Doctor Who 50th Anniversary - Reflections on the Movies, Spin-Offs, and Other Media, Plus Addenda

Doctor Who has become far more than just a television programme. One can think of that metaphorically in terms of the effect it has had on its fans, but here, I mean it literally as well. It has expanded into numerous other media, from comics and annuals to stage plays to movies to books to audio productions, and beyond. Some of these are just things fans put together in their own homes, while others are professional productions or publications. No look back over the history of Doctor Who would be complete without including a mention of these various things.

There is so much out there that it’s unlikely that any single individual has seen, read, or heard it all (if there is any such person, I’d love to meet him/her). I certainly haven’t. I’ve already mentioned in these reflections that, to my chagrin, I have heard very little of the Big Finish audio productions, something I really hope to correct some day (especially to hear the Paul McGann ones). I also haven’t read most of the novels of the last ten years or so. However, I’d like to take a look back at the things I have experienced. It’s likely that I don’t remember everything Doctor Who-related that I’ve ever come across, so no doubt some things will be left out. Also, I’ve touched on the books in previous reflections (both the Target novelizations and the later original novels from Virgin and then BBC Books), so I won’t retread that ground here. Primarily, I’m looking at the movies, spin-off television programmes, and some selected other media, such as comics and roleplaying games.

July Round-Up and 2 Short Reviews

And so, another month has come and gone. July was my most productive month for the blog in some time. I mentioned last month that I had fallen behind on Pathfinder reviews. This month, I began the task of getting caught up with reviews of Chronicle of the Righteous, We Be Goblins Too!, Rasputin Must Die!, Fey Revisited, Kobolds of Golarion, and Quests & Campaigns. There’s still quite a bit more to get through, but it’s a good start. Next up is a review of Castles of the Inner Sea. Expect that in the next day or two.

On top of those Pathfinder reviews, I also delved into reviews of the latest releases for the Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space game. Two of them, The Time Traveller’s Companion and Defending the Earth: The UNIT Sourcebook, were first announced a few years ago and finally saw release in the last few months. Luckily, they were well worth the wait. Unfortunately, I was quite disappointed with The First Doctor Sourcebook and that has dampened my enthusiasm for getting any of the books dealing with the other Doctors (of which The Second Doctor Sourcebook is already available). If I do eventually get them, I’ll review them here, but it may be a long wait.

Outside of roleplaying reviews, there wasn’t a lot happening this month. No television reviews. I haven’t been watching anything recently. There are several things I do want to check out (particularly Orphan Black) but I just haven’t had the time, unfortunately.

Even though I’m not primarily a news site, I do occasionally report news that catches my interest. This month there was the intriguing news that the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Special is going to be simulcast worldwide. There was also the opening of the York Maze, which this year is shaped like a Dalek. Finally, there was the first preview of Neil deGrasse Tyson’s new Cosmos series. Carl Sagan’s original is a brilliant work, and I am eagerly looking forward to this new one.

My reviews on this site tend to be quite in-depth. I like to look at every aspect (well, as many as possible) of things and critically analyse them to best of my ability. However, this does take time and it means that some things I might like to review I end up not reviewing because I just can’t fit them into my schedule. So I’ve decided, every once in a while, to write a few short, quick reviews and gather them into one post, just to draw people’s attention to their existence. I thought I’d start with a look at a couple of RPG periodicals that I find particularly good and useful.

First up is Wayfinder. This free fanzine is published biannually under the Pathfinder Community Use Policy. The most recent issue, #9, was released earlier this month. The magazine is made by Paizo Fans United and bills itself as a “Pathfinder Fanzine made by Fans for Fans”. Although it’s fan-produced, it often has forewords or even articles written by Paizo staff and/or writers. Each issue contains a staggering array of articles, new optional rules ideas, and short adventures, as well as fiction and artwork. The latest issue focuses on the Darklands of Golarion and contains things like new drow magic items, the secretkeeper prestige class, and more. As with any publication with a large number of authors, there is some variability in the quality of different articles, but for the most part, articles are well-written and enjoyable.

For players and gamemasters (primarily gamemasters) of any of the various Doctor Who roleplaying games, there is the Diary of the Doctor Who Role-Playing Games published by the Earthbound Timelords. This fanzine often contains reviews of Doctor Who merchandise as well as convention reports. However, its main focus is on adventures and gamemaster advice for roleplaying in the worlds of Doctor Who. All three Doctor Who games (FASA’s game from the 80’s, Virgin’s Time Lord, and the latest game from Cubicle 7) get attention in the magazine with most articles providing stats for all three versions. The FASA game does tend to get a little more attention, as the authors and publishers have long-lasting campaigns dating back to when the FASA game was the only one available and thus have done a lot of work of their own on that game. Nevertheless, the fact that Doctor Who games tend to be more narrative-based than mechanics-based means that just about everything is easily used with any version of the game.

Every issue contains several adventures, some fully detailed and some shorter synopses that GMs can expand as they please. The more detailed adventures often fall into the trap that a lot of Doctor Who roleplaying adventures fall into—that of assuming certain outcomes to various events. I’ve run a few of their adventures in the past, and I’ve found the best ones are often the less-detailed ones since there’s more leeway there for players going off in all sorts of unexpected directions. Nevertheless, one thing all the adventures are great for is providing creative ideas and concepts.

Diary of the Doctor Who Role-Playing Games used to come out roughly once every month. However, the last few issues have had very long delays. There was a four-month gap between issues 18 and 19, and then a nine-month gap before the most recent issue 20 came out this month. Until 20 showed up out of the blue, I had actually pretty much given up hope that there would be any more issues. I’m not sure what this means regarding the frequency of future issues. However, all twenty currently existing issues are still available for free download and I highly recommend them.

The First Doctor Sourcebook

This book is not what I expected. To be honest, however, I’m not entirely sure what I expected. I figured there would be information on the first Doctor and all his companions, probably also the key aliens and villains from that era. There would probably also be advice about playing during the first Doctor’s time along with some adventure ideas. Most of these things are present in The First Doctor Sourcebook, but they take up only a very small portion (maybe 30 pages or so total) of the book. Beyond these things, I don’t really know what I expected, but I certainly didn’t expect what the book delivers. The vast majority of this 160-page book is devoted to presenting each of the first Doctor’s television stories as adventures that people can play out in their Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space games.

There are a lot of different ways you can play Adventures in Time and Space. You can play as one of the Doctors and any of his companions. You can create unique companions to travel with the Doctor. Or you can create your own original Time Lord characters to use instead of the Doctor. Alternatively, you can play the game without a Time Lord at all and have an all-human group, perhaps a UNIT or Torchwood group, or a group of time agents from the 51st century. There are limitless possibilities, but one possibility I never once considered was playing out a television story as a game adventure. And honestly, after reading the book, I would still never consider it.

Defending the Earth: The UNIT Sourcebook

The United Nations Intelligence Taskforce (or Unified Intelligence Taskforce as it’s been renamed in recent years*) has long been an iconic element of Doctor Who. In fact, apart from the TARDIS and the Doctor himself, UNIT is perhaps the most enduring element of a show that is all about change. Companions come and go. Even the Doctor changes his form and personality. But UNIT keeps reappearing. It was most prominent in the Jon Pertwee years, of course, but has nonetheless appeared in some form with the vast majority of Doctors at some point or another.

With UNIT playing such a major role in the history of the television show, it only makes sense that any game based on Doctor Who should need to address and describe the organization so that it can be used in the game, too. This is where Defending the Earth: The UNIT Sourcebook, a supplement for Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space, comes in. The book gives an in-depth look at UNIT and how to use it in Doctor Who roleplaying games that feature UNIT in any way, from games completely about UNIT where there is no Time Lord character and all the PCs are members of, or affiliated with, UNIT to games where UNIT only appears on rare occasions, to everything in between. The book contains material, too, that is applicable beyond just UNIT, such as some of the new traits and gadgets, as well as the expanded firearm rules. Defending the Earth continues the trend of high-quality, well-thought-out books for the Adventures in Time and Space game.

The Time Traveller's Companion

After Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space first came out a few years ago, a couple of other supplements soon followed it (a GM Screen and Aliens and Creatures) and others were announced. It was exciting for people who were both roleplayers and Doctor Who fans as it had been a long time since a Doctor Who roleplaying game had been in print. However, after those first few releases, the game entered a sort of limbo. The announced products remained announced but not actually available and nothing new was released. Word came through that the game needed to be retooled for the arrival of the eleventh Doctor. But the eleventh Doctor arrived and even had a couple full seasons and still, there were no new products for Adventures in Time and Space. Then, last year, the revised eleventh-Doctor version of the game finally arrived, and Cubicle 7 assured fans more products were still on their way.

And at long last, those products have started to show up. The Time Traveller’s Companion and Defending the Earth: The UNIT Sourcebook (the two products that waited in limbo for a long time) are both available, and a series of supplements covering each Doctor has also begun releasing with the supplements for the first and second Doctors currently available and further Doctors still to come. Once again, it’s time for Doctor Who roleplaying fans to be excited.

The first of these books, The Time Traveller’s Companion is a massive 240-page tome full of information about time travel, Time Lords, TARDISes, and more. Pretty much everything to do with time and its potential use in-game gets discussed in quite a lot of detail. Most of the book is descriptive detail, from a complete history of Gallifrey to temporal mechanics and space-time phenomena. Adventures in Time and Space is a rules-light game and this book maintains that, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any new rules elements here. These are mostly in the form of new traits (particularly Time Lord and gadget traits) and new gadgets, but there are also detailed rules for piloting TARDISes, regeneration, and more. I’m actually extremely impressed by just how much detail there is in the book. It has definitely made the long wait worth it.

Orbiting TARDIS Funded, Funny Searches, and Monthly Round-Up

I’m starting something a little new this month, which is basically a month-in-review. On the last day of each month, I’ll take a look back at the entire month, both things that I’ve commented on, and reviewed on the site, as well as possibly a few other things in the month that have caught my interest.

June was a fairly slow month overall, but it opened with the news that Matt Smith is leaving Doctor Who in this year’s Christmas special. This led to much speculation about who might be the next Doctor, but that speculation seems to have simmered off for the time being.

Although I haven’t written a post on it (because there’s nothing concrete to write about), there have been tons of bizarre and often conflicting rumours over the past couple weeks about more missing episodes having been found. Numbers as high as 90 are floating around. Another popular (and perhaps more believable) number is 17. Of course, even the find of one missing episode would be exciting news, if true. Whether there’s a kernel of truth to this particular round of rumours remains to be seen.

With the TV show off the air until November, there were no Doctor Who episodes to review this month, but I did review the book Queers Dig Time Lords.

A couple weeks ago, I posted about this Kickstarter campaign to place a TARDIS in orbit. The campaign closed yesterday having raised $88,880, passing their second stretch goal after an initial goal of $33,000. I’m very curious to learn when the actual launch will take place!

I’ve fallen a bit behind on my Pathfinder reviews, meaning I only got to three this month (Doom Comes to Dustpawn, Ultimate Campaign, and The Frozen Stars). This means I’ve got a backlog of products to get through, so expect lots of those over the next couple of weeks. I’ll also have some reviews of the newest products for the Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space game, which have finally been released!

For some time now, my wife has wanted me to do a post about some of the unusual search keywords that bring people to this site. The vast majority of search keywords are pretty normal and self-explanatory, such as “steven moffat sexist” or “doctor who sexist” or various things referring to Pathfinder products. Some others are a bit unusual, but you can generally understand how they came about, such as the website address as keyword (presumably from people entering the address in the wrong field of their browsers). However, every now and then, I see some search words that are a little more bizarre. Sometimes, I’m not even sure how those words led people to this site. So I’ve been keeping a list of some of the best to share. Here they are (all spelling mistakes are replicated exactly):

but then moffat – I can see how this would bring people to this site, but it’s the arrangement of the words I find amusing. But then Moffat...what?

female doctor dices – This is possibly a direct search for this site, just with a misspelling of dice, but it does create an interesting image in my mind. What exactly is this female Doctor dicing? Tomatoes perhaps? Cucumbers?

docrors looking at girls with dig tits – I’m actually impressed that somebody looking for porn would forgo the porn and come to this site instead!

dr sexist children delivery thank you – Okay, the dr sexist part I can understand. The rest? Uh...

why does everyone hate act 6 – Act 6 of what?

And my favourite:

dead people

Aliens and Creatures

Aliens and Creatures is a supplement for Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space. It provides games statistics for a plethora of monsters and alien beings from the television show as well as an overview on how to create your own alien characters. In addition, there are a few short adventures, more story point tokens, and best of all, detailed creature cards for easy reference. It is invaluable to any Gamemaster running a game in the Doctor Who universe. Unfortunately, it’s out of print now, so you should grab one while you can since there are apparently no plans to reprint it at this time.

The main portion of the boxed set is a 134-page rulebook. This book contains extensive game statistics and descriptions of just about every alien creature to have appeared during the time of the ninth and tenth Doctors. While some of these creatures appeared in the core rules set, their descriptions here are fleshed out to include various different kinds. For example, in addition to statistics for the generic Dalek, this book also contains statistics for the Emperor Dalek, Supreme Daleks, the Cult of Skaro, Dalek mutants (the true Daleks inside their casings), Davros, and even statistics for the pig slaves and Dalek/human hybrid seen in the story “Daleks in Manhattan”. There are statistics for both evil and good aliens alike, from the adipose and carrionites to the catkind and Ood. Even some of the more obscure creatures to have shown up (such as the Hoix from “Love and Monsters” and the Isolus from “Fear Her”) are included. There are even statistics for specific individual characters, such as Cassandra, the Face of Boe, and Professor Lazarus.

Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space

As a fan of both roleplaying games and Doctor Who, I am naturally attracted to any attempt to blend the two together. Over the years, there have been a few attempts to make a roleplaying game based on the world's longest-running science fiction television series. In the mid-1980s, FASA produced the Doctor Who Roleplaying Game. Then in the 90s, Virgin Books (which published Doctor Who novels at the time) came out with Time Lord, their version of a Doctor Who rpg. The latest attempt is Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space from Cubicle 7 Entertainment. And without a doubt, it’s the best one so far.