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[Thad]

Gaiman confirms long-rumored episode.

Makes sense given that he spent '09 giving non-denials, up until the very end where he firmly denied he had written an episode for the 2010 season.

Because he wrote an episode for the 2011 season.

[Thad]

New trailer.

[Mothra]

I want to see this show get good again SO HARD

[Thad]

The Telegraph has a shitload of new info about the coming season.

Highlights:

The race to save the planet that’s unfolding on the village green will, Gillan says, help to show viewers what bonds the Doctor and Amy together. 'They’re two of a kind. They’re both a bit lost,’ she says. 'Because Amy has no parents

Both Moffat and Wenger seem eager to address one rumour that persistently dogs the current Doctor Who production: budget cuts.

[...]

Moffat has a spikier retort. 'This is going to sound pious,’ he says, 'but the original Tardis was a budget cut. It was. They couldn’t afford to make a spaceship. They couldn’t afford even to do a magic door. They couldn’t afford to do a sphere. So someone came up with, Why don’t we do a police box? And it’s bigger on the inside. That’s the single best idea, I think – though I am a bit prejudiced – in all of fiction.’

This new Tardis – not an obligatory accessory for each new Doctor, but required by the damage done to it in Tennant’s last episode – is big. It must be three times the size of Tennant’s, on multiple levels with staircases in between. Less grubby than its predecessor, with a transparent plastic floor on the main level, its walls are resplendent with polished copper and its central column features a blown glass decoration that could be straight from Tales of the Unexpected. There are old car seats and downstairs – downstairs! – a swing. With a nod to Paul McGann’s Tardis, the central column features an old TV screen on an extendable trellis. It also has a 1980s-style computer keyboard, and a His-Master’s-Voice style trumpet speaker.

Most importantly, from the moment he stumbles out of his crashed Tardis, Smith is certainly his own Doctor. Less prickly than Eccleston and without the slapstick of Tennant, he brings an air of muddled intensity that’s a bit reminiscent of, say, Tom Baker (though without the stripy scarf).

Read the whole thing; it's quite good!

Also, my Flash is not working at the moment, but Digital Spy has an interview snippet with Moffat where he discusses the regeneration scene from January.  It is apparently part of a larger, forthcoming interview.

EDIT: Got Flash working.  Turns out it's only a minute long and doesn't really tell us anything.  Sorry!  But when they post the rest of the interview, that should be fun.

I don't think there's an official (British) premier date yet; as far as I know it's still "probably Easter."  Still, that's just another month.

[Mothra]

[Royal☭]

The trailer from BBC just says Easter 2010

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpbmMhNe6aA

[Verde]

I don't think there's an official (British) premier date yet; as far as I know it's still "probably Easter."  Still, that's just another month.

From the article you linked:

'Doctor Who’ returns to BBC One on April 3

[Thad]

  Guess I managed to lose it somewhere in that massive information dump they gave us.  Thanks for pointing it out.

[Thad]

IT.  BEGINS.

US trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teBw2IWuOA0&feature=player_embedded

UK trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dK_7S_EpnBk&feature=player_embedded

Johnston comments that the chief difference is that the UK version focuses on the point-of-view character and the US version focuses on the godlike hero.

Main thing that struck me: his voice is deeper and stronger than I expected.  Definitely a plus; the Doctor needs to be able to alternate between whimsy and gravitas.  And as I've said before, I love the idea of the much older Doctor who River Song described being the youngest of all in body.

There's plenty of other news to go 'round.  I quite like the one from The Scotsman.

Maybe this isn't new but it is my view: Doctor Who is a fairy tale – not sci-fi, not fantasy but properly a fairy tale. And I don't mean Disney-style where the endings are changed and everyone lives. Doctor Who is how we warn our children that there are people in the world who want to eat them.

And more of that interview from Digital Spy: main snippet, bonus cut.

(I quite like his comments on what he'd do if there were a multi-Doctor story for the fiftieth anniversary: he mostly dismisses it, but notes that it would be interesting to focus on the fact that it's the same man experiencing the same events from different perspectives.  He went for a straight causality loop in Time Crash, but I'm confident he could make a damned complex and layered time-travel story stretched out over a couple hours.  Plus I'd love to see 4, 9, and 10 share a stage, but I'm just daydreaming as far as that goes.)

He also rather strongly implies that River Song's relationship to the Doctor is NOT what everybody expects.  What everybody expects is, of course, the Doctor's wife.

Meantime: there's a Wii game coming (and a DS release as well), the Beeb's released one last Tennant adventure as an audiobook, and the comic's still running.  Lee DOES spend a bit too much time on fanwank for my tastes (though I quite like Martha telling Magombo that UNIT has a long history of science advisors giving orders to their superiors), but it's a solid enough story.  I'm just not sure how satisfying it'd be to people who don't recognize namedrops like Adric, Turlough, or even Malcolm.

[Mothra]

I'm not watching a single god damn snippet or spoiling a dang thing for myself, but ffffffffffffff I want it to be April already

[Thad]

FIRST 35 SECONDS OF THE NEW SEASON!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNvUCYxIQM8&feature=player_embedded

[Verde]

Well, I had high expectations and the first episode more than matched them. I can't think of a single way that the Tennant era Doctor Who was better than what I just witnessed; even the gurning was better.

Instead of talking to myself until you guys have had a chance to catch up, I'll just dump this short article called Doctor Who and the homosexuals of doom from a (thankfully ironically titled) website called Liberal Conspiracy. Mostly because I read it this morning and it managed to whet my appetite without so much as a synopsis of the first episode.

[Royal☭]

Oh wow, that episode was amazing.  Moffat hits the ground running, no doubt about that.  Also, it looks like the Doctor is going to team up with Van Gogh.

[Niku]

GOD

FUCKING

DAMNIT

WHY DO I HAVE TO BE CAUGHT UP ON DOCTOR WHO SO I CAN'T JUST POUND THROUGH THE ENTIRE SEASON IN TWO DAYS

[Mothra]

Loved it

[Joxam]

Saw the ep, cheered a lot, thought it was great. Would buy again.

[Thad]

Yeah, fucking great.  In both Moffat's case and the Doctor's, there were shades of what had come before, but a definite sense of the new.  Great script; laugh-out-loud lines AND serious drama, culminating in a FUCK YEAH moment.

Yeah, the kid's got chops.  He can pull off the full range, from the "I AM a madman with a box" to "Hello.  I'm the Doctor.  Basically: RUN."

I've been on the Internet long enough to know that some people will still be screeching about how terrible this was.  Those people are idiots, and fortunately I think they will now be in the extreme minority.


Moving forward: we've seen some hints of things to come.  The fact that the old lady (Jeff's mom?) recognized him is certain to come back.  And of course the now-standard prophesying.

Geronimo indeed.



EDIT on further thought: I think the best way to describe this episode is Davies-style spectacle and pacing combined with Moffat's wit and cleverness.  Best example would probably be that he pulled out the cell-phones-across-the-world trick again, except he managed to make it actually make logical and story sense instead of just pulling it out of his ass.

[Verde]

I love how Moffat plays with time. First in The Girl in the Fireplace, then in Blink, then with River Song in the library episodes. And of course, in this episode too, where [spoiler]five minutes for the Doctor turns out of be "twelve years and four psychiatrists" for Amy Pond.[/spoiler]

I think for RTD time was just a destination, but it's clear that Moffat is treating time-travel as an integral part of the show rather than just a reason for ladies to wear Victorian bonnets.

Also like that it took place in the present without ever mentioning when "the present" was. After all, the plot [spoiler]spans fourteen years and starts with the Doctor flying over the Millenium Dome - meaning we're at the very least four years into the future by the end of the episode.[/spoiler] Could RTD have done that without some kind of "who's the Prime Minister now" gag? I very much appreciate that the new team respects us enough to not have the characters constantly allude to the audience watching the show in 2010.

[Mothra]

Hold on let me connect to the OVERMIND THROUGH MY HOLOBAND EVERYBODY DOES IT IT'S THE FUTURE SEE THE BLIMPS

[Royal☭]

Moving forward: we've seen some hints of things to come.  The fact that the old lady (Jeff's mom?) recognized him is certain to come back.  And of course the now-standard prophesying.

I attribute her recognize him not as some kind of foreshadowing, but as her dimly trying to remember [spoiler]the man that Amy had been drawing since she was a little girl[/spoiler].


What I loved about the episode is how Moffat literally makes the Doctor his own, top down.  New Doctor, new TARDIS, new companion, even [spoiler]new sonic screwdriver[/spoiler].  I liked this regeneration episode better than the Christmas Invasion because we're introduced to the new Doctor as he hits the ground running, rather than left in a haze as the characters don't understands what's going on.  Basically it gives the new Doctor a chance to prove himself, rather than sidelining him the entire episode.

It's a wonderful episode, and if Moffat can keep the momentum going, he'll be a good successor to Tenant.