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Created
Tue, 29/10/2019 - 11:30
Fury From The Deep is the latest missing Patrick Troughton story to receive the animated treatment and will be released next year. BBC Studios made the announcement on the Animations Panel at the London Comic Con at the weekend and a teaser has since gone up on the Doctor Who YouTube Channel. All six missing episodes of Fury from the Deep, the penultimate adventure from season five, will be animated in high definition in both colour and black and white. The release will also include the surviving clips from the serial, a new Making-Of, and other features still to be… Continue reading
Created
Tue, 15/10/2019 - 20:11

Update in 2024: You may have linked to this page because it's heavily quoted by a semi-anonymously published website called the “Stallman Report”. While the author of that document tried to contact me shortly before launching their site, I missed that email for a week or two. (I get a lot of email and as those of you who have emailed me know, my autoresponder indicates it's not the best way to contact me …). I got back to the author only after they'd published, asking for a phone or video call with them (in large part to discuss the inaccuracies in their “Stallman Report”). The author never followed up with me on that. While I would welcome rigorous journalistic coverage of these issues discussed herein, I sadly have not seen much of such, and the “Stallman Report” definitely is not written by a journalist nor is it researched with sufficient rigor, in my opinion.

Created
Sun, 13/10/2019 - 19:30

I was to meet my son for breakfast at the stipulated time. It was part of yesterdays ultimatum or perhaps pen-ultimatum. He was still in bed when I arrived to pick hm up. He had seemingly forgotten the acid words he had thrown my way the day before. We went …

Created
Sat, 12/10/2019 - 11:02
This year’s Adelaide and Brisbane Supanova Pop culture conventions are set to have a little flavor of Who to them with the announcement that Mark Strickson is coming for both events. Strickson, who played Fifth Doctor companion Vislor Turlough in the 80s, is set to join Eleventh Doctor companion Canton Delaware (Mark Sheppard- who told the DWCA this week that two episodes and travelling in the TARDIS makes him a companion). The duo joins the likes of pop culture icons John Travolta and Jason Isaacs for the conventions to be held at the Adelaide Showground November 2-3 and the Brisbane… Continue reading
Created
Mon, 07/10/2019 - 21:48
November 24 marks a very special occasion – exactly 40 years since the first-ever DWCA event in 1979. To mark to occasion the DWCA have an upcoming Day Event on the weekend just after the 40-year milestone on December 1. The event will be held at Club Burwood in Sydney. http://dwca.org.au/events/sydney-day-event-december-2019/ In preparation for the celebration, we’re sharing here Ashley Tuchin’s article Unconventional: A History of The ADWFC’s Doctor Who Parties which first appeared in Zerinza Volume 1. Zerinza Volumes 1 and 2 are both still available through the DWCA store. http://dwca.org.au/products-page/dwca-publications/ Unconventional: A History of The ADWFC’s Doctor Who… Continue reading
Created
Fri, 04/10/2019 - 19:59
Unique in so many ways, this episode of Doctor Who has been missing from the BBC archives for years, with fans trying very hard to plug the gap. The DWCA tried to reconstruct it as text in their Zerinza special back in 1980, when Rosemary Howe novelised it as part of her adaptation of The Daleks’ Masterplan. In 1989 John Peel crafted an official Target novelisation, incorporating it into his two novel adaptation of The Daleks’ Masterplan. In 2000 the amateur video production company Loose Cannon created their own reconstruction of the episode using the audio soundtrack along with available… Continue reading
Created
Fri, 04/10/2019 - 19:24
It’s official – Doctor Who DVDs and Blu-rays have a new distributor and the dates for the upcoming full season Collection boxed sets have finally been announced for Australia! The tale of bringing Doctor Who episodes to Australian collectors is a long and tangled one. Back in December 1984 Data Extract was first on the scene to break the news of Doctor Who videos arriving on Australian shores. “The rights to distribute the BBC video catalogue have recently been obtained by Polygram Music Video after stiff competition from Roadshow,” the story read. “The BBC video Revenge of the Cybermen will… Continue reading
Created
Sat, 21/09/2019 - 09:34
The latest issue of Data Extract has been sent to all subscribers, this issue featuring Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant discussing workplace relations on the set of The Twin Dilemma, an interview with writers Jon Blum and Robert Smith?, the second last episode of the Eleanor saga, a dive down the rabbit hole into Doctor Who Choose Your Own Adventures, political jargon in the Junkyard and fan discussion on the nature of creativity. All this and a new full-colour episode of The Dalek Chronicles – Time War! If you aren’t a subscriber, make sure to join up now! Continue reading
Created
Mon, 16/09/2019 - 17:30
Messerschmidts Heads
Franz Xaver Messerschmidt’s “heads”

In the late 80’s I wrote an awful essay for my Media teacher at Camborne Tecnhical College. There was no internet to speak of back then so I relied upon the books in the limited library for research. Most of the books seemed to …

Created
Mon, 16/09/2019 - 02:43
The robot, Bender, is adrift in space. His body is populated by 'Shrimpkins'
Bender might say, “Greetings to my yeasts and bacterias”

The picture above is from an episode of Futurama I watched with my boys. The robot, Bender, is adrift in space. His body is populated by ‘Shrimpkins’.

Auden wrote “A New Year Greeting” the year I was born. It was in …

Created
Wed, 11/09/2019 - 13:04
Both this blog post and the paper it describes are collaborative work led by Charles Kiene with Jialun “Aaron” Jiang. Introducing new technology into a work place is often disruptive, but what if your work was also completely mediated by technology? This is exactly the case for the teams of volunteer moderators who work to …
Created
Mon, 09/09/2019 - 09:03

I remember another time when I was young. In my homeland traveling by train. A group of passengers sprinkled throughout the open-plan carriage talked amongst themselves. They appeared to know each other from their intersecting lives in suburbia. This was obviously their regular commute. Rereading Saint-Exupéry I am reminded of …

Created
Thu, 05/09/2019 - 16:56
Victorian London will never be the same again, with Neve McIntosh, Catrin Stewart and Dan Starkey returning as Madame Vastra, Jenny and Strax the Sontaran for their own audio adventures in The Paternoster Gang: Heritage, from Big Finish Productions. Over the course of the four adventures, the much loved characters from the Steven Moffat era of Doctor Who face the first electronic automated cars in London (very ahead of their time), hordes of zombies, and ghost-like figures which are haunting Greenwich before their former selves have died… Plus they’ll have to cope with the capers of the Bloomsbury Bunch: an… Continue reading
Created
Thu, 05/09/2019 - 15:52
Imagine combining a love of Doctor Who and writing – it’s a dream that comes true for many fans but one that often feels totally out of reach -until now. Big Finish is looking for a new voice to join their stable and write an adventure for the next Bernice Summerfield and Unbound Doctor box set. Writers/fans from all around the world have until 23.59 UK time on September 20 to enter the competition. Writers are being asked to send a single page synopsis and a 3,000-word sample of the script with the Benny team putting together an asset pack… Continue reading