Predict the Ratings competitionBookmark and Share

Tuesday, 29 December 2020 - Reported by Chuck Foster

Revolution of the Daleks (Credit: BBC)As Doctor Who makes a welcome return to television on New Year's Day, so too does our festive Predict the Ratings competition! This year readers have the chance to win a copy of Revolution of the Daleks on Blu-ray/DVD upon its release date (currently scheduled for the last week in January 2021).

As always, the aim is to predict the final consolidated (four screen) viewing figure in the United Kingdom for Revolution of the Daleks as reported by BARB, to the nearest 10,000 viewers (i.e. two decimal places). In addition, we'd like you to predict Doctor Who's position in the weekly chart (which will be used in the case of a tie-break).

The four screen viewing figure includes television, PC/laptop, tablet and smartphone devices - these may be updated as the week progresses, we will be using the initial total released by BARB.

 

Friday's episode is broadcast in the UK at 6:45pm on BBC One; ITV will broadcast Doctor Who's 'traditional' competition in the form of Emmerdale from 7:00pm (preceded by the News), with BBC Two showing the film Mr Holmes. Channel 4 The Greatest Showman, and Channel 5 continuing The Battle of Britain. Other highlights of the evening are BBC One's new drama The Serpent, ITV's Dancing on Ice with Torvill and Dean, and a festive Taskmaster on Channel 4.

For comparision, 2019's Resolution was watched by 7.13 million viewers, and 2020's Spyfall part one achieved 6.87m viewers - top of the charts for the first week of 2020 went to the Fireworks with 10.84m.


To enter our competition, please send the following details to comp-ratings@doctorwhonews.net with the subject, "Counting down the days":

  • Your name and preferred email address
  • Your country of entry (full details will be requested only if you are the winner)
  • Your guess at the final viewing figure to the nearest 10,000 (eg.9.99m)
  • Your guess at the final position in the chart (eg. 1st) - this will only be used in the event of a tie-break
     

Terms and Conditions:

  • The competition closes at 08:00 GMT, 2nd January 2021
  • Only one entry will be accepted per person.
  • The competition is open worldwide
  • BARB final figures are expected in early 2021, we will contact the winner once they have been published
  • The prize is a copy of Revolution of the Daleks on either DVD or Bluray; we will confirm the format with the winner at time of notification.


Good luck and don't forget to watch the episode yourself! See our guide for current schedules for the episode locally, and visit This Week in Doctor Who for the continuing adventures of all of the Doctors around the world!




FILTER: - Competitions

Philip Martin 1938-2020Bookmark and Share

Monday, 28 December 2020 - Reported by Marcus
Philip Martin (Credit: BBC Studios)

The writer Philip Martin has died at the age of 82.

Philip Martin was an acclaimed television writer who worked in British television for over forty years.

He contributed two scripts for Doctor Who, both during the era of the sixth Doctor.

His first was Vengeance on Varos in 1985. The script dealt with a world where torture and executions were broadcast live to peoples homes. Martin created the character of Sil for the story, played admirably by Nabil Shaban.

Sil proved so popular the character returned for Martin's second script for the series, Mindwarp in 1986. Part of the Trial of a Timelord series, the script also dealt with the departure of Peri, played by Nicola Bryant, from the series.

A third script, Mission to Magnus was never filmed when the show was put on hiatus in 1985. It was later novelised by Martin in 1990 and recorded by Big Finish. 

Philip Martin was born in Liverpool in the North West of England. His early work included scripts for Z-Cars. A play for today set in Birmingham's underworld was developed into a series, Gangsters

Later work includes Tandoori Nights, Star Cops, Virtual Murder and several episodes of Hetty Wainthropp Investigates.

In 2019 Martin revisited the character of Sil to much acclaim in an independent broadcast television series from Reeltime Pictures Ltd., Sil and the Devil Seeds of Arodor.

 

 





FILTER: - obituary - writer

Alister Pearson AuctionBookmark and Share

Wednesday, 23 December 2020 - Reported by Marcus
Auction (Credit: Alister Pearson)
The Doctor Who Appreciation Society is auctioning an Alister Pearson print for charity. 
 
In 2019, Alister Pearson had three photographic prints prepared of his artwork for the cover of the charity fundraising book TIME’S CHAMPION, originally published in 2008.
 
One of these prints was given to Sixth Doctor actor Colin Baker.
 
Another is signed by Colin and is up for auction, raising money for a charity supported by him: St Tiggywinkles.
 
The print is exactly the same size as the original painting, measuring 218mm (8.5 inches) in width and 389mm (15.25 inches) in height (not including the thin white margin).
 
The book itself has been reprinted this year, once again raising funds for the British Heart Foundation, in memory of its co-author Craig Hinton.
 
The print can be signed by the artist (with or without a dedication) if the winning bidder wishes him to do so.
 
The item can be viewed at on eBay




FILTER: - DWAS - Charities

Jeremy Bulloch 1945-2020Bookmark and Share

Friday, 18 December 2020 - Reported by Marcus
Jeremy Bulloch (Credit: Robert Workman)

The actor Jeremy Bulloch has died at the age of 75.

Jeremy Bulloch appeared in seven episodes of Doctor Who. 

His first appearance was in 1965 when he played alongside First Doctor William Hartnell in the story The Space Museum. Bulloch played Tor, one of the  Xeron rebels.

He returned to the series in 1973 playing Hal the archer in the Third Doctor story The Time Warrior

Jeremy Bulloch was best known in science fiction circles for playing bounty hunter Boba Fett in the Star Wars franchise appearing in the films The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi.

Bulloch has a long career in film and television, first appearing at the age of 12 in a breakfast cereal commercial. As a child actor, he had many appearances in early television productions including roles in Billy Bunter of Greyfriars School and The Chequered Flag as well as the films Carry on Teacher and Spare the Rod

In the 1960's he appeared with Cliff Richard in the fun-filled musical Summer Holiday. and had a regular role in the soap opera Compact. Other roles included parts in George & Mildred, The Professionals, Agony, Jenny's War, Robin Hood, Casualty, The Bill and Starhyke. He appeared in the James Bond film Octopussy. 

In recent years he has been a regular at Star Wars conventions. 

Jeremy Bulloch died in hospital on Thursday from health complications following his many years living with Parkinson’s disease”, according to his agent.

He is survived by his wife, three sons and 10 grandchildren. 





FILTER: - obituary

Doctor Who Magazine Special Edition The 2021 YearbookBookmark and Share

Wednesday, 16 December 2020 - Reported by Marcus
Doctor Who Magazine Special Edition The 2021 Yearbook (Credit: Panini)

The latest special edition from Doctor Who Magazine is the 2021 Yearbook

Packed with all-new content and previously unseen images, Doctor Who Magazine’s 2021 Yearbook is the essential guide to an extraordinary year.

Highlights include:

  • Exclusive interviews with Jodie Whittaker (the Doctor), John Barrowman (Captain Jack), Mandip Gill (Yaz) and Tosin Cole (Ryan); guest stars Laura Fraser (Kane in Orphan 55), Anjli Mohindra (Queen Skithra in Nikola Tesla’s Night of Terror) and Warren Brown and Matthew McNulty (Jake and Adam in Praxeus); plus writers Ed Hime (Orphan 55) and Maxine Alderton (The Haunting of Villa Diodati).
  • Analyses of all the episodes from the 2020 series.
  • The inside story of the new YouTube serial Daleks!
  • Behind the scenes of the Radiophonic Workshop’s latest project.
  • Tributes to the Doctor Who luminaries who passed away during 2020.

… and much more!

 

DWM Special Edition 56: The 2021 Yearbook is on sale from Wednesday 16 December at WH Smith, selected supermarkets and online from store.panini.co.uk priced £6.99.

A digital edition is also available, priced £5.99 from pocketmags.com





FILTER: - DWM

Doctor Who Magazine: Issue 559Bookmark and Share

Wednesday, 9 December 2020 - Reported by Marcus
Doctor Who Magazine: Issue 559 (Credit: Panini)

Doctor Who Magazine Issue 559 talks to Jodie Whittaker, John Barrowman and Chris Chibnal as the preview the New Year episode of Doctor Who, Revolution of the Daleks. 

Highlights of the new issue include:

  • An exclusive preview of the New Year’s Day Special, featuring contributions from Jodie Whittaker, John Barrowman, Chris Noth, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Chris Chibnall, director Lee Haven Jones and costume designer Ray Holman.
  • The latest from showrunner Chris Chibnall in his Production Notes.
  • A behind-the-scenes look at the trailer for the Season 8 Blu-ray box set, with writer and director Pete McTighe, Katy Manning and Stewart Bevan.
  • Christmas with the Doctor – a fresh look at stories that were broadcast during the festive period between 1963 and 1989.
  • What did missing 1965 episode The Feast of Steven actually look like? DWM’s CGI recreation offers some clues.
  • The strange story of the 1964 record I’m Gonna Spend My Christmas with a Dalek.
  • Interviews with the team behind the immersive theatre experience Time Fracture.
  • The final instalment of a two-part article exploring David Whitaker’s influence on the Daleks.
  • The Fact of Fiction analyses the 2014 Festive Special Last Christmas.
  • Apocrypha rediscovers the bizarre 1965 comic strip A Christmas Story.
  • The DWM Christmas Quiz!
  • The first part of The White Dragon, a new comic-strip adventure for the Thirteenth Doctor.
  • Previews and reviews, news, prize-winning competitions, Time and Space Visualiser, The Blogs of Doom and more.
  • PLUS a giant, double-sided poster!

 

Doctor Who Magazine Issue 559 is on sale from Thursday 10 December

£6.99 (UK)





FILTER: - DWM - Thirteenth Doctor

Lethbridge-Stewart updates/competitionBookmark and Share

Sunday, 6 December 2020 - Reported by Chuck Foster

Candy Jar Books has released details on the next series of Lethbridge-Stewart novels for 2021, plus the chance to colour in the Brigadier!

 


 

Picking up from the events from series five's ; the new three-book series returns to the 1970s with Domination Game by Aly Leeds & Megan Fizell, Fear Frequency by George Ivanoff and The Haunting of Gabriel Chase by Andrew Allen.

Range editor Andy Frankham-Allen said:

It was always our intention to return to the 1970s and finish our mission of leading the Brig to his destiny with UNIT. And so, after a couple of years of telling very different stories looking at different later times of his life, we’ve decided it’s now time to return to our original mission. Thus, the next three books are kicking off the final two and a half years of novels that will, indeed, end with the events that lead to the formation of the illustrious organisation. But before all that, there’s a few loose threads to pick up with Domination Game


 

Lethbridge-Stewart: Domination Game (Credit: Candy Jar)Domination Game
Written by Aly Leeds and Megan Fizell
Cover by Paul Cooke


It’s time to move on.

Sally Wright has had enough of the Fifth Operational Corps to last a lifetime. She has been chased, kidnapped, and dogged by unknown horrors – and to top it all, the end of her engagement to Brigadier Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart has cast a shadow over her career. In an effort to leave it all behind, she requests a transfer back to the Regular Army... But, after everything she’s seen, is it possible to return to normal life? And will the Brigadier let her go?

Harold Chorley cannot move on. While searching for answers to the missing gaps in his memory, he makes an alarming discovery; the Dominator war lord, Dominic Vaar, is no longer in prison. Hot on Vaar’s trail, Chorley discovers an experimental military project that seems sinister in its appetite for volunteers. Volunteers who are never heard from again.

William Bishop is not looking forward to life at the Madhouse without Anne Travers, but in heading up a mission to Gloucestershire with Sally and Chorley, he soon finds other things to worry about.

One thing is for sure, not everybody will survive this encounter with the Dominators!

 

 

Aly Leeds is a regular contributor to the range, having penned a few short stories and 2018's Fear of the Web; this time, however:

2020 has been a difficult year for everyone, presenting us each with a unique set of challenges. During lockdown it became clear that I was going to need some help with the manuscript, so I asked Megan Fizell, winner of the 2019 Short Story competition, if she’d step in prior to her debut novel in the LSverse. We’d chatted a lot and found we had similar ideas about what we like in a story, so we worked on blocking the book together. Like me, Megan was eager to see Sally get a fitting finale. I think we’ve done her justice.


Long-time readers of the range will be familiar with Lance Corporal Sally Wright, one-time fiancée of Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart. They became engaged in the very first Lethbridge-Stewart novel, but since their engagement fell apart in 2017’s The Daughters of Earth Sally’s life hasn’t gone so well. Hints of her ultimate fate have been dropped in several stories published since then, especially in Rise of the Dominator and Tall Tales, so most readers won’t be surprised by at least one resolution of Domination Game. But, of course, it’s how everything reaches that point, and the full magnitude of the events, that makes for a compelling story. Aly continued:

Following the positive reception of Fear of the Web in 2018, Andy asked if I’d be willing to write a second book for the series. My answer was ‘Yes!’, but commitments at the time meant I couldn’t take on any of the upcoming Bloodlines titles. Knowing that several loose ends were being tied up prior to the series moving on, I asked Andy what was going to happen to Sally Wright. We last left her in Glastonbury in Piece of Mind, having recently ended her engagement to Lethbridge-Stewart, and I wanted to know where her story went from there. I was told, while a book had been planned on the subject, nothing had come of it and so, unfortunately, she would be exiting the series without fanfare. The news upset me, and I was a little angry on Sally’s behalf. Here was one of the series’ two female characters, who had developed so much from ‘the love interest’ since her debut, a character many people had become fond of, about to be dealt a Liz Shaw? Absolutely not! So, I asked Andy to give me the book and I’d write Sally a decent send off – and, happily for me, he agreed.
Andy added:
Yes, before Aly Domination Game was assigned to two other authors but, for various reasons, nothing clicked into place. It was, in part, that which saw the end of the ongoing Lethbridge-Stewart narrative for a while. A sure sign that we all needed to do something a little different for a while. But when it came time to think about returning to that narrative, and Aly expressed an interest in wrapping up Sally’s story, I knew it was time to return. And so Aly had a look over the original outlines, expressed some very strong objections and told me what they’d like to do with it. Including turning a very important aspect on its head. An aspect they wasn’t sure I’d agree to. But I did! It’s so nasty, that I couldn’t say no.
Aly concluded:
This story was a chance to show Sally at her best, operating away from Lethbridge-Stewart and all the unwanted baggage their relationship brought her, choosing to go her own way. It also sees her go up against an old enemy in the form of Dominator Vaar, now a prisoner of the Crown and himself, in a pretty precarious position. Hot on Vaar’s heels is Harold Chorley, who is close to finding the answers to what happened to him at the Dominex plant in 2015’s Mutually Assured Domination. There’s a fair amount of change, too. We have Bill and Anne contemplating a future away from HAVOC, and Lethbridge-Stewart is moving on in his own way from the events of The Man from Yesterday... with someone very special. There’s a lot going on, and we’ll see where it leaves our heroes afterwards.

The book cover is by artist Paul Cooke, whose previous covers were for The Man from Yesterday and The Danger Men wo fasdf With both of those being by Nick Walters, it seemed apt for Paul to contribute to the next story to feature Dominic Vaar, created by Nick. Paul said:

I was asked to do an illustration that echoed the feel of my last one, The Danger Men; action packed, and like a movie poster, this time including Sally, as well as Bill Bishop once again. But also Vaar. I was excited to receive a commission that included the Dominator. Firstly, I like what Candy Jar have done with the character, but am also a big fan of Adrian Salmon (the only artist to draw Vaar thus far) and how he draws the Dominators: chunky, large hands. A real solid look to them. So, I took that as my inspiration and went for it. I'm so pleased Andy went for it, too. I couldn’t find any reference for prison uniforms, even asking an ex-prison officer friend, so I used the uniform from Porridge! It's set in the ‘70s, so I pushed the colours; I remember as a kid the ‘70s being very bright, and let that influence the palette.

 

Further details of the new series and how to pre-order can be found on the Candy Jar website.

 


 

Lethbridge-Stewart Colouring Book (Credit: Candy Jar)Meanwhile, the Lethbridge-Stewart Colouring Book will be released just in time for Christmas!

The collection of artwork features twenty brand new pieces of art by Thunderbirds, Danger Mouse and Doctor Who artist Martin Baines. concentrating on the Lethbridge-Stewart series of novels and features the Dominators, Quarks, Yeti, Anne Travers, Bandrils and much more. Added to this, the book also explores the UNIT era of Doctor Who.

Shaun Russell, head of publishing at Candy Jar Books, said:

2020 has been a difficult year for all of us. Lockdown has taken it’s toll, and it is quite likely that we still haven’t seen the end of COVID-19. Normally we do something special for Christmas. For instance, in 2016 we released The Xmas Files – a collection of Lethbridge-Stewart-inspired Christmas stories, in 2018 our online advent calendar (still available on the Candy jar Books website), and last year The Lucy Wilson Mysteries: Christmas Crackers collection of stories. Sadly, due to other commitments, this has not been possible this year. So, when Martin approached me to do the colouring book, I thought why not. This is not strictly a Christmas project, but it certainly is a great stocking filler.

In 2020 Martin created some of Candy Jar’s most popular covers, including the Downtime sequel Child of the New World (released this summer), as well as Kiss of the Ice Maiden and 100 Objects of Doctor Who, both of which are due out in a couple of months. Martin said:

Shaun and I chat regularly about future projects. The conversations are always great fun, particularly when it’s about Lethbridge Stewart and Doctor Who. We are currently developing an epic comic strip starring the Brig (which will hopefully be released 2021). So, having worked on this artwork, I thought a Lethbridge-Stewart colouring book would be something special to end the year. I was so glad when Shaun agreed. The Lethbridge-Stewart Colouring Book is the celebration of the Brigadier and classic Who in general. If you like the Brigadier, UNIT, Quarks, Yetis and even the Bandrils this is the book for you!

Shaun continued:

I suspect some people will prefer not to colour Martin’s images, but instead keep them as a lockdown memento. I’m certainly considering framing one or two of his striking pieces personally.

Martin concluded:

Early Doctor Who has for me been a real discovery and I hope this book adds to the legend. I have put in a lot of research and fleshed out certain elements. The Bandrils were particularly interesting to draw, and fleshing out the Lucy Wilson characters was quite fun. I also loved drawing Professor Travers and Sergeant Benton.

 

Further details on the book and how to pre-order can be found on the Candy Jar website.

 


 

Competition!

 

Candy Jar have kindly offered a chance to win a copy of the Lethbridge--Stewart Colouring Book and their recent novel Downtime: Children of the New World; in order to do so, simply answer the following:

The original Downtime introduced us to the Brigadier's daughter - what was her name?

Send your answers to comp-candyjar@doctorwhonews.net with the subject "Chap with crayons: five rounds rapid!" along with your name and address. The competition is for UK readers only, and the closing date is 16 December 2020 (allowing the prize to be sent out before Christmas!)





FILTER: - Candy Jar Books - Books - Lethbridge-Stewart - Competitions