From Out of The Past: Nine Missing Late 60s Doctor Who Episodes Released

Well, it’s official: the BBC has announced that they have recovered nine episodes of Doctor Who from the run of Patrick Troughton, the second Doctor. Which means that I will only need to spend a full day watching British children’s television to bring myself up to speed… but since the episodes have been released only via iTunes, it will mean that I will finally be forced to give Apple my real name. Or wait something like 24 hours for the episodes to be released to Bittorrent. Jesus, did I say that out loud? Either way, I’m getting ahead of myself here.

The episodes are from the 1967 story arc The Enemy of The World and the 1968 arc The Web of Fear, which is the first story to feature The Great Intelligence…

Hey Amanda? What’s The Great Intelligence?

Well Rob, he’s the guy with the evil snowmen. The one that was voiced by Magneto in that Christmas special. And I think he was the leader of The Whisper Men in that Name of The Doctor episode.

Were those the ones that ripped off The Gentlemen from Buffy? I don’t remember that one all that well. I was pretty shitfaced when we watched that.

You mean as opposed to now?

…don’t give me static. I’m doing journalism! Or at least blogging. It’s like journalism, only you can go off on ridiculous tangents, and no one cares if you do it in your underpants!

Anyway.

Christmas In Whoville: Previously Lost Doctor Who Episodes To Be Released

Update, 10/7/2013: The BBC has announced that the press conference has been delayed until “the end of the week.” Which day exactly? You got me. This is one of those… yeah: still not gonna write that phrase that starts with “time” and has too many “-ey”s in it.

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So apparently it’s official: there will be some new Doctor Who episodes released. Or actually, make that old ones. New old episodes? I dunno; fucker’s a time traveler, isn’t he? You figure it out.

Okay, here’s the deal: for years, a lot of the earliest episodes of Doctor Who featuring the first and second Doctors (William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton, respectively) have been considered “lost,” due to the BBC’s forward-thinking practice, until 1978, of bulk-wiping their old videotapes to save money on having to buy new tapes with which to capture Jimmy Saville finger-blasting prepubescent girls on Top of The Pops.

In total, 106 episodes from the early years of Doctor Who have been missing and unseen for years, although every once in a while rumors pop up saying that some episodes have been found in some musty basement in some Third World toilet somewhere, and they almost always turn out to be nothing. But today, however, the BBC has officially announced that they have recovered, and will be screening and making available for digital purchase, some previously lost episodes as soon as this coming Wednesday.

How many episodes? Well, actually that’s a good question.

What Can We Expect From Peter Capaldi’s Doctor Who (Video)

YouTube user Peter Nottage has posted an excellent mash up of Peter Capaldi’s foul mouthed Malcolm Tucker of The Thick Of It appearing to negotiate his way across the the Doctor Who universe with companion Clara in tow. While it is highly unlikely that Stephen Moffat would actually write The Doctor in this manner, I think it would be a welcome change from having The Doctor babble on about that which is “wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff” for fuck’s sake.

And, for those of you who continue to prefer lighter DW fare, in the vein of fish fingers and custard, I have something for you after the jump.

Doctor Who News – Peter Capaldi Is The 12th Doctor

Yesterday, the BBC announced that Peter Capaldi will be the next Doctor in Doctor Who. Capaldi is probably best known for his work as Malcolm Tucker on The Thick Of It. He also was most recently seen on the big screen in World War Z as W.H.O. Doctor (ha!).

Capaldi’s casting is a departure from the recent trend of casting much younger actors to the role of The Doctor in order to court the demographic. Indeed Capaldi is 55, the same age as William Hartnell when he was cast as the very first Doctor back in 1963. Reportedly, Capaldi was the only person show runner Steven Moffat was interested in for the role. As of the Doctor Who panel back at San Diego Comic-Con back in July, Moffat had said that there had been no casting decisions made with regard to the 12th Doctor. Nice to see Moffat continue his streak of being upfront and transparent with the show’s fans.

Check out the video of Peter Capaldi’s introduction to Doctor Who fans from the BBC television special that aired yesterday, after the jump.

#TheFourth – New Tom Baker-centric Doctor Who Promo Clip

Bleeding Cool has posted about a new video from BBC Worldwide. It features camera panning over illustrations of the fourth Doctor’s companions, with audio clips from selected companions and Tom Baker. While it could be that the video is a promo for an upcoming Doctor Who DVD box set Doctor Who: the Doctors Revisited 1-4, which will be released on July 16, it could also be as simple as BBC Worldwide being a bit tongue in cheek – it was released on July 4th. Probably not directed at us Americans for our nation’s birthday, but who knows? The series’ massive popularity of late here in the United States is why Stephen Moffat remains still employed, to the eternal bafflement of many fans of the classic series and the earlier Russell T. Davies reboot episodes.

Rory Kinnear – The New Doctor Who?

Bleeding Cool is reporting that UK paper The Telegraph is running a story that the BBC has offered the part of the 12th Doctor to Skyfall‘s Rory Kinnear.

According to the Telegraph article’s author, Richard Eden:

“He has been offered the part and we are waiting to hear if he will accept,” says my man in the Tardis. “He is the perfect choice.”

The 35-year-old alumnus of St Paul’s School, George Osborne’s alma mater, is the son of Roy Kinnear, the celebrated actor.

He played the MI6 officer Bill Tanner in Skyfall and Quantum of Solace, the James Bond films, and won acclaim for his stage performances in productions of Othello, Mary Stuart and Hamlet.

However, tweets Dr. Who producer, Ed Starling:

Don’t believe what you read about the new #doctorwho being announced this weekend. I think it must be Starburst getting a bit over-excited!

— Ed Stradling (@edstradling) June 8, 2013

Steven Moffat says this morning “I haven’t a clue who it is, we’ve barely started.” So no #doctorwho announcement this evening I fear!

— Ed Stradling (@edstradling) June 8, 2013

Hmmm. A vote in Kinnear’s favor, at as far as I’m concerned, is that he’s at least a bit older than Matt Smith. As an old school Doctor Who fan, I worry that the rampant fan growth among the 18-25 set under Smith will lead to a series of increasingly younger casting choices possibly resulting in the eventual casting of Justin Bieber or a fetus.

However, Stradling did have some interesting things to say about how Smith was cast in Doctor Who in the first place.

Regeneration All Over Again: Matt Smith Leaving Doctor Who, Continuity Is Doomed

It is official now: Matt Smith will be leaving Doctor Who after the upcoming 50th anniversary special and the annual Christmas special.

This is weird and potentially unsettling news for a couple of reasons. The first reason being that Matt Smith has been the face of Doctor Who as it has exploded in worldwide popularity over the past few years. Sure, Christopher Eccleston brought the franchise back to life, and David Tennant ramped its popularity way up, but it wasn’t until Smith that the show graduated to Hall H panels at San Diego Comic-Con and to mainstream press coverage. It’s easy to forget these days that, back in the 90s, Doctor Who was a niche property; back then I belonged to a local private social club (I wasn’t a member of the local Polish-American community, but I was trying to lay into a girl who was. Plus they had dollar beers. But I digress), and they had a Doctor Who pinball machine not because they were fans, but because it was the cheapest and least in-demand machine available at the time.

But not only is showrunner Steven Moffat losing (or firing, because frankly the story and statement aren’t totally clear as to who pulled the trigger on this decision) the guy who fronted the move from niche cheapie show with cardboard sets that you might catch on PBS at 4 a.m. if your cable had gone out, to the forefront of televised sci-fi, but he is opening up a potential can of continuity worms that is sure to turn this year’s Doctor Who panel at SDCC into a geekstorm so intense that it will make the members of the 501st Stormtrooper Legion mutter “nerds” under their breath.

Wishing For A Sonic Zippo: New Doctor Who Christmas Special Trailer Online

I am not the resident Doctor Who-head in the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office – those duties fall to Amanda and Lance Manion, who as children both thrilled to the adventures of the Fourth Doctor on PBS during the early 80s while I was instead busy flipping around the channels saying, “Dad? Why is that freak in the scarf arguing with a crappy Artoo-Deetoo knockoff on an obviously cardboard spaceship? Could we get a VCR so I can watch the actual Star Wars and not be subjected to bankrupt English people playacting?”

Amanda and Lance have since changed my mind about the Doctor- if everyone has “their” Doctor, mine’s Christopher Eccleston – so I have a certain level of excitement about the Doctor Who Christmas Special coming up on, well, Christmas. The concept of a Christmas Special is apparently a particularly British tradition in television – do a six episode “series,” take a little nap, drink a little tea, do a quick Christmas special, and then binge drink on lager while arguing whether Tom Baker could kick Matt Smith’s ass, or vice versa, all while pretending that they don’t know full well that Han Solo cold kill them both before they hit the ground. But I digress.

This special looks to properly introduce new Companion, Jenna-Louise Coleman, with the Doctor battling evil, supernatural snowmen. And based on the latest teaser, these Snowmen look to be a threat as creepy and dangerous as the Weeping Angels… provided the Weeping Angels could be destroyed by fire, or perhaps a warmish late-winter day.

Don’t believe me? Well, you can check that trailer out after the jump.

With A Whimper – Review Of Doctor Who: The Angels Take Manhattan

Well, I’ll give last night’s episode of Doctor Who this much: it made me queue up the Weeping Angels origin episode “Blink” on streaming Netflix to help me put my finger on what went wrong with “The Angels Take Manhattan”. The short answer? Almost everything.

“The Angels Take Manhattan” was intended to be an emotional send off for the Doctor’s most recent companions, Amy and Rory Pond. Here’s a spoiler up front: the Ponds are sent away into the past to a fixed point in time where, apparently, the Doctor can never see them again. Given that it’s been established that the Doctor needs to be around others on a near constant basis in order to remain somewhat centered, if not completely sane, the ending of this episode should have competed with Old Yeller for tear jerker of the millennium. However, convoluted story telling, hype, and lack of attachment to Amy Pond as a character worth caring about, as compared to other Companions, served to kill this episode in its crib.

More spoilery disappointment, after the jump.

Last Days Of The Ponds – Behind The Scenes At Doctor Who

In less than an hour, the final Doctor Who episode starring the Ponds will air in the UK. Those of us here in the states will need to wait another five hours and avoid Twitter and Web site spoilers…like this behind the scenes Doctor Who video which hints at Amy’s fate in tonight’s “The Angels Take Manhattan”.

You’ve been warned.

At least I have no idea what happens to Rory. Yet. Although I think it involves unemployment…