I need your help...

Kasterborous has had its current look for over 18 months now, and we've decided that it is time for a change.

As such, Anthony Dry will be embarking on a redesign when the series 4 boxset is out of the way, and redesigning Kasterborous. I've also got a very tsty forum redesign in mind...

However, Kasterborous needs to continue growing and developing which is why we're asking you, our readers, for your suggestions to make te site more relevant.

You might think a brief preview of the forum on the front page of K would be better, or a greater focus on news. Whatever you think of drop int the forum and let us know, and if we like it (and we're liking them all at the moment) we'll use it!

Spiders from Mars?

Excellent news – the latest Doctor Who rumour from The Scum claims that Thin White Duke and supermodel husband David Bowie is being lined up to play a villain in Series 4.

 

Will he be playing an alien prince who steals Agatha Christie?

 

Is it even true?

 

And how seriously should we take rumours printed in a “news”paper as ridiculous as The Sun?  Should we even bother repeating them, let alone believing them?

 

We all seem to want something newsworthy where Doctor Who is concerned, more information in order to attempt to satiate our information lust. This way, every topic can be pulled, twisted, turned inside out, and thoroughly digested and discussed.

 

I wonder where this leaves our descendants, knowing that we were fed on a diet of misinformation?  Will they know – will they even care?

 

And will they be watching lost episodes of Doctor Who starring David Bowie?

 

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If it keeps on raining...

Funny old weekend. A Bank Holiday without rain, it nevertheless seemed that if the amount of work that I had given myself to complete didn't start to go down, the levee might just break.

It seems that I'm not the only one. Just one year on from relenting to the voice of fans, Shaun Lyon has finally decided the time has come to radically change Outpost Gallifrey, and minimise his input to the most famous of Doctor Who fansites.

Without OG there would be no Kasterborous, and very little else that was visually appealing for Doctr Who fans online. It is at the very hub of Doctor Who fandom, and is tus a very important entity.

Best of luck to the chaps looking after the surviving parts of Outpost Gallifrey, and to Shaun in everything he has planned for the future.

Totty

You know I get amazed that we don't come in for any flack with Kasterborous' "bordering on the sexist" attitude to women.

Taking a step back from my own insanse creation, it would seem on first impression that Kasterborous is "that Doctor Who site with the nice art, news and opinion pieces and totty".

I would feel that it was a mixed opportunity however to report about Kylie Minogue or Nicola Bryant without slipping in a picture of their lovely faces. Similarly, you don't get many chick pics on Outpost Gallifrey or unitnews.co.uk because the site owners aren't interested in doing that.

You could say then that we're fulfilling a niche which strangely hasn't been touched by anyone else.

Come on DWM! You did an interview with McFly - let's have a burlesque Kylie centre pages pullout!

Modded World

As I posted in the Kasterborous Forum today, I discovered some mods for various popular games to give them a Doctor Who theme.

For instance years ago someone made a Doom 2 DW mod, complete with sound effects, which was pretty cool. There have also been Quake mods, Jedi knight and Star Trek mods (go figure) but nothing that really, trulycaptures the spirit of Doctor Who.

I can't help thinking that a Civ 3 based mod might offer a plyable time war, but at the end of the day these mods are done BECAUSE THERE IS NO COMMERCIAL ALTERNATIVE!

So come on BBC, give us the Doctor Who video game we want, NOT "Snap in Space"!

Board

The weather recently has turned bizarrely wintery, leading kids to start playing indoors and spend time preparing their Christms lists (or is that just me?)

One thing I always used to love receiving at Christmas was a good board game. Not your MONOPOLY or CLUEDO but a good one, like Game of Life... Something with depth.

This year however it seems that despite my protestations I am going to be the otherwise willing recipent of DALEK OPERATION !

It's not quite RISK, you'll agree.

Back In Time(Lords)

One of the great things about a more regular blog is that I can squeeze in stuff I wouldn't say in the news items; they can be difficult to angle in the right way when there is lots to get through.

The touted return of the Fifth Doctor and the Rani, however, is another mattr entirely. I have loads to say on the matter, more than I could squeeze into a news report. For instance, are they related castings, if both true? If the Rani story is false, who in the press is sad enough to want to see a retun of the big shouldered one? Who is this 'Peter Jackson' Sylvester McCoy referred to? The director? The writer? The rugby player?

Peter Davison might look good for mid fifties, but how is the Fifth Doctor's aging going to be explained? Perhaps the tale will take inspiration from The Dark Dimension?

As for the Rani, well, Doctor Who was never camper than when Kate O'Mara appeared. I had reservations about the return of the Master... The Rani in comparison is such a non-entity that I don't want to even entertain the idea.

The Meddling Monk would be preferable...

Farewell WhoCentral...

There seems to be loads more Doctor Who websites around these days, but the departure from the web of www.whocentral.co.uk Is a sad one.

Whocentral was one of the fledgling Kasterborous' reference points back in 2005, being as it was the only source of interesting, well written opinion pieces and articles.

Updates had been fantastically rare in the meantime, however, and even an offer from Ksterborous to republish and link back to the originals was met with wall of silence.

So farewell WhoCentral. You may have gone largely unnoticed, but Kasterborous will always remember you.

Who knows, they might come back one day...

Game of the Summer

Charlie Croker in the Kasterborous Forum has unearthed the very first Doctor Who computer game thanks to http://www.justyce.org/atari.html.

I'm proposing a mass download of the game, with reports back and assistance posted in the forum.

Maybe it *is* 26 years old... It will still be better than a videogame Top Trumps...

Is Fanfic Dead?

Doctor Who in the 21st century is, it's fair to say, built on both the fandom and the potential of the original run.

These two things were developed and maintained to an extent from 1991 to 2003 by two long-running series of original adventures from Virgin Books and later BBC Books.

They took the Doctor and companions to places new and old, in both physical, mental and emotional terms, and many of the authors were first time writers.

With the arrival of twenty first century Who, however, I find that the current run of novels that accompany the series lack spark and imagination. In fact they're a pretty turgid and disappointing companion to the Doctor's on-screen adventures.

My attempts to find anything of interest online have also proved unsuccessful as I have no interest in reading about the return of the Ninth Doctor or what happened when the Doctor met Rose again.

So in time-honoured manner, I'm planning my own series of spin off stories set in the Doctor Who universe.

Stay tuned...

Doctor Tube

Exactly how much rubbish is there on YouTube? I was watching a selection of "classic" adverts the other day, before stumbling into a Harry Sullivan-starring fan edited video to The Village People's "In The Navy." Camp doesn't cover it.

It is reassuring to know however that fans love the show so much that they spend time and effort creating such work, desperately editing clip selections to fit the chosen tune. Or not, as the case may be.

There are also countless fan movies/adventures on YouTube, as well as the first Kasterborous vidKast. Brian and I are currently developing a follow up, you might be interested to know - stay tuned...

What on Earth is Happening?!

Back in the real world, it seems that things aren’t what they seem.

Apparently, Ben Kingsley is to appear in Doctor Who Series 4 (30). Ben, who prefers “Sir Ben”, is touted as a potential Davros, creator of the Daleks, although at the moment it is unclear whether this would be a pre-disfigurement or post-desperate escape from the mothership in 1963 Davros. The former would avoid messy prosthetics work for the Oscar winner, currently on his third wife. (When I say “currently on”, I don’t mean… oh forget it…)

Meanwhile, we’ve got good word that the Doctor and Donna and perhaps Martha (hey why not get Rose back too?) are set to visit both Agatha Christie and ancient Rome. Which era of Rome isn’t clear, but as a fire has recently devastated the HBO/BBC set for the series Rome in Italy, which is used for many a Roman visual (Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, CBBC’s The Fall of Rome…) we suspect it might be the age of the Emperor Nero.

So far, despite the Tate announcement, Series 4 is looking interesting. Perhaps we’ll get a slick combination of Series 2 (28) and Series 3 (29).

Actually, on this matter, you might see fewer references to “Series 1, Series 2” etc in Kasterborous.com from now on. Let’s face it, it is the same show. If the series is still going in 15 years time, a fiver says they retroactively rename the series/seasons in line with the classic format.

So let’s start now.

Shakespeare's Stamp

There seems to be much to-do about the potential casting of Sir Ben Kingsley in a possibly prominent role in Doctor Who Series 4.

Some fans think it's highly unlikely that the Oscar winner would trouble himself to portray the insane geneticist Davros after delighting us all with his perfect interpretation of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. However, despite other successes (Schindler's List, for example) it's worth pointing out that Kingsley enjoys his work, and needs to earn money.

I would refer you all to exhibits a, b and c: BloodRayne, Species and Thunderbirds.

So now we've established why Sir Ben would bother his arse appearing in Doctor Who without mentioning Sir Derek Jacobi.

Of course I could have gone on to mention Kenneth Branagh, a man once heralded as the "New Olivier". A role for this particular thesp could be even more interesting for the young'uns watching Doctor Who as none of them will know Sir Ben, or Gandhi - but they all know Harry Potter...

Aha! I caught you looking!

A colleague pointed out that the previous post was rather near the knuckle.

It was meant to be - there is no excuse for resting on your laurels, and accepting hand-fed scraps when the real meaty stuff is published elsewhere.

A case in point - Mr Dry and myself were involved in a proposal to produce an unlicensed Doctor Who calendar and magazine (I can hear eyebrows raising around the web. This would have been completely legal, let me assure you, pay no heed to those that say the BBC has a firm grip on everything Doctor Who. No logo, no Doctor Who in the title, no grief. It's UK law, look it up.)

Anyway, the product would have been heavily based on Kasterborous tonally and visually, and things looked pretty tasty. Except that time scales were being cut, promises being forgotten, questions being ignored, that kind of thing.

So you see, we dumped the idea, and got out while we could, and soon discovered that it was probably best that we did so.

The point? Well, we were offered what seemed perfect, but what's being thrown at you isn't always what you want or need...

Extra Time!

I've been meaning to start these extra posts for some time now, squeezing in stuff that I wouldn't normally brooch on Kasterborous.

First off (and I might well derive a Kasterborous article from this at some point in the future) I'm going to talk about Doctor Who Magazine.

Or what's left of it, anyway.

If you don't buy DWM, you won't know what I'm talking about here, but that's OK. You can hang fire until further notice, because frankly the magazine Isn't What It Was.

You see, annoying cliqueyness of the editorial team aside, DWM fails on a regular basis to reach the heights it scaled between 1996 and 2004 - the period between the failed TVM and the launch of the new incarnation.

In those days, articles would draw you in, teach you something new, with honesty, passion and a friendly tone that meant you, the reader, were part of the team. We had wonderful (classic, in fact) comic strips, thought-provoking articles and a nice focus on the novels and audios that wasn't in-your-face, nor too reserved.

It was, in fact, the model that Kasterborous adopted in 2005 (I'm still waiting for the comic strip, although there may be something in the offing). As such, it is a shame to see the magazine now dancing with adjectives such as "cliquey", "smug", "sychophantic" and "lazy".

Save a recent issue that featured a Pixley special picking through the bones of the much vaunted (but in the end probably best taht it was never produced) Tom Baker and Ian Marter-penned "Doctor Who Meets Scratchman", there is nothing to talk about in DWM. The strip has seen better days, RTD's column is getting samey (the following three words will appear in the next Kasterborous news item: "the", "a" and "Doctor" - can't you feel the excitement? Brrr, I'm bristling with it!) and the letters page is weighed heavily towards new, "squeee" or equally sychophantic fans (and if I have to type "squeee!" ever again I will never watch the series again). As for Time Team - are we nearly there yet?

Sadly for DWM, it has seen better days. Currently however it is dancing in a kind of mire of unrivalled love of the current series that embarrassed many fans in the 1980s...

Who Do YOU Want?

If - and as yet there is no confirmation of ANYTHING - we were to get a new Doctor at the end of Series 4 (and I'm more than happy with David Tennant), there's quite a lot of choice out there.

I'm not a personal fan of James Nesbitt, and while I'm happy about that particular theory being debunked, it would have been quite a piece of casting.

But, if RTD is to leave, and Steven Moffat is to take over, there are certain things that need to be addressed to maintain the series' long term survival and elevate it from the spot-the-celeb-fest that RTD likes to turn it into when really, I feel, it's those moments that need to make real statements about our lives in a way only the very best fiction can.

Foremost, no more Julie Gardner and Phil Collinson camping their way through Doctor Who Confidential. It grates big time, and detracts from an otherwise interesting show.
We should also have a long think about how Doctor Who refreshed itself in the past, and hope for a new title sequence. It's about to see its fourth series, more than any sequence in the shows history save the Tom Baker era.

We should also - if David Tennant is to leave, and he's never said how long we will stay in the role (and why should he?) then we need a Doctor who is radically different. He must be different in order to further the character and underline the risk of regeneration. I'm not suggesting that the 11th Doctor should be manipulative or slightly psychotic, traits that severely hampered the Sixth and Seventh Doctors, but he should definitely play to the strengths of the actor concerned - whoever he may be.

Thankfully we don't have to worry about the next Doctor being The Hoff or Paul Daniels - but let's have some fun speculating, eh?

My personal favourites:
Richard E Grant - there was something quite wonderful about the original Ninth Doctor as seen in Paul Cornell's Scream of the Shalka, and he deserves another chance
Kris Marshall - best known as My Family's bonkers Nick, Marshall has quite a reputation on stage, and wouldn't look out of place with his Tom Bakerish eyes. Oh and he's ginger (ish).
John Nettles - completely a long shot as I'm not convinced about the younger actors claim, Nettles carries episodes of the wonderful Midsomer Murders with an air of tranquil calm, and could provide the same influence on Doctor Who if teamed with a dynamic younger pairing.

Howabout we carry this on elsewhere, such as in the Kasterborous Doctor Who Forum?