Halfway Out of the Dark

 

Paradoxically Christmas both is and isn't a time for Doctor Who; it is a time for sitting with the family and watching the Doctor Who Christmas Special and it is a time to look forward to some Time Lord-related presents under the tree but it's not a time to focus on self-indulgent, time-consuming challenges.

So with that in mind I had a last little push this past week to get as many of my DVDs I'd yet to watch for this challenge ticked off the list so I was free to enjoy the festive period with my family.

So far my calculations just include any Doctor Who related TV shows produced or co-produced by the BBC (so I guess the major omission is the Australian K9 show which I haven't ruled out including yet, just no great desire to watch it at this stage based on the handful episodes I've seen).

Anyway just focusing on the stuff for the challenge I'm now 98 DVDs, 29 Blu-Rays and 12 CDs down (the CDs being the audio recordings of lost TV episodes) and I'm pleased to announce that I'm halfway through the dark having just hit 50.07%!

May not sound a huge amount but this does include all of the extras which 2 Entertain cram onto their releases. So I've listened to every single commentary track (some episodes having multiple ones), read all of the production subtitles, listened to every isolated score track, watched every retrospective documentary, and watched more Blue Peter than I probably watched as a kid!

I am starting to get to the stage where I'll have nothing left on the shelf to go to so next year a big part of the challenge will be regularly picking stuff up to fill gaps in the collection, still I have just under two years to get the other 50% so I'm confident that I can do this thing! :)

Happy 48th Birthday, Doctor Who!

Today marks the 48th anniversary of the first ever broadcast of Doctor Who on what was then simply called BBC tv - considering the show is still on the air and arguably more popular than ever that is a heck of an achievement!

It also means I have exactly two years to finish my challenge to watch every episode of Doctor Who (including all of the DVD extras) by the 50th anniversary. I had been going through the process of posting a picture on Facebook of each thing I watched, listened to (in the case of some of the lost episodes) or read (as I'm easily distracted and am doing extra stuff other than the episodes when the mood takes me) for my challenge but after my PC blew up a little while back that drew to a halt. I have been carrying on my challenge though and as of today I have crossed the 40% mark - so here is a list of what has been crossed off the list so far:

DVDs/BLU-RAYS

Doctor Who - An Unearthly Child (1963)
Doctor Who - The Daleks (1963-1964)
Doctor Who - The Edge of Destruction (1964)
Doctor Who - The Rescue (1965)
Doctor Who - The Romans (1965)
Doctor Who - The War Machines (1966)
Doctor Who - The Dominators (1968)
Doctor Who - The Invasion (1968)
Doctor Who and the Silurians (1970)
Doctor Who - The Sea Devils (1972)
Doctor Who - The Three Doctors (1972-1973)
Doctor Who - The Green Death (1973)
Doctor Who - The Time Warrior (1973-1974)
Doctor Who - The Sontaran Experiment (1975)
Doctor Who - Revenge of the Cybermen (1975)
Doctor Who - The Talons of Weng-Chiang (Special Edition) (1977)
Doctor Who - The Invisible Enemy (1977)
Doctor Who - The Invasion of Time (1978)
Doctor Who - The Ribos Operation (1978)
Doctor Who - The Pirate Planet (1978)
Doctor Who - The Stones of Blood (1978)
Doctor Who - The Androids of Tara (1978)
Doctor Who - The Power of Kroll (1978-1979)
Doctor Who - The Armageddon Factor (1979)
Doctor Who - City of Death (1979)
Doctor Who - Full Circle (1980)
Doctor Who - State of Decay (1980)
Doctor Who - Warriors' Gate (1981)
Doctor Who - The Keeper of Traken (1981)
Doctor Who - Logopolis (1981)
Doctor Who - Castrovalva (1982)
Doctor Who - Time-Flight (1982)
Doctor Who - Arc of Infinity (1983)
Doctor Who - The Five Doctors (25th Anniversary Edition) (1983)
Doctor Who - The Caves of Androzani (Special Edition) (1984)
Doctor Who - The Mark of the Rani (1985)
Doctor Who - The Two Doctors (1985)
Doctor Who - The Trial of a Time Lord: The Mysterious Planet (1986)
Doctor Who - The Trial of a Time Lord: Mindwarp (1986)
Doctor Who - The Trial of a Time Lord: Terror of the Vervoids (1986)
Doctor Who - The Trial of a Time Lord: The Ultimate Foe (1986)
Doctor Who - Time and the Rani (1987)
Doctor Who - The Movie (Special Edition) (1996)
Doctor Who - The Complete First Series (2005)
Doctor Who - The Complete Second Series (2005-2006)
Doctor Who - The Complete Third Series (2006-2007)
Doctor Who - The Complete Fourth Series (2007-2008)
Doctor Who - The Complete Specials (2008-2010)
Doctor Who - The Complete Fifth Series (2010)


SPIN-OFF DVDs/BLU-RAYS

K9 and Company - A Girl's Best Friend (1981)
Torchwood - The Complete First Series (2006-2007)
The Sarah Jane Adventures - The Complete First Series (2007)
The Sarah Jane Adventures - The Complete Second Series (2008)
The Sarah Jane Adventures - The Complete Third Series (2009)


LOST EPISODE CDs

Doctor Who - Marco Polo (1964)
Doctor Who - The Reign of Terror (1964)
Doctor Who - The Crusade (1965)
Doctor Who - Galaxy 4 (1965)
Doctor Who - The Myth Makers (1965)


AUDIO DRAMAS (BIG FINISH)

Doctor Who - The Sirens of Time (1999)
Doctor Who - Phantasmagoria (1999)
Doctor Who - Whispers of Terror (1999)
Doctor Who - The Land of the Dead (2000)
Doctor Who - The Fearmonger (2000)
Doctor Who - The Marian Conspiracy (2000)
Doctor Who - The Genocide Machine (2000)
Doctor Who - Red Dawn (2000)
Doctor Who - The Spectre of Lanyon Moor (2000)
Doctor Who - Winter for the Adept (2000)
Doctor Who - The Apocalypse Element (2000)
Doctor Who - The Fires of Vulcan (2000)
Doctor Who - The Shadow of the Scourge (2000)
Doctor Who - The Holy Terror (2000)
Doctor Who - The Mutant Phase (2000)
Doctor Who - Last of the Titans (2001)
Doctor Who - Storm Warning (2001)
Doctor Who - Sword of Orion (2001)
Doctor Who - Shada (2003)


SPIN-OFF AUDIO DRAMAS (BIG FINISH)

Jago & Litefoot - Series One (2010)


NOVELS

Doctor Who - Winner Takes All (2005)
Doctor Who - Only Human (2005)
Doctor Who - The Eyeless (2008)
Doctor Who - The Coming of the Terraphiles (2010)


GRAPHIC NOVELS (PANINI PUBLISHING)

Doctor Who - The Iron Legion (1979-1980)
Doctor Who - Dragon's Claw (1980-1982)
Doctor Who - The Tides of Time (1982-1984)
Doctor Who - End Game (1996-1998)


GRAPHIC NOVELS (IDW PUBLISHING)
Doctor Who - Agent Provocateur (2008)
Doctor Who - The Forgotten (2008-2009)
Doctor Who - Through Time and Space (2009)
Doctor Who - Fugitive (2009)
Doctor Who - Tesseract (2010)
Doctor Who - Final Sacrifice (2010)
Doctor Who - The Ripper (2011)



GRAPHIC NOVELS (BBC BOOKS)


Doctor Who - The Only Good Dalek (2010)


SPIN-OFF GRAPHIC NOVELS

Abslom Daak - Dalek Killer (1980-1990)


AUDIO BOOKS

Doctor Who - The Runaway Train (2010)


SOUNDTRACK CDs

Doctor Who - Series 5 (2010)


MISCELLANEOUS BOOKS

Doctor Who - The Official Annual 2011 (2010)
Doctor Who - The Brilliant Book 2011 (2010)
Doctor Who - The Brilliant Book 2012 (2011)


Whilst that may seem a ridiculous amount of stuff I have loved every minute of it and look forward to the next two years of trying to get it all done!

Ginger Nuts

If I worked at the BBC there would be shows like this! :)

Strike a Pose

So I went into the newsagents on the way home today and spent some time looking for a certain magazine, I was already embarrassed slightly so when I saw the staff looking at me suspiciously I of course made it look like I was looking at the row of semi-naked women pouting out from the lurid covers of magazines such as 'Front' and 'Nuts' before spotting my target, taking the final copy to the counter and paying for my copy of Vogue... yes you read that right... I bought a copy of Vogue, but don't judge me - Karen Gillan hypnotised me into buying it... that is my excuse and I'm sticking to it!

See what I mean? Those eyes are hypnotic!

Anyway it may surprise anyone who hasn't actually met me that I don't know a heck of a lot about the fashion world but apparently 51 years ago a chance meeting in the Vogue offices between photographer David Bailey and model Jean Shrimpton changed the face of fashion photography forever.

Now I am of course aware of David Bailey (miserable bugger from all accounts!) but will admit that I had not heard of Jean Shrimpton until it was announced earlier this year that our very own Ms Gillan would be playing her in a BBC Four biopic called "We'll Take Manhattan".

And that is what this spread is promoting by getting the real-life Bailey to photograph the pair who are re-enacting his formative years. The article itself is kind of slim (six pages in total including the photos) but it's made me want to see the film that much more as in all honesty I didn't really know what it would be about before this (I didn't even know the film was about David Bailey and Jean Shrimpton as every article I read focussed purely on the Gillan/Shrimpton angle).

No idea of an actual date yet but the article does confirm it will be on BBC Four later this year - so something else to look forward to then.

Five More Sleeps

One of the things I love most about new Who is the anticipation for new episodes. I know that in todays society of instant gratification that may seem an odd thing but to me Doctor Who is like a fine wine (not the best analogy as I don't drink wine... but my only other option is "Doctor Who is like a vintage cheese..." and that doesn't seem to have quite the same gravitas). The time it is off the air is not a time to spend mourning, it's a time to get excited, follow filming reports and start speculating about who lives, who dies, which random character is suspected of being the Rani this year, which villains come back, etc.

Even when the show is on the air, the week between episodes is usually filled with so much speculation that the days until the next episode is on seem to fly by. Not that any level of grand speculation ever quite matches the brilliance of what Russell T Davies and Steven Moffat have surprised us with over the last six years, but again that is all part of the fun.

Who is "Mels"? Is she a regenerated Melody Pond before she takes on the River Song persona? Is the rumour about certain characters making cameo appearances true? And do they actually kill Hitler? And that's just speculating about one episode, never mind the rest of the series.

Roll on Saturday night, but until then let's just sit back and enjoy the anticipation of it all.

Two Amy Ponds and an Introduction

What better way to christen a new blog than with a picture of two Amy Ponds?

Well I guess an introduction might also help so I'll start with a quick confession (tellingly more of a confession than owning two life-sized Amys) - I didn't always love Doctor Who, at least not to the extent that I do now.

Tom Baker was already the fourth Doctor when I was born and I have incredibly fond memories of growing up watching Pertwee, Baker and Davison's Doctors. I don't think I was ever obsessed with the show back then but I did have a talking K9 toy which I loved and the show was certainly up there with The Muppet Show and Worzel Gummidge for me.

Doctor Who remained on the air right up until I was 13¾ (bizarrely that is acurrate almost to the day giving me a nice Adrian Mole reference for my fellow 80s kids) and I will freely admit by the time it went off the air in 1989 I was far from distraught as Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy had done little for me and I simply moved on to pastures new when it was finally cancelled.

However my fondness for the show was always there and when Paul McGann became the eighth Doctor in 1996 I was genuinely excited for the return of what had been such a constant prescence during my childhood. But again when that relaunch never went anywhere I simply moved on to numerous other nerdy pursuits that could occupy my time, occassionally revisiting some classic Doctor Who stories on DVD but never really delving into serious fandom.

Then in 2005 Russell T Davies relaunched the show, he had cast the amazing Christopher Eccleston as the Doctor and even had Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat on board as writers... my hopes where high and nothing pleases me more than being able to say that, six years later, the show for me has gone from strength to strength, it's produced two incredibly high quality spin-off shows aimed at two completely different demographics and has even given me a new found passion for the classic series as I'm now collecting the classic DVDs.

Oh and not since my childhood crush on Daphne from Scooby-Doo have I loved a fictional character quite so much as I love Amy Pond!