I love a good tease!
The latest Coming Soon trailer is a doozy – action, explosions, Jumping Jack, Derek Jacobi, burning eyes, scarecrows and perhaps most importantly a real indication that the second half of this season is going to be darker than anything we’ve seen before in the new series.
And another Mr Saxon ending… this time with him tapping out the theme tune on a glass table…. weird! Roll on June 30!
Don’t scroll to the post after this one if you’re wanting to remain spoiler free. (In fact, don’t even read this one!)
One week old, and already Zeus Blog is in hot water for publishing a major spoiler for the upcoming Daleks In Manhattan episode. It wasn’t our intention to create a furore so early on (that was going to be saved for next month), and our sincere apologies to whoever got their Episode 4 spoilt in our rush to get a quick joke online!
In our defense, it was pretty hard to miss. Apart from being all over the official website, thumbnails sprung up across the net before you had time to say ‘where’s its nose?’. Pity the poor ‘spoiler-free by choice’ folk in the UK who have to see it every time they go into a WH Smiths.
You have to ask – what were they thinking?! The publication of an upcoming monster on the front of the Radio Times is nothing new, but to give away the cliffhanger from an upcoming two-parter a week before the episode airs is pretty out of the box. There’s publicity and then there’s ‘spoil the ending’ publicity, which seems to go against what the production team have been trying to achieve this season, with their ‘wall of silence’ pact.
But maybe it’s just us fans once again getting precious about the little things when, in the scheme of things, it’s probably an excellent move on RTD’s part to get the public interested again, even if he himself seemed to think that he’s ruined the ending a little…
Oh and we promise not to spoil anything ever again. Not even the return of the Master.
JP
Another series, another chance to take a guess at what we think will happen in Series 3. 13 episodes = 13 theories:
JP-PA-AH-DR-JE
We live in fast times, and no times are so fast than those of the monthly pubzine. Although we’ve boasted of Zeus Plug’s loose-playing, throwaway element (“Winner of Wellington’s Best Beermat-cum-DW-themed-Pubzine for 2006”), the truth is that it’s taken a lot of energy and no small amount of money bringing it out to a monthly schedule. Could we keep doing it at this rate in 2007? Probably we could after a four-month break; but we’re not going to.
Oh sit down. You’ll still have Zeus Plug! But like Ranquin in The Power of Kroll we’re bowing to the inevitable Tentacle of Progress. Zeus Plug the pocket-sized publication is no more – Zeus Blog must live!
So, you ask – what is a Zeus Blog and what will it do for my family? Well, it won’t put bread on your table for a start. Worse, it won’t put bread on ours. But it will do a few trickier things that your old A6 publication couldn’t do: it’ll be faster and more colourful, quicker to arrive and, best of all, interactive. That’s right – this time your actual opinion of what you’ve just read will now be able to be posted alongside the rest of the inane drivel content. That’s the main benefit, alongside the sheer lightning speed of modern teckernology; everything else is just gravy – cartoons, pugnacious opinion pieces, regular head-to-head battles, and your favourite features of the old pubzine. Oh, and some reviews too, because there really should be somewhere for these to go that doesn’t require a six-month publication lead-up, and we hear that Interweb thing is just the place.
Paper is dead, baby – these days it’s all done online!
Avid readers will know by now that we here at ZeusPlug Terraces have been… somewhat… tardy on covering Torchwood. Why? Tardiness, mainly. There’s no great conspiracy, and what you’re witnessing is something not unlike the current situation with TSV, where it seems entire seasons of a show can be screened between issues, meaning that whatever reviews and overviews that do come out in the following issue start to look REALLY dated. ZeusPlug doesn’t actually ‘do’ reviews, but this blog does take an interest in what other blogs have to say about the different issues affecting Who fandom. For Torchwood then, it’s interesting to see the excellent Public Address System covering TVNZ’s recent purchase of Torchwood and the politics therein. The talkback is good too – particularly from the likes of Epsom and Wellngton (er, and the obligatory pitch-in by Paul). You can read the original G2 post commenting on the purchase here, plus Paul’s comment again (he gets around, you know).
As for ZeusPlug and Torchwood – watch this space. Given that ZP9 won’t be out until April, the chances of any Torchwood season one commentary (or Runaway Bride come to that) appearing then are nil to zero, so this here blog’s the place it’ll likely turn up in some shape or form. Not that anyone was complaining, but just so you might want to mark it in your diary or something 
Sad news for Who publishing today – OG is reporting, as the excellent TV Cream website had also, that Dreamwatch magazine (nee Dreamwatch Bulletin, nee Doctor Who Bulletin, or DWB for short) is shutting up shop just shy of issue 150 of its relaunched volume.
I have one or two issues of Dreamwatch, and about half a dozen of DWB and can say that of the material in those early late 80s, early 90s issues, there were few of them that didn’t offer some riveting critique of the show (even in its ‘wilderness years’) or the world of fandom. Indeed, before its editors decided to go commercial, to broaden the focus beond DW and into other telefantasy, the zine was one of a rare breed, an educated, opinionated title that expressed opinions of the ashow and of fan ‘ownership’ thereof, with litle regard for its then-controller, JN-T, a man who was to be the subject of many a heated letter or article. It was DWB which demanded the producer’s resignation, which spawned the ill-fated ‘Day of Action’, an attempt to bombard the BBC switchboards with fan demands for the show’s return, and it was in the pages of DWB that Paul Cornell wrote a scathing critique of Terror of the Autons, ending with the phrase that for a while would be his calling card – ‘dissent is good’. There were many more episodes in DWB‘s early history, and as the zine matured and became more professional, those stories somehow seemed to become fewer in number and diminished in impact. While the zine was born out of a desire to provide a fan-owned ‘alternative voice’ to the JN-T obeying Doctor Who Monthly, it seemed that once the focus was shofted to a broader world beyond Who, it had a larger battle to fight for the hearts and minds of a greater fan culture already catered for with the likes of well-established titles such as Starburst, TV Zone, Cult TV and, most significantly (and arriving not long after DWB‘s mid-90s reinvention), SFX.
The door isn’t utterly closed on Dreamwatch however, there is talk of it becoming an e-zine. Whether such a venture can survive in yet another new world, this time of instant blogging, RSS feds and free news sites remains yet to be seen. It has been reported many times over the past few years that this new version of the Internet, the so-called and much-hyped ‘Web 2.0′, will surely prove to be a large nail in the coffin of print news media. That the Internet, an arena enthusiastically adopted by much of what we would call modern fandom, could prove the death of one of fandom’s earlier (but not so old) progeny, has a sad inevitability about it. The news world is unforgiving and fickle enough without fandom’s added enthusiasm for rumour, spoilers and innuendo.
So farewell then, Dreamwatch. Thanks for the years, the exclusives and contributions. May the electronic world which is surely taking your place prove to be as challenging and interesting in the years to come.
Just in time for Chrimbo – Zeus Plug would like to present (geddit?) its loving readers with a free gift – for FREE! Everyone knows a Doctor Who fan is the easiest person to buy for this Christmas, but here’s an extra special addition to the gift for the ‘enthusiast’ who already has everything. All you need is a colour printer, some nice paper, and Adobe Acrobat Reader.
Click here to download an A4 version
Click here for an A3 version (you’ll need the right paper, obviously)
Motif designed by Peter A and realised in loving digital form by Mrs P. Results may vary. The Daleks are Copyright etc etc Terry Nation’s Estate blah blah. Not for re-sale (are you MAD?)