Recently in Doctor Who Category

"Would you think about that a moment, my friends? Whenever you've seen Batman, who's he with? Criminals, that's who!" Before Atwater and Ailes, there was...Cobblepot: I know the comparison was already floating around after the veep debate. Still, this contentious Batman-Penguin matchup of thirty years ago now seems eerily on the money... (Via Neilalien.)

Also, this is unrelated, but while I'm borrowing fun fanboy youtubes from other places, I also got a tickle out of this compelling compilation of Dr. Who clips, by way of Return of the Reluctant a week or so ago. What are you doing here? What are you doing here? What are you doing here? What are you doing here?

The place to be right now, other than Berlin? San Diego, where the 2008 Comic-Con is now under way. There are lots of pictures of the floor here and here -- Note the full-scale version of NIte-Owl's ship (Archimedes) from Zack Snyder's Watchmen.

One of the first stories down the pike: Strangely enough, the recent rumors are true: Darren Aronofsky is signed for a Robocop sequel. I'd buy that for a dollar...But, don't get Murphy out of cold storage just yet: Not many of Aronofsky's projects ever seem to get off the ground. (See also: Batman: Year One, Ronin, Lone Wolf and Cub, Watchmen, Black Swan.)

Meanwhile, Disney brought down the house the first day with a surprise, fully-formed teaser for TR2N, featuring none other than the Dude, in both 1983 and 2008 incarnations. Best of all, as I recently wished in my Iron Man review, they seem to have stuck with the "Col. Kurtz up the datastream" idea. That should be great fun. Everyday, I think I'm going to wake up back on the grid...

Update: Also from Comic-Con Day 1, the trailer for Wolverine airs (ho-hum), Coming Soon has a sit-down with new Doctor Who showrunner Steven Moffat, and Torchwood's Captain Jack is up for Captain America? I don't see that at all.

Update 2: The TR2N trailer is up in really poor Kramervision...and it still looks grand. (A slightly cleaned up version is here.)

"My entire career has been a Secret Plan to get this job. I applied before but I got knocked back cos the BBC wanted someone else. Also I was seven." Arguably the reincarnated show's best writer, Stephen Moffatt will take over as head of Doctor Who for Season 5 (or Season 31, depending on how you're counting), replacing Russell Davies. That's a perfect choice...so long as it doesn't screw up Spielberg and PJ's Tintin trilogy.

And now for something completely different: a Friday night trip on the wayback machine. A few weeks ago, I showed up at a winter gathering wearing the snazzy official Tom Baker scarf my mother made me for Christmas. And, while a few folks correctly identified it (and were suitably impressed --Thanks, mom!), absolutely no one had any clue what I was talking about when I aped this classic moment with the wires from The Genesis of the Daleks ("But do I have the right?"), when the Doctor contemplates his own version of the baby-Hitler conundrum: Is it moral to destroy the genocidal Daleks before they've ever been created? Well, admittedly old-school Who is a pretty niche interest here in the States...it's not exactly "I drink your milkshake!" Still, since everything is on Youtube these days, sure enough, I found this fun fan-made trailer for Genesis online, and thought I'd share it. If you ever watched Tom Baker Who, I'm guessing you'll probably dig it. If not, it'll just seem realllly cheesy (although perhaps not as cheesy at first glance as another Brit sci-fi classic (and the Farscape of its day), Blakes' 7. Blakes' credit sequence may not hold up at all in 2008, but the dour finale certainly does.)

By the way, there are plenty more classic Who trailers where that came from, including this one, featuring scenes from every episode. Collectively, they bring back fond memories of staying up into the wee hours as a kid on Saturday nights to catch Who on SCETV (and, roughly half the time, waking up in the middle of Jack Horkheimer, Star Hustler wondering where the hell I was.)

Fifth incarnation (and All Creatures Great and Small vet) Peter Davison will suit up as the Doctor once more in a special scene with current doc David Tennant for charity. I wonder if he's gotten over the whole Adric thing. (Via Ed Rants) Update: It's now online.

Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson's previously-announced Tintin trilogy finds a writer in Doctor Who scribe Steven Moffat, of the Season 3 episode "Blink." Speaking of which, I've run hot and cold on BBC's Doctor Who update thus far, and have found showrunner Russell Davies' campy contributions to be mixed at best. But the second half of Season 3 has been exceptionally good Who. From "Blink" to the "Doctor goes Human" two-parter in pre-WWI England ("Human Nature/"The Family of Blood") to Derek Jacobi's turn as a lonely, befuddled scientist at the end of time in "Utopia" to the Master taking Tony Blair's job in "The Sound of Drums," I'd say this most-recent run can hold its own with the best of the Pertwee-Baker years. (I haven't seen "Last of the Time Lords," the Season 3 finale, yet, but I dig John Simm as the Master, and his evil companion is a real kick.)

Off-topic, but also on the television front, I've recently boarded the 5:23 Mad Men commuter train. It's a show I've been shying away from despite the good reviews, mainly because I feared it'd be 85% Rat Pack kitsch, i.e. its raison d'etre would be primarily to wallow in the unregenerate un-PCness of the early Sixties. But, while I'm still living a few episodes behind present-time, Mad Men makes for pretty solid television, even if, as with Miller's Crossing, it can be hard to watch without a glass of Jamesons and clinking ice in hand. Jon Hamm's Don Draper and John Slattery's Roger Sterling are particularly good, and, as someone noted on The House Next Door, Michael Gladis' Paul Kinsey is an eerie facsimile of the young Orson Welles. Plus, with all due respect to Officers Bunk and McNulty, it's a nice change of pace to watch smart, well-written characters in a TV drama that aren't cops, doctors, or mobsters.

Finally, I never much cottoned to it anyway, but after the Season 2 premiere, NBC's Heroes is getting kicked off the DVR. As I said last Spring, the blatant, unattributed ripping off of Watchmen and the X-Men's "Days of Future Past" in Season 1 was already hard to swallow. And, judging from the first week's installment, Kring & co. have decided to go back to the well, and have stolen the Comedian storyline straight out of Watchmen too. Given that their poorly-written, overstuffed show is usually as artless as their theft here, count me out.

No, not in that Incredibles way. The House Next Door, an excellent film/television blog I routinely check after every new episode of The Wire, Battlestar Galactica, and Doctor Who, has sparked a fun conversation about choice movie monologues (somewhat akin to the list here.)

Season 2 of BBC's Doctor Who revival premieres tonight on Sci-Fi, with -- as most of y'all know -- David Tennant (a.k.a. Barty Crouch, Jr. of Goblet of Fire) filling in for Christopher Eccleston as the second/tenth Doc. Meanwhile, season 3 of Battlestar Galactica doesn't begin until October 6, so you still have a week to catch up on the Vichy/Resistance webisodes online.

Sci-Fi announces they'll be airing Season 2 of Doctor Who, with David Tennant (a.k.a. Barty Crouch Jr. of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire) as the Gallifreyan in question, sooner than expected: it begins Sept. 29. And in related news, the TV teaser for Battlestar Galactica Season 3 is up at YouTube...if you've never seen the show, please don't hold that lame Nickleback-ish song in the background against it.

Village people take note: Having passed over season 2/28 of Dr. Who to David Tennant, Christopher Eccleston will instead channel Patrick McGoohan's Number Six for a six-episode revival of BBC cult classic The Prisoner. Hmm...more Who is always a good thing, but this sounds unnecessary.

Those of you who care already know this -- but still, the second season of Battlestar Galactica ends tonight with a 90-minute episode that includes cylon Dean Stockwell, a one year flash-forward, and a new Vichy-like storyline for Season 3, which begins airing in October. And The Sopranos Season Six isn't the only big-ticket TV premiere coming up. March 17 is shaping up to be a doozy for the fanboy nation (particularly we anglophiles), as Guy Fawkes will be muscling in on St. Patrick in V for Vendetta and the Doctor will finally be returning to American television with a two-hour premiere on Sci-Fi.

Program the Tardis and the TiVos: The Doctor Who revival will finally come to American shores this March, when the Sci-Fi Channel begins airing Season One. (Via Triptych Cryptic.) I guess this means I'll have to give up the Sci-Fi boycott, but, then again, I guess I gave it up in principle when I bought the first season of the new Battlestar Galactica last weekend.

Cybermen 2.0. Is there a Doctor in the house? (By way of Triptych Cryptic.)

Sarah Jane (Elisabeth Sladen), one of the Doctor's most memorable companions from the Pertwee-Baker years, will return in Season 2 of the Who revival (along with the Cybermen.) How 'bout Harry and the Brigadier while we're at it?

At first I thought this might be an April Fools joke...but, no, it seems that Christopher Eccleston has already tired of Doctor Who after 13 episodes and will be replaced for the recently-announced second season. Phew, thank goodness for Gallifreyan regeneration.

By way of Quiddity, the BBC's Dr. Who revival runs into trouble trying to cast actors of diminuitive stature -- they're all busy being Oompa Loompas and Gringotts goblins for Willy Wonka and Harry Potter IV respectively. Somewhere, Jack Purvis is smiling.

BBC One releases a very teaser-ish teaser for the Doctor Who revival. (Via AICN and Triptych Cryptic.)

Dark Horizons posts some pics of the 2004-era Daleks, soon to be seen on BBC's Doctor Who revival. No word on if Davros is joining the fun. (And, yes, I'm just going to maintain the ridiculous pretense that there might actually be people out there who give a rip about the frelling Daleks right now.)

Filming on the new Doctor Who runs afoul of British anti-terrorism forces. The article also has one of the first pics up of Christopher Eccleston as The Doctor. Between this and the Batman post above, I know I'm starting to sound like the fanboy Joan Rivers...but what's up with the lousy costume? Surely, any Time Lord worth his salt would wear something a mite more quirky.

Word is BBC's new Dr. Who will face David Beckham and a handful of other celebrities when the Autons take over Madame Tussaud's in the forthcoming new series. I hadn't heard that Christopher Eccleston has been confirmed as the ninth Doctor before, either. That's not bad, although he'd probably have made a better Master.

So, I don't know what's stranger...the claim that P. Diddy, Snoop, and Jay-Z are allegedly donning rubber masks for the new Dr. Who revival on BBC, or the assertion that Diddy's got a full-size gold-plated Dalek of bling. Puff Davros? Diddy Digs Daleks? I think somebody's having me on. (By way of Triptych Cryptic.)