Wednesday Series Coverage
Wednesday, 23 March 2005 - Reported by Shaun Lyon
BBC Radio Wales have some further details on their website about their Dr Who documentary, Back In Time. "This weekend Doctor Who returns to BBC One Wales. BBC Radio Wales has been granted exclusive access behind the scenes for a two part special called Dr Who: Back in Time. This Saturday at 13:05 we look at the links between the Time Lord and Wales, including Dalek road signs in Llangollen." The two parts air on consecutive Saturdays, March 26 and April 2 at 1:05pm, with repeats on Sundays, March 27 and April 3, at 5:30pm.
ITV's This Morning program that aired, er, this morning, featured by far one of the best, and funniest, interviews with Russell T Davies to date. It showed clips from "Rose" including the Doctor peering through Rose's cat-flap and the "That's who I am" clip betwen Eccleston and Piper shown widely. It may also have included one of the first released shots from "The End of The World" showing The Doctor and Rose in front of a large window filled with flames and asteroids. The Doctor says "come with me" and takes Rose's hand. Shots were included of Chris and Billie on set, and interviews with them took place in front of TARDIS and Dalek. The presenters Phillip Schofield and Fern Briton interviewed RTD on the sofa, and showed shots of "Who's who in Who" from today's papers. The main picture was of Simon Day as "The Steward" who has 10 minutes of screen time (and then meets with an interesting fate which we won't spoil here...) Schofield claimed that Eccleston was the eighth ever actor to play the Doctor, obviously unaware of Paul McGann. And Davies mentioned that he made up alien's names by sitting at home with a glass of whiskey!
BBC 2 today ran an episode of The Daily Politics which featured a 10 minute segment on Doctor Who with three guests: political correspondent Andrew Marr, who appears in "Aliens of London"; Tim Collins MP, Shadow Spokesperson for Health and Education and well-known Doctor Who supporter; and Barry Letts, former series producer during the 1970's. The crux of the feature, although a thinly veiled excuse to talk about Doctor Who (of which Andrew Marr and Tim Collins are huge fans), was about how Doctor Who, especially in the 70's provided much political comment as the basis for many stories. Issues of environment, tax and Government bureaucracy were illustrated by using parts of 'The Green Death', 'The Sun Makers' and Pertwee at odds with a government Minister. They had a clip of Helen A (they were comparing her to Thatcher) from "The Happiness Patrol" as well. Marr confirmed aliens would be taking over MP's in an episode to be transmitted between now and the general election (May 5th).
Ratings war on the horizon? As of April 2, Ant and Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway, Doctor Who's timeslot rival on ITV, moves forward to 6.45pm in the schedule,
giving it a 15 minute jump on our show. The gauntlet's being lowered now...
The official site has been updated today with a new "Media Player" that now features the latest Doctor Who trailer (narrated by Christopher Eccleston), the "Project Who" radio broadcast and other goodies, as well as clips from the 'classic' series. Also, on the front page of the official site is a link simply called "Lies", which goes to another site that has a certain tie-in appeal to the first episode, "Rose" (if you see the episode, you'll know what it's about!)
The Project: Who? CD, due out later this spring, is at number 3 in the BBC Shop bestsellers list (up from number 8 a week ago!). Meanwhile, the banner advertising it and other Doctor Who productions is on the front page of the BBC Shop site with an interesting catchphrase: "Saving the Earth, every week on BBC One. If you think TV is missing a hero, then you haven't met the Doctor. He saves planets for a living - more of a hobby actually, as he's very, very good at it. He's saved us from alien menaces and evil from before time began - but just who is he? Well, Rose Tyler is about to find out. She's 19 and she's not travelled much. But all that's going to change..." Also noted in that BBC Shop area is alisting for the new Doctor Who series DVDs, although without any information as yet.
Today's New Statesman features a story about the new series and its lack of a regeneration sequence: "To deprive us of a scene in which the doctor regenerates into Christopher Eccleston must have been one of the first decisions Russell T Davies made while writing his comeback episode. His reasons are sound enough. Most of the target audience of children will never have even heard of Doctor Who, let alone know that eight actors have played the role since 1966. It would have made a puzzling and slow start. Instead we plunge into young Rose Tyler's worst day ever in her menial job in a trendy West End department store." The review portion is a bit heavy-handed (noting that Doctor Who may now be "a bigger proposition than it looks").
Update on our report yesterday about Doctor Who in the Netherlands: according to the Spits newspaper, the show will indeed be broadcast on the Nederland 3 network "next year".
Creative Match analyses the new series and its visual effects. "The Mill have been working on the special effects. After their Academy Award for the effects on Gladiator there is no doubt that this will be a more sophisticated treat than the original. Chief Executive of The Mill Robin Shenfield has commented on the work, 'Visual effects can be the tail that wags the dog, but with Doctor Who the storytelling was so good we knew it was something we really wanted to do. It's soul-destroying to do great effects work on a project lacking in other areas because when it gets panned, it feels like your work is being panned, too. Whether we take something on really depends on the quality of the scripts and the team that's working on it.'"
An article called "Well, he took his time" appeared in today's Herald, which actually plays up the whole notion of being a Doctor Who fan, including discussions with Mark Gatiss, Phil Collinson and the Edinburgh Doctor Who group.
Some other news clippings today include a briefer version of yesterday's Sun article on the Sun website, a two page article in the Western Mail, a "Guide to the new series monsters" in today's Mirror (which mentions some new aliens in "End of the World" beyond the ones we already know about, including "Spark Plug," "Hop Pyleen" and "The Steward," which we now know is Simon Day's character), and an interesting article at BlogCritics called "What BattleStar Galactica Can Teach Doctor Who About Television In The Digital Age."
(Thanks to Steve Tribe, Chuck Foster, Paul Engelberg, Sergio Ferr?, Wayne Barry, Ceri Laing, Mark Wright, Paul Blakemore, Karen Bryan, Michael Spence, Graham Kibble-White and Bas Pierik)
ITV's This Morning program that aired, er, this morning, featured by far one of the best, and funniest, interviews with Russell T Davies to date. It showed clips from "Rose" including the Doctor peering through Rose's cat-flap and the "That's who I am" clip betwen Eccleston and Piper shown widely. It may also have included one of the first released shots from "The End of The World" showing The Doctor and Rose in front of a large window filled with flames and asteroids. The Doctor says "come with me" and takes Rose's hand. Shots were included of Chris and Billie on set, and interviews with them took place in front of TARDIS and Dalek. The presenters Phillip Schofield and Fern Briton interviewed RTD on the sofa, and showed shots of "Who's who in Who" from today's papers. The main picture was of Simon Day as "The Steward" who has 10 minutes of screen time (and then meets with an interesting fate which we won't spoil here...) Schofield claimed that Eccleston was the eighth ever actor to play the Doctor, obviously unaware of Paul McGann. And Davies mentioned that he made up alien's names by sitting at home with a glass of whiskey!
BBC 2 today ran an episode of The Daily Politics which featured a 10 minute segment on Doctor Who with three guests: political correspondent Andrew Marr, who appears in "Aliens of London"; Tim Collins MP, Shadow Spokesperson for Health and Education and well-known Doctor Who supporter; and Barry Letts, former series producer during the 1970's. The crux of the feature, although a thinly veiled excuse to talk about Doctor Who (of which Andrew Marr and Tim Collins are huge fans), was about how Doctor Who, especially in the 70's provided much political comment as the basis for many stories. Issues of environment, tax and Government bureaucracy were illustrated by using parts of 'The Green Death', 'The Sun Makers' and Pertwee at odds with a government Minister. They had a clip of Helen A (they were comparing her to Thatcher) from "The Happiness Patrol" as well. Marr confirmed aliens would be taking over MP's in an episode to be transmitted between now and the general election (May 5th).
Ratings war on the horizon? As of April 2, Ant and Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway, Doctor Who's timeslot rival on ITV, moves forward to 6.45pm in the schedule,
giving it a 15 minute jump on our show. The gauntlet's being lowered now...
The official site has been updated today with a new "Media Player" that now features the latest Doctor Who trailer (narrated by Christopher Eccleston), the "Project Who" radio broadcast and other goodies, as well as clips from the 'classic' series. Also, on the front page of the official site is a link simply called "Lies", which goes to another site that has a certain tie-in appeal to the first episode, "Rose" (if you see the episode, you'll know what it's about!)
The Project: Who? CD, due out later this spring, is at number 3 in the BBC Shop bestsellers list (up from number 8 a week ago!). Meanwhile, the banner advertising it and other Doctor Who productions is on the front page of the BBC Shop site with an interesting catchphrase: "Saving the Earth, every week on BBC One. If you think TV is missing a hero, then you haven't met the Doctor. He saves planets for a living - more of a hobby actually, as he's very, very good at it. He's saved us from alien menaces and evil from before time began - but just who is he? Well, Rose Tyler is about to find out. She's 19 and she's not travelled much. But all that's going to change..." Also noted in that BBC Shop area is alisting for the new Doctor Who series DVDs, although without any information as yet.
Today's New Statesman features a story about the new series and its lack of a regeneration sequence: "To deprive us of a scene in which the doctor regenerates into Christopher Eccleston must have been one of the first decisions Russell T Davies made while writing his comeback episode. His reasons are sound enough. Most of the target audience of children will never have even heard of Doctor Who, let alone know that eight actors have played the role since 1966. It would have made a puzzling and slow start. Instead we plunge into young Rose Tyler's worst day ever in her menial job in a trendy West End department store." The review portion is a bit heavy-handed (noting that Doctor Who may now be "a bigger proposition than it looks").
Update on our report yesterday about Doctor Who in the Netherlands: according to the Spits newspaper, the show will indeed be broadcast on the Nederland 3 network "next year".
Creative Match analyses the new series and its visual effects. "The Mill have been working on the special effects. After their Academy Award for the effects on Gladiator there is no doubt that this will be a more sophisticated treat than the original. Chief Executive of The Mill Robin Shenfield has commented on the work, 'Visual effects can be the tail that wags the dog, but with Doctor Who the storytelling was so good we knew it was something we really wanted to do. It's soul-destroying to do great effects work on a project lacking in other areas because when it gets panned, it feels like your work is being panned, too. Whether we take something on really depends on the quality of the scripts and the team that's working on it.'"
An article called "Well, he took his time" appeared in today's Herald, which actually plays up the whole notion of being a Doctor Who fan, including discussions with Mark Gatiss, Phil Collinson and the Edinburgh Doctor Who group.
Some other news clippings today include a briefer version of yesterday's Sun article on the Sun website, a two page article in the Western Mail, a "Guide to the new series monsters" in today's Mirror (which mentions some new aliens in "End of the World" beyond the ones we already know about, including "Spark Plug," "Hop Pyleen" and "The Steward," which we now know is Simon Day's character), and an interesting article at BlogCritics called "What BattleStar Galactica Can Teach Doctor Who About Television In The Digital Age."
(Thanks to Steve Tribe, Chuck Foster, Paul Engelberg, Sergio Ferr?, Wayne Barry, Ceri Laing, Mark Wright, Paul Blakemore, Karen Bryan, Michael Spence, Graham Kibble-White and Bas Pierik)
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