Hello gentle reader and welcome to our month in review for August 2007. As we’ve been down this road already this month, it’s an abbreviated, slightly less-silly summary of the month’s events. Read and enjoy – and don’t forget to join us at the end of September when Jono will have his snaps back from the UK!

RIP OUTPOST GALLIFREY

Well, we can’t say we didn’t see this coming. Oggie as we’ve known it is a site not long for this world, soon to inhabit a multitude of various new guises with name that just aren’t as cute to abbreviate as ‘Oggie’. It’s all been said before and we’ll not continue the initial chest-beating as a year’s planning has obviously paved the way for a better future for Shaun Lyon and his collaborators. But… damn! And vale Outpost Gallifrey. The days of the great one-stop Who fan site will soon be behind us.

FAREWELL CLAYTON

What? What? WHAT? Nothing happy ever came of that repeated phrase, and yes, ’tis true. Long suspected as happening soon by one of us, erstwhile DWM editor Clayton Hickman has announced his departure for bigger and brighter things (fantattle says Big Finish), with erstwhile deputy Tom Spilsbury jumping into a well-warmed editor’s chair. Longtime readers will remember Clay as being the last editor of fandom’s showless years, managing the difficult task of keeping the magazine viable and entertaining while for a long time having not a lot telly-wise to report. And he did a smashing job. Well done Clay, and all the best for future endeavours.

RTD’s 80s TV

Now is it me or is there a vague vibe going on with the rumours being concocted leaked put about from Rusty these days? Believe them all and you’d be forgiven for thinking series 4 will be largely made up of hat-tips to 70s and 80s TV. Kylie, Joan Collins, cruise liners and lady detectives. Can’t you just hear the pitch? “It’s Neighbours meets Dynasty… and then it’s Murder She Wrote - on The Love Boat!”

DOB-IN-A-DOC!

Earlier this year we had news of series 3′s Big Bad spoiled by none other than Gene Hunt from Life on Mars (well okay, Philip Glenister). But who could have foreseen that the alleged involvement of Sir Peter of Davison in an alleged Comic Relief skit and/or series 4 would be revealed by… Sylvester McCoy? To Peter Jackson? Here in NZ? Bonkers. It’s got to be a conspiracy, or a red herring to throw us off or something. Either that or some King Lear-vs-Spamalot theatrical rivalry hitherto unspoken and now realised in the form of- oh God I don’t know. You couldn’t make this stuff up!

MEME PEOPLE SUCK

Poor Adam Rickitt. A Coro star in the UK, then sent to our shores to play mixed-up could-still-be-murderer Kieran Mitchell on Shortland Street (and play very well this week it has to be said!). He’s ours for a while, it would seem, and a welcome guest to our little local telly scene. BUT. On Outpost Gallifrey’s Forums he’s an institution. A weird, you’re-in-on-the-joke-or-you’re-completely-bewildered institution. We’re not in. We’re not sure we want to be in. Some folks go on Who and move on to Coro (Mark Eden, William Russell, Helen Worth); some go on Coro and progress to Who (Thelma Barlow). And then there’s ‘teh interweb’ in all its mad glory, doing the job for them. Weird. And a little obsessive.