Just thought I’d post a few clips that I really enjoyed seeing on Children In Need 2009.
This year’s amazing official CiN single, masterminded by the ever fantastic Peter Kay:
Great to see Mrs Goggins and some of the old Watch With Mother characters back on the telly!
Paddington as a Rock Diva was amazing heh.
It’s released on hard copy DVD single on Monday (though you can download it now) – either way, if you like it too, make sure you buy a copy!
Walk On The Wild Side
“George… George Alagiah!!!” (I love this bit, made me roar with laughter!).
Eastenders
Was fun, but why no special appearance by Babs and June Brown?! Boo!
Merlin
And of course, the absolute highlight was the Doctor Who preview!!
Oh, and going back to the single, I absolutely love the artwork that comes with it (taking inspiration from The Beatles’ album cover for Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band):
NB – Spoilers – please DO NOT watch the YouTube clip if you do not want to see any cast information on Doctor Who: “The End Of Time” (the final Tennant episodes airing over Christmas 2009).
The video clip is admittedly of poor quality, taken by someone at yesterday’s SD Comic Convention, but it’s the best there is at the moment, and still watchable!
In my opinion, great to see a bit of a personality shining through and not just the surly publicity stills that have been churned out of Matt Smith. I’m warming to him a lot on the basis of this one photo… weird!
Doctor Who fans have been given their first look at the new costume being worn by Matt Smith, the 11th actor to play the role.
The Time Lord’s new look consists of tweed jacket, bow tie, rolled up trousers and black boots.
Filming on the new episodes begins on Monday in Cardiff, with the new series going out in spring 2010.
Smith is taking over from David Tennant, whose last episodes will be shown at the end of the year.
“I feel very privileged and proud to be part of this iconic show,” Smith said after arriving on set for his first day of filming.
“The scripts are brilliant – I’m excited about the future and all the brilliant adventures I get to go on as the Doctor.”
The Doctor will also have a new companion – Amy Pond – played by Karen Gillan, who meets the Time Lord in episode one of the new series.
There is also a changed team behind the scenes, led by new lead writer and executive producer Steven Moffat who will be responsible for the overall creative direction of the show, as well as plot and character arcs.
“Matt and Karen are going to be incredible, and Doctor Who is going to come alive on Saturday nights in a whole new way,” Moffat said.
Since its return in 2005, Doctor Who has won a number of accolades, including Baftas and National Television Awards.
According to BBC News’ Entertainment correspondant Lizo Mzimba, and via his twitter account, the new Doctor Who assistant will be 21 year old Karen Gillan (who previously appeared in the Fires of Pompeii episode as Soothsayer).
Soothsayer is a member of the Sibylline Sisterhood that were in Pompeii in 79 CE. She has eyes painted on the back of her hands – a sign of a soothsayer. She was the first of the Sisterhood to see the TARDIS or “Blue Box” that had appeared in a prophecy. She had psychic powers due to breathing in dust from Vesuvius that was converting her into a Pyrovile and could see time thanks to the rift activity there. It is likely that she died during the eruption as it has not been shown otherwise.
NB – I do not know if her assistant will be an extension of Soothsayer or whether she will be a completely different character – I think that they could go either way with it!
Worth noting that Gillan is being brought in for Matt Smith’s doctor, and that the character of Adelaide (portrayed by Lindsay Duncan) is being brought in especially for the Waters of Mars special. Whilst her time on the show has not been confirmed by the BBC, in light of today’s announcement, I presume we can assume it is just one or two of the special episodes… (?)
Below represents my current thoughts as to the prophecy that is delivered to the Doctor in Planet Of The Dead.
It may, remarkably, and on the very off chance, contain elements that prove to actually be correct… please only view its contents if you are happy to read speculation which may/may not be relevant to the story and eventual demise of Tennant’s Doctor Who.
If you are looking for my review of the episode itself, please CLICK HERE.
UPDATE: If you are interested, I have just posted a preview trailer clip of The End Of Time episodes (the final ones that are showing over Christmas 2009) which indicates a slightly different path for the story to take – I guess we’ll have to wait and see if any of the below thoughts do actually end up getting incorporated!
Right, so now that the disclaimer is out of the way, let me share my thoughts with you.
I stress that these are just thoughts, and as I’m not a complete Who geek, I apologise for any glaring inaccuracies/oversights!
I have not read any of the spoilers/anything regarding Planet Of The Dead online, as I don’t want to spoil it for myself… so these are my initial theories, and are not influenced by anything I have read.
CARMEN: “Your song is ending, sir. It is returning. It is returning through the dark. And then, Doctor, he will knock four times.”
I think that the entire prophecy revolves around the episode ‘Midnight’ (Series 4, Episode 10)
‘Midnight’ came towards the end of Series 4, and Tennant’s departure was no doubt known to the creative team by then.
‘Midnight’ does not have a satisfactory conclusion, and Donna is kept well out of the story line.
In ‘Midnight’ the Doctor knocks on the side of the vessel 4 times, and only does it the once.
Nobody else knocks on the side 4 times (apart from whatever is held to be outside)
I am going to suggest that Carmen, from Planet Of The Dead (who makes the prophecy) is also the cabin steward on the vessel.
They make a big point of saying that they don’t know the cabin steward’s name at the time.
I think that the creature that is coming for the Doctor in the end is the same thing that was in this episode.
We saw that it definitely wanted the Doctor (multiple examples), and we saw that he was powerless against it.
We never actually saw the thing that had taken hold of the Doctor, very little information was provided about it, leaving the Who team scope to flesh out the details afterwards.
The ‘thing’ was not captured and was left in the skies above ‘Midnight’
We know that the ‘thing’ had wholly consumed Sky Silvestre and had gained control over her (though did not yet have free thought)
The cabin steward and Sky were then blasted out of the spacecraft together…
Although we are told that there could be no living thing on Midnight, the mechanic thinks that he sees a shadow before all the trouble happens… a living thing… therefore, perhaps the cabin steward actually could have survived…
The cabin steward could have looked into the vortex and seen the future whilst in the skies of midnight… they seemed the sort of place for that kind of thing!
In addition, perhaps, the ‘thing’ was able to tell the future… we saw how it went from mimic to pre-empting what people were about to say. Maybe the ‘thing’ is now Carmen / the attendant or Carmen / the attendant also inherited this ‘gift’
Rose is seen screaming at the Doctor… at the time I thought it was to do with the issue of the lost planets, however this wasn’t made reference to in The Stolen Earth / Journey’s End… so perhaps it relates to the final episode for Tennant?
The doctor uses the sonic screwdriver to shut off the music video… silencing a song… it is this screen that we next see Rose on.
There is reference made in the episode to the creature traveling through dark and light… dark features in the prophecy (presumably the light comes from the diamonds, which the creature would be leaving behind…).
As it has been for him once, it could be said to ‘be returning’
Carmen addresses him as ’sir’ – this could be seen as the same level of title granted by the service industry to a customer, much in the way that the attendant would be expected to address her customers.
A similarity to the episode ‘Midnight’ can be drawn when they first reach the new planet and the Doctor finds himself accosted (and blamed for the situation) by the members of the public who were on the public transport system.
Midnight in terms of date/time is the first moment of a new day… strange choice of name for an area is ‘Midnight’… could it be used to signify a new day is coming?
In a nutshell, I think that Carmen is the stewardess from the flight, and that the unresolved issue from ‘Midnight’ is going to prove to be his big challenge… a new super-evil that we know he cannot yet defeat. There are too many loose ends, in my opinion, for this episode not to evolve further. I’m sure a lot of the above is coincidental, and I am reading too much into it… time will tell
I could be completely wrong, however those are my thoughts as to the background and possible outcome of the prophecy made by Carmen in the episode Planet Of The Dead.
OK, so now I’ve got a moment to myself, I thought that I’d share my thoughts on the recent Doctor Who special, ‘Planet Of The Dead’.
It is also worth noting, that this episode has been credited as the 200th Doctor Who adventure (as noted by the route number of the bus)
Despite all my excitement, I have to say that I was grossly disappointed in this special. There was absolutely no sustenance to it… nothing really happened!
First off, lets look at the special effects… I didn’t really see any (and not in the good way!), most of what did exist was CGI and noticeably so. There didn’t seem to be that much going on that required the services of the Time Lord, especially when most of the work was delegated out to Lee Evans’ character back on Earth.
I had set Confidential to record afterwards, however, due to the lack of technical stuff, I decided to cancel the recording… there was nothing geeky about the episode that had intrigued me, which is unusual!
The story line was rather limp… the Doctor and a really unlikable character in Lady Christine running around a desert, randomly hanging out with fly people – the Tritovores – (one presumes that they were there to highlight the usefulness of the [absent] TARDIS in interpreting the different alien languages into English… as otherwise these characters were surplus), and really not very much happened outside of this. No ‘real’ action occured with the ‘alien stingray’ (obviously so incidental that they didn’t even give them a proper name!).
The prologue to the episode was disjointed and not in keeping with the style of previous Doctor Who episodes at all.
Why on Earth were UNIT involved in such a ’small’ issue? I thought that they were the elite team and there for times such as illustrated in The Stolen Earth/Journey’s End. Their presence seemed, frankly, laughable and ill conceived. If we call UNIT out every time something small happens, who’s going to become the elite force next time we have a worldwide emergency? The UNIT commander was in no way authoritative enough to command the whole shebang anyway!
I found a lot of the acting to be of fairly poor quality on this occasion and that there were no likable characters. Lee Evans was great as novelty value for a few minutes, but then even that wore off!
I also disliked the notion that the Doctor had become a little lawless, ensuring that Lady Christine got away with her crime… and he did so with a smile on his face. That isn’t the Doctor that we all know, is it?!
Whilst it was good to see that there was a prophecy for the Doctor towards the end of the episode, (‘Your song is ending, sir. It is returning. It is returning through the dark. And then, Doctor, he will knock four times.”) it does come across as a little pointless in my opinion, and unfortunately something that the Doctor Who team are going to have to contend with for the next year or so. We all know that the Doctor will be around until at least the end of 2010, and we know that the present Doctor is going to have to regenerate at Christmas, and will not completely die. A friend and I briefly discussed this, and agreed that the devil was going to be in the detail of how they do it, though I think that knowing the contractual arrangements of the actors behind the characters definitely causes for episodes to be viewed in a completely different light.
One question that didn’t get asked… how did the Doctor come to be on the number 200 bus anyway? He seemed to have been drawn to Lady Christina, however this does not get explained (or did I miss it…?). Perhaps this will be explained later on in the specials, though I am slightly doubtful that it will.
I have also read some pretty interesting speculation about the four knocks prophecy (and noticed something myself – I think people should re-watch ‘Midnight’ as several elements tie in to the prophecy!), and the advertising on the side of the bus – if both were to be correct, that would potentially be very cool!
If you would like to read my own personal theory re: the prophecy, please CLICK HERE (though do be warned of potential spoilers!!)
I do, however, like the name of the episode, Planet Of The Dead. Alas the episode/planet was a lot less foreboding/commanding than I’d hoped for. Although 100 billion people were supposedly killed on the planet, I didn’t really feel a sense of compassion and felt that the figure just seemed to get bandied around loosely.
All in all, I was grateful to get a new episode of Doctor Who, though I was left feeling very underwhelmed, especially when it came on the back of such a strong and phenomenal prior series. David Tennant did say in his column in the Doctor Who magazine that this episode was to be an antidote to the recent heavy story lines, and hinted that it was more of a stand-alone episode rather than one to add to the continuity of the character.
I am, however, REALLY REALLY looking forward to ‘The Waters of Mars’ – the trailer of that actually did look terrifying and Doctor Who back at its finest!
Surprisingly, despite all the masks, it’s not a Stephen Moffat episode (his are always the best!), it’s a collaboration between RTD and Phil Ford.
The Waters Of Mars won’t hit screens until Autumn (they’re predicting November 2009) and will feature Lindsay Duncan as the Doctor’s assistant. This in itself has me very excited – we’re finally getting an sharp and intellectual companion! Looks like we’re also getting a few good aliens, and this story is rumoured to be linked a lot more to the final two episodes.
I can’t wait!
(NB – If you wish to post a comment, that’d be great, however please DO NOT post any spoilers!! – thanks).
Whilst getting all excited for Planet Of The Dead (screening tonight, BBC ONE, 18:45 BST), I have been watching the last series via BBC Three.
Last night culminated in the ‘Journey’s End’ and ‘The Next Doctor’ episodes… and something in ‘Journey’s End struck me, especially as Tennant’s departure had not yet been announced…
There is now a part timelord-part human version of the Doctor in Rose’s parallel world. If she managed to get back into our world, then no doubt the part-human doctor will also be able to at time of crisis etc. Therefore, it lends itself, does it not, to the possibility of the door being left open for Tennant to do some cameo appearances/come back if he chose to do so?
Unless, of course, they kill part-human Doctor off in the 4th special this year (as one would imagine that the whole cast (inc. his double and Rose) would be there to bid farewell to Tennant?)
Maybe other people cottoned on to that much earlier than I did, I had to wait for the repeats to re-view these episodes and my memory is naff sometimes heh! The one thing I love about Doctor Who – there’s so much speculation, it really does grab your imagination!
This clip has got to be my favourite of ANY Doctor Who episode:
Yes, it is terribly self-indulgent, congratulatory, and victorious, and Donna’s line is a little cheesy and mis-placed, however the ‘Song of Freedom’ is absolutely gorgeous on the ears and the clip manages to move me absolutely everytime I see it. It’s especially great to see them all together in the TARDIS. I don’t think that they’ll ever be able to recreate that feeling for me in any future episodes, though I really am looking forward to the new series.
For anyone following me on twitter, I probably will not be tweeting throughout the new episode, Planet Of The Dead, tonight as I want to take it all in! I will, however, create a blog post in the next few days Anyone who is leaving a comment, please DO NOT post any spoilers. Thanks!
Yes, yes, yes, this has been floating around for weeks now (though judging by the amount of RT’s my tweet received, I was one of the first people to start spreading it around twitter it would seem (thanks to @thestage)) – I just thought that now I’ve found a little time for my blog again that I’d post a copy of the trailer on here.
Initial thoughts (and please don’t shoot me!) – the trailer makes it looks a little tacky… mainly because of the block colour and ’special effects’ – it all looks too green-screen/fake and rather ‘American-ised’. Having said that, Michelle Ryan did say that they filmed a lot of it in Dubai, and so perhaps it’s just the post-production that hasn’t done it any favours (and I’m sure the episode will be cleaner than the trailer!). Also, I’ve never been to Dubai, so maybe the deserts genuinely are that yellow(?)
This will also be the first episode to be available in HD… so one would presume that the effects will definitely be awesome and prolific throughout the episode!
Not too sure what I make of Michelle Ryan as the companion… one thing that we all learnt from Catherine Tate, don’t judge before you see them in the role as, actually (and in Catherine Tate’s case!) she may turn out to be your favourite one!
Very much looking forward to the new episode, especially as this is the beginning of the end for David Tennant’s Doctor. I reckon that we’re in for a cracking episode come Christmas!!
For those who simply cannot wait, The Stage have done a video interview (not to disimilar in style to Confidential) with David Tennant and Michelle Ryan as a build up to the screening. The video interview can be accessed HERE.
Doctor Who‘Planet Of The Dead’ screens on BBC One on Saturday 11th April 2009, 18:45 BST
