Entertainment Weekly celebrating 50 Years of Doctor Who

‘Doctor Who’: This Week’s Cover | PopWatch | EW.com.

Filed under: TV, Doctor Who, science fiction

The Best Doctor Who Scene Ever (an update)

The Doctor Who clip I wrote about earlier was taken down, but here is an even longer, better quality version of the same scene from “The Unicorn and the Wasp” – quite possibly the best scene ever in the Doctor Who reboot (though I am sure some would pick a scene with the young Amelia Pond, such as ‘fish fingers and custard‘):

And you can watch the whole episode online through Amazon instant video.

For more…

• The Unicorn and the Wasp – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
• BBC – Doctor Who – The Unicorn And The Wasp – Episode Guide.
• Amazon.com: Doctor Who: Season 4, Episode 8 “The Unicorn And The Wasp”: Amazon Instant Video.

Filed under: TV, Doctor Who, science fiction

Nerdware for lounging around your blue box

Doctor Who: Towelling Robe: 4th Doctor @ Forbidden Planet.

Filed under: Nerdware, clothing, Doctor Who, science fiction, television

The Tumblr-ization of Pinterest: Fish Fingers and Custard!

There’s a board on Pinterest called Fish Fingers and Custard!. If Pinterest is your first major foray into social networks beyond FaceBook, it will look a bit strange.  But if you’ve spent any time on Tumblr, it will look very, very familiar.

And I think that’s a good thing.  To a large extent, Pinterest feels like the product pages and ads from House Beautiful, Martha Stuart Living, Cosmo, Fine Cooking, FHM and… wel,l all those other magazines that are little more than glorified catalogues.

The intrusion of a quirkier, less product-placement mentality from the world of Tumblr is a welcome development.

What is still lacking, though, is an intrusion from the world of journalism – with all the stunningly pictorial events happening around the world, from tornadoes and other climate change catastrophes to war and famine (and even the odd nice thing) this is a still a lack of boards and pins reflecting any kind of political or social awareness and interest.

For more…

• Pinterest – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
• fish fingers and custard | Tumblr.
• I go ‘ding’ when there’s stuff..

Filed under: Feel Good, Interweb, Doctor Who, Pinterest, Tumblr

At last: an Amy Pond Action Figure

BIG Chief Studios Ltd. is proud to announce the Amy Pond 1:6 Scale Collector Figure, officially licensed and authorised by BBC Worldwide. Featuring a fully realised character portrait of “the girl who waited” as portrayed by actress Karen Gillan, authentically styled hand-tailored detailed costume, signature accessories and a partial TARDIS display base. (via Big Chief Studios.)

Given some of the comments on my previous post on the “pornification of Amy Pond” – not to mention the fact that this pose looks awfully close to that of a lady of negotiable virtue – I expect to see some interesting DIY outfits and accessories emerging pretty quickly.

Filed under: TV, action figures, Doctor Who, science fiction, toys

Doctor Who’s Amy Pond – Karen Gillan – gets naked. Again. For real. Maybe.

Teh Interweb is all a-buzz with stories of an apparently trashed, post-party Karen Gillan wandering the corridor of a NYC hotel naked in the early hours:

Doctor Who star found naked in NYC hotel corridor:

A trendy NYC hotel played host to actress Karen Gillan allegedly laying naked and mumbling in its corridor. According to reports Gillan had tried to get into another guests room whilst naked and trying to cover herself with towels, before collapsing to the floor mumbling.
(via snarkerati.com.)

Doctor Who star Karen Gillan naked at a riotous New York part:
Doctor Who star Karen Gillan was found naked in a New York hotel corridor after a night of riotous partying.

Miss Gillan, 23, who plays the Time Lord’s assistant Amy Pond, was seen ‘whimpering’ in the nude by guests at 7am before security arrived, wrapped her in a sheet and escorted her to her room
(via Mail Online.)

Karen Gillan caught nude in a hotel hallway? ‘Doctor Who’ star’s awkward morning:
British tabloid The Mirror reports that 23-year-old Gillan found herself locked out of her New York City hotel room… without her clothes. Gillan, who was staying at the Ace Hotel with showrunner Stephen Moffatt and co-star (the latest Doctor) Matt Smith, tried to cover up with towels, but 7 AM is not an ideal time to be trying to hide your bare derriere in a busy hotel hallway.
(via Zap2it.)

Well, we’ve had previous indications that Gillan was a bit of a party monster, though not of course in a league with some of LA’s trashutantes (Lindsay Lohan et al):

Of course this may all be a mistake. It may not have been her at all. Or there may be a perfectly reasonable explanation for why she was naked in the hotel corridor at 7am. Happens to me almost every time I stay in New York. No, seriously. That photo above could be any of us dancing at a party, and there have been no confirmations that it really, really was Karen Gillan. No denials either. And it is hard to think of a reason for ending up naked in a hotel corridor that doesn’t involve poor judgement calls and heavy over-indulgence.  The real question, for me, is where the hell were her friends?  Friends don’t let friends drink and run around corridors naked.

But in honor of the story, I wanted to pass along some more naked fakes (see earlier post). There’s a whole pseudo-site of them for your perusal, so I won’t bother to upload any. Remember, kids – no kids.  Teh Interweb is only for consenting adults.

Filed under: TV, Doctor Who, porn

Scenes of the Season: I’m Dreaming of a Time Lord Christmas

Another new Christmas tradition – the Doctor Who Christmas Special:

“I’m the Ghost of Christmas Past.”

And Santa Claus coming down the chimney, as well. And in addition to the Doctor, we have the often snarky and always spunky Amy Pond, a real Victorian Scrooge of a villain, it seems, and… a spaceship?

Amy and Rory are trapped on a crashing space liner, and the only way The Doctor can rescue them is to save the soul of a lonely old miser, in a festive edition of the time-travelling adventure, written by Steven Moffat. But is Kazran Sardick, the richest man in Sardicktown, beyond redemption? And what is lurking in the fogs of Christmas Eve?

Read all about it at: A Christmas Carol – 2010 Christmas Special – Doctor Who – BBC AMERICA (or A Christmas Carol (Doctor Who) – Wikipedia).

Trapped on a crashing spaceship and traveling back in time to save them in the present? I feel like we’ve seen those things before, in more than one Doctor Who episode – such as “The Girl in the Fireplace,” where the Doctor travels back to Versailles while on a spaceship – also written, perhaps not coincidentally, by Steven Moffat – or 2007’s Christmas special, “Voyage of the Damned” when the Doctor was… trapped on a crashing space liner.

Still, we don’t expect great lashings of originality from an episode of Doctor Who, and this does look like it is going to be good, if the trailer is anything to go by. And Moffat has written a number of the best Doctor Who episodes during its current incarnation, including the very scariest, “Blink,” “The Empty Child”/”The Doctor Dances” and “Silence in the Library”/”Forest of the Dead.” (See List of Doctor Who serials for details.)

It also looks like the most Christmas-y Doctor Who Christmas special ever, as if they are taking it more seriously as a geeky holiday tradition. I’ve enjoyed the previous Christmas specials, to varying degrees, but they none of them really embraced the season the way this one seems to do. So that’s nice.

In the past, broadcasts of Doctor Who episodes in the United States have been sadly behind their first showings in the UK. This time, though, BBC America has scheduled things fairly sensibly: the Christmas special will be showing on… Christmas Day, December 25, 2010 at 9pm/8c.

Which seems great – by 9pm, after a full day of presents and rich and sweet food, some time traveling chills and thrills with the Doctor and Amy might be just the thing.

Filed under: TV, Christmas, Doctor Who, holidays, science fiction

Terry Pratchett on Doctor Who

SFX magazine’s guest editor, Sir Terry Pratchett himself, explains why Doctor Who is questionable SF: “I wish I could hate Doctor Who…”

read the rest at: GUEST BLOG Terry Pratchett on Doctor Who.

Filed under: TV, Doctor Who, science fiction

Doctor Who Adventure Game at BBC

There’s a new Doctor Who adventure game over at the BBC as of today: Tardis. It’s not available from US internet addresses, but if you have a way round that, or are legitimately in the UK (or possible Europe, and maybe Australia or New Zealand?) you might want to check it out.

With the TARDIS caught in a time riptide, it’s up to Amy to save the day or leave the Doctor trapped in the void forever. Meanwhile, a dangerous entity is roaming the TARDIS corridors and it hasn’t been fed for a very long time…

This is your chance to be the Doctor.

Are you ready for the challenge?

via BBC – Doctor Who – TARDIS.

Filed under: Pop Culture, Doctor Who

Doctor Who: Every single journey through time

Doctor Who: Every single journey through time detailed detailed by Information is Beautiful. As a spreadsheet | Television & radio | guardian.co.uk.

Filed under: TV, Doctor Who, science fiction

Doctor Who’s Amy Pond – Karen Gillan – Gets Naked (NSFW)

or, The Pornification of Amy Pond

Science Fiction and fan-created erotica (ie, porn, in fancy clothes) go way, way back… Slash—a term for fan fiction depicting romantic or sexual relationships between fictional characters—began with fan-written stories, often very sexually explicit, about Captain Kirk and Mister Spock from the original Star Trek TV series.

Since then, slash-type fan produced material has blossomed to cover a wide-range of television shows beyond Star Trek, and even some non-televisual popular cultural texts, and has been the subject of a number of academic studies. Science fiction and fantasy is still the genre within which most such fan creation takes place, though fans have branched out somewhat into other genres—and also into other forms beyond the original fan fiction short stories.

In recent years, fan videos have also become popular ways of exploring romantic or erotic subtexts—with fans splicing together clips from TV shows depicting steamy or suggestive moments with an appropriate song as soundtrack. Needless to say, both the use of the song and the clips violate copyright, but in general producers and studios have preferred to turn a blind eye to such practices.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer for years proved particularly fertile ground for fans‘ imagined relationships between favorite characters. Of course, Buffy made it pretty easy, what with the soap opera-like love lives of its characters. But even before Willow had come out and gotten involved with Tara, fans were already writing lesbian sex scenes between Willow and Buffy. Similarly, fans depicted a romance between Buffy and Spike long before that relationship actually actually appeared on the show, near the end of the series.

Given Doctor Who‘s strong fan base and long history, it’s no surprise that there has been, for a long time, a great deal of fan activity associated with what is perhaps the most popular sci-fi TV series of all time. And given the Doctor’s penchant for scooping up attractive young women to accompany him on his adventures in time and space, it’s also no surprise that there has been a fair amount of fan-created material exploring romantic and sexual relationships between the Doctor and his companions.

I was surprised, though, at how quickly a large amount of faked nudes and pornographic images of the latest companion, Amy Pond, played by Karen Gillan, appeared on the internet.

Fake nudes and fake pornographic images of pop culture figures are not slash, and mostly are not associated directly with the fan communities that spring up around TV shows such as Star Trek, Buffy and Doctor Who, and that generate the slash (and non-slash) fan fiction, fan videos and the like. (There is a related phenomenon of artistic, often drawn or painted as opposed to photographic, images of an erotic nature, generally pretty soft-core and romantic, and that does arise within fan communities.)

These fake nudes and porn shots have been around since the early days of the internet, when they circulated in usenet newsgroups devoted to such images of popular celebrities and public figures. They are made from nude photographs or porn images, downloaded or scanned in, which then have the faces or features of a celebrity “photoshopped” onto them, with varying degrees of skill. Most often they are clearly identified as fakes, but every now and then one is taken as possibly genuine, though usually not for long, and it seems to be a point of honor with many of the fakers to identify their work as such, and even to sign it.

These fakes might be dismissed as little more than technologically sophisticated versions of crude caricatures in toilet stalls, but it is also possible to see them in a much more disturbing light—as the products of, or fuel for, the deranged sexual fantasies of celebrity stalkers. The truth is probably closer to the harmless end of the spectrum. As long as there have been stars, and hormonally-addled teenagers, there have been sexual fantasies about stars. Photoshop and the internet have simply provided a way of producing elaborate visions of those fantasies, and sharing them. (All that being said, I do want to acknowledge that the women—and occasional man—depicted in this way well may find it disturbing and offensive regardless.)

As I said, though, I was a bit surprised at how quickly faked images of the Doctor’s newest companion appeared. Before the second episode of the new series of Doctor Who had aired, I’d already stumbled across one fake—albeit a fairly mild one, shared via a link in a chat session on a website devoted to Doctor Who (see below; there is some mild NSFW material below the fold, but nothing hardcore).

Filed under: Pop Culture, Doctor Who, porn, science fiction

The Best Scene in Doctor Who History?

YouTube – The Best Scene in Doctor Who History… EVER.

Possibly, possibly. Certainly a great one. And for me, much as I love Amy Pond and am enjoying Matt Smith’s Doctor, the best scene would have to be one with David Tennant. Now I’m going to have to go and watch every episode to see if this really is the best scene…

Filed under: TV, Doctor Who, science fiction