Back here we looked at the work of the Restoration Team. Here's Tomorrow's World from 1992 having a closer look at the work that was done to recreate the colour version of The Daemons:
Tuesday, 12 October 2010
Nearly Who (Part 1)
Here's a look at the actors who where nearly Who.
Hugh David was the first actor lined up for the role of Doctor Who. But when Verity Lambert was appointed producer of the series, she felt that he was too young to play the old man she envisaged. He still made his mark on the series as director of two Patrick Troughton stories, 'The Highlanders' and 'Fury from the Deep'.
'Doctor Who' producer Verity Lambert eventually selected William Hartnell to star in the series, but one name she had on her shortlist was respected theatre actor Cyril Cusack, pictured here as Becket in the 1964 production of TS Eliot's 'Murder in the Cathedral'.
Verity Lambert also considered Leslie French to play the Doctor. Though he didn't get the part, he appeared in the 'Doctor Who' 25th anniversary adventure 'Silver Nemesis' as an ill-fated astrologer. He's pictured here as Mr Woodhouse in a 1960 adaptation of Jane Austen's 'Emma'.
Pictures and text from the Beeb's Changing Face of Doctor Who, here.
And here's Billy, the man who got the job, from shillpages, here.
Hugh David was the first actor lined up for the role of Doctor Who. But when Verity Lambert was appointed producer of the series, she felt that he was too young to play the old man she envisaged. He still made his mark on the series as director of two Patrick Troughton stories, 'The Highlanders' and 'Fury from the Deep'.
'Doctor Who' producer Verity Lambert eventually selected William Hartnell to star in the series, but one name she had on her shortlist was respected theatre actor Cyril Cusack, pictured here as Becket in the 1964 production of TS Eliot's 'Murder in the Cathedral'.
Verity Lambert also considered Leslie French to play the Doctor. Though he didn't get the part, he appeared in the 'Doctor Who' 25th anniversary adventure 'Silver Nemesis' as an ill-fated astrologer. He's pictured here as Mr Woodhouse in a 1960 adaptation of Jane Austen's 'Emma'.
Pictures and text from the Beeb's Changing Face of Doctor Who, here.
And here's Billy, the man who got the job, from shillpages, here.
Daleks with legs
I heard once that The Sun newspaper was aimed at the intelligence level of the average UK resident. That doesn't say much I'm afriad. But then I was the one who just typed 'Dalek with legs' into Google. They're Penny Lancaster's leg's apparently.
Read for youself a classic piece of Sun journalism, here, where back in 2004 they predicted that new series Who daleks would have, yes, you've guessed it, legs.
Read for youself a classic piece of Sun journalism, here, where back in 2004 they predicted that new series Who daleks would have, yes, you've guessed it, legs.
Daleks, daleks and more daleks!
Me and Sarah Jane
To celebrate the new series of the Sarah Jane Adventures, the Beeb have updated the official Who new series website with an introduction to Sarah Jane, which is about time really, considering that the classic series Who website only has a small gallery of images from the new SJ Adventures... and none of her original series stuff. Check it out here
Anyway, it's an excuse for a few more pics of Sarah Jane, and a brief look at the character.
Elisabeth Sladen portrayed determined journalist Sarah Jane Smith from the beginning of The Time Warrior (1973) through the end of The Hand of Fear (1976).
When she left the series in 1976, it made front page news, where previously only a change of Doctors had received such attention. Bob Baker and Dave Martin intentionally left Sarah's departure scene in The Hand of Fear unwritten, and Sladen and Tom Baker co-wrote Sarah's departure scene themselves. When Sladen announced her intention to leave the series, it was originally planned to killed Sarah off in a pseudo-historical story involving aliens and the French Foreign Legion, to be written by Douglas Camfield. Luckily the script didn't materialise, the Hand of Fear replaced it, and SJ got dropped off in Aberdeen.
New Doctor Who Producer John Nathan-Turner had asked her to return to the series to ease the transition between Tom Baker and new Doctor Peter Davison. She declined the offer, but accepted his second offer of doing a pilot for a spin-off series called K-9 and Company, co-starring with K-9, the popular robot dog from Doctor Who. However, the pilot was not picked up for a series. Sladen would reprise the role of Sarah in 1983 for the 20th anniversary special The Five Doctors. Until the return of the new series, Sladen's last television appearance as Sarah was in the 1993 charity special Dimensions in Time. [In 1995 she played the role once again in the independent non-BBC film Downtime which was her last on-screen appearance as the character until 2006.]
Sladen also portrayed Sarah in numerous audio dramas. Two of them were produced for BBC Radio: The Paradise of Death (1993), and The Ghosts of N-Space (1996), together with Pertwee as the Doctor and Nicholas Courtney as the Brigadier.
Check out more info here.
Genesis of the Daleks audio
Another advertising feature that ran for a while in the pages of Doctor Who Weekly (and presumably other publications too) early 1980. This one was to promote the Genesis of the Daleks LP. The record featured a heavily abridged audio version of the television story. [Image grabbed from Altered Vista's 'In The Comics', here]
Subsequently released on cassette, and more recently on CD (together with Exploration Earth) and even given away free with a newspaper, meaning you can pick it up for a couple of quid on ebay if you wanted.
Monday, 11 October 2010
Lego Dalek with legs
The highlight the Dalektricity blog has to be this - Dalek logo! There's also instructions on how to build a lego dalek - check it out here.
Sara Kindom
Of more worthy attention from the Dalektricity blog are some scans of articles from early Doctor Who Weekly pages, and some Monthly scans, such as this interview with Jean Marsh who played Sara Kingdom in The Daleks Masterplan. Find it here. There's also the text and some images from The Outlaw Planet, a Sara Kingdom story from the 1960s The Dalek Outer-Space Book - here, as well as notes on Terry Nations 'Lost Dalek series' The Destroyers, which was to again feature Sara Kingdom, here. [It is the pilot for this which is due to be released on audio by Big Finish as part of the Second Doctor Lost Stories (see here)]
And there's a Terry Nation Article from Doctor Who Magazine #252 (1997), here, and an interesting piece on Mission to the Unknown here.
And there's a Terry Nation Article from Doctor Who Magazine #252 (1997), here, and an interesting piece on Mission to the Unknown here.
Dalektricity
I'm always plundering other blogs here, and have found one I hadn't looked at before, Dalektricity, which contains a wealth of Dalek oddities, including Dalek pin-ups (yes, just another excuse for me to post pics of girls with Daleks) and girls in Dalek costumes (I'm resisting the temptation to start a series of these myself), as well as jokes and even some serious stuff. Good for a Sunday afternoon when you have nothing to do. Not so good for a Monday afternoon when you have lots to do!
Mission to the Unknown comic recon
Here's an interesting idea - a comic reconstruction of the missing Who episode Mission to the Unknown. It's really well done - just a shame the Dalek speech isn't done in the traditional 60's font. Find it here.
Space Adventure cards
How Doctor Who nearly became the Time Lady
From The Sunday Telegraph online (and a fuller article than actually appeared in the paper). I'm gonna paste the whole piece, just in case they start charging to access pages in the future!
How Doctor Who nearly became the Time Lady
The creator of Doctor Who urged the BBC to give the character a sex change in a desperate bid to prevent the series from being cancelled, it can be revealed.
By Marc Horne
Published: 8:00AM BST 10 Oct 2010
Sydney Newman devised Doctor Who when he was head of BBC drama in the 1960s Photo: BBC
His appearance and personality may have changed dramatically over the decades he has spent travelling through time and space, but Doctor Who has always remained resolutely male.
However, it has emerged that the show's creator urged the BBC to give the character a sex change in a desperate bid to prevent the series from being cancelled.
Sydney Newman, who devised the long-running science-fiction show when he was head of BBC drama in the 1960s, was asked to help after the show suffered a slump in ratings in the 1980s and was taken off air temporarily.
He told Michael Grade, then the controller of BBC One, that the ailing series could only be saved by regenerating the Time Lord into a Time Lady.
Mr Newman criticised the direction the show had taken, but insisted that it could be revived by turning the lead character into a heroine.
Had the advice been accepted, actresses who could have been considered for the role include Frances de la Tour, Joanna Lumley and Dawn French.
Instead, the BBC played safe and replaced the incumbent Doctor, Colin Baker, with another male actor – Sylvester McCoy, a little-known children's entertainer.
The show's decline continued until 1989 when it was pulled from the schedules, not to be revived for another 16 years.
Now, almost a quarter of a century later, Mr Newman's surprising intervention has finally been made public in a new documentary about the Doctor Who's darkest days.
In a written pitch dated Oct 6, 1986, the Canadian-born television executive delivered a scathing verdict on the show's populist, dumbed-down drift and called on Mr Grade to "engage the concerns, fears and curiosity" of young viewers.
He implored: "Don't you agree that this is considerably more worthy of the BBC than Doctor Who's presently largely socially valueless, escapist schlock!"
Mr Newman urged the controller to temporarily reintroduce Patrick Troughton, a former Time Lord, to steady the TARDIS and pave the way for the most radical change in the show's 23-year history.
He wrote: "At a later stage Doctor Who should be metamorphosed into a woman.
"This requires some considerable thought – mainly because I want to avoid a flashy, Hollywood Wonder Women because this kind of heroine with no flaws is a bore.
"Given more time than I have now, I can create such a character."
He called for the female time traveller to be accompanied by a trumpet playing schoolgirl in "John Lennon-type spectacles" and her graffiti-spraying "yobbo" elder brother.
Mr Newman added: "Should you accept these ideas the fee I would accept would be in the form of my being taken on and paid to be its executive director to ensure the concept is properly executed."
He also requested his name be added to the programme's closing titles.
However, Grade spurned the advice of the veteran, who died in 1997, and choose instead to replace Baker with McCoy. The move failed to reverse the show's diminishing ratings and the original series was quietly axed.
Doctor Who was relaunched in 2005 by Russell T Davies, who has expressed sympathy for the idea of a Time Lady taking centre stage and even nominated Catherine Zeta-Jones as a future contender.
Ed Stradling, who directed the documentary for the BBC, was astonished by the contents of the letter, which had been unearthed by a researcher in the BBC archives.
He said: "Sydney Newman, it seems, was quite serious about the idea of having the Doctor regenerate into a woman. There is nothing to suggest he was being tongue-in-cheek.
"Newman's suggestions would have certainly have been considered, but they were never taken on board. He was a hugely respected and influential figure in British drama, which makes it all the more surprising that his suggestions were just so off-the-wall."
As head of drama at the BBC in the early 1960s, Mr Newman found himself looking for a Saturday teatime series to bridge the gap between Grandstand and Juke Box Jury.
He proposed an educational children's science fiction series entitled Doctor Who, which went on to become a huge hit after the first series was broadcast in 1963.
Mr Newman went on to introduce "angry young men" like Dennis Potter, Jeremy Sandford and Ken Loach to the BBC, and was posthumously hailed as one of the 50 most influential people in TV history by Broadcast magazine.
His role as "father of Doctor Who", alongside producer Verity Lambert, was recognised in the 2007 episode Human Nature when David Tennant, the then-inhabitant of the TARDIS, refers to his parents "Sydney and Verity".
The documentary, entitled The Last Chance Saloon, is included in the newly-released DVD of the Sylvester McCoy-era adventure Time and the Rani.
Toby Hadoke, the comedian whose one-man show Moths Ate My Doctor Who Scarf received rave reviews at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, said that Doctor Who fans in the 1980s frequently speculated on which actresses might be suitable to play the show's central role.
He said: "I know Frances de la Tour was mentioned, along with the American sitcom actress Elaine Stritch. Latterly, Dawn French and Joanna Lumley were two names that were talked about.
"Personally, I feel that Frances de la Tour has a sort of Doctor-ish quality about her."
The UK Resource Centre for Women in Science, Engineering and Technology yesterday called on the BBC to finally realise Mr Newman's vision and ensure that the current Doctor, Matt Smith, is succeeded by a woman.
Jane Butcher, the centre's assistant director, said: "Having a high-profile TV character such as Doctor Who being played by a female would raise the profile of women in science and would help convince young women that they can make an important contribution, both as scientists and as leaders."
How Doctor Who nearly became the Time Lady
The creator of Doctor Who urged the BBC to give the character a sex change in a desperate bid to prevent the series from being cancelled, it can be revealed.
By Marc Horne
Published: 8:00AM BST 10 Oct 2010
Sydney Newman devised Doctor Who when he was head of BBC drama in the 1960s Photo: BBC
His appearance and personality may have changed dramatically over the decades he has spent travelling through time and space, but Doctor Who has always remained resolutely male.
However, it has emerged that the show's creator urged the BBC to give the character a sex change in a desperate bid to prevent the series from being cancelled.
Sydney Newman, who devised the long-running science-fiction show when he was head of BBC drama in the 1960s, was asked to help after the show suffered a slump in ratings in the 1980s and was taken off air temporarily.
He told Michael Grade, then the controller of BBC One, that the ailing series could only be saved by regenerating the Time Lord into a Time Lady.
Mr Newman criticised the direction the show had taken, but insisted that it could be revived by turning the lead character into a heroine.
Had the advice been accepted, actresses who could have been considered for the role include Frances de la Tour, Joanna Lumley and Dawn French.
Instead, the BBC played safe and replaced the incumbent Doctor, Colin Baker, with another male actor – Sylvester McCoy, a little-known children's entertainer.
The show's decline continued until 1989 when it was pulled from the schedules, not to be revived for another 16 years.
Now, almost a quarter of a century later, Mr Newman's surprising intervention has finally been made public in a new documentary about the Doctor Who's darkest days.
In a written pitch dated Oct 6, 1986, the Canadian-born television executive delivered a scathing verdict on the show's populist, dumbed-down drift and called on Mr Grade to "engage the concerns, fears and curiosity" of young viewers.
He implored: "Don't you agree that this is considerably more worthy of the BBC than Doctor Who's presently largely socially valueless, escapist schlock!"
Mr Newman urged the controller to temporarily reintroduce Patrick Troughton, a former Time Lord, to steady the TARDIS and pave the way for the most radical change in the show's 23-year history.
He wrote: "At a later stage Doctor Who should be metamorphosed into a woman.
"This requires some considerable thought – mainly because I want to avoid a flashy, Hollywood Wonder Women because this kind of heroine with no flaws is a bore.
"Given more time than I have now, I can create such a character."
He called for the female time traveller to be accompanied by a trumpet playing schoolgirl in "John Lennon-type spectacles" and her graffiti-spraying "yobbo" elder brother.
Mr Newman added: "Should you accept these ideas the fee I would accept would be in the form of my being taken on and paid to be its executive director to ensure the concept is properly executed."
He also requested his name be added to the programme's closing titles.
However, Grade spurned the advice of the veteran, who died in 1997, and choose instead to replace Baker with McCoy. The move failed to reverse the show's diminishing ratings and the original series was quietly axed.
Doctor Who was relaunched in 2005 by Russell T Davies, who has expressed sympathy for the idea of a Time Lady taking centre stage and even nominated Catherine Zeta-Jones as a future contender.
Ed Stradling, who directed the documentary for the BBC, was astonished by the contents of the letter, which had been unearthed by a researcher in the BBC archives.
He said: "Sydney Newman, it seems, was quite serious about the idea of having the Doctor regenerate into a woman. There is nothing to suggest he was being tongue-in-cheek.
"Newman's suggestions would have certainly have been considered, but they were never taken on board. He was a hugely respected and influential figure in British drama, which makes it all the more surprising that his suggestions were just so off-the-wall."
As head of drama at the BBC in the early 1960s, Mr Newman found himself looking for a Saturday teatime series to bridge the gap between Grandstand and Juke Box Jury.
He proposed an educational children's science fiction series entitled Doctor Who, which went on to become a huge hit after the first series was broadcast in 1963.
Mr Newman went on to introduce "angry young men" like Dennis Potter, Jeremy Sandford and Ken Loach to the BBC, and was posthumously hailed as one of the 50 most influential people in TV history by Broadcast magazine.
His role as "father of Doctor Who", alongside producer Verity Lambert, was recognised in the 2007 episode Human Nature when David Tennant, the then-inhabitant of the TARDIS, refers to his parents "Sydney and Verity".
The documentary, entitled The Last Chance Saloon, is included in the newly-released DVD of the Sylvester McCoy-era adventure Time and the Rani.
Toby Hadoke, the comedian whose one-man show Moths Ate My Doctor Who Scarf received rave reviews at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, said that Doctor Who fans in the 1980s frequently speculated on which actresses might be suitable to play the show's central role.
He said: "I know Frances de la Tour was mentioned, along with the American sitcom actress Elaine Stritch. Latterly, Dawn French and Joanna Lumley were two names that were talked about.
"Personally, I feel that Frances de la Tour has a sort of Doctor-ish quality about her."
The UK Resource Centre for Women in Science, Engineering and Technology yesterday called on the BBC to finally realise Mr Newman's vision and ensure that the current Doctor, Matt Smith, is succeeded by a woman.
Jane Butcher, the centre's assistant director, said: "Having a high-profile TV character such as Doctor Who being played by a female would raise the profile of women in science and would help convince young women that they can make an important contribution, both as scientists and as leaders."
Who Comic Blog to close
Big shame here - the Who Comic blog, run by James, is being forced to close down due to copyright problems, see here. It's a big shame that Who publishers and copyright holders see such blogs such as this a threat, but I guess it's to be expected. I wonder if it is what happened also to the Cuttings Archive, which had such a wealth of Who stuff and is now no more.
I accept that the availability of audio stories, such as those by Big Finish, or the new BBC audio range, online can a serious impact on sales - it's just too easy to download a story - but I don't think online pdfs of comics and graphic novel stories could affect sales in the same way - most Who fans who are really into this stuff will buy it all, religously, as soon as it comes out. Having pdfs is just a useful reference, allowing the originals to be packed away safely. However I do respect artists and photographers who want to protect the copyright on their images, and guess comics fall into this. But should blogs be regarded a breaking copyright? Where would we be if we couldn't use any Who images? New media is all about accessibility to information, sharing and not profiting, and at the same time surely the Who brand gets bigger as a result - including sales.
Most of my posts include images, either by artists or photographers. I work on the basis that their use comes within the 'fair use' principle, and try to acknowledge names and link back to original sources where possible.
But let's face it, the genie is out of the bottle already, and nearly every Who video, DVD, audio, comic or magazine is out there online to download, somewhere.
Anyway, big thanks to James for his blog, and helping me add to my pdf comic collection. Check out the posts here and here for info on the First and Second Doctor stories, with links to James's site for available stories - before they dissapear. I guess I need to do the Third doctor comics quickly!
I accept that the availability of audio stories, such as those by Big Finish, or the new BBC audio range, online can a serious impact on sales - it's just too easy to download a story - but I don't think online pdfs of comics and graphic novel stories could affect sales in the same way - most Who fans who are really into this stuff will buy it all, religously, as soon as it comes out. Having pdfs is just a useful reference, allowing the originals to be packed away safely. However I do respect artists and photographers who want to protect the copyright on their images, and guess comics fall into this. But should blogs be regarded a breaking copyright? Where would we be if we couldn't use any Who images? New media is all about accessibility to information, sharing and not profiting, and at the same time surely the Who brand gets bigger as a result - including sales.
Most of my posts include images, either by artists or photographers. I work on the basis that their use comes within the 'fair use' principle, and try to acknowledge names and link back to original sources where possible.
But let's face it, the genie is out of the bottle already, and nearly every Who video, DVD, audio, comic or magazine is out there online to download, somewhere.
Anyway, big thanks to James for his blog, and helping me add to my pdf comic collection. Check out the posts here and here for info on the First and Second Doctor stories, with links to James's site for available stories - before they dissapear. I guess I need to do the Third doctor comics quickly!
Saturday, 9 October 2010
It's a Police Box!
I've not seen many original period photos of Police Boxes, so thought this was worth sharing. As ever, it's started me off on an internet stumble ('search' is far too a methodical term).
Find about about the history of Police Boxes on wikipedia here, with good links as ever.
By 1953 there was a network of 685 blue police telephone boxes in London, as well as others throught the country.
Each kiosk contained a telephone linked directly to the local sub-divisional police station. Officers from beat patrol could report their whereabouts from them without having to make carefully timed meetings with their Sergeants at fixed points, and the flashing light could indicate to the patrolling officer that he was required to make contact with the station.
The interiors of the boxes normally contained, for the use of officers; a stool, a table, brushes and dusters, a fire extinguisher and a small, (often very inadequate,) electric fire.
They played an important part in police work until the mid 1960s, when they were phased out following the introduction of personal radios. In 1997 a replica police box was erected at Earls Court, equipped with closed circuit TV.
What did surprise me is the variety of shapes and sizes (check out this site here).
See also the news from 2002 when the Beeb successfully managed to retain the copyright on the design, here.
[Image stolen from the Metropolitan Police Site - don't tell them!]
30 Years At The Radiophonic Workshop
Released in 1993 and celebrating the 30th anniversary of Doctor Who, a great collection of original TV Who music (and including also the radio drama 'The Paradise of Death', which was also part of the 30th anniversary releases).
Download it here.
I'm wondering why this appears to have been released only on CD, and the audio stories, which have the same style design covers and were also released as part of the 30th anniversary, were issued only on cassette (see here for info).
(With the appropriate head nod to Combom).
Download it here.
I'm wondering why this appears to have been released only on CD, and the audio stories, which have the same style design covers and were also released as part of the 30th anniversary, were issued only on cassette (see here for info).
(With the appropriate head nod to Combom).
Friday, 8 October 2010
Dalek curry
Daleks invade BBC Centre
Collection of Tom Baker promotional pics, with Daleks, outside the BBC Centre in London.
Early Baker Promo Pics
Collection of random early Baker promo and behind the scenes pics.
Maybe the first promo pic after being named as Who? (before outfit was made)
Perhaps during filming of first story, Robot?
Anyone know which stories the last two images come from?? Answers on the back of a postcard please (or via the comments!).
Maybe the first promo pic after being named as Who? (before outfit was made)
Perhaps during filming of first story, Robot?
Anyone know which stories the last two images come from?? Answers on the back of a postcard please (or via the comments!).
The Green Team
More promo pics, this time from location shooting for Liz Sladen's first story as Sarah Jane Smith - The Time Warror.
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