A cache of never-before-seen Doctor Who scripts, including one for a serial that was replaced by the first Daleks story, have been unearthed in Herne Bay in Kent.
They were discovered by local prop maker Jason Onion, who found them while researching the town’s links with the BBC sci-fi drama.
The scripts were nestled in a box of papers belonging to the late writer and TARDIS creator Anthony Coburn, who used to live in Herne Bay.
Onion said that he wasn’t initially aware of the significance of his find and believed the scripts to be copies of existing Doctor Who screenplays.
“With the consent of Anthony’s wife, Joan Coburn-Moon, and other family members, the family lent me a box of his work and I saw the scripts, but put them to one side,” he told thisiskent.co.uk. “When I scanned the cover later I realised it didn’t have the right title for the first episode.
“I had a look and as soon as I saw the first few pages I knew it was not the episode that had been televised. I just sat there, and stared and stared. I wanted to cover them with glass. They are unbelievably precious, and I had them in my hand.”
The collection includes two versions of Doctor Who’s very first episode, An Unearthly Child, an alternative second episode and another three scripts including a story about the Masters of Luxor, which was replaced by 1963’s The Daleks.
On Tuesday night (February 26) in Liverpool, BBC Worldwide Showcase paid tribute to one of the BBC’s most successful and long-running global franchises, Doctor Who, as the series heads toward its 50th anniversary this November.
Mark Williams (who played Rory’s father Brian in Season 7) hosted the Doctor Who Showcase Symphonic Spectacular, a celebration of Murray Gold’s epic music score for the show. Led by the boyishly Tennant-esque Ben Foster as conductor, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and the Sense of Sound choir made Gold’s compositions sound even more mythic. The soloists Daniel Keating-Roberts and Elin Manahan Thomas lent their voices to a couple of the numbers; Thomas was particularly moving with her soprano renderings of “Madman with a Box” and the gorgeous “Abigail’s Song.”
Read the entire story at Anglophenia.
Doctor Who celebrates its 50th birthday in November, but it is not the first time viewers have had the chance to see the Time Lord in 3D. Doctor Who’s 30th anniversary was marked in 1993 with a 3D story, Dimensions in Time, broadcast as part of Children In Need. The two-part adventure was filmed on EastEnders’ Albert Square set, and featured Doctor Who stars past and present, as well as cast members from the BBC soap. Stevan Moffat, the show’s lead writer and producer said the latest 3D escapade would bring a “whole new dimension of adventure for the Doctor to explore”.
The special was announced as part of the BBC’s latest round of drama commissions, which will also see Call The Midwife return in 2014.
Update: story link fixed!
courtesy BBC Worldwide:
William Hartnell was the first TV Doctor. A veteran of stage and screen, Hartnell saw the role as an ideal opportunity to break away from the tough sergeant major roles he often found himself cast in. He got to wear a long grey wig too!
Find out more about William Hartnell here.
More clips being added throughout the month!
There are some key clips in here. It’s definitely worth a browse.
h/t Anglophenia
Also on the list: Sherlock Series 2.
The BBC Doctor Who site has a gallery of pictures of the TARDIS through it’s many incarnations. Click through for the entire gallery.
British astronomer and broadcaster Sir Patrick Moore has died, aged 89, his friends and colleagues have said.
Sir Patrick presented the BBC programme The Sky At Night for over 50 years, making him the longest-running host of the same television show ever.
He wrote dozens of books on astronomy and his research was used by the US and the Russians in their space programmes.
Described by one of his close friends as “fearlessly eccentric”, Sir Patrick was notable for his habit of wearing a monocle on screen and his idiosyncratic style.
Sir Patrick presented the first edition of The Sky at Night on 24 April 1957. He last appeared in an episode broadcast on Monday.
Sir Patrick Moore is known to Whovians for his cameo appearance (as himself) in the Eleventh Doctor’s first episode, “The Eleventh Hour.”
Did you know that Spearhead from Space is the only Classic Who story that can be remastered into genuine HD?
Originally broadcast in January 1970, the story features John Pertwee’s first outing as the Third Doctor and was the first colour production of the iconic series.
A scene-shifters strike at Television Centre in 1969 meant that the entire story was filmed on location using 16mm film rather than recording to video tape, which allowed the team at BBC Studios & Post Production to remaster the story.
Working with the 16mm format meant BBC S&PP’s Digital Media Services lead colourist Jonathan Wood took a different approach to the grading of Spearhead from Space. He explains: “The look of this HD remaster is a low-key filmic approach, which gives it more of a dramatic result. Working with the original negative and using a powerful non-linear grading system, we decided to treat this four-part story like an individual filmed drama rather than thinking of it as part of an ongoing series normally shot in a TV studio.”
If you happen to nerd out about this stuff like we do, click the link for more.
- Have you been able to confirm said news on at least 2 websites?
- Are those 2 websites respectable?
- Is one of those websites the BBC or a BBC offshoot?
If you answered no to any of these, then no, your news is wrong.
BBC has given me unrealistic expectations in men…
(Source: helloeverything)
The Doctor will come face-to-face with some old enemies…
We can confirm that the Cybermen will be menacing the universe once again when Doctor Who returns for a run of eight epic episodes in spring, 2013.The iconic enemies will feature in an adventure directed by Stephen Woolfenden and written by the acclaimed Neil Gaiman whose previous episode was the Hugo Award-winning, The Doctor’s Wife.
Starring Matt Smith as the Doctor and Jenna-Louise Coleman as the new companion, the episode co-stars Warwick Davis (Life’s Too Short and Harry Potter), Tamzin Outhwaite (EastEnders and Hotel Babylon) and Jason Watkins (Being Human and Lark Rise to Candleford) as a band of misfits on a mysterious planet…
Steven Moffat, Lead Writer and Executive Producer, told us, ‘Cybermen were always the monsters that scared me the most! Not just because they were an awesome military force, but because sometimes they could be sleek and silver and right behind you without you even knowing. ’ He added, ‘And with one of the all-time classic monsters returning, and a script from one of our finest novelists, it’s no surprise we have attracted such stellar names as Tamzin, Jason and Warwick.’
The Cybermen last appeared in 2011’s Closing Time but debuted in 1966 opposite William Hartnell’s Doctor in the classic The Tenth Planet.
Doctor Who is up for ‘Favorite Sci-Fi/Fantasy TV Show’ which is awesome. We want the show to win that one.
However….
we REALLY want you to win the ‘Favorite TV Fan Following’ Award.
Because you guise deserve this. We just voted for you so go vote for yourselves.
Srsly guise.
Srsly.
(thx xxgoldie12xx for the heads up!)
Update 4:08pm EDT: I think we crashed the People’s Choice Awards site. It was up all day and then you started clicking through and it wasn’t.
There should be a separate award for that.
Update 4:55pm EDT: It’s up again! Go vote!
Find out what happened to Rory’s dad and the Ponds in this scene written by Chris Chibnall and narrated by Arthur Darvill.
Because somebody’s got to water the plants.
(Source: youtube.com)
The UK BBC One broadcast of the mid-season finale of Doctor Who begins in an hour!
We cannot express enough the importance of tagging your spoilers as ‘spoilers’.
So instead we are expressing it through this gif. And in case the single pin isn’t enough, we’ve added EVEN MORE PINS.
This episode is KIND OF THE BIGGEST EPISODE to hit the fandom IN YEARS so BE SURE TO TAG YOUR SPOILERS.
For everyone watching in time zones after the UK, install Tumblr Savior and blacklist the tags you think people will use tonight. Our personal blacklists include the tags ‘spoilers’ ‘dw spoilers’ ‘the angels take manhattan’ ‘wtf’ and every profane variation of ‘OMG’ that we can think of.
We WILL BE LIVETUMBLRING the U.S. premieres of The Angels Take Manhattan later tonight. We will post our usual warning about an hour out.
