Tag: Doctor Who: 50th Anniversary

Doctor Who: 50 Years in Space & Time (Part 3)

With the Radio Times celebrating Doctor Who\’s 50th Anniversary, with no less than TWELVE variant covers, the TV Times also got in on the act with their own 50 Years of Doctor Who Anniversary edition for the week of 23rd-29th November, with four variant Doctor Who covers. I have the 1963-1969 Cover #1, featuring Hartnell and Troughton, plus companions Jamie, Zoe, Steven and Dodo, and a selection of the favourite b&w era monsters. A very nice cover, although it\’s strange that all the background companions and monsters are Troughton-era. There\’s nothing from the Hartnell era, except the First Doctor himself, and maybe the Daleks, as they were from both eras.

Inside the magazine, we have:

  • A mini-review of The Day of the Doctor
  • A five-page 50 Years of Doctor Who Special celebration, A Very Special Birthday. This is a nice one, and includes an interview with David Tennant and Matt Smith, and interviews with Tom Baker (the 1970s) and Peter Davison (the 1980s)
  • There\’s also a Classic Companions piece, featuring interviews with Peter Purves (Steven) and Frazer Hines (Jamie)
  • And to crown it all, there\’s A Brief History of Time (Lords), a very nice timeline running along the bottom of the entire five-page feature, starting with An Unearthly Child in 1963, and taking us right up to the 2012 Christmas TV Special, in which the Matt Smith Doctor faces off against the Great Intelligence, in the shape of Richard E. Grant

Overall, a pretty good Doctor Who 50th Anniversary edition. It\’s well worth grabbing at least one copy of this one.

To Be Continued…

Doctor Who: 50 Years in Space & Time (Part 2)

Last time out, I talked about what TV has been dishing up for us to celebrate our favourite Time Lord\’s 50th birthday. This time, I\’m having a look at what\’s been happening on the magazine front. In this first part, I\’ll be looking at the Radio Times.

The November 23rd-29th edition of the Radio Times is a Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Special, with no less than twelve variant covers, each one featuring a different Doctor (including the \”War Doctor\” John Hurt, which is why there are twelve covers, not eleven). So far, I\’ve got the Hartnell, Troughton, Pertwee and Tom Baker covers, and to be honest, that\’s enough.

I honestly think it\’s going a bit overboard trying to collect all twelve covers, unless you\’re a reseller wanting to make a big profit, or a hardcore, dedicated fan or collector, who simply has to have every cover. I\’ve always been a huge fan of the first four Doctors, so I\’ve decided just to collect only the magazines with the covers of those four Doctors.

Inside the magazine itself, we\’ve got:

  • A golden celebration of Radio Times Doctor Who covers, with fifty covers for all fifty years
  • A Steven Moffat article You Can\’t Destroy the Doctor
  • On set with the Three Doctors (Smith, Tennant and Hurt)
  • A detailed overview of all eleven Doctors
  • And, finally, a competition to win the Doctor\’s bow tie

Oh, yeah, and don\’t forget that this issue is also interactive, if you happen to have an Apple or Android smartphone. Which I don\’t. Life is so unfair! 🙁

This one is worth grabbing at least one copy of.

To Be Continued…

Countdown to \”Day of the Doctor\” – Two Hours and Counting Down

I\’m sitting here eagerly awaiting the start of the 50th Anniversary Doctor Who Special, The Day of the Doctor, which airs on BBC1 in about one and a half hours, at 7.50pm. I\’m really looking forward to seeing the Zygons again, after almost forty years. I\’m also really looking forward to seeing the David Tennant Doctor and Rose again. And John Hurt. Oh yes, more John Hurt, please!

We\’re all aware that Matt Smith is bowing out with the upcoming Christmas Special, The Time of the Doctor, after three really good years on the show. That\’ll be sad, as I really liked him. But I\’m sure the series will be in safe hands, as Matt gives over the reins to Peter Capaldi, who is a darned good actor. Steven Moffat, and Russell T. Davies before him, haven\’t let us down yet with their choices of actors for the modern series. I trust their judgment. Christopher Eccleston, David Tennant and Matt Smith have ALL been excellent in the role, and I\’m certain that Peter Capaldi will be, too. I\’m particularly interested in how the relationship between the new Doctor and companion Clara Oswald will pan out.

So here\’s looking forward to The Day of the Doctor. I\’m sure it will be a cracker, although it will have to be something really \”special\” to be better than the truly excellent An Adventure in Space and Time, which aired on BBC2 on Thursday night. If it\’s even half as good as that one, I\’ll be happy! 🙂

Doctor Who – Fifty Years in Time and Space

This month marks the 50th Anniversary of my all-time favourite sci-fi television series, Doctor Who. The very first episode of An Unearthly Child aired on BBC1 at 5.15pm on Saturday 23rd November, 1963, and the world of sci-fi television, and our lives, would never be the same again.

There has obviously been a lot of recent activity to celebrate the anniversary. The November issue of Doctor Who Magazine is of course a bumper 50th Anniversary special, with some truly excellent and detailed behind the scenes articles and a few other nice bits \’n\’ bobs. There have also been various television programs celebrating the lead-up to the anniversary. Last Thursday (14th November) gave us the excellent The Science of Doctor Who on BBC2, featuring the ever-brilliant and entertaining Professor Brian Cox, the Doctor himself (Matt Smith), and various other celebrities from the worlds of science and entertainment. Monday 18th also gave us the bumper two-hour The Ultimate Guide to Doctor Who on BBC3.

But the best is yet to come. I\’ve been eagerly awaiting the 50th Anniversary Special, The Day of the Doctor, which is being aired on the evening of Saturday 23rd on BBC1. This one gives us not one, not two, but THREE Doctors (plus Clara, of course), and Rose, and Daleks, AND the long-awaited return of one of the best-ever Doctor Who monsters, the Zygons. I mean, what\’s not to look forward to? Add to this the fact that the anniversary is actually falling on Saturday 23rd November, rather than, say, on a Wednesday, or one of the other days of the week. That alone is giving me a huge thrill. Hey, it doesn\’t take much to get me excited, eh? Roll on Saturday evening! I\’ll be like a young kid again. 🙂

However, as much as I might be looking forward to The Day of the Doctor, there\’s something else that I\’m looking forward to even more. Tonight, at 9pm, BBC2 is screening An Adventure in Space and Time, which promises to be an absolute gem. Sure, the 50th Anniversary Special is wildly anticipated by all Doctor Who fans, myself included. But Doctor Who specials come and go, and there have been quite a few of them over the years, some good, some not so good. There has never been a Doctor Who programme like An Adventure in Space and Time on television before. It is a \”first\”, and, as such, is, in my opinion, even more important than the 50th Anniversary Special itself. I consider it to be the most important Doctor Who production of recent years.

An Adventure in Space and Time is a prestigious television drama portraying the origins and earliest behind-the-scenes developments of Doctor Who and the Hartnell-era cast. It\’s written by the irrepressible Mark Gatiss, and stars excellent character actor David Bradley as William Hartnell, major Hollywood star Brian Cox as Sydney Newman, and a cast of excellent young British actors including Sacha Dhawan as Waris Hussein, Jessica Raine as Verity Lambert, Jamie Glover as William Russell, Jemma Powell as Jacqueline Hill and Claudia Grant as Carole Ann Ford.

An Adventure in Space and Time promises to be something truly special, and is absolutely NOT to be missed by any Doctor Who fan. I\’ll make sure that I have the phone off the hook, and all my friends and relatives will be informed that they will suffer the most horrible death imaginable if they come anywhere near my house between 9.00pm and 10.30pm tonight. They have been warned! 🙂

Doctor Who: 50 Years in Space & Time (Part 1)

As this month marks the 50th Anniversary of Doctor Who, my all-time favourite telefantasy series, I reckon that now is the perfect time to relaunch this blog as a dedicated Doctor Who thingie, rather than the more general telefantasy blog of its previous regeneration.

I now do all of the more general stuff over on my main Tales of Time & Space blog on wordpress.com, so I\’ve cleared out all previous posts from this one (they can be reposted in some form on Tales of Time & Space at some point in the future), and I\’m starting from scratch here with Doctor Who-only posts.

This coming Saturday (and I get a real thrill out of the fact that the 23rd November actually does fall on a Saturday this year) marks the 50th Anniversary of the very first episode of An Unearthly Child (aka The Tribe of Gum – I still refuse to refer to the overall story by that name), which first aired on BBC1 at 5.15pm on Saturday 23rd November, 1963. I\’ll make sure to be sitting in front of the telly at 5.15pm on Saturday with my DVD box-set of The Beginning, plus a little drinkie or two, ready to mark the anniversary of the exact moment when the very first ever episode of Doctor Who exploded upon an unsuspecting world. Actually, it\’s more like \”sneaked by unnoticed\”, due to the widespread furore surrounding the assassination of John F. Kennedy the day before, but \”exploded upon\” sounds much more dramatic, doesn\’t it?

There has obviously been quite a bit of activity on television to celebrate the lead-up to the anniversary. Aside from the almost compulsory annual Children in Need silliness, we\’ve had, most notably: the fun The Science of Doctor Who special on BBC2 (Thursday 14th November, at 9.00pm), hosted by the seemingly ever-present and absolutely brilliant Professor Brian Cox (with a guest appearance by the Doctor himself, Matt Smith); Doctor Who: The Doctors Revisited (Watch, Saturday 16th November at 2pm); a three-part Doctor Who: Monsters and Villains Weekend documentary (BBC3, Friday/Saturday 15th/16th November at 8pm, and Sunday 17th November at 7.30pm); and the bumper two-hour The Ultimate Guide to Doctor Who (BBC3, Monday 18th November, 8pm-10pm).

That leaves the two biggies still to come. Every Doctor Who fan on Planet Earth is chomping at the bit, waiting for the 50th Anniversary Special, The Day of the Doctor (BBC1, Saturday 23rd November, 7.50pm). Obviously I\’m as eager as anyone else to see The Day of the Doctor, but, as far as I\’m concerned, the true highlight of the entire anniversary celebrations is An Adventure in Space and Time, which airs tonight on BBC2, from 9pm-10.30pm.

I\’ve been waiting for months for this one, and I consider An Adventure in Space and Time to be potentially the most important Doctor Who production of recent years. It promises to be something truly special and unique, and I haven\’t been this excited about any Doctor Who-related programme since the unsurpassed Philip Hinchcliffe era of Tom Baker\’s run on the classic series.

And just for good measure, after An Adventure in Space and Time ends, you can hop channels over to BBC4 at 10.30pm, where they\’re airing all four episodes of An Unearthly Child. This is gonna be the best Thursday night\’s television viewing in years!

To Be Continued…