Doctor Who: coming live to a stage near you‏

Doctor Who is soon set to step out of his Tardis and onto a theatre stage. The Doctor, together with assorted adversaries including the Daleks, Cybermen and Oods, is to tour the UK this autumn in a new stage show. Based upon the BBC’s smash-hit award-winning series Doctor Who, the doctorwholive.com show promises to deliver a spectacular audio/visual experience featuring live music, special effects and appearances from the show’s most popular monsters

Doctor Who Live will come to the Trent FM Arena in Nottingham on Monday 25th and Tuesday 26th October 2010.

See also: other Doctor Who blog posts

Doctor Who slays St George

From the Guardian's Comment is free blog:

"Other than that, and our crusade-inspired flag, George has not much to do with being English in the 21st century..... I suggest a new [patron saint]: The Doctor, the shape-shifting time-travelling guardian of humanity from Doctor Who. In fact, the Doctor shares many striking similarities with St George. Both are dragon-slaying outsiders, fighting on foreign shores to protect their adopted people. But we know so much more about the Doctor, and thus can proudly and sensibly sing his praises. If we as a people demand collective narrative from legend, we might as well make it a ripping yarn."

See also: Blake's Jerusalem banned

Interactive guide to Doctor Who and his regenerations‏

The Guardian has published a complete interactive guide to Doctor Who and his regenerations. As we prepare for the departure of David Tennant and the arrival of Matt Smith as the 11th incarnation of the Doctor, it looks back at how his predecessors met their fates.

Sci-fi updates

• The BBC has announced that David Tennant is to appear as the Time Lord in the spin-off show The Sarah Jane Adventures. He will appear over two episodes of a new 12-part series of the CBBC show, which starts in September. The same news item notes that Doctor Who may be heading for the big screen after a spokeswoman for BBC Films confirmed that "a script is in development".
• Seen the new Star Trek film yet? If you are a fan, you may enjoy this Guardian article on the Starship Enterprise as a classic of everyday design.

Star in a reasonably-priced TARDIS

A fun idea by staff at the BBC has resulted in a "hilarious mash up of Doctor Who and Top Gear": Star in a reasonably-priced TARDIS. This combines clips of the TARDIS in flight from the show with David Tennant's appearance in Top Gear's Star In A Reasonably Priced Car slot. It shows Jeremy Clarkson talking Tennant through a lap in the TARDIS and when the clip was shown to Clarkson and Top Gear's Executive Producer they loved it and agreed that it could be put online.

The disappearing Doctor Who knitting patterns

I blogged on Dr Who Tardis and Dalek knitting patterns last month and today the Guardian - "Hands off the Doctor Who knitting circle" - has alerted me to the fact that a blogger (Mazzmatazz), who created knitting patterns for Doctor Who-related objects and published them under Creative Commons licenses, has been instructed to remove them from her website by the BBC.

On a mystery-related note, this Saturday's episode features the Agatha Christie storyline - don't forget to check out the book titles in the dialogue!

Dilemmas of a time traveller

This week's CultureWatch from Damaris includes an article on the moral dilemmas raised in a recent episode of Doctor Who: Dilemmas of a time traveller. The themes of choices, responsibility, suffering, morality, and ethics are considered in the light of the Doctor's decisions in episode two of the current series 'The Fires of Pompeii’. The article concludes with some recommended reading for a fuller treatment of the problem of suffering.

Dr Who Tardis and Dalek knitting patterns

Instructions for knitting your own Dr Who Tardis and/or Dalek

(courtesy of a tip in the weekly newsletter from www.moneysavingexpert.com).

Dawkins - and the Doctor and the art critic

Just had to blog this news item that combines a defence against secularism in art (from a non-Christian), Richard Dawkins, and Doctor Who!

The writer defends Christian art - and the Bible as literature - against attack from leading humanists such as Dawkins. He says: "we should celebrate the Christian legacy in western art and society - and stop the Dawkins army from denying us the possibility of drawing inspiration from faith to create the art of the future".

The Doctor Who angle is the news that Professor Richard Dawkins is to appear in the current series as himself. The article pointed me to Outpost Gallifrey, described as "the most popular Doctor Who fan website on the Internet and homepage of online Doctor Who fandom".

Doctor Who does books

In the Year of Reading, its good to see that the new series of Doctor Who (which kicks off on Saturday) features two episodes set in a library and one which features Agatha Christie's ten-day disappearance and provides viewers with the opportunity to "spot how many titles of Christie novels are hidden in the dialogue".

A two-part story Silence in the Library and River's Run apparently promises "an abandoned library, moving shadows, the gruesome Nodes, and the horrifying Data Ghost" - the Radio Times reviewer says the latter is "possibly the most spine-chilling scene I've ever seen, anywhere".

Countdown to Christmas (8)

Here's an example of what Libby Purves was talking about concerning Advent calendars: while several Infusion members are diehard Doctor Who fans, I do think a Dalek advent calendar is going too far!

Set your videos....

Radio Times has alerted me to a couple of programmes in the next week of interest to Doctor Who fans:

• On Sunday David Tennant crops up in Learners a comedy drama about a terrible driver who remains determined to pass her driving test. He plays Chris, a driving instructor. An earlier press release indicated that the latter role has a twist as Chris is a devout Christian with the patience of a saint. Its always interesting to see how the media portrays Christians...
• On Friday 16th, Children in Need will include a mini-episode of Doctor Who with the fifth (Peter Davison) and tenth incarnations (David Tennant) meeting up.

Countdown to Christmas (2)

After considering ways to make Christmas special for children with very little, I spotted an article in The Guardian entitled Meet the new face of Christmas which discusses what will fill Santa's sack for children in the western world this year. According to toy manufacturers who made their annual prediction of Christmas best-sellers last week, games based on films and TV characters will be the best-sellers. Retailers said a surge in the popularity of entertainment characters could be due to the summer's bad weather, which led to increased cinema attendance.

The article links to a gallery of what retailers expect to be the dozen best-selling toys this year. Included is a Dalek Sec hybrid voice changer mask, which changes your voice to sound like a Dalek (until the batteries run out...)

Jesus and Dr Who

Another post about Doctor Who and resonances with the Christian faith. There's news of a vicar who is using concepts from the series to teach about Jesus. Father Ben Andrews in Cardiff is planning a Dr Who themed evening of worship on Sunday, September 23. He will use themes from the series to explore the Christian faith with hopes that young people can worship in a way that’s right for them.

CultureWatch on Doctor Who

Phil blogged on the theology of Doctor Who concerning an early episode in the 2007 series of Doctor Who. Belatedly catching up with email newsletters that arrived when I was on holiday, I've found an article from Damaris CultureWatch by Tony Watkins, entitled Mastery or madness?, discussing the series finale. There are lots of resonances with the Christian faith - including the Master rejecting forgivesness and grace because he does not want to face up to its implications. Tony Watkins concludes his article by stating "this isn’t the first time that the Doctor has echoed Jesus Christ in some way, but he has never done so more clearly or more powerfully".

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The Theology of Doctor Who

This is a loose collection of thoughts which could be better if given more time, but it might be useful as it is.

I find an element of Doctor Who each week is usually aligned in some way with Christian theology. This week (5 May) the Doctor encountered an 76 year old scientist who succeeded in making himself 40 again. Unfortunately the DNA manipulation did not stop there, and it resurrected latent genes which turned him periodically into a raving monster.

Part of the argument voiced by the Doctor against the monster was that death is a part of being human, saying that in living a long time people get tired.

An aspect of the issue was also reflected this week in the enhanced production by Boots of an anti-wrinkle cream which has been proven to work. Queues formed, and people in the queues did not want their photos taken by newspapers.

Jesus pointed us towards a relationship with God as the basis for our long term - eternal - security. He did not make light of the body, viewing it as sacred and given by God as a gift, so wanting to have smoother skin is not wrong. However, he emphasised the importance of faith and belief in himself above anxiety about our physical fate.