tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-203228652024-03-15T11:51:33.161+13:00P.S.Researching and writing, mainly about Doctor WhoPaul Scooneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05977298672662345736noreply@blogger.comBlogger154125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20322865.post-77424559078002308732024-03-13T21:57:00.011+13:002024-03-15T07:58:28.829+13:00Roger Noel Cook<p>I'm saddened to learn that Roger Noel Cook, the regular writer on the <i>Doctor Who</i> comic strip in <i>TV Comic</i> from 1966 to 1970, has died. </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">I
encountered Roger when I was researching my book, <i><a href="https://telos.co.uk/shop/doctor-who/the-comic-strip-companion-1964-1979/">The Comic Strip Companion 1964-1979</a></i>, a guide to the <i>Doctor Who</i> stories from <i>TV Comic</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">We made
contact through Barracudas guitarist and songwriter Robin Wills, who had
interviewed Roger on his blog in February 2009. Roger was talking about his
music career but made a passing reference to having written <i>Doctor Who</i>, so this
had to be the same man whose name frequently appeared in recently obtained BBC
correspondence files concerning the comic strip. Having been alerted in
February 2010 to the existence of the interview by fellow researcher Richard
Bignell, I contacted Wills, who kindly forwarded my request on to Cook. Roger
got in touch, and we struck up a regular correspondence via email. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Looking
back through the emails from February and March 2010 when we were writing back
and forth nearly every day, I’m most struck by how enthusiastically “Roger the
Dodger” or “The Madman from Marbella”, but usually just “Rog”, responded to my
many questions about his work. His memories were hazy, which was understandable
given that four decades had passed since he’d stopped writing for <i>TV Comic</i> in
1970. He told me that, “My recollections are hopelessly scattered”, but he was
keen to provide whatever details he could recall. He hadn’t kept copies of his
work, so I sent him scans of the comic strips from <i>TV Comic</i>. He enjoyed seeing
these, revisiting them for the first time since their original publication. He was
astonished too when I reunited him with copies of his letters and synopses from
the correspondence files held by the BBC.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZgLyO_GjS9yWiNeWsIyd8SXehMxwWXJ4firmL6Yu00V0_DSiikTJV5H_46dUh0bJpD5OXatE0oUj5ycqIXzYi0UnWCmAndVQqVOMRbDF0vdfjxHtJyE16QA_NI70AT6ZJakIHTjDywVcM3AE8s8koX5sFSf9TFb8p4vRPG9H2B5jU_wc0eL8c/s2596/1969%2012%2010.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2596" data-original-width="2204" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZgLyO_GjS9yWiNeWsIyd8SXehMxwWXJ4firmL6Yu00V0_DSiikTJV5H_46dUh0bJpD5OXatE0oUj5ycqIXzYi0UnWCmAndVQqVOMRbDF0vdfjxHtJyE16QA_NI70AT6ZJakIHTjDywVcM3AE8s8koX5sFSf9TFb8p4vRPG9H2B5jU_wc0eL8c/s320/1969%2012%2010.jpg" width="272" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>One of Roger Noel Cook's letters to Roy Williams at BBC Enterprises, dated 10 December 1969. He was delighted to see this again, observing, "Not many writers would refer to themselves as 'The Idiot'! ... That's my signature, like a spider on drugs."</i></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p class="MsoNormal">One of the
most interesting things I learned from Rog was that he was just 19 years old
when he was hired by TV Publications (later Polystyle), who had offered him “a
very attractive deal”. This meant that when we were corresponding, he was only
in his mid-60s. He was fulsome in his praise for artist John Canning (who
started illustrating the strip around the same time Rog began writing it). He
shared with me his impressions of what it was like to work for <i>TV Comic</i>. He
described the staff as “church going Christians” and as such didn’t feel as if
he fitted in – “I must’ve slipped through the net” - but nevertheless
considered them “lovely people to work with”, pointing out the stark contrast
with his later lucrative career as a publisher of porn videos and magazines.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">As Rog
pointed out, <i>Doctor Who</i> was just one of many regular weekly strips he worked on
in the latter half of the 1960s. <i>TV Comic</i> did not include creator credits, so
it was a revelation to discover that Rog had been the regular writer on <i>Tom
& Jerry</i>, <i>Popeye</i>, <i>Beetle Bailey</i>, <i>Orlando</i> and <i>Ken Dodd’s Diddymen</i>, amongst
others. He was phenomenally prolific, estimating that he wrote on average about
20 scripts a week, half for <i>TV Comic</i> and half written freelance for IPC. “All
my scripts were written at enormous speed,” Roger told me. “I would be
embarrassed to write anything at that speed now. I would just write what was in
my head at the time. I didn't plot and I didn't re-write. I just wrote ‘em as
they came to me.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKi3Hz-2cUZxkHwriywGvhvtvbaHuteAJ-9kD4eIxdbnBNQZm7YgLMYIvOQggJjjdK_ckeBUurHD391ch57zxalF5IernzvZ8pFwInP0dZcQQcezU2imKkzp-PgaRLv2oQaOyFUYnTdyjFH50XLT2Iz5gwc7cmTxHQ-m-9XKGG4FR7axSkFDDL/s2576/0864%20p8-9.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1729" data-original-width="2576" height="215" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKi3Hz-2cUZxkHwriywGvhvtvbaHuteAJ-9kD4eIxdbnBNQZm7YgLMYIvOQggJjjdK_ckeBUurHD391ch57zxalF5IernzvZ8pFwInP0dZcQQcezU2imKkzp-PgaRLv2oQaOyFUYnTdyjFH50XLT2Iz5gwc7cmTxHQ-m-9XKGG4FR7axSkFDDL/s320/0864%20p8-9.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>One of Roger Noel Cook's many </i>Doctor Who<i> strips (</i>TV Comic<i> issue 864 cover dated 6 July 1968).</i></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p class="MsoNormal">He was
proud of the fact that he earned so much from his work that he was able to
purchase an E-type Jag, inspired by John Canning who owned a brand-new Mark 10
Jag. Rog had a life-long passion for cars, and told me all about his
impressive collection of Bentleys. He was excited to be working with his son,
an award-winning animator, on launching an online Formula 1 car racing game
with David Coulthard as a backer.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">His emails conveyed so much energy and enthusiasm. They were unfiltered streams of consciousness. He’d answer my questions about the <i>Doctor Who</i> strip as best he could, but would often go off on tangents taking in what he’d been up to that week (“</span>Played tennis in the rain yesterday… lost to 16 year olds”); observations about his life in Marbella (his neighbours, he informed me, included “premier league soccer stars who can barely communicate, Saudi Princes, Russian oil magnates, gangsters and stockbrokers who wrecked the globe's financial system...”), and observations about his time in the music and porn industry <span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">(</span>“I wasn't offensive until I started to edit <i>Men Only</i> and <i>Club International</i>. Then I learned how to upset people - the establishment and just about everyone everywhere except a few million readers every month.”)</p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwbmz1Nk6DmQywHZd64L1Q7C4KCKr49sHDVfmbno-WU3az6t4Xxj5JyMu4ssz5JDNUOiY1KFti7AzHMjLE-2xSsvUkqH-kHXiAv-4emAXPF-waFfXrkrXSCmRr-U4JzWjUZHQ3Q866o4xLBkjjt2rL4LK_yWhkDOJwQAxPNjZJhdLaK9zgZN8f/s640/thumbnail.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwbmz1Nk6DmQywHZd64L1Q7C4KCKr49sHDVfmbno-WU3az6t4Xxj5JyMu4ssz5JDNUOiY1KFti7AzHMjLE-2xSsvUkqH-kHXiAv-4emAXPF-waFfXrkrXSCmRr-U4JzWjUZHQ3Q866o4xLBkjjt2rL4LK_yWhkDOJwQAxPNjZJhdLaK9zgZN8f/s320/thumbnail.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;"><i>Roger Noel Cook with one of his prized Bentleys, at his villa in Marbella.</i></span></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p class="MsoNormal">Our lively,
informal correspondence was a welcome distraction for me as at the time my
mother was hospitalized with terminal cancer. I didn’t share this with Rog
until after she’d passed away in April 2010, and then only to explain why I’d
been late in replying to his last email. I was touched by his sympathetic
message of condolence, sharing that he’d lost his own mother just a year
earlier.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">I
reconnected with Rog in late 2012 to let him know that <i>The Comic Strip
Companion</i> had been published. He read my book and thought it was “an amazing
piece of work of entertainment history”, which is a wonderful endorsement from
the man responsible for creating so many of the stories I’d written about in
that volume.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Rog was
excited to share with me that he was planning to make a movie adaptation of his
graphic novel called <i>The Devil’s Detail</i>, with Richard Senior attached as
director (Senior had recently directed the <i>Doctor Who</i> story <i>Let’s Kill Hitler</i>) and the
then-current Doctor Matt Smith approached to star in it. I don’t think this got
anywhere, but his passion for the project was plainly evident.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">The last
time we exchanged emails was in April 2018. Rog’s name had come up in something
I was researching, and I wanted to check a minor detail with him. Typically,
his enthusiastic reply was peppered with fascinating observations and anecdotes
about his career. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b>Read John Freeman's tribute to Roger Noel Cook on <a href="https://downthetubes.net/in-memoriam-doctor-who-comic-writer-editor-and-musician-roger-noel-cook/" target="_blank">Down the Tubes</a>.</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><br /></span></p>Paul Scooneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17322991318366377845noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20322865.post-53054738070782305832020-11-18T14:00:00.003+13:002021-03-22T10:21:26.162+13:00Excavating Battlefield<p style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="line-height: 107%;"><i>Doctor Who: The Collection - Season 26 </i>blu-ray set was released in January 2020. I was commissioned to write the production information text for the season's opening story, </span></span><i style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="line-height: 17.12px;">Battlefield</span></i><i style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="line-height: 107%;">.</span></i></b></p><p style="text-align: left;"><i style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="line-height: 107%;">Battlefield </span></i><span style="font-family: helvetica; line-height: 107%;">was my eleventh set of production info text,
and the third for ‘The Collection’ blu-ray boxed sets. My previous blu-ray work
included <i><a href="https://paulscoones.blogspot.com/2020/03/unearthing-earthshock.html">Earthshock</a></i> and <i>The
Trial of a Time Lord</i>. The latter was a collaboration with another writer on
all 14 episodes that consumed a great deal of time throughout the first
quarter of 2019. Following that experience, I welcomed the prospect of working on a story
with fewer episodes and comparatively untroubled production development. I’m
grateful that I’ve been able to continue to do this work without having to venture
beyond my home in Auckland, New Zealand.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="line-height: 107%;"><i>Battlefield</i> holds a special place in my memories. I first saw the story one Saturday afternoon in early October 1989 in the company of a small group of fan friends. An off-air VHS recording of all four episodes had arrived that morning via airmail from the UK (ten days after it was broadcast). During the preceding two years I had been watching VHS recordings of<i> Doctor Who</i> that had yet to screen in New Zealand but always by borrowing the tapes from friends after they had already watched them. <i>Battlefield</i> marked </span>the first time that all of us watched <i>Doctor Who</i> for the first time together.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Whereas the<i> last</i> </span><span style="font-family: helvetica;">time I’d seen </span><i style="font-family: helvetica;">Battlefield</i><span style="font-family: helvetica;"> was in 2008 when it was released on DVD. </span><span style="font-family: helvetica;">In early April 2019 w</span><span style="font-family: helvetica;">hen I started work on </span><i style="font-family: helvetica;">Battlefield</i><span style="font-family: helvetica;">, I hadn’t watched the story in over a decade. </span><span style="font-family: helvetica;">I
was therefore coming to it with relatively fresh eyes. On my first run through in preparation for writing the info text, I made notes on anything I spotted that might be worth covering in the subtitles.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">The story is loaded with references to
Arthurian legends of course, which would all need to be explained, but there
are also numerous call-backs to the series’ own mythology with the return of
UNIT, Bessie, and Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">While I needed to explain the numerous
bits of Arthurian lore that crop up in <i>Battlefield</i>, I didn’t want to spend
more time than was necessary on researching this complex topic, especially given the relatively limited space available to me in the info text. My university degree in the 1980s had
included a paper on early English history which gave me a basic
understanding of the subject, but I needed to read up on the details. </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">There are
many contradictory versions of the legends of Arthur. <i>Battlefield</i>
doesn’t follow one text but rather borrows bits and pieces from a wide variety
of different sources. I was delighted to find in the stacks at my local library
a copy of <i>The New Arthurian Encyclopedia</i>, edited by Norris J. Lacy,
which documents the origins of the various fragments of the legend, helpfully
arranged by topic. This was invaluable as <i>Battlefield</i> scriptwriter Ben
Aaronovitch was on record as having used Lacy’s book for research. The library’s copy was a
revised and updated edition from the 1990s. Curiously, one of the additions
is a write-up about <i>Battlefield</i> in a section about the depiction of Arthurian legend in television
series. (The authors seem to have been unaware that one of Aaronovitch’s sources was close
to home.)<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"></span></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gvMqDwf8i7w/X7RtuWrshNI/AAAAAAAABNg/9JvEr48gXBwkPb6p0lmXtEaA9jL5-liJACLcBGAsYHQ/s2000/91anaBmXGCL.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2000" data-original-width="1524" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gvMqDwf8i7w/X7RtuWrshNI/AAAAAAAABNg/9JvEr48gXBwkPb6p0lmXtEaA9jL5-liJACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/91anaBmXGCL.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The New Arthurian Encyclopedia<i>, edited by Norris J. Lacy (1996).</i></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p style="height: 0px;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="line-height: 107%;"><br /></span><br />x</span></p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">During my initial watch-through something
that caught my attention was a scene in the first episode where Elizabeth
Rowlinson (played by June Bland) is sitting in the bar of the Gore Crow hotel reading a book written
in braille. Thanks to the improved picture definition, it was possible to make
out sections of the braille text. My expectation was that it was just a random publication
that the BBC happened to have in their prop stores. What was the book? I
couldn’t find anything about <i>Battlefield</i> that answered this question. The
script’s directions simply note that Elizabeth is reading ‘a braille book’.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Despite being able to make out parts of the braille text I didn’t have any success trying to decipher it using translation websites. I then sent an email to the Blind Foundation of New Zealand asking for help. I promptly received a reply from Maria Stevens, the Foundation’s Accessible Formats Manager. Maria examined the screenshots I sent her and was able to interpret a few short fragmentary phrases from the text (for example: “…high in a stone of marble…”; “… this, he blessed him and said, …”). These were enough to positively identify the text. Remarkably, it wasn't just some random braille book but Thomas Malory’s<i> Le Morte D'Arthur</i> and had therefore been specially selected to fit the story’s subject. It’s the discovery of brand new, hitherto undocumented facts like this that is for me the single most exciting aspect of the job.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"></span></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-z9K1l-5ao-c/X7RqwpxirkI/AAAAAAAABM4/jr2XXMlIbyEByFFKNdKLVqp_bXNV-EytQCLcBGAsYHQ/s768/vlcsnap-00016a.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="576" data-original-width="768" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-z9K1l-5ao-c/X7RqwpxirkI/AAAAAAAABM4/jr2XXMlIbyEByFFKNdKLVqp_bXNV-EytQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/vlcsnap-00016a.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Elizabeth Rowlinson (June Bland) reads the opening sentences of Book IV, Chapter VIII of Malory's </i>Le Morte D'Arthur<i>.</i></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Having researched many 1980s episodes
there was something slightly poignant about getting to write about the last
on-screen appearance of the 1983-89 version of the TARDIS console room. In
doing so, I got to debunk a commonly repeated misconception about this scene.
It is often suggested in articles about the story that the room is in darkness to help disguise the fact that the usually rigid walls have been replaced with a cloth cyclorama, but in fact this lighting effect
is specified in the script.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">In earlier drafts of the script, Peter
Warmsly is accompanied by a large, slobbering dog. The animal, written out
before production commenced, was called Cerebus. At first glance, the name
looked to be a typographical error. In Greek mythology, the dog ‘Cerberus’ guards
the entrance to the underworld, whereas ‘Cerebus’ is an aardvark from the
titular comic strip. If this was a typographical error it was a remarkably
consistent one, as the name remained the same throughout the scripts. I decided
that as with other instances in the story (Avallion for Avalon, for example), the name was likely intended as a variation
on a commonly accepted spelling. Curiously, Marc Platt’s novelisation
reinstates the dog and names him Cerberus, so perhaps it was a misspelling
after all.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Another head-scratching moment comes
when the Doctor orders a drink of water from the hotel bar. There’s an
unscripted moment of business when Sylvester McCoy holds up his glass and scrutinizes
its contents before taking a drink. My initial interpretation was that it is a
response to a line earlier in the same scene about the hotel’s beer getting an
entry in the CAMRA guide. McCoy is making a visual joke out of treating the
water with the same level of appraisal that might be accorded to Arthur’s Ale.
My editor suggested an entirely different take on this, however, proposing that
it was instead a topical reference to concerns over contamination of drinking
water which was a major issue in 1989. Fortunately, there was enough time on
screen at this point to offer both explanations.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"></span></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-U9bh6gVfIak/X7RsKpnbLzI/AAAAAAAABNE/aRfdCcrLRzAjrdGmI-VgojPSUAcdgaHiQCLcBGAsYHQ/s768/vlcsnap-2020-11-18-13h33m59s366.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="576" data-original-width="768" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-U9bh6gVfIak/X7RsKpnbLzI/AAAAAAAABNE/aRfdCcrLRzAjrdGmI-VgojPSUAcdgaHiQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/vlcsnap-2020-11-18-13h33m59s366.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The Doctor scrutinizes his drink.</i></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">A criticism frequently levelled at the
story is the sequence where the armoured Ancelyn is blown straight up in the
air by a grenade and crashes through the wall of the hotel’s barn. This looks absurd, but an examination of the scripts reveals that this
would have made sense if the script directions had been followed. As written,
the knights including Ancelyn were envisioned as wearing technologically advanced
armour, perhaps not unlike that of Iron Man. On screen the knights are instead
dressed in traditional medieval-style armour. If Ancelyn had been wearing
powered armour that gave him the ability to fly, then the oft-mocked sequence
makes a great deal more sense. A remnant of this original intention makes it
into the finished story’s dialogue when Ace asks, “Is it an android?” when
first sighting Ancelyn in his armour.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"></span></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Gybg4sx8Q2U/X7Rs8ZeGe3I/AAAAAAAABNQ/ahAX75L8L-IA3bmsGeSrUXuC2BAgvwbswCLcBGAsYHQ/s768/vlcsnap-2020-11-18-13h37m05s082.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="576" data-original-width="768" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Gybg4sx8Q2U/X7Rs8ZeGe3I/AAAAAAAABNQ/ahAX75L8L-IA3bmsGeSrUXuC2BAgvwbswCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/vlcsnap-2020-11-18-13h37m05s082.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The knight Ancelyn (Marcus Gilbert) in his decidedly not technologically-advanced-looking armour.</i></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Another example of a lack of attention paid to script directions comes in the sequence when Mordred (Christopher Bowen) conducts the ritual to summon Morgaine (Jean Marsh) from another dimension. He lights up an eight-sided shape on the ground. This was meant to have been an octagram, an eight-pointed star sometimes used to invoke magic. Due to an apparent misreading, the shape was instead realised as an octagon!</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-I6iZ66KeBXY/X7RvE8zOecI/AAAAAAAABN0/jk3c0Uj5vSwU9ezI87FLb-GvSoFD8UCJACLcBGAsYHQ/s768/vlcsnap-2020-11-18-13h46m45s709.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><img border="0" data-original-height="576" data-original-width="768" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-I6iZ66KeBXY/X7RvE8zOecI/AAAAAAAABN0/jk3c0Uj5vSwU9ezI87FLb-GvSoFD8UCJACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/vlcsnap-2020-11-18-13h46m45s709.png" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><i>Octagram, not octagon!</i><br /></span></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="line-height: 107%;">Part of the brief for the info text is
to cover the career highlights of key cast members. Researching the cast for
this story yielded some interesting details, such as the fact that two of its
actors later auditioned for the role of the Eighth Doctor, and another went on
to a prestigious directing career working on such programmes as <i>Luther</i>, <i>Being Human</i>, and <i>Fear the
Walking Dead</i>. It was a sobering moment while </span>researching the career of Dorota Rae, the
Polish actress who plays the UNIT helicopter pilot Lavel, to discover that she had died mere months earlier.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Whenever the opportunity presents
itself, I like to slip a mention of New Zealand into the subtitles. Obviously, there needs to be a justifiable, legitimate reason for doing so. <i>Battlefield</i>
is the third story in which I’ve managed to do this. According to the script,
Ace was to have disparagingly referred to the Brigadier as “Colonel Blimp”,
which allowed me to explain that the 1930s cartoon character was the creation
of New Zealander David Low, for London’s <i>Evening Standard</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">The Doctor’s speech about the horrors
of nuclear war presented an opportunity to do something creative with the
subtitles. The scene features shots of a countdown display showing the seconds
remaining until destruction. In an early edit of the recorded material, McCoy's speech was reduced
in length, removing around 13 seconds. The cut meant however that the counter
was no longer in synch. </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"></span></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pzkI6b0VV8E/X7RudQwJcdI/AAAAAAAABNo/CwZCIIRCTbU1FrJNFj55hSdMIjSspZRCgCLcBGAsYHQ/s768/vlcsnap-2020-11-18-13h43m55s250.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="576" data-original-width="768" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pzkI6b0VV8E/X7RudQwJcdI/AAAAAAAABNo/CwZCIIRCTbU1FrJNFj55hSdMIjSspZRCgCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/vlcsnap-2020-11-18-13h43m55s250.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Watching the clock!</i><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">The production documentation shows that this had not escaped the attention of producer John
Nathan-Turner, who wrote to director Michael Kerrigan
advising that this was something that needed to be fixed. “Whenever we have countdowns on <i>Doctor
Who</i>, our younger viewers tend to count with the clock,” Nathan-Turner
wrote. “If the little horrors are counting then they should reach number 1 at
the same time as our visuals.” Kerrigan fixed this by replacing the shots of
the counter. Inspired by Nathan-Turner’s words, my subtitles invite viewers to
count along. Is the countdown timed correctly though? Try it and find out!</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NYJYBssn4aM/X7RyE8uPuwI/AAAAAAAABOA/__Am6nPvkYY7Y3fMwucLF5RBOPv0uStxgCLcBGAsYHQ/s225/images.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="225" data-original-width="225" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NYJYBssn4aM/X7RyE8uPuwI/AAAAAAAABOA/__Am6nPvkYY7Y3fMwucLF5RBOPv0uStxgCLcBGAsYHQ/s0/images.jpg" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="line-height: 107%;"><i style="background-color: white; color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">An earlier version of this article was first published in issue 510 of Celestial Toyroom, the fanzine of the Doctor Who Appreciation Society.</span></i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><br /></p>Paul Scooneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17322991318366377845noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20322865.post-5418304694903753082020-04-06T23:25:00.001+12:002021-03-22T10:28:01.316+13:00About a Book<div><b><span style="font-family: helvetica;">This piece originally appeared in </span><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><i>Behind the Sofa: Celebrity Memories of Doctor Who</i>. I wrote it </span><span style="font-family: helvetica;">shortly after my Mum, Janet Elayne Scoones, died on 6 April 2010. I've republished it here to mark the tenth anniversary of her passing. Miss you, Mum.</span></b></div><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br />
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: helvetica; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;">It is 1975.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: helvetica; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;">I’m seven
years old, sitting on the step that connects the living room at the front of
our house to the passage at the rear. Mum comes over and says that she has a
book for me.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: helvetica; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;">It is a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Doctor Who </i>book, with a man, a dinosaur,
a terrifying-looking lizard man and an exploding volcano on the cover. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: helvetica; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;">I know a
bit about <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Doctor Who</i>. It is a
mysterious and scary television programme I’ve recently seen for the first
time. Mum likes <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Doctor Who</i>. She grew
up watching the show. It’s<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>okay to be
scared when <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Doctor Who</i> is on because
she watches with me.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: helvetica; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;">Mum bought the
book for herself but after reading thought I might like it. I’ve never read a
book this long before. There are some pictures to help explain things, but most
pages just have words and the writing looks tiny. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: helvetica; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;">On the back
of the book Mum has neatly crossed out a single word with a black felt-tipped pen: </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: helvetica; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: helvetica; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;">“… <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Tyrannosaurus rex</i>, the biggest, most
savage <s style="text-line-through: double;">mammal</s> which ever trod the
earth!” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: helvetica; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;">Whoever wrote that got it wrong, </span>Mum tells me. Dinosaurs were not
mammals. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: helvetica; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;">Mum thinks
I should try reading the book by myself. If Mum thinks I can do it, I must be
able to.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;">I start
reading, trying to finish a chapter a day. I take the book to school. I read it during lunchtime
in the classroom on a rainy day while eating </span>peanut butter sandwiches. The
story is enthralling and terrifying in equal measure.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: helvetica; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;">The bit with Morka watching Fur Under Nose, Frock Coat and Silver Buttons is odd and
unfathomable. Major Barker and Masters getting sick and succumbing to a deadly
virus is terrifying. I read the book through again, several times. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: helvetica; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;">Soon after, I discover that
my local library has other <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Doctor Who</i>
books. I read them all. I’m well and truly hooked.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: helvetica; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;">It is 2010.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: helvetica; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;">I’m 42
years old, standing in front of a group of mourners who have gathered to
remember and farewell Mum.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: helvetica; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;">I speak of
how Mum inspired me to set out on the journey that led to where I am now. My
life-long fascination with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Doctor Who</i>
has led to professional work associated with the series. I am a freelance
writer, working for the BBC on production notes subtitles for the DVDs and
writing a book about the comic strips.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-family: helvetica; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;">It all started
with my Mum and a book called <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Doctor Who and the
Cave Monsters</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /><br />
</span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WUOnfkCr0_s/XosOZKcnkzI/AAAAAAAABII/Q9fSPnnYOGIIHVzYkofinMjHzOibmoxogCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/052%2BCave%2BMonsters%2Bv1.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="246" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WUOnfkCr0_s/XosOZKcnkzI/AAAAAAAABII/Q9fSPnnYOGIIHVzYkofinMjHzOibmoxogCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/052%2BCave%2BMonsters%2Bv1.jpg" width="196" /></span></a></div>
<span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br />
<i>Originally published in <b>Behind the Sofa: Celebrity Memories of Doctor Who</b>, edited by Steve Berry (Matador, 2012, reissued by Gollancz, 2013).</i><br />
<i><br /></i><br /></span>Paul Scooneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17322991318366377845noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20322865.post-26670010422146400202020-03-31T16:06:00.002+13:002021-03-22T10:23:34.636+13:00Unearthing Earthshock<div><b><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span><span style="line-height: 17.12px;"><i>Doctor Who: The Collection - Season 19 </i>blu-ray set was released in December 2018. I was commissioned to write the production information text for the season's penultimate story, </span></span><i><span style="line-height: 17.12px;">Earthshock</span></i><i><span style="line-height: 17.12px;">.</span></i></span></b></div><div><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Eight minutes into the second episode of <i>Earthshock</i>, there’s a continuity error hidden in plain sight. It’s initially on screen for just four seconds and reappears in four even shorter shots over the next half-minute. Blink and you might miss it.<br />
<br />
The Cybermen have remotely-activated their bomb hidden in the caves on Earth. The Doctor is inside the TARDIS frantically working to block the signal to prevent the bomb’s detonation. The tension mounts as the action cuts back and forth between the TARDIS, the Cybermen and the bomb.<br />
<br />
But wait - there’s something not quite right about that bomb. Perched on top of the device is the magnetic clamp device from the TARDIS toolkit. An item that the Doctor is seen fixing to the top of the bomb just after the nine-minute mark. A full minute <i>after</i> it is first seen sitting on top of the bomb!<br />
<br />
</span><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0gt_fpkzURk/XoKsN2kpHAI/AAAAAAAABG4/MzIE-cU0610s4QmvMrVIClyGpbKIWPvwACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/vlcsnap-2020-03-31-15h05m12s047.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><img border="0" data-original-height="576" data-original-width="787" height="234" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0gt_fpkzURk/XoKsN2kpHAI/AAAAAAAABG4/MzIE-cU0610s4QmvMrVIClyGpbKIWPvwACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/vlcsnap-2020-03-31-15h05m12s047.png" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-family: helvetica;">The Cyber bomb, with the Doctor's magnetic clamp in place on top.</span></i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br />
</span><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GYEHDsWqGrQ/XoKsemxVBnI/AAAAAAAABHA/tOgW6est_iI46I0pIYrCwmK9psYIGxHLQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/vlcsnap-2020-03-31-15h06m47s747.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><img border="0" data-original-height="576" data-original-width="787" height="234" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GYEHDsWqGrQ/XoKsemxVBnI/AAAAAAAABHA/tOgW6est_iI46I0pIYrCwmK9psYIGxHLQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/vlcsnap-2020-03-31-15h06m47s747.png" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Later, the Doctor places the clamp on the bomb.</span></i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br />
I’ve viewed <i>Earthshock</i> a lot over the past three and a half decades. I think it’s one of Peter Davison’s best stories. Each time I've watched, the mistake with the bomb has completely passed me by. As it undoubtedly did for the production crew at the time and has subsequently done for countless viewers. I checked reference books, magazines and websites that contain lists of such things, and not one of them makes a mention of this error.<br />
<br />
I only noticed it because I was paying exceptionally close attention to the story. I was making notes for the production information text commentary (or ‘info text’) I wrote for the Season 19 blu-ray set in 2018.<br />
<br />
Info text is just one of the many special features included on the ‘classic’ series <i>Doctor Who</i> blu-rays, and the DVDs before them. The text appears on screen as subtitles, but rather than transcribed dialogue it provides a commentary about the story’s production. The text points out pertinent, specific details about moments in the episodes as they appear, as well as general information about how, when and where the story was made.<br />
<br />
With all of the entertaining special features on the wonderful new blu-ray sets, the info text tends to get a bit overlooked. Which is a shame, because this feature delivers a lot of interesting new information that you won't find elsewhere.<br />
<br />
In some cases, the text that originally appeared on the DVDs has undergone only minor revisions for the blu-ray collections, but certain stories have been given brand new info text subtitles. The Season 19 blu-ray has new info text for three stories: <i>Four to Doomsday</i>, <i>Black Orchid</i> and <i>Earthshock</i>. I was commissioned to write the text for the Cyberman story.<br />
<br />
I previously worked on the <i>Doctor Who</i> DVDs, writing info text for eight stories released in the latter half of the range. I mainly covered 1980s stories. I’m particularly interested in this decade of Doctor Who as a researcher and as a fan of the series. When the DVD range wound down around 2013, I thought that I’d written my last lot of info text. I was surprised and delighted to be invited back to work on the blu-rays.<br />
<br />
I approached <i>Earthshock</i> with a little trepidation. It had been five years since I’d last written a set of info text, and I had to re-familiarise myself with what was involved in the process. I was aware too that the story didn’t appear to have gone through any significant alterations during its development. I’d never before worked on a story with such a close match between what appears in the rehearsal scripts and on-screen. There were no early script drafts or major rewrites, and no deleted scenes. Such material offers a wealth of detail to discuss in the info text. Part of the challenge I faced with <i>Earthshock</i> was to find other aspects to discuss in the subtitles.<br />
<br />
The work involves viewing the story with fresh eyes. I work using timecoded copies of the episodes in order to specify the exact moment a subtitle appears and disappears on screen. Because of the precision involved in placing subtitles around shot changes, my preferred approach (which I must add isn’t necessarily that used by other info text writers), is to start with a slow, close watch through each episode noting down the exact timecode (measured in 25ths of a second), when each new shot commences. <i>Earthshock</i> has an exceptional number of these per episode, ranging between 167 shots (for Part One) and 245 shots (for Part Two). It takes me most of a day to work through a single episode. I’m not just noting down timecodes. I also use this slow-time viewing to annotate a copy of the script with any observations that I think are worthy of inclusion in the info text. The benefit to this stop-start scrutiny is that otherwise overlooked details, such as the aforementioned continuity error with the bomb, tend to spring into focus.<br />
<br />
It was while doing this slow watch-through that I noticed an error with the life form scanner that appears in Part One. While Lieutenant Scott and his party are exploring the caves, on the surface Walters is tasked with monitoring their progress. Each individual is represented by a dot of light, which winks out when that person is killed. When first seen, the screen shows a cluster of 13 dots, representing Professor Kyle, Lieutenant Scott and eleven troopers. Over the course of the episode smaller groups split off and are picked off by the androids, so the display changes accordingly. There are however a couple of shots of the scanner where the dots don’t correspond to the number of troopers. The number drops by two when there is no reason in the story for this change, and afterwards the scanner screen is once again displaying the correct number of dots.<br />
<br />
</span><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OtEywfL5Fg0/XoKv5DVP5DI/AAAAAAAABHM/9wxtSaU7chsAVAwzSEja34SpCAZV5swvACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/vlcsnap-2020-03-31-14h58m07s352.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><img border="0" data-original-height="576" data-original-width="787" height="234" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OtEywfL5Fg0/XoKv5DVP5DI/AAAAAAAABHM/9wxtSaU7chsAVAwzSEja34SpCAZV5swvACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/vlcsnap-2020-03-31-14h58m07s352.png" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Count the dots... there ought to be 11 in the cluster at the top right of the picture, but only 9 are displayed.</span></i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br />
Those dots, when displaying correctly, are an accurate reflection of how many troopers are present in the story. By comparing various items of production paperwork, I was able to determine that there are 14 in total. Unusually for this era of <i>Doctor Who</i>, it’s an evenly balanced group, with an equal number of men and women. The cast lists initially caused some confusion, as they included six credited and 11 uncredited performers playing the troopers, making a total of 17. The reason for this became clear when I discovered that three of the walk-ons had to be replaced during production.<br />
<br />
The troopers wear name tags on their uniforms but in all but a few cases, we don’t get a clear enough look at these tags to see make out the names. Most of the group never take their helmets off so it’s difficult to tell them apart. Some are named in the credits, and others are identified in dialogue, but a few remained nameless. Thanks to a scene breakdown document that lists the characters involved in each scene, however, I was able to put names to all of the troopers. New Fact! The non-speaking female trooper who goes to the freighter is called Austin.<br />
<br />
</span><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GAgnA3VkNFQ/XoKw6HrhfbI/AAAAAAAABHU/HTM6RjLWsHYAjjINBj8Y5b-Vfrt7lS-mwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/vlcsnap-2020-03-31-15h08m25s583.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><img border="0" data-original-height="576" data-original-width="787" height="234" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GAgnA3VkNFQ/XoKw6HrhfbI/AAAAAAAABHU/HTM6RjLWsHYAjjINBj8Y5b-Vfrt7lS-mwCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/vlcsnap-2020-03-31-15h08m25s583.png" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Trooper Austin (left) played by Nikki Dunsford, seen here with Lieutenant Scott (James Warwick).</span></i></td></tr>
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On the subject of unnamed characters, what about the Captain, memorably played by Beryl Reid. What’s her name? She's called Briggs in the script and on the closing credits, but that name never appears in the story itself. There’s evidence too that the story's writer Eric Saward might have had another name in mind for the Captain. At one point in Part Two, a scripted direction intended for Briggs instead refers to her as ‘Stien’. It seems likely that in the original version of the script this was the Captain’s name and this solitary mention was overlooked in revisions. Saward clearly liked the name enough to reuse it in <i>Resurrection of the Daleks</i>. In Part Three, there’s also evidence that the Captain may have originally been male, as the Cyber Lieutenant says ‘his’ rather than ‘hers’, a mistake in the script that wasn’t picked up on during production.<br />
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</span><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iygasiddP8M/XoKykIZ6fWI/AAAAAAAABHg/cvYxijJP24oNSxeRjQVzz643kYTQo8y7QCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/vlcsnap-2020-03-31-15h10m55s468.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><img border="0" data-original-height="576" data-original-width="787" height="234" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iygasiddP8M/XoKykIZ6fWI/AAAAAAAABHg/cvYxijJP24oNSxeRjQVzz643kYTQo8y7QCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/vlcsnap-2020-03-31-15h10m55s468.png" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-family: helvetica;">The unnamed Captain Briggs (Beryl Reid), or should that be Captain Stien?</span></i></td></tr>
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The scripts also helped to get to the bottom of an anecdote concerning a familiar <i>Doctor Who</i> catch-phrase that first crops up in <i>Earthshock</i>. The Doctor’s “Brave heart, Tegan” interested me because in a 1984 interview for <i>Doctor Who Magazine</i>, Eric Saward claimed that “Brave heart” was something spontaneously ad-libbed by Peter Davison during the recording of the scene. The memory clearly cheats, as the line’s already present in the rehearsal script, prepared before the cast began work on the story!<br />
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Another Tegan-related phrase, “I’m just a mouth on legs”, stumped me. According to various sources, including most recently the <i>Doctor Who – The Complete History</i> partwork, this phrase was included in the story after an American fan had used it to describe Tegan. This struck me as unlikely given that fandom had only recently seen Tegan on screen for the first time when <i>Earthshock</i> was written. I checked with a number of people who were likely to be in the know, including Janet Fielding herself, but no one knew the answer. The info text must be as accurate as possible so, as I was unable to verify this particular claim, you won’t find it in the subtitles.<br />
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Researching info text can be an eye-opening experience. I go into each story thinking I already know it well, but after a close rewatch, and reading through the scripts and the production paperwork, I realise that I’ve learned so much more. The most enjoyable aspect of my work on the info text is getting to point out fresh discoveries to viewers. There’s a lot about <i>Earthshock</i> I haven’t touched on here, so pop in the blu-ray, turn on the info text and find out more!<br />
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<i><span style="font-family: helvetica;">This article was first published in issue 498 of Celestial Toyroom, the fanzine of the Doctor Who Appreciation Society.</span></i></div>
Paul Scooneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17322991318366377845noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20322865.post-85539164022037725042019-01-10T16:29:00.001+13:002019-01-10T16:32:36.404+13:00Rescuing the Lion (Archived Interview from 2001)Last week I celebrated the 20th anniversary of the discovery of the film print of The Lion, an episode of Doctor Who from 1965 that was among the series' missing episodes until Neil Lambess and I found it still existed in January 1999.<br />
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In revisiting some of the material associated with the find, I noticed that one of the interviews I did many years ago about the discovery disappeared off the internet at some point. The website that hosted the interview, Whoniversity.co.uk, is no longer active, but I was able to retrieve the interview I did in 2001 using the Wayback Machine.<br />
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I'm no longer in contact with the writer of the interview, Mark Parmerter, but I trust he won't mind me preserving the interview here.<br />
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<b>Rescuing The Lion </b></div>
<b><div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Written by Mark Parmerter </b></div>
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<b>May, 2001</b></div>
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Many <b>Doctor Who</b> fans may be hesitant to admit the fact, but be honest: who hasn't fantasized at least once about being the next to discover the whereabouts of a missing episode and successfully returning it to the BBC and fans around the world? For two New Zealand <b>Doctor Who</b> fans, this fantasy became reality in January of 1999 when Paul Scoones and Neil Lambess located the otherwise missing first episode of a 4-part William Hartnell adventure first broadcast on BBC-1 on March 27, 1965. The dramatic story of how <i>The Crusade</i>, Episode One: <i>The Lion</i> was rescued and loaned to the BBC for copying purposes is related in great detail in an <a href="http://doctorwho.org.nz/archive/tsv57/lion.html" target="_blank">article</a> written by Paul Scoones for the <b>New Zealand Doctor Who Fan Club</b>; here in this article, however, Scoones has kindly agreed to further discuss <i>The Lion</i>'s rescue, highlighting his initial reactions to the find, remarking upon the worldwide attention generated by the discovery, and speculating upon the possibility of future missing episode returns.<br />
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Very early in 1999, Scoones was contacted by fellow New Zealand <b>Doctor Who</b> fan Neil Lambess, who asked Paul to bring his video camera and join him in a visit to private film collector Bruce Grenville. Acting on a lead, Lambess had reason to believe that <i>The Lion</i> was included in Grenville's 16mm film collection. Scoones explains that prior to this event, "I had spent a great deal of time over the last 12 years researching <b>Doctor Who</b> screenings on New Zealand television (we were the first country outside the UK to screen the series), and I knew from what myself and other NZ researchers had found that most <b>Doctor Who</b> film prints in NZ had either been exported or destroyed many years ago, so I didn't hold out much hope of ever finding anything. Neil Lambess had always clung to the belief - long before <i>The Lion</i> was found - that there were missing episodes here. He still hasn't given up searching."<br />
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When Paul and Neil sat down with Grenville, who was unaware of <i>The Lion</i>'s rarity having bought it cheap at a film collectors fair, they watched the 16mm film print in question and knew immediately that they were viewing a genuine missing episode. Paul's first thoughts during these exciting moments? "My first thoughts were along the lines of "Oh my goodness - what are we going to do?" I think when I was sitting there watching the episode that first time what was running through my head was how to get it back to the BBC. At that time we weren't sure if Grenville would even loan it out. I was really worried that he might very well decide to hoard it away, and the only copy anyone would ever get to see would be my handi-cam version recorded off the screen. Fortunately, that wasn't the case." After contacting Steve Roberts of the BBC's unofficial <b>Doctor Who Restoration Team</b>, negotiations were underway with Grenville for the BBC to borrow the film print for copying, and news of the discovery literally spread around the globe.<br />
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<span style="background-color: white;">The Season Two historical adventure <i>The Crusade</i> has always been highly regarded and praised. In Peter Haining's twentieth anniversary book <i>Doctor Who - A Celebration</i> (1983), Jeremy Bentham writes "Director Douglas Camfield pulled off a considerable coup with this story. Armed with what he considered to be the finest script he has ever worked with, he managed to persuade big-name actor Julian Glover to play the part of King Richard I - Richard the Lionheart. The grand confrontation between Glover, as Richard, and up-and-coming actress Jean Marsh as Joanna made for one of the finest moments of television drama ever witnessed in <b>Doctor Who</b>." In the <i>Doctor Who Handbook - The First Doctor</i>, authors Howe, Stammers and Walker exclaim "David Whitaker's scripts are brilliant, Douglas Camfield's direction immaculate and Barry Newbery's sets superb. William Hartnell...turns in one of his best ever performances as the Doctor." And upon its discovery, Gary Russell proclaimed in <i>Doctor Who Magazine</i> #275 that <i>The Lion</i> "Is an example of historically detailed Doctor Who at its very best, with charm, wit, style and conviction."</span></blockquote>
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Scoones admits he was quite surprised at the time by the worldwide attention which <i>The Lion</i> generated. "It was a surprise, yes. For a few days, it was like what I imagine it must be to be a minor celebrity. My phone rang constantly with local and overseas TV stations all wanting an interview, and I was on both television news channels here in NZ, as well as the story appearing on the front page of the newspaper. The media attention was remarkable."<br />
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Even more remarkable is the colorful history behind the film print of <i>The Lion</i>. Research has revealed that this particular film print somehow managed to survive near-burial at a Wellington rubbish tip in 1975, thereby passing from one New Zealand film collector to another for the next quarter century, persevering through owners ignorant of its worth and poor storage conditions. As Scoones illustrates, "It is a remarkable story. Its survival is a combination of good luck and dedication on the part of the film collectors who originally rescued it from the dump. What's worrying, however, is that until 1999, no one whose hands the film passed through had any awareness that the film was in any way rare or valuable. Hopefully, due to the high media exposure its recovery received, film collectors are now aware to look out for <b>Doctor Who</b> film prints."<br />
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Hopeful fans would like to believe that perhaps more missing <b>Doctor Who</b> material is waiting to be discovered elsewhere in New Zealand, either via film collectors or TV archives. Scoones cautiously believes "It's always possible that something will show up, but I think the news stories about <i>The Lion</i>'s discovery which circulated the globe probably did more to raise awareness than any BBC orchestrated campaign could have ever done, and if there were episodes in private hands its likely we'd know about it by now. And I don't subscribe to the belief that there are selfish film collectors knowingly hoarding away missing episodes. I think that's a fan myth. I'd like to believe that sooner or later, human nature would prevail, and the owner of any missing material would come forward and allow the BBC to take a copy. There's far more prestige in being a generous benefactor than a secretive hoarder."<br />
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And as for the likelihood of lost episodes still residing in New Zealand's TV archives, Scoones reveals that "TVNZ's own archives have been thoroughly catalogued and we know from internal records that no missing episodes survive there. About a decade ago, Graham Howard gained permission to go through a Wellington film store of old television episodes, and although he found two film cans labeled with missing <b>Doctor Who</b> episodes (<i>Marco Polo</i> Episode 7 and <i>The Moonbase</i> Episode 3), the film cans had unfortunately been reused and no longer contained the original films. I think if there are any more missing episodes to be found, they'll be residing in as-yet uncatalogued television vaults somewhere else overseas."<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="background-color: white;">Once owner Bruce Grenville realized the value of his missing episode film print, he announced plans to sell it at auction. Initially, his plan was to auction <i>The Lion</i> in September 1999, but this event was canceled due to a surprising lack of interest. A second attempt to sell the print at auction was successful, and the print was sold by Grenville to another New Zealand collector for US$850. This same collector then auctioned <i>The Lion</i> on eBay.com with the final price reaching an astonishing US$3150! However, the winning bidder never paid up, and The Lion was offered again on eBay between January 1-15, 2000 (almost a year to the day that the episode was found). 43 bids were received, and the final price at which the film was sold was US$1275. Neither the buyer or seller's identity was disclosed...</span></blockquote>
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The story of <i>The Lion</i>'s dramatic rescue did not end, however, with its discovery. That was just the beginning, as Scoones discovered once attempts were made to transfer the film print from New Zealand to the BBC. "I'd always believed that the BBC would be prepared and set up to smoothly handle the recovery of missing episodes, but the reality is surprisingly different. I spoke at length in an article for <b>The Disused Yeti</b> over the problems I had with receiving reimbursement for mailing costs and the debacle over the crediting of the people involved in the find. I was for a time very pissed off about the whole thing; not so much for myself, but for my friend Neil Lambess, who actually tracked down the episode in the first place, and received negligible recognition. His name appears nowhere on the UK packaging or credits of the video." And what was the BBC's response when Grenville announced his intention to auction the print off? "Incredibly, the BBC threatened legal action over his ownership of the print - how's that going to encourage people to come forward with missing episode prints? Sheer incompetence, really." The BBC later reversed course regarding its threatened legal action, but the damage had perhaps already been done.<br />
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One may assume that the BBC has since developed new policy for facilitating the return of missing episodes, but Scoones does not believe this to be the case: "I recently was contacted by a BBC producer searching for missing episodes of <b>Dad's Army</b>, who sadly informed me that nothing has changed and that there's a very real risk that members of the public who approach the BBC through their general phone lines about missing episodes would be turned away through ignorance. It's a sad situation, but the BBC is a huge corporation full of people who don't care about the wider picture and are only interested in their particular area. Any approach to the BBC about missing episodes - unless made through people who care, such as <b>The Restoration Team</b> - is likely to fall on deaf ears."<br />
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On a positive note, fandom may now enjoy another long-lost look at <b>Doctor Who</b>'s prestigious past while hope has been renewed that further lost episodes may still exist somewhere, waiting to be found. Justifiably, Scoones feels great pride in his and Neil's contribution to fandom: "Whenever I come across a mention of the story or <i>The Lion</i> in particular, in articles or reference books, it always provokes a tingle down my spine, knowing that I helped to recover it. I'll never forget the night before I sent the film print off to the UK; it was a strange sensation to have the film print sitting on my desk at home and thinking how unique it was, and how many hundreds of fans around the world would just love to get their hands on it!"<br />
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Paul Scooneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17322991318366377845noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20322865.post-55423888001568648522018-04-03T16:28:00.003+12:002018-04-03T17:34:41.464+12:00Monty<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span lang="EN-NZ">Our much-loved cat Monty died today. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-NZ">He joined Rochelle and me at the beginning of 2006 when he was just a six-week-old kitten who had never been away from the rest of his litter. When we went to pick him out he stood out from his tabby siblings because of his distinctive black and white tuxedo markings and his amusing half-moustache.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-NZ">It was immediately apparent to us that this kitten had an adventurous nature. While we were still deciding whether to take him, he made the decision for us by making a bee-line for the front door even though he’d never been outside, as if to say, ‘What are you waiting for? Let’s go!’ The people we got him from had called him Sylvester, but we decided to name him Monty, short for Montgomery Horatio Scoones.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-NZ">We got Monty as a companion for our other tuxedo cat, Chester, whom we’d had for many years. Chester was elderly and wasn’t expected to last much longer, but he hung in there, and the pair had two years together before Chester died in April 2008; coincidentally, ten years ago this month. In Chester’s absence, Monty soon asserted himself as the ‘alpha cat’ of our neighbourhood, and befriended or bested every other feline in the vicinity. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-NZ">We later acquired two female kittens to keep Monty company but these free-spirited young cats were barely tolerated by him, and the threesome took quite some time to work out how to share the same house.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-NZ">Monty had so much personality and was hugely affectionate. He would immediately rub up against most human visitors and demand to be petted, even complete strangers.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-NZ">He loved to go for walks around the block. He never wore a collar or lead, he just happily trotted alongside us. When he got tired, he’d just flop down on the ground and was content to be carried the rest of the way.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-NZ">Monty was a large, heavy cat with a corresponding appetite. His all-time favourite food was fresh beef heart. His hearing was keenly attuned to the exact sound made by the kitchen scissors as we cut the chunks of beef heart up for him. Even if he was roaming a neighbour’s property, he’d immediately come charging inside and demand to be fed. We had to be very careful never to use those scissors for anything else!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-NZ">Over a year ago, Monty had surgery to remove cancer from the end of his nose. He initially seemed fine but complications later developed and our vet put him on medication. This kept him in good health for many months, but we were aware that he was on borrowed time. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-NZ">His health rapidly declined in recent days and, after a particularly bad patch over the weekend, we realised with great sadness that it was time to let him go. We took him to the vet first thing this morning and he was peacefully put to sleep. We’ve buried him in a sunny patch in our garden alongside his old pal Chester.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Paul Scooneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17322991318366377845noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20322865.post-11061874229436071042017-03-03T10:45:00.000+13:002017-03-03T10:45:28.899+13:00Colour Cave MonstersWhenever the Jon Pertwee story <i>Doctor Who and the Silurians</i> has screened on New Zealand television, the episodes have always been in black and white. March 2017's screenings on The Zone channel is the very first time that this story has been broadcast in New Zealand in colour.<br />
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Colour television began in New Zealand way back in October 1973, but many programmes were still broadcast in black and white for a while afterwards.<br />
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<i>Doctor Who and the Silurians</i> was first broadcast here in April - May 1975, a full five years after the UK. It was the last <i>Doctor Who</i> story screened in black and white before colour episodes (beginning with <i>Day of the Daleks</i>) were seen later the same year.<br />
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<i>Doctor Who and the Silurians</i> story was originally made in colour but the BBC junked the colour recordings of this story in the early 1970s. Australia had previous screened the story in black and white, and it seems likely that New Zealand's copies were sourced from that country.<br />
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<i>Doctor Who and the Silurians</i> was next seen here a decade later, in May - June 1985, at which time only black and white copies were available. The story was repeated in this form in August - October 1991.<br />
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The fourth screening, and the first time the story was seen on Prime, was in September - October 2000. By this time the BBC had produced colour-restored copies of this and other Jon Pertwee stories but the episodes supplied to Prime were in black and white.<br />
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I alerted Prime to the existence of colour-restored copies of this and later Pertwee stories, and as consequence colour episodes were sourced and screened, but it was too late to do anything about the Silurians story which had already screened.<br />
<br />
Consequently, March 2017's screening of <i>Doctor Who and the Silurians</i> is the first time it has been seen in colour on New Zealand television.Paul Scooneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17322991318366377845noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20322865.post-24149131194069838942017-02-07T12:39:00.001+13:002017-02-28T10:42:08.048+13:00Twin Peaks in New Zealand<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-NZ"><i>Twin Peaks</i> screened on </span>New
Zealand television in 1991. I was in my early twenties and watched every episode as it went out, read the books, and frequently discussed the plots with similarly obsessed friends. I haven’t thought about <i>Twin Peaks</i> in a long
time, but the anticipated arrival this year of a television revival and
continuation has re-engaged my interest in this much-loved cult classic. A long-time
friend and fellow New Zealander, Morgan Davie, has created a <i>Twin Peaks</i>
re-watch blog at <a href="http://ruminator.co.nz/peak-peak-rumination-starting-at-the-start/" target="_blank">The Ruminator</a> that counts down to the new series debut.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-NZ">Morgan
notes on his blog that <i>Twin Peaks</i> arrived in New Zealand in April 1991, a year after the show’s US debut. Despite this long delay, and incredibly
for a series that was slow to divulge its twists and turns, I didn’t find out who
killed Laura Palmer until it unfolded on screen. This was of course years
before the internet became commonplace, so perhaps this wasn't so remarkable. Good luck trying to avoid ‘spoilers’
when the new series airs.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-NZ">This renewed
interest in <i>Twin Peaks</i> got me thinking about my memories of watching the
episodes on their original broadcast, so last week I decided to look up the screening dates in the <i>New
Zealand Listener</i>.
This weekly magazine</span>, which has been around longer than television,<span lang="EN-NZ"> most usefully</span> publishes comprehensive television schedules. (The<i> Listener</i> was an enormously useful resource many years ago when I researched the entire <a href="http://doctorwho.org.nz/archive/timeandspace/" target="_blank">transmission history of <i>Doctor Who</i> in New Zealand</a>.)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-NZ">Leafing
through the bound volumes of 1991 issues, I discovered some
interesting, long-forgotten facts about how and when <i>Twin Peaks</i> was screened here. The episode billings had descriptions, but not episode names or numbers so a bit of
head-scratching and cross-referencing with online guides was necessary to work
out exactly which episode screened on any given date.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-NZ"><i>Twin Peaks</i>
screened on TV3, New Zealand’s first privately-owned television channel. In 1991 it was still relatively new, having launched in November 1989. </span>The pilot episode was scheduled to air on
Tuesday 2 April 1991, in a two-hour primetime slot from 8:30-10:30 pm. The
<i>Listener</i> took the unusual step of including a note in the billing: "At press time, TV3 were unwilling to
confirm that <i>Twin Peaks</i> would definitely play at this time on this day."<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-F-NuQ-MQoIM/WJkQ24by-rI/AAAAAAAAA48/8Nr6dhpSvTYDPj0o90cFZ1M5TdI1YfTYQCPcB/s1600/Ep00%2B%25282%2BApr%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-F-NuQ-MQoIM/WJkQ24by-rI/AAAAAAAAA48/8Nr6dhpSvTYDPj0o90cFZ1M5TdI1YfTYQCPcB/s320/Ep00%2B%25282%2BApr%2529.jpg" width="169" /></a></div>
<br />
In spite of this uncertainty the magazine promoted the screening with the front
cover strapline, “Twin Peaks, Weirdsville, USA”, and a two-page article
entitled ‘Strange Crew’ by Shelley Howells, profiling each of the main characters. This was the first of several feature articles about the series
that appeared in the <i>Listener</i> that year. The others included interviews with
Peggy Lipton and Julee Cruise, a look at the <i>Autobiography of Dale Cooper</i> book,
and an item about <i>Twin Peaks</i> fandom.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-NZ">As it
transpired, the <i>Listener</i> were right to be uncertain: the pilot did not screen on this date, and instead went to air
exactly a week later, in the same timeslot on the evening of Tuesday 8 April
1991. That date is curious because it is exactly a year to the day after the US
premiere. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-NZ"><br /></span>
Something prevented TV3 from screening <i>Twin Peaks</i> when originally
advertised. No explanation was provided for the delay in the <i>Listener</i>, but I suspect that there may have been an embargo in place
that prevented the series being screened here any earlier than the one-year
anniversary. In their promotion for the series, the <i>Listener</i> mentioned the re-edited home video version of the pilot episode, advising viewers to
“watch again – the telly version has a different ending”. So given that the video release was already available in New Zealand, were the rights surrounding this perhaps responsible for holding up the television broadcast?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/POXDHKlQ9T2tKHD-jkhULM9-fiMtKhWInFP58aI7hwImxmCxd5H-eF20OoYRBpF4yZVhEtYf470pdIEWc14_BoibFGzSEEt5U8ODdNAewtGwtylt7To7h-EF90LhBb53cSHP1RZ2_YraQwjbFdL4Zap82Ge1bCjKEjR5eMQqda1sxpNcKl8eezOvmnPNNthZR3DlLeoK_YwTsEnpqfBnezoFOEvs3seyEIAL45GlTrtqYx90RG-XkCsknDqGYMl7jT9piKI5IDVeR4FXfmjF8lfODZE6n1zqGD3akaqEelV4vpDDDLlWfcY4lk6arBcYzHPxqrSta1PuhPwPvZacD9T6akwiUXJYoCEl5XNfptZcNhq6giajtjMzL5P-FgF2MR3CR1ck8lJJoCcYNaizt_i5gyXQUG9SXFxsA8dmFuFDUDMMZq5pcchdbDVW5XB9OKQO04Y_rzaLZbuYJzLNS09dpqpUEt2EKwqaZyZ2v5lCQc4H0agrhbF_uQLcART735oreH0arAwikUEjpNHjppK1vOZ8kic3Y_uSISPAwGNWbgyI9uJpVsMUpFOjo5sFuRl2yjhau4Ls-adheSK1IkvWgN9R5OmLEB0YhctxMdRBlwBf=w450-h990-no" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/POXDHKlQ9T2tKHD-jkhULM9-fiMtKhWInFP58aI7hwImxmCxd5H-eF20OoYRBpF4yZVhEtYf470pdIEWc14_BoibFGzSEEt5U8ODdNAewtGwtylt7To7h-EF90LhBb53cSHP1RZ2_YraQwjbFdL4Zap82Ge1bCjKEjR5eMQqda1sxpNcKl8eezOvmnPNNthZR3DlLeoK_YwTsEnpqfBnezoFOEvs3seyEIAL45GlTrtqYx90RG-XkCsknDqGYMl7jT9piKI5IDVeR4FXfmjF8lfODZE6n1zqGD3akaqEelV4vpDDDLlWfcY4lk6arBcYzHPxqrSta1PuhPwPvZacD9T6akwiUXJYoCEl5XNfptZcNhq6giajtjMzL5P-FgF2MR3CR1ck8lJJoCcYNaizt_i5gyXQUG9SXFxsA8dmFuFDUDMMZq5pcchdbDVW5XB9OKQO04Y_rzaLZbuYJzLNS09dpqpUEt2EKwqaZyZ2v5lCQc4H0agrhbF_uQLcART735oreH0arAwikUEjpNHjppK1vOZ8kic3Y_uSISPAwGNWbgyI9uJpVsMUpFOjo5sFuRl2yjhau4Ls-adheSK1IkvWgN9R5OmLEB0YhctxMdRBlwBf=w450-h990-no" width="145" /></a></div>
<br />
<span lang="EN-NZ">Having effectively lost a week, TV3 seemed keen to make up lost ground, scheduling
the first and second episodes of series one back-to-back in another two hour
timeslot the very next day. </span>From the
following week, the series settled into a regular schedule of one episode a
week on Tuesday evenings.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There was no break between seasons 1 and 2 as there had been in the US, which
meant that NZ went from a year to only eight months behind. The
double-length Season 2 premiere (episode 8) was split into two regular-length episodes
here. A month later, the reverse occurred with two episodes (13 & 14)
screened back-to-back. This reason for this appears to have been tied to the
revelation of Laura Palmer’s killer at the conclusion of the latter episode.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-NZ">The resolution
of the ‘Who killed Laura Palmer?’ storyline in episode 16 appears to have put a massive dent in the series’ popularity, at least here in NZ. Episode 17 screened as
usual on 22 July, but the following week <i>Twin Peaks</i> was abruptly absent without
explanation (at least in the pages of the <i>Listener</i>). Taking its place was an episode of the new US crime drama <i>Law & Order</i>. TV3’s decision to yank <i>Twin Peaks</i> from the schedule might also have been precipitated by its recent cancellation in the US, with
the final episode screening there on 10 June 1991. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-NZ"><i>Twin Peaks</i>
was off air for nine weeks, and when it returned it looked as if TV3
had lost all confidence in it. The series resumed without any fanfare on Monday 30 September, shunted into a graveyard timeslot of
11:05-12:05, as the last programme screened before the channel’s midnight closedown. Effectively it had been buried in the schedule. The final 12
episodes screened in this fashion, with the last episode going to air on 16 December,
just over six months after the US. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-NZ"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-NZ">An ignominious end for what </span>had been<span lang="EN-NZ">, </span>earlier that same year, a heavily-promoted primetime series.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-NZ"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-NZ">Twin Peaks on New Zealand Television </span></b><b>- An Episode Guide</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
(Episode descriptions from the <i>Listener</i>)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-NZ">Pilot: ‘Northwest Passage’</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-NZ">NZ: 8 April 1991 (US: 8
April 1990)<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-NZ">A surreal murder mystery series which probes
the secretive lives of the townsfolk who live in Twin Peaks, a small US
northwestern timber town. Pilot: FBI agent Dale Cooper is called to Twin Peaks
to solve the brutal murder of Laura Palmer, the high-school homecoming queen.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-NZ">Episodes 1 & 2: ‘Traces to Nowhere’ & ‘Zen,
or the Skill to Catch a Killer’<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-NZ">NZ: 9 April 1991 (US: 12
& 19 April 1990)<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-NZ">Cooper and Truman find out more about Laura’s
secret life, and release James from jail – along with the malevolent Mike and
Bobby. At the sheriff’s department Cooper demonstrates an unusual deductive
technique. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-NZ">Episode 3: ‘Rest in Pain’</span></b><span lang="EN-NZ"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-NZ">NZ: 15 April 1991 (US: 26
April 1990)<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-NZ">Cooper uses the deductive powers of his
unconscious mind to break open the case, the townsfolk gather for the funeral
and Truman reveals the secret of the Bookhouse Boys.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-NZ">Episode 4: ‘The One-Armed Man’<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-NZ">NZ: 23 April 1991 (US: 3 May
1990)<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-NZ">Cooper tries to match his dream with Sarah’s
vision; Hawk stalks the one-armed man; Hank goes before the parole board and
Audrey decides to conduct her own investigation of Laura’s murder with help
from Donna.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-NZ">Episode 5: ‘Cooper’s Dreams’<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-NZ">NZ: 30 April 1991 (US: 10
May 1990)<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-NZ">Cooper and Truman meet the Log Lady and find a
gruesome crime scene in the woods. James and Donna take Madeline Ferguson into
their confidence. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-NZ">Episode 6: ‘Realization Time’<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-NZ">NZ: 7 May 1991 (US: 17 May
1990)<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-NZ">Agent Cooper and Ed pay a special visit to
One-Eyed Jack’s while Audrey Horne works undercover as a host there.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-NZ">Episode 7: ‘The Last Evening’ <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-NZ">NZ: 14 May 1991 (US: 23 May
1990)<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-NZ">Cooper and Truman’s investigation moves towards
a terrifying end, Dr Jacoby’s meeting with “Laura Palmer” has bizarre
consequences and Hank Jennings’s evil spreads to Josie Packard.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-NZ">Episode 8 (part 1): ‘May the Giant Be with You’<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-NZ">NZ: 21 May 1991</span></b><b><span lang="EN-NZ"> </span></b><b><span lang="EN-NZ">(US: 30
September 1990)</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-NZ">Scorching questions remain in the mill fire’s
aftermath; Jacques Renault is found dead; Audrey becomes a terrified prisoner
and Donna puffs cigarettes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-NZ">Episode 8 (part 2): ‘May the Giant Be with You’<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-NZ">NZ: 28 May 1991</span></b><b><span lang="EN-NZ"> </span></b><b><span lang="EN-NZ">(US: 30
September 1990)</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-NZ">The community is shattered as several lives hang
in the balance, Audrey is taken prisoner and Donna receives a strange message.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-NZ">Episode 9: ‘Coma’<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-NZ">NZ: 4 June 1991</span></b><b><span lang="EN-NZ"> </span></b><b><span lang="EN-NZ">(US: 6
October 1990)</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-NZ">Agent Cooper gets some uncalled-for help, and
some unwelcome news; Audrey is in more trouble than she thinks; Donna plans to
meet a stranger; and a distressed Leland Palmer makes a frightening discovery.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-NZ">Episode 10: ‘The Man Behind the Glass’<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-NZ">NZ: 11 June 1991</span></b><b><span lang="EN-NZ"> </span></b><b><span lang="EN-NZ">(US: 13
October 1990)</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-NZ">The trail to Laura’s killer takes a new turn;
Blackie O’Reilly sees a golden opportunity; James Hurley and Madeline Ferguson
strike an unforeseen chord; and Dr Jacoby undergoes hypnosis.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-NZ">Episode 11: ‘Laura’s Secret Diary’<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-NZ">NZ: 18 June 1991</span></b><b><span lang="EN-NZ"> </span></b><b><span lang="EN-NZ">(US: 20
October 1990)</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-NZ">Ben Horne baffles Agent Cooper when he asks him
to save Audrey’s life, Donna goes on another picnic, Lucy’s love life becomes
difficult and Josie introduces her cousin from Hong Kong.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-NZ">Episode 12: ‘The Orchid’s Curse’<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-NZ">NZ: 25 June 1991</span></b><b><span lang="EN-NZ"> </span></b><b><span lang="EN-NZ">(US: 27
October 1990)</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-NZ">Cooper tells Truman where Audrey Horne is,
Donna and Maddy plan to steal Laura Palmer’s secret diary and Benjamin Horne
gets a surprise visitor and a business proposition.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-NZ">Episodes 13 & 14: ‘Demons’ & ‘Lonely
Souls’<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-NZ">NZ: 2 July 1991</span></b><b><span lang="EN-NZ"> </span></b><b><span lang="EN-NZ">(US: 3 &
10 November 1990)</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-NZ">Cooper and Truman raid One-Eyed Jacks, Donna and
Maddy are at the mercy of an angry Harold Smith, Shelly and Bobby “welcome
home” Leo and Cooper’s bureau chief stops in Twin Peaks. With some vital help
from the one-armed man, Cooper and Truman’s investigations finally uncover the
identity of Laura Palmer’s killer!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-NZ">Episode 15: ‘Drive with a Dead Girl’<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-NZ">NZ: 9 July 1991</span></b><b><span lang="EN-NZ"> </span></b><b><span lang="EN-NZ">(US: 17
November 1990)</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-NZ">The one-armed man helps Cooper and Truman’s
search for Bob, Lucy returns home with company and Bobby sets out on a new
money-making venture.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-NZ">Episode 16: ‘Arbitrary Law’<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-NZ">NZ: 16 July 1991</span></b><b><span lang="EN-NZ"> </span></b><b><span lang="EN-NZ">(US: 1
December 1990)</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-NZ">Cooper asks Truman to give him 24 hours to
prove who murdered Laura Palmer, Deputy Andy surprises Donna with his knowledge
of French, Mrs Tremond disappears and Ben Horne’s fortunes hit an all-time low.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-NZ">Episode 17: ‘Dispute Between Brothers’<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-NZ">NZ: 22 July 1991</span></b><b><span lang="EN-NZ"> </span></b><b><span lang="EN-NZ">(US: 8
December 1990)</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-NZ">Agent Cooper and Truman bid farewell and a wake
is held for Leland Palmer. Nadine may be able to go back to high school,
Tremayne embraces fatherhood, and Audrey tells a new-found friend all about her
ice cream preferences.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-NZ">Episode 18: ‘Masked Ball’<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-NZ">NZ: 30 September 1991</span></b><b><span lang="EN-NZ"> </span></b><b><span lang="EN-NZ">(US: 15
December 1990)</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-NZ">Truman defends Cooper’s activities at one-eyed
Jacks, Mrs Briggs worries about Garland’s disappearance and Nadine is besotted
with Mike Nelson.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-NZ">Episode 19: ‘The Black Widow’<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-NZ">NZ: 7 October 1991</span></b><b><span lang="EN-NZ"> </span></b><b><span lang="EN-NZ">(US: 12
January 1991)</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-NZ">Cooper’s white glove test yields a clue, Deputy
Andy and Dick Tremayne are concerned about little Nicky’s past and Bobby makes
a quick buck.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-NZ">Episode 20: ‘Checkmate’<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-NZ">NZ: 14 October 1991</span></b><b><span lang="EN-NZ"> </span></b><b><span lang="EN-NZ">(US: 19
January 1991)</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-NZ">Cooper and Truman arrange a trap for Jean Renault,
Deputy Andy and Dick Tremayne pry into Little Nicky’s background and an old
lover interrupts Ben Horne.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-NZ">Episode 21: ‘Double Play’<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-NZ">NZ: 21 October 1991 </span></b><b><span lang="EN-NZ">(US: 2
February 1991)</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-NZ">Cooper tells Truman about the tragic history of
his former FBI partner Windom Earle, Audrey sets up a business deal with Bobby
Briggs, Leo Johnson comes back to vicious life and James is confused about
Evelyn Marsh.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-NZ">Episode 22: ‘Slaves and Masters’<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-NZ">NZ: 28 October 1991</span></b><b><span lang="EN-NZ"> </span></b><b><span lang="EN-NZ">(US: 9
February 1991)</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-NZ">Truman and Cooper try to track down Cooper’s
former partner, Windom Earle, Ed Hurley cooks for Norma, Dr Jacoby changes the
course of history, and James Hurley gets in trouble with the law.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-NZ">Episode 23: ‘The Condemned Woman’<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-NZ">NZ: 4 November 1991</span></b><b><span lang="EN-NZ"> </span></b><b><span lang="EN-NZ">(US: 16
February 1991)</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-NZ">Truman watches as Cooper pleads with Josie for
the truth, Ben Horne has a change of heart about the future of Twin Peaks, and
James Hurley and Donna Hayward say goodbye.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-NZ">Episode 24: ‘Wounds and Scars’<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-NZ">NZ: 11 November 1991</span></b><b><span lang="EN-NZ"> </span></b><b><span lang="EN-NZ">(US: 28
March 1991)</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-NZ">Agent Cooper and the sheriff’s department
investigate caves at midnight, Truman wakes up to the murderous embrace of a
naked woman and Audrey Horne and Donna Hayward witness a strange meeting. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-NZ"><i>(The wrong billing information was published - this was for episode 25. The error was noted in the </i>Listener<i> the following week)</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-NZ">Episode 25: ‘On the Wings of Love’<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-NZ">NZ: 18 November 1991</span></b><b><span lang="EN-NZ"> </span></b><b><span lang="EN-NZ">(US: 4
April 1991)</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-NZ">Cooper investigates caves at midnight, Truman
wakes up to a murderous embrace and Audrey Horne and Donna Hayward witness a
strange meeting. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-NZ">Episode 26: ‘Variations on Relations’<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-NZ">NZ: 25 November 1991</span></b><b><span lang="EN-NZ"> </span></b><b><span lang="EN-NZ">(US: 11
April 1991)</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-NZ">Cooper and Truman try to understand the
hieroglyph found in Owl Cave, and the local beauty competition draws hot
competition.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-NZ">Episode 27: ‘The Path to the Black Lodge’<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-NZ">NZ: 2 December 1991 (US: 18
April 1991)<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-NZ">Cooper and Truman continue their investigation
of Owl Cave, Windom Earle takes a captive, Cooper and Annie find their romance
blooming, and Donna discovers a scrapbook full of surprises.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-NZ">Episode 28: ‘Miss Twin Peaks’<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-NZ">NZ: 9 December 1991</span></b><b><span lang="EN-NZ"> </span></b><b><span lang="EN-NZ">(US: 10
June 1991)</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-NZ">Cooper and Truman unravel part of the secret of
the Black Lodge – but it might be too late. And the townsfolk gather at the
Miss Twin Peaks pageant.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-NZ">Episode 29: ‘Beyond Life and Death’<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-NZ">NZ: 16 December 1991 (US: 10
June 1991)<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-NZ">Cooper and Truman attempt to head off Windom
Earle at the Black Lodge to save the life of Miss Twin Peaks. Nadine Hurley
enrols in the school of hard knocks.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Paul Scooneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17322991318366377845noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20322865.post-12579922844081124452016-06-01T00:44:00.000+12:002016-06-01T00:44:23.285+12:00Adventures in Hardcover<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-FGPTLSdKtaQ/V0165pLJnuI/AAAAAAAAA1I/xri2BmnGcnkri815hQ6BUIOY1X-pqq57ACLcB/s1600/DSCF0833.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="203" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-FGPTLSdKtaQ/V0165pLJnuI/AAAAAAAAA1I/xri2BmnGcnkri815hQ6BUIOY1X-pqq57ACLcB/s320/DSCF0833.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My collection of <i>Doctor Who</i> hardback novelisations</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The <i>Doctor Who</i> novelisations are to me powerful objects of nostalgia. Just a glance at the cover artwork has the power to trigger a memory of where and when I first acquired my copy of that book. These slim paperbacks were an obsession throughout my teens, as I gradually built a much-loved collection of the novelisations.<br />
<br />
The books taught me to read, and by extension, to write. My mother gave me a paperback copy of <i>Doctor Who and the Cave-Monsters </i>when I was probably about eight-years-old. I remember that the book seemed daunting at first. It was long with many unfamiliar words and small type. I was intrigued by the fact that it was related to the television series I'd been watching. I read it many times over.<br />
<br />
I then found to my delight that my local library had some of the books in hardback. I regularly borrowed these. I don't remember all of the titles they had, but I vividly recall that one of them was <i>Doctor Who and the Time Warrior</i>, because the disturbingly life-like cover artwork of Linx the Sontaran gave me horrible nightmares.<br />
<br />
Around the end of 1980, I noticed a display bin full of Target <i>Doctor Who</i> paperback books in a local bookshop. My grandmother offered to buy me one, so I picked<i> Doctor Who and the Genesis of the Daleks</i> because it looked exciting and had Daleks. I got this book days before my family went off on a two-week summer camping holiday. During that time away, I made it my mission to look for more of the books in any shop I could find. By the time I returned home my collection had grown to seven books.<br />
<br />
This was the beginning of my obsession. I had an overwhelming desire to own every book in the series. There were so many to collect (around 60 were available by the end of 1980), and I didn't have very much pocket money so limited myself to only getting the Tom Baker Doctor books at first. Once I had almost all of these, I set my sights on the rest.<br />
<br />
Eventually I caught up. By mid-1984 I had around 80 titles but there were still three I was having great difficulty tracking down: <i>The Abominable Snowmen,</i> <i>The Ice Warriors</i> and <i>Four to Doomsday</i>. Months of fruitless searching culminated in a triumphant discovery - I chanced across all three sitting together on the same shelf, newly stocked in my local bookshop. At last I had a full set! Thereafter it was a matter of building up the collection at the rate of one a month as each new Target title appeared in the shops.<br />
<br />
My interest in collecting the novelisations was re-energised in the late 1990s, long after I'd completed a set of the full run of Target paperback books. I had fond memories of the hardback editions of the novelisations that I had first encountered in the library before I started collecting the paperbacks. The first three hardbacks had been published in the 1960s. Two more were issued in early 1974. Thereafter, the books were only issued in paperback until late 1975 when the hardbacks resumed, beginning with <i>Planet of the Spiders</i>. The ten books that had only been published in paperback were all later issued in hardback editions. The hardbacks and paperbacks initially appeared simultaneously but from 1983 onwards the hardbacks were issued several months in advance of the paperbacks. The hardback range ended in June 1988 and the last 22 novelisations were only issued in paperback.<br />
<br />
I'd acquired a handful of the hardbacks from secondhand bookshops and fellow fans. It was only when I started using the Ebay auction site that I realised that it might be possible to collect a set of these editions. Ebay had many of the hardbacks listed reasonably cheaply and also often in even more cost-effective assortments of four or five titles. The condition of the books varied wildly, from much-scuffed and faded ex-library editions to immaculate never-been-read copies, but this variable quality simply adds to the charm of the collection.<br />
<br />
Although I was placing low bids for these hardbacks, I rarely lost an auction. There was only one title that I had to pay well over the odds for, and that was <i>The Wheel in Space</i>, one of the rarest of the novelisations. The last hardback in publication order, <i>The Smugglers</i>, was exceptionally difficult to find. I noticed an auction that described the book as a paperback but featured a photograph of the hardback. Possibly due to the misleading description no-one had placed a bid, so I took a chance. It was only when the parcel arrived in the post that I knew for certain that I'd got the right edition!<br />
<br />
I collected the hardbacks at just the right time. In the late 1990s interest in <i>Doctor Who</i> seemed to have diminished, something that was reflected in the prices of secondhand merchandise associated with the series. A couple of years later, possibly fuelled by growing interest in the DVD releases and then later the new television series, the prices for these hardback editions shot up dramatically, and many of them are now impossible to find.<br />
<br />
I have one of every novelisation issued in hardback. <i>The Crusaders </i>and <i>The Auton Invasion </i>are the 1980s reprint editions, but otherwise the books are as originally published.Paul Scooneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17322991318366377845noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20322865.post-87630884339523736822015-11-12T23:05:00.001+13:002016-07-24T21:53:54.368+12:00Acting in overruns - setting the record straight about Planet of Fire<div class="MsoNormal">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-zgfrnlRPKOQ/VkRmcB3e89I/AAAAAAAAAz4/Nkoj2kpP01g/s1600/vlcsnap-2015-11-12-21h55m23s963.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-zgfrnlRPKOQ/VkRmcB3e89I/AAAAAAAAAz4/Nkoj2kpP01g/s320/vlcsnap-2015-11-12-21h55m23s963.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mark Strickson as Turlough in <i>Planet of Fire</i> (1984)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
On <i>The Underwater Menace</i> DVD is a documentary called <i>The
Television Centre of the Universe - Part Two</i> in which actors Peter Davison, Janet Fielding, Mark Strickson and other personnel reminisce about their memories of working on <i>Doctor
Who</i> at the former BBC Television Centre studios in London. During the documentary, Strickson, who played the fifth Doctor’s companion Turlough, recalls an incident
that occurred on <i>Planet of Fire</i>, his last story, when he had to perform a scene with seconds to spare at the end of the day’s recording.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
BBC Television Centre had a regulated shutdown each night
at ten o’clock. The studio lights would be turned off at exactly that time regardless
of the production’s progress. It was therefore imperative to finish recording before this deadline or else have the lights go out abruptly in the midst of
recording a scene. Special arrangement could be made to go beyond ten o’clock if deemed to be absolutely essential, but these so-called ‘overruns’ were required to be documented in writing by the programme’s producer with an explanation as to why each instance had occurred.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The studio recording for <i>Planet of Fire</i> took place in two blocks
totalling five days: 26 and 27 October in the large Studio One; and 9, 10 and
11 November 1983 in the much smaller Studio Six. It was a particularly demanding
production for the crew, led by the highly-experienced director Fiona Cumming, because
of the number of complex effects shots and difficulties with operating the
robot prop Kamelion. These factors and other technical issues contributed to overruns
on three of the five studio days.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Thursday 27 October, the second of the two days in Studio
One, suffered the most significant overrun, lasting 35 minutes past ten o’clock.
The scenes scheduled for recording on this date included all that take place on
the Hall of Fire set. The overrun was necessary to complete these scenes
because it would have been costly and impractical to not only retain and
re-erect the large set on the next available studio day, two weeks later, but
also re-hire the large group of extras playing the Sarns in these scenes. The
Hall of Fire material was scheduled to have been completed early enough in the
evening to subsequently record four scenes in the wrecked Trion spaceship and a
further eight in the Master’s Laboratory, but due to the delay all of these material
had to be rescheduled for a later date. The sets had been erected for these
scenes in Studio One were dismantled without having been used. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The abandoned scenes were added to the next block of
recording days, and provisions were made to erect the required sets in Studio
Six. Fortunately the plan had always been to split the Master’s Laboratory
scenes over the two studio blocks so additional room only had to be found to accommodate
the Wrecked Ship set, which was erected alongside the TARDIS Console Room.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Wrecked Ship scenes were now scheduled to be recorded last
thing on the evening of Thursday 10 November, the penultimate studio day. On <i>The Television Centre of the Universe</i> documentary Mark Strickson recalls that these were the final scenes he
recorded for the series. This was not the case: he was back the very next day, Friday 11
November, to perform scenes on the Ruins set, culminating in his final
scene in story order, in which Turlough bids farewell to the Doctor and Peri outside the TARDIS. Once this scene was completed, recording continued with scenes in the Master’s Laboratory and on the Master’s TARDIS Console Room set. Turlough was not involved in any of these scenes so Mark
Strickson was released from the production early on his last day. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
On the previous evening it was a very different state of affairs as the cast and crew worked against the clock to complete the scenes on the Wrecked Ship
set. Ten o’clock passed, and the production was again into overruns. As producer John Nathan-Turner noted, in a memo dated 15 November, the overrun
on 10 November ran to 15 minutes ‘in order to complete scenes in a set that <u>had</u>
to be struck [i.e. dismantled] over-night’. He was of course referring to the
Wrecked Ship set.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-UKS55O-cGmA/VkRdKTXACAI/AAAAAAAAAys/Iqxdlga58HQ/s1600/IMG_0567.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="210" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-UKS55O-cGmA/VkRdKTXACAI/AAAAAAAAAys/Iqxdlga58HQ/s400/IMG_0567.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Internal BBC memo from <i>Doctor Who</i> producer John Nathan-Turner, dated 15 November 1983, to explain the overrun on the evening of Thursday 10 November.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Recalling the the pressures they were under on the DVD documentary, Strickson says, ‘[it] was the last scene in the studio and the
director Fiona Cumming said, “Look, get it in Mark. I don’t know how you’re
going to do it, you’ve got so many seconds, the scene lasts this.” So I had to
physically, as I was acting, cut lines because I knew the lights were going to
go out.’</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This was by no means the first time Strickson had told this particular anecdote about his final story. On the <i>Calling the
Shots</i> feature on the <i>Planet of Fire</i> DVD, he says, ‘… we were running very, very
late, we had something like thirty seconds left before the lights were turned
out and Fiona Cumming … said to me, “Mark, I don’t care how you do it, get the
lines in, get the plot down because we all lose light in thirty seconds”, and I
just edited and cut it as I went, and almost the moment we finished the whole
of television centre went black.’ The incident is also mentioned by Strickson on
the <i>Planet of Fire</i> DVD commentary (during the first Wrecked Ship scene in Part
Two). Furthermore, when Jon Preddle and I <a href="http://doctorwho.org.nz/archive/tsv21/markstrickson.html" target="_blank">interviewed Mark in 1990</a>, he said, ‘This scene
lasts about a minute and a half in the script and there was about forty-six
seconds of studio left to get it in. So we started this scene and Fiona says,
“I don’t care what you do, but get the plot in.” We just went for it - and I
got the plot in.’</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IYimHCudKQA/VkReRmu_yGI/AAAAAAAAAy0/ebOULYbO5Sk/s1600/vlcsnap-2015-11-12-21h55m27s571.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IYimHCudKQA/VkReRmu_yGI/AAAAAAAAAy0/ebOULYbO5Sk/s320/vlcsnap-2015-11-12-21h55m27s571.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mark Strickson (Turlough) and Jonathan Caplan (Roskal) in the final scene recorded on the Wrecked Ship set on <span style="font-size: 12.8px;">10 November 1983</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The common thread running through these accounts is
that under pressure Strickson improvised the last scene to some extent in order to get the relevant details across in the briefest time.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So what was altered in the heat of the moment? The camera
scripts offer a detailed record of what was to be performed in
studio. A comparison between the scenes on the Wrecked Ship as written and on screen reveals a
surprising fact. They all play out as scripted. There
is one dialogue edit, a cut lasting four seconds, at the start of Part Four’s Scene
22 (Roskal: ‘Is it still working?’ Turlough: ‘I don’t know.’), but these lines were definitely recorded as evidenced by their inclusion on a longer, time-coded edit of this episode.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-J6GaIindrF0/VkRj0hj711I/AAAAAAAAAzs/AAb6_SAqsgo/s1600/Untitled-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="185" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-J6GaIindrF0/VkRj0hj711I/AAAAAAAAAzs/AAb6_SAqsgo/s400/Untitled-1.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Pages from the camera script for <i>Planet of Fire</i> Part Four, showing the last two Wrecked Ship scenes<br />
(click on the image to enlarge)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
The scenes in the Wrecked Ship were recorded last thing in
the evening, just before the studio shut down. In that respect Mark Strickson’s
recollection is undoubtedly correct. However the notion that this was his final
work on <i>Doctor Who</i> or, more significantly, that he cut lines and edited dialogue
on the fly in order to complete one or more of these scenes in the time available is wrong. All
four scenes were all performed as written in the camera scripts. What Mark Strickson deserves credit for here is of course that he did a sterling job of managing
to deliver the lines accurately under such pressure.<br />
<br />
<i><b>Postscript:</b></i><br />
Stephen James Walker offers his recollection in response to my article... ‘I was in the studio when those wrecked ship scenes were being recorded at the end of the day, and they certainly were done very much under time pressure. I remember Mark accidentally dropped the Trion pendant prop at one point, and had to scrabble around on the set to retrieve it, while still acting.’</div>
Paul Scooneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17322991318366377845noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20322865.post-33874531168758920922015-09-10T00:46:00.002+12:002015-09-24T10:03:09.969+12:00Ever Decreasing Delays<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-K0NPi-VPUp8/VfAp_BRx9GI/AAAAAAAAAo4/qw_b8NF6xAY/s1600/12004873_10154391540739988_350070918592925938_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-K0NPi-VPUp8/VfAp_BRx9GI/AAAAAAAAAo4/qw_b8NF6xAY/s400/12004873_10154391540739988_350070918592925938_n.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
Good news! Prime has announced that Series 9's episodes of <i>Doctor Who</i> will be screened in New Zealand at 7:30pm on the Sunday after the UK Saturday broadcast. That means that we are only a matter of hours behind. A simultaneous broadcast would be 6:30am, so Prime’s screening will be 13 hours later.<br />
<br />
Although one-off specials have appeared on Prime soon after the UK in the past, this will be the first time that a full series of <i>Doctor Who</i> has aired here so promptly.<br />
<br />
Looking back over the past decade of <i>Doctor Who</i>, New Zealand fans have not always been so fortunate.<br />
<br />
Back in 2005 when the revived series launched with <i>Rose</i> in the UK on Saturday 26 March, there was no indication of when New Zealanders would get to see it. The series finally arrived here on Thursday 7 July, 103 days later.<br />
<br />
If this long delay seemed intolerable, there was worse still to come. The first Christmas special, introducing David Tennant’s Doctor, was delayed by more than six months. <i>The Christmas Invasion</i> was held back to open the second series, so New Zealand finally got to see it on Thursday 6 July 2006, 193 days later! Series 2 (<i>New Earth</i> to <i>Doomsday</i>) began screening the following week, 89 days after the UK. This was a slight improvement on the treatment of the 2005 series, but only by two weeks.<br />
<br />
In 2007 the Christmas special was again held back by Prime and stuck on the beginning of Series 3. Whereas the first two series had both opened in July, Series 3 did not commence until late August, resulting in an even longer gap between UK and NZ transmissions. When <i>The Runaway Bride</i> screened on Sunday 19 August 2007 it set a new series record delay of 237 days.<br />
<br />
The first six episodes of Series 3 (<i>Smith and Jones</i> to <i>The Lazarus Experiment</i>) had a delay of 148 days. This gap was reduced by a week to 141 days for the latter half of the series (<i>42</i> to <i>Last of the Time Lords</i>) simply because the UK took a one-week break mid-series.<br />
<br />
2008 was the last to have such long delays for a run of episodes. Once again the Christmas special was held back to open the new series. <i>Voyage of the Damned</i> screened on Sunday 13 July 2008, a delay of 194 days. The first half of Series 4 (<i>Partners in Crime</i> to <i>The Unicorn and the Wasp</i>), had a gap of 99 days, that reduced by a week to 92 days for <i>Silence in the Library</i> to <i>The Stolen Earth</i>, and a further reduction to 85 days for the series finale, <i>Journey’s End</i>, as the last two episodes were screened back-to-back in New Zealand on 28 September 2008, 12 weeks after Series 4 concluded in the UK.<br />
<br />
There was no new series in 2009. <i>The Next Doctor</i>, 2008’s Christmas episode, was scheduled as a one-off special on Prime, however it still suffered a long delay before screening on Monday 13 April 2009, a delay of 109 days.<br />
<br />
Thereafter, the situation began to improve as Prime gradually moved its screening dates closer to those in the UK. The lack of a full series in 2009 to have to find room for in the schedules may have helped in this regard. The next special, <i>Planet of the Dead</i>, aired on Monday 1 June 2009, 51 days after the UK.<br />
<br />
The gap closed considerably for <i>The Waters of Mars</i>, which aired on Sunday 29 November, just 14 days after the UK. In fact New Zealand appears to have been the very first country outside the UK to screen this story (Australia first screened it a week later, and Canada and the US both aired it the following year).<br />
<br />
David Tennant’s last story, the two-part <i>The End of Time</i>, wasn’t quite as prompt to arrive here, screening on 7 and 14 February 2010, 44 days after the UK.<br />
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The arrival of Matt Smith’s Doctor saw Prime making further inroads into the delay for a run of episodes. Series 5 (<i>The Eleventh Hour</i> to <i>The Big Bang</i>) screened from Sunday 2 May 2010, 29 days behind the UK.<br />
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<i>A Christmas Carol</i> was slightly more delayed, screening on Sunday 30 January 2011, 36 days later.<br />
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The 2011 series was split in half for both the UK and NZ. The first half, <i>The Impossible Astronaut</i> to <i>A Good Man Goes to War</i>, screened here from Thursday 19 May 2011, a delay of 26 days. The second half, <i>Let’s Kill Hitler</i> to <i>The Wedding of River Song</i>, screened from Thursday 15 September and had only a 19 day gap.<br />
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The next Christmas special, <i>The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe</i>, screened here on Thursday 19 January 2012, 25 days after the UK.<br />
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The first half of Series 7, <i>Asylum of the Daleks</i> to <i>The Angels take Manhattan</i>, screened from Thursday 13 September 2012, a gap of just 12 days, which was at the time the shortest delay NZ had experienced with the new series.<br />
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Even better than this, the 2012 Christmas special <i>The Snowmen </i>screened less than a day after the UK, on the evening of 26 December. This next day arrangement has been repeated for successive Christmas specials.<br />
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The latter half of Series 7, <i>The Bells of Saint John </i>to <i>The Name of the Doctor</i>, was again a 12 day delay, with the run of episodes commencing on Thursday 11 April 2012.<br />
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The 50th Anniversary Special, <i>The Day of the Doctor</i>, was simulcast in many countries around the world, but New Zealand was very slightly delayed. Had this country joined the simulcast, the story would have aired at 8:50am but instead it went out just 10 minutes later, screening at 9am, on Sunday 24 November. This time delay was apparently because Prime's schedules dictated that the programme started on the hour.<br />
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The 2013 Christmas special, <i>The Time of the Doctor</i>, screened less than a day after the UK, on the evening of 26 December.<br />
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Peter Capaldi’s first series, <i>Deep Breath</i> to <i>Death in Heaven</i>, screened from Sunday 31 August 2014, only a week after the UK.<br />
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Finally, <i>Last Christmas</i> screened less than a couple of hours after the UK, going out on Prime at 9am on 26 December 2014, and making New Zealand once again the first country outside the UK to screen the story.<br />
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Which brings us up to date. Until now, next day screenings (which are effectively the same day given the timezone difference), have been the province of one-off specials, but with Series 9 screening from Sunday 20 September, Prime has committed to giving full series the same treatment. The time when New Zealanders had to wait days, weeks or even months to see new episodes of <i>Doctor Who </i>are hopefully gone forever.Paul Scooneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17322991318366377845noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20322865.post-9508059660190579372015-07-02T14:45:00.001+12:002015-07-02T15:02:03.648+12:00Gallifrey MagazineI was sorting through a box of assorted old items recently when I discovered eight copies of a thirty-year-old <i>Doctor Who</i> fanzine I produced in the mid-1980s when I was a teenager.<br />
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<i>Doctor Who - Gallifrey Magazine</i> ran for thirty monthly issues between June 1983 and December 1985. Each issue was A5, between 8 and 12 pages long and produced on a manual typewriter with Letraset, felt-tip pen, and photocopied pictures. My father ran off a handful of copies of each issue for me on a photocopier at his place of work and I distributed these free of charge to friends at school. At most, I perhaps had five or six readers. By the end I was only keeping it going for my own interest.<br />
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These recently rediscovered issues are the final eight from 1985, numbered #23 to #30. I produced these issues when I was aged 16 and 17, thirty years ago. They represent the earliest surviving examples of my creative output as a <i>Doctor Who</i> fan. I once owned a complete set of all thirty issues, but sold these to an Australian fanzine collector in 1988 when I was a poor student in need of funds. (I wonder if that collector still has them?) These last eight issues were duplicate copies that somehow survived when so much of what I did as a fan in the 1980s has long since been either purposefully or accidentally discarded.<br />
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It is both humbling and embarrassing to look back over these issues with so much distance. I'd like to think that my 17 year-old self would be absolutely thrilled if I knew what I’ve achieved in those intervening decades. So what do I make of his efforts...?<br />
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<b><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">#23 - May 1985 </span></b><br />
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The cover is made up of shots from the Pertwee era title sequence (sourced from the <i>Radio Times Twentieth Anniversary Special</i>), and announces ‘Jon Pertwee is the Doctor!’. The focus was very much on the stories that were currently screening on television in New Zealand. A month before before this issue was published, TVNZ began screening a massive retrospective, beginning with <i>The Mind Robber</i> and <i>The Krotons</i> followed by every story from <i>Spearhead from Space</i> onwards. In the magazine I refer to these screenings as the ‘Repeat Season’ as I was unaware that this was the first time many of these stories, especially from Pertwee’s era, had been screened in New Zealand.<br />
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The issue includes a preview of <i>Spearhead from Space</i>, reviews of the Target novelisations <i>The Highlanders</i> (the latest release) and <i>The Auton Invasion</i>; a profile of writer Robert Holmes, an ‘Archives’ feature that was a short synopsis of <i>The Invasion</i>, and a quiz based entirely on the recently-screened <i>The Mind Robber</i>. The back cover had the tenth part of an ongoing 'Programme Guide' listing a brief synopsis of every story. This issue’s instalment covered <i>The Androids of Tara</i> to <i>Meglos</i>. I was clearly heavily influenced by <i>Doctor Who Magazine</i>; the Robert Holmes feature for example lifted sections from an interview that had only just appeared in issue #100.<br />
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<b><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">#24 - June 1985</span></b><br />
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Judging by the ‘Second Birthday Special’ strap line, I was obviously proud of the fact that my little magazine had been going for two years, Perhaps I was inspired by <i>Doctor Who Magazine</i>’s recent 100th issue milestone. The trio pictured in the montage photograph, Troughton, Pertwee and Davison, were the three Doctors who had appeared on New Zealand television during the two years that the magazine had been around.<br />
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In the ‘From the Editor…’ column I talked about a page increase, from 10 to 12 pages. I asked for writers to contribute articles and/or reviews. No one among my small readership accepted this invitation, which must have been disheartening, and may have contributed to my later decision to cease production. I reported that the readership had increased since the series was back on television, and that the issue had taken ‘over two full days to research and write up’.<br />
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The issue’s contents included a book review of <i>Frontios</i>, just one of many recent television stories I had never seen but I absolutely adored the book, calling it a masterpiece and awarding it 10/10. I was much less kind to <i>The Cave Monsters</i>, harshly criticising it for not strictly the television serial and only awarding it 4/10. I previewed <i>Doctor Who and the Silurians</i> and <i>The Ambassadors of Death</i>. The first of these would have been halfway through by the beginning of June, so the preview was a little late. I apologised for this in the issue, explaining that ‘until the story appears in <i>The Listener</i>, I have no idea what the next one to be shown is’. <i>The Ambassadors of Death</i> preview opened with the hope that this would be the next story screened as I couldn’t know for sure. The ‘Archives’ featured <i>The Seeds of Death.</i> The idea with this feature was to cover the unseen Troughton stories from the same season as the two that had been recently screened. Those two stories, <i>The Mind Robber</i> and <i>The Krotons</i>, were both reviewed in this issue. It seems I wasn’t overly enthusiastic about either of them. I judged <i>The Mind Robber</i> as suffering from a reduced budget and an overly padded plot. I thought <i>The Krotons</i> was well written but was let down by both the visuals, and the performance of the Krotons and the Gonds. The back-page Programme Guide reached <i>Black Orchid</i>.<br />
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<b><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">#25 - July 1985</span></b><br />
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The Pertwee-fest continued with cover-promoted previews of <i>Inferno </i>and <i>Terror of the Autons</i>. I presumed (correctly as it turns out) that these would be the next two stories screened. The cover photo is from <i>The Ambassadors of Death</i>, the then-current television story, although there was nothing about this particular serial in the issue. The magazine's masthead got a revamp, with the lettering of the word ‘Gallifrey’ traced from an article heading in <i>Doctor Who Magazine</i>, and a screengrab of Pertwee’s face from the opening titles (previously used on #23) was introduced in the top right cover, where it would remain for the rest of the magazine’s run. This was to denote the current Doctor’s era on television.<br />
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In the ‘From the Editor…’ column I discussed the magazine’s future, observing that I thought it ‘extremely unlikely we will reach issue 100’, but that it would ‘definitely be going until the end of this year. After that, no definite plans have been made’. It would appear from this comment that I was already thinking about winding up the magazine.<br />
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The issue features a Target Books news column, using information from <i>Doctor Who Magazine</i>. I reviewed the new novelisation of <i>Planet of Fire</i>, praising it as ‘fantastic’ and awarding it 10/10. ‘This Month’ was a new regular feature, listing key events that happened in the current month through the series’ history. I think the source of most of my information for this was the Peter Haining book <i>The Key to Time</i>. ‘Saga of the Silurians’ was an attempt to explain the continuity links between <i>Doctor Who and the Silurians</i> and <i>Warriors of the Deep</i>. ‘Archives’ covered <i>The Space Pirates</i>, and the television reviews section looked at the first two Pertwee serials. I described <i>Spearhead from Space</i> as a ‘classic’ and described the Autons as ‘effective and far more believable killing machines’ (compared to the clockwork soldiers and the Krotons of the two previous Troughton stories). I thought <i>Doctor Who and the Silurians</i> wasn’t quite as good, but liked that it was effective in eliciting sympathy for the Old Silurian. An ‘Advance TV Preview’ listing noted the episodes due to screen on each Friday evening for the remainder of 1985. This must have been an educated guess as I had no access to advance television schedules, but turns out in hindsight to have been exactly right. The back-page Programme Guide reached <i>Warriors of the Deep</i>.<br />
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<b><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">#26 - August 1985</span></b><br />
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The <i>Terror of the Autons</i> photo on the cover came from the book <i>The Adventures of K9 and Other Mechanical Creatures</i> – you can even spot the page join on the left.<br />
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The issue features previews of <i>The Mind of Evil</i> and T<i>he Claws of Axos</i>. By now I was confident enough of the upcoming television schedule to provide advance airdates for these stories. ‘Collecting Target Books’ was a guide to starting your own collection, and I noted that it had taken me over five years to complete my own set of the first 93 books. One thing that comes through in all of these issues is that I regarded the Target novelisations as almost equal in status to the television episodes. I addressed this in the ‘From the Editor…’ column, explaining that while the series was ‘this magazine’s first priority', the 'mammoth number of books available' came 'a close second.' I rated the latest novelisation, <i>The Caves of Androzani</i> 8/10, noting that it was ‘a little overshadowed by the extraordinarily good <i>Frontios</i> and <i>Planet of Fire</i>. I also reviewed the novelisations of <i>Terror of the Autons</i> and <i>The Claws of Axos</i>, rating them 9/10 and 8/10 respectively.<br />
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‘The Doctor’s Celery’ was an article inspired by the information provided on the subject in <i>The Caves of Androzani</i> novelisation. The first in a new series of articles covered the behind-the-scenes details on the production of Jon Pertwee’s first season. ‘Archives’ covered the final Troughton story, <i>The War Games</i>, and the back-page Programme Guide reached its thirteenth and final instalment, concluding with <i>Revelation of the Daleks</i>, which was at the time the most-recently produced story. What I find particularly striking about this list of twelve stories (that begins with <i>The Awakening</i>), is that at the time I wrote it I had not seen any of them. Now I look at it and not only are they all familiar to me, but I've also worked on the DVDs of six of these titles.<br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>#27 - September 1985</b></span><br />
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A photograph from <i>The Claws of Axos</i> appears on the cover. Inside, are previews of <i>Colony in Space</i> and <i>The Daemons, </i>and ‘A Special Advance TV Preview of Upcoming Stories’ with details of the next fifteen stories (<i>Day of the Daleks</i> to <i>Planet of the Spiders</i>), including airdates for each calculated on the expectation that the series would continue to screen at the rate of two episodes every Friday. In hindsight I can see that I was correct but only up to the end of January 1985 when the schedule changed. Ah well. This advance preview was purportedly ‘due to popular demand’. I think one of my classmates at school who read the magazine must have asked for such a listing. I noted at the end of this preview that I wasn’t sure what would happen once all the Pertwee stories had screened, but hoped that the series would continue with old stories before catching up and carrying on with previously unscreened stories, which was indeed what happened.<br />
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‘The Six Doctors’ was a new serialised feature looking at the characters of each of the Doctors. I'm embarrassed to admit that this wasn’t my own work but an edited rehash of a feature by Richard Marson from <i>Doctor Who Magazine</i>. Oh dear. At least I credited Marson at the end of each instalment. <i>Marco Polo</i> was the latest book received, and I wasn’t impressed, judging by my review. I thought the story was ‘boring’ and that the novelisation bore ‘little resemblance’ to the television version. I’ve no idea what I based this judgement on. <i>The Doomsday Weapon</i> was also criticised for straying too far from its source, but I praised the novelisation of <i>The Daemons</i>.<br />
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Turning to the television stories, I was clearly impressed with <i>The Ambassadors of Death</i>, describing it in my review as ‘nothing short of a masterpiece’. <i>Inferno</i> and <i>Terror of the Autons</i> also received effusively positive reviews. What's curious about my review of the latter story is that I wrote the following about Roger Delgado’s Master: ‘his evil pitted against the Doctor’s good is the strongest memory I had of the Pertwee years of the series’. Although I have memories of watching the Pertwee era first time around, none of the Delgado Master stories screened in New Zealand prior to 1985 so I cannot possibly have seen them as a child. What was I thinking? Had I concocted a set of false recollections based on reading the books? I have no recollection of this.<br />
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<b><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">#28 - October 1985</span></b><br />
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Not my most successful cover design, this features a photograph of Azal from <i>The Daemons</i> backed by black bands coloured in felt-tip pen. Inside was a preview of <i>Day of the Daleks</i>, and a summary of the rest of Season Nine (‘Story 3 features the return of the Master. Don’t ask how he escapes, because I want to keep that secret…’).<br />
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The latest book release was the reissue of <i>The Doctor Who Monster Book</i>. My review compared it to the original edition, but as I didn’t own a copy I must have lifted that information from <i>Doctor Who Magazine</i>’s assessment of the book. The novelisations of <i>Day of the Daleks</i> and <i>The Curse of Peladon</i> received brief but uniformly positive reviews.<br />
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‘The Six Doctors’ continued with a look at the Second Doctor. Three of the photographs used in this two-page spread were recycled for a similar-looking couple of pages for Troughton’s obituary in the first issue of <i>Time Space Visualiser</i> a couple of years later. The second part of a ‘Guide to the Pertwee Stories’ covered the production of Season Eight. The first of the television stories reviewed this issue was <i>The Mind of Evil</i>. I described this as ‘a high-tension action-packed drama’ but lamented the loss of the colour episodes. My family had recently acquired our first colour television, so after many years of having no choice but to watch <i>Doctor Who </i>in black and white, it was particularly irksome that many of the early Pertwee episodes were not in colour. The review of <i>The Claws of Axos</i> praises the location filming and the sets, but criticises some of the characters as ‘unconvincing’, singling out including Bill Filer and Mr Chinn. I can pinpoint exactly when this review was written, because it opens with the line, ‘Less than an hour ago, the final credits rolled for the last episode of this story’, which means that I must have written it on the evening of Friday 20 September.<br />
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<b><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">#29 - November 1985</span></b><br />
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In a departure from the usual photo covers, this issue has a rather nice drawing of Jon Pertwee. I drew this by copying an illustration from <i>The Key to Time</i> book (the original by Vitaly Sabsay appears on page 89). The cover announced ‘Doctor Who is Twenty Two!’, and the issue celebrated the twenty-second anniversary of the series. Inside I wrote in the introduction: ‘Twenty two years is a long time. If you were just old enough to watch it when it started, you could have children of your own watching it today.’ Twenty-two years may indeed have seemed like a long time to a 17-year-old, but imagine how I feel reading them now. I typed those words thirty years ago.<br />
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An article titled ‘In the beginning...’ described how the series started, and a re-vamped ‘Archives’ feature set out to document the stories in order from <i>An Unearthly Child</i> onwards. The wording of the first synopsis appears to have been lifted directly from Jean-Marc Lofficier’s <i>Programme Guide</i>. <i>The Curse of Peladon</i> and <i>The Sea Devils</i>, which screened during November 1985, were previewed, and ‘The Six Doctors’ series continued with a look at the third Doctor, still shamelessly borrowing from Marson’s article. This wasn’t the only copying going on here. The review of the latest novelisation, <i>The Awakening</i> ends with the footnote ‘Taken from Doctor Who Magazine Review’. I’ve compared this with Gary Russell’s review (which appears in DWM #97) and although ‘my’ review is a lot shorter, much of the wording is copied more or less verbatim. I’ve no idea why I did this. Did the book fail to arrive in time, or was I incapable of forming my own opinion about its merits...?<br />
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A new column called ‘Update’ set out to summarize what had gone on in the series since New Zealand television left off with <i>Mawdryn Undead</i> in November 1983. As I hadn’t seen these stories, the information provided about <i>Terminus</i>, <i>Enlightenment</i> and <i>The King’s Demons</i> would have undoubtedly have come from <i>Doctor Who Magazine</i>. This was accompanied by another new feature, ‘Photo of the Month’, featuring a photo of Peter Davison that had originally appeared in a 1983 issue of <i>The Listener</i>. Judging by my review, I wasn’t overly thrilled with <i>Colony in Space</i>, calling it ‘a less than totally successful story.’ I was clearly more impressed with <i>The Daemons</i>, writing that it ‘never suffered a dull moment’.<br />
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<b><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">#30 - December 1985</span></b><br />
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The cover features a photo from <i>Day of the Daleks</i> overlaid with another from <i>The Sea Devils</i>, reflecting the coverage of the Ninth Season that was on screen at the time.<br />
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Significantly, there is no hint anywhere in this issue that it would be the last. My ‘Editor’s Note’ confidently claims that issue 31 is coming in January 1986. The issue was shorter than usual, just eight pages rather than the usual twelve. This was explained away with a vague reference to ‘publishing deadlines and other commitments’. In December 1985 I was finishing my Sixth Form year at school, so I expect that my studies were occupying much of my time and attention.<br />
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Despite the reduced page count I managed to include most of the regular features in the issue, including synopses for <i>The Edge of Destruction</i> and <i>Marco Polo</i> in ‘Archives’, and previews of <i>The Sea Devils</i> and <i>The Mutants</i>. ‘The Six Doctors’ covered the Fourth Doctor, and ‘Photo of the Month’ featured a photo of Tom Baker from a 1982 issue of <i>The Listener</i>. A new feature called ‘Databank’ documented fictional information about the Ice Warriors. ‘Update’ continued with coverage of <i>The Five Doctors</i>. As noted in the article, this was the one new story that I had seen, as it was played at a science fiction exhibition in Auckland that I’d attended the previous year. This item ended with a promise that coverage of the next season ‘starts next issue’.<br />
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And that was where it all ended.<br />
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Clearly I had plans to keep going with the magazine, but I do not recall if I even made a start on assembling issue 31. Why, after two and a half years of uninterrupted production, did <i>Gallifrey</i> abruptly come to an end?<br />
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I remained a devoted fan of the series after this point. I still watching the series every week on television and collected the books and <i>Doctor Who Magazine.</i> I think the so-called ‘cancellation crisis’ that led to the series’ suspension for eighteen months during 1985-86 perhaps knocked my confidence in the series. I remember believing for a while during 1985 that it wasn't coming back. I also found it hard to maintain interest in the new series, not having seen any of Colin Baker’s episodes. I only ‘knew’ his Doctor through reading the comic strips and the books.<br />
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Outside of <i>Doctor Who</i>, there was now a lot more going on in my life. 1986 was my final year of school. I was socialising a great deal more with friends and going out on evenings and weekends. None of these friends shared my interest in the series.<br />
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Although I had given up editing a <i>Doctor Who</i> fanzine, the thought of one day reviving it much have kept niggling away at the back of my mind. I recall thinking if I could just meet some fellow fans who shared my passion for the series, that maybe we could produce something together, perhaps even start up a club. At the end of 1986 I left school and in 1987 I started studying at the University of Auckland. I initially hoped to meet fans through the science fiction club on campus, but I was discouraged by the dismissive attitude I encountered at the one meeting I attended (perhaps I just caught them on a bad day?). One day in May 1987 I decided to put up a notice on the campus clubs notice board asking for any <i>Doctor Who</i> fans to get in contact. I received one response, a letter from a fellow first-year student called Paul Sinkovich. We met up and I discovered to my delight that Paul had off-air VHS copies of all of the new series episodes I’d never seen, and a large stack of UK fanzines. I showed him my copies of <i>Gallifrey</i>, and we decided to collaborate on a fanzine. I initially wanted to resurrect <i>Gallifrey</i> and continue on with issue 31, but Paul wisely persuaded me to create a new fanzine, which we called <i>Time Space Visualiser</i>. The first of 76 issues and numerous spin-off specials, published over more than twenty years, appeared in June 1987. <br />
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Once again, I was editing a <i>Doctor Who </i>fanzine.Paul Scooneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17322991318366377845noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20322865.post-30584713226609131672015-03-24T17:04:00.001+13:002015-03-24T22:42:31.555+13:00Spearhead from Space: 40 Years Ago<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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40 years ago this month I watched <i>Doctor Who</i> for the first time. My earliest exposure to the series occurred between 6:01 and 6:30pm on Friday 14 March 1975. The episode was the first part of <i>Spearhead from Space</i>, Jon Pertwee's debut story. I was aged six-and-three-quarters. </div>
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<i>Spearhead from Space</i> marked <i>Doctor Who</i>'s return to New Zealand screens after a protracted absence lasting three and a half years. The programme had last screened in September 1971 when the Patrick Troughton story <i>The Wheel in Space</i> was transmitted. (New Zealand missed out on seeing all of Season Six). By the time <i>Spearhead from Space</i> screened in March 1975, New Zealand was more than five years behind; at the time UK viewers were watching the Tom Baker story <i>Genesis of the Daleks</i>.<br />
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I was of course oblivious to all of this. As far as I was concerned, <i>Doctor Who</i> was just another new thing to watch on television (four months later, in July 1975, I discovered <i>Thunderbirds</i> and was immediately hooked, but that's another story...).<br />
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I have Mum to thank for noticing that <i>Doctor Who</i> was on that evening, and calling me over to watch it with her on our black and white television (we didn't get a colour set until many years later, but at this stage it wouldn't have any difference as <i>Spearhead from Space</i> was broadcast here in monochrome). Mum recognised Jon Pertwee's first story as one she'd seen five years earlier and she thought I might enjoy it.<br />
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As parents often are, Mum was concerned about which television programmes were suitable for her young children to watch, but she knew and approved of <i>Doctor Who</i>. Mum had been a teenager in London in the 1960s when the William Hartnell stories were broadcast on the BBC. She had watched the series with her older brother. I was born in London in June 1968, mid-way through a seven-week repeat screening of <i>The Evil of the Daleks</i>. Mum had continued to watch <i>Doctor Who</i> after I was born. I may have even caught sight of some episodes when I was younger and simply not remembered them. Our family emigrated to New Zealand in June 1973, the week of my fifth birthday, between the end of <i>Frontier in Space</i> and the beginning of <i>The Green Death</i>.<br />
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My memory of watching <i>Spearhead from Space</i> for the first time is understandably patchy. I believe I probably missed watching the beginning of the first episode. I have this memory of Mum describing to me how the Doctor had arrived on Earth and fallen out of the TARDIS. For many years (up until I saw the story again, or perhaps when I read the Target novelisation), I had this remarkably vivid mental image of the police box appearing in an ornate garden and the Doctor pitching face-forward from the doorway on to a paved pathway between two flowerbeds.<br />
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The earliest memory of the series that I can be sure of comes from near the end of the first episode. The Doctor is in a wheelchair, with a bandage stuck over his mouth. He is being loaded into the back of an ambulance outside a hospital when he springs to life and takes off, rolling down a path in his wheelchair at speed. As absurd as it sounds, this sequence gave me nightmares, and is probably why it has stuck in my memory.<br />
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That's the only scene I remember clearly from the first episode, but I recall various other bits from later in the story, most notably the boiler-suited blank-faced Autons stalking through the woods (cue more nightmares), Sam Seeley's cottage, and the Doctor and Liz working side-by-side at a laboratory bench, which I think might be from the fourth episode.<br />
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I have seen <i>Spearhead from Space</i> many times over the years but each time I do it I find myself transported back to my childhood. It will always have a special place in my affections as the point at which I began watching <i>Doctor Who</i>, 40 years ago.<br />
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Paul Scooneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17322991318366377845noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20322865.post-89482204397194960002015-02-01T14:49:00.003+13:002015-02-01T16:58:49.200+13:00Fan Memories: Audiotape Recordings<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It seems a ridiculously antiquated thing to do now, but there was a time when I recorded episodes of </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Doctor Who</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> as they were broadcast on television. Not on DVD-R or even VHS, but on C60 audio cassettes.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In the 1980s when I was a teenager, our family didn't have a video recorder. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We didn't have a colour television until 1985. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">These were </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">expensive luxuries - or </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">at least my parents considered them so.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I can pin-point the day I started making audio recordings of <i>Doctor Who</i>: 25 April 1983, the day that Part Three of <i>Four to Doomsday</i> screened in New Zealand. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It started with wanting to </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">make a recording of the theme music. Having worked out how to set up the stereo and microphone in front of the television in the living room to do this, it occurred to me that I may as well record the entire episode.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Lacking a microphone stand to point </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">the microphone horizontally at the television speaker, I</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> constructed a rudimentary cradle using my younger brother's Duplo blocks. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I begged my family to remain quiet for the duration of the recording, so as to avoid capturing unwanted background noise. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I was so anxious about getting the recording right that I often forgot to properly focus on watching the episodes.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">As I only had a handful number of reuseable C60 audio cassettes and could only fit two episodes to a tape (one on each side), I was </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">selective about which stories I recorded. If I had the novelisation, </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I didn't bother making a recording, so for example I skipped </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Time-Flight</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">.</span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">When I acquired a new novelisation, I'd reuse the tapes for that story.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I made good use of the recording of <i>Black Orchid. </i></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I listened to the audio of that story so many times. Rewatching the story years later, I realised that I could recite</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> the dialogue from memory. I transcribed the audio and turned </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">this into a novelisation, </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">typed up and bound as a Target-sized book for my own personal collection. It sat on my bookshelves slotted between <i>The Visitation</i> and <i>Earthshock</i>. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Sadly I no longer have this: when the 'proper' adaption arrived in 1987, I promptly binned my inferior version, ashamed of an achievement I'd been immensely proud of just a few years earlier. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The very last story I recorded on audiotape was <i>The Ambassadors of Death</i>, in July 1985. Around the time of the broadcast of that story my family finally replaced our old black and white television with a brand new colour set. I eagerly looked forward to watching <i>Doctor Who</i> on our new television, but <i>The Ambassadors of Death</i> was broadcast in black and white - oh the irony! </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The first episode I saw in glorious colour </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">was therefore Episode 1 of </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Inferno</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I was still a few years away from acquiring my first video recorder, but it was at that point that I stopped making audio recordings. I'm not entirely sure why I stopped, but I suspect it had a lot to do with owning most stories beyond this point as novelisations. My priorities had changed too, <i>Doctor Who </i>wasn't quite the all-consuming interest it had been and I'd become more interested in recording songs off the radio than television programmes.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">When I later got involved in <i>Doctor Who </i>fandom, I was fascinated to learn that I hadn't been alone in making off-air audio recordings. This was, I discovered, a common fan activity that dated right back to the beginning of the series. Indeed it is entirely due to these fan recordings, that audio copies survive of every missing episode. </span><br />
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<li><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">For more on the subject of fans recording </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Doctor Who</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> episodes on audio, I recommend 'Love Off-Air' a feature on Disc One of the DVD </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Doctor Who: The Invasion</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">.</span></li>
</ul>
Paul Scooneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17322991318366377845noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20322865.post-58814106825382834922014-11-28T18:32:00.001+13:002014-12-01T20:46:35.741+13:00Doctor Who Series 8 NZ Viewer Ratings<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Series eight of <i>Doctor Who</i> recently finished screening here in New Zealand. The episodes, which screened as usual on the Prime channel, were transmitted a week following the UK broadcasts, screening here on Sunday nights at 7.30pm.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Viewer ratings indicated that these twelve episodes were watched by an average overnight rating of 123,273 people. Adding in time-shifted viewers (those who recorded the episodes and watched later), that average increases to 143,114. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Several of the earliest episodes, all screened during September, received the strongest overnight ratings. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>Deep Breath</i> received the lowest rating of the initial five stories on overnight results. This may have been due to the extended length of this episode, causing it to run an hour later than usual, finishing at 9.25pm. The episode’s strong performance in the timeshifted ratings, indicates that many viewers appear to have elected to record it for later viewing. The episode also premiered a week earlier in cinemas around the country, which may have also contributed to the relatively low rating for a series premiere.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The second episode, <i>Into the Dalek</i>, saw a sizeable increase in the overnight ratings, gaining 18,750 viewers. Ratings remained consistently high for <i>Robot of Sherwood</i>, <i>Listen</i> and <i>Time Heist</i>, with an average of approximately 135,000 across these four episodes. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>The Caretaker</i>, which screened at the beginning of October, suffered a sharp decline, dropping by 28,710 viewers from the previous week. Although the following episode, <i>Kill the Moon</i>, gained back some of the lost ground by picking up 11,140 viewers, the series never regained its earlier highs.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The strongest performing episode from the latter half of the series on overnights was the finale, <i>Death in Heaven</i>, on 128,570. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The two lowest rated episodes on overnight ratings were the aforementioned <i>The Caretaker</i>, on 106,520 and <i>Flatline</i> on 109,820. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Consolidated ratings, which include timeshifted viewers, who record programmes and watch after transmission, give a more accurate indication of the total audience</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">. </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Robot of Sherwood</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> in particular benefitted from these </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">additional</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">viewers, with 24.38% of its consolidated figure coming from timeshifted rating. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Conversely, <i>In the Forest of the Night</i>, which had an overnight audience of 123,070, placing it closest to the series average, suffered a drop to last place in the timeshifted ratings.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>Doctor Who</i> on Prime was placed in the same timeslot as some heavily-promoted and highly popular offerings on rival channels TV One, TV 2 and TV3. <i>Doctor Who</i> was usually in fourth place for overnight ratings in its timeslot, but for both of the last two weeks of the series it managed to make it into third place, edging out TV2.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">TV One consistently gained the largest audience share for the timeslot. For nine weeks <i>Doctor Who </i>was placed against TV One’s <i>My Kitchen Rules New Zealand</i> (average overnight 373,161). For the last three weeks <i>Our Big Blue Backyard</i> instead occupied the timeslot (avg 463,370).</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Over on TV3, <i>The X Factor</i> screened for most of the run (avg 236,956). When this ended, the movies <i>How to Train Your Dragon</i> (194,540), and <i>Shrek Forever After </i>(275,540), occupied the slot for the last two weeks.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">TV2 most often came in third place for the timeslot. For the first four weeks two half hour shows, <i>The Middle</i> (avg 201,312) and <i>The Neighbors</i> (avg 169,582) were up against <i>Doctor Who</i>. For the next five weeks the timeslot was occupied with a family movie, including such titles as <i>Brave</i> and <i>Toy Story 3</i> (avg 225,670). The final three weeks saw the movies replaced with <i>The Voice</i> (avg 110,480). This series saw a marked drop in viewers for TV2, and the final two episodes of <i>Doctor Who</i> gained higher ratings than <i>The Voice</i>.</span><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Overnight Ratings</span></b><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">(and</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> most watched on Prime chart position for that date)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>1.</b> <i>Into the Dalek</i> (7 Sep 14) 135,840 (2nd)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>2.</b> <i>Listen</i> (21 Sep 14) 135,740 (3rd)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>3. </b><i>Time Heist</i> (28 Sep 14) 135,230 (3rd)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>4.</b> <i>Robot of Sherwood</i> (14 Sep) 133,040 (1st)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>5.</b> <i>Death in Heaven </i>(16 Nov 14) 128,570 (3rd)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>6.</b> <i>In the Forest of the Night</i> (2 Nov 14) 123,070 (4th)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>7.</b> <i>Mummy on the Orient Express</i> (19 Oct 14) 121,850 (3rd)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>8.</b> <i>Kill the Moon</i> (12 Oct 14) 117,660 (2nd)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>9.</b> <i>Deep Breath</i> (31 Aug 14) 117,090 (2nd)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>10.</b> <i>Dark Water</i> (9 Nov 14) 114,840 (4th)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>11.</b> <i>Flatline</i> (26 Oct 14) 109,820 (2nd)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>12.</b> <i>The Caretaker </i>(5 Oct 14) 106,520 (4th)</span><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Timeshifted Ratings</span></b><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">(and % increase of audience watching timeshifted)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>1.</b> <i>Robot of Sherwood</i> 42,900 (32.25%)</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>2.</b> <i>Deep Breath</i> 26,180 (22.36%)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>3.</b> <i>Into the Dalek</i> 21,360 (19.85%)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>4.</b> <i>The Caretaker</i> 21,140 (17.37%)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>5.</b> <i>Listen</i> 20,500 (16.62%)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>6.</b> <i>Kill the Moon</i> 19,560 (15.89%)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>7.</b> <i>Mummy on the Orient Express</i> 19,360 (15.72%)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>8.</b> <i>Flatline</i> 19,080 (15.10%)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>9.</b> <i>Time Heist </i>16,130 (11.93%)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>10. </b><i>Death in Heaven</i> 12,580 (9.78%)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>11.</b> <i>Dark Water </i>9,770 (8.51%)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>12. </b><i>In the Forest of the Night</i> 9,540 (7.75%)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Consolidated Ratings</span></b><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">(and % of total audience watching timeshifted)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>1. </b><i>Robot of Sherwood</i> 175,940 (24.38%)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>2.</b> <i>Into the Dalek</i> 157,200 (13.59%) </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>3. </b><i>Listen</i> 156,240 (13.12%)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>4.</b> <i>Time Heist </i>151,360 (10.66%)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>5.</b> <i>Deep Breath</i> 143,270 (18.27%)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>6.</b> <i>Mummy on the Orient Express</i> 141,210 (13.71%)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>7.</b> <i>Death in Heaven</i> 141,150 (8.91%)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>8.</b> <i>Kill the Moon</i> 137,220 (14.25%)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>9. </b><i>In the Forest of the Night</i> 132,610 (7.19%)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>10. </b><i>Flatline</i> 128,900 (14.80%)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>11. </b><i>The Caretaker</i> 127,660 (16.56%)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>12. </b><i>Dark Water </i>124,610 (7.84%)</span><br />
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<i>Ratings: Nielsen Television Audience Measurement, All 5+, sourced from <a href="http://www.throng.co.nz/">Throng.co.nz </a></i>Paul Scooneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17322991318366377845noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20322865.post-38359027684400760482014-11-09T11:03:00.001+13:002014-11-09T11:04:23.840+13:00Doctor Who Talk at the Auckland Central Library <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-sPdkaZ5rF-Y/VF6SHIN0S-I/AAAAAAAAAes/nreZHVpcxw0/s1600/The%2BComic%2BStrip%2BDr%2BWho%2BA5%2Btwo-up%2Bon%2BA4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-sPdkaZ5rF-Y/VF6SHIN0S-I/AAAAAAAAAes/nreZHVpcxw0/s1600/The%2BComic%2BStrip%2BDr%2BWho%2BA5%2Btwo-up%2Bon%2BA4.jpg" height="400" width="286" /></a></div>
<br />
I will be giving a talk about Doctor Who this Wednesday 12 November 2014, from 6 to 7pm, at the Auckland Central Library.<br />
<br />
The talk is to mark the 51st anniversary of Doctor Who - although of course here in New Zealand it is actually the 50th anniversary!<br />
<br />
I'm be talking about several aspects of Doctor Who, including its long history, how it has been viewed in New Zealand, my passion for the show, my work as a writer/researcher for the BBC DVDs, and my book, The Comic Strip Companion.<br />
<br />
The talk will be along similar lines to the very well-received one I gave at the Takapuna Library in 2013, and also at the national science fiction convention earlier this year. I'll be showing a number of images and some short video clips to illustrate my talk.<br />
<br />
I will have limited quantities of my book and the DVDs available to purchase and get signed afterwards.<br />
<br />
Hope to see you there!Paul Scooneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17322991318366377845noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20322865.post-89068565703311031602014-09-18T17:07:00.003+12:002014-09-18T17:08:59.600+12:00Doctor Who's 50th Anniversary - in New Zealand<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; line-height: 18px; text-align: start;">Happy 50th anniversary!</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br style="background-color: white; color: #141823; line-height: 18px; text-align: start;" /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; line-height: 18px; text-align: start;">Fifty years ago today<i> Doctor Who</i> had its first ever overseas broadcast. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; line-height: 18px; text-align: start;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; line-height: 18px;">At 7.57pm on Friday, 18 September 1964, slotted in between </span><i style="color: #141823; line-height: 18px;">NZBC Reports</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; line-height: 18px;"> and </span><i style="color: #141823; line-height: 18px;">The Burma Surgeo</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; line-height: 18px;">n, the first episode of </span><i style="color: #141823; line-height: 18px;">Doctor Who</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; line-height: 18px;">, </span><i style="color: #141823; line-height: 18px;">An Unearthly Child</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; line-height: 18px;">, was shown in New Zealand to the Christchurch region on CHTV-3.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; line-height: 18px; text-align: start;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; line-height: 18px; text-align: start;">With that screening, New Zealand became the first place outside the UK to screen <i>Doctor Who</i>.</span></span><br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-CQhbSyCW4vE/VBpm0btTTGI/AAAAAAAAAeI/FG63Xnak0OI/s1600/scan0003.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-CQhbSyCW4vE/VBpm0btTTGI/AAAAAAAAAeI/FG63Xnak0OI/s1600/scan0003.jpg" height="320" width="262" /></span></a></div>
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</span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; line-height: 18px;">The full line-up of the day's programming on CHTV-3 </span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; line-height: 18px;"><i>New Zealand Listener </i></span><span style="color: #141823;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">11 September 1964 </span></span><span style="color: #141823; line-height: 18px;">Vol.51 No.1302 (14-20 September 1964)</span></span></div>
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</span><br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-cx0fOkr8uTo/VBpnSqP3WHI/AAAAAAAAAeQ/pS6ybFDABDM/s1600/1964-09-11-B.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-cx0fOkr8uTo/VBpnSqP3WHI/AAAAAAAAAeQ/pS6ybFDABDM/s1600/1964-09-11-B.jpg" height="273" width="320" /></span></a></div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-I7kciGwj4hc/VBpnVv5OKAI/AAAAAAAAAeY/E6HjWU_FWNE/s1600/1964-09-11-A.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-I7kciGwj4hc/VBpnVv5OKAI/AAAAAAAAAeY/E6HjWU_FWNE/s1600/1964-09-11-A.jpg" height="242" width="320" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; line-height: 18px;">Photograph and feature article from page 7 of the same issue.</span></div>
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Paul Scooneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17322991318366377845noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20322865.post-24191913414467096252014-08-30T12:42:00.001+12:002014-08-30T12:42:23.237+12:00Zeus Pod<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-yLtOh0xJb2c/VAEdiMFz-8I/AAAAAAAAAd0/uFgPQNyWmE8/s1600/pod-badge-orange-300x300.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-yLtOh0xJb2c/VAEdiMFz-8I/AAAAAAAAAd0/uFgPQNyWmE8/s1600/pod-badge-orange-300x300.jpg" /></a></div>
<i>Zeus Pod</i>, a new <i>Doctor Who</i> podcast, may well be the first of its kind in New Zealand. Certainly it is the only locally-produced fan podcast based on the series that I know of.<br />
<br />
It is the third incarnation of what began eight years ago as <i>Zeus Plug</i>, a printed A5, hand-distributed ‘pub zine’; then migrated online as <i><a href="http://www.zeusblog.tetrap.com/">Zeus Blog</a></i>. Now the Zeus name has a new lease of life as a lively and upbeat weekly audio podcast, hosted by Jono Park.<br />
<br />
Jono’s professional experience as a presenter is clearly in evidence with his confident delivery, and highly structured plan for each episode, keeping things (mostly) on track, though his desire to get episode under half an hour may be thwarted by talkative guests and the amount of material covered in each instalment.<br />
<br />
<i>Zeus Pod</i> is planned to run for a ‘season’ of thirteen episodes, with each weekly programme focusing primarily on a review of that week’s new <i>Doctor Who </i>episode.<br />
<br />
A spoiler warning for New Zealand fans watching on Prime, which is showing <i>Doctor Who</i> on Sunday evenings a full week after the UK: you’ll want to wait a week before listening in as these episodes are recorded and made available soon after the UK broadcasts.<br />
<br />
I was the guest on <i>Zeus Pod</i>’s second episode, titled ‘BB’ (and yes, appropriately enough, it does name-check <i>The War Machines</i>). Jono and I discussed what we thought of the first Peter Capaldi episode, <i>Deep Breath</i>, and tried to make sense of the mystery set up in that episode. I’d avoided going online to see what others were saying about it, so at the time of recording I believed my theory about the identity of Michelle Gomez’s character was original. I subsequently discovered that many fans appear to have reached the same conclusion. We’ll probably all be proved wrong by the end of this series.<br />
<br />
In addition to critiquing the debut episode of Series 8, I took part in the ‘60 Second Story Smackdown’. This is a regular segment on <i>Zeus Pod</i>, in which Jono offers up random pairs of stories and the guest has to make snap judgements over which one is better. I doubt I’ll soon be living down one particularly controversial decision …<br />
<br />
Jono also challenged me to a ‘first lines’ quiz, involving guessing the correct story from a reading of the opening line of dialogue. I must confess that I felt some trepidation about this segment. I should make a confession here: I don’t re-watch <i>Doctor Who</i> very often. Yes, it’s true! Where possible I prefer to leave a few years in between viewing a particular story, so that when I do see it again I find enjoyment in re-discovering what I’ve partly forgotten in the interim. This means of course that details – such as opening lines of dialogue – rarely linger in my memory. Consequently I was expecting to be thoroughly humiliated in this quiz. Have a listen and see how I did.<br />
<br />
I’ve been a guest on a number of overseas <i>Doctor Who</i> podcasts, but it was a pleasure to finally get to take part in one originating in my own country.<br />
<br />
I thoroughly recommend <i>Zeus Pod</i>. It can be listened to and downloaded on Soundcloud <a href="https://soundcloud.com/zeuspod">here</a>.<br />
<br />Paul Scooneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17322991318366377845noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20322865.post-12702790602983838922014-04-12T12:15:00.001+12:002014-04-12T12:35:26.811+12:00Conclave 2 Guest AppearanceI'm delighted to report that I will be a guest speaker at <a href="http://conclave2.aucontraire.org.nz/">Conclave 2</a>, this year's New Zealand National Science Fiction Convention (or 'Natcon'), which is being held in Auckland from Thursday 24 April to Sunday 27 April 2014. At the time of writing this is two weeks away.<br />
<br />
I was initially invited as a 'Fan Guest of Honour', a position traditionally bestowed on a notable member of the local SF fan community. I was delighted to be asked, of course, but in subsequent discussions with the organiser it was clear that I had been invited so that I would talk about my professional work as a writer so it was mutually agreed that I should be 'upgraded' to Guest of Honour status, joining fellow guests Dave Freer and Lyn McConchie.<br />
<br />
I'm not entirely sure the con will be like. The last time I attended one of these events was eleven years ago. I used to be a regular at SF conventions. My first was Conscience in 1989 and the last was Emoticon, in 2003. I've lost count of how many SF cons I attended during those fifteen years, but was a lot.<br />
<br />
I have some very fond memories of these weekend-long social events. My favourite recollection is of striking up a conversation with a fellow con-goer from Auckland called Rochelle when we passed on a stairwell at a convention in Wellington. Just last month we celebrated our 15th wedding anniversary, so I have an SF convention to thank for bringing us together.<br />
<br />
The closest I've come to experiencing a convention in recent years has perhaps been at the <a href="http://www.armageddonexpo.com/">Armageddon</a> expo that takes place several times a year in various places around New Zealand, but these are very different affairs. I'm always working on our <a href="http://www.retrospace.co.nz/">Retrospace</a> shop stand, so I encounter hundreds if not thousands of fans but very rarely get out from behind the stand to see any of the panels or other events. Armageddon expos are frantic, noisy, high-energy, media-driven events, quite unlike the more relaxed pace and social environment of the SF cons.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
The main item for me at Conclave 2 will be my Guest of Honour speech on Friday, where I'll be talking about writing info text subtitle scripts for the <i>Doctor Who</i> DVDs and <i>The Comic Strip Companion</i> book.<br />
<br />
Here's my schedule of appearances for the convention: <br />
<br />
<b>Thursday 24 April</b><br />
7:00pm - Opening Ceremony<br />
<br />
<b>Friday 25 April</b><br />
9:00am - Panel: The Mainstreaming of SF<br />
3:00pm - Guest of Honour Speech<br />
4:00pm - Panel: The Pasts and Futures of Doctor Who<br />
<br />
<b>Saturday 26 April</b><br />
2:00pm - Panel: SF Series Seriously Sought<br />
4:00pm - Panel: How Writers Do It!<br />
7:30pm - Banquet and awards ceremony<br />
<br />
<b>Sunday 27 April</b><br />
10:00am Guest of Honour Meet-Up<br />
12:00noon Closing Ceremony<br />
<br />
Details for Conclave 2 can be found <a href="http://conclave2.aucontraire.org.nz/">here</a>. Perhaps I'll see you there!<br />
<br />Paul Scooneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17322991318366377845noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20322865.post-80012806935562945422014-03-24T21:25:00.000+13:002014-03-29T23:14:49.392+13:00A Year Without Doctor WhoThe Sixth Doctor arrived in March 1984, thirty years ago this month.<br />
<br />
Just a couple of weeks ago I got to discuss this milestone with both Colin Baker (the Sixth Doctor) and Nicola Bryant (his companion Peri) when I hosted a series of talks with them in Dunedin and Christchurch, at the Armageddon Expo events.<br />
<br />
As I talked to these two actors about the anniversary of their first appearance in <i>Doctor Who</i> I couldn't help but think that the relevance was slightly lost on myself, and perhaps also on those members of the audience who were old enough to remember what it was like to be a fan thirty years ago in New Zealand.<br />
<br />
1984, the year in which Peter Davison's third and last season aired and Colin Baker commenced playing the Doctor, was entirely devoid of any televised <i>Doctor Who</i> at all in this country. Not one of Colin Baker’s stories screened here until November 1988, several years later and indeed some time after Colin had departed the role.<br />
<br />
The series had abruptly halted on TVNZ following ‘Mawdryn Undead’ in late November 1983. This was an unfortunate point at which to break the series as it left hanging the ongoing plot involving Turlough and the Black Guardian.<br />
<br />
At first it appeared as though TVNZ were giving <i>Doctor Who</i> a brief respite over the summer months. I can remember being relaxed about this break at first, possibly even relieved. My family were in the habit of going away camping on a remote beach - without a television set - for two weeks in January. I’d have been most upset if the show had been on at the time.<br />
<br />
I’m sure I would have been even more annoyed had I known that it would be a very long wait. That summer of 1983/84 came to an end without any sign of <i>Doctor Who</i>’s return. It became a weekly ritual to scan the New Zealand Listener’s television listings, eagerly searching out a billing for the next story, only to be deflated week after week, month after month. The series finally returned in April 1985, after a hiatus that lasted about 18 months. There was a bittersweet twist to this. The return was not the anticipated latter half of the Fifth Doctor’s era (which should have resumed with ‘Terminus’). Instead we were treated to older stories from the 1960s and 1970s. I was thrilled to get to see these vintage episodes, many which I’d never viewed and those I had seen were dim distant memories. It did mean however that it would be years before TVNZ got around to screening those much delayed new episodes.<br />
<br />
The prolonged absence was made all the more agonising because for the first time ever I was well informed about what was screening in the UK. At the beginning of 1984 I discovered <i>Doctor Who Magazine</i>. My grandmother most generously set up a standing order with her local newsagent in East London, and started posting me a copy every month commencing with issue 84, which arrived in early January.<br />
<br />
<i>Doctor Who Magazine</i> was a treasure-trove of previews, set reports, reviews, and photographs. I studied these issues in obsessive detail, scrutinising every word and picture, trying to imagine what thrilling-sounding stories such as ‘Frontios’, ‘Planet of Fire’ and ‘The Caves of Androzani’ must be like.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0qQ3v40zY6o/Uy_o0HTFkTI/AAAAAAAAAc8/Py7I1lxULMM/s1600/dwm88.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0qQ3v40zY6o/Uy_o0HTFkTI/AAAAAAAAAc8/Py7I1lxULMM/s1600/dwm88.jpg" height="320" width="244" /></a>I witnessed through the pages of the magazine the departure of the familiar TARDIS crew of the Fifth Doctor, Tegan and (for me, the newly arrived) Turlough, to be replaced by the Sixth Doctor and Peri. My impression of these two characters, played by unfamiliar actors, was entirely based on what I saw and read in the magazine.<br />
<br />
A large part of my understanding of what the Sixth Doctor was like came from reading the <i>Doctor Who Magazine</i> comic strip. Of course I knew from the photographs elsewhere in the issues that he had a tasteless and gaudily colourful costume but in the uniformly monochrome strip it actually looked quite stylish. The new Doctor seemed good-humoured with an easy-going personality.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-zlvbHJM-Oqs/Uy_q4O_E0SI/AAAAAAAAAdI/ZgKt3IE1E40/s1600/voyager1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-zlvbHJM-Oqs/Uy_q4O_E0SI/AAAAAAAAAdI/ZgKt3IE1E40/s1600/voyager1.jpg" height="320" width="216" /></a>The Sixth Doctor’s stories were extraordinarily imaginative, at least in comic strip form. Even without having seen ‘The Twin Dilemma’ I think I must have realised that the surreal mind-bending visuals of stories like ‘Voyager’ and ‘Once Upon a Time-Lord’ were nothing like what was happening in the television series, but these strip stories gave me a deep and enduring admiration of Doctor Who in the comic strip medium.<br />
<br />
1984 and the arrival of the Sixth Doctor has been occupying my thoughts a lot lately, and not just because of the thirty-year anniversary or talking to Colin and Nicola. I’ve reached the point in the writing of the second volume of <i>The Comic Strip Companion</i> in which I’m covering the earliest strip exploits of the Sixth Doctor. Thirty years is a long time, but as I re-read the pages of ‘Voyager’, marvelling at the gloriously surreal twists and turns of Steve Parkhouse’s surreal script and John Ridgway’s absolutely stunning illustrations, I can’t help but be transported back to that time when this was the only new <i>Doctor Who</i>.<br />
<br />
I turned sixteen in 1984. I wish I could tell myself at that age that one day I’d be the author of a series of books about the comic strips, that I’d write the production information text for DVDs of those 1984 stories that I used to speculate about, and that I’d be chatting to the actors who played the Sixth Doctor and Peri. I’m not sure which of these facts would impress my younger self more. I’m not even sure he’d even believe me.Paul Scooneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17322991318366377845noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20322865.post-11712884310652201092013-09-27T12:20:00.001+12:002013-09-28T07:18:07.380+12:00I made it through the Wilderness<div class="MsoNormal">
Ten years ago something quite extraordinary
happened. <i>Doctor Who</i> came back.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Around midday on Friday 26 September 2003, <st1:country-region w:st="on">New Zealand</st1:country-region>
time, a <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/3140786.stm">news story</a> appeared on the BBC news website, announcing that <i>Doctor Who</i> was returning to BBC television, as a multi-part series developed by Russell T Davies. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I don't recall now how I first found out about this news, but I may have been tipped off by my friend and fellow fanzine editor Adam, who had better connections
in the UK than myself and had likely been given a heads-up about the news on the BBC website. I in turn alerted my friend and fellow fan Jon Preddle. I phoned him at work but he wasn't at his desk. He phoned me back a short while later but also missed getting hold of me. So we discussed the news via email.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Here's a few of the emails from that afternoon: </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="color: red;">From: Paul Scoones | </span><span style="color: red;">To: Jon Preddle | </span><span style="color: red;">Friday 26 September 2003 14:30</span><br />
<span style="color: red;">Subject: News</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>So, thoughts on the new series news just announced today?
I'm cautiously excited but there are so many hurdles to just that it remains to
be seen whether it'll actually get to our screens.</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: red;">From: Jon Preddle | </span><span style="color: red;">To: Paul Scoones | </span><span style="color: red;">Friday 26 September 2003 15:04</span><br />
<span style="color: red;">Subject: RE: News</span><br />
<i>I'll believe it when I see it - as I said to your answer
phone!</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: red;">From: Paul Scoones | </span><span style="color: red;">To: Jon Preddle | </span><span style="color: red;">Friday 26 September 2003 15:23</span><br />
<span style="color: red;">Subject: RE: News</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>I'll believe it when I've got the DVDs, the novelisation and
the Corgi toys all gathering dust on my shelf.</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That exchange hardly seems like the reaction you would
expect of a couple of life-long fans of the series. Although we were excited by the prospect of <i>Doctor Who</i>’s return, we were also
somewhat cautious about getting our hopes up and just a little skeptical of the
series actually going ahead.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Jon and I had spent years following all of the various rumours and speculation concerning the potential return of <i>Doctor Who</i> to television throughout the 'wilderness years' period when the series wasn't in production. We’d
got our hopes up on numerous occasions, only to have them dashed. In 1996 Paul McGann was cast and
<i>Doctor Who </i>went back into production, but what looked at the time like it might be the pilot
for a new series disappointingly turned out to be no more than a one-off television movie. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In 2003 <i>Doctor Who</i> reached its 40th anniversary year. I had been
editing <i>Time Space Visualiser</i>, the fanzine of the <st1:country-region w:st="on">New Zealand</st1:country-region> <i>Doctor Who</i> Fan Club for 13 years.<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It was challenging to find new and interesting things to say about the series. With no new television series to talk about, TSV was increasingly focused on the BBC novels
and DVDs, and the Big Finish audio dramas. Some readers started grumbling about the predictable nature of the content, and the readership was gradually dropping away. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I felt the time was
right for a new editor with fresh ideas and a new approach. By mid-year I’d reached a decision. I announced that I would step down and passing the zine on to Adam, my new co-editor.<br />
<br />
The issue featuring this announcement went to print in the third week of
September. The news that the series was coming back broke one day before I was
due to collect copies from the printers. I hastily put together a one-page
'TSV Extra' covering the announcement to include
with the issue.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I remember thinking how extraordinarily weird that timing was.
After so many years of editing TSV with no new series news to report, the revelation that the series was to return came just after I'd committed in print to stepping down as editor! I had been TSV editor since the beginning of 1991,
which was just one year after <i>Doctor Who</i> ceased regular production. I’d documented the
series in print throughout its ‘wilderness years’ and now that it was coming back I was no
longer required.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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Ten years on from that wonderful news of the series return, a row of new series DVDs are sitting on my shelves. I've just checked; yes, there is some dust on them. I'm ready to believe.</div>
Paul Scooneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17322991318366377845noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20322865.post-55325739591296084422013-09-03T21:29:00.000+12:002013-09-18T13:15:27.959+12:00Scream of the Shalka DVD Production Subtitles<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i>Doctor Who: Scream of the Shalka</i> arrives on DVD this month, with subtitle production notes written by myself.<br />
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I was commissioned to write the production notes (this is my eighth set of subtitles for the DVD range) in early October last year. With the 'classic' <i>Doctor Who</i> DVDs winding down, as there are now only a few titles as yet unreleased, I was doubtful that there would be any more work on the range coming my way. Many months had passed since I delivered my previous set (for the <i>Vengeance on Varos</i> Special Edition), so the offer to work on another story came as a welcome surprise.<br />
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I was delighted to be offered <i>Scream of the Shalka</i> in particular because it is uniquely set, in small part, in my home country of New Zealand. I was therefore well-positioned to explain the 'location' used and also had the irresistible opportunity to correct an actor’s painful mispronunciation of a familiar place-name. The New Zealand connection was however coincidental. I was asked to tackle this story for a different reason, but one that had something to do with my geographical location.<br />
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Researching a set of DVD production notes involves combing through the production files held at the BBC’s Written Archives Centre. This, combined with a close analysis of the scripts, forms the bulk of the subtitle material. The problem for me is that I'm on the far side of the world so it is impractical to pop over to the UK each time I get a commission. Instead I’m usually dependent on someone helpfully undertaking the time-consuming task of photographing or scanning the files for me.<br />
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I was assigned <i>Scream of the Shalka</i> because it was expedient to do so. Written Archives do not hold any production documents or scripts for the story. This is either because the production is too recent (relatively speaking) to have been released to the Archives or perhaps because it was a webcast, not a television drama production. The important thing is that there was nothing on file that needed to be accessed and copied for me. (See Addendum below).<br />
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While I wasn't about to pass up the commission, this singular lack of documentation did give me some initial concern. I was worried at the prospect of having to come up with a set of subtitles without any of the usual invaluable documentation to fall back on. I didn’t even have any scripts.<br />
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I emailed Paul Cornell, the writer of <i>Scream of the Shalka</i>, asking if he might have a copy of the script or indeed any other material he could let me see. Fortunately Paul had retained all of his work related to the story on his computer, and very generously sent me everything he had.<br />
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When I saw just how much material Paul had attached to his email, I felt a weight lift from my shoulders. He'd provided various versions of the scripts, outlines, character notes, email correspondence, sequel proposals and more. Reading through these documents, I stopped worrying that I had far too little to write about and instead started wondering how I could possibly begin to fit all of this detail into the production notes' running time.<br />
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The one condition Paul stipulated of me was that I let him see and approve my subtitle scripts before I submitted them. Paul sent me everything he had so was concerned in case I included something he considered too sensitive for publication. I'm happy to say that when I sent Paul my finished subtitles for approval the only change he requested was to correct a single spelling error.<br />
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<i>Scream of the Shalka</i> was developed over three story outlines and five script drafts. Charting the evolution of the story through these versions proved to be a daunting and yet fascinating exercise. Sequences were added or replaced, names and locations were changed, and many of the details regarding the Shalka themselves were altered. I have included as much of this detail in the subtitles as I could.<br />
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The New Zealand content in <i>Scream of the Shalka</i> was inspired by Paul Cornell's experiences while travelling around the country on holiday in early 2003. He and his wife Caroline stayed at my house for a few days during their trip and on one occasion Paul used my computer to get on with his writing while my wife Rochelle and I took Caroline out for the day. (I should note though that I was not aware of what Paul was writing at the time. He was careful not disclose anything to me about this as-yet unannounced project during his stay in New Zealand.) I think it is somehow quite fitting that I wrote the subtitles at the same desk and in the same room where Paul had been writing almost exactly a decade earlier.<br />
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During my research I discovered that I had another connection to the story. In the final version, the two men who appear in the opening sequence set on the slopes of New Zealand’s Mount Ruapehu are McGrath (in the suit and sunglasses) and Dawson (in the floral shirt). However in the earliest script drafts the two were respectively ‘Jon Preddle’ and ‘Paul Scoones’. Paul Cornell never let on about this, so for ten years I was unaware that he had intended to name two of the story’s characters after myself and my friend Jon. It was an odd experience to write about myself in the subtitles!<br />
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I also received some invaluable assistance from James Goss. James was one of the story’s three executive producers and developed the making-of feature for the DVD. It was extremely useful to compare notes as we were both researching the story. As James observes in the current issue of <i>Doctor Who Magazine</i> (see the DVD preview in #464), there were even times when I corrected him about things he’d mis-remembered.<br />
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The production notes for <i>Scream of the Shalka</i> may end up being my final work for the DVD range. I hope not, but if that proves to be the case it is fitting that I bow out with a story that has such personal significance.<br />
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<b><i>Scream of the Shalka</i> is released on DVD on 16 September 2013.</b><br />
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<b>Addendum: </b>Shortly after publishing the above article, I learned from a colleague that files for <i>Scream of the Shalka</i> are in fact held in the BBC Written Archive. This documentation, which was previously believed to be unavailable, is not held with the normal <i>Doctor Who</i> files but instead filed in an separate area. Despite this belated discovery it is unlikely that there is much that it would have added to the production notes subtitles. Paul Cornell's comprehensive files, supplemented by James Goss and others, provided an exceptional level of detail about the development and production of the story, most likely duplicating a lot of what is held in the BBC Written Archive.Paul Scooneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17322991318366377845noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20322865.post-65935774565071341842013-08-30T17:13:00.001+12:002013-08-30T17:13:33.140+12:00Poll Result<div>
The latest <i>Doctor Who Magazine</i> (#464) has the results of 'The Best of 2012!' Merchandise Poll.</div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Books Non-Fiction category results from the 2012 <i>Doctor Who Magazine</i> Merchandise Poll</td></tr>
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<i>The Comic Strip Companion</i> appears in fifth place. That's a good result, especially considering the high standard of the competition and the large number of titles my book was up against. </div>
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Looking back at the poll form (in #455), this category listed eleven suggested titles (including my book), with readers also invited to vote for any of the many other non-fiction Doctor Who titles published last year. A couple of the titles that didn't receive enough votes to make it into the top five were well-publicised and widely-distributed official BBC books.</div>
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I'm delighted that my book about a frankly rather niche subject has been so well received.</div>
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It is also lovely to see Behind the Sofa in third place, as I had a piece published in that book.</div>
Paul Scooneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17322991318366377845noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20322865.post-80132198212658542732013-07-18T17:29:00.003+12:002013-07-22T09:38:48.359+12:00Written out of HistoryOne of my proudest achievements was finding a lost episode of <i>Doctor Who, </i>an honour I share in equal part with my good friend Neil Lambess.<br />
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Neil and I found a 16mm film print of <i>The Lion</i> (the first episode of the 1965 William Hartnell story <i>The Crusade</i>) in the collection of Auckland film collector Bruce Grenville in early January 1999.<br />
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Neil did the investigating that led to the find. Neil then contacted me and we went to meet Bruce and view the film together, thereby verifying that it was a missing episode. I then handled the episode’s return to the BBC.<br />
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Neil and I have always been of the view that we deserve to share equal credit for the episode’s discovery and return. We would not have it any other way.<br />
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I remember saying to Neil, shortly after viewing the film, that our discovery had surely earned us a place in the <i>Doctor Who</i> history books. <br />
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So it was upsetting to see in the recently-published <i>Doctor Who Magazine Special Edition</i>, <i>The Missing Episodes - The Second Doctor Volume One</i> that my part in the discovery and return of <i>The Lion</i> had been effectively written out of history.<br />
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The special itself is an absolutely superb record of the early Patrick Troughton stories, showcasing the missing episodes from <i>The Power of the Daleks</i> to <i>The Faceless Ones</i> with a series of telesnaps (photographs taken of the television screen as the stories were originally broadcast).<br />
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The special is prefaced with a four-page article by Richard Molesworth called <i>The Numbers Game</i> that covers the various discoveries of missing episodes. Many people responsible for making these finds and returning film prints to the BBC are name-checked in Richard's coverage of the subject. <br />
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The discovery of <i>The Lion</i> in New Zealand is covered in one paragraph. There is no mention of my name and, worse still, my involvement has been wrongly attributed to others.<br />
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The problem lies with the last two sentences of this paragraph. Here’s the first of these:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><b>Grenville showed the episode to a friend of his, Neil Lambess, who was also a fan of the series, in 1999.</b></i></blockquote>
The friend of Neil's who was also a fan of <i>Doctor Who</i> was me, not Bruce. Grenville was not especially a fan (he wasn’t even aware that the series had missing episodes). He also did not know Neil prior to the episode’s discovery. They met for the first time when we went along to Bruce's house to view the film. What this sentence also omits to say is that Bruce showed the episode to both of us: I was sitting there right alongside Neil when we first saw the film.<br />
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Here’s how I think this sentence should have read:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Grenville showed the episode to Neil Lambess and a friend of his, Paul Scoones, who was also a fan of the series, in 1999.</i></blockquote>
Moving on to the paragraph's last sentence:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><b>Lambess realised that Grenville had a missing episode, and helped facilitate its return to the BBC later that year.</b></i></blockquote>
This time it's Neil rather than Bruce to whom my involvement is wrongly attributed. I "helped facilitate" the episode's return: I negotiated the loan, physically collected the film and made the arrangements for its transportation to the UK. Furthermore, this all took place within days of making the discovery, not “later that year” as the article claims.<br />
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Again, here’s how I think it should have read:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>They realised that Grenville had a missing episode, and Scoones helped facilitate its return to the BBC days later.</i></blockquote>
What I find most surprising about this is that the article's writer, Richard Molesworth, is the author of <i>Wiped! Doctor Who’s Missing Episodes</i> which is regarded as the definitive book on this subject. There is a section in the book where Neil and I are quoted about the discovery and return of <i>The Lion</i>. Richard only had to refer to his own book to fact-check his article and avoid making these mistakes.<br />
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I posted about the article’s errors on Facebook, and received the following response from Richard: “Sorry Paul, no slur intended - my brief was to be concise, and quite a few names got left out of the article - it was more of a 'what was found and when' piece. The 'who' often got truncated or omitted. Sorry if I've offended.” A short time later he added: “This had nothing to do with the editor, let’s make this clear.”<br />
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I can appreciate the need for conciseness, but this should never be at the expense of factual accuracy. Omitting any mention of my name from the article is annoying but not necessarily wrong; ascribing my role to other people most definitely is.<br />
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In the article, those two sentences amount to 40 words. My suggested rewrites above come to 43 words. That's right, just three additional words could have fixed this.Paul Scooneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17322991318366377845noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20322865.post-19118105668355065232013-04-26T22:22:00.002+12:002013-07-18T22:33:02.197+12:00Award NominationI'm delighted to report that <i>The Comic Strip Companion</i> has been shortlisted for an award.<br />
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My book has made it on to the final ballot for the Sir Julius Vogel Awards, in the Best Professional Publication Category.<br />
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The Vogels are administered by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Association of New Zealand.<br />
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Voting will take place at AuContraire, the national science fiction convention, to be held in Wellington from 12-14 July 2013. Members of SFFANZ or Au Contraire are eligible to vote.<br />
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I'd also like to congratulate my friend Adam Christopher who has received two nominations, for Best Novel and Best New Talent.<br />
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The full list of nominations <a href="http://www.sffanz.org.nz/sjv/sjvNominations-2013.html">can be found here</a>.<br />
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<b><i>Postscript</i></b><br />
My book didn't win an award. Oh well, at least it was nominated. Better luck next time!<br />
<br />Paul Scooneshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17322991318366377845noreply@blogger.com0