The official Doctor Who convention in Cardiff over this past weekend brought with it a lot of news and announcements about Season Seven, including who will be the next companion after Rory and Amy depart mid-season. It also featured the first promo video for the new season, and BBC has just officially released it online. Whovians, rejoice!

In the promo, The Doctor wears a hat, rides a horse, and generally causes trouble, flanked as always by Amy and Rory. As previous set photos indicated, The Doctor and his companions will visit the wild wild west, the snowy tundra, and an ancient civilization, and will content with old and new foes alike. The promo even features guest stars Mark Williams (known best as Arthur Weasley) and Ben Browder of Stargate. We also learn that Amy Pond isn’t too great at handling a gun, and what exaclty The Doctor really would like for Christmas.

Amy and Rory will depart from the series in the fifth episode of the season in an episode featuring the Weeping Angels. The new companion, played by Jenna-Louise Coleman, will first appear in the Christmas Special.

Doctor Who returns to BBC One and BBC America this fall. You can watch the new promo after the jump.

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Love it our hate it, it would seem Doctor Who is here to stay. Having been a staple of British Television for many , many years, the series is now firmly entrenched in the U.S. with fans from all across the country.

Those fans are, of course, waiting patiently for the new season to begin on BBC America and to get them ready, there’s a brand new trailer just released today. But first, some scoop on the upcoming season, directly from the BBC:

The new season will see the last days of the Ponds, with Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill making their final rollercoaster voyage with The Doctor (Matt Smith). Amy (Karen Gillan) and Rory (Arthur Darvill) have been at the Doctor’s side for more than two seasons but what will he do after their heartbreaking departure?

New guest stars so far confirmed to star will include David Bradley, Rupert Graves and Mark Williams. Season 7 will then see a dramatic turn of events when The Doctor meets a new friend – the recently-announced new companion, played by Jenna-Louse Coleman. Prepare yourselves for thrills, adventures and dramatic surprises as the show builds towards its enormous, climactic 50th anniversary year.

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The seventh season of the revamped run of Doctor Who will unfortunately be the last for the Ponds. Amy and Rory have been with the Doctor since the beginning of the fifth season, and have been by Matt Smith’s side during his entire run.

So with that info common knowledge, show runner Steven Moffat took to twitter to reveal their choice for the Doctor’s next companion:

We saw a lot of brilliant actresses. But Jenna was the only person going faster than Matt – he had to keep up!

That Jenna of which he speaks is Jenna-Louise Coleman, the stunner on the right. She will be introduced in this year’s Christmas special and finish off the seventh season run in early 2013.

Being the companion during the Doctor’s 5oth anniversary year is a fantastic opportunity for the young actress. The show has retained a high level of popularity over the past seven years and looks to boom in 2013.

In other Doctor Who twitter related news, Moffat did also confirm that this upcoming season will indeed split at the half way point like last year. However, with the split coming around Christmas it will likely only face a small holiday hiatus. Nothing near as excruciating as the summer brake in 2011.

Look for new Doctor Who on BBC America this fall.

For several years now the modern iteration of Doctor Who has been a high water mark for genre television. Upping the ante with incredible writing, good budget effects and a group of actors that would put most prime time line-ups to shame.

Among this mountain of quality is also the superb musical scores Murray Gold has written for the series since it returned in 2005. The Doctor has always had one of the best themes in the history of television, but what Gold has been able to do is add so much life to the show by crafting complex themes and ideas that span across entire eras of the show.

The last two seasons have been the era of Moffat and Smith, who together have reformed the show into a stylistically very different beast than the Russel Davies run. Massive credit to Mr. Gold who has adapted to this new stylistic direction to write some of the best music of the show’s long and storied history.

So we come to the sixth series, the most recent and thus far most ambitious soundtrack yet. Series Six is a season dominated by answering very large and very important questions that have been presented over the course of the last few years. The season was also split down the middle which gives it a really great pace and flow.

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Steven Moffat is one of the best television minds working today. He is in charge of two of the most interesting, well written and generally fun shows on television, Doctor Who and Sherlock, and he might fancy bringing a bit of both together.

The Express is reporting that Cumberbatch is the desired choice to play the most recent incarnation of The Master, a renegade Time Lord who often butts heads with the good Doctor:

“It’s fitting that the Doctor comes face to face with his ultimate enemy, The Master, for the 50th anniversary and it’s felt Benedict is the perfect choice if schedules can work… Fans will love the idea of the man who plays Sherlock Holmes taking on the Doctor’’

This year Cumberbatch was in two highly regarded films stateside, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and War Horse, and the next year and a half will see him in at least two major blockbusters, Star Trek 2 and The Hobbit. So there is genuine concern about his upcoming availability for a multiple episode or even season long arc on the show.

The 50th anniversary year of the longest running sci-fi show in history is expected to be huge. No doubt bringing back the Master is only the tip of the iceberg of plans the Grand Moff and BBC have in store for us in 2013.

For nearly 50 years Doctor Who has captured the imaginations of countless minds, from the very young, to the very young at heart. The internet age has allowed that active fan base to accomplish some pretty incredible things, including the ambitious Doctor Who Fan Orchestra which takes individual YouTube submissions of each instrument and re-builds themes from the show.

From the video’s description:

The Doctor Who Fan Orchestra invites musical fans of Doctor Who to take part in an online collaborative celebration of Murray Gold’s music. Participants submitted recordings for this work from November 2011 to January 2012.

This final mix includes a total of 177 submissions from 154 individual participants, ranging in age from 11 to 57, and who are located in at least 18 different countries across the world, including: United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, Spain, France, Russia, Brazil, Canada, Finland, Hong Kong, Israel, Latvia, Norway, Poland, Singapore, Sweden and Switzerland.

The end result is incredible, a near flawless performance of two classic early run Murray Gold themes. The video itself is a collage of individual performances that is almost as interesting as the music they are playing. To see the pieces fit together in an intricate, 21st century weave of YouTube videos highlights this magnificent piece.

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With the growing popularity of BBC America over the past few years, US audience members have become inundated in the wild world of all things Doctor Who. With massive billboards in Times Square, TV spots on primetime TV, and more toys than you can collect, The Doctor has become a staple in American TV culture.

With that, it only makes sense that another industry that’s skyrocketing would try to claim their territory with this franchise, in the form of a video game.

The game, titled The Eternity Clock, has been shrouded in mystery, for the most part, since it was announced a few months back. All that we know is that fans will have the option of playing as The Doctor or love interest River Song.

The game is set for release next year on PS3, PC, and the newest Sony platform, the Vita. In the last few days, BBC leaked the very first teaser of the game online, and we’ve got it for you to check out.

It may not show much, but you can check it out after the jump and judge for yourself.

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“Borrowing implies the eventual intention to return the thing that was taken. What makes you think I would ever give you back?”

-Idris

Doctor Who is a quintessential piece of British culture, and it has been for nearly a half century. A more recent contributor to that lexicon is Neil Gaiman, the mastermind behind Sandman, Stardust and Coraline. Well last year the ‘Grand Moff’ worked his magic again and secured Gaiman to write a season six episode of Doctor Who. Uniting two of the giants in British fantasy into one perfect, condensed episode of TV. Or is it?

Of course it is, I won’t even try to fool you. ‘The Doctor’s Wife’ is one of, if not the, best episode of Moffat and Smith’s run up to this point The tone is fabulous, the writing is perfect, the acting is spectacular and the monster is every bit as threatening as he should be considering the stakes. As far as stand alone stories go, I predict this will be at or near the top of many Whovian’s top lists for years to come.

So we have reached the spoiler warning portion of my review, I cannot implore you enough to see the episode first. You do yourself a disservice by not heeding that warning! More after the jump.

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“Were sailors! Just like you… except for the gun thing, and the beardiness’

-The Doctor

One of the biggest problems that face shows with season long story arcs is how to fit in the “one-off” episodes that exist in between the larger, grander story episodes. Doctor Who used to be a serial, which meant they didn’t ever really need small single episode stories to keep the thrust of the season afloat. Most of the time there were hardly any definition between the seasons at all, in fact looking back now it would be difficult for most casual Who fans to differentiate between the specific seasons of the original run.

That structure isn’t feasible today, and in 2005 when Russell T. Davies restarted the show he had to take the show into the more traditional season format. This meant that the stories became far more interconnected over the course of a season, and it also meant that every now and then you would get an episode that pretty much exists entirely on it’s own. It is exactly that type of episode that ‘The Curse of the Black Spot” ends up being, and it is one of the better stand alones yet.

This is the point where I warn all you readers who haven’t seen the episode yet to avoid the rest lest ye be spoiled! More after the jump.

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“…and one whacking great kick up the backside for the Silence, you just raised an army against yourself!”

-The Doctor

‘Day of the Moon,’ the second part of the season opening two-parter, plays just as much as a season premiere as it does a season finale. There are more answers, more closure, more lose ends connected in these episodes than most of the season finales up to this point. Where this story excels though is where it seamlessly asks new questions and begins new arcs. It is the perfect episode for those wanting answers from season five and for those wanting new puzzles for season six.

Of course had Moffat decided to use these episodes to close season five I, like many others, would have demanded his head. This episode ends on not one, but two (and a half) cliffhangers, and one of them is the most mind meltingly tantalizing Doctor Who twist yet. Having a two-parter end on such a note is telling for the direction Moffat is taking his Doctor. The emotional depth of these characters keeps growing and growing, and it is obvious that something major is about to happen.

Reader beware, after the jump I will spoil the episode for the purposes of review, so if you care at all about the good Doctor and his companions I implore you, see the episode first.

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“We travel in different directions, every time we meet I know him more and he knows me less”
-River Song

There are three things that are certain in life: death, taxes and Doctor Who. The longest running sci-fi show in TV history returned this week with the premiere of the 6th season of the revamped run that started in 2005. This episode marked several firsts and introduced what might be the scariest monster the show has ever thrown at us.

For the first time ever the show shot principle photography in America, Utah to be exact. Also for the first time BBC America is airing the episodes day and date with the British premieres. All of this while we are getting a returning Doctor and companion for the first time in the new era of the show. With such an historic start excitement has been breeding a ton of hype for start of the season. Does “The Impossible Astronaut” live up to it?

In a word, yes. In seven words, holy god damn hell yes it does. “The Impossible Astronaut” delivers on nearly everything we have come to expect from the Moffat/Smith run. It has excitement, rich production values, humor, a well crafted story and the scariest monsters yet. I am going to get into some spoiler territory from here on out so if you haven’t seen the episode yet, I urge you to go do so immediately and then come back and read this review.

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You make be a huge fan of the BBC series Doctor Who and watch it all the time. However, that doesn’t mean you necessarily know the entire history of the show, especially as its been running on TV for over forty years.

Really, to be a fan and watch it now, nobody expects you to know everything. However, if you’re one of those people who just has to know but doesn’t necessarily want to spend all your time doing the research, these guys have got you covered.

YouTube users The Fine Brothers have taken the time, done the work and put together a very comprehensive history of Doctor Who. In fact, you can get the lowdown on the show’s entire historuy in only six minutes. How’s that for a time saver?

Check out the video after the break. You’ll be happy you did.

Although, be careful as it may contain spoilers. Oh and don’t forget the new season of Doctor Who will premiere on BBC America this Saturday, April 23 at 9/8C.

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