The Doctor Who Christmas Special 2021

As you well know, each year since Doctor Who lost the Christmas Day slot, I've had a go at creating my own Christmas-themed episode. I've done three so far and the running gag sadly shows no sign of flagging.

2021 posed a little bit of a problem as it was post-Flux and would've been one of the final episodes for Jodie Whittaker. In the end, I put something to together that featured the thirteen Doctor teaming up with the fugitive Doctor for a 'What If?' style tale. 

'Whatever Became of Christmas?' sees the Doctor returning to Earth to celebrate the festive season with her friends. However, when she exits the TARDIS she discovers that despite it being Saturday 25 December 2021, the shops are open, there's no decorations up and nobody has heard of Christmas. As stumbles around Sheffield, her actions are being watched... But by who? 

Here's a Radio Times cover previewing the episode. The series also used to have an RT cover in the run-up to the double issue and heralded their preview of the rest of the festive telly delights and Mrs Brown's Boys. Folks seem to have been fascinated by my choice of colour for Jodie's T-shirt. I put her in a green one for the second special simply to differentiate her from earlier choices and it seems to have stuck for the following specials. This time I've paired it with a deep red coat to contrast with it. This allowed the Doctor to have a Christmassy colour scheme to her look (red and green) to contrast against the lack of colour in the Xmas-less Sheffield. 

Here's the RT billing for Christmas Day. Again the running gag of the special preceding Call the Midwife is played out again. This time it's a football version of the popular family drama. The synopsis is a bit long-winded for the Radio Times but it gets across the plot. 

And finally the Blu ray cover which for some reason I always seem to complete first.

As a bonus, I've also done textless versions of both pieces of art. 

Heaven only knows what I'm to do for the 2022 Christmas special. It will be post-regeneration and chances are the Doctor will still be faceless before their debut in 2023... Ho, hum! It keeps you on your toes does Doctor Who!

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* I say "images" as my writing seems to be long-winded and rambling again. And it trickles off towards the end. Buy a coffee for the pretty pictures but not the writing bit. Hate writing... and it shows.

Doctor Who - Series thirteen on Target

This is late! 

I should've posted this last year in the week following the final episode of the series. These are the six covers I produced for series 13. It would be interesting to see how Target would've handled this back in the day - six short novelisations (more profitable) or a single big one (probably more logical for a six part story).

As for the episodes, I really enjoyed this series. Some great visuals, a far ranging story packed with colourful characters and some great twists along the way. It certainly corrects the issues I have with the last two series.

The negatives are fiddly nerd things. Not enough Kate Stewart (in fact, why the heck was she even there?). The timeless child storyline had no real pay off as the Doctor is still running from her past rather than facing up to it. Chris Chibnall seems to have a real issue with the Doctor he created. By all means, make her more fallible but don't make her a failure - especially on a personal level. Hopefully, this will be addressed in her final two episodes... but I've an awful feeling the regeneration will hinge on the unrequited love between her and Yaz rather than tackling her dodgy past with Division.

As for the covers, I adopted the mid 70s style for them. I'm a great fan of these comic strip/pop art pieces. Ones like Peter Brookes' 'The Green Death' et al with a smattering of Kirby, Bellamy and Achilleos. 

Again, the lack of dynamic photographic source material hampered the compositions - especially for the first one. Some of these were done after the episode aired which I don't like doing. The spontaneity of using just the visuals from photos to create the design rather than picking out characters and incidents from the stories is something I prefer... and was no doubt a factor in the original Target artists' creations back in the day. 

I hope you like them.

Just to catch up, here's my covers for the following two specials 'Eve of the Daleks' and 'Legend of the Sea Devils'. I'll probably return to the Sea Devils story once the show airs later this year.

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Doctor Who Trump Card Game Redux

Back in the late 70s, the British toy firm Jotastar produced a set of trump cards based on Doctor Who. I had a set. I seem to recall I purchased it at a gift shop at Butlin's Holiday Camp in Weston-super-Mare. Now, the quality of Doctor Who merchandise at the time wasn't exactly at its peak. But this pack of forty cards were something else. The instructions gave the game a more verbose title "Doctor Who and the Legendary Legion Trump Card Game" (Note the absence of the word 'Top'). The so-called legion turned out to be a selection of heroes and heroines from history that included four cowboys, Sherlock Holmes and Thor. Not too sure if they consulted a historian for their "legionnaires"! In amongst their number was the eponymous Doctor Who and, predating its sentience in the much later 'The Doctor's Wife', the TARDIS. 

It was in the selection of villains that the set really started cooking with gas. Culled from all of the first four Doctors' eras. these included: Sensorites, Cybermen, Gellguards, Davros, Mechanoids and the Wirrn amongst others. There were also Ogrons and Sea Devils but confusingly, their names had got mixed up.

 The illustrations were somewhat perfunctory. I can only assume the uncredited artist had been told to concentrate on making them colourful as opposed to accurate. The Ogron/Sea Devil was turquoise and looked more like a balding dog whilst the Sensorites were resplendent in their bright orange jump suits. Some of the artwork seemed familiar too... (Where's my Weetabix cards?) I remember noticing that the drawing of Sherlock Holmes heralded from a US Marvel Comics adaptation of 'Hound of the Baskervilles'.

Game play was the same as the branded Top Trumps game. The major difference being that you had three choices of attack instead of four. "Mental Ability", "Weapons" and "Special Powers" - the latter meant that many of the historical figures were a little low in that area. 

You can tell that, despite having a veritable archival smorgasbord of old monster, I was disappointed by the set. Compared to the actual official Top Trumps, they looked pretty shit to be honest. No snazzy plastic keep case to store them in. Jotastar pushed the boat out with a flimsy cardboard box decorated with a doodle of a seemingly blind Tom Baker. 

Fast forward to the present day... A bit bored last weekend so I delved into my file of unfinished projects and ideas. I had wanted to produce a new Doctor Who Monster Book - visually based on the old 1976 one but updated to feature series 11 and 12 of the current run. That would take too much time and involve the fag of writing which I usually abhor. Then the Jotastar trump card game came to mind... Brilliant. I can do that... and maybe even make the illustrations a bit better with new series stuff. So that's what I did over the past few days. Here is a new set of cards in the style of the 70s originals. It would be nice to be able to actually produced a genuine set but costs would no doubt prohibit that. You'll just have to settle for these images. 

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Countdown for TVAction 2020

You'd never get a comic like Countdown or TVAction today - at least not with the same licenced comic strip content. Yes, TV's Dr Who was a children's/family programme but what about the other strips?  You can hardly say that Cannon, The Protectors and the often grim Hawaii-Five-0 were child friendly. That was the way things were back then. With so little targeted programming (at least compared to 21st century television) of a certain quality, the kids of yesteryear found their favourite programmes to be the adult fare offered to their parents. (The late Trevor Preston pointed this out in his 1969 pitch document for Ace of Wands.)

Flash forward to 2020... Children's television is now more targeted towards them with specific channels whilst family drama/adventure shows on the main channels are virtually non-existent (save for TV's Dr Who, of course!) In spite of this, let's have a look at modern schedules and see what choice TV shows would fit inside a Countdown or TVAction published today...

Elsewhere on this blog are some modernised versions of the comic which have given their pages over to the current TV scene. This is the link to them. 

Here are some additional variants based on the covers of the three Countdown and TVAction annuals published in the early seventies... along with an annual based around The Persuaders! they also released. (I really scraped the barrel coming up with a TV show that fitted into the design of that one!!!)

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Target: Whittaker - Alternate Covers

As a supplement to the previous Target: Whittaker posts, here's a collection of Target covers I did for Doctor Who's series 12 either before decent visual material became available or after when I decided to do some variants. 

Hope you like them. Some of these weren't uploaded to Twitter. 

If you liked these covers maybe nip back a few posts and take a look at the others I've done for series 11 and 12. You can also show your appreciation for them buy buying me a coffee via my Ko-fi account. Click the link for more details and to also see a gallery of my best stuffs. 

Target: Whittaker (update)

This is a bit of housekeeping really. I did a handful of mid-70s Target book cover for Doctor Who series 11 early last year. I was so pleased with them, I turned them into a set of mugs available from the RedBubble shop. 

Just before Christmas, I returned back to the idea and did the rest of the episodes - another five or six, I think. The series is now complete and here they all are. Some of these have been posted before but here they are all in one place. 

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