News: November 2005 Archives

For everyone in teh USA who couldn't be bothered to bittorrent the new Doctor Who series, rejoice. It's available on DVD from 14th Feb 2006, costing $99.98 (which seems incredibly expensive for 13 shows).

As I suspected, the Doctor Who Christmas Special, The Christmas Invasion is going to be shown at the mega-primetime slot of 7pm. Nice. Predicted ratings? 7 gazillion.

Blimey guvnor, strike a light. The TARDIS is on the front cover of the Christmas Radio Times.

That probably means nothing to anyone outside of the UK, so let me explain. The RadioTimes is a TV and Radio listings publication. At one time it was the only listing magazine in the UK and it has been going since 1923, it also used to be the largest circulation magazine in the UK.

The Christmas edition of the RadioTimes is a legendary thing, covering the two weeks from before Christmas until the New Year. When I was a kids we used to get it and I would pore over the schedules looking for cool things to watch over the Christmas Holidays (that was in the days before VHS and DVD (a large number of youngsters now go huh?!)).
So to see Doctor Who advertised on the front cover is very cool, and a real sign of how big a hit the new series of Doctor Who has been.

SFX ran a Cybermen design competition. The results are online and very amusing. The best is this one, who is apparently Simon R Mills. Funny.

SFX also say that they have been to the Doctor Who set and seen the Cybermen in action, but aren't allowed to say anything yet. And they have a good interview with Russell T Davies online where he says...

"we realised that we've probably got about ten of next year's episodes nailed down already"

Cool.

Arthur C Clarke has been awarded Sri Lanka's highest honour, Sri Lankabhimanya.

He's getting the honour "in recognition of his outstanding contribution to major pioneering breakthroughs in global communications and space technology and in appreciation of his abiding love of this [Sri Lanka] paradise island".

Only one other person has ever been given the honour and that was posthumously.

The BBC have releases a Doctor Who Christmas press pack, which includes the plot setup to the Christmas Special, plus a (quite long) interview with David Tennant and an interview with Billie Piper.

DT says "The Christmas episode does have some scary moments. Sinister Santas, a spinning killer Christmas tree and of course the Sycorax."

Oh yes.

Via Unofficial Battlestar Galactica Blog:, Sky have finally confirmed their Battlestar Galactica season two air date. It starts on Tuesday, January 10th at 9pm.

It'll be interesting to see if Sky will now air any of Battlestar Galactica on Sky 3, their free digital terrestrial tv channel. They've just shown 24, so maybe there is hope for those without Sky One.

Wnat to be a real Browncoat? Then buy Mal's orginal coat in an auction. An ideal present for the obsessive Firefly that has everything.

Via Outpost Gallifrey, the BBC have released their Christmas 2005 TV highlights press release. It includes a detailed description of the episodes setup (so don't read it if you don't want to see spoilers!). Doctor Who is the first show mentioned in the release, so the BBC obviously see it as their big hitter. (Who would have thought it, a SF show the BBC's top Christmas offering?)

Also worth noting is that BBC3 is down to show Doctor Who. Whether this is just a repeat of the special or last series repeated (again) is not mentioned.

CBBC, the BBC Children's channel is running a Doctor Who competition. The main prize is the first season DVD Box Set, a sonic screwdriver with psychic paper and a TARDIS mobile phone flasher. Cool.

Two catches.
One,CBBC is a digital only channel and you have to enter the competition through it's interactive service (aka "the red button").
Two ,presumably you have to be a child?! So either masquerade as a small person or persuade your closest child relative to enter for you.

The interactive service will also be showing some clips from the DVD, including some of the special features. That's pretty cool, the "special features" section of the TV channel promoting special features of the DVD. So much content and so many distribution channels....

The Doctor Who Children in Need Special was aired last night and is online now. It was much, much better than I expected...

In case you miss it or don't get BBC 1, the Doctor Who Children in Need Special is available here after 9.30pm (GMT) tonight. Don't expect too much however as the site describes it as both a "scene" and a "clip" ie. not very long.

Battlestar Galactica must be gathering the dollars in for the SciFi channel, unlike SciFiction, because it'sgetting a third season. The question now is how long can Ronald Moore keep the series feeling fresh and unrepetitive? After all how long can a ragtag fleet search for Earth and run away from cylons without the whole thing becoming one long bout of dejavu?

The tabloids are trying to conjure a story of nothing (as usual). The Daily Mirror has a story stating that Billi Piper may not do a third series of Doctor Who. The BBC shrugs in response. Once again the tabloids seem to either not understand or not care about the turnover of companions (and Doctors) in Doctor Who. It's all part of the show. And weren't there all these stories about the coming series too?

Personally I wouldn't be surprised if Billie decided to do something else after (what sounds like) a couple of long series shoots. I saw her in last weeks excellent Much Ado About Nothing adaptation and she was pretty good, so I guess she'll have plenty of offers.

Quite insane, but very interesting (for me anyway!) some guy has watched all six Star Wars movies simultaneously and reports in his findings. What is interesting is how Lucas's use of the (rigid?) structure of the films introduces all sorts of coincidences. eg.

• The first appearance of Palpatine in TPM and AOTC is ON THE SAME FRAME. And at the same time in ROTJ, Vader is telling Moff Jerjerrod that the Emperor is coming.
• Luke destroys the Death Star and Vader kills Palpatine at just about the same time

etc...

Somehow never as scary as the Daleks, but still a Doctor Who icon, the Cybermen are back in the new series of Doctor Who, looking a little bit chunkier and cool.

Two bits of Doctor Who news from Outpost Gallifrey...

Firstly the Doctor Who Children in Need special is on a 9.06pm and lasts 3.5 minutes. As with all these charity shows it's bound to be a disappointment.

Secondly ITV has developed a £6 million science fiction series to rival Doctor Who. It's called Primaeval and will follow a team of scientists who travel into prehistoric times and other worlds through black holes. In other words it's Sliders, except probably not as good. Still, even if it's rubbish, an arms race escalation of SF shows in the UK, just like there is in the US at the moment, must be a good thing.

Via The Alien Online, Empire has an nice interview with Rick McCallum. Hearing him talk about the costs of the movie is really interesting. Some quotes...

RM: If our film cost $125 million we wouldn�t break even!

Empire: So it's all about DVD now?

RM: It�s the only thing that is even keeping the film business walking.

and

Empire : What about an equivalent of iTunes for movies?

RM : Yeah, there�s no question that is the direction. [snip]. The illegally downloaded prints, the copy that I saw of the downloaded version from the very first day, is a better quality image than you could see in 99.9% of all the theatres in the world. That�s tragic, but that�s the reality.

Empire : So what�s the solution?

RM : It�ll be a solution of digital projection in theatres, DVD release for home and video on demand for those who can�t afford the DVD.

Where Steve Jobs leads, other will follow...

Sci Fi Wire is reporting (via The Hollywood Reporter) that NBC Universal is set to launch video on demand via DirecTV. CBS and Comcast (who?) have announced similar deals, however the intersting part of the NBC deal for us lot is that it includes Battlestar Galactica and Surface. (NBC Universal own SciFi Channel).

Sketchy details so far, 99 cents per episode (nicely undercutting iTunes), and what do you bet some nasty DRM? And how about opening it up to the rest of the world? Presumably if it's via DirecTV it will be some sort of cable download thing?

Here's a suggestion, forget selling the show abroad, just open it up on your website store for us all to download! Go on! (Pretty unlikely I guess as I imagine non-US stations can get into bidding wars for good shows and up the price significantly.)

The Disembodied Brain ewviews Star Wars: Battlefront II. Sounds cool. Unfortunately I don't have the time to play games these days. Maybe the next console generation?

The Doctor Who Christmas special , The Christmas Invasion will be shown on Christmass Day. The BBC has not confirmed a time yet, but what's the betting that it's the mega prime time Christmas Day 6pm slot?

Maybe this is how Sky works? Apparently they haven't yet scheduled when they are going to be showing season two of Battlestar Galactica ie. the first showing of season two in the UK. The original rumour was that it would start in January. Is this in doubt now?

StarWars.com has put online the webdoc Becoming Sidious for the majority of us who don't like to pay for web content. It's a good little doc, Ian McDiarmid is a great actor and very interesting.

Also online, a trailer for Empire at War (the videogame), and a selection of mildly amusing The Apprentice trailers, with Donald Trump giving Darth Vader a hard time for letting Luke blow up the first Death Star.

The BBC Doctor Who site has a selection of fancy dress pictures from Halloween. The scariest being, of course , a small boy in a gas mask.

"Are you my mummy?"

Also via Ain't It Cool News an in-depth review (the first of many no doubt) of The Revenge Of The Sith DVD.

According to the Homing Beascon newsletter....

"The Star Wars home entertainment day you've been waiting for has arrived!"

Hmmm. Never knew that there was such thing as a home entertainment day, Dear Lucasfilm please learn proper English.

Anyway, I'm tempted but resisting. Maybe I'll rent it to watch the extras.