Doctor Who is back

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Buzz Bumble
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Doctor Who is back

Post by Buzz Bumble »

The new part-season of Doctor Who starts on Prime soon (it's the second-half of the season started last year) ...
  • Doctor Who
    Prime
    8:30pm, Thursdays (starts 11 April)
Note: The latest Skywatch magazine says the show is on Tuesdays, but both the NZ Herald TimeOut article and TV Guide junk email say it's on Thursdays ... Sky is hopeless at getting their own schedules correct, so I'd believe the other two.

There's a prequel clip to the first new episode on YouTube for those with fast internet connections.


There's also a new kids' show by Doctor Who resurrecter Russell T Davies starting on Sky's UKTV ...
  • Wizards vs Aliens
    UKTV
    6:00pm, Sundays (starts 7 April)
    When aliens come to Earth, two teenage boys are all that stand between them and the most precious thing in the universe - magic! An exciting new children's drama created by acclaimed writer Russell T Davies, which brings together the popular genres of Sci-fi and Fantasy for the first time in a hilarious adventure series.
The rumour is that this show uses some of the scripts that were originally written for the Doctor Who spin-off The Adventures of Sarah Jane, but which weren't filmed because of Elizabeth Sladen death.



These are brief descriptions of the first four episodes of the new part-season of Doctor Who (minor plot spoilers - so highlight if you want to read them) ...
  • THE BELLS OF SAINT JOHN
    The Doctor's search for Clara Oswald brings him to modern day London, where wi-fi is everywhere. Humanity lives in a wi-fi soup.

  • THE RINGS OF AKHATEN
    The inhabited rings of the planet Akhaten, where the Festival of Offerings is in full swing. Clara meets the young Queen of Years as the pilgrims and natives ready for the ceremony. But something is stirring in the pyramid, and a sacrifice will be demanded.

  • COLD WAR
    The Doctor and Clara land on a damaged Russian submarine in 1983 as it spirals out of control into the ocean depths. An alien creature is loose on board, having escaped from a block of Arctic ice. With tempers flaring and a cargo of nuclear weapons on board, it's not just the crew but the whole of humanity at stake!

  • HIDE
    Clara and the Doctor arrive at Caliburn House, a haunted mansion sat alone on a desolate moor. Within its walls, a ghost hunting Professor and a gifted psychic are searching for the Witch of the Well. Her apparition appears throughout the history of the building, but is she really a ghost? And what is chasing her?





On a related note, this article was printed in the Wairarapa News. Maybe there's someone here who knows about it. :)
Harley Street pupils hold key to lost Dr Who shows
Intergalactic Investigation: International film researchers are chasing down a long lost Doctor Who episode that may have screened at the former Harley Street School in the 1970s.

Harley Street School may have long since closed, but a British researcher has discovered it may be at the heart of an enduring international television mystery.

In the 1960s, a generation of British school children were captivated by the onscreen adventures of their television hero, Doctor Who, and it was not long before the Doctor crossed hemispheres to fascinate New Zealand television watchers.

The programme, produced by the BBC, was broadcast from 1964 in New Zealand, and it seems Masterton may have been the final resting place of at least one of the characters adventures.

British researcher and fan of the series, David Crichton, says Doctor Who, like many British shows from the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s was not all archived. Over 100 episodes of the programme, broadcast in the United Kingdom between 1963 and 1969, are thought to be lost forever.

Television was seen as an ephemeral medium and little or no thought was given to retaining episodes of the series. The BBC recorded on expensive videotapes which had to be reused for other programmes. When they were wiped, the only copies left would have been 16mm film copies made of the show for overseas sale. Most of these were destroyed in the 1970s as foreign broadcasters cleared their archives.

"These programmes remain missing to this day. A1though 106 episodes of Doctor Who are still missing, episodes do periodically turn up in the hands of private collectors who are entirely unaware that their collections may be unique," said Mr Cricbton.

One such incident, in 1999, led to the recovery of an episode from a 1965 Doctor Who serial titled The Crusade, which was owned by a film collector here in New Zealand. It had been salvaged from an New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation skip in the 1970s by a 18mm collector.

Harley Street School has recently become the centre of a search for further missing episodes of the series. Sometime between 1972 and 1974 a 16mm Doctor Who print was shown on the school projector at the school.

"Rumours of this screening have been circulating among Doctor Who fans for over 30 years, and I've recently been undertaking some research to separate the fact from fiction — I've contacted several hundred former pupils and staff members, and I now have independent accounts of the Doctor Who screening," said Mr Crichton.

According to the story, an interschool sports day between Harley Street, Fernridge and Opaki schools in the 1970s was organised, but the activities ended prematurely due to bad weather.

The children were marched into the school hail and, as a special treat, were shown two episodes of a missing Patrick Troughton Doctor Who serial, The Macra Terror.

Though former teachers of the school that have been contacted have no memory of the event there is also a possibility that the screening took place as part of a summer holiday programme or something similar.

Mr Crichton is appealing to Wairarapa residents to contact him if they can remember the event.

I'd love to find out more details, like a fixed date, which would be incredibly helpful for my research, and it is of course my hope that we may be able to find out who supplied the Doctor Who prints, and perhaps contact them to see if they survived their ‘destruction' at NZBC and may still exist today in someone's attic," he said.

If you remember seeing this film at the school or have any information email David Crichton at: david_ian1@hotmail.co.uk or contact Wairarapa News.
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