Everyone has already posted the great new videos from Comic Con, but somebody had a lot of fun editing this silly footage together, so I thought I would put this up for your enjoyment instead. It’s been online for a little bit now, but I just found it, so maybe you haven’t seen it either. Enjoy.
And going on now; check The Schedule to get a glimpse of what all is going on, check Comic Con‘s very own web site for all the amazing details, and check any one of the hundred’s of sites webcasting from there for all kinds of coverage. Sadly, that no longer includes G4TV, because it no longer exists; it is in the process of being converted to a soft porn channel owned by a soft porn magazine.
A blast from the past: John Cleese as an art critic, commenting to an art collector about the Tardis. Suddenly Tom Baker’s Doctor runs up and jumps in, along with two Companions, one of whom is the second Ramana. Just a small throw-away moment from original series that brought two quintessential British icons together for the first time. There is also a wonderful behind the scenes outtake from that episode where John asks Tom for an autograph for his kid, but neither has a pen.
In honor of the 5oth anniversary, the folks at Future Publishing are hosting a competition for AudioGO, formerly BBC Audiobooks, and they are giving away 50 Doctor Who audio presentations, 25 CDs and 25 digital downloads. These are actually Audiobooks, with a single person reading a novelization, Radio Plays, with a full cast, sound effects, interlude music, and the whole nine yards, Soundtracks from the original TV series with narration to fill in the missing visuals, and several other formats. Some of the soundtracks are from episodes that have only survived in audio form, with the full original cast. They have literally hundreds of them, they have been doing Doctor Who audio stories from the beginning and are still cranking them out. To get and idea what kind of things they involve, you can download the free sampler and listen to 45 minutes worth of excerpts from all the different kinds of programs they produce. The only bad news for this contest is it is only open to residents of the UK (if I was reading the rules correctly), but even if you don’t live there you should grab the free sampler and check out some of the amazing stories you can collect.
There was a Discworld game that came out way back in 1995, and as such games do, it had a collection of 8 bit music. It also had Eric Idle doing the voice of Rincewind, which I think is a brilliant bit of casting, and Jon Pertwee doing a whole lot of the other voices. It was based on Terry Pratchett’s book Guards, Guards! but somehow wound up with Rincewind instead of Vimes in charge. If you still have the game you no doubt need a legacy system to play it on, but thanks to Sorek142 you can still listen to the soundtrack, or at least the incidental music, from the various scenes. Note that does not include Eric Idle’s song That’s Death, ranked by PC Gamer as among The best songs in PC gaming in 2010, because that was on the Discworld II game.
Today is the opening ceremony at the NADWCon, or North American Discworld Con, in Baltimore, MD. Obviously Sir Terry Pratchett is the Guest of Honor, but a lot of other folks will be there as well, including another favorite satirical author of mine, Esther M. Friesner. I recommend haunting the media area, in case you might be able to see some footage of the new TV series The Watch, assuming they got the money to make it. Note this is supposed to be a full TV series, and not a miniseries like Hogfather, Going Postal, or The Color Of Magic. 13 hour long episodes!