TARDIS Report: The Week in Review
Friday, 2 June 2006 - Reported by Shaun Lyon
Broadcasting
Finland will be the latest country to show Doctor Who. According to an email sent to an Outpost Gallifrey reader by the Head of Programming at YLE2 in Finland, "The first series will take off on YLE TV2 on Sunday 10. September at 20:05. We still have no news as to the second season. I hope we could tell you more sometime in June."
GMTV, the breakfast show on ITV1, has this week reported on Billie Piper's new film, 30 Things to Do..., noting that the actress will, as predicted, be returning to Doctor Who for Series Three, although the number of episodes is not yet known or decided. (A remarkably similar story about Series Two appeared at about the same time last year.) Piper was interviewed by Chris Moyles on BBC Radio 1 on Friday morning; the programme can be accessed on the BBC's Listen Again service (link here), which also has a photo gallery. Also on GMTV, Camille Coduri was a guest on Friday morning, promoting her new series, Pickles.
Billie Piper: The Biography
While the press was recently aflutter about Billie Piper writing her own autobiography at such a young age, there's already one about to hit shelves.Billie Piper - The Biography, written by Neil Simpson, is due out on October 2 in paperback from John Blake Publishing. "A massive star was reborn when Billie Piper took on the role of Rose Tyler in the BBC's smash revival of 'Doctor Who' in 2005. The 22-year-old was applauded as one of Britain's brightest and most popular actresses - collecting award-nominations and multi-million pound contracts along the way. Amazingly, this is the second time Billie has dominated her chosen profession. In 1998, she was the youngest solo artist to have a Number One single in Britain with 'Because We Want To'. She followed that up with two more Number One singles, a platinum-selling album, and as 'Britain's Britney' she was on the brink of conquering America. But Billie Piper has always been full of surprises. At the height of her pop fame she shocked fans by marrying former DJ Chris Evans and enjoying one of the longest - and allegedly booziest - celebrity honeymoons on record. In this, the first biography of the star, Neil Simpson explains why Billie turned her back on pop fame, how stalkers and false rumours nearly destroyed her and why her marriage to Chris ultimately unravelled. He examines how Billie reinvented herself as a newly single woman and one of Britain's hardest-working actresses. She wowed the critics in television adaptations of Chaucer and Shakespeare before winning the 'Doctor Who' job and today, with Hollywood calling and a new man in her life, she has never been happier. This is her amazing, inspiring story." The cover illustration is at right; click on the thumbnail for a larger version.
The Impossible Planet Pre-publicity
Tuesday's Radio Times, covering 3-9 June, has the last of four free sets of stickers, as well as the regular Doctor Who Watch feature, this week focusing on the Ood, which the Editor's letter warns "might put you off eating spaghetti bolognaise ever again". The article itself is a brief behind-the-scenes piece, with comments from Russell T Davies ("I loved inventing the Slitheen and Raxacoricofallapatorius and then I thought 'Why don't I just call something the Ood?' Ha ha ha ha!") and Neill Gorton: There's always a brief description in the script and for this story it was 'bald albino things with tentacles like a sea anemone rather than a mouth." The episode is, once again, one of the magazine's recommendations for the week ("a real behind-the-sofa classic") and for Saturday: "a terrific, pacy episode, reminiscent of Ridley Scott's Alien. If you're not on the edge of your seat (or behind the sofa) throughout, you must have nerves of steel." Next Thursday's Totally Doctor Who will, according to the listings, look at "how a Tardisode is made, plus MyAnna Buring discusses her role as Scooti" in The Impossible Planet. The show also features on the Letters page, this time with someone suggesting that the Doctor shouldn't need glasses because he "has access to technology that ... could correct his vision in a flash" - the reply notes that both the First and the Fifth Doctors occasionally wore glasses.
The official BBC Doctor Who website was updated on Tuesday lunchtime, the homepage featuring an Ood, with sound effects and some phrases from the episode's dialogue: "Don't turn around" and "And the Beast shall rise from the Pit." The episode guide entry for The Impossible Planet includes the usual photo gallery, with ten pictures concentrating on the Doctor, Rose and the guest cast. Last Saturday's site update for The Idiot's Lantern included the 'Next Time' trail and the eighth Tardisode.
Issue 5 of Doctor Who Adventures, officially released on Wednesday, also previews The Impossible Planet and The Satan Pit, with a two-page photo feature. "The Doctor likes impossible," says the article, "He's said it before. So finding himself far out on a space station on a planet that shouldn't exist, suspended in orbit around a Black Hole should keep him happy for a while, shouldn't it?"
Thursday's Totally Doctor Who (repeated Friday, Saturday and Monday on CBBC) as usual previewed this week's episode: the scene shown features Will Thorp as Toby being menaced by Gabriel Woolf's Voice of the Beast.
CBBC Newsround says of the episode, "This is a seriously scary episode featuring a growing menace, there are lots of shocks and it leaves us on a great cliff-hanger. It's probably my second favourite episode of the series so far (only narrowly beaten by Girl in the Fireplace). There's a lot of humour in this one too - Billie's first line of the episode is a classic. And there's a great gag from the Doctor towards the end. Presumably one of the reasons we haven't featured alien planets before is the relatively cheap cost of filming earthbound episodes. This story certainly doesn't seem any cheaper than others, and in fact the effects are some of the best seen so far, especially when The Doctor embarks on a dangerous voyage late in the episode. What will fans enjoy? Well, there's a little bit of info about the origins of the Tardis, but the best thing by far is the tenderness between The Doctor and Rose. This episode shows another dimension to their relationship and demonstrates how close they've become over the past 18 months. Great stuff. Four out of five."
BBC Books Sales Success (Again!)
The first three Tenth Doctor novels are now in upper reaches of the Top 20 Fiction Heatseekers chart compiled by Nielsen Bookscan for The Bookseller for a seventh week, this week going back up the chart. At Number 3 is The Stone Rose by Jacqueline Rayner, with unit sales in the week to 27 May of 2,564 and total sales of 21,237. The Resurrection Casket by Justin Richards is at Number 5, its week's sales standing at 2,530, its total sales at 18,423. Stephen Cole's The Feast of the Drowned is at Number 7 (2,272 week/17,951 total). Also entering the same chart, at Number 11, is Aliens and Enemies. This has sold 2,037 copies in its first week.
People
The Mirror has a feature about Billie Piper's career. "Just two years ago, she spent her time downing pints of lager in the pub, piling on the pounds and looking like she'd just rolled out of bed. But Billie Piper's down and out days are well and truly over. She's ditched the frumpy clothes, restyled the bird's nest of a hairdo, shed the excess weight and even got rid of husband Chris Evans. And the transformation from scruffbag to sex kitten has done wonders for the 23-year-old's career. After playing a huge part in the revival of BBC1's smash hit drama Doctor Who and winning critical acclaim for her portrayal of the Doc's sidekick Rose Tyler, Billie has become one of our hottest young talents. Today, she makes her big screen debut alongside Dougray Scott and Emilia Fox in Simon Shore's Things To Do Before You're 30. The story tells the tale of a group of people trying to live their complicated adult lives in 21st-century London, while desperately clinging on to their youth. Billie plays art student Vicky, the youngest of the gang, and she enjoyed every minute of filming. 'I always wanted to make movies,' she says. 'I feel totally at home in this job.' ... Her performance in The Canterbury Tales won rave reviews and alerted the team behind the new Doctor Who series, written by Russell T Davies. The show pulls in up to 10 million viewers and Billie has won a place in the nation's hearts. Last year, she scooped the National TV Award for Best Actress. 'I was shaking like a leaf,' she admits, 'and had to have a word with myself on the way to the stage because I thought I was going to cry. That would have been too embarrassing. It was a brilliant night, but I spent the whole evening in shock, chewing my nails.' Earlier this year, it was revealed that Billie - born Leanne Paul Piper - had bagged a multi-million pound deal to write her autobiography. The book, which is planned for a Christmas release, will detail her rise to fame as a teenager, the breakdown of her marriage to Chris and her astonishing success as an actress. ... These days, despite her new-found success, she remains level-headed and down to earth. She has displayed incredible maturity in the aftermath of her marriage to Chris and although she is now dating law student Amadu Sowe, she remains on good terms with her ex and the pair regularly meet up for coffee. 'Chris and I are pretty much inseparable and live opposite each other,' Billie says. 'It's an extraordinary situation that I don't expect anyone else to understand.' This summer, she'll be filming a new drama for the Beeb called Ruby In The Smoke with a string of other lucrative projects also lined up. But for now she's looking forward to the premiere of Things To Do Before You're 30. The film's producer Marc Samuelson was hugely impressed with her and wastes no opportunity to sing Billie's praises. 'She was a complete knockout,' he says. 'In the first meeting, she'd read the script, she was completely focused, very serious, very nice. She's perfect for the role. It's nice to discover that we knew exactly what we were doing.' It sounds like the perfect role for Billie. Her character in the film, Vicky, is a free spirit and up for a laugh. A girl with the world at her feet. Not unlike Billie herself." Hello Magazine and Morecambe Today also have brief articles and pictoral about the premiere, as does the Mirror which says "Billie Piper looks more girl next door than movie star as she arrives last night at the premiere of her new film in a simple black jacket, white T-shirt and black trousers. But the 23-year-old Dr Who actress looked happy with her casual outfit at the VIP London screening of her new Brit flick Things To Do Before You're 30. How about marry and divorce a millionaire, have a number one hit song and travel through time, Billie?"
The Daily Express says that "Comedian Peter Kay may be shortly appearing in Doctor Who as a baddie but he fancies his chances as the Timelord himself. Kay is a massive fan of the classic sci-fi show and is keen to take the lead role when David Tennant eventually hands in the keys to the Tardis. The creator and star of Phoenix Nights, a proud Boltonian, says: 'I think the Doctor should come from Bolton next time. He's always been a bit posh for my liking!' But hasn't Kay forgotten Tennant's predecessor, fellow Lancastrian and Salford-born Christopher Eccleston, who played the part in his native Mancunian accent? When sidekick Rose asked him: 'If you're an alien, how come you sound like you come from the North?' Eccleston's Timelord replied laconically: 'Lots of planets have a North. . .'"
The Norfolk Eastern Daily Press says of Doctor Who that "it is the programme known for sending children cowering behind the sofa. From the moment its eerie theme-music starts up on Saturday evening, millions of youngsters - and many mums and dads too - are transfixed by the adventures of the eccentric Timelord, as he faces up to an array of frightening foes. But one 13-year-old from Norwich not only watched Dr Who, she appeared in it - only weeks after her mother declared the series 'too scary' for children. Now aged 51 and a mother of five, Barbara Harper vividly recalls making her acting debut in BBC1's legendary sci-fi, playing one of the children in the five-part story The Mind Robber in 1968. More than 7m viewers were on the edge of their seats as the The Doctor, played by Patrick Troughton, and his assistants Jamie (Fraser Hines) and Zoe (Wendy Padbury), were hurled into The Land of Fiction ruled by evil Master - Emrys Jones - who is desperate to escape. Now as a new generation enjoys watching David Tennant and Billie Piper in the latest series of Dr Who, Mrs Harper is set to relive her TV stardom this summer as a special guest at a Dr Who convention in Norfolk. She contacted the EDP after reading an article about the event at Holt on June 24-25, and has been invited to join the stars. 'They are quite excited to have someone who has never been to a Dr Who event before, and I am getting all nostalgic,' she said. The sixth doctor Colin Baker is due to make an appearance during the weekend which will also showcase other stars of the series, including Terry Molloy, who played the Timelord's arch enemy Davros, the creator of the hated Daleks. Mrs Harper, of Watton, said she still had clear memories of her own appearance in two episodes The Mind Robber, which was screened on BBC1 in September and October 1968. She said: 'I was 13 years old and lived in Norwich but I had just started at stage school in London when I was auditioned for Dr Who. 'It was my first acting job, and it was quite ironic really as my mother had just written to the BBC complaining that a recent episode was too scary for children. I don't remember being scared myself, but in those days children hadn't seen monsters. There were no Star Wars then. I have great memories of working on the programme as I had my birthday while we were rehearsing and they presented me with a birthday cake. I was in a couple of episodes of The Mind Robber, and I was pleased when it came out on DVD recently so that I could convince my children that I had a 'real' part, and wasn't inside a Dalek costume. They said 'Oh look, there's mum!'' She added: 'There were no Daleks or Cybermen in the series I was in. The Doctor landed on this planet and the Master sort of took over people's minds. There were story book characters like Rapunzel and Cyrano de Bergerac, and I was one of the children from Edwardian times.' The children's sequence was largely drawn from E Nesbit's novel The Treasure Seekers, and other colourful characters included Gulliver, and Blackbeard. Mrs Harper continued acting until her early 20s, working in the theatre and winning small roles in Special Branch and the Wednesday Play. 'After 10 years I thought I have outgrown this and did other things, and then I got married and the kids came along. I don't regret acting, I really enjoyed it. I met a lot of people and I had loads of fun, and I think it gives you a lot of confidence,' she added."
Other Press Reports
Today's Mirror insists that a subtle change in the show's credits - but one noticed by many a Doctor Who fan - was entirely due to its lead actor. "Doctor Who supernerd David Tennant demanded that BBC bosses change his character's credits in the sci-fi show, claiming he doesn't actually play Doctor Who... It turns out he just wants to be known as The Doctor. The geek sighs: 'As a kid, it always bothered me - obviously it's the name of the show but he's not called Doctor Who.' Get him." Also noted at Yahoo News.
The Western Mail says, "For decades we have loved the 'OOOOeeeeeOOOO' sound of the start of Doctor Who on Saturday evenings. For a generation of thirty and fortysomethings, the Doctor Who musical intro probably evokes more childhood memories than any other. Even now, I remember hiding behind the sofa as a kid, sneaking the occasional look at the horrible maggots episode and squirming when the slimy innards of bizarre creatures were revealed by the Doctor. And now another generation of children are into the Time Lord and the Tardis, talking about the latest scary episodes with their friends. Daleks were the 'slightly less cuddly but easier to understand' Teletubbies of the Sixties, in an era when time-travel and sci-fi had gained popularity on television, following a surge of cult B movies in the 1950s. Created by Terry Nation, who had written for comedian Tony Hancock, the Daleks virtually doubled Doctor Who's audience overnight and spawned the BBC's first merchandising boom. Nation had seen a performance by the Georgian State Dancers and had been inspired by the gliding motion of long-skirted ballerinas. At the height of Daleks success, two feature films were made, starring Peter Cushing as the Doctor. Having been forced to watch Hammer Horror films (back behind the sofa) as a kid by my older brother, (who wanted to stay up and watch them - but not alone), I thought Peter Cushion was more of a Dracula killer than a Dalek enemy. But Daleks are still the Doctor's greatest nemesis with their no-nonsense cry, 'Exterminate!'. They have their own entry in the Oxford English Dictionary and made it onto a stamp as one of the enduring icons of the 20th century. Not bad for a race that famously struggles to get up stairs."
Other items: more on the ratings issue at icWales; Now Playing Mag and TV Squad review "The Idiot's Lantern".
(Thanks to Paul Engelberg, Greg Dunn, Paul Greaves, Paul Hayes)
Finland will be the latest country to show Doctor Who. According to an email sent to an Outpost Gallifrey reader by the Head of Programming at YLE2 in Finland, "The first series will take off on YLE TV2 on Sunday 10. September at 20:05. We still have no news as to the second season. I hope we could tell you more sometime in June."
GMTV, the breakfast show on ITV1, has this week reported on Billie Piper's new film, 30 Things to Do..., noting that the actress will, as predicted, be returning to Doctor Who for Series Three, although the number of episodes is not yet known or decided. (A remarkably similar story about Series Two appeared at about the same time last year.) Piper was interviewed by Chris Moyles on BBC Radio 1 on Friday morning; the programme can be accessed on the BBC's Listen Again service (link here), which also has a photo gallery. Also on GMTV, Camille Coduri was a guest on Friday morning, promoting her new series, Pickles.
Billie Piper: The Biography
While the press was recently aflutter about Billie Piper writing her own autobiography at such a young age, there's already one about to hit shelves.Billie Piper - The Biography, written by Neil Simpson, is due out on October 2 in paperback from John Blake Publishing. "A massive star was reborn when Billie Piper took on the role of Rose Tyler in the BBC's smash revival of 'Doctor Who' in 2005. The 22-year-old was applauded as one of Britain's brightest and most popular actresses - collecting award-nominations and multi-million pound contracts along the way. Amazingly, this is the second time Billie has dominated her chosen profession. In 1998, she was the youngest solo artist to have a Number One single in Britain with 'Because We Want To'. She followed that up with two more Number One singles, a platinum-selling album, and as 'Britain's Britney' she was on the brink of conquering America. But Billie Piper has always been full of surprises. At the height of her pop fame she shocked fans by marrying former DJ Chris Evans and enjoying one of the longest - and allegedly booziest - celebrity honeymoons on record. In this, the first biography of the star, Neil Simpson explains why Billie turned her back on pop fame, how stalkers and false rumours nearly destroyed her and why her marriage to Chris ultimately unravelled. He examines how Billie reinvented herself as a newly single woman and one of Britain's hardest-working actresses. She wowed the critics in television adaptations of Chaucer and Shakespeare before winning the 'Doctor Who' job and today, with Hollywood calling and a new man in her life, she has never been happier. This is her amazing, inspiring story." The cover illustration is at right; click on the thumbnail for a larger version.
The Impossible Planet Pre-publicity
Tuesday's Radio Times, covering 3-9 June, has the last of four free sets of stickers, as well as the regular Doctor Who Watch feature, this week focusing on the Ood, which the Editor's letter warns "might put you off eating spaghetti bolognaise ever again". The article itself is a brief behind-the-scenes piece, with comments from Russell T Davies ("I loved inventing the Slitheen and Raxacoricofallapatorius and then I thought 'Why don't I just call something the Ood?' Ha ha ha ha!") and Neill Gorton: There's always a brief description in the script and for this story it was 'bald albino things with tentacles like a sea anemone rather than a mouth." The episode is, once again, one of the magazine's recommendations for the week ("a real behind-the-sofa classic") and for Saturday: "a terrific, pacy episode, reminiscent of Ridley Scott's Alien. If you're not on the edge of your seat (or behind the sofa) throughout, you must have nerves of steel." Next Thursday's Totally Doctor Who will, according to the listings, look at "how a Tardisode is made, plus MyAnna Buring discusses her role as Scooti" in The Impossible Planet. The show also features on the Letters page, this time with someone suggesting that the Doctor shouldn't need glasses because he "has access to technology that ... could correct his vision in a flash" - the reply notes that both the First and the Fifth Doctors occasionally wore glasses.
The official BBC Doctor Who website was updated on Tuesday lunchtime, the homepage featuring an Ood, with sound effects and some phrases from the episode's dialogue: "Don't turn around" and "And the Beast shall rise from the Pit." The episode guide entry for The Impossible Planet includes the usual photo gallery, with ten pictures concentrating on the Doctor, Rose and the guest cast. Last Saturday's site update for The Idiot's Lantern included the 'Next Time' trail and the eighth Tardisode.
Issue 5 of Doctor Who Adventures, officially released on Wednesday, also previews The Impossible Planet and The Satan Pit, with a two-page photo feature. "The Doctor likes impossible," says the article, "He's said it before. So finding himself far out on a space station on a planet that shouldn't exist, suspended in orbit around a Black Hole should keep him happy for a while, shouldn't it?"
Thursday's Totally Doctor Who (repeated Friday, Saturday and Monday on CBBC) as usual previewed this week's episode: the scene shown features Will Thorp as Toby being menaced by Gabriel Woolf's Voice of the Beast.
CBBC Newsround says of the episode, "This is a seriously scary episode featuring a growing menace, there are lots of shocks and it leaves us on a great cliff-hanger. It's probably my second favourite episode of the series so far (only narrowly beaten by Girl in the Fireplace). There's a lot of humour in this one too - Billie's first line of the episode is a classic. And there's a great gag from the Doctor towards the end. Presumably one of the reasons we haven't featured alien planets before is the relatively cheap cost of filming earthbound episodes. This story certainly doesn't seem any cheaper than others, and in fact the effects are some of the best seen so far, especially when The Doctor embarks on a dangerous voyage late in the episode. What will fans enjoy? Well, there's a little bit of info about the origins of the Tardis, but the best thing by far is the tenderness between The Doctor and Rose. This episode shows another dimension to their relationship and demonstrates how close they've become over the past 18 months. Great stuff. Four out of five."
BBC Books Sales Success (Again!)
The first three Tenth Doctor novels are now in upper reaches of the Top 20 Fiction Heatseekers chart compiled by Nielsen Bookscan for The Bookseller for a seventh week, this week going back up the chart. At Number 3 is The Stone Rose by Jacqueline Rayner, with unit sales in the week to 27 May of 2,564 and total sales of 21,237. The Resurrection Casket by Justin Richards is at Number 5, its week's sales standing at 2,530, its total sales at 18,423. Stephen Cole's The Feast of the Drowned is at Number 7 (2,272 week/17,951 total). Also entering the same chart, at Number 11, is Aliens and Enemies. This has sold 2,037 copies in its first week.
People
The Mirror has a feature about Billie Piper's career. "Just two years ago, she spent her time downing pints of lager in the pub, piling on the pounds and looking like she'd just rolled out of bed. But Billie Piper's down and out days are well and truly over. She's ditched the frumpy clothes, restyled the bird's nest of a hairdo, shed the excess weight and even got rid of husband Chris Evans. And the transformation from scruffbag to sex kitten has done wonders for the 23-year-old's career. After playing a huge part in the revival of BBC1's smash hit drama Doctor Who and winning critical acclaim for her portrayal of the Doc's sidekick Rose Tyler, Billie has become one of our hottest young talents. Today, she makes her big screen debut alongside Dougray Scott and Emilia Fox in Simon Shore's Things To Do Before You're 30. The story tells the tale of a group of people trying to live their complicated adult lives in 21st-century London, while desperately clinging on to their youth. Billie plays art student Vicky, the youngest of the gang, and she enjoyed every minute of filming. 'I always wanted to make movies,' she says. 'I feel totally at home in this job.' ... Her performance in The Canterbury Tales won rave reviews and alerted the team behind the new Doctor Who series, written by Russell T Davies. The show pulls in up to 10 million viewers and Billie has won a place in the nation's hearts. Last year, she scooped the National TV Award for Best Actress. 'I was shaking like a leaf,' she admits, 'and had to have a word with myself on the way to the stage because I thought I was going to cry. That would have been too embarrassing. It was a brilliant night, but I spent the whole evening in shock, chewing my nails.' Earlier this year, it was revealed that Billie - born Leanne Paul Piper - had bagged a multi-million pound deal to write her autobiography. The book, which is planned for a Christmas release, will detail her rise to fame as a teenager, the breakdown of her marriage to Chris and her astonishing success as an actress. ... These days, despite her new-found success, she remains level-headed and down to earth. She has displayed incredible maturity in the aftermath of her marriage to Chris and although she is now dating law student Amadu Sowe, she remains on good terms with her ex and the pair regularly meet up for coffee. 'Chris and I are pretty much inseparable and live opposite each other,' Billie says. 'It's an extraordinary situation that I don't expect anyone else to understand.' This summer, she'll be filming a new drama for the Beeb called Ruby In The Smoke with a string of other lucrative projects also lined up. But for now she's looking forward to the premiere of Things To Do Before You're 30. The film's producer Marc Samuelson was hugely impressed with her and wastes no opportunity to sing Billie's praises. 'She was a complete knockout,' he says. 'In the first meeting, she'd read the script, she was completely focused, very serious, very nice. She's perfect for the role. It's nice to discover that we knew exactly what we were doing.' It sounds like the perfect role for Billie. Her character in the film, Vicky, is a free spirit and up for a laugh. A girl with the world at her feet. Not unlike Billie herself." Hello Magazine and Morecambe Today also have brief articles and pictoral about the premiere, as does the Mirror which says "Billie Piper looks more girl next door than movie star as she arrives last night at the premiere of her new film in a simple black jacket, white T-shirt and black trousers. But the 23-year-old Dr Who actress looked happy with her casual outfit at the VIP London screening of her new Brit flick Things To Do Before You're 30. How about marry and divorce a millionaire, have a number one hit song and travel through time, Billie?"
The Daily Express says that "Comedian Peter Kay may be shortly appearing in Doctor Who as a baddie but he fancies his chances as the Timelord himself. Kay is a massive fan of the classic sci-fi show and is keen to take the lead role when David Tennant eventually hands in the keys to the Tardis. The creator and star of Phoenix Nights, a proud Boltonian, says: 'I think the Doctor should come from Bolton next time. He's always been a bit posh for my liking!' But hasn't Kay forgotten Tennant's predecessor, fellow Lancastrian and Salford-born Christopher Eccleston, who played the part in his native Mancunian accent? When sidekick Rose asked him: 'If you're an alien, how come you sound like you come from the North?' Eccleston's Timelord replied laconically: 'Lots of planets have a North. . .'"
The Norfolk Eastern Daily Press says of Doctor Who that "it is the programme known for sending children cowering behind the sofa. From the moment its eerie theme-music starts up on Saturday evening, millions of youngsters - and many mums and dads too - are transfixed by the adventures of the eccentric Timelord, as he faces up to an array of frightening foes. But one 13-year-old from Norwich not only watched Dr Who, she appeared in it - only weeks after her mother declared the series 'too scary' for children. Now aged 51 and a mother of five, Barbara Harper vividly recalls making her acting debut in BBC1's legendary sci-fi, playing one of the children in the five-part story The Mind Robber in 1968. More than 7m viewers were on the edge of their seats as the The Doctor, played by Patrick Troughton, and his assistants Jamie (Fraser Hines) and Zoe (Wendy Padbury), were hurled into The Land of Fiction ruled by evil Master - Emrys Jones - who is desperate to escape. Now as a new generation enjoys watching David Tennant and Billie Piper in the latest series of Dr Who, Mrs Harper is set to relive her TV stardom this summer as a special guest at a Dr Who convention in Norfolk. She contacted the EDP after reading an article about the event at Holt on June 24-25, and has been invited to join the stars. 'They are quite excited to have someone who has never been to a Dr Who event before, and I am getting all nostalgic,' she said. The sixth doctor Colin Baker is due to make an appearance during the weekend which will also showcase other stars of the series, including Terry Molloy, who played the Timelord's arch enemy Davros, the creator of the hated Daleks. Mrs Harper, of Watton, said she still had clear memories of her own appearance in two episodes The Mind Robber, which was screened on BBC1 in September and October 1968. She said: 'I was 13 years old and lived in Norwich but I had just started at stage school in London when I was auditioned for Dr Who. 'It was my first acting job, and it was quite ironic really as my mother had just written to the BBC complaining that a recent episode was too scary for children. I don't remember being scared myself, but in those days children hadn't seen monsters. There were no Star Wars then. I have great memories of working on the programme as I had my birthday while we were rehearsing and they presented me with a birthday cake. I was in a couple of episodes of The Mind Robber, and I was pleased when it came out on DVD recently so that I could convince my children that I had a 'real' part, and wasn't inside a Dalek costume. They said 'Oh look, there's mum!'' She added: 'There were no Daleks or Cybermen in the series I was in. The Doctor landed on this planet and the Master sort of took over people's minds. There were story book characters like Rapunzel and Cyrano de Bergerac, and I was one of the children from Edwardian times.' The children's sequence was largely drawn from E Nesbit's novel The Treasure Seekers, and other colourful characters included Gulliver, and Blackbeard. Mrs Harper continued acting until her early 20s, working in the theatre and winning small roles in Special Branch and the Wednesday Play. 'After 10 years I thought I have outgrown this and did other things, and then I got married and the kids came along. I don't regret acting, I really enjoyed it. I met a lot of people and I had loads of fun, and I think it gives you a lot of confidence,' she added."
Other Press Reports
Today's Mirror insists that a subtle change in the show's credits - but one noticed by many a Doctor Who fan - was entirely due to its lead actor. "Doctor Who supernerd David Tennant demanded that BBC bosses change his character's credits in the sci-fi show, claiming he doesn't actually play Doctor Who... It turns out he just wants to be known as The Doctor. The geek sighs: 'As a kid, it always bothered me - obviously it's the name of the show but he's not called Doctor Who.' Get him." Also noted at Yahoo News.
The Western Mail says, "For decades we have loved the 'OOOOeeeeeOOOO' sound of the start of Doctor Who on Saturday evenings. For a generation of thirty and fortysomethings, the Doctor Who musical intro probably evokes more childhood memories than any other. Even now, I remember hiding behind the sofa as a kid, sneaking the occasional look at the horrible maggots episode and squirming when the slimy innards of bizarre creatures were revealed by the Doctor. And now another generation of children are into the Time Lord and the Tardis, talking about the latest scary episodes with their friends. Daleks were the 'slightly less cuddly but easier to understand' Teletubbies of the Sixties, in an era when time-travel and sci-fi had gained popularity on television, following a surge of cult B movies in the 1950s. Created by Terry Nation, who had written for comedian Tony Hancock, the Daleks virtually doubled Doctor Who's audience overnight and spawned the BBC's first merchandising boom. Nation had seen a performance by the Georgian State Dancers and had been inspired by the gliding motion of long-skirted ballerinas. At the height of Daleks success, two feature films were made, starring Peter Cushing as the Doctor. Having been forced to watch Hammer Horror films (back behind the sofa) as a kid by my older brother, (who wanted to stay up and watch them - but not alone), I thought Peter Cushion was more of a Dracula killer than a Dalek enemy. But Daleks are still the Doctor's greatest nemesis with their no-nonsense cry, 'Exterminate!'. They have their own entry in the Oxford English Dictionary and made it onto a stamp as one of the enduring icons of the 20th century. Not bad for a race that famously struggles to get up stairs."
Other items: more on the ratings issue at icWales; Now Playing Mag and TV Squad review "The Idiot's Lantern".
(Thanks to Paul Engelberg, Greg Dunn, Paul Greaves, Paul Hayes)
Subscribe to News
Follow us on Twitter
Like us on Facebook
Contact Us
