Saturday Press and Broadcasting Notes

A new edit has been made to the 'Trip of a Lifetime' trailer, which was shown during late night BBC1 programming on Friday night. They have removed all but the specially recorded Doctor scenes in the Console room and him running from the fireball and have inserted his opening sentence, "Do you want to come with me?" at the very end. It's around 10-15 seconds long. The show was also trailed in a DVE squeezed box during the end credits of the first film's showing on BBC2 this afternoon, though this was just a couple of clips from the beginning of Rose with a voice over from the continuity announcer spoken over the top, who went on to announce the evening's DW night and then following the credits trailed the first part of Project: Who over a Radio 2 slide.

The BBC has moved the Tommy Boyd hour on March 26 to an earlier time slot, 9:00pm, in anticipation of their coverage of the new Doctor Who series debut earlier in the evening.

There's an article about the new series in the Times Educational Supplement this week (published March 18); you can have a look at the cover at their website website, and follow the link bottom left that says "TES Teacher" although the article apparently cannot be read on the site.

BBC Radio 7 will play their radio comedy show, Dead Ringers, at 8:30AM, 10PM and 3AM on Friday 25th March: "The team with queries for You and Yours and who is the next Dr Who. From October 2003". This is a best-of repeat broadcast from October 2003. Dead Ringers is the show that spawned Jon Culshaw and his well-known impersonation of Tom Baker's Doctor.

Today Radio 2 comedy programme "The Day the Music Died" included a "Vision On" Gallery sequence with descriptions of pictures of new Doctor Who aliens supposedly sent in by musicians. It's about 18 and a half minutes in, but the programme as a whole is well worth a listen here.

The Saturday 19 March edition of the Daily Telegraph carries two Doctor Who articles, one an A to Z of the show by Matthew Sweet (who presented the Culture Show piece on Thursday evening), the second an interview with Mark Gatiss. The A to Z includes a few choice morsels - Q is for Quillam (from Vengeance on Varos), F is for Fanboys ("approach with caution") and O is for Outing Doctor Who fans. Read the A to Z here and the Gatiss interview here.

Today's The Express wonders "Why Billie has Fallen For A Dalek." "You'd never guess it in a million light years. But new Doctor Who star Billie Piper has admitted to a growing attachment with a Dalek. Talking about her role in the BBC1 revival of the classic series, she revealed: 'I had this quite emotional scene with a Dalek. "I'm sat there the night before the take thinking, how am I going to tap into my emotions? This is a hunk of junk! And then, I think because it is so beautifully written with human emotion, I am stood there and I am actually feeling for this thing.'" It also mentions her appearance on tonight's Parkinson.

An article in today's Telegraph, primarily about Quatermass, mentions Doctor Who serveral times. "The low-budget but endlessly inventive Doctor Who owes its existence to an even more pioneering television creation, Quatermass. ... That charisma and anti-Establishment mind-set were transferred in 1963 to Doctor Who, his spiritual successor. Though pitched at children, this series bore many of the same characteristics, infusing sci-fi with a gothic aspect. Both these shows were often less Isaac Asimov and more Mary Shelley. In Quatermass, the fate of Victor Caroon - Quatermass's astronaut, brought back to Earth with an alien infection, who soon becomes a haunted wasteland-dwelling fugitive - has very strong echoes of Frankenstein. At the climax of Quatermass and the Pit, a vast flickering image of a horned demon hovers in the night sky over London. In the second serial of Doctor Who, the doctor's companion, Barbara, is pursued through a weird, deserted alien citadel by something unseen by us but clearly so appalling that her scream echoes over the closing music. It is, of course, a Dalek. ... The notion that sci-fi could be low-key and unsettling ensured the doctor's longevity. But the rebellious spirit of Quatermass reached out further. In 1978, the crew of Blake's Seven took off into space, taking a stand against proto-fascist aliens across the galaxy, in what sounded like a spaceship with wooden floors. This was the golden age of the quarry location, when actors in spangled costumes ran around pretending to fire space weapons at each other just outside of Reigate. But the anti-Establishment theme prevailed. In those days, when you could get a convincing laser beam for neither love nor money, the only alternative was robust and gaudy scripting."

Today's Scotsman features a commentary called "Who says I'm a geek?" about a viewer who remembers back when he was 12 and still feels the excitement of the new series. "I am abuzz with anticipation, fizzing with excitement. All my adult worries and responsibilities have receded, replaced by an obsessive childish concentration on just one thing: next week, after nine years in televisual limbo, Dr Who is returning to our screens. Yes, it's true, Dr Who, my childhood hero, my two-hearted intergalactic friend, will be dematerialising in the corner of my living room in just a few days' time. ... "Of course, Doctor Who has never really been cool. The Who-niverse is the province of the geek, a socially shunned sub-culture which sees sweaty men in wash-shrunk jumpers weeping in quarries at the discovery of some discarded Cyberman hosing from 1974. Critics still harp tiresomely about wobbly sets (they were never that wobbly) and shoddy special effects (errrm ...), as if the show was some sort of slapdash pantomime rather than the incredibly imaginative and original slice of televisual manna which, at its best, it actually was. Doctor Who fans always get enormously defensive when discussing their beloved obsession, usually shooting themselves in the foot with arguments like, 'Pah! If it's rubbish TV sci-fi you're talking about, just look at Blake's 7!" which just make you look twice as insane. But I don't care. I'm not ashamed to admit my allegiance. It's geeky and silly and about as likely to impress women as a trip to an oil refinery, but I'm so irrefutably fond of the series, it would be an act of pitiful self-denial to claim otherwise."

Today's Times Online has an article called "Billie the kid" which biographies Billie Piper, including comments about her marriage and her other performances in preparation for the new series. She also makes note of some of her favorite moments from filming the new series.

(Thanks to Will Hadcroft, James Armstrong, "C Kent", Tom Boon, Steve Tribe, Faiz Rehman, Paul Engelberg, Dan Harris, Steve Chapman)