is detailed by Dr. Una McCormack, a New York Times bestselling author of novels based on Star Trek and Doctor Who and who teaches creative writing at the Angela Ruskin University.

The Dark Archive is available from Obverse Books.




FILTER: - Books - season 26 - Seventh Doctor