Sorry, little in the way of genre movies this week as near as I can tell, although I do tend to miss releases every so often. This would be a great weekend to catch a previous release you didn’t quite make it to the theater for, or to binge watch a show you are falling behind on. I particularly recommend checking out Class and Doctor Who Season 10 on VOD or Streaming. Speaking of Streaming, that link to Class will take you directly to the Pilot episode, streaming for free for anyone to watch. Remember that this is the school that the Doctors granddaughter Susan was attending in the very first 1963 episode, and if you keep your eyes open the episode is filled with Easter Eggs, which seems appropriate considering it aired Saturday night.
This weekend you can swing by the UK’s National Space Centre for an out of this world experience featuring the Science of the Time Lords exhibit. On the 28th and 29th they will be doing a presentation about the science behind the UK’s most popular TV franchise, Doctor Who. Each year they set up a fun family weekend where they look at the fact behind the fiction of this iconic program, and this time they are focusing on the core concept of the show: Time Travel and the ultimate Time Lord vehicle, the TARDIS! The schedule includes workshops, competitions, challenges, talks, exhibitions, and so much more. The exhibits I would most like to see in person include the fully realized recreation of the 1978 TARDIS Control Room from the Tom Baker era, and the Members of the UK 15th Cyber Legion showing off their costumes and detailing how you can create your own. From my perspective, the only down side to these events are the fact that they will be happening on a continent different from the one I live on. I intend to do my best to attend next year, though!
This time around Humble Bundle is offering a Doctor Who Comics Bundle currently with about 50 titles in it. If you haven’t hit Humble Bundle before, they have deals on various nerd-approved things, often including ebooks, games, and audio dramas. You get to select what price you will pay, but if you pay above a specified amount you unlock additional titles. Each deal comes with a charity being supported, and you also get to select what percentage of your payment goes to the creator, what goes to the charity, and what goes to the site itself for setting it all up. I generally just leave the percentage at the default since it is usually very equitable, and for the Doctor Who Comics Bundle the charity is Children In Need, a most worthwhile organization. As little as $15 unlocks all 50 issues of the comics and puts money into the Children in Need coffers; or if you are not a Doctor Who fan, look into their other current bundles, odds are good you will find something you like coupled with someone you want to support.
A classic lost story of Doctor Who will be available in select movie theaters for one night only. On Monday, November 14th, Doctor Who: The Power of the Daleks will be on the big screen thanks to BBC Worldwide. This was the 1966 story with the very first regeneration, when William Hartnell’s Doctor was killed off, and regenerated into Patrick Troughton’s version of the character. No one had any idea if it would work or if they would lose the audience, but with 20/20 hindsight it is obvious it worked very well indeed. The original broadcast now only exists as a handful of 15 second film clips totaling maybe 3 minutes or so, and a number of semi-complete audio recordings. So they compiled, cleaned up, and merged the best of the audio into the full soundtrack, and had a team of animators create the visuals to go with it. I have never heard this particular story, and while I could just buy the DVD and watch it at home (it becomes available in November as well) I feel the need to be in a large auditorium with a bunch of other serious Whovians and experience it for the first time it has been shown in public in 50 years.
Put together by John SmithVFX, this Sherlock/Doctor Who mashup from 2013 is quite nicely done. Looking at the Wholock VFX Breakdown, which is the second video here, it becomes obvious this was primarily a masterful job of masking, compositing, and chroma/light balancing to create the finished product.
There isn’t any genre films on the big screen this weekend as near as I can determine; but that’s OK, because we will have the Doctor Who Christmas Special on Friday instead. This will be the first episode where Alex’s Professor River Song shares the screen with Peter’s incarnation of the Doctor. When you add in that Steven Moffat wrote the script himself, and the director this time has also been directing Sherlock episodes, it is bound to be something special indeed.