Hickensian by Tag

As fans know, there isn’t a ‘proper’ season of Who this year, but we do have 4 specials to look forward to, and details of the first one are starting to come through. ‘Planet of the Dead’ looks set to air on Saturday April 11th, so I’ve updated the subscribable iCal feed for Dr Who Season Guide (please note, this is a new address for the iCal feed). As the air date and time are confirmed I’ll update the calendar.

It’s David Tennant’s last season too – and I worry for the tone of the final story. Will it be a good, well scripted, send off? Or an overblown variety performance bring-everyone-back-for-one-last-one extravaganza? Rumours in the tabloids are pointing to the latter, but I hope they’re wrong!

The new Radio Times has a spectacular fold out cover previewing the upcoming Doctor Who Christmas Episode “The New Doctor”. Go see the larger version on Outpost Gallifrey for the detail (like the Cyberman with odd black tinted mask and visible brain).

Delia Derbyshire has long been considered ahead of her time. One of the earliest creators of electronic music, she is most famous for her work with the BBC’s Radiophonic Workshop in Maida Vale, at which she created the haunting original Dr Who theme, in an age without synthesizers:

A lot of modern musicians like Orbital, Stereolab and Spacemen 3 cite her work as an influence, and it’s easy to to see why.

What sparked this blog post was the news that more of her work has been discovered, some 267 tapes to be exact! All of this is going to be digitized and made available, but in particular was this experimental dance track that she created in the 60’s. Made decades before ‘electronic dance music’ really happened, and yet it sounds like something created today.

This clip from a BBC Four documentary gives some insight into how she created music with reel to reel tapes:

Sadly she died in 2001 at 64, just after rediscovering her love of electronic music, working with Peter Kember (Spacemen 3, Sonic Boom), of which she said:

“Working with people like Sonic Boom on pure electronic music has re-invigorated me. He is from a later generation but has always had an affinity with the music of the 60s. Now without the constraints of doing ‘applied music’, my mind can fly free and pick-up where I left off.”

Discover more about her life at delia-derbyshire.org

This is for those who watched (and care about!) Dr Who episode 12 The Stolen Earth, so be warned – there are spoilers!

This email landed this morning:

“I’m surprised to not see a Dr Who post on your blog. Are we going to get one? Will David Tennant be staying? Did you feel a pang of sadness at the thought of losing our current doctor?”

Ah, go on then.

I don’t think this is when David Tennant leaves, and I base that solely on the fact that he’s been seen filming the Christmas Episode! However, some points against that though:

• It’s possible that the production team kept his leaving secret – after all they had planned that Rose would be coming back, and managed to keep it secret for a couple of years.
• Catherine Tate did put her foot in it by saying this was his last season, after which there was an air of ‘she let the cat out of the bag’
• The scenes for the Christmas episode may be flashbacks, or some other ‘Time-Crash’ style plot device. Or even a complete Red Herring.
• Ood Sigma telling him that his “song may soon end” (although I take this to refer to Professor River Song – too literal?)

Still, my feeling is that next year’s special episodes will be his last. 3-4 years is the usual reign for a Doctor, and I’m sure that he would want to move on soon. He’s a great actor after all, and wouldn’t want to be typecast no matter how much of a fan he is. I hope he doesn’t go though – he makes even a bad script magic to watch.

So if this isn’t his last story, as I’m reckoning, then that leaves some issues. Will they back out and do some cringey plot device about how he regenerated but ‘came back the same’? Hopefully not, but here’s my theory: There was a brief mention to Donna that she ‘had something on her back’ – referencing the previous episode (Apparently Dextrus says this to Donna in ‘Fires of Pompeii’, but I missed that reference). There is still a Time Beetle™ on her back, and once some other choice is reversed, it will undo all these events. Anyway, we’ll see come Saturday!

Wonderful news for the future of Dr Who today, not that Russell T Davies is to step down as Executive Producer, but that Steven Moffat will replace him.

Steven is the writer that consistently writes the stand-out stories in each season – The Empty Child, The Girl in the Fireplace and Blink. Whenever Mr Oxton tells me ‘last weeks episode was a bit meh”, I always tell him to wait for the Moffat story, then you’ll be impressed. ‘Silence in the Library’ is the next Moffat story (in 2 weeks time, because of a break for Eurovision – grrr!).

I’m very appreciative of everything Russell has done for Dr Who. I may not agree with all his decisions, but without him, there would be be no show to get all ‘comic book store guy’ about in the first place. Plus, I still think Gridlock was a darned good story. However, I think Who can only get better under Steven’s guidance. Yay!

(Photo by Denni Schnapp)

I’d missed this the first time I watched the Poison Sky last week! I know, I’m probably the last person to notice it…

In the Tardis, just before Donna looks at the monitor, there is a brief flash of Rose calling the Doctor – just for a few frames. Often the ‘story arcs’ throughout the season get on my pip, usually because they’re loud and obvious, but these brief flashes of Rose are really well done. Yay!

5th April is the confirmed date for the new season of Dr Who! Mixture of excitement and worry about this one – I don’t know anyone who thinks ‘Donna Noble’ is a good idea, but then I though that about Billie Piper, and how wrong I was.

On YouTube you can see the cinema trailer that doesn’t appear on telly until 29th March. It features interesting spoilers and not too many ‘running away from explosions’ shots:

As I did last year, I’m putting together a subscribable calendar for the new season. So far, not a huge deal of information is known, but in some cases there are at least suggested titles. You can subscribe to the Dr Who Season 4 Calendar right now, and as I find out more, I’ll update it.

What we do know about this series is:

• Return of the Sontarans (played by Mike from the The Young Ones). Yay!
• Agatha Christie!
• Pompeii!
• David Troughton and a mysterious library! It’s a 2 parter written by Steven Moffat, so you know that at least this one will be good.
• Big 3 part finale with Martha, Rose, Sarah Jane and Captain Jack. It sounds overblown, but I hope I’m wrong.

Hopefully they’ll give Dalek Caan a rest this year, bless im.

I just had to show you this piece of awesomeness, created by a friend of a friend.

The quality of the build is amazing!

Many a Doctor Who fan’s favourite was Tom Baker. Maybe because he stayed in the job the longest, probably more likely that he was simply excellent at the part. However, I think who you grow up with has a lot to do with it, and I grew up with Peter Davison, and he was by far my favourite.

Unashamedly English in style, he was also the first ‘young doctor’ and there hasn’t really been another youthful one until David Tennant. So it’s pant-wettingly exciting that they are appearing together tonight, to say the least. Steven Moffat has written the scene (who consistently turns out the best stories for the last 3 seasons), and Graeme Harper, the veteran Who director is involved too. It may only last 5 minutes in the end, but everything points to good time.

And here it is:

When David Tennant says “You were my Doctor” I get a lump in my throat…

So the theme of the Dr Who Christmas special has been revealed (Titanic doesn’t hit an iceberg, it crashes into the TARDIS) and the ‘special guest co-star’ has been confirmed as Kylie after all. It sounds like it’ll be a good Christmassy romp, as long as Russell T Davies doesn’t go overboard (ouch) on the corny Titanic jokes.

One thing worries me though: Does this mean he will meet himself?

I was on board another ship once. They said that was unsinkable. I ended up clinging to an iceberg, it wasn’t half cold.

The End of the World

I’m sure they’ve thought about it!

I’ve been looking for a public calendar to subscribe to for Dr Who Season 3, but can’t find one. So, I made one on Google Calendar instead. I’ll try and make sure the broadcast times are kept up to date!

If anyone knows of a service that creates iCal feeds based on a search for a TV Show, I’d love to hear about it! It’s something that Ben Ward blogged about on backstage.bbc.co.uk but so far I’ve not seen anything more than the RadioTimes saved favourites function. With all these startups, surely someone has dreamed up a ‘watchr’ service? Or is UK TV schedules data only accessible via screen scraping?

Excuse me for a moment while I blurt out some random lists…

Telly

In 2005, Doctor Who had finally been brought back, and given proper respect. This year, David Tennant just went on to fully restore my faith in the show. I’ve not enjoyed or looked forward to TV as much as this year with Doctor Who. Sure there were some stinkers – “New Earth’ was an awful way to start the season, and ‘Love and Monsters’ might’ve been OK it if it weren’t for the Peter Kay ending – but the rest was decent drama. ‘Girl in the Fireplace’ and ‘Army of Ghosts/Doomsday’ were my highlights. Now when I think of 2006, I always think of that farewell scene on the beach.

Music

(Once again, not everything on this list was released in 2006, it’s music I listened to in that year).

1. The National – “Alligator”
2. Pelle Carlberg – “Everything. Now!”
3. Starflyer 59 – “My Island”
4. Mew – “And the Glass Handed Kites”
5. Beck – “The Information”
6. Duke Special – “Songs from the Deep Forest”

Honourable mentions for Thom Yorke’s “The Eraser”, The Submarines’ “Declare a new state” and “Imogen Heap’s “Speak for yourself”. Hammock’s new album “Raising a voice…” came too late to make the list, but will definitely be high in this years.

Podcasts

1. The Garrett Murray Podcast
2. The Show with ZeFrank
3. Ask a Ninja
4. MacBreak (hiring Merlin was genius!)

When I finally got to meet Garrett and Shawn at @media, I had no idea that they were podcasting together, but I’m glad I found out. Most of my favourite moments are summed up in the End of year best o, especially Shawn’s relaxation tapes. The grizzly bear and xylophone prank calls didn’t however.

OS X Software

1. Omniweb 5.5
2. Camino 1.1a
3. Firebug Extension for Firefox (the best thing to happen to web development since the WebDev extension)
4. Letterbox plugin for Mail.app (finally – a 3 paned vertical view in Mail, what I’ve always wanted)
5. Linotype FontExplorer

Finally, 2006 brought a new version of Omniweb, with the updated Webkit, and what a difference it made. I’ve been living it in pretty much since it came out, which I guess means I’m playing around less. I just hope that Omnigroup give it some much needed interface love in 2007 to bring it in line with their other apps. Camino is also becoming a shining light amongst OS X browsers, and I think that all Mac users need one webkit browser, and one Gecko-based. I know which 2 I use!

Web Apps

1. Twitter
2. Basecamp
3. Bloglines
4. (the revamped) Google Reader
5. Flickr Gamma

Rather than use IM now (which I never did much anyway), I just dip in and out of Twitter. Sometimes just leaving a status (that previously I would’ve done via my IM status), other times joining in the conversation. It particularly made watching the MacWorld announcements more fun, with Garrett every now and then chipping in with just “HOLY HELL!”.

Resolutions for the new year

• Must finish the Correo icon for Nick. Version 0.1 had to go out without a final icon for me! The shame!
• I want to use this journal for more of the throwaway screenshotty stuff that I’ve been posting to Flickr. Be warned.
• Get that darned book written. Somehow.
• Be more adventurous with colour.

OK I’m done. Thanks!

I can’t believe it’s all over. No, not the World Cup, Doctor Who, The Doctor and Rose.

(Warning: If you’ve yet to see season 2, possible spoilers ahead). I’ve been a fan since I was about 6, but I’ve never felt as good about the show as I have with the David Tennant and Billie Piper combination. I didn’t think it would work, but by golly it was genius. Now its over, and every time I think about it, I just feel sad and tearful. It echoes quite closely the plight of Lyra and Will in the Northern Lights trilogy, and I think I cried at that too. I need some sort of a support group.

Thankyou Russell T Davies, for making Doctor Who such a decent show to watch again.