Season Nine...and More

Hello Fellow Whovians!
Firstly, allow me to apologise for not updating the site sooner but I've been busy with Christmas/NewYear and a birthday (mine) as well as the launch of my first short story.

The News Relating To DW S9:

There isn't a lot to report unfortunately, whilst we eagerly await the new season reports are slowly emerging about what we can expect.

*Peter Capaldi and Jenna Coleman will be returning for S9. There was speculation that Jenna would only be appearing as Clara Oswald for half of S9 with a new companion to be introduced, this rumour turned out to be false and Jenna will be with the show for the entire run of S9

*Steven Moffat will be returning as show runner and writer.

* The title of the first story of the season will be titled "The Magician's Apprentice"

*Steven Moffat has written the first two stories of S9

*Michelle Gomez will be reprising her role of Missy/Master (yeah, like we really believed the Master was gone for good)

*Kate Stewart, daughter of the late Alastair Lethbridge-Stewart will be in a story.

*Michelle Gomez announces her return in a Radio Times short video. It's also confirmed that Missy will be returning in the very first story of S9. Many fans are wondering whether this will be a direct continuation of last season's storyline (I'm betting it isn't) or whether Missy has hatched another diabolical plan in the break between S8 and 9.

Who Related News.

*Leggo will be releasing a DW set.
*A new Doctor Who comic is to be launched (although it may be out at the time of writing!)

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More news as it comes to hand.

 

The Ultimate Christmas Gift Guide For The Whovian In Your Life..(PART ONE)

Merry Christmas everyone and to all my Jewish friends and blog guests (especially Geoff and Viv.) Happy Hunnakah!
We've (and by we I mean just me, Mike.) have spent hours trawling through the internet for holiday gifts to please any Whovian or your plain old garden variety fans. Whether it's for you Mum, Dad, brother, sister or assorted friends you're sure to find something to both please and delight the Doctor Who fan in your life.
Because Destination Gallifrey is an international site, I've tried my best to include merchandisers and retailers from around the world, if you see something that is from a country other than your own, please do contact the store/manufacturer. You are more than likely to discover that these stores have international shipping whilst others have overseas branches, at the very least you'll be able to make a note of what you like and learn whether it's available where you live.
Got your paper and pen ready? Good. Without any further ado, here is Destination Gallifrey's 2014 gift guide.

TARDIS TREATS.

The TARDIS has become such an iconic symbol that the term 'bigger on the inside' has fallen into common language. Here are some of the best TARDIS mechandise on the market.
gifts for the Whovian foodie:

Who wouldn't be happy with the ultimate fan biscuit barrel/cookie jar. Great talking point and shows the TARDIS in all its glory.

Available from Forbidden Planet Amazon UK and Amazon U.S.A.

Give your boring old dinner some of the TARDIS treatment with these nifty salt and pepper shakers or you could just keep them as part of your Dr Who collection.

Available from: Amazon UK and Amazon USA.

 

Here's the ultimate in bottle openers, it actually makes a dematerialisation sound when you use it. Available from the abovementioned reatailers.

Here's an exquisite coffe or tea mug with a keep warm lid, I think it would make an ideal pencil and pen caddy for your desk

Please visit Forbidden Planet to check out this mug and also the the other fantastic mugs they offer, even "toby Jug" style one in the shape of each Doctor.

Other Whovian Homewares.

How about sleeping with the Doctor, metaphorically speaking of course. This TARDIS duvet (for we Aussies AKA doona cover) make a great gift and very practical too. 

Available in Single and Double (check for other sizes from BBC Shop and Forbidden Planet UK
These 16oz glasses celebrate 50 years of our favourite show and com in a set of two. The glasses feature all of the Doctors.

Available from BBC Shop 
and Entertainment Earth in the U.S.A.

Latest Who News

Have YOU been a good Time Lord Doctor?

Nic Frost to appear as Santa in DW Christmas Special.

*Well known and loved actor Nic Frost, normally associated with his roles alongside friend and fellow actor, Simon Pegg, will be appearing alongside Peter Capaldi as Santa. Whether Santa turns out to be a Time Lord, an alien or a three headed monster or the real Kris Kringle remains to be seen. We can reveal that the story does take place at the North Pole and does involve some sort of alien.

Clara For Christmas.

*It has been confirmed that actress Jenna Coleman will reprise her role as Clara Oswald. Even though her character said goodbye to the Doctor at the end of the series final episode, Death In Heaven, having her reappear in the Christmas Special nicely rounds out Series 8 and clears the decks for a new companion(s) for Series 9.

Steven Moffat and Peter Capaldi to return for Series 9

It's been confirmed that showrunner and scriptwriter, Steven Moffat will continue on in those roles for Series 9. Many fans have voiced a lot of criticism over the direction that Moffat took during Series 8. Some of these criticisms included, uneven story quality, too much emphasis on the Clara Oswald character and overriding the show's canon. It's hoped that the complaints have been taken on board and Mr Moffat once again gives Whovians the "wow" factor. Peter Capaldi will also be returning as the Doctor. Peter too, has come in for some criticisms. Some fans believe his portrayal of the Doctor is too dark and unlikeable but it really is important that he is given the opportunity to develop the character of the Doctor before judgement is passed.
AND FINALLY.....

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DOCTOR WHO! 

On the 23rd on November 2014 the world's longest running sci fi program and our favourite show turned 51. Destination Gallifrey would like to wish the show a very happy birthday and a big birthday thank you to all the cast, crew and others who made the show possible and so well loved..Cheers to the next 50 years!

For mor great Doctor Who news, reviews and interviews, visit Whoogle and Doctor Who News

He's Just A Cosmic Girl..An Analysis Of Gender & Regeneration Within Doctor Who.

We Two Are One.

The revelation that Missy is the Master has caused more than a ripple of anger amongst fans and whilst I don't have any official figures, I would assume that most of the disquiet has come from long time fans that have been watching the show during some period of the preceding fifty years.
Rather than looking at the gender change through an emotional angle, let us examine this change in terms of the impact it has/will have on the dynamics of the show in the future.

Previous DW Controversies.

This isn't the first time that the subject of regeneration has caused controversy. In the 25th Anniversary Special, The Five Doctors, the Master was asked by the High Council Of Gallifrey, and more specifically, Borusa, to go into the Death Zone and help the Doctor. In return for helping the Doctor he was to be given a full Presidential pardon for his past crimes and a whole new regeneration cycle.

Whoa! Back up, a whole new regeneration cycle? How is that possible? It was continually pointed out that Time Lords can only regenerate a maximum of twelve times before they died The 25th Anniversary Special was written by Terrance Dicks who is a previous Doctor Who script editor and writer as well as the author of numerous Target Novelisations of the show.It's very hard to believe that someone who is virtually Who royalty would've forgotten or ignored show canon.

In the Peter Davison story, Mawdryn Undead ,Mawdryn and his accomplices attempted to steal Time Lord technology in order to give themselves a regeneration cycle, instead it gave them one life with a perpetual mutation.

Mawdryn, the would be Time Lord.

In order to end their suffering they required the fith Doctor's life and as he himself pointed out, it would cost him all his remaining regenerations and would effectively finish him as a Time Lord. This is because to aid each of Mawdryn's crew as well as Mawdryn himself would require one of each of the Doctor's regenerations.

In Colin Baker's first story, the universally disparaged, Twin Dillema, the Sixth Doctor meets an old friend and fellow Time Lord, Azmael. Azmael forces himself to regenerate in order to stop a plot by the Gastropods. Peri asks the Doctor if Azmael will regenerate to which the Doctor says no, there are only twelve regenerations and Azmael had used them all.

Then we come to the first appearance of the Derek Jacobi/John Simm Master. At some stage the Anthony Ainley version of the Master may have "died" (he was no longer technically a Time Lord anymore since he now used the power of the Keeper Of Traaken to steal other people's bodies.)
The John Simm tells the Doctor that the Time Lords ressurected him to use as a weapon, presumably in the Time Wars with the Daleks.

DNA Or Consciousness Via The Matrix.

The ideas I'm about to put forward are hypothetical but I believe plausible given what we know about Time Lord technology and medical research.
We know that the Matrix contains the sum total of all Time Lord knowledge. We also know that the Master has been inside the Matrix (as has the Doctor.). It isn't beyond the bounds of possibility that the Master 'deposited' his mind and personality into the Matrix to retrieve later on to place into a new body. This sort of operation wouldn't be beyond limits of Time Lord technology. We also know that a mind/body transference is possible because we have witnessed the 6th Doctor's companion Peri, undergo it in the Trial Of A Time Lord Story, Mindwarp.
In the 10th Doctor Story Human Nature and part two of the same story, Family of Blood, we actually see the Doctor change his physiognomy to that of a human with all of his Time Lord genetic information contained inside a pocket watch. Professor Yana (The Master) also underwent a similar transformation in another story that heralded the arrival of actor John Simm as the Master.
From what has been just revealed we can see that Time Lords can manipulate the physiognomy so changing their gender doesn't seem like a total impossibility at all.

The Romana Regeneration Contraversy.

When the late Mary Tamm (1950-2012) left the show after playing the role of Romana for a year, a new actress was required to take over the role.
Douglas Adams (creator of The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy) was the shows script editor at the time and his sense of humour can clearly be seen in the regeneration scene from Destiny Of The Daleks. It should be pointed out that Mary Tamm had never refused to do a regeneration scene, she simply wasn't asked to do one as she told fans.
In the TARDIS, Romana casually informs the Doctor that she's regenerating. This one scene has caused a great deal of anger amongst fans. The anger was aimed at the way Romana paraded into the control room wearing a variety of regenerated forms including a distinctly alien looking body. Fans decried the casual way threw away bodies like she was trying on dresses. It appeared that Romana had used up (or most of ) her entire regeneration cycle in a few minutes.
It wasn't until many years later when the show had been relaunched that the controversy was finally put to rest.

Lend Us A Hand Guv.

In the Christmas Invasion, a newly regenerated Doctor was undergoing post regeneration trauma and had been asleep/comatose for a prolonged period of time before he was strong enough to deal with the invasion by the Sycorax.
In a scene that would've shocked many fans (myself included), the Sycorax leader chops off the Doctor's hand.

Now we can understand Romana's parade of bodies, because she was still within the first fifteen hours of her regeneration and because she had regeneration energy left she was able to "try" out new bodies until she decided on the one she liked and letting the fifteen hours pass. When she 'chooses' the Princess Astra look body she even tells the Doctor, "The arms are a bit long, still,I can take those in a bit."

Now, while I'm all for answering questions if I possibly can but before I'm bombarded by Whovians asking "Why hasn't the Doctor done this?" let me explain.

Death In Heaven..Cybermen And A Psychotic Missy

Rebirth Of The Cybermen.

The Story Continues....

In part one of the series finale, Dark Water, we learnt that Missy (aka The Master), had been collecting the minds of the deceased to use as a new army of Cybermen.

In Death In Heaven, her reason for going to all this effort is revealed. No sooner have the Cybermen marched down the steps of St Paul's Cathedral, than the U.N.I.T. team arrive, led by Kate Stewart, daughter of the late, beloved Alistair Lethbridge Stewart for those who aren't familiar with that particular relationship. The Cybermen blast off into the air and explode to create an ominous looking dark cloud. To me, this make the Cybermen way too overpowered. I know we have seen flying Cybermen before but this simply makes them more like the Sentinels (Marvel comics robotic mutant killers).
I've always felt that the Cybermen were far more frightening when they showed an "organic" aspect of themselves. Despite advances in make up and costume, I still find the 10th planet Cybermen and to a lesser extent, the Earthshock models far more chilling.

Both the Doctor and Missy are tranquilised and taken aboard an Air force One style aircraft where the Doctor discovers that the enactment of emergency protocols have made him President Of Earth. The minds that have been harvested by Missy are then used to seed the cloud and it begins to rain on cemeteries around the world. This "rain" is actually something that is similar to nanobots that have the complete blueprint information to turn the dead into cybermen. The Doctor informs the U.N.I.T team that there is simply no defence against an army that can weaponise the dead.

The Death Of Danny Pink (for good no kidding).

Danny Pink started off as a fairly likable character but when writer Stephen Moffat continually used the character to berate the Doctor over morality and whether the Doctor was in fact a good man, he quickly became annoying

The dynamics between Danny and the Doctor became nothing more than two Alpha males beating their chests to try and impress Clara the female, Jane Goodall would've been impressed.
In 3W, Clara has been trying to convince a group of Cybermen that she is actually the Doctor in order to avoid being deleted. She gives the Cybermen the galactic coordinates of Gallifrey and a lot of other information relating to the Doctor. This scene was not thought out at all, in his attempt to write a clever scene, Moffat has ignored the fact that the Cybermen can simply scan her to see if she has two hearts. A cyberman materialises besides her and destroys the Cybermen and then teleports itself  and Clara to a graveyard. Upon removing it's faceplate we see it's Danny.

I did find Danny's  slightly zombie look horrifying and I give high praise to the costume and make up department for giving us this chilling vision of what it means to become "upgrated". Danny's emotional inhibitor hasn't been activated so he can still feel, especially his love for Clara. By this time the Doctor has arrived after Cybermen destroyed the plane and Missy escaped. In a really badly written scene the Doctor is falling to earth when he gets collected by the TARDIS.

The Doctor warns Clara that if she activates the inhibitor Danny will be fully Cybernised and will destroy her. Danny tells the Doctor to do it but he refuses (leading to another angry exchange between the two which nullifies any tension or sadnees from the situation).

Happy Birthday Doctor!

Missy arrives and the whole reason for her scheme is revealed. Yes it was Missy that brought the two of them together, she simply wanted to see how a control freak like the Doctor would be able to work alongside someone who couldn't be controlled. This does go towards some way to explain why I was never comfortable with the Clara character and why she was difficult to warm to but it does seem like a ridiculous reason when Moffat himself has built up the character so much.The Doctor tells Danny he needs to have the inhibitor switched off so Danny can gain access the hive mind and discover the Cyber plan. Finally, Clara switches off the inhibitor but Danny doesn't kill her because Moffat whacks us over the head with the Hallmark Card notion that loves is stronger than anything. That may have been a nice touch thirty years ago but it's been overused since then.

Missy explains the Cyber army is actually a birthday present for the Doctor to prove that they really aren't so different after all and now the Doctor can go and save all the people he wants to with his own army. The fact that the Doctor actually thinks about it is disturbing, OK, we have a darker Doctor but there is no way the Doctor would use the dead in any of his incarnations. He gives the Cyber control bracelet to Danny who goes into soldier mode to order the cybermen to fly into the cloud and destroy it and themselves as well.
Clara wants to kill Missy naturally, (seen that before with Martha Jone's mum). The Doctor tells her not to or she'll be no better than Missy, ho hum, been there done that etc. Missy is then conveniently  killed by a lone Cybermen who turns out saved Kate Stewart from falling to her death from the U.N.I.T plane. Why did this Cyberman save her? Because it was created from the skeleton that was her father Brigadier Alistair-Lethbridge Stewart in a piece of writing that has both angered and outraged fans.

Doctor Who: Death in Heaven recap by Paul Verhoeven

Dark Waters..The Revelations Begin.

*WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS!

"Oh you know who I am."

The first big revelation in Dark Water is that Danny Pink is dead, killed whilst crossing the road and talking to Clara on his mobile phone. The way characters can constantly return from limbo, death, alternative universes may make this comment obsolete by next week. I am not going to be surprised in the least if he is back sucking face with Clara next week.

In her grief, Clara attempts to blackmail the Doctor by collecting every key in the TARDIS and then throwing each one into a lava pool until he agrees to take her back and change events, preventing Danny's death.It turns out that this scene was just a "dream" (always viewed as a writing cop out when you've written yourself into a corner.) in order for the Doctor to discover what Clara's motivations were.

If writer Steven Moffat was hoping this desperate, angst riddled Clara would have the audience howling buckets of tears then he missed the mark by a long shot with this writer. That scene made me absolutely loathe Clara Oswald. Why does she believe her loss is any greater than anyone else on the planet? To see how a similar situation is portrayed take a quick look at Rose Tyler's scenes when she watches her dad's death in the 9th Doctor story Father's Day. I'm prepared to accept that grief can and does make people do strange things but it seems everything Clara does is always way over the top.

Doctor Orpheus.

In a direct reference to Greek Mythology, the Doctor offers to take Clara into the underworld to find Danny, just like Orpheus ventured into the underworld to beg Hades to release his love Eurydice. The underworld turns out to be the Netherworld, a place where the consciousness of the dead go to. In actual fact it is actually the Matrix, a Time Lord device that houses minds like a hard drive.

In a nutshell, the minds of the deceased are being kept in the Matrix whilst their bodies are saved to be used as new cybermen all with the help of the mysterious Missy.