Doctor Who Lockdown cinema posters

It all started when the lovely Emily Cook ( @Emily_Rosina ) sent out a tweet suggesting that, under lockdown conditions, wouldn't it be lovely to have a nationwide tweet-a-long to the first episode of Doctor Who (2005) 'Rose' on its fifteenth anniversary. By all accounts the suggestion snowballed into a worldwide trending event for which Russell T Davies himself appeared on Twitter to join in and even supplied a new ending for the episode. 

The tweet-a-longs are now a regular event. Loads of creatives join in with the fun along with many of the cast, writers and producers. 

I did my bit and added a few retro cinema posters to the melee. A few. I say "a few". I've now done ten - one for each episode. I even threw in a few classic series stories too.

Each of these posters is (sometimes loosely) based on ones for old feature films. I'll tell you which at the bottom of this post but in the meantime, see if you can spot them. Some are pretty obscure... 

The designs are based on the following feature film posters:

Dalek - Kronos (1957)

The Eleventh Hour - The Blue Bird (1940)

The Girl in the Fireplace - The Virgin Queen (1955)

Human Nature/The Family of Blood - Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939)

Heaven Sent - Death in Venice (1971)

The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky - Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)

Planet of the Spiders - Kingdom of the Spiders (1977)

Remembrance of the Daleks - Saturday Night, Sunday Morning (1960)

Rose - Invaders from Mars (1953)

The Stolen Earth/Journey's End - War of the Worlds (1953)

If you've enjoyed these posters, then you can show your appreciation to the artist by buying him a cup of coffee via his Ko-fi account by clicking here. He really does appreciate it and needs constant coffee to keep him awake to produce this tat.

Lockdown Doctor Who Posters

There was a global re-watch of the very first nu-Who episode 'Rose' a week or two back. It followed on from an equally popular one for 'Day of the Doctor'. Loads of folk took part. Steven Moffat and Russell T Davies even joined Twitter to take part. Both of them supplied some new short stories to complement the episodes. The two events even made the BBC news showcasing the diverse fans from around the world - Brazil, Japan, Moscow, Italy, Australia - who joined in with the love.

I did my little bit and produced a cinema poster for 'Rose' in the style of the 1950s sci-fi film 'Invaders from Mars' (like those Supermarionation ones I did a few posts ago). I quite enjoyed doing it. So I did one for 'The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky' based on the famous poster for 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers'. I've no idea how the two connect up but the end result is quite pretty. 

I might do some more. 

If you like these, then buy this struggling artist a coffee via his Ko-fi account. He'd like that. He'd like that a lot. Thank you.

The Complete Doctor Who Series One on VHS... as well!

Well, the Doctor Who season nineteen video covers seem to go down well...

So here's series one... using a variant of the 'Black Sheep' template. 

(Apologies for not using smoke and vortexes as often as they did back then, but I did get a little bored and wanted to give them a bit more distinctiveness.)

If you liked this post (or indeed, any of the 400 odd others I've done over the years), why not buy me a coffee at my Ko-fi profile. The link is here.

Early Ninth Doctor Novels For Elderly Doctor Who Fans...

In 2005, the BBC, fearing that the radical new series of Doctor Who starring TV's Christopher Eccleston as more contemporary "Northern" Time Lord would alienate elderly fans, commissioned a set of three novels depicting familiar monsters and villains from the beloved Hartnell era in brand new adventures with the ninth Doctor. 

They were never published as it was a silly idea.

Revisiting the Eccleston Target Book Covers...

Christopher Eccleston's first series as the Doctor was my starting point at producing 'new' Target book covers. I should point out that it wasn't my original intention to do one for EVERY televised story. I was off work on extended sick leave and needed something to do instead of mindlessly devouring the BBC's daily pescription of Homes Under The Hammer and Bargain Hunt. So I started this blog - originally with the aim of reproducing some of the funny stuff what I wrote for some Doctor Who fanzines back in the 90s which I still considered a bit amusing. I had also dabbled in Photoshop during 2013 - producing a selection of six or so fake pieces of vintage DrWHO merchandise - including William Hartnell's Book of Outer Space and a DrWHO promotional box of Kellogg's Porky Pops. These were all cobbled together and posted intermitantly on the blog that I'd decided to call "Andydrewz's Pages" for no other reason than I quickly needed a name and a varient on my ancient email address seemed like a quick solution. 

I'd always admired the early Target book covers - especially the ones that marked the introduction of the gate logo (that's the diamond logo without the diamond). These were the more cartoony and dynamic covers that were done originally by Chris Achilleos and later Peter Brookes.  The first one I did was one for the Matt Smith story Cold War. I've no idea why I picked that one. It was crap anyway... and has not seen the light of day ever since it was consigned to a file on my old mac. Crude is too kind a word for it. (The one on the blog currently is NOT that version.) Anyhow, I decided to do the Eccleston adventures. There was 13 of them and I had access to all the press stills from them.

The results were variable and can still be seen here. The End of the World was a parody of Achilleos' Revenge of the Cybermen whilst The Unquiet Dead was plain risible and was changed several times before it was finally posted on the blog. I still hate that cover. I also condensed the two-parters into single volumes which, in hindsight, was a mistake. 

I received some nice feedback about them via the blog and decided to embark on the following series... taking breaks now and then to produce some silly might-have-been merchandise. The blog blossomed...

Flip forward to today or rather last Monday. Someone asked me to do a new cover for one of the Eccleston stories. I had offered them my old cover from three years ago but, looking at it, I realised how crude it looked. So I redid it... And it came out quite well. 

So I've spent this week going back to 2005 and completely re-doing the Eccleston covers. Some of them are similar to the originals (well, the one for Rose is at least!) whilst others are completely new. And I've taken the opportunity to do covers for ALL thirteen episodes as opposed to doubling up the two-parters into single volumes. 

They're all here now. I hope you like them. If nothing else, the whole exercise has reminded me of how awful the publicity stills for series one were - especially The Empty Child.

The 12 Target Covers of Doctor Who Xmas Specials...

As a Christmas treat for all of you lovely people, I've gone back to some of my old Doctor Who Target book covers - in particular, the Christmas specials - and re-worked them into full covers. 

Yes, I have had a bit of time on my hands this week but things should get back to normal shortly and an absence of new posts over the next week or two should confirm this.

Oh, and a happy Christmas to all of you at home! x