Last night the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office Staff convened for the broadcast of the Doctor Who 50th anniversary special. I would like to say that a lot of tequila was involved with the construction of these tweets, but there wasn’t. Sierra Nevada and a fair amount of Sauvignon Blanc were the main perpetrators. The rest was inspired by circumstance. And, possibly tequila happenstance. Enjoy.
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.
Hypable posted speculation this morning that J.K. Rowling may be involved in an upcoming Dr. Who short story anthology, which will begin as a publication of individual “eshorts” starting on January 23, according to the BBC press release. Although Stephen Moffat is not commenting on the project, publisher Juliet Matthews reports:
We are delighted to have 11 sensational children’s authors involved in the series, all bringing an individual style, imagination and interpretation to their eshort tribute to The Doctor. This is a who’s who of children’s fiction coming together to celebrate the much-loved Doctor Who.
I’m too out of touch with children’s fiction these days to have any idea what constitutes a “who’s who”; I can’t imagine they are digging up the corpse of Lewis Carroll for this project. However, Bleeding Cool thinks they may have found evidence of the possibility of Neil Gaiman’s involvement based on this tweet from this morning:
Rewatching lots of old YouTube clips for A Project. I’d forgotten how much I loved Curse of the Fatal Death j.mp/133F6RZ#drwho
— Neil Gaiman (@neilhimself) January 4, 2013
So, who knows? Either way, Dr. Who and children’s literature fans will have a field day making guesses and placing bets. The first of the authors for this series will be revealed on January 7. I don’t suppose there’s a chance that they’d get the Go The Fuck To Sleep guy involved, would they? Now that would be an interesting take on Dr. Who, especially if they got Samuel L. Jackson to read it.
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.
Whovians who have embraced Amy Pond, Weeping Angels, and Steven Moffat, rejoice! Your tonic of choice is set to return to the airwaves August 25th. Of course, if you happen to be at the Edinbugh International Television Festival, which begins on August 23rd, you may get to see it before it officially hits the TV. Either way, Season 7 sees the return of Doctor Who to television after a particularly long hiatus. Amy and Rory will rejoin the Doctor for at least the first part of the season. Well, probably at least until this happens during a fight with some Daleks:
Does Amy actually cash in her chips this season? Check out the trailer after the jump!
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