JINGS!
And so the Scottish Invasion of Doctor Who continues. And we approve, even if we know a little less about Karen Gillan than some of her predecessors. It might be no bad thing – after PiperTategate fandomia didn’t exactly distinguish itself with good behaviour based on preconceived notions. Mind you, we knew so very little about Freema, didn’t we? But so long as Karen doesn’t have to film a scene where a fish drowns she should be fine.

TENNANT’S EVICTED
A surprisingly muted farewell last week with the last of the Tenth Doctor’s scenes having been shot (bar the odd pick-up post production – still time for another “Whatwhatwhat” Russell!) And so a dignified, muted that’s yer lot – au revoir, Doctor, it’s been fab!

MORE TENNANT TO COME YET
Except to say that there was also that special segment he shot for John Barrowman’s dreadful variety show.  Nothing wrong wiv dat, Sylv did it for the kids, and Jon made a post-telly career out of it. All the best, David.

TENNANT CLINGING ONTO ROLE LIKE A LIMPET
Coming later this year of course is Dreamland, the new animated Who special, featuring David Tennant as the Doctor. Well, these are tough times and the money will be handy whilst one is in LA perusing the Hollywood dailies, right?  

“…FROM MY COLD, DEAD HANDS” – TENNANT
A Doctor Who movie rumoured to be in the works, scripted by RTD and starring David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor? Cheese and crackers, man – run for your life! Did Eccleston teach you nothing?

PIPER RELIEVES BLOGGER
Hmm. If latest rumours are to be believed then the Rose’s return might not be that gratuitous. As you were, everyone.

TOBY HADOKE: “KIWIS FED MY DOCTOR WHO HABIT”
Amidst the local excitement of Toby Hadoke’s award-winning Clayton Hickman impression came related news that during the performer’s own ‘wilderness years’ his hunger for old school (i.e. not yet released) Who was fed by, shall we say, buccaneers of the south seas in Australia and NZ fandom. Cribbins! Can you imagine the tripe he must have got from here then? Nth generation copies of something so ridden with dropouts and static it resembled little more than a blur in a smudge factory. I wonder if he ever met Chr*s M*****y?

LATEST ISSUE OF MAG REACHES LETTERBOX. STOP PRESS!
Thanks guys, that sort of news completes our day every bloody single time you post it.

DWM 405 ODDLY NOT THAT RARE, COLLECTABLE ANY MORE
In fact we hear they’re going for a song on Ebay these days. Right, Jono?

and finally…

THE CLINTON EFFECT
You know, we have been cads when it comes to fan message boards, linking to the ridiculous and sometimes pathetic for a cheap laugh. As if we know any better. But message boards and fora are, largely, homes for the most drossful waste of time and bandwidth in christendom; wretched isles upon whose shores are daily swept tides of frippery, bile and squee.

But the recent and untimely passing of Clinton Spencer, observed with sensitivity and some sentiment recently on the NZDWFC Message Board provided an opportunity to see such devices work well, perhaps even fill the function for which they were originally intended. With a (likely) end of year date of the next TSV being probably too late to mark a notable fan’s passing (although a suggested obituary would still in our minds be wholly appropriate) the immediacy of these online communal spaces provides the perfect space for coming together and, well, sharing. We’ve said this numerous times, but fandom is community first and foremost, and despite being for the least happy of reasons, it was good to see local fan media being used for the best as well.

All the best, everyone.

Just a quick one this month, folks, as Foo has an update coming along and of course besides Planet of the Dud and someone inflating a Dalek in Chiswick last week, not a lot happened in April.  So…

Geek Maggot Bingo!
Some fun recently with Public Address’ thread on general spookiness on the small and large screen. Excellent. Ask me about my zombie weekend sometime! Anyway, good news for Old School Who as some of the golden oldies come out and indicate that those touchstones are well and truly embedded down here in NZ as well. Krynoids! Maggots! Daleks! And to show we’re in good and scary hands for future stories, yes, Weeping Angels and Empty Children too.

But Blog barometer cooling on BTS?
Yeah, no link this time just a gripe. We’ve had our fun taking the mick out of Kasterborous’ occasional Ian Levine-esque chair arm thumping editorial asides. But dammit, they’re still a lot more fun than Behind the Sofa, and more frequent too. Sure, BTS has clawed itself back into validity a little with their recent reviews of Dubai Double Decker Trouble, but have’t we all? On the other hand, BTS’s tweets are sweet, even if Twitter appears to be on the wane…

Plus Kasterborous put us onto the Tainted Love Dalek. Sofa haven’t pointed us towards anything fun since Farmergeddon.

Stripping Back the Years
But this is fun - a set of very cool and witty strips detailing the history of the good Doctor. Maybe not for the squee squad, this one…
Part1, Part 2, Part 3

Oh, it had to happen…

The Next Doctor – inevitable spoof

and finally…

MasterCard mash-ups

1 and 2

Thanks to Dave for a lot of these!

It’s April. Still, better late than Neville! (sorry Neville)

No Funny Things Happened on the way to this Forum
Forget your mystery casting and trailers - this was the big news of the month, and it’s sad news. The Restoration Team forum, once established as a venue for discussion of the technical side of recovering DW’s past, is no more from 1 April, having lost the War on Personal Abuse and Constant Questions About Fan Animations. A real pity, as it was a great service and probably did more to explain a lot of bewildering terms surrounding the work of the Team than many a DWM feature. Alas, the constant verbotening of speculation of future stories plus the veto on discussing releases in common knowledge but not yet advertised by 2Entertain meant a lot of thumb-twiddling and attempts to focus on those pesky occasional techie questions. Really, it’s a shame and deserves better coverage than a flippant monthly column like this one. Hopefully the likes of the future DVDs forum at the DW Forum will cater for those more fannish inquisitions in the future, and those more earnest and scholarly technical discussions can carry on elsewhere, unmolested.

Mind you, we only ever visited it for the future speculation ourselves… 

Vote Billie in the FH[o Hu]M 100!
Mm. Yeah. See, if it featured the series’ other ‘Billy’, then we might have a story (albeit one that didn’t really demand pictures). Here it’s kinda dull. But nice try Kasterborous.

No Flies on Them!
Den of Geek called it – or near as dammit, with Easter Saturday being when we (oops, we mean the UK!) get to visit the Planet of the Deads! Everyone else of course will just have to wait a day or so for the torrents. A-harr!

Summer Holiday
And speaking of behind the times on everything, let’s get rid of one inevitable mash-up while we can…

DWM 405 missing from subscriptions shock! gate.
See? Fandom does give a toss about print media!

RTD&D
Old Rusty seemingly made little attempt to cover up his comic-reading past in the series to date what with the likes of Max Normal in Gridlock, the plot of a JudgeDredd story (‘Sob Story’, Prog 131 for those of you playing at home) in Gridlock and the designs for Satan being supposedly based on the art of Simon Bisley (though I have to admit I didn’t see it myself) BUT who could have guessed he was also in his time a Dungeons and Dragons playa? Well, it was probably obvious – coming of age in the late Seventies, early Eighties, it was kind of de rigeur in a loveable Old School way. But we digress. You want proof? Here’s a Berbalang from the Fiend Folio (and White Dwarf 11), next to a friend of more recent years…

 
Fast forward to White Dwarf’s Fly Man, and… well, you see where we’re going?

Not that there’s anything wrong with that, Mister RTD. Ahem. PitchBlackTremorsTheFlyBadCityBlueandJudgeDredd’sTheHuntingPartyABus?AreYouMad?AndEvenThisCloseToYourOwnEpisodeMidnight?!!!

Ooh, that felt better.

Okay then. Things that happened last month. Here we go…

WHO THE FROCK IS DEAN GAFFNEY AND WHAT IS HE DOING IN DW NEWS?
You know, we live in fractious times, and none moreso than on the internet, with its Facebooks and MySpacings. News this week that Eastenders/reality TV curio Dean Gaffney would be in one of the specials this year was ‘revealed’ this week, then revealed to be a fake posting on that hive of scum and villainy, Twitter. Young fans who understand all this and probably care were alternately scandalated and then relieved that it all turned out bunkum. We dunno, having seen this we reckon he’d fit the bill perfectly.

KASTERBOROUS KEEPS ABREAST OF THINGS
It has to be said, Colin Baker running into sometime cinematic DW companion rumour Pamela Anderson is a hell of a story. And good on Kasterborous.com for not opting on an easy eyecatcher and instead going straight to cover reportage of said story without making mountains out of molehills. Er, by that we mean overinflating things. Um. Don’t open this at work, okay?

AND SPEAKING OF HARRY HILL…
That Poetry Corner, eh? Superb – and good to know we’ve made advances in the science of rhyming dialogue since “Seek, Locate – Exterminate!”

BIG FINISH ‘FIND’ SEASON 23!
Hooray! Simply years after once Producer Gary Russell said nix to number Six once more meeting (er, spoiler?) the Celestial Toymaker, Sil, the Ice Warriors, the Autons and theRaniortheMasterorperhapsbotheven via audio, aw no, look ! More recent Producer Nick ‘Ring Modulator’  Briggs has only gone an dun it! Fantastic news for those who’ve wanted to hear the stories, instead of shelling out the clams for a pretty patchy trio of Target specials. Naturally fans have gone one better and demnded that the ‘original’ ‘season’ 27 follow this. We’ll see. In the mean-time with the stock involved it wouldn’t be out of the question to call the remounted ‘lost season’ a bit of a risky move. 

TSV 76 SPEEDS TO COMPLETION ‘SOMETIME SOON.’
Look, we recently swore off jabbing Her Madge’s Fanzine in the ribs for simultaneously celebrating 75 issues of longevity then gag-tastically slipping off the radar for over twelve months, so we’ll accentuate the positive and say that delays like this not only have not occurred since 1986, but with each passing month a year’s sub to TSV exponentially increases in value for money! Seriously, we can’t wait for those Season Four reviews (who was the companion again?)

NEW BIGSAVE FURNITURE AD SURFS ZEITGEIST, BREAKS FANBOY HEARTS, SCARES SMALL CHILDREN.
It’s good (we suppose) that someone else noticed this rather quaint throwback to 1980s advertising with its blocky ‘video’ effects and not-so-soundalike-a version of the DW feem toon, along with a handy disapperating blue shipping container (genius!). But to be frank, this ad has caused us all at ZeusBlog Terraces to hide behind the sofa more times than not due to the bug-eyed zaniness of its presenter and her scary shouty hypermania. Jesus Christ, woman – it’s only furniture!

The passage of time. We’ve seen it, and it’s not a pretty sight. It does things to a man. Nevertheless, we at ZeusBlog Terraces are a flinty-eyed steely bunch, and we don’t shrink from our blogging responsibilities no sir. Thankfully, nothing of any importance Who-wise happened in January to blog about – not a single thing, so it makes this instalment so much easier.

Let’s keep this in the manner of the TSV Message Board and start out by going completely off-topic…

OMG teh Prisoner is deads!
Okay, he was never in the series (even though The Village was of course), so let’s see some of that, as well as the late great scary man, put to the tune of some imminently-visiting senior songsters of the heavily metallic genre [indulge me, it's the only way I'll see them now. Curse you, parenthood!]

OMG Khaaaan is deads as well!
Aint It Cool News really pulled one out of the hat on the video tributes to this guy who was also never in DW. We spent a wee while – yes, a very wee while, finding one they missed. Khan. Say it once and there’s muuusic playing. Say it twice and it’s actually a little obsessive.

OMG Computer voice too? Curse you, mortality!
The fickle fulcrum of fate teeters cruelly in Roddenberryland. Majel Roddenberry, the precedent of all that’s lady sounding in computers of skiffy will be broadcast live no more. She was the antecedent of Mister Smith in the Sarah Jane Adventures we suppose.  Er, that’s about it. No, we’re not going to comment on the guy who was in the robot in Lost in Space.

OMG Dalek is deads!
Lest we forget and let it be said now: before Katy Manning it was John Scott Martin who was the first actual Who actor to pose topless with a Dalek. That man – what an innovator! And he had a career afterwards as well.

[Ed: It's possible we may be wrong on this and the picture is of that pesky Bob Jewel again. In which case, here's a blog covering some of the worst Dalek cakes of all time. Ye gods.]

Matt Smith not dead, but lives on in YouTube mash-ups
Which, after les Piper’s Call Girl antics, is writing ‘shipping’ videos all by itself…

RT Forum throws in towel, becomes news site instead.
And fair enough. The RT, it has to be said, isn’t alwasys the life of the party on the Interweb, what with its talk of colour spots, 72 edits (to which we say, hey – if you can remember them you were never there, eh punters?) and fending off the young enthusiasts and their weekly assault on the board with suggestions that, gosh – maybe other stories could be animated as well? That said, what a great mont for articles about forthcoming releases – and what releases! Planet of the Daleks in colour fully of course. Yeah, and Marinus! War Games! Attack of some Cybermen! Why, you’d never think there’s a global depression looming with that shopping list.

Bus Smashed en route to Dubai. (gate)
We got nothing. Why is this news? More David Tennant stories? Oh.
Aren’t we all over him now?

And there’s your January 2000 and nine. Peesha-pish!

It’s a 45th anniversary! Or was! And we’ve a mixed bag in Fast Return this month, so let’s at least start with a song – an anniversary song, naturally, found by Travelling Dave on your tube.

But what, as the cereal packet goes, are we really celebrating here? Ahem:

45 UP
There comes a time in one’s life when the marking of anniversaries and significant birthdays becomes more gradual and perhaps less cause for genuine celebration. Forty years after 1963 Doctor Who was still an historic programme, its extended life contained within non-television media. Two years after that and fandom started talking seriously about ‘legacies’ and ‘kisses to the past’ in ways they hadn’t done for nearly ten years.  In the time since the TV Movie new fans had been conceived and born, and discovered what we know as the ‘new’ series at just the right age. Perhaps they are the children of former fans themselves – it doesn’t really matter, and for them the idea of a series with a 41 year-old backstory was moot. Four years on and this blogger ask himself whether this anniversary, along with every other one since 1989 is a marking of, say, 45 years at all, or just 26 years plus a few more to be counted on the day. Perhaps 2008 is merely just the fourth anniversary, and the big party will be next year, in the fifth year of a new series? Can you really see the join after the return of so many villains and companions from episodes of yesteryear? Does it matter?

THE SILENCE OF THE FANS
All of which angstiness just goes to ask – why so quiet this year? Are we satiated with a series back and a safe regeneration of production hands ahead that we don’t feel the need to draw attention to the show’s long toothiness? Or are we scared to? Or have we politely left the stage to allow the young ‘uns to say their piece, only to discover the sum of their wisdom to date to be ‘OMG squee! Lols!’ or the like? Yours please, below.

In the mean-time…

IT WAS NEARLY A YEAR AGO TODAY…
We have a local anniversary coming up of course – happy first birthday soon, latest issue of TSV!

RODNEY’S A LOVELY NAME FOR A FIELD MARSHALL
Spotted this week on Public Address. More politics, sorry folks…

(Click on the pic to biggen it up)

A DUDE TO BE THE NEXT DOCTOR, MAYBE
We’re none of us fooled by the Christmas atrocity special this year, naturally, but oh yes: some rocking in the squee world to the news that David Tennant’s career will not be determined by one role alone. We covered that last month of course, but to date no replacement has been confirmed aside from the odd slip of the tongue (or not). So there’s little fun to be had for the moment, except perhaps in ringing the doorbell at Kasterborous.com and shouting “James Nesbitt!” until they come to the door all red-faced and cross. Ah, fan sites. So easy to wind up.

We’ll know when we know (as we all know). Remarkably, the regular viewing audience has far from imploded with the suspense. 

SOMEONE’S GETTING A SMACK FOR THIS
Oh, TV Guide – will you ever win?

They must do their research using the Guinness Book of Records or something.

BACK IN OUR DAY WE CALLED IT “FILKING”. AND WE KEPT IT TO OURSELVES.
When they’re not ruining our niche cult series by making it all popular and profitable, the younger generation still have a lot to answer for. Why only this month they claimed (in the pages of DWM, no less) to have invented the art form of “Trocking” – that is, Time Lord Rocking; writing songs about Doctor Who. Big yawn, you might think – when we were mere scraps we not only had “Frocking,” but we also had “Gunning” as well and we were grateful, you can keep your “Trocking” well away from me and my children, et cetera. But truth to tell, some of it isn’t half bad. Take a look at this talented little shite fan and tell me you don’t have an earworm infestation.

Yes, very good young man. Now get to bed.

 
QUICK, BEFORE THE ELECTION STARTS!

HATCHES:
Billie Piper had a boy. Fandom sort of over that stuff now. But really, well done Billie. Congratulations!    

MATCHES:
It’s election time everywhere! Well, everywhere except the UK and other places. Still, it’s a game the whole family can play. Speaking of, has anyone checked that thse two aren’t related? The resemblance is uncanny!


 ”Praise the Company!”

DISPATCHES:
But it’s not all beer and giggles, and so we must observe the international collapse of the squee as David Tennant says he’ll not be ‘teh Doctor forevar’ and puts a shelf life on his time in the TARDIS. Fair enough, you might say. The lad done great, but he has a career to think about. Comes with the role, even. The show is built to withstand such changes. Good luck to him even. But no. And Outpost Gallifrey’s Forum implodes. And – oh, Jon!
“Not a dry eye in the house”? “Sad day”?
Do me a favour…

THE CREDIT CRUNCH HITS WHO-CORNER IN TRADEME.
And it’s tough all over for Troughton annuals. An $80 starting bid draws little interest:
http://www.trademe.co.nz/Books/Rare-collectable/Annuals/1950-today/auction-182169363.htm
But there’s a bargain to be had ($5 starting bid – no reserve) if you look:
http://www.trademe.co.nz/Books/Rare-collectable/Annuals/1950-today/auction-183214509.htm
Keep shopping, kids!

DAVE ATTEMPTS TO FIND A YOUTUBE SONG FOR THE 9TH DOCTOR AS CATCHY AS ‘HANDLEBARS’
Last month’s whip-round of YouTube videos bore some fruit…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLiXUbCuaTY&feature=related
-and Dean Grey returns, this time to Canary Tower:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMbbt4uptlU

LOOKS MIGHTY FAMILIAR? (WITH FREE EARWORM!)
Looking forward though, and to this year’s Chrimbo bonanza. Morrisey! Kirwan! Cyberwraiths! Eh?
We’ve postulated before on the inspiration for these chaps (as seen in the trailer). Taran Wood Beasts gone digital? Zog from the Ultimate Adventure gone gimp? Dave reckons he has the answer. And it’s catchy!

OH, MORGAN… (NO, NOT THAT ONE)

The worlds of Shortland Street and Who converged once more on October 15th, geek-totty staff nurse Morgan’s birthday, don’t you know…
“Hunter feels out of his depth trying to get Morgan a geeky present for her birthday. When Sophie suggests a beauty treatment, Hunter agrees. Later, Hunter sees Gerald’s present, Dalek salt and pepper shakers, and feels he has trumped Gerald’s present. Hunter surprises Morgan with a pampering session with, the Aporé Day Spa. Morgan is privately unimpressed and feels nettled when the beautician criticises her appearance and hard sells her beauty products.
Morgan defends that the products are associated with animal cruelty, and are too expensive. Hunter only hears the ‘too expensive’ part and buys her a pack. Pushed to the limit, Morgan decries the products and pampering session. Hunter is left crestfallen that he has misjudged Morgan.”
Heartwarming stuff. But enough to make you demand Morgan return her geek badge with the on-screen realisation of her present:
“Oh you got me THOSE! Gerald, thankyou!” [she plays with her presents] “Kill! Crush! Destroy!”
Eh? Even a five year old gets the catchphrase right!!! Why so slipshod on the research TVNZ?
You’re not still shamefaced at turning down the new series in 2005 perchance…?