Friday, April 17, 2015

The Founding Fathers and The Locked Room

Those luminous persons at Big Finish have announced the contents of The First Doctor box-set out in June, what has some scribbling by me:

"Big Finish are delighted to name the four new stories being released in June in the Doctor Who - The First Doctor Companion Chronicles Box Set:

The Sleeping Blood by Martin Day
When the Doctor falls ill, Susan is forced to leave the safety of the TARDIS behind. Exploring a disused research centre in search of medical supplies, she becomes embroiled in the deadly plans of a terrorist holding an entire world to ransom – and the soldier sent to stop him.

The Unwinding World by Ian Potter
Office life is tough, the commute is a grind, nothing works quite as well as you’d like. Vicki seems to remember things being better once, before the little flat. It’s time she put some excitement back in her life. It’s just a shame the Doctor can’t help.

The Founding Fathers by Simon Guerrier
The TARDIS lands in Leicester Square in the summer of 1762. When the Doctor, Steven and Vicki find themselves locked out of the TARDIS, only one man can possibly help them. But the American, Benjamin Franklin, has problems of his own…

The Locked Room by Simon Guerrier
Steven Taylor left the Doctor and the TARDIS to become king of an alien world. But it’s now many years since he gave up the throne and went to live in a cell in the mountains, out of sight of his people. He’s not escaping his past – quite the opposite, in fact. As his granddaughter, Sida, is about to discover…

Doctor Who - The First Doctor Companion Chronicles Box Set is released in June on CD and Download, and until July 1st is at a pre-order price of £20 on CD and £15 on Download. It’s part of the epic and much-loved Doctor Who - The Companion Chronicles range from Big Finish, which can be Subscribed to for savings across buying the titles separately.

Bar the first four stories, all the Companion Chronicles are available on both CD and Download, and exclusive to the Big Finish site, a CD purchase will provide access to a Download in your account too!"

Tuesday, April 14, 2015

The Art of Doctor Who

Out this week in shops is the The Art of Doctor Who - the latest sumptuous special edition from Doctor Who Magazine, "celebrating six decades of design and illustration inspired by the series."

It's a beautiful, comprehensive thing, and I'm thrilled to have a couple of pieces in it.

For a short feature on Doctor Who animation, I got to speak to Steve Maher, who was responsible for the look of The Scream of the Shalka and The Infinite Quest, and the two animated episodes of The Invasion.

For a longer (but it could easily have been book length!) feature on Doctor Who comics since 2000, I got to speak to Lee Sullivan, Mike Collins, John Ross, Nick Roche, Pia Guerra, Adrian Salmon, Elena Casagrande and Alice X Zhang, as well as former DWM editor Clayton Hickman and current Titan Comics editor Andrew James. (There's also sage wisdom from Martin Geraghty, but he spoke to my comrades, not me.)

But I think my favourite bit is, without me asking, an episode of AAAGH! making it into the mag, with what I think might be Nervil and Mrs Tinkle's first appearance in DWM