Doctor Who / The Dandy / Elephantmen in discussion on the radio

Squeezing in a trio of radio appearances on 104.4 FM and elsewhere before Resonance FM runs a three week repeat schedule while the studio is refurbished, Alex Fitch is covering a variety of subjects over the weekend...

Clear Spot: Out of the Whoniverse

In an hour long show looking at the further adventures of companions and minor characters in Doctor Who episodes, Alex Fitch talks to a selection of writers, actors and producers about two audio based spin-offs from a couple of 7th Doctor (Sylvester McCoy) adventures in particular: The Minister of Chance which continues the story of a character from Doctor Who: Death Comes to Time,
and Counter Measures which explores further alien and paranormal encounters dealt with by the supporting cast of Remembrance of the Daleks.
Actors interviewed in the show include Paul Darrow (Blake's 7), Pamela Salem (Miss Moneypenny in Never Say Never Again) and Doctor Who audio regular John Banks, plus producers and directors Dan Freeman, David Richardson and Ken Bentley.

8pm, Friday 17th August, Resonance 104.4 FM (London) / streamed at www.resonancefm.com / podcasts after broadcast at www.panelborders.wordpress.com

Jon Briggs Breakfast show: Caption and The Dandy

As part of Jon Briggs' Saturday morning breakfast show which runs from 6am - 9am, Alex Fitch and Robin Etherington will be talking about this year's Caption Festival in Oxford and the sad demise of The Dandy comic in its 75th year. Robin wrote the strips Yore and Tag Team Tastic for The Dandy in 2011 and is a regular contributor to The Phoenix comic, which he'll be discussing in person at Caption on Sunday 19th.

7.50am approx., Saturday 18th August, BBC Oxford 95.2 FM (Oxfordshire) /
streamed at www.bbc.co.uk/bbcoxford /
'listen again' after broadcast at www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00wyw49 (until 24/08/12)

Panel Borders: Unleashing the Elephantmen

In the last of the current broadcast series of Panel Borders, which this month has been looking at anthropomorphic or 'funny animal' comics, Alex Fitch talks to writer, editor and letterer Richard Starkings, and Ian Churchill, one of a rotating team of artists on Elephantmen, an American monthly comic (primarily created by Brits) about retired super-soldiers that are half animal, half human hybrids. Mixing the sci-fi / noir ambience of Blade Runner with the anthropomorphic horrors of The Island of Doctor Moreau, the comic has been serialised since 2003 and in this episode, recorded in front of an audience at last year's Bristol Small Press Expo, Alex talks to Richard and Ian about the origins of the title, Richard's move to America as a creator and Ian's own creator owned title, Marineman, which first appeared as a back-up strip in Elephantmen #25.
(The next podcast episode of Panel Borders will be online 26/08/12 and next broadcast on Resonance on 16/09/12)

8pm, Sunday 19th August, Resonance 104.4 FM (London) / streamed at www.resonancefm.com / extended podcast after broadcast at www.panelborders.wordpress.com

Big Finish Baker!!

It looks as though Tom Baker, the 4th and arguably most popular Doctor Who, may soon be working for Big Finish, the company who have produced audio adventures based on Doctor Who for the past decade.

According to the Big Finish website, the company has had 'warm contact' with Tom. Nothing is certain, but if new 4th Doctor stories are to be recorded, it looks as though companion actors Lis Sladen, Louise Jameson and Nicholas Courtney may also be involved.

When Big Finish began their Doctor Who stories, they initially signed up three Doctors - Peter Davison, Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy. A major coup was achieved when Paul McGann came into the fold but Tom until now has eluded them.

Tom played the Doctor on television until 1981 and returned briefly for a 3D special in 1993 for BBC TV's Children in Need. He has recently recorded some successful audio stories for the BBC but those adventures have been part full-cast drama, part audio book.

The Four Doctors for 2010!

Big Finish, the company licenced by the BBC to produce audio dramas based on Doctor Who, have confirmed that they will be releasing a multi-Doctor story in December 2010 entitled The Four Doctors, starring Peter Davison, Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy and Paul McGann.

Doctor Who has a long history of re-uniting the various incarnations of the Doctor in both televised and audio adventures. In the 1970s, William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton and Jon Pertwee came together in The Three Doctors, followed by The Five Doctors in 1983 and The Two Doctors in 1985, which teamed by then-current Doctor Colin Baker with second Doctor Patrick Troughton.

In 1993, a 3D multi-Doctor story, Dimensions in Time, formed part of the BBC's Children In Need line-up.

When Big Finish launched their Doctor Who range, their first story featured Davison, Colin Baker and McCoy together and, more recently, another Children in Need TV story featured a meeting between Peter Davison and David Tennant.

In comics, of course, there have been several meetings of Doctors, including a charity gathering on behalf of Comic Relief that also saw several Doctors encounter Dan Dare and the Mekon, many years ago now. And downthetubes supremo John Freeman teamed up with artist Lee Sullivan to bring us Planet of the Dead, a Seven Doctors story in Doctor Who Magazine.

It remains to be seen if we will see another Doctors team-up on the TV for the 50th anniversary in 2013 but, in the meantime, The Four Doctors will be keenly awaited by fans. The four Big Finish Doctors have come together before in Zagreus, a 40th anniversay audio story, but on that occasion they did not all play their usual character. This looks like it will be a 'proper' multi-Doctor story, complete with Daleks!

There is just one catch - you have to be a Big Finish subscriber to get it!

• Details at http://www.bigfinish.com/.

Daleks: Animated!

Inspired by Big Finish's Dalek Empire audio series, here's an animated version of the opening scenes from the first story, animated using Carrara 6, Daz studio and Crazytalk 6.

After centuries of peace, the galaxy is invaded by the Daleks. And nothing will ever be the same again... the first story, Dalek Empire I: Invasion of the Daleks, written and directed by Nicholas Briggs stars Sarah Mowat, Mark McDonnell and Gareth Thomas. The narrator, who isn't listed in the animation's credits, is Joyce Gibbs.

The work of "android65mar", the animator says he's always had an interest in animation and a fascination with science fiction, particularly Doctor Who and particularly at the moment it seems Daleks. "It must be my age, which I have now decided with all my vanity to be a bit coy about..."

More info about the Dalek Empire audio releases here on the Big Finish web site

Judge Dredd's Crime Chronicles Released

Top audio adventure company Big Finish, perhaps best known for their Doctor Who productions, has just made a long-awaited return to the 2000AD universe with a brand new series of adventures in crime and space.

Judge Dredd: Crime Chronicles finds the iconic lawman of Mega City One starring in four new stories where he faces off against foes old and new and, for the final story, partners up with a fellow Judge played by Doctor Who’s Louise Jameson, who played companion Leela in the 1970s.

Officially licensed by Rebellion, each story is a dramatic reading, with full sound design and a specially drawn cover by 2000 AD artist Cliff Robinson, and features Toby Longworth as Judge Dredd.

The series begins with Stranger Than Truth, written by former 2000AD editor David Bishop and told by Brit-Cit academic, Eliza Blunt (Helen Kay). Captured and imprisoned by Judge Dredd, author Truman Kaput has spent years in the Mega City One iso-cubes, his work banned. His crime: writing lurid detective novels in which the ficticious Slick Dickens repeatedly outwits the cowardly bully, Judge Dredd. Now a new Truman Kaput novel is being serialised, and each chapter predicts an imminent murder with chilling accuracy. Has Slick Dickens escaped the page to commit real crimes in Mega-City One? Is a serial killer using the chapters as templates for their crime?

Where does fiction end and the truth start? And, perhaps most importantly: can Dredd stop the plot before his nemesis fulfils the finale of Slick Dickens: I Killed Judge Dredd?

In Blood Will Tell by James Swallow, due for relese in November, a frenzied mutant attack on Mega-City One's shield wall is revealed to be the cover for a group of infiltrators. Judge Dredd tells the story of how he was forced to face a deadly opponent from his past: Garris Hale, a man whose life he destroyed. Back from exile in the radioactive wilderness of the Cursed Earth, Hale has possession of a dark secret – a secret so explosive that it could plunge the entire city into anarchy and chaos! With his judgement in question and the future of his city in the balance, Dredd must face a lethal enemy intent on revenge at any cost...

The third tale, to be released in December, The Devil’s Playground by Jonathan Clements, is narrated by Wendy Plainfolk (Gemma Wardle) and finds Judge Dredd hunting a killer on the loose, his only lead a girl who's never seen the sky or the streets. Raised in a religious commune, locked in a closed farming habitat in the heart of the city, Wendy Plainfolk knows nothing of the temptations and dangers of Dredd's world. But she is the only link to a double homicide in a place she calls the Devil's Playground: Mega-City One.

January 2010 see Louise Jameson narrate James Swallow’s Double Zero in the guise of Judge Anderson. On the Mills-Wagner scale of psychic potentiality, the Double Zero rating is ranked as the lowest possible level of human telepathic receptability and/or psionic ability.

When a strange premonition draws Psi-Judge Cassandra Anderson to her fellow law officer, Joe Dredd, what begins as an inkling of something sinister soon becomes a matter of life and death. With telepathic secret agents from a dozen city-states infiltrating the Big Meg in search of a psychic weapon called 'the pariah', Anderson and Dredd find themselves in a race against time to save the life of an innocent child – with the power to start a war...

• The Judge Dredd: Crime Chronicles are priced £9.99 per CD and £7.99 for an MP3 download. Subscritions are also available from www.bigfinish.com/Judge-Dredd:-Crime-Chronicles

Tube Surfing, 30 June 2008: Baxendale, Bernice Summerfield and Graveyards

Above: The Bash Street Kids, drawn by Leo Baxendale, start a circus in a story from Beano Issue 1063, published in 1963. Bash Street Kids © DC Thomson

• (via FPI): Leo Baxendale features in The Times today, recalling the early 1950s and his first approaches to DC Thomson, them taking on Little Plum, Minnie the Minx then the immortal Bash Street Kids. More details and links over on Forbidden Planet International's blog, or jump straight over to The Times. Talking of Leo, his next volume of memoirs, Hobgoblin Wars, is due fairly soon.

• Big Finish have announced that Simon Guerrier's book, Bernice Summerfield - The Inside Story, will be out in August. The book is a warts-and-all guide to the character first created for Virgin's Doctor Who New Adventures by Paul Cornell, but who quickly grew to feature in the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip and get brought to life by Big Finish in several audio adventures, voiced by actress Lisa Bowerman. More info here on the Big Finish web site.

• (via Bear Alley): The latest Eagle Times (Volume 22 Issue 2, Summer 2009) continues a run of excellent issues with more of the same. The cover story is a look at the nature artwork of Tom Adams, nowadays best known for his covers for Agatha Christie novels but who has had quite a diverse career over the past sixty years. Other features include looks at the Dan Dare stories Operation Saturn and The Man from Nowhere, Eagle Autographs, Rex Keene (the first in a new series of 'Rivals of Jeff Arnold'), the third part of a look at Heros the Spartan, a P.C. 49 text story, pop music in 1965 and a look at Eagle Holidays.
Subscriptions are £22 (overseas £34 in UK pounds) for four issues a year from Keith Howard, 25A Station Road, Harrow, Middlesex HA1 2UA. More info at: eagle-times.blogspot.com

• Congratulations to Neil Gaiman, who has picked up yet another award for his novel, The Graveyard Book, this time the 2009 Locus Award for Best Young Adult Book.

• A new web portal, Talenthouse launches today, aggregating the works of artists from multiple disciplines including music, fashion, fine art, graphic design, film and photography.
Based in California, the site is the brainchild of British recording artists Amos Pizzey and run by CEO Roman Scharf. It allows artists to build their own profiles for free to display their work in full screen mode, gather followers and alert friends when new work is posted.
Cynopsis Digital reports the site's business model includes selling subscriptions to its database to TV and film studios and talent agencies (like the Amazon-owned IMDBPro), as well as launching brand-triggered creative competitions to source the community for new designs (sort of a multidisciplinary Filmaka)

• Bloggers and other writers may be interested to know Google-owned YouTube has launched its own portal to help instruct citizen journalists about how to practice better reporting. YouTube's Reporter's Center features house-made videos, clips from seasoned Pros from Dover including Katie Couric and Bob Woodward and practical shooting tips from sources such as Howcast. Check it out at www.youtube.com/reporterscenter

More Who Comics Mythos Leaps to Audio Adventures

Stockbridge - an English village created for the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip - will feature in a new trilogy of audio adventures from Big Finish.

To date, Stockbridge has featured in the strips The Tides of Time, The Stockbridge Horror, and Stars Fell on Stockbridge in the 1980s, and, more recently, The Stockbridge Child.

"The three stories in our 'Stockbridge trilogy' are set in the past, present and future of the village," reveals Script Editor Alan Barnes in the latest issue of DWM of the new audio adventures. "They're all very different.

"October's Castle of Fear, set in the Middle Ages, is a galumphing historical adventure," he revealed, "with, hopefully, a very surprising twist.

"Jonny Morris's The Eternal Summer, released in November, is a weird Sapphire and Steel-y sort of affair featuring mad UFO spotter Max Edison, and Mark Morris's Village of the Damned, released in December, is a full blooded horror-ish sort of thing, with sinister ravens and zombie cricketers!"

All three adventures star Peter Davison's Fifth Doctor and companion Nyssa, played by Sarah Sutton.

"I loved the idea that the Fifth Doctor would make his home from home in a pretty English village, and that weird stuff would keep on happening there," says Barnes.

The idea of the Doctor having a home, or homes, beyond the TARDIS has been used several times in comics: the Third Doctor had his own cottage in the Countdown stories, while Andrew Cartmel gave the Seventh Doctor at least one spooky house in stories he penned for the comic in the 1990s, initially realized by artist Arthur Ranson.

• More info: www.bigfinish.com

Dalek Empire: The Fearless

Big Finish has just released an awesome CGI trailer to promote Dalek Empire IV: The Fearless, a mini-series of four, full-cast audio dramas with each chapter released on single CD.

Spanning four spin off series from Big Finish's Doctor Who dramas so far, Dalek Empire is an epic saga of humanity's struggle to survive the relentless onslaught of the Daleks. Spanning the entire galaxy and stretching over centuries, it is seemingly a war without end and The Fearless finds humanity on the losing side of the conflict.