The Sixth Doctor, played by Colin Baker and his companion Peri, played by Nicola Bryant are once again united in a special anthology of audio adventures from Big Finish. This will mark the 150th release (of the main line of titles, there are many others). Baker and Bryant had a special kind of chemistry on the screen as the bombastic eccentric Doctor and the young American companion Peri.
The actors have appeared on and off screen since they left the airwaves in 1985, continuing their collaboration. Their latest Doctor Who adventure promises to be something very special.
Via TardisNewsroom:
August 2011 sees the release of the 150th Doctor Who main range title, Recorded Time and Other Stories. This two-disc anthology stars Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant, and its four stories are written by writers new to the range…
"Three of the four Recorded Time stories made it to the final 12 of last year's Writers' Opportunity," says script editor Alan Barnes. "The story that we picked to go into production – Rick Briggs' The Entropy Composition – won out because it fitted best with the stories we'd already commissioned for the Demons of Red Lodge anthology release. But it broke my heart to lose some of those final 12, so I was determined to give my personal favourites a second chance!
"They're a terrific mix of styles: Catherine Harvey's Recorded Time – the title track, if you like! – is a surreal excursion into the court of Henry VIII, with a decidedly tragic edge; Matt Fitton's A Most Excellent Match takes us into the world of Jane Austen (among others); and Philip Lawrence's Question Marks is a real-time thriller set in a stricken vessel... but to say more would spoil it!"
The only episode not by a new writer is Paradoxicide by Richard Dinnick, in which the Doctor and Peri investigate a message from the legendary planet Sendos.
Director Ken Bentley has assembled a lovely guest cast which includes Raquel Cassidy (Party Animals, Lead Balloon, Doctor Who: The Judgement of Isskar), Joan Walker (Doctor Who: The Magic Moustrap) and Paul Shearer (The Fast Show).
The second news piece for this blog entry involves the Reeltime production 'Downtime' directed by Christopher Barry and written by Marc Platt (Ghostlight). This was created during the 'Wilderness Years' between the end of the classic Doctor Who series and the return of the program in the 1996 TV Movie starring Paul McGann. The Reeltime productions are superb films that included several actors from the classic program and several gifted creators who would become part of the BBC Wales revival.
Downtime- 1995
watch?v=Droy0JJP0pQ
Downtime starred the late Nicholas Courtney as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, Lis Sladen as Sarh Jane Smith, Jack Watling as Professor Travers, Deborah Watling as Victoria Waterfield and K-9 voice actor John Leeson as Anthony, the DJ.
As some readers may recall, Downtime producer Ian Levine has been working with Seventh Doctor actor Sylvester McCoy in creating new material to be included in a DVD release of Downtime. Today, Shadowlocked released a new exclusive image of McCoy filming a scene. The scene looks very similar to one from the William Hartnell adventure Celestial Toymaker (starring the late Michael Gough) in which the Doctor was ensnared in a dimensional trap and forced to play a tri-logic game while his companions performed a deadly array of absurd tasks.
I'm very excited about this new Doctor Who project and hope that more information will trickle in.
Via Shadowlocked:
Sylvester McCoy films a scene for Downtime
Here's a bit of fun to warm the hearts of Doctor Who fans. Having read last week's interview with Sylvester McCoy, Rob Ritchie was kind enough to send us this pic of the great man recreating his most famous role (at least until the first Hobbit movie comes out) for a new imagining of the 1995 straight-to-video release Downtime...
Original director Christopher Barry could not include The Doctor as a character for the original release due to rights issues, but this seems to be getting remedied now for a revised version of the tale, which featured the late Nicholas Courtney as The Brig, Elisabeth Sladen as Sarah Jane Smith and Deborah Watling as Victoria Waterfield.
We're assured by Sylvester McCoy that the rather scruffy-looking table in the picture will end up CGI'd into the TARDIS centre console, with suitable background dropped into where the green screen currently is.
Chris tells us that the new inclusion of The Doctor in Downtime is accompanied by a new villain called Padmasambavah, played by Steven O'Donnell, who many UK viewers may remember as 'Spudgun' from the Rik Mayall/Adrian Edmonson 1990s comedy Bottom (his sidekick in that show, Christopher Ryan, is an old hand at Doctor Who, having played Lord Kiv in the Colin Baker adventure Mindwarp and also the Sontaran Commander Staal in the David Tennant story The Sontaran Stratagem, and a different Sontaran in the Matt Smith outing The Big Bang).
The re-booted version of Downtime is being handled by producer Ian Levine.
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