The first day of September already. An autumn month - though the weather in London doesn't seem to realise so, fortunately. Less than three months to the Anniversary Special and An Adventure In Time And Space.
We discovered this week that BBC3 will be joining the celebrations with a clip show. Yes, all expense is being spared. These programmes are the cheapest thing going, and are invariably rubbish. A group of C- to Z-List celebrities who have no connection whatsoever to the programme are shown some clips and are then filmed commenting on what they have viewed - usually edited to make it look as though they know what they are talking about. In general, the people who take part just want to get their face on TV and care most about their own dwindling popularity through the exposure of being connected to something successful. Expect lots of struggling stand-up "comedians" who you won't see again - until another clip show.
In better news, I posted the other day about the new figurine collection. I am rather impressed with this, and promise I own no shares in the company. Issue 2 on the 12th September will have the Julian Bleach Davros, followed by the Lumic Cyber-Controller in Issue 3 (not a Cyberman as I originally thought) and a Weeping Angel in Issue 4.
Monday saw the release of The Ice Warriors. Just a word on the animation of episodes 2 & 3. The direction is nowhere near as distracting as that done for The Reign of Terror, and the faces are well done, but the limb movement is rather amateurish. The stars of the show - the Ice Warriors themselves - are realised in a very rudimentary fashion.
As I suspected last week, The Moonbase has now been pushed back to 2014.
Also on Monday we got to see the Doctor Who Prom on BBC1. Rather than simply present edited highlights, there were several interviews and other back stage items. This did mean that quite a lot of music was cut, plus most of the Madam Vastra / Strax introductions, which is a shame. I'm particularly surprised the specially written anniversary piece was not included. Always nice to see the monsters terrorising the audience. The Ice Warrior was more impressive in this than he was in Cold War...
Two guest artists passed away recently. Gerard Murphy played Richard Maynarde in Silver Nemesis. He was 64.
Christopher Burgess was one of Barry Letts' repertoire of favourite actors, first appearing in Doctor Who in The Enemy of the World (as Swann), then returning as Professor Philips in Terror of the Autons, and then Lupton's friend Barnes in Planet of the Spiders. He was 86.
Looking ahead to the coming week, there is a good chance that filming will begin on the 2013 Christmas Special - Smith's finale. Guest artists might start to emerge. Yesterday, there was a suggestion that Ian McNiece would be reprising Winston Churchill. A tweet implied this but was quickly withdrawn - either because it was erroneous or because it was a spoiler. Personally, I think it makes sense for River, the Paternoster Gang and Churchill to feature in Smith's final story, if only in a cameo.
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