Neil Gaiman is a geek god. He’s the author of several award winning books and comics including the series The Sandman and novel American Gods. He’s a Doctor Who fan and if he could’ve traveled with any incarnation of the Doctor, it would’ve been Patrick Troughton’s Second Doctor.
“Doctor Who was the first mythology that I ever knew,” he said.
Tonight Gaiman returns with Nightmare in Silver, the second episode he’s penned for the BBC America show about all of time and space. In Nightmare, the Doctor, Clara (Jenna Louise-Coleman), Artie and Angie arrive at Hedgewick’s World of Worlds, once the greatest theme park in the galaxy but now home to strange creatures and a terrifying new breed of Cybermen.
The Cybermen are not only one of the Doctor’s greatest enemies but one of Gaiman’s greatest passions. His first Doctor Who experience was seeing the fourth season episode, Moonbase, as a child. Swift and silent Cybermen were at the center of the episode and those villains stuck with Gaiman.
It’s the news Whovians everywhere have been waiting for. The Tenth Doctor (David Tennant) and Rose (Billie Piper) will be return to Doctor Who for the 50th Anniversary. John Hurt is also slated to appear alongside current the Doctor (Matt Smith) and his companion Clara (Jenna-Louise Coleman).
This news comes as a surprise, though a very welcome one, to Doctor Who fans. As we reported only a few days ago, Steven Moffat himself was not confirming any details and just a week ago John Barrowman (Captain Jack Harkness) confirmed he wouldn’t be involved in the anniversary. Tennant was last seen as the much beloved Tenth Doctor in 2010’s The End of Time, which was also the last time we saw Piper’s Rose.
“Doctor Who is the most exhaustingly planned show on earth.” So says the show’s lead writer and executive producer, Steven Moffat, in an interview today. Moffat admits that he encounters few surprises when putting together the show that encompasses all of time and space but there are plenty of surprises for the audience.
The second part of season 7 begins with The Bells of Saint John, which will kick off Jenna-Louise Coleman’s run as the Eleventh Doctor’s (Matt Smith) newest companion. Speaking about Coleman, Moffat said Clara brings a wit and unimpressed quality to the TARDIS and the Time Lord that makes the Doctor work harder to be impressive. “They have enough in common and yet enough sharp contrast,” said Moffat, referring both to the Doctor and Clara as well as Smith and Coleman.
Adding to the uniqueness of Clara is that the Doctor has already met two other versions of his new companion. Regarding whether Clara will ever remember or learn about those other encounters, Moffat jokingly replied, “I would know the answer to that question and certainly won’t give it to you.”
As Doctor Who‘s season 7.2 premiere gets closer, fans are getting a few more sneak peaks at what The Doctor and Clara will be facing. BBC America has released posters for episodes 6-9 and a new trailer.
Plus, if you can’t wait for the premiere, plot details (hint: SPOILERS) are available on the BBC America site.
Check out the new trailer and posters after the break. Doctor Who returns Saturday, March, 30 at 8P PT on BBC America followed by the new seriesOrphan Black.
What could be better than a third season of the BBC’s awesome Sherlock series starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman as a modern-day Holmes and Watson? Why, a fourth season of course.
That’s right, during and interview with UK’s Radio Times today, Cumberbatch said he and co-star Freeman have agreed to do two seasons after Season 2.
“We’ve agreed to two more series but I could get into trouble for saying that,” Cumberbatch said during the interview. “All I know at the moment is I’m doing these three and another three.” Which, translated to how we do series here in the U.S. means he’s currently filming season three of three episodes and then would go on to do a fourth season of three episodes.
He also said in the interview that he and Freeman would like to do more seasons, but as always it depends on their schedules and that of co-creator Steven Moffat, who also runs the BBC’s Doctor Who.
So yeah, that’s pretty cool. We could all use more seasons of this excellent show. And more Cumberbatch and Freeman isn’t a bad thing either.
Look for season three of Sherlock to hit the U.S. later this year.
Geronimo! BBC America has released images from the first four episodes of the second half of season seven for the show that takes viewers through all of time and space. The pictures show not only Matt Smith’s Eleventh Doctor but also Jenna-Louise Coleman’s companion Clara and guest stars Dougray Scott and Jessica Raine. Warning! Spoilers may follow!
Doctor Who returns with the thriller episode, The Bells of St. John, which introduces a new enemy known as the Spoonheads. Seven more episodes are set to finish out the 7th season of the timey whimey show. Since this is Doctor Who’s 50th anniversary we can expect some surprises.
In a press release from BBC America, lead writer and executive producer Steven Moffat said: “It’s the 50th year of Doctor Who and look what’s going on! We’re up in the sky and under the sea! We’re running round the rings of an alien world and then a haunted house. There’s new Cybermen, new Ice Warriors and a never before attempted journey to the centre of the TARDIS. And in the finale, the Doctor’s greatest secret will at last be revealed! If this wasn’t already our most exciting year it would be anyway!”
Catch Doctor Who when it returns on March 30 8 p.m. ET on BBC America.
The recent five episode run to kick off the seventh season of Doctor Who ended with the bittersweet send off of the Ponds. The second longest running companions for the Doctor in the new run, and the thus far only traveling mates of the Eleventh Doctor, the Ponds were fan favorites whose presence on the show will be missed.
That last paragraph contained no spoilers, as it was well publicized that they would be ending their run in the 5th episode of this current season. Going forward there will be spoilers for that episode, so if you somehow missed how the Ponds met their ends you might want to bookmark this story and come back once you watched the episode.
Some how the great Steven Moffat managed to essentially kill these two beloved characters while at the same time giving them the happiest ending possible. Even though they were trapped in the past during a time the Doctor is unable to ever visit (which were sure will be retconned sooner rather than later), they were both given full, seemingly normal lives to live together for decades and decades. The love story of Amy and Rory Williams, which has seen their love forged over thousands of years, over several deaths and over a parallel lifetime finally settles long enough to let them live out the rest of their days in loving peace.
That is where the show left us, a sucker punch to the gut that had the sweetest of aftertastes. However, the Doctor Who writing crew is not one to leave well enough alone, and that has been proven once again in this newly released story board animation of an unfilmed coda scene to that episode.
Today Nerdist Industries kicked off it’s Doctor Who-eekend with an episode of All-Star Celebrity Bowling featuring Team Nerdist vs. Team Doctor Who. It is the best showdown of geekiness in all of Time and Space. There are fezzes. There are TARDIS bowling balls. There’s Wil Wheaton! This is the episode whose preview brought down the house at San Diego Comic-Con. See for yourself it is lives up to its hype.
The rest of Doctor Who-eekend includes the series premiere of Dork Fork with Alton Brown where he’ll be cooking up Time and Space themed dishes. Later on Saturday, the Nerdist Channel will feature Chris Hardwick’s Q&A with Smith, Gillan, and Executive Producer Carole Skinner from the New York Doctor Who premiere. The Who-eekend concludes with cosplay coverage from Gallifrey One on Just Cos.
Of course you need no more prompts from us to watch the season premiere this Saturday, we have beat that info well into your head. Stay peeled to The Flickcast for any more slivers of Doctor Who info in the coming weeks while part one of the new season gets underway.
Also watch the full episode of All-Star Celebrity Bowling after the jump.
It will come as no surprise to those who read us with regularity that this is a very pro Doctor Who site. The big season seven premiere is this weekend and there is more than a little bit of who mania around these parts in anticipation. Thankfully the BBC has delivered unto us a little morsel in the last few hours of waiting.
All this week BBC has debuted a daily, short mini-episode online. Pond Life, as the mini-mini-series has been dubbed, is all about what the Ponds are up to in the five months leading up to the September 1st premiere. Each episode provides only the slightest of glimpses of our favorite characters doing what they do, but it is enough to make us excited about them all over again.
It is also important to note that today’s episode, which is the last of the bunch, actually seems to bring with it some rather important information about where our characters are at when the season begins. All told the roughly six minutes total of the five shorts provide a rather meaningful prologue to the next season, so anyone who is on the Who bandwagon really should check these out.
You can check out the first part of Pond Life after the jump, and be sure to head over to BBC’s YouTube channel for the rest of the series.
Doctor Who is almost back, and what better way to get you jazzed for the next batch of new episodes than with some rather impressive promotional artwork. These theatrical one-sheet inspired banners highlight each of the first five new episodes of the upcoming season.
There is some pretty major stuff happening in this first set of shows which will be ushering in some change. What that change will be is common knowledge, but on the precipice of the new season we wont spoil it here, especially as these posters do a good job of alluding to what will happen without overtly telling you.
One thing that is really interesting is how Steven Moffat has approached this new season. He has said in the past that he was trying to make each episode stand a little more on its own like a little movie. This was the same creative directive that Bruce Timm used in the early seasons of Batman: The Animated Series and look how well that turned out.
The focus on making these episodes more like self-contained mini-movies within a larger, interconnected world might be one of the better moves Moffat has made. Every episode we have seen clips from looks stunning, and if these episodes can deliver on their promise we are all in for a little over a month of pure television awesomeness.
Take a look at all the new banners after the jump.
Say what you will about American TV structure vs. our brethren across the pond, but when it comes to the big time shows you usually know what and when you are getting them. One of the biggest shows on BBC is, of course, Doctor Who and up until now we have only had a vague sense of when it was returning.
It was announced that the seventh season premiere will air on Saturday September 1st. As of now this is only official for the BBC broadcast, but starting last year the show aired day and date with BBC America, and there is no indication that will change now. The seventh season begins with a five episode run before it fractures around Christmas, allowing the second half to play out in 2013.
In addition to the air date, BBC also released the official synopsis for the first three episodes:
Episode 1: Asylum of the Daleks
“Kidnapped by his oldest foe, the Doctor is forced on an impossible mission – to a place even the Daleks are too terrified to enter… the Asylum. A planetary prison confining the most terrifying and insane of their kind, the Doctor and the Ponds must find an escape route. But with Amy and Rory’s relationship in meltdown, and an army of mad Daleks closing in, it is up to the Doctor to save their lives, as well as the Ponds’ marriage.”
Even though our reaction to the CW’s upcoming Arrow has been a bit mixed (we’re reserving judgement), we’ve now got at least one new reason to check out the show. According to ET, Torchwood star John Barrowman has joined the cast of Arrow in a recurring role.
The character is somewhat of a mystery at the moment, with Producers only saying Barrowman will play a “well-dressed man” who is “as mysterious as he is wealthy … he is an acquaintance of the Queen family and a prominent figure in Starling City.” Huh, that fits a few people in the world of Green Arrow. Or, it could be a completely new character.
Anyway, as you may know, the upcoming show centers around Oliver Queen, a wealthy young bad boy who, after spending five years shipwrecked on an island, returns to Starling City with a mastery of the bow and a determination to make a difference.
Arrow stars Stephen Amell as Oliver Queen, Colin Donnell as Tommy Merlyn, Katie Cassidy as Laurel Lance, David Ramsey as John Diggle, Willa Holland as Thea Queen, Susanna Thompson as Moira Queen and Paul Blackthorne as Detective Quentin Lance.
Arrow premieres Wednesday, Oct. 10 at 8PM on the CW.
Some of us here at The Flickcast are fanatical fans of the BBC’s long running show Doctor Who. Others are not quite as enthusiastic, and that’s okay. To each his or her own.
Still, no matter your thoughts or feelings about the show, there’s no denying it’s very popular with millions of people around the world. Obviously, the BBC knows what they’ve got and are giving fans of the show a little something extra to celebrate Doctor Who‘s 50th anniversary.
That’s right, the show — who’s last season was the most-watched series ever on BBC America and the most downloaded on iTunes — is getting a TV-movie. The special will be called An Adventure In Space And Time and will highlight the genesis of the character. It will air next year.
Until then, the latest Doctor Who series (season) starts in the UK this month and comes to BBC America in the Fall.
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