Cheaper Doctor Who Theatrical Productions Over the Years

There's been three official Doctor Who plays - 'The Curse of the Daleks' (without the Doctor but with Daleks), 'Doctor Who and the Daleks in Seven Keys to Doomsday' (with both the Doctor and the Daleks) and 'Doctor Who - The Ultimate Adventure' (again with both the Doctor and the Daleks but also with the Cybermen and Margaret Thatcher!).

None of the them set the West End alight and were suspiciously absent at their year's respective Olivier Awards... but Doctor Who fans have a bit of a soft spot for them. 

Here's three cheaper versions of them... not that any of them really had a budget in the first place. Without a doubt, The Ultimate Adventure's budget would not have covered the cost of cat food for the cast of Andrew Lloyd Webber's 'Cats'.

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Doctor Who - Series Seven on Target

 A bumper crop here for what became the 50th anniversary series. 

To a certain degree, it was two series. The first five episodes aired in late 2012 and saw the departure of Amy and Rory. This led into a Christmas special that introduced for a second time, the new companion Clara. The series returned in Easter 2013 with another introduction for Clara whom this time, we were assured was safe and not liable to die for at least the rest of the series. This run of eight episodes climaxed with the revelation of the retrospectively named 'War Doctor' played by Sir John Hurt. This in turn was followed by the anniversary special in November which in turn was followed a month later by another Christmas special which bade farewell to Matt Smith. 

We never had it so good!

The second batch of eight contained some of my favourite eleventh Doctor stories, 'Cold War', 'Hide' and 'The Crimson Horror' were all high points with the only low point being the disappointing 'Nightmare in Silver', which despite being written by the great Neil Gaiman, felt like a remix of old ideas with some superficial re-colouring. The new Cybermen were cool though. Their looked smoother and more streamlined than the more robotic Cybus versions. It's just a pity they still had that clanky stiff sound effect every time they took a step. 

Here they are anyway. And don't worry, I've no After Party to follow this post.

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Doctor Who - Series Six on Target

Let's face it. Series six of 'Doctor Who' was a bit of a mess wasn't it. All that stuff with Amy's baby, her kidnapping, her rescue, her baby's kidnapping, her quick recovery over her baby's kidnapping... etc... 

Series six certainly had an ill-thought out story arc. Too much mystery early on with sudden walloping chunks of new information later on. All this with a liberal dose of temporal paradoxes made the whole arc both anticlimactic and uninvolving. I would love to be able to explain the series six story arc but I haven't the energy nor the space to go through in the amount of detail that would be needed to make it intelligible.

Having said that, several of the standalone stories - especially in the second half of the series - were excellent. I loved 'The Girl Who Waited', 'The God Complex' and 'Closing Time'. I hope that shows with these covers although my favourite amongst these is the appallingly titled 'Let's Kill Hitler'. My least favourite Matt Smith episode. I think you can guess why... 

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Doctor Who - Series Five on Target

Back to catching up with my faux Target covers. 

A few months ago, for some reason known only to my raddled subconscious, I ended up doing 70s style Target covers for the current run of Doctor Who series-by-series... but in reverse. This meant I started with series ten and worked my way back to series five. Thus if you accept the fact that one gets better and better, the more you perform a task, then these selections of Target book covers will get progressively worse as I'm post them in series order beginning with Matt Smith's debut series. 

I liked Matt's debut series but not as much as series seven and certainly more than series six. I hope this shows with this selection. 

Particularly pleased with the one for Amy's Choice. This really was a great example of Doctor Who doing a unique standalone tale which needs no introduction or follow-up. It's got a beginning, a middle and an end... And that's it. No necessity for a prequel or a sequel. No need for Toby Jones' Doctor to return as a villain in a Big Finish spin-off set in a dreamscape where he traps a different character from the Doctor's past every episode... The story is a nice enclosed little tale of its own. I'm surprised Simon Nye didn't write at least another script for the series but there you go. 

Anyway, here goes... 

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The Avengers '98 - The Director's Cut DVD/Blu-ray covers

'The Avengers' movie released in 1998 has to be one of the biggest disappointments ever in the history of movies... at least for me. I was genuinely looking forward to it having missed out on the opportunity to visit the set the year before. A stuntman friend of mine was doing some work on the film and needed some help with his gear. He knew I was a fan of the original series and tried to get in touch with me. But this was a few years before the advent of mobile phones, so his calls to me went unanswered as I was at the day job helping Sooty to put on a show at The American Adventure Theme Park.

When the film was released, it got blistering reviews. And it's easy to see why. The film was a mess and its narrative virtually incomprehensible. There were rumours of it being a troubled production. The film seemed to have very short running time for a so-called blockbuster. There had been no preview screenings for the press prior to its public release. Indeed its premiere was virtually non-existent. And what's more, even more sinister, was the fact that Sean Connery's face appeared nowhere in the Titan Magazines special published to coincide with the release (save for a shot of him in a full page ad for another publication).

Titan Books had also published a novelisation written by Julie Kaewert. Kaewert had used the original screenplay and the book revealed many omitted scenes and the plot actually made more sense. Indeed, it was one of those rare occurrences where the novelisation was actually better than the film!

Adding to the ignominy of the film's reputation (at least on a personal level). I was browsing a second hand VHS stall at the local flea market one Saturday and found, to my surprise, a brand spanking new copy of the film on VHS. It was the Saturday before the Monday the film got its official release on the medium. The VHS was a genuine copy and the tape inside had been played for about ten minutes. You can picture the history... Reviewer gets preview copy - Watches ten minutes of it - Gives up - Can't wait to get shot of it - Sells it on to a second hand stall - Rescued by fan out of pity.

As the years rolled on, stories of the production and the apparent existence of a 'Director's Cut' started to fly around filmdom.

Fast forward to last year and I was approached by Dan Martin who runs a Facebook page dedicated to getting the 'Director's Cut' released on Blu-ray. He wanted a faux cover as a proof of concept to put on social media to drum up some support for the campaign in the wake of 'The Snyder Cut' of 'Justice League' getting a release.

How could I not refuse?

Here it is with a few variants. Hopefully it speaks for itself. It's different to the original artwork. Not TOO quirky or stylised with the fun being emphasised through the use of old BBC weather symbols in the background. I also slipped in the union flag/rampant lion symbol which, although from 'The New Avengers' fitted in with the flavour of the design - especially since its a symbolically burning icon behind Sir August. 

Hope you like it and I'm still waiting for the call from Warner Bros either to ask me to produce a final version of the cover or to issue a take-down order.

Here's some textless versions of the artwork.

And a selection of logo variants too...

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