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 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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Doctor Who Lockdown Cinema Posters - part two

Here's the rest of the retro cinema posters I did for the Doctor Who Lockdown tweet-a-longs. 

As before, most of them are based on actual posters. You're welcome to guess which films are the inspiration in each case. I tended to go with designs that fitted the episodes rather than the original films themselves. 

The Fires of Pompeii appeared on the back cover of issue 507 of the DWAS's Celestial Toyroom in an anglicised form. The original Italian version is here along with the textless art.

Click here for part one.

I also did a few random original series ones and I'll upload them as a separate post.

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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.

A Few Favourite New Series Doctor Who Episodes...

Further to the Peter Capaldi Doctor Who covers I did a few weeks back I also picked out five of my favourite pre-2014 episodes and gave them the same treatment. 

Don't worry, I'm not going to spend my time doing every episode.