New Animated Dr. Who Series

smak writes "To celebrate the doctor's fourtieth anniversary, the BBC and Cosgrove Hall Films are webcasting a fully-animated adventure starring Richard E. Grant. You can watch the first episode of Scream of the Shalka and new episodes will be launched every Thursday. Enjoy." It requires Flash 4, but also looks pretty damn cool.

Showing Dr. Who

[The Munger]

At the moment in Australia, we're enjoying Dr. Who weeknights at 6:00. The ABC [abc.net.au] (Our government run station), is showing them from the very first episodes. Great days for Australian 'Who' Geeks. It's great seeing the emergence of the Daleks and all your old fav's.

Re:The theme!

[Chatmag]

I found some as wav files, if that helps. Dr. Who Themes [barbneal.com] scroll down the list for the Dr. Who themes.

Techno Dr. Who

[apoplectic]

Or you could listen to "Doctor?" from Orbital's album "The Altogether" for the truly techno'ed version.

Yep, you're right.

[sethadam1]

There is no spoon [f9.co.uk].

Re:The theme!

[Anonymous Coward]

There are a number of mixes/arrangmenets of the theme freely and legally available at whomix.mutagene.net [mutagene.net]. They aren't the original Delia Derbyshire version and none of them try to be, but I humbly suggest that they include some of the better remixes of theme made. Certainly better, for my money, than the mix used in Scream of the Shalka.

Mind you, the BBC is releasing a Doctor Who remix album in 2004 featuring 808 State, the Orb, Lemon Jelly and a bunch of other artists. That might up the bar a bit.

Orbital

[OS24Ever]

Orbital on "The Altogether Now' has a song that is Doctor ? which is a nice techno version

Done before with Douglas Adam's script

[NaugaHunter]

Here [bbc.co.uk] - all six episodes.

I'd never really watched Dr. Who before, but I enjoyed this - probably because of Professor Chronotis and good ol' Adam's wit. I'll watch the newer ones when I get a chance, but I figured I'd point this out for those the Adam's fans that didn't see the link on the bbc page.

(There's also another 6 episodes called 'Real Time', talking about the return of Cyber Men. Probably an inside Dr. Who thing - if you've never seen Dr. Who but are interested and are a Douglas Adam's fan his series is probably the best introduction.)

Re:Who's influence on the Matrix films...

[NanoGator]

There's also an episode called "Trial of a Time Lord", with Colin baker as the Doctor. The last chunk of it involves entering the 'Matrix'. It was a little different, though. In this ep, the Matrix was a repository of all Time Lord knowledge. Or something like that. Imagine the universe having a black box recording everything that happens, then having a Holodeck to walk into and witness events that occured. It was taken over and the laws of physics were messed up, etc.

Though I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if this episode had significant influence on the Matrix movies, it'd be difficult to say it was more than simply inspired.

9th Doctor

[Chuck Chunder]

It says so on the webpage [bbc.co.uk]

Re:Which doctor is this?

[Performer Guy]

Richard E. Grant is the new doctor. There is some resemblance and of course it is his voice.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/doctorwho/shalka/inter vi ews/grant/

The BBC's web site also says:

"Scream of the Shalka
Richard E Grant stars in the Ninth Doctor's debut adventure."

Re:What if we never saw the 1st?

[TomV]

There is a scholl of doctor Who continuity which goes for in-depth exhaustive analysis of past stories. However, one of the core features of Doctor Who to date has been that it consists of multi-part stories (usually 4 or 6 parts but up to 12 occasionally), at the end of which the Doctor and his travelling companion depart for a new destination and the reset switch is thrown. Knowing that the setting of Shalka is somewhat reminiscent of the early 1970's TV stories adds a certain rich piquancy for the long term fan, but with a new Doctor (Richard E Grant) introduced somewhere in the middle of his life here, he arrives into a strange and dangerous situation and proceeds to investigate and make things better: that's all you need. Absolutely no prior knowledge *needed*.

Go on, it's fab.

Re:Many Episodes still missing?

[andy landy]

When I last heard, there were 110 episodes missing (This was 10 years ago)

These are mostly Hartnell and Troughton episodes. During the Pertwee era (Colour) the BBC took black & white footage too, and although some colour footage is missing, all the black and white films remain. Additionally, the BBC still has audio recordings of everything.

Since the BBC sold stories to other countries, occasionally, foreign copies are found (Sometimes in the vault of a crypt, somewhere in mid-eastern Europe), but it looks like it's slowing down.

I did have a list of exactly which episodes were missing, if anyone's interested, I could probably dig it up.

For those interested in the cause; as I recall, the BBC had two distinct branches, BBC Worldwide and BBC something-else. Each branch thought the other had the 'master copies' of the films, so junked theirs - they were stopped before all the Doctor Whos (or is that Doctors Who?) were destroyed, but of course, some didn't make it.

Re:Flash 4?

[dr_eaerth]

If you happen to be on Windows, and you might not, Media Player Classic [sourceforge.net] plays these. Just download the swf file and grab the slider and scroll to after the "Loading" screen.