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Doctor Who 50th Radio Plays this week!

BBC4 Extra is pulling out all the stops this week in honor of the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary, and running a complete Radio Play story every day. Not that you can tell if you look at the episodes at 6PM and 6:30PM each day, since that is only the first two episodes of each story. But if you start at the following Midnight you will see every episode of that story listed, starting with Doctor Who and the Daleks this past Sunday morning, the 17th, which ran 8 or 10 episodes long. I should probably also mention that that one, along with a lot of the rest of them, are brand new, never before available Doctor Who stories, or at least not available from the BBC Radio service. They are only online for a single week, so start listening to them now, so you can hear them before they evaporate. They also have some serious original programming coming up that is only available in Radio format for the celebration, including Who Made Who, a three hour documentary on the anniversary itself next Saturday. Be sure to check the Doctor Who 50th web site, and absolutely hit the Guide to Doctor Who Specials across the BBC, which lists out every program on every channel.

Who Made Who
Who Made Who

The First Doctor Psudo Painting

I continue to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who, and wanted to create my own images to use as wallpaper, icons, buttons, and other applications. For this set, my inspiration was an art form developed somewhere between 1880 and WWII, where they only had the chemical set to capture black and white photographs. They would print them out at the highest resolution they could manage, which usually made the grain of the film stock on the negatives obvious (kind of the 1930s version of pixelation), and then hand paint the prints to create their own version of classic portrait paintings. The results were often quite attractive, in a paint-outside-the-lines kind of way, and it was interesting to see which areas they decided to color and what they left black and white, showing what they thought was important within the image. So here are a few pictures I created in that style celebrating the first Doctor, and I will probably share a few more over the next week or two that celebrate other Doctors.

Who1 William Hartnell
Who1 William Hartnell
Susan and Barbara
Susan and Barbara

Something to Do: Movies, 22Nov13

I have to mention Day of The Doctor first, which will be in a whole bunch of theaters in 3D in 75 countries around the world, all playing at the same time it is going to air on BBC1 in the UK. This is the 50th anniversary special itself, and you can watch it online, in the theaters, or on TV, for a complete list check out the Day Of the Doctor listing. The other film this weekend is The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, which should also be a lot of fun.

Something to Watch: DVDs, 19Nov13

Top spot this week goes to The World’s End, another excellent collaboration between Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg, and Nick Frost. Not only will it be released as a stand-alone, but they will also bring out the box set with the entire Cornetto Trilogy; Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and The World’s End. There is a rather unusual Vampire film coming out called Sanguivorous, with no spoken dialog and an acting style based on Noh or Butoh, a form of Japanese story telling through dance. It only played in a handful of theaters across the US, in part because a live band (composed of Japanese percussionist Tatsuya Nakatani and Chicago saxophonist Edward Wilkerson, Jr.) toured with it to play the soundtrack for this silent film. The 3rd interesting film this go round is Mars, a 2010 animated comedy romance about space exploration that has been on the Film Festival circuit for the last several years, and is finally getting a DVD release.

In TV, Doctor Who: The Tenth Planet is story number 29 with William Hartnell as the Doctor, and companions Ben and Polly. This was Hartnell’s final tale as the Doctor, and the first time we got to meet the Cybermen. It was also the first time a Regeneration happened on screen as the role was passed on to Patrick Troughton. Star Trek The Next Generation: Season Five makes its Blu-Ray debut this week as well, and they are also extracting a two-part story to roll out separately, Star Trek The Next Generation: Unification.

In Anime, Sword Art Online: Fairy Dance Part 2 delivers the final 6 episode of this excellent little series. I think they should have packaged them up in season 1 and season 2 boxed and sold them for the same price that they have been selling the half seasons, so I will be waiting for a more cost effective packag before I buy my copy. One Piece Movie 10: Strong World continues that series, with a new film. I mention that because sometimes the feature length presentations are retellings of the TV show stories.

Good Luck Girl is about a rich, beautiful, and very lucky girl who has everything going her way. That is because she is siphoning off the good luck of everyone around her, and a minor god notices and decides to follow her around and give the luck back. A lot like spiritual wack-a-mole, really, with all the fun and silliness the situation can deliver. This is from the folks who did Bleach and Gintama, I recommend you check it out. Finally, Little Busters!: Collection 1 is about 5 childhood friends who have grown up, letting their dreams of becoming defenders of justice fade over the years. But now cats are bringing two of them messages about a secret world that needs their help, and their dreams might not be as far in the past as they had thought.

Doctor Who Domination rollout

The Doctor Who Domination is now in place; we are talking only days before the 50th anniversary celebration happens, so brace yourself. Starting Monday, BBC America will start the countdown on some killer Doctor Who programming, and the rest of the world will be doing the same thing. I expect to see some excellent video releases, interviews with the principles, and distributions of tons of extra goodies we have never seen before. This next week or two should be very amazing indeed!