Author: Vinnie Bartilucci

This month’s anniversary Doctor Who e-book will be penned by British author Marcus Sedgwick, writer of the acclaimed novel Floodland,

The Spear of Destiny features The Doctor in his third incarnation and his assistant Jo Grant as they attempt to retrieve Odin’s spear Gungnir. Marcus notes an interesting parallel between “mythology and legend”, as he puts it – Odin was hung on the World Tree for nine days, until finally his side was pierced by his own weapon, the spear Gungnir. This same even would re-appear in Christian dogma as part of of the Crucifixion.

Braking from the previous two books, Mr. Sedgwick has elected to bring back a classic Who villain.  And this being the Pertwee era Doctor, there could be no more iconic villain that The Master.

Mr Sedgwick’s response to writing for the classic her is appropriately calm and reserved. from his Blog:

Doctor Who is iconic. There is no other word for it. It’s now been a part of British culture for 50 years. 50! That’s a lot. So I admit that when I finally sat down to write the opening words of my story, I had a sudden freeze. Hands poised over the keyboard, I thought “Holy -insert-your-own-expletive-here-, this is Doctor Who! Doctor Who!”

Following the practice of the previous releases, The Spear of Destiny will be released on the 23rd.  Pre-orders are available at Amazon.com.

In BBC America’s press release discussing the second half of the seventh season of Doctor Who (premiering March 30th), a number of guest stars were listed, including Dougray Scott, Warwick Davis, Dame Diana Rigg and her daughter Rachel Stirling. But one name listed may be a big clue to the season’s Big Bad.

Richard E. Grant, who appeared in the Christmas episode, The Snowmen, will be returning in the season’s eight episode run.  Grant played Dr. Walter Simeon, head of the Great Intelligence Institute and mastermind behind a plan to take over the world with an army of animated ice creatures.  The Great Intelligence, the disembodied life force  who allied with Simeon (and voiced by Sir Ian McKellen), was a Who villain from the Troughton days, with appearances in many of the other media adventures, and a cameo in the 20th anniversary adventure The Five Doctors.

BBC America would not confirm the character Grant will play in his return, but the rumors that the Great Intelligence would make a further appearance in the series certainly gives one reason to suspect that we’ve not seen the last of Dr. Simeon.

The Teaser photo, released yesterday by the BBC, offers numerous teasers about the new series, including our first look at The Spoonheads, the monster from the premiere episode, The Bells of St John, the first to be broadcast in 3-D.. Also featured are the Ice Warriors, returning via a story by Mark Gatiss, and the redesigned Cybermen from Neil Gaiman’s second DW adventure.

The series will also feature Jenna-Louise Coleman, and hopefully provide more information how the same woman with the same name could appear in three different times; the far future of Asylum of the Daleks, the Victorian age in The Snowmen, and modern day Britain.

Doctor Who premieres March 30th on the BBC, and on BBC America, as part of their “Supernatural Saturday” lineup.

Additional casting for the 50th anniversary Doctor Who special An Adventure in Space and Time has been trickling out slowly as filming has proceeded.  Today it was revealed that the role of the second Doctor, Patrick Troughton, will be played by Reece Shearsmith, a member of the surreal comedy team The League of Gentlemen. The team also includes Doctor Who writer and actor Mark Gatiss, who wrote the anniversary adventure.

Reece Shearsmith (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“I first asked Reece 12 years ago when I started thinking about this project.” Gatiss was quoted in the Mirror. “We were in the midst of League of Gentlemen and I just remember thinking, if anyone plays Patrick Troughton, it should be Reece. Like the Second Doctor, he’s small, saturnine and a comic genius. The complete package. He thought it was a fantastic idea and I’ve kind of nurtured it all this time.”

While the team have been long-time fans of the series, Reece is the only member of the League not to have made an appearance in the returned show.  In addition to writing several episodes for the new series, Mark Gatiss played Dr. Lazarus in The Lazarus Experiment, voiced one of the Spitfire pilots in his episode Victory of the Daleks, and was almost unrecognizable under makeup (and a pseudonym) as Gantok in The Wedding of River Song.  Steve Pemberton played Strackman Lux in the Moffat-penned two-parter Silence in the Library / The Forest of the Dead.

While he’d not made it to the big game till now, Reece’s history with Doctor Who is quite long indeed.  His first professional acting credit is with the fan-produced Doctor Who Homage series P.R.O.B.E. a production written by Gatiss.  The show attempted to pay homage to Doctor Who, even casting many classic Who actors like Caroline John (playing her Who role of Liz Shaw) and several Doctors including Peter Davison.

An Adventure in Space and Time is a dramatization of the creation of Doctor Who, centering mostly on the show during the early years, and the growing professional relationship between first Doctor William Hartnell and the show’s producer Verity Lambert.  It will be one of the last productions to be produced in the original BBC Television Centre, where the original series was filmed,  before the property is redeveloped.  David Bradley (Argus Filch from the Harry Potter films) will play Hartnell, and Call the Midwife‘s Jessica Raine will portray Verity Lambert.

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God bless the deranged maniacs at the Warner Archives and their desire to not let anything be forgotten.  As part of their exponentially-growing manufacture on demand DVD program, they’ve added to their already impressive list of animated releases with a 2-disc release of Hanna-Barbera’s The Completely Mental Misadventures of Ed Grimley.

Martin Short has had a wide and varied career in comedy, and inamongst appearing on SCTV, Saturday Night Live and his film career, he created a character named Ed Grimley.  Formed from equal parts of sight gags from his SCTV days and a voice he used to do to annoy his wife, Ed caught on with America during Short’s SNL run.  When NBC and Hanna-Barbera looked for a way to compete with CBS’ Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, the hyperkinetic Mr. Grimley was tailor-made.

Featuring a mini-reunion of the SCTV gang, the series features Martin in the titular (a word you want to hear more often, and so seldom do) role, with Andrea Martin and Catherine O’Hara, with Joe Flaherty reprising his SCTV creation Count Floyd.  Jonathan Winters rounded out the crew, adding in his comedy genius.

The comparison to Pee-Wee is easy to make on the surface, but at its base, Ed’s show was a surreal take on a sitcom, as opposed to the kids show parody of Mr. Herman.  Ed has no desire to find adventures; he’s more than happy practicing his triangle and enjoying the company of his neighbors at the palatial Freebus Arms.  But adventure seeks him out, and before you can say “Uncle Balfour’s favorite Mantovani record” he’s running n a horse race or getting a new identity after testifying in a robbery trial or being whisked to Kansas via a hurricane.

Ed Grimley was one of the last shows made at Hanna-Barbera before their purchase by Turner, and was one of its last truly original works.  With character work and story direction by Scott Shaw! the show had a unique voice that stood above the sadly dying world of Saturday Morning cartoons.  It’s popped back up on Cartoon Network on occasion, but thanks to Warner Archives, fans can get their triangle on whenever they please.

The 2-disc set is available from The Warner Brothers Shop.

The BBC and Puffin books are continuing the monthly releases celebrating the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who. The second adventure, starring the second Doctor (played by Patrick Troughton) will be titled The Nameless City, written by Michael Scott, author of The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel.

The synopsis promises new adventures and a new foe for The Doctor:

“When Jamie McCrimmon brings the Doctor a mysterious book, little does he realise the danger contained within its pages. The book transports the TARDIS to a terrifying glass city on a distant world, where the Archons are intent on getting revenge on the Time Lord for an ancient grudge.”

Apparently featuring Jamie as The Doctor’s Sole companion, it is likely this adventure takes place in the fan-theorized “Season 6B”, a period of time after the events of Troughton’s last adventure The War Games, but before the first Pertwee adventure, Spearhead from Space.  Many fans, including now Who writer Paul Cornell, surmised that for a period of time, the Time Lords  had The Doctor perform certain tasks for them, before his eventual regeneration.  The Tardis Data Core wiki has a good run-down of the theory, which has effectively been accepted into continuity by the BBC.

The book will be released on 2/23, and can be pre-ordered via Amazon.com.

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• Eoin Colfer writes first Doctor Who Anniversary e-book(comicmix.com)

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Some things we now know about the Doctor thanks to Eoin Colfer, writer of the Artemis Fowl books:

The Doctor hates Blakes 7.

The Doctor has lost a hand before.

The Doctor’s first stop on Earth was not 1963.

Colfer’s e-book, A Big Hand for the Doctor, is the first of eleven monthly releases, each featuring a different Doctor.  Eoin (“Owen”) chose the first Doctor, as played by William Hartnell, and takes advantage of that by doing an end-run around continuity and setting his adventure before the first adventure of the series.  In it, he is in Victorian London, recuperating from a battle with a band of organleggers who kidnap children from their bedrooms, wasting “not a molecule” of their biomass, resulting in their fearful moniker, the Soul Pirates.  The Doctor lost a hand in a sword fight with their leader, and while a new one is grown for him, a helpful alien surgeon fits him with a functional if unattractive metal claw.  His granddaughter Susan has disobeyed (of course) and set off after the Soul Pirates herself, only serving to get herself caught in their glittering tractor beam.  The Doctor must fight off the hordes of slow-witted pirates to save the children, as well as match wits with their leader, a young man who has chosen to wear The Doctor’s severed hand around his neck.

The short story (only about 5,000 words) is witty and charming, with wonderful tossaway details of still more adventures unseen and yet to come.  The story is laced with parallels to a certain classic of children’s literature, all tied up with a cameo by the author at the end, once again showing that even when he’s not aware of it, The Doctor can’t help but to help.

The authors of the rest of the anniversary adventures are a closely-guarded secret  Each will be revealed around the beginning of each month.  A number of names have been floated by numerous websites with little evidence or basis in fact, mainly to draw clicks to their pages.  The first book is available at many e-book dealers including Amazon.com.

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Matthew Holness first rose to notoriety with his character of  Garth Marenghi; author, dream-weaver, visionary, plus actor.  He’s a perfect creation, all the insufferable genre authors boiled down to one.  Holness has returned with another author and another genre, and takes the story in the opposite direction.  A Gun For George, available for viewing at Britain’s Film4 website, is a short film featuring a down on his luck author who’s angry at the world for the loss of his brother, and his popularity.

Terry Finch is the author of the (once) popular Reprizalizer series, a two-fisted vigilante, taking to the criminals of suburban England.  He’s self-deluded, down on his luck, and angry at the world about it.  While you laugh at garth and look forward to someday seeing his head trapped in farm equipment, Matthew makes you feel for Terry.  His books are clear Mary Sue fiction, but with the world of Men’s Adventure series as their base, series like the Mack Bolan books that emerge from Gold Eagle press with astonishing regularity.  Terry is hanging onto life by his nails, trying to sell his books door to door to make enough to repair his car, George, named after his brother.  But when an old fan bequeaths him the contents of his council flat, including a loaded revolver, the implication is that Terry may finally erase the line between reality and fantasy.

Holness is a contemporary and collaborator with the gang from The Mighty Boosh, as well as popular comedians Richard Ayoade ([[[The IT Crowd]]]) and Matt Berry ([[[Snuffbox]]]).  It’s a darker comedy than the Marenghi work, and features none of his past collaborators.  Marenghi is an ego-trip on two legs, while Finch is a poor and desperate man, unwilling to admit that his books are a thing of the past, if indeed they were ever much popular at all.  The film switches between modern day reality and Finch’s revenge fantasies, filmed in the style of a seventies “One man against crime” film trailers.  Terry’s past is only alluded to, but it can be easily inferred that his books are an impotent strike back against the real assault of his brother George, which is why they are so important to him.

Holness is representative of a lot of British humorists who don’t feel the need to crank out non-stop product of questionable quality, preferring to take their time a craft the work to perfection.  This short film is an example of why that can be a very successful process.  No news on if we’ll see any more of Terry Finch in the future, but what we have seen here was well worth the wait.

That last page is going to calm a LOT of people down.

With the seven hundred issue run of Amazing Spider-Man ended, Marvel has started this new odd hybrid Spider-Man in a new title, Superior Spider-Man, which premiered this week.  Writer Dan Slott has presented one of the most controversial plot twists in comics in some time and set it up in a new book.  And it works exceedingly well. (Spoilers ahead.)

SUPERIOR SPIDER-MAN #1
by Dan Slott
art by Ryan Stegman, color by Edgar Delgado

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In the first event in association with Doctor Who‘s fiftieth anniversary, Puffin Books will be releasing eleven e-books in 2013, one a month, each dealing with a different Doctor.  Writer of the Artemis Fowl series Eoin (“Owen”) Colfer has written the first, starring the first Doctor, played on TV by the late William Hartnell. (more…)