Dr Who fan in knitted puppet row

Once again, the world shows me that truth is far stranger than fiction.

BBC News Wednesday, 14 May 2008

A Doctor Who fan is embroiled in a row with the BBC after she published knitting patterns for the sci-fi drama’s monsters on the internet.

The patterns of Ood and Adipose were removed from her website after the BBC’s commercial arm complained that they breached its trademark.

But the woman said the corporation was “making an example of her”.

BBC Worldwide said it acted because finished figures were being sold by others on auction website eBay.

It also denied threatening legal action and said it had offered to consider marketing the designs itself.

The 26-year-old, who does not want to be identified other than as her online moniker of Mazzmatazz, said: “All I want is the BBC to be fair.”

“I’m just an ordinary fan, who happens to like knitting and sci-fi, and everything has just gone a bit crazy,” she said on her website.

Her case is being publicised by the Open Rights Group, a lobbying organisation which specialises in digital rights issues.

Executive director Becky Hogge told BBC News: “She doesn’t feel she’s doing anything wrong yet she’s being threatened with legal action.”

“In the offline world, what she’d be doing would be fine. But because she’s doing it online, which is a public space, it causes a problem.

Wayne Garvie, director of content for BBC Worldwide, explains the BBC’s actions

“The law is a blunt instrument - it doesn’t recognise the difference between someone hawking fake Louis Vuitton handbags, and someone doing what Mazzmatazz is doing. She’s not really infringing on the commercial interests of the BBC in any way.

“I imagine the BBC’s brand protection team are looking out all over the web for people infringing its trademarks and the e-mail they sent to Mazzmatazz was a stock one.

“The ripple effect of that e-mail was quite upsetting.”

A BBC Worldwide spokesman said it was not “heavy-handed” with “genuine fans of the show”, but that it had to act in the interest of licence-fee payers by protecting the Doctor Who trademark.

“If you don’t protect your trademark, it’s taken away from you. And Doctor Who is massive for the BBC. It’s up to us to earn money from it so we can re-invest it in the BBC,” he said.

He added: “It’s not that we don’t admire creativity from fans - most of the time, we take the view that if it’s small-scale and not for profit, then we turn a blind eye.

“This lady, with the best will in the world, wanted to share with friends, family and fans.

“But there were some unscrupulous people taking these patterns and using them on eBay to make profit for themselves. Unfortunately, we had to get to the source of the patterns - and that was her website.”

He said that Mazzmatazz was still welcome to get in touch with BBC Worldwide to discuss the issue.

“We were offering to take her ideas to our licensing team. While we don’t have any plans to offer any knitted toys, in the future, who knows?”

Ms Hogge said the case raised wider issues of intellectual property law, which is currently being reviewed by the government.

“The BBC have got a difficult situation here - the fans are a very important part of Doctor Who,” she said.

“This situation shows there should be some flexibility in the law - both for fans and for the BBC.”

So now that it’s illegal to show you how to do this… just look very closely and do like I do:

Doctor Who and The Planet of the Ood

Doctor Who- Series Four- Episode Three

Planet of the Ood

For those of you playing at home, the Ood first appeared in the excellent Season Two story, ‘Impossible Planet.’ A sympathetic psychic slave race, the Ood were used by a strange disembodied evil force living at the edge of a black hole hell bent on… it was never quite clear what its goal was… but luckily the Doctor and Rose stopped it! Unable to save the Ood (I’m still screaming at the screen that the Doctor has a time machine), the Doctor clearly had a debt to pay the visually stunning alien race. The production team must have felt the pangs of guilt as well because there is no clear reason why this story was made other than to bring the Ood back.

To be honest, that’s fine with me. One of the more impressive aliens of the new series, the Ood look and sound very creepy and ‘classic’ Doctor Who… yet the story itself fails to deliver.

The problems start with the beginning where we see the Doctor and Donna sharing their exclamation pointed expositionary dialog (we’re on an alien planet! I can’t believe it! I grew up in the suburbs and here I am on an alien planet!!). This exchange of lines is so painfully drawn out that a death row inmate forced to watch this episode asked if the schedule could be stepped up a bit. The setting is quite stunning and it’s a change of pace to see the TARDIS land on an alien planet full of snow and ice.

The Doctor and Donna discover a dying Ood and are enthralled in a mystery. Say what you will about contrivance, but this is one of the few ‘classic series moments’ in this new Doctor Who… something that almost made me like this one. Nearby is a factory where Ood slaves are processed and sold as slaves to Earth colonies. The Doctor and Donna sneak into the facility (after a brief ‘we’re not married’ joke that just never works) and soon find that things are not as innocent as the company Ood Operations would like people to think. Given that the story opens with an enraged Ood and then a pathetic dying one, this is hardly a surprise.

The story progresses at a painful pace as excellent guest star Tim McInnery (of Blackadder) acts in one scene steering the evil plot and the Doctor and Donna wander around the factory uncovering random plot points that don’t really connect. We discover that the Ood are born with their brains in their hands (not one person in a read through laughed out loud at this??) and a gigantic brain has been housed in a secret storage facility for hundreds of years, trapped in an energy prison and thereby keeping the Ood prisoner.

This major plot point involving a giant brain fails miserably to connect up with the rest of the story. This is a shame, because the rest of the story is actually quite good. See, there is this splinter group of humans who call themselves ‘Friends of the Ood’ who have been working very patiently to free the aliens from slavery. One member of the group is the docile assistant Ood to McInnery’s evil Halpen. While McInnery has been thinking that he was being fed hair tonic throughout the story, it was actually a fluid that was slowly turning him into an Ood.

Okay, so that makes about as much sense as enslaving a race with a giant brain being kept in a warehouse.

Yet the Friends of the Ood storyline is the best bit of this story. Again the special effects department have risen to the occasion in producing very impressive masks, but the story itself is so flimsy and undercut by Tennant’s uninspired performance and terrible Catherine Tate who still fails to bring anything to the program.

During his second year as executive producer, Russell T Davies said that he was dead against setting stories on alien planets because it just looked cheap and unbelievable. This is very ironic because the stories set on other worlds have been quite good. Also ironic is that according to wikipedia, the initial drafts of this story by writer Keith Temple were deemed as being “too dark” and “too old Doctor Who.” Many fans have highlighted similarities between this episode and the classic 1980’s serial ‘Revelation of the Daleks.’ Both take place on cold planets, both stories operate almost entirely independent to the Doctor and his companion and both stories have an unusual amount of violence and gun play. Given a few tweaks in the right direction, this episode could have been quite good. As it happens, it’s only a slightly above par episode of a series that seems to be treading water at best.

Next week, the return of the Sontarans.

Doctor Who -Planet of the Ood premieres in the US this Friday on the Sci-Fi Channel.

Doctor Who- Fires of Pompeii

Doctor Who- Series Four- Episode Two

The Fires of Pompeii

The second episode of the ‘light-hearted’ fourth season of Doctor Who (RTD) is once again annoyingly close to being almost watchable.

A brilliantly shot episode on Rome’s Cinecittà studios, it is the single episode shot outside of the English shores in this extremely expensive revival series… and it shows. The sets are great, the location work is stunning and even the premise (aliens cause the destruction of Pompeii) is a smart one. So where does this show go wrong?

The Doctor and Donna arrive in ancient Rome in much the same way they enter any situation, with exclamation marks.

Donna-”Look at me! I’m in ancient Rome!”
Doctor-”I know! Isn’t it great!?”
Donna-”It IS! I’m enjoying myself!”
Doctor-”We are BOTH enjoying ourselves! This is good!-Being in ancient Rome, I mean!”

… etc.

The writing takes a further downward spiral with the lazy writing convention that gets worse each time it gets explained, the translation circuit. I’ve been watching the program since I discovered that I’m awkward around girls, so I know that we as an audience are ‘hearing’ English no matter where the Doctor goes. I never really thought much of it and was thankful that the show cared little for it as well. Then in walks the new program and explains that the TARDIS’ ‘telepathic translation circuits’ allow the crew to hear English. Not just English, mind you, but London-accented suburban English. Since the introduction of Rose, the program has been taken from the RADA-class English accents and dropped head first into the exact same ‘do you ‘ave any bruvvers?’ London accent. Even in ancient Rome, it is inescapable.

The plot involving a cult of mystics that inhale volcanic ash that is actually microbes of alien life called the Pyrovale is pretty clever. The special effects including the interior of Vesuvius and the Pyrovile themselves are very nicely done. The double psychic duel over the Doctor’s secrets was also an interesting change of pace (but I always enjoy seeing the Doctor out of his depths).

Yet all in all… the episode is terrible.

(I’ve also read that the Pyrovile are in the story at RTD’s insistence which makes me wonder what the original script was like).

Aside from the aforementioned accents problem and the characters busy explaining who they are and how they feel in every scene, the real problem with this one is the ending. Essentially, this episode was constructed to put the Doctor in a moral dilemma where he realizes that he has to choose not to interfere with what he describes as a ‘fixed point in history.’ Donna pleads with him to do otherwise, but he stands back to let Vesuvius erupt as it was destined to. In a perfect world, this would be where the episode ended.

But, oh no.

The TARDIS returns and rescues the family of four that have stumbled through the plot as a mixture of exposition and comic relief. Why save only four people? Doesn’t that upset history? It gets worse. The episode ends with the family living the high life in Rome proper (how they did this I have no idea) and paying homage to sculptures of Donna and the Doctor as their patron Gods.

Yikes.

My only hope is that this pays off in a later story.

But my hopes are low.

-Doctor Who-’Fires of Pompeii’ premieres on the US Sci-Fi Channel this Friday Night-

Doctor Who composer Tristram Cary dies

The father of electronic music Tristram Cary has passed on at the age of 82.

The composer of haunting music from the seminal years of Doctor Who and co-inventor of the synthesizer used by Pink Floyd, The Who and Roxy Music, Cary was a pioneer and maverick of music. Without this wizard coming up with some of the strangest melodies and sounds ever heard, we would be a much quieter and saner planet… and we can’t have that.

When the young genius was serving his country as a naval officer during WWII, he conceived the idea of electronic ‘tape’ music, a concept that would develop into the unusual modern sounds that exploded onto the scene in the 1963 TV serial Doctor Who - The Dead Planet (today known as episode one of The Daleks).

The howling sounds mixed with strange twitterings and metallic scratching evoked the outcome of a thermonuclear war and the alien world that it had created. At the time it must have seemed nightmarish. Anyone hearing it today would think it the lost work of a band such as COIL or Nurse With Wound (he was that far ahead of his time). Sadly this level of musical genius associated with Doctor Who is long gone. Whereas it was once the birthplace of innovation, the program is now the home of bombastic music more at home accompanying Russian tumblers at the hyper active hands of Murray Gold. But all things change and as you know hope springs eternal. But we will never see the likes of Tristram Cary again in this world… and that’s okay.

He was unique and we benefited from his example.

To listen to some of his tracks and learn more about this incredible musician, visit his website.

Recommended:
Doctor Who: Devil’s Planets
Doctor Who: The Daleks’ Master Plan (BBC Radio Collection)

Doctor Who-2008 Christmas Special

So much for my career as a mystic!

Despite my prediction that big changes are on their way for next year with a new producer and new Doctor, it appears that Tennant is still the reigning timelord of the season.

(guest star David Morrissey - the ‘other Doctor’ and David Tennant pictured)

A recent post to a Doctor Who entry on my blog alerted me to the fact that this year’s Christmas Special is already in production and filming in Gloucester. A mixture of a period piece and alien invasion story, this year’s holiday special will feature the dreaded robotic Cybermen in a Victorian England setting.

(on the spot footage)

It bears mention that next year will be a year of specials rather than a full 13 episodes. It has also been mentioned that Tennant may not be in all four of these specials. Could this Christmas Special be a tale from the Doctor’s past?

And just why is David Morrissey’s character refered to as ‘the other Doctor?’ Is this the face of the 11th Doctor?

We’ll have to wait and see.

Doctor Who Series 4 - Episode 1

In response to the decidedly darker tone of Series 3, producer Davies stated that this new series would be much lighter. I had no idea exactly what he meant, but apparently he had stayed up late at night watching old Laurel and Hardy videos before filming the Series 4 opener, ‘Partners in Crime.’

The last time we had seen Catherine Tate as the ‘runaway bride’ Donna Noble was in the 2007 Christmas Special… y’know the one that was really really bad with the wedding and the spider-lady that could not move. In the special she was portrayed as brassy and took no gaff from the usually charismatic Doctor. When it was announced that she would be returning to the program, I thought that this would be a welcome change to the ‘companion is in love with the Doctor‘ formula that has ruled this series since 2005. Then we got to this season and my hopes were squashed.

1. Partners in Crime

The series opens with middle-aged wastrel Donna Noble who lives with her mum and pines after a time traveling gay man who lives in a blue box. Donna fights with her mother (in strangely fading montages) who is somehow five years older than her and visits character actor Bernard Cribbins who watches the skies for walk on parts in BBC productions. Donna has been spending her time following unusual events such as UFO sightings and is now involved in the deep investigation of a suspicious diet pill Adipose.

Seriously… that’s the plot.

Apparently just anyone can be an investigator getting into scrapes and uncovering conspiracies as Donna shows remarkably the exact same hunches as the Doctor who is ‘hilariously’ within a stone’s throw to Donna throughout most of the story (though the two fail to notice each other). The lack of a payoff for any of these jokes is outdone by just how horrific Tate looks. She is dressed in a cheap real estate salesperson’s suit, wearing what looks like a cancer wig and more makeup than John Barrowman (and that’s a lot). I’m not so much against Tate here as I am against the show. After a trio of hot young ladies we get a frankly unattractive older woman with nowhere to go in her life. It’s an argument that would put the straightest man off of women entirely. The production team has made poor Tate look as big as a tank next to the whisp-like Tennant. I’m really not sure what the idea was.

If the forced chemistry didn’t kill this episode, the story itself certainly did. Adipose is ‘revealed’ to be an alien invasion plot of miniature fat creatures. Actually the evil Ms. Foster has apparently been waiting for just anyone to simply ask her what her plan is and when the fresh out of acting school reporter comes along she is certainly relived that she finally has someone to give her lines to. She is a wet nurse hired by the Adiposian family (or some such nonsense that Davies didn’t bother to waste any time working on) to foster (get it?) their children into adulthood. Apparently their planet is lost (the result of the Time War perhaps, something that ran throughout all of Series One and was never mentioned again… I stupidly thought it was a brilliant plot thread at the time but have since realized it is a plot contrivance). The diet pill attracts fat cells and somehow turns them into little CGI fellas that wave at the camera and cavort… and nothing else. Foster also has a sonic screwdriver pen that can apparently do all of the nonsensical things that the Doctor’s magic wand can.

This is never explained.

The Doctor and Donna run around a deserted office building chased by the evil Ms Foster and the only two men she could convince into following her (it’s almost heart-warming how this aspect of ‘three fellas are going to invade the Earth’ aspect of the Classic Doctor Who series has infected this new version) for what seems like forever. Then the ‘partners in crime’ find the massive one thing that will end the episode and mess around with it until everything ends… and Ms Foster falls to her death like Wyle E Coyote in a Warner Brothers cartoon.

The final moments of the episode consist of Donna showing the viewers that she has apparently been driving around with a trunk full of gear in case she ever ran into the Doctor in hopes that he could whisk her away from her very very sad life. There is a brief inexplicable appearance of Billie Piper who fades away after showing the viewers at home that she’s had some plastic surgery and the TARDIS flies by Cribbins. Donna and the Doctor lean out of the TARDIS‘ open door to wave to him and my hopes for this season not making me want to kick the television in are squelched right there.

For all of the new series flaws, the TARDIS flying in the sky with the Doctor and Donna waving goodbye ranks amongst the worst moments in TV history.

Davies wanted a lighter tone and he has certainly set it here. This fourth series will be full of slapstick, the Doctor and Donna being mistaken for a married couple and lots of mad running from one scene to the next. I’m hoping for the usual one to three stand out episodes, but other than that… I’m praying for Davies to leave the program… and I’m not a praying man.

Doctor Who premieres on the Sci-Fi Channel in the US this Friday, April 25th.

(Doctor) Who Will Save Your Soul?

The BBC science fiction series Doctor Who has enjoyed a kind of popularity that is seldom seen in popular culture (though I do live in a country where you can study Buffy the Vampire Slayer). With roughly 8 million viewers a week domestically and even more through cable export and DVD sales, it’s fair to say that this long-running series is unique in its success.

But can it save your soul?

32 year old Father Ben Andrews thinks so. His church was featured in the the episode ‘Father’s Day’ in the first series of the new Doctor Who. With such on-air exposure, Father Ben had to take advantage of the tie-in to bring in more parishioners. He started a Doctor Who-themed evening to reach out to youngsters, putting old Jesus Christ in a ‘time-lord-ish’ light.

Hey… whatever works , padre.

On the flipside, Whovian Simon White has discovered the face of God and He may just have a wee goatee since His nemesis is the snappy dresser Doctor Who. A once happy collector of K-9 cookie jars, a closet full of knitted scarves and cricketing gear, White woke up one day only to realize that his childhood hero was actually the devil.

Dr Who and his materialistic obsession with it represents the “greatest lie that Satan ever told” according to Mr White. …Having discovered Christianity Mr Smith has renounced his old life and is putting the whole collection up for sale in local trade magazines and on eBay. He said: “God delivered me from the evil that is Dr Who, materialism and alcoholism.

“Through my relationship with Jesus I saw that none of this was making me happy and I was born again like Lazarus. It’s a timely tale as we come up to Easter. I wanted to tell others that no matter what trouble you are in God can deliver you from the evil. If you are prepared to have a relationship with him then God can help. I have been resurrected. My old life is dead, my new life is alive.”

While personally I enjoy the adventures of the time traveling hero, I’d hardly say he is either God or Devil, yet… whatever works. I just want to know if Father Ben is bidding against me on the Weetabix Ice Warrior standee.

Why oh why did Simon split up the set into separate auctions!!??

Rose Tyler and the future of Doctor Who

Last week Doctor Who returned to the airwaves and while it was exciting to see David Tennant and Catherine Tate renewing their chemistry from last year’s Christmas Special Runaway Bride, the real surprise came at the end of the episode where a certain blond woman was seen, Rose Tyler. With popular actress Bille Piper returning to the series that made her a star, the Internet is ablaze with controversy and theory about what this could mean.

An innovative program begun in 1963, Doctor Who is a television production that is surrounded with majesty and magic alike. With stories by Robert Holmes, David Whittaker, John Luccarotti and many more told ground breaking tales of human history and psyche. Special effects that may seem simplistic and silly today but in reality paved the way for many a science fiction spectacle that we take for granted today. Stage actors and TV mavericks united in producing the most loved TV program of its like.

When Doctor Who returned to cathode ray tubes across the globe back in 2005, the first episode of this 21st Century version of the British institution was entitled simply ‘Rose.’ The focus of the first season was not so much on the star (The Doctor), but on the relationship between the Timelord and his unlikely human assistant Rose Tyler. A simple shop girl who went on to visit other planets and the end of human history itself, she even merged with the energy of the Doctor’s ship itself and rewrote all of time to spell doom for the Daleks.

While the Doctor’s sacrifice of one incarnation to make way for another at first unsettled Rose (and viewers!), in time she grew to understand this aspect of her strange traveling friend. A burgeoning romance bloomed between the two adventurers who ran unscathed through the fires of Hell and alien laser fire… until the inevitable caught up with them. A barrier a thousand worlds wide separated the time travelers that can never be bridged.

Until now, that is.

Producer Russel T Davies tackled Doctor Who in much the same way any other creator working on a project with such a massive legacy would. He created a device many call a ‘Mary Sue.’ His companion Rose Tyler was in many ways himself doting on his childhood hero and gushing at the wonders of his/her adventures. The ascension from companion to hero is a wish fulfillment that any fan would have and the devastating separation also a kind of inevitable turn of events. Even when Rose is not in the show, she is in the the show. With head writer Russel T Davies pulling the strings, all plot threads lead to Rose Tyler (if you’ll excuse the painfully mixed metaphor) and her importance to Doctor Who.

Despite all of this the Doctor and Rose cannot end up happily ever after.

Throughout season two of the series the Doctor and Rose are told that they will pay the price for the invulnerability to danger. In the season finale Doomsday, this comes to pass. Throughout season three the Doctor pines and pouts about Rose, the woman he once loved. Rose appears again in season four, but so far is a strange spectral image that fades into mystery.

2008 marks the 45th anniversary of the longest running science fiction series on television. It will also mark the end of producer Russel T Davies involvement. Despite many attempts to inform the public that he has been ‘convinced to stay,’ the producer has revealed in interviews that he is anxious to move on to other programs. This means that all of the toys must go back in the box that spawned them, including Rose Tyler. The three part season finale ending in a story entitled ‘Journey’s End’ will feature every companion (and likely monster/villain) ever in this new version of Doctor Who in a mighty stand off, ending in the only way that it can, death.

The death of Rose Tyler and this lovesick version of the Doctor will pave the way for a new life of the program that another producer and cast will take up. Much in the same way that Peter Bryant gave way to Barry Letts in 1970, 2008 will be the end of an era.

In 2009, Doctor Who will return as a series of specials that will no doubt honor the history of the program as the new production team huddles together to make the program anew. And what will come?

Only time will tell.

Doctor Who- Series 4 footage

After the start of Doctor Who season 4 tonight, you can bet that Whovians are all aflutter about their favorite Timelord. But what’s a new season without the old monsters?

Caught in the act, here’s on the spot footage of Daleks in series 4. In the footage we see Daleks rounding up humans on a contemporary London street.

Watch it while it lasts…

To add to the excitement, here is a trailer video featuring dual-weaponed Daleks, the Ood and the Sontarans:

One last vid for the night, an exclusive documentary on the Adipose from the series 4 opener ‘Partners in Crime.’

Doctor Who 4.1 Sneak Peek

Enjoy it while the link lasts, but here is a clip from the fourth season opener of Doctor Who starring David Tennant as the time traveling Doctor and Catherine Tate as the unlikely companion, Donna.

This clip features monsters from the first episode ‘Partners in Crime’ which concerns the new CGI creations from The Mill, the Adipose.

Burning Question for Doctor Who: Davros Back for Season 4?

By John Scott LewinskiWhat lies ahead for Doctor Who? Stars David Tennant and Catherine Tate gathered with other show actors, writers and directors in Central London last weekend for the official launch of the show’s fourth season on BBC1. The group offered glimpses into the inner workings of the popular sci-fi franchise.

After viewing the new season’s first two episodes, Tennant, Tate and show runner Russell T. Davies fielded questions about Doctor Who’s future. This will be the show’s last full season before taking a part-time hiatus with just three 90-minute specials next year.

Will Davies be back to executive produce? Will Tennant give way to Doctor No. 11? Is a feature film in the works, considering the show’s massive appeal since returning to TV?

And, as more of a hard-core fan query, will Davros (evil creator of the Daleks) return to the show this season? More importantly, are rumors true that a major star like Sir Ben Kingsley is in position to play him?

Answers start materializing this Saturday on BBC1 — and probably on BitTorrent, LimeWire and YouTube soon afterward.

Sir Ben Kingsley’s name has been bandied about for almost a year now as playing Davros, the creator of the Daleks. If anything, it’s a sign that Davies is desperate (once again) for ideas and bringing all of the old creations back.

We saw this in Peter Davison and Colin Baker’s eras where the program was rife with old ideas as these actors struggled to make their mark in the role. In the opinion of many, it hampered the program and kept it from growing. If you look at the most creative periods of Doctor Who, they have nothing to do with Daleks, Cybermen or any other old creations. For instance, the Philip Hinchcliffe era featuring the introduction of Tom Baker to the role had almost no previous creations in it (aside from the Barry Letts-influenced first season) and is lauded by fans for some of the best stories of the program’s history.

So far the best episodes of this new Doctor Who have not been the Dalek or Cybermen stories, but the two parter ‘Empty Child/The Doctor Dances,’ ‘Girl in the Fireplace’ and ‘Blink.’ What the program needs is more of these kinds of episodes… wait… aren’t those all Steven Moffat creations?

Season 4 of Doctor Who premieres this Saturday 4/5 on BBC1.