BBC considers Doctor Who movie

I heard about this last year and I found an article on it from The Guardian which I have edited down >>>>

• Ben Dowell
• MediaGuardian,
• Wednesday October 3, 2007
• Article history

Doctor Who: Tranter 'would not rule out a film version'

The BBC controller of fiction, Jane Tranter, has left the way open for a movie version of Doctor Who - despite film adaptations of existing BBC dramas not being part of her new strategy for BBC Films.

Ms Tranter told MediaGuardian.co.uk that the move of the BBC films department from central London to a new base inside BBC Television Centre was designed to "cross-fertilise" film production with the expertise from the comedy, natural history and news and current affairs departments.

"This move is not about making feature films about things that are on the television - those ideas are staring us in the face already and may seem too obvious," Ms Tranter said.

However Tranter pointedly refused to rule out the possibility of a film version of Doctor Who, the department's most successful drama series of recent years.

"I would not rule out a film version of Doctor Who, no," she said.

This could see a follow-up to the two previous Doctor Who movies: Dr Who and the Daleks, and Daleks - Invasion Earth 2150AD. Both of these films starred Peter Cushing as the doctor - a part he never filled for television.

Ms Tranter also hinted that actor David Tennant, who plays the current doctor, was likely to return to the role for a fifth series, even though he has agreed to play Hamlet for the Royal Shakespeare Company next year.

His decision means that the fifth series will not be shown until 2010, two years after the fourth series airs next year, effectively creating a "gap year" filled by three Doctor Who specials starring Tennant and overseen by head writer and executive producer Russell T Davies.

"All we can say is that David is a fantastic doctor and that he is doing Hamlet," she said.

Doctor Who series 3 ended in July 2007 with 8 million viewers, a 39% share of the audience.

Reinventing DAVROS

Davros, in case you’ve spent the last week holidaying in another dimension, is back. Doctor Who’s most menacing adversary - a prune-faced genius of eyeless, shrivelled evil - returned at the fingernail-shredding climax of last Saturday’s penultimate episode.

As the series finale opens, Davros and his creations the Daleks are once again on the brink of world domination. Worse still, it is prophesied that one of the Doctor’s companions will die.

More drawings of Doctor Who's nemesis Davros and the Supreme Dalek No wonder the Doctor looked petrified. Davros had not been seen in an episode of Doctor Who since Remembrance of the Daleks in 1988. But as Neill Gorton, the man who built him, reveals the new Davros was inspired by an even older incarnation. Pre-production art concept of Davros The first thing we did was to go back to the 1970s version played by Michael Wisher," says Gorton, "We all agreed the very first Davros was somehow creepier - more sinister." Alterations were made, of course, partly because modern audiences expect a superior brand of alien mastermind. (Search on YouTube for a clip of 1980s Davros and you’ll gasp at the Hallowe’en clunkiness of his costume.) "We couldn’t use a hokey rubber mask," Gorton says, "but we also had to make Davros recognisable. When he first trundles into view we can’t have people saying, 'Who’s that bloke?'" The next generation Davros began life in the imagination of concept artist Peter McKinstry. While remaining faithful to the original "iconic design", McKinstry had two key aims: to make Davros bigger and scarier. "We wanted to get away from the slightly flimsy look of the earlier series," he says. "So I beefed Davros up, made him more sturdy. I also think that the reinvented Davros is unusual for the new Doctor Who because he is genuinely grotesque. Sometimes we’ve held back a bit with the ugliness of the monsters. But Davros is a very unpleasant looking character, which makes his return all the more powerful." It took McKinstry a week of 12-hour days to finalise his design. Then the baton passed to the man who would build Davros: Neill Gorton. You may not have heard of Gorton until now, but you have almost certainly marvelled at his work. It was Gorton who created, in the prosthetic sense at least, Catherine Tate’s Nan character, and who morphed Jim Broadbent into Lord Longford for Channel 4’s Bafta-winning drama, Longford. Earlier verions of Davros, he says, were crying out for today’s cutting-edge techniques. "The 1980s Davros mask was made of stiff rubber. It just had a slot where the actor’s mouth sticks out. If you look carefully you can see that it’s all painted black around that area to cover the join. Now we use modern materials like silicon gels that are incredibly flesh-like and move with the actor’s skin. Rather than the old pull-over-the-head mask, our Davros prosthetics are glued to the entire face so that every squint and snarl of the actor comes through." Davros’s new facial mask, designed in clay on top of a cast of the actor’s face, took four long weeks to perfect. Everyone from executive producer Russell T Davies down would suggest tweaks (“make the eyebrows meaner”; “harden the cheekbones”). What’s more, each prosthetic could only be used once. "It’s very delicate," Gorton says. "Because the whole mask gets glued to the face, every time you remove a prosthetic it gets ruined. We shot for six days in total, so we had to make half a dozen heads." Designing and building Davros clearly presented the production team with some extraordinary challenges. But at least none of them wound up trapped within their outlandish creation. The actor who plays Davros, Julian Bleach, who also played the Monster in ITV1’s recent Frankenstein, spent an hour and half each day in make-up. During filming, he then had to drink through a straw and spoon-feed himself using a mirror. "I occasionally got a bit disorientated and confused because my vision was impaired and sound became distorted," he says. "The overall effect made me feel almost as old as I looked." Somewhat unfairly, Bleach won’t earn much public acclaim for playing Davros because no one will recognise him. "I wouldn’t even recognise myself," he says. Indeed the reinvented Davros is so convincingly hideous, you wonder how Doctor Who’s younger fans will react. Were his creators concerned about making Davros too terrifying? "No, not all," says Gorton, "The scarier the better. That’s what’s Doctor Who is about: getting everyone behind the sofa." Here are some more images of Davros and also of the new Red Supreme Dalek

Catherine Tate on Charlotte Church Show

On Thursday, 19th July 2008, Catherine Tate is one of the guests on the third series of The Charlotte Show. David "I'm too ugly to be the Doctor" Mitchell is Charlotte's other guest.

James Nesbtt - I know nothing about being the 11th Doctor

Just browsing the BBC Press Office page and saw this >>

"I know nothing about being the next Doctor Who," James Nesbitt tells Graham Norton

This week's guests on The Graham Norton Show on BBC Two are James Nesbitt, Catherine Tate and The Kooks.

In the last show of the current series, James Nesbitt talks about the fact that bookies are offering odds of 6-1 on him being the next Doctor Who.

He tells Graham: "I know nothing about that. I wouldn't put a lot of money on it.

"I would find it very hard to follow David Tennant [but] my daughters would worship me forever because they're obsessed by it."

And Graham also gets to the bottom of reports of James getting entangled with Uma Thurman at a party thrown by Elton John.

The Murphy's Law star says: "I met her inadvertently. Bill Clinton was at the next table and towards the end of the evening I thought I should thank him for sorting out Ireland, and I was standing on – and ripping – Uma Thurman's train. She wasn't that pleased – someone lifted me and moved me."

Catherine Tate tells Graham that she'd like to return to her hit comedy series.

She says: "Not right now, but I wouldn't rule it out – specials or something with the old lady character."

And there's music from The Kooks, performing live in the studio.

The Graham Norton Show returns for a new series in the autumn.

The Graham Norton Show is a So Television production for BBC Two.

The Graham Norton Show, 9.45pm, Thursday 3 July 2008, BBC Two

The Latest Big Finish News

The Eighth Doctor Collection

New from Big Finish comes the ultimate collection for fans of Paul McGann's Eighth Doctor!

This 9 disc set features over 540 minutes of audio Doctor Who adventures and behind the scenes interviews with Paul McGann, Nicholas Briggs and Gary Russell and features a special re-issue of four classic Doctor Who adventures featuring the Eighth Doctor and his companion Charley, as played by India Fisher.

Storm Warning by Alan Barnes
The Eighth Doctor finds himself aboard the ill-fated R101 airship and meets Edwardian adventuress, Charley Pollard.

Sword of Orion by Nicholas Briggs
The Eighth Doctor and Charley get caught in the cross-fire of the Orion war. Things only get worse when the Cybermen are revived from hibernation.

The Stones of Venice by Paul Magrs
The Eighth Doctor and Charley arrive in Venice in the far future and become entangled in a web of love, lies, death and an ancient curse.

Invaders from Mars by Mark Gatiss
Manhattan 1938. The Doctor and Charley discover that Orson Welles's broadcast of War of the Worlds might not have been fiction after all.

Also appearing are Mark Gatiss (The Lazarus Experiment), Jessica Hynes (Human Nature), Simon Pegg (The Long Game) and Gareth Thomas (Blake's 7)

Also included is a 12 page, full colour booklet with an introduction by India Fisher and behind-the-scenes information on each play. Includes Bonus Documentary which takes a look at the making of the four adventures. Actors, writers, producers and directors – including Paul McGann, Gary Russell and Nicholas Briggs – reveal behind-the-scenes secrets, discuss production problems and recount all the fun and frolics encountered during these explosive four stories!

Released on August 30th, with a retail price of £39.99. Orders can be made via email - mailorderenquiries@bigfinish.com - telephone (01628 824 102) or via their website, www.bigfinish.com.

Orders that are placed before August 1st on the Big Finish Website will receive £15.00 off the RRP and get the set at £24.99!

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Doctor Who: The Stage Plays

Big Finish will open the curtains on Doctor Who’s theatrical past with audio adaptations of the three Doctor Who stage plays. Curse of the Daleks, a Doctor-less adventure was written by David Whitaker and Dalek creator, Terry Nation and was originally performed in London in 1965. The two subsequent stage plays were written by former Doctor Who script-editor, Terrance Dicks. 1974’s The Seven Keys to Doomsday starred Trevor Martin as a new incarnation of the Doctor and The Ultimate Adventure in 1989 initially starred Jon Pertwee and later Colin Baker. The Daleks were the Doctor’s opponents in both adventures.

‘These won’t be massive rewrites,’ explains executive producer Nick Briggs, ‘because we want to stay as faithful as possible to the originals and present, for the first time, a lasting, dramatised record of the Doctor’s stage adventures. Terrance has adapted his two plays, and I’ll be making minor changes to Curse, simply to make it more audio-friendly.’

In keeping with this, The Ultimate Adventure will even include the songs that were featured in the theatrical version.

Each play will be released as a double CD with The Ultimate Adventure being available from September, The Seven Keys to Doomsday in October and The Curse of the Daleks in November. Colin Baker will star as the Doctor in The Ultimate Adventure with Nicholas Briggs as the voice of the Daleks in all three. Further casting details are yet to be confirmed.

Doctor Who: The Stage Plays replace Cyberman 2 in the Big Finish schedules, with the Cyber mini-series now to be released in February 2009.

Torchwood Series 2 DVD Boxset Released

Front Cover

Rear Cover


What you get


Debuting at number 1 in many charts across the country, the complete second series of Torchwood was released on DVD today in the United Kingdom. The boxset contains 5 discs, the contents of which can be seen below;

Disc 1
Episodes: Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, Sleeper and To The Last Man

Disc 2
Episodes: Meat, Adam, Reset and Dead Man Walking

Disc 3
Episodes: A Day In The Death, Something Borrowed and From Out Of The Rain

Disc 4
Episodes: Adrift, Fragments and Exit Wounds
Extras: Deleted scenes, Outtakes and The Lives & Deaths of Captain Jack

Disc 5
Extras: Torchwood Declassified Cut Downs

Radio Times - 5-11 July 2008

The latest cover of RT with the Doctor's arch nemesis Davros, evil genius and creator of the most evil beings in the universe, the DALEKS!

Below are scanned pages of what you can expect to find inside the issue 8 pages of how the design the monsters of Doctor Who>>