The Doctor Who Thread

[Susan Foreman]

March 8th: Today in WHO-story

Births
1914 - George Tovey (Ernie Clements in Pyramids of Mars; father of 1960s Dalek movies' Susan actress Roberta Tovery)

1928 - Terry Bale (Soldier in The Reign of Terror and the voice of Arcturus in The Curse of Peladon)
1940 - Christopher Wray (PC Groom in The Dæmons and Lovell in The Sea Devils)
1948 - Gyles Brandreth (Big Finish Productions actor - Doctor Marriott in I.D. and Rexx in the Gallifrey story Intervention Earth)
1957 - Paul Clayton (Mr. Bartle in Planet of the Ood and Ulysees Meregrass in the animated special The Infinite Quest; Big Finish actor - Henry in The Wormery, 44 in the Bernice Summerfield story The Kingdom of the Blind and Mr. Colchester in the Torchwood stories The Torchwood Archive and Aliens Among Us)

Deaths
2012 - Cheryl Molineaux (Miss Rutherford in The Ambassadors of Death) aged 65
2014 - James Ellis (Peter Warmsly in Battlefield) aged 82

Episodes
1969 - The Space Pirates, Episode One: 5.8 million viewers
1975 - Genesis of the Daleks, Part One: 10.7 million viewers
1982 - Earthshock, Part One: 9.1 million viewers
1983 - Enlightenment, Part Three: 6.2 million viewers
1984 - The Caves of Androzani, Part One: 6.9 million viewers
2002 - Death Comes to Time, Episode Three ('The Child' - first installment)

Introductions
1975 - First appearance of the Daleks' on-screen creator Davros

1982 - David Banks and Mark Hardy's debut as the Cyberleader and Cyberlieutenant respectively

Releases
1984 - Issue 87 of Doctor Who Magazine (Marvel)
1990 - Issue 159 of Doctor Who Magazine (Marvel)
2001 - Issue 302 of Doctor Who Magazine (Panini UK)

2011 - The Ark (DVD - region 1)
2012 - Darkstar Academy and Torchwood: Army of One (BBC Audio); issue 259 of Doctor Who Adventures (Immediate Media Co.); issue 445 of Doctor Who Magazine (Panini)
2017 - Issue 2 of Torchwood Year 2 (Titan Comics)

Behind-the-Scenes
2002 - Recording of the Big Finish audio ...ish took place
2005 - Big Finish announce that an agreement was made with Paul Cornell to continue producing books and audio adventures featuring the Seventh Doctor's companion Bernice Summerfield
2006 - Shooting scripts for Love & Monsters were issued; recording for the music for The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit took place
2011 - Recording of the Big Finish audio Robophobia

[trebor8273]

Not sure if this has already been posted.seaaon three steel book out 26th of his month.

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by trebor8273

Not sure if this has already been posted.seaaon three steel book out 26th of his month.

It's not out until 7th of May. The cover had to be redesigned as it's the wrong Master on it.

[Susan Foreman]

Doctor Who casts Alan Cumming as King James I for series 11 - Radio Times

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by Susan Foreman

Doctor Who casts Alan Cumming as King James I for series 11 - Radio Times

James I ties in with the witchcraft episode i posted about a couple of weeks ago.

Good choice in Alan Cumming.

[iank]

Steve Roberts on the classic season blu rays:

"It's upscaled in hardware using a motion-compensated Teranex broadcast scaler.
Quote:
The idea of putting them onto Blu-ray as upscales to HD is a sound one. DVD compression is very lossy and blocky, so upscaling to HD and harnessing more modern codecs at high bitrates means that the episodes can be presented as near to studio quality as possible for a domestic format, plus the audio will be uncompressed rather than AC3. New and some of the older DVD extras made in HD will appear in better quality too. For other seasons where film inserts exist, these can be included in true HD.

I saw a couple of posts asking about upscaling. Theoretically it's possible to put SD material onto Blu-ray and cram on more episodes onto fewer discs. However:

* The Blu-ray Disc Association frown on this, as they want Blu-ray to be seen to mean High Definition.
* The cost of, say, two discs in SD versus six in HD would still need to be the same, as the manufacturing costs are low compared to the clearance costs. So from a consumer point of view, six discs represents better value for money than two.
* Putting the episodes on in HD means that the Restoration Team have control over the quality of the upscaling rather than your player or TV."

[Gothmogxx]

Originally Posted by Demdike@Cult Labs

This is a rip off. Just upscale your dvds. It was never filmed in HD.

Are they going to do this with every season? If not it's a waste of time.

New docs on Sontaran Experiment and Revenge of the Cybermen - two of the worst Baker stories.

I can only see this of interest to those who haven't bought the dvds.

I spent 10 years getting every DVD for my collection so I certainly won't be spending more of my time and money getting this: A decade spent getting them all was more than enough.

I will admit I have a soft spot for Revenge though. Maybe its because it was one of the first classic episodes I ever saw 10 years ago along with Pyramids of Mars Episode 1, all of The Mutants (first full story I watched, never understood why it gets slated so much), all of Tomb of the Cybermen another classic and all of Terror of the Autons. I've always enjoyed Revenge after repeat viewings.

I couldn't care less about The Sontaran Experiment though. People give Robot a hard time but that one is both a stereotypical UNIT story (sadly the second last proper, original UNIT story as well, but at least the Brig and his leadership get a good send off in Terror of the Zygons) and its very fun: Sontaran Experiment is just boring (and why doesn't Field Major Styre look even remotely as well designed as Commander Linx?) Props to Baker though for fighting Styre while suffering a broken collarbone: You can tell just by looking at his face how painful it is.

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by iank

Steve Roberts on the classic season blu rays:

"It's upscaled in hardware using a motion-compensated Teranex broadcast scaler.
Quote:
The idea of putting them onto Blu-ray as upscales to HD is a sound one. DVD compression is very lossy and blocky, so upscaling to HD and harnessing more modern codecs at high bitrates means that the episodes can be presented as near to studio quality as possible for a domestic format, plus the audio will be uncompressed rather than AC3. New and some of the older DVD extras made in HD will appear in better quality too. For other seasons where film inserts exist, these can be included in true HD.

I saw a couple of posts asking about upscaling. Theoretically it's possible to put SD material onto Blu-ray and cram on more episodes onto fewer discs. However:

* The Blu-ray Disc Association frown on this, as they want Blu-ray to be seen to mean High Definition.
* The cost of, say, two discs in SD versus six in HD would still need to be the same, as the manufacturing costs are low compared to the clearance costs. So from a consumer point of view, six discs represents better value for money than two.
* Putting the episodes on in HD means that the Restoration Team have control over the quality of the upscaling rather than your player or TV."

Which these aren't.

They can attempt to gloss it over as much as they want. When they declared Spearhead as the only one they'd put out on blu they seemingly forgot to mention upscaling the others.

It's just an attempt to make more money from the same thing when in fact they've run out of product.

I really doubt they'll release every season which makes this a gimmick. Obviously they can shoot me down. Here's hoping season 24 is next.

[Gothmogxx]

Originally Posted by Demdike@Cult Labs

they've run out of product.

Hence why Philip Morris needs to hurry up and give them some new product

I'm 100% certain the 90+ episode recovery rumour is rubbish but I think they have at least some more stuff, hopefully more of Season 5 as The Abominable Snowmen and The Wheel and Space were supposed to be with The Web of Fear and The Enemy of the World where they were found. Web 3 is also a potential find, apparently they're doing well in tracking it down. I've accepted that Season 4 is pretty much out of the question due to poor episode sales, which is sad because i'm watching it for my marathon and i'd love to see more of Macra Terror for example. Marco Polo would be up there as well in my request list, which is thankfully an episode that's likely to be found given it sold so well abroad

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by Gothmogxx

Hence why Philip Morris needs to hurry up and give them some new product

I'm 100% certain the 90+ episode recovery rumour is rubbish but I think they have at least some more stuff, hopefully more of Season 5 as The Abominable Snowmen and The Wheel and Space were supposed to be with The Web of Fear and The Enemy of the World where they were found. Web 3 is also a potential find, apparently they're doing well in tracking it down. I've accepted that Season 4 is pretty much out of the question due to poor episode sales, which is sad because i'm watching it for my marathon and i'd love to see more of Macra Terror for example. Marco Polo would be up there as well in my request list, which is thankfully an episode that's likely to be found given it sold so well abroad

The problem the BBC have got is that the people who would buy an animated Marco Polo for example would total around 20-30,000. These blu releases will sell less than that because not everyone has a blu-ray player and of those that do not all will be duped into buying the exact same episodes again.

It's time they got animating again. The most logical choice would be The Crusade but that's a no-no to the ultra PC BBC.

The Claws of Axos looked crap on both dvd releases. HD would make it look even worse if that's possible due to the NTSC quality meaning those pink lines will stand out even more.