Sci-Fi Storm

Some excellent classic Doctor Who news – two episodes of the classic series, episode 3 of Galaxy Four (the first of the serial found of four) and episode 2 of The Underwater Meanace (second of four found) have been uncovered! According to Doctor Who Online, the announcement came at the “Missing Believed Wiped” event in London, sponsored by the British Film Institute and dedicated to the recovery and screening of previously lost programming. Terry Burnett, a former engineer TVS in Southampton, had the two episodes.

There are still many, many episodes of the First and Second Doctor still remain missing (some Third Doctor episodes only exist in black and white). At the time, the BBC often re-used tapes and often disposed of film for cost reasons.

Also announced recently was Doctor Who: The Eternity Clock, the first in several video games being produced by Supermassive Games, for the Playstation 3, Playstation Vita and PC platforms, and should be out early in 2012. No word if it will be available in the U.S.

Doctor Who: The Eternity Clock will immerse gamers in the universe of Doctor Who, allowing them to take on the role of the Doctor and River Song as they travel across time and space to save the Earth. Gamers must learn to master the complexities of time travel with exceptional time based game play, changes made in one time will impact another creating multiple possibilities and challenging players to solve puzzles across the centuries.

A wholly new storyline has been developed especially for this new Doctor Who console game franchise, written in collaboration with the BBC Wales team. Photo-real graphics, television quality scenes and highly realistic characters will bring the world of Doctor Who to life immersing fans completely in the twists and turns of an action filled plot. The stars of the series Matt Smith (the Doctor) and Alex Kingston (River Song) have recorded full voiceovers for their characters in Doctor Who: The Eternity Clock and motion capture has been used to create in-game characters that are incredibly realistic providing the ultimate Doctor Who gaming experience.

Thanks to DoctorWho TV, after yesterday’s rather nailbiting prequel video, here is a few more humorous clips to further whet our appetite…

The prequel teaser for the upcoming Doctor Who Christmas Special, “The Doctor, The Widow and The Wardrobe” is now available online and you can watch it below! See who’s got their finger on the button! And then bite your nails waiting until Christmas Day to see how it turns out!

So, that Doctor Who movie that David Yates is supposedly producing? MTV News caught up with Yates at the 2011 BAFTA Los Angeles Britannia Awards and asked him about it…here is the video of the quick conversation:
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We already knew that the BBC will not produce any more Doctor Who Confidential specials to tie in with future episodes. But an apparently already-filmed Confidential to tie in to the upcoming Christmas episode, “The Doctor, The Widow and the Wardrobe” (which airs at 9pm ET Christmas night on BBC America for those of us on this side of the pond) will also not be shown, despite the fact it already exists.

According to Gillane Seaborne, who produced the Confidential series, said, “The biggest regret is the episode of Confidential we’ve filmed for this year’s Doctor Who Christmas special which now won’t be shown. So I guess in the fine traditions of Doctor Who, we now have our very own missing episode.”

Strangely, the BBC seems to believe that there is no Christmas Confidential filmed. According to a BBC spokesman, “While Doctor Who Confidential has been decommissioned, all existing episodes will be shown. But there is no Christmas special.”

Perhaps it will turn up in someone’s attic in 30 years?

Just in case you were still holding out hope that everyone was wrong, Steven Moffat chimed in to say that Doctor Who will return in the fall. He mentions that one reason is that traditionally it was a Fall show, not aired with “All those barbecues and children playing outside, while on the telly there are green monsters seething in their CGI-enhanced lairs? It’s just not right is it?” But he also adds, “But it’s not the whole story.”

Sounds like there were still production reasons at work.

Check out the preview below of the 2011 Christmas Special episode of Doctor Who, entitled “The Doctor, The Widow, and the Wardrobe”. And if the title hasn’t clued you in – yes, there is a definite Narnia theme to it (much like last year was a bit of The Christmas Carol…) (video courtesy of DoctorWhoTV)

Catch the Doctor Who sketch from this year’s Children In Need special, where the Doctor literally gives the shirt off his back to raise money…(courtesy DoctorWhoTV)

We knew that there has been discussions for a long time about a feature film version of Doctor Who – but always in the context of being within the current franchise. Now Variety is reporting that a Doctor Who film is in the works, but it is going to be a reboot of sorts, and David Yates, who directed the last four Harry Potter films, is in charge.

According to Yates, they will NOT follow the current series. “Russell T. Davies and then Steven Moffat have done their own transformations, which were fantastic, but we have to put that aside and start from scratch,” he said. And neither Davies or Moffat are at this time involved at all. Not sure how this will fly with the current fanbase.

Doctor Who was re-imagined once before, in a pair of movies starring Peter Cushing in 1965/1966, which were adapted from the serials, “The Daleks” and “The Dalek Invasion of Earth”. However Cushing’s Doctor was human, not a Time Lord, whereas Yates mentions the Doctor being a Time Lord specifically. Once pre-production gets going and there is a script, we may find out more just how much of the mythos we are familiar with will get rebooted.

When I heard recently about a video set to The Proclaimers “500 Miles”, I thought it was the video I’d seen before with David Tennant singing the song along with The Proclaimers themselves.

No, this was a new video – which looks like it was filmed at various stages in David Tennant’s tenure, and features various companions, enemies and the crew and even some old friends – I shed a tear when the late Lis Sladen appeared… 🙁