Torchwood Season ("Series") 3 reviews! From Easter 2009 - new articles every Saturday (plus more) on Doctor Who or Torchwood! From most 11th July, Saturday, onwards, weekly - Classic Season 1...
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A blog about planets (and more) of Doctor Who.
This is the third article in a regular weekly series of articles from planetzogblog on the topic of Doctor Who and religion. (Clink for link to the article last week on the same topic.)
Following on from part 2, which featured the 2006 Season, episodes 7, 8&9, here are some brief thoughts on the next episode:
(Please note, if you haven’t seen this season, the plot is discussed.)
Pending – this article will appear once I’ve watched the Doctor Who: Survival DVD…
This is the second article in a regular weekly series of articles from planetzogblog on the topic of Doctor Who and religion. (Clink for link to the article last week on the same topic.)
Following on from part 1, which featured the 2006 Season, episodes 1 to 6, the next three episodes are described here.
(Please note, if you haven’t seen this season, the plot is discussed.)
The BBC News Magazine has a story today saying that according to the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, the number of hyphenated words is shrinking (link.)
One aspect of the concerns Russell T. Davies has about “Planet Zog” (click on About on the header of planetzogblog for more) is that he is sci-fi writer hoping to reach a mass audience. In the latest Cassutt File at Sci Fi Weekly, Michael Cassutt discusses this subject:
“…the problem of selling a sci-fi or fantasy series to a television network, noting tremendous resistance to any concept set in a world that isn’t the here and now. Which means, no futures. No starships or distant planets or Martian colonies.”
This is the first article in a regular weekly series of articles from planetzogblog on the topic of Doctor Who and religion.
(Note also the recent Doctor Who news story (link) on this subject.)
(That news link discovered via the Behind the Sofa blog.)
Although Doctor Who has featured religion in the past, and these articles will cover 1963 to 2008, the 2006 Season and the 2007 Season in particular have been quite philosophical on this subject. So we will begin with the first half of the 2006 Season. (Please note, if you haven’t seen this season, the plot is discussed.)
Doctor Who Magazine 386 (the most recent one) features, on the letter pages, a letter titled “MAID TO PLEASE?”
From the letter:
“Have both the Tenth Doctor and the Master got a thing for women in maid outfits?… [The letter then details a list which was described previously on planetzogblog back in July (click for link) while adding Martha's mother and sister.] …All I can say is this: can the Doctor please take Donna to France?”
“When you see familiar faces
But you don’t remember where they’re from
Could you be wrong?
When you’ve been particular places
That you know you’ve never been before
Can you be sure?
‘Cause you know this has happened before
And you know that this moment in time is for real
And you know when you feel deja vu
[Chorus:]
Feel like I’ve been here before…”
Deja Vu by Iron Maiden from the album Somewhere in Time.
Tommorow, Tuesday, on BBC2 at 7:30pm, in the final part of The Cosmos: A Beginner’s Guide – it’s called Other Worlds – Adam Hart-Davis presents… planets around other suns.
(Previously, planetzogblog has mentioned last week’s part – click here for link.)
From the BBC/OU open2.net article on tommorow’s programme: “We catch up with some amazing findings in our solar system and beyond and unveil the chances of finding another earth and, possibly, life elsewhere in the Cosmos.”
Hmmm. Like a New Earth you might say.
Torchwood (the “adult” spin-off from Doctor Who) premiered in the US on BBC America on Saturday, September 8th at 9pm. (Yesterday.)
(Update January 15th, 2008: Click here for more Torchwood.)
Here is a link (click here) to Alan Sepinwall’s blog on this topic. (He’s the TV Critic for the New Jersey newspaper The Star Ledger.)
He’s writing about the first four episodes. He raises the point that, going by these first four episodes of Torchwood, the recently-broadcast-in-the-US Doctor Who episode Human Nature is actually much more “adult” than Torchwood.
Well, planetzogblog can’t disagree with that.
However, if you’re watching it – stick with it. Episodes 1 through to 6 are of variable quality, but things pick up from episode 7 dramatically, and the show is excellent from episode 7 through to 13 (the season’s end.)
Here is a viewer’s guide to help you to get through to episode 7. (It may be a struggle sometimes.)
Torchwood Season One, episodes 1 to 6 – a viewer’s guide.
This week on BBC2 there are a couple of factual programmes featuring black holes. (As seen on television’s Doctor Who’s The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit. Click on the Tenth Doctor on the right-hand-side column of planetzogblog for more on this black hole and its orbiting planet.)
Tonight, Tuesday, at 7:30pm, in part five of The Cosmos: A Beginner’s Guide, Adam Hart-Davis describes the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy.
He also investigates the solar weather (featuring Gamma-Rays) of our own sun. As the BBC2 listings blurb for tonight’s programme says “…writhing magnetic fields that occasionally snap, releasing millions of tonnes of material towards earth that can disrupt communications and electricity supplies.”
That doesn’t mention helping to power Dalek Experiments-after-the-Final-Experiment though. Read the rest of this entry »
The BBC announced today (link) that after the 2008 Season, Doctor Who in 2009 will be broadcast as three specials only, with another Season following in 2010.
Hmmm… planetzogblog is philosophical about this.
Classic Who was on our screens for twenty-six continuous years. This now seems extraordinary. In this day and age, programmes similar to Nu-Who would be seen as having a very long run if they continued for just five years – with the possible risk of a public perception of the show becoming stale.
Is this a strategy from the BBC to keep Doctor Who fresh and on our screens for as long as possible – “resting” the programme every five years or so?
