Ookaay… to borrow the phrase that last year’s big trend made popular, it’s Business Time.
All sixteen teams from Rounds One and Two have re-entered the bout and are now in two divisions. Upper division consists of the winners to date, and lower division needs no further explanation. Also, Round Three is Joker Round, so there may be some surprises in this week’s bouts. Let’s see how they shape up:

UPPER DIVISION
Silurians versus Macra (Location: The Castellan’s Caves)
It’s the undergound battle of all time, and just when you thought it couldn’t get any weirder, the Silurians finally get to play their Joker – a tame T-Rex (or is it an Allosaur? Perhaps we’ll call it… a Speleosaur, given that it lives in a cave?). Never mind, the “most fearsome mammal of all time” faces off against the crafty crustaceans.

Zygons versus Judoon (Location: Valley of the Shobogans)
No Jokers in this bout as the Zygons used their Skarasen in the big game, but it might be worth pointing out again (as the Rutan match-up went so well… sigh) that the Judoon are equipped with their handy dandy bio-scanners, so shape-changing may not have the advantage it did last time.

Slitheen versus Krill-traps (Location: Rassilon’s Orangery)
Yes! Another Joker invoked as Rusty’s new monsters go head to head. The Slitheen of course are fast, devious and vicious, while the Krillitanes are fast and vicious AND since their victory over the Tetraps gain their Joker – the better race traits of their last victims. So: quadroscopic vision, poison bites and backwards talking for them then. Will it be enough to tip the balance?

Haemovores versus Vogans (Location: Flavia’s Boneyard)
Did I mention it’s Joker round?
And that the Haemovores have brought the seven-foot tall Ancient One as their big gun? Eek – I can’t watch! Let’s move instead to…

LOWER DIVISION
BRING OUT YOUR LOSERS!

Tetraps versus Primords (Location: Borusa’s Folly)
Will the power of flight and small arms fire be enough to get the Tetraps through this round? Or are the Primords made of tougher stuff than the Tetrap bullets, and force the match to be played on terra firma?

Cryons versus Vervoids (Location: Spandrell’s Storehouses)
Cold-loving ice maidens with guns versus plant-men who probably like north-facing positions and well-drained soil. Will the Cryons be disadvantaged by their setting? Or will the Vervoids turn out to be frost-tender?

Krotons versus Voord (Location: Omega’s Labyrinth)
At this stage things just look too weird with a match-up of these proportions. Cannon-carrying silicates the Krotons meet rubbery saboteurs the Voord, who get to play their Joker – a Voord Leader with telepathic connections (as seen in The Fishmen of Kandalinga). Will empathic links be enough to turn Marinus’ frogmen’s losing streak?

Nimon versus Terileptils (Location: Kellner’s Steppes)
Neither team is ignorant of how it pays to increase your brain-power, both come armed, although the Nimon are the physically stronger group – arguably. However, the Terileptils get to play their Joker, and it’s a weird one. Plague Rats.

And that’s Round Three done. Don’t forget to vote!

Well that has to be it – July 2008 is a dead cert to being the swiftest July on record. Where did it go? Probably stoled. Maybe by Davros and his minions, that scallywag. Anyway, things moved quickly last month, so you may have missed these happenings…

X-TENDED! X-MAS TRAILER! X-CITEMENT!
Hmm. They’re really keeping things under wraps, aren’t they? Anyway, it appears an extra ten seconds or so gives us but a very confident young urchin, the likely companion of the piece, more David Morrissey and an evil Dirvla Kerwin. And Cyber-Wraiths, or robot Taran Beasts or something. Are we excited? Well, lots of this stuff was to be had in the set photos section of the DW Forum (if you could bear the trudge through the squeeing that is). But at the moment? mm. We’ve been disappointed before with a huge build-up. Scare us this time, Mister Davies!

MOST IMPROVED WHO-BLOG?
Why, it’s Kasterborous! We may have bagged them slightly earlier in the year for getting a bit huffy with the more outrageous rumours (and some which came true… ahem), but hey – a new look, lots of intelligent, up-to-date content devoid of the sort of fannish speculation which makes the DW Forum a chore to read these days, and great editorials. We’ve been away a while, but it’s nice to be back. Well done, Christian and Co!

MEANWHILE ON THE DOCTOR WHO FORUM…
Yes yes, that’s two bags full so far in one installment. So what’s got up our goat this month? Apart from the ennui of it all over there with the youngsters and their shipping and squeeing and Janto-ing. Well, nothing outrageous. And maybe that’s the problem. But just as it appears young Rusty gets the gist of hiding spoliers from us (until the inevitable leak to the tabs that is), young fandom runs out of new series facts to talk about and, say, starts to create their own series five. And you get this…

and…

Eee-yikes.

DALEK-MASKED WOULD-BE ABDUCTOR FOILED BY CAR HEADLIGHTS?
Words fail us.

POLISHING UP THE SILVER?
Aaand it’s twenty years now since Silver Nemesis was unleashed onto an unsuspecting world (insert obligatory ‘NZ got an episode before everyone else’ note – Ed.) There’s precious little McCoy left to release, and going by the stories remaining one does get the feeling 2Entertain have their own impressions as to what’s going to sell quickly or not (a clue: Battlefield is next) . Anyhoo – that wouldn’t stop the interested fan from frustrating the forum administrators bringing up the topic of format and version on the Doctor Who Technical Forum. And what a discussion! Special Edition or standard, slightly wonky edition? Add the documentaries, or delete the rubbish bits? Worth a little extra in the budget to give punters the choice via a two version double disc like Fenric and 5 Doctors, or a blight on potential resources for other, probably less-vanilla-bound stories? Phew! Good job it’s not on the schedule yet…

DWM COMIC STRIP FINDS ITS MOJO ONCE MORE.
Now, ’tis true that we’ve been a bit harsh on DWM lately, perhaps not on this blog, but behind the back of the series’ esteemed organ. but to be fair, despite a whole internet of spoiler potentials and interviews and what have you, the Official Magazine sees to be doing alright for itself. Particularly quite recently in the comic strip department. There was a time, your loyal Rapid Returner must confess, when this was the first and sometimes only thing he turned to with the mag in the new series, most other content being either already old by the time it got to these shores, or a bit… fluffy. But we’re loving Rob Davis’ The Widow’s Curse (spoiler-tastic panels here) right now. Lovely artwork by Martin Geraghty, solid nods to the new series’ history, what could well be Donna’s only comic strip outing (we’ll see, maybe) and bets of all a story that seeks to build on the recent past. A one-off monter race gets fleshed-out (if you could say that) is a quite respectful and very effective way.

THE ‘QUEEN’S BUM’ AWARD
As in… we believe it occupies physical space, but we’ve not actually seen proof of its existence. And it goes this month to the Time Meddler DVD. Has anyone actually seen a copy here, let alone bought one? From a terrestrial shop?

Another dawn breaks over the Death Zone and as we survey the carnage of last week’s Monster Mash we see that the winners are absent. Yes, it’s progression to Round Three for the Vogans, Judoon, Macra and Krillitane, with nary a protest from the crowd. The losers of course carry on to meet other losers in a pick-off of the most rubbish.

So to this week then, with eight new teams returning. Let’s meet them again!

Location: The Technodome

 Lizard-men of science! Having lost to the Sycorax last time, the Silurians are in no mood to be the patsy to yet another Johnny-come-lately. They have head-weapons and enquiring minds ready for the Terileptils, one-time Cheetah-bait and wielders of energy weapons and crafty hunting knives. But who will be dissecting whom?

Location: The Crystal Coastline

 It’s a rubber-fetishist’s wildest dream! More crafty knives courtesy of the web-footed Voord, quietly stalking the technological wiles of the Zygons about the Death Zone’s jagged-edge rock pool. This could be a tricky one, and the Zygons don’t have their pet Skarasen to call on this time.

Location: The Windfarm

 You too may not want these in your back yard. The flatulent Slitheen with their great talons and ferocious speed versus the methane-breathing, toxin-injecting Vervoids. Nobody light a match!

Location: The Ragged Heath

 Our final match-up for his round sees a rounding-off of alternative futures for mankind. The Haemovores are out for blood with their claws and teeth, ready for the faithless. The Primords have brute strength on their side, and you probably wouldn’t want to taste what’s inside them. Who wins?

And that’s round two introduced! The winners of this round of course meet round one’s champions, while the losers face-off with their counterparts for the ultimate humiliation. Next round though features Wild Cards for those who didn’t get to play them first round. Don’t miss it!

[At right: another abandoned contender from the first game]

Welcome back to the Death Zone!

And what better time than the finale of another series of Doctor Who than to pick through the bones of its less-than victorious monsters? And so, patched up and assembled once more for battle, here are the losing teams from the first round of Monster Mash, each eager to be the top of the heap. Let’s meet the first set:

Location: The Icefields

It’s the return of the Cybermen’s most- er, singular enemies! The Cryons are armed with Cyberguns, thermal explosives and have the advantage of terrain, while the Vogans have percussion rifles, quilted armour padding and big foreheads. If the sun comes out, they’ll be the team left solid. It could be a close one.

Location: The Forum

Rhinocops the Judoon were left all in a tingle after their first-round loss to the Rutan last season, so here’s hoping their strength, laser rifles and slow-mo mojo will win the day. The Nimon on the other hand have built-in lasers and a bullish attitude. If these guys butt heads it could get messy…

Location: The Pinnacles

The Tetraps pit their web guns, venomous tongues and quadroscopic vision against the swift and vicious Krillitanes. The Krillitanes lost out to the Sontarans, meaning they were denied their genetic advantages. But maybe this time they’ll get lucky?

Location: The Undercity

Some punters were left feeling a little crabby when the Macra lost to the Krynoids last time. Will their superior minds come up trumps against the intellect vampires that are the Krotons? Giant crabs versus cyborg pillarboxes – you’ll only get that here, folks!

And that’s all for this round! Place your bets below, and we’ll see the results next week. And if you’re feeling a little underwhelmed, remember that next round features plant-men, dinosaurs, really really really mad scientists and more vampires than you can shake a stake at. It could be worse, you could have had these guys…

Mmmm. It’s a common complaint, but here at ZeusBlog Terraces we think we can provide some relief. We understand – you’re tired, scratchy, your mind is clouded and you feel like you’ve done nine rounds with a Pool Cleaning Robot. But still you yearn for more. You’re a sad case, but you’re not alone.

What you need of course is less of that ‘shipping’ smoochy finale stuff and some more mindless monster-a-monster violence. A new batch would be silly (Hath versus Adipose? Too soon!), but there’s still the question of who will lead the bottom league play-off of last competition…

Ah yes, that’s more  like it.
We’ll start with the patient soon enough, nurse. But first let’s reaquaint ourselves with the lovely contestants:

In alphabetical order then:

Cryons, Haemavores, Judoon, Krillitane, Krotons, Macra, Nimon, Primords, Silurians, Slitheen, Terileptils, Tetraps, Vogans, Zygons

You’re drooling again. It’s very fetching. But hold off on the predictions for the time being – the blood (gween, naturally) will flow over the next few days – let battle recommence!

It’s all over bar the squeeing (and probably not a small amount of screaming). We have roughly four Doc-less months before the as-yet-unnamed Christmas special reaches UK televisions, and shortly thereafter, the torrents, probably. in the mena-time it’s as good a time as any to be pausing for breath and taking stock.

Over on the Doctor Who Forum they’re busy assessing the 2008 series and pointing fingers debating the dynamics of Moff and RTD’s influence over where the programme will go from here.

‘Mad’ Lawrence Miles offers some very good and reliably opinionated analysis, plus his 25 suggestions for future Who. The side-bar mathematics is strangely convincing, too.

And over on Kasterborous there’s RTD whistling a merry tune as he strikes matches over the good bridge Fandom. Or perhaps it’s just for the ‘Ming-Mongs’.

So, plenty to talk about, and lots doing it. Excellent. Meanwhile on this side of the world, the terrestrials among us are just now tuning into series 4 and Torchwood 1. Good luck everybody!

MIchele Hewitson’s NZ Herald review of ‘Voyage’ is here, already linked to over at NZDWFCMB.

And Wellington blogger Poneke offers his ten cents on the new series and its influence (outing himself as more than a casual watcher in the process), and the scheduling of Torchwood. Discussion ensues  -hi Morgue!.

Read. Enjoy. Join in!

PA

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July already? That’s crazy talk. Here at ZeusBlog Terraces the passage of time and the changes it brings are not unknown to us. Jono has left the building, series 4 and Torchwood: The Puberty Year are mere days away ‘free for the first time’ as TVNZ is fond of saying (whatever that means), and things just tick along. We marked them, as usual, so you could reads them later. And so…

TOOTHGATE!
Wash ever sho much made about the shtate of a Who alumnush’ teeth than in the return of the Piper? Well, some of us recall vague comments from US fans about the number of fillings young Davison showed during Caves of Androzani, but we can’t all have dental plans and a bewildering electoral system. And surely those gags about British teeth are as old as… well, the JN-T Era at least?

Speaking of products of the Davison years…

“HELLO DAD!”
Now this might be true or it might not be true. We’ll leave the serious factfinding to the celebrity bloggers (that’s people who blog about celebrities, not, y’know..) on Stuff and t’Herald and the like. Regardless, is it us or does it make this picture seem all the more – awkward?

UNCOVERED!
Al tells this story best:

“A certain Wellington-based designer and frequenter of this Blog was elated to find himself in the position to create a Doctor Who cover for a national publication.  Not TSV, but the Dominion Post’s TV Week supplement – the front of which has proudly displayed Who‘s NZ premiers for the last three years in a row.So, having beaten off more senior designers for the privilege, he awaited the inevitable Dave and Kylie pic with eager anticipation.

But when the file arrived it was revealed instead to be a shot from local ‘comedy drama’ Burying Brian starring Shane Cortese! So rather than creating the best TV Week Who cover ever, he’s now jinxed the programme’s perfect cover rate.”

TRAILERPARK
The Doctor! Donna! Her from Call-Girl! Captain Jack! Harriet Jones! Martha Jones! Gwento Jones! Dempsey! Those kids and the Briscoes Lady! More drum beats than a Cadbury’s dairy milk ad! Trailers, eh? Back in the days of paper fandom it was said that whole comic routines from Red Dwarf could be constructed out of the dozens of slogan t-shitrs that were merchandised off the programme. We’re not there yet, but what Who fandom does have made for them, as well as by them is… trailers! Everywhere! Well, obiously not so ‘everywhere’ if you happento live outside the UK and can’t access those parts of the official site, but you can find them easily enough, and more, on the Tube of You. Official trailers, spoof trailers, fan-trailers (some with the unmistakable features of the late Michael Wisher wheeling menacingly through Dalek corridors, bless ‘em). At this rate, and if you can take a little Emo soundtrack-adding, play your cards right and you might never need to watch a complete episode off the telly again.

3-D RHUMBA
But fandom isn’t always a happy little town as some- say, a fan animator, will tell you. Fresh from the Guardian‘s well-intended and quite interesting look-in on the world of lost episode restoration post-Invasion there’s… well, a lot of bitching really. Put to footage of some of the said attempts at resurrecting Power and Evil of the Daleks with dayglo TARDIS crewmembers seemingly bumping and grinding their way through classic Who dialogue. The fact that the Guardian obviously haven’t been able to use the original broadcast audio and have instead opted for a musical soundtrack doesn’t help. Oh, but well done guys. Keep it up!

OBLIGATORY VIDEO
So he saw the Housemartins before they split up, did he? Does that mean that- gasp – the Doctor created Fatboy Slim?!

AND FINALLY – THE MEDALS TABLE UPDATED FOR THE FINALE:
Bloody newcomers! Don’t ask us to explain it, it’s complicated.

I’m pretty sure that blasted hand hanging about is a bit of a “gimmie” to somehow re-ungenerating Tennant. That and Martha’s mystery chip being some sort of Apocalyptic reset at the end… and while we’ve all been set up that Donna is toast with a big sacrifice in the offing, surely it’s Grandad Cribbins with his undisclosed (medical?) secret (Poision Sky) who is going to make the sacrifice. Donna and the Doctor are still somehow mysteriously linked tho – prehaps he’ll regenerate into her?

I just watched it again tho and I get the horrible sinking feelling we’ve seen it all before and it’ll end up a bit of a mess. The whole dalek fleet take on the Earth smacks too much of the Toclafane (and even the invasion of Canary Warf & Parting of the Ways), Turn Left’s phantom/alternative year as the world goes to custard was also lifted straight out of Last of the Time Lords (even down to the troops on the streets and red-lit Tardis) though rather than walking the world like Martha, Donna had to just jog four blocks. And the Donna “impending doom” thing too, they’ve been seeding that one for an age now… like they did with Rose’s “death” in Doomsday…

And the Daleks are 3 for 4 in the finale monster stakes, with Davros and Supreme (and we are all waiting for that egg to hatch – looks like it’s designed arround the dramatically important Hasps) joining the long line of uber-Dalek baddies (Emperor/Cult). The planets were hidden a second in the future, we haven’t seen that since the Sontarans and the ATMOS systems a few episodes ago (or one ago if you are in a retcon mood). Copper gets name checked, coz he really looked like the type of chap to be into sub-wave communications, and yeah, for the second year running we have a plot device reliant (or should that be “Reliant“) on phone systems. And did anyone else get a funny feeling watching Rose and the Nobles “praying” (and the world calling) for the Doctor over their mobiles?

Deja-vu all over again.

And other things have just been thrown into the companion heavy mix (and doesn’t anyone else find use of the expression “companions” a little jaring when used by charcters in the context of the story), the Shadow Proclamation and Harriet Jones bits only served to carry truckloads of exposition. (As well as making them both seem far too dull and pompous). The thing with the bees just petered past, a waste after all that build up; the Darkness… well that had nothing to do with the story – how does the stars going out fit in? How does the Cardiff rift power still work if the planet has been moved from the space/time location it was fixed at? Bad Wolf anyone – what was that about, really?

I would love all this to pay off, but I just get the feeling it’s very nice looking window dressing and repeating memes pulled out of Rusty’s bucket o’cannon (it even had Richard Dawkins in it!)And I’m sorry, but I just don’t see them getting away with a year of “specials” with a new Doctor, you would want a season, a strong run, time for the new man (or woman) to get his/her boots under the table. While the Hamlet thing and recent reports of renegotiating contracts is a bit of misdirection, why would we have a cut down run of stories if it wasn’t true? And why scan out a future with River Song if you’re going to chuck it in the bin four episodes down the line?

DR