On November 1963 – coincidentally, just a day after the assassination of President Kennedy – British viewers sat down to watch a new science fiction programme designed to fill the grandstand at Juke Box Jury. Minutes later, a mysterious figure with a flowing white cloak and a Victorian frock emerged from the fog – andContinue reading “A complete history of the history of Doctor Who”
Tag Archives: TV
Strange Attraction: What Stranger Things gets right (and the other big fantasy franchises are getting wrong)
The past decade has not been kind to the great sci-fi and fantasy properties. Star Wars, Star Trek, DC and Marvel have all tarnished their legacies by prioritising quantity over quality, and even Doctor Who is currently lost in the time vortex. Meanwhile, a young pretender has stepped in and seized the throne with a simple, old-fashioned formulaContinue reading “Strange Attraction: What Stranger Things gets right (and the other big fantasy franchises are getting wrong)”
Lost in space and time: the story of Doctor Who’s missing episodes
“I am being diminished. Whittled away, piece by piece… Great chunks of my past, detaching themselves like melting icebergs” – The Doctor, The Five Doctors People have been underestimating Doctor Who for a very long time. In 1963, cautious BBC execs were reluctant to commit to more than 13 episodes of their new teatime adventure serial,Continue reading “Lost in space and time: the story of Doctor Who’s missing episodes”
Joanna Lumley: “They asked me to be the voice of the four-minute warning”
To call Joanna Lumley a ‘national treasure’ feels somehow inadequate. In truth, she is closer to a sacred monument – one of that rarefied group of people, like David Attenborough and Michael Palin, who are as essential to Britain’s idea of itself as Shakespeare and spotted dick. From her early days as a 60s cover girlContinue reading “Joanna Lumley: “They asked me to be the voice of the four-minute warning””
David Nicholls: ‘I don’t know if authors should think too much about where they come on the brow scale.’
The year is 2009. Gordon Brown is Prime Minister, Slumdog Millionaire sweeps the board at the Oscars, and Susan Boyle outsells Beyoncé and Taylor Swift to become the UK’s unlikely new queen of pop. In publishing, meanwhile, the year marks the arrival of two very different, but equally cherished, literary sensations: Hilary Mantel’s Booker Prize-winningContinue reading “David Nicholls: ‘I don’t know if authors should think too much about where they come on the brow scale.’”
Interesting Media 