Timey Wimey Waffle

You may, or more probably may not, have noticed I've a bad habit of back-posting items. Readers of my bits of waffle will know that I spend alot of time out of the country, with limited internet connection, and whilst I'll continue the blog whenever I can, there are going to be big gaps. Now when I'm back, like now, I get to wade through months of blog postings to catch up with stuff, and, as anyone with any basic time travel knowledge knows, it's very important that everything is left in its right place in the time line and all that. So when I find something related to a specific date, I'm back-posting it around that time so that it sits in the time continum correctly. It's mostly New Season stuff like merchanside releases, Radio Times coverage, interviews and the like. In between all this I'll post all the usual padding and waffle which I know you all love so much.


Daleks board the 207 bus without knowing that round the next corner...

Now one danger of doing this is I might say or post something that will make me look like I knew it before anyone else. One such example is a reference to the News of the World hacking scandal, which I've just made in a post about Matt Smith falling over and needing stiches (see '"Drunken giraffe" bangs head, and knocks over coffee, alot' here). Now to any police investigation looking at my blog it may look like I had inside knowledge of such said scandal at a time when no-one else did, and that I may, therefore, be implicated by this knowledge. Well I'm not, and I don't, and I didn't and I never have. So there.

Just to prove this I plan to back-post a whole load of Radio Rimes cuttings from the very early days of Who soon (time is relative, don't forget), and most of these I'm gonna back date to their publication dates, which will be before I was born. Proof, therefore, that either I am a down-right dirty blog back-poster or time-traveller with amazing internet access abilities. Take your pick.


...a troop of cybermen are waiting patentily for their bus. Tune in next week for the next episode of 'Doctor Who and the Bus' a really exciting new/old adventure.

Now you may wonder what all this has to do this the photographs accompanying this post. Well, I had to make it interesting somehow. Perhaps it's a clue that I really am a time traveller and I snapped these on a recent visit back to the past... no, I pinched them from WhoFix!

Note to self: Defence if Police enquire as to knowledge of News of the World hacking scandal...

1. I'm a down right dirty blog back-poster.
2. I'm a time traveller
3. I'm of unsound mental disposition (probably dillusional) and should be left alone to live out my sad and pathetic life in whatever way I want.

Living with the Cybermen

The Doctor and The Cybermen try living together in this hilarious spoof clip from BBC sketch comedy show 'Dead Ringers', with impressionist Jon Culshaw as Doctor Who favourite Tom Baker.

The Invasion!

Having just mentioned the Invasion reconstructions, an excuse to show the covers and talk through this classic second doctor story in more detail...

Even though 'The Invasion' is an incomplete story, with episodes 1 and 4 missing. It is, to date, the only incomplete story to be released in audio CD, video and DVD format (I think!). The story was sold abroad, so the optimistic Who fan can hope that perhaps one day these missing episodes will be recovered from a foriegn TV station clearing out their archives... perhaps.

The Who Script project introduces this story as follows:

The Invasion was to have been a sequel to a story in the previous season, The Web of Fear, and it was also intended to feature the return of two characters from that story, Professor Travers and his daughter Anne. As these actors were unavailable this lead to the substitution of two similar characters, Professor Watkins and his niece, Isobel. Further changes resulted in replacing the Yeti used in "Web" with the Cybermen, and expanding the story to eight episodes. Invasion was the fourth occasion Patrick Troughton's Doctor encountered the Cybermen, more than any other adversary. (Get the story scripts here.)

According to the Who wiki site, the story had a working title of "Return of the Cybermen" and was originally conceived as a four part story - it got expanded to eight when the next story, "The Dreamspinner", fell through (see here).


The audio CD of the original soundtrack was released with linking narration by Frazer Hines.


The video release used linking narration by Nicholas Courtney (again text of which is available on the script project link above). Cover artwork was by Alistair Pearson.


The DVD uses animated versions of the missing episodes 1 and 4 that were made by Cosgrove Hall, which had previously made The Scream of the Shalka. It also contains the linking narration of Nicholas Courtney from the video release.


This last image has been robbed from the Invasion gallery on the Beebs classic series website, here. Strangely, the only way I could get to this page was through google, as I can't find it linked through the site menus.

The Beeb's classic series website doesn't have a 'photonovel' version of this story, which is a shame. But they do have the usual episode guide page with short video clips and the odd 'original paperwork' section which I think is the shooting script (here).

You can read about the reconstruction here.

Achilleos Art

And we shouldn't forget the artist who inspires most of these designs, Chris Achilleos. Here's a couple of recent designs which throwback to his early Target book covers.

Rose


Doomsday


And a recent(ish) working for Tomb of the Cybermen, following it's rediscovery.


Don't forget to visit Chris's site, here, where you can still buy original prints of his amazing classic Who work.

Colourised Who

And here it is, the site where I grabbed the pics of Zoe in my last post. I really like these images, so here's a few more to make doubly sure you click the link and visit their site!

The images are all colourised by Michael Blumenthal.

The Daleks, from their first story.


An amazingly coloured image from Marco Polo


A funky cyberman from Moonbase.


From one of my favourite stories, the Ice Warriors.


And here's a couple of Ice Warriors creeping up on the Doctor (from Seeds of Death)...


And a couple of cybermen creeping up on Zoe from the Wheel in Space...


And look... there's me!