David Tennant nominated for two Best Actor Awards

David Tennant has been nominated twice in the Best Actor category of the Broadcasting Press Guild (BPG) Awards.

Tennant’s nominations include a Best Actor role for Doctor Who and another Best Actor role for his portrayal of Arthur Eddington in the BBC/HBO co-production Einstein and Eddington.  Einstein and Edditiong has also been nominated for Best Single Drama.

More information is available at the Broadcasting Press Guild website.

William Hartnell as the first Doctor Who

Here’s one of the most interesting and unexpected press releases to surface in a long time.

According to reports, Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe might be the custodian of long-lost episodes of Doctor Who.

The story goes that Zimbabwe bought the first season of Doctor Who when it was still a British colony and that as a result many of the episodes deleted by the BBC in the late sixties and seventies may still be in existence there.  Mugabe himself may possess tapes of some early episodes starring the first Doctor, William Hartnell, that have not been seen for 30-40 years and that were previously thought gone forever.

But don’t get too excited just yet -they may still be gone forever.

Diplomatic relations with Zimbabwe aren’t exactly hot and so although it is reported that Mugabe has some of these long lost episodes, no one seems to know for sure whether he has them.  Worse, even if he does hold the key to the holy grail of Doctor Who, there remains the strong possibility that the BBC will never get their hands on the tapes.  Britain and the BBC don’t exactly sit in his good books.

A BBC source apparently told The Sun: “We have looked all over the world for missing Doctor Who episodes but there are still some broadcasters we have not spoken to.  Zimbabwe could prove a problem as there is so much red tape.  There is a fear that we may never get our hands on the footage and that would be a real shame for fans.”

Nonetheless, with 108 Doctor Who episodes still missing, the chance that President Mugabe might come through has brought hope to die hard Doctor Who fans everywhere.

Want to know what the missing episodes actually are?

Visit the BBC’s missing Doctor Who episode list.

Mark Wallinger's reflective TARDIS

How awesome is this – a shiny reflective model of the TARDIS from Doctor Who.

It’s on display at the Hayward Gallery in an exhibition that opened on the 18th Feb that is, of all things, related to football.   The title of the exhibition:  Mark Wallinger Curates: The Russian Linesman, Frontiers, Borders and Thresholds.

Wallinger said: ” The works in the exhibition use illusion, artifice and dislocating devices to look at our accidental time and place in the world afresh.”

You’ll be able to see the reflective TARDIS in Wallinger’s exhibition up until 4 May.

Lindsay Duncan as the voice of the TC-14 in Star Wars and as Margaret Thatcher

The auditions are on for who will be the next Doctor Who companion and according to the latest reports, 58 year old Lindsay Duncan is a front runner

Lindsay Duncan is an award winning UK actress who has been frequently nominated (and won) various Best Actress awards for her projects.  Many expect she’ll become a household name for her present project, Thatcher, a drama based on the British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher set in the days leading up to the 1982 Falklands war.  But perhaps it will be Doctor Who that does it instead.

If you haven’t heard of her, you’ve most likely heard her at least – she provided the voice to the TC-14 Cybot in Star Wars: Episode 1 – The Phantom Menace (yes, the silvery looking C3PO).

If Lindsay Duncan scores the new companion role the new Doctor Who series will have broken a few of its own records.  It will boast the youngest Doctor ever (Matt Smith at age 26) with the oldest companion ever.  It will also be only the third time in the 40 year plus history of the show that a companion has been played by an actor older than the Doctor.

Doctor Who fans might jump on me for that comment though, because everyone knows the Doctor isn’t really 26 years old – said he was 904 years old in the 2007 Christmas special…

David Tennant and Michelle Ryan on location in Dubai

The producers of Doctor Who were recently faced with a dilemma in Dubai.  As part of filming the story ‘Planet of the Dead’, the Doctor (David Tennant) and his companion (Michelle Ryan) were supposed to board a double decker bus in London and arrive in the same bus on another planet.  The filming of the arrival on another planet was meant to take place in Dubai.  It hasn’t quite worked out that way.

After filming the scene in London, the cast and crew jet setted off to complete filming in Dubai but along the way the bus took an unexpected turn for the worst – it got wrecked.  With no bus to exit from during filming in Dubai, the script had to urgently be rewritten.  The result?  Now the bus crashes into a spaceship en route resulting in it crashing on the planet.  It’s almost as if it was always meant to be.

“We rarely take Doctor Who abroad,” said Doctor Who producer Tracie Simpson.   Perhaps they might think twice next time.

Planet of the Dead, the first of four Doctor Who specials scheduled for release during 2009, will air on BBC One sometime in Spring.

Relatively unknown 26 year old Matt Smith has been named the 11th Doctor Who.  Smith will be the youngest actor ever to play the iconic Time Lord.

In an interview with BBC1 Smith stated, “I’m flabbergasted. I haven’t slept really, to be honest.”  Actually, he stated a lot more than that, so I’ve included the video of the interview at the end of the article.

Smith’s television debut occurred only two years ago, and in what is really quite ironic, his debut was next to David Tennant’s most popular sidekick, actress Billy Piper.

In reaction to the announcement (and with a sly joking smile), David Tennant stated, “As I approach the beginning of the end of my time as the Doctor, I am very jealous of the chap who’s coming next, who’s got all this extraordinary journey to look forward to, and everything that’s about to unfold and the way his life is about to change in so many ways.” Read the rest of this entry »

Steven Moffat, the award winning scriptwriter considered by many to be the new creative power behind Doctor Who is reportedly keen to see Doctor Who make the transition to the big screen. Moffat, who is credited with driving the series since the departure of Russel T. Davies, apparently told attendees of a recent festival that he is keen to see Doctor Who hit the big screen: “It would be good to see it in the cinema so long as it is great and fantastic….so long as it never gets in the way of the TV show. If it got in the way of the show that would be appalling.”

Doctor Who premiered on television way back in 1963 and despite the immense popularity of the re-imagined modern take on the series, talk of a big screen debut have never been serious. For the millions of fans that the series has around the world combined with the growing number of fans that the series is now attracting in the US, talk of a big screen movie story with the good Doctor is creating quite a stir of interest. Read the rest of this entry »