Oooooh, shiny!

As the new broom continues its sweep through the corridors of BBC Wales’  Upper Boat studios, this morning sees the launch of the new Doctor Who logo exclusively on the show’s offical homepage (and copied above) A thousand bloggers will incorporate it in to their themes and merchandisers around the world will try and work out how to replace the now familiar “taxi cab” symbol on their products. I guess we won’t start to see it on the shelves before 2010 as we build up to the end of the RTD/Tennant era but it’s another sign of things to come. Change is afoot. For what it’s worth I think the “DW” in the shape of the TARDIS is something appraoching genius, and the old style words are pretty good too. More importantly, what do you think?

Tags: BBC, Logo, Stephen-Moffat, TARDIS

EDA Review #2: Vampire Science

After the disappointment of The Eight Doctors in which a clumsy idea seemed to have been rushed in to print, my hopes had been diminished for this second volume of the Eighth Doctor Adventures, Vampire Science, all of which resulted in my pleasant surprise that the EDA’s were not to be a complete waste of time after all. An altogether better Doctor Who adventure with a cohesive plot, a recognisable title character and some interesting ideas and scenes throughout.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: BBC, Books, EDA, Eighth Doctor

There is a report on the Guardian website about a speech that James Murdoch made about the BBC, in which Dear Mr Murdoch beseeched the establishment to deregulate and tear down the structures of the BBC. I paraphrase, of course, but follow the link through if you want to see him in all his glory. The phrase, “lowest common denominator” means nothing to this man. Inevitably, now the idiocy of this idea has started to permeate the Twitterverse, a hashtag ( #welovethebbc ) has emerged to fight back. Here are a few reasons to join in and why the BBC is so wonderful…

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: BBC, James Murdoch, WelovetheBBC

EDA Review: The Eight Doctors

So, here we go. The Eighth Doctor Adventures, or EDAs to their friends, were a series of seventy-three novels released by BBC books between June 1997 and June 2005 that picked up tales of the Doctor’s travels following the events of the TV Movie, which starred Paul McGann in his only ever appearance as the wandering Time Lord. The Eight Doctors is a spiritual sequel to TV’s “The Three Doctors” and “The Five Doctors” and was written by prolific and much-loved Doctor Who author, and former script editor/writer on the show, Terrence Dicks. Something of a hero of mine it has to be said.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: BBC, EDA, Eight Doctors, Paul-McGann, Sam Jones, Terrence Dicks

My name is Kevin and I am a collector.

It must be one of those genetic dysfunctions that leads me to suffer from that fan-ish compulsion to buy every available product in a sequence. If I like a musician, I will need every one of his or her CDs on my shelf, or if I buy a book and I enjoy it I’ll need all that author’s books and then carefully arrange them (yes, in order) on copious shelving around the house. Trading cards are also an irritatingly difficult thing to collect, mainly because it’s so hard to find a good dealer in the UK and gaps in collections are

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: BBC, Books, Collector, EDA, Eighth Doctor, MA, NA, NSA, PDA, Terrence Dicks, Virgin

Up until now, throughout its first two years, Torchwood has met with a generaly positive response from the viewers, gaining enough momentum to make the move from BBC3 to BBC2 after a successfull first series and shortly to make another upgrade to BBC1. It seems to be especially successfull in the international markets like America and Australia who even seem to be a lot more upbeat about it than they are about the better known parent show. However, a vocal few from the fan communities

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: BBC, Captain-Jack, Children of Earth, Cyberwoman, Eve-Myles, Jon Barrowman, Rob Lowe, Torchwood