TIME Planetarian of the Year!

It's that time of the year folks! 

All aboard for the Kembel Express!

Yes, you can now "take them back to Kembel, TAKE THEM BACK TO KEMBEL!" and let the Daleks deal with them aboard the only train designed to carry ALL the alien delegates that formed the Outer Systems Alliance back in TV's The Masterplan of the Daleks. 



Not suitable for small children due to small parts that fall off it.

Very obscure Doctor Who TV spin-off comic books...

I have no idea where these came from but I find them funny so there...

Whovians in Love special emergency topical edition!

Someone put a fake eBay listing up for episode one of the missing Doctor Who adventure 'The Savages' last week. At the risk of sounding arrogant, it didn't fool me and just looked a bit like a desperate cry for help and attention. Some dreadful photoshopping - worthy of my early efforts on this blog - coupled with the usual vague details of provenance one associates with this sort of 'wheeze'. 

Fake!

Sadly, a small number of fans were taken in by the scam. Even more sadly, a large number were also 'up-in-arms' about it despite seeing through the attempted deception meaning the perpetrator gained even more publicity oxygen. 

My attempt to create a missing episode fragment is to the right... IT IS A FAKE! 

Anyhow, my usual absurd view of the world was applied to the sorry situation and, at the risk of giving him more net-time, I came up with this rather angry issue of Whovians in Love. 

Happy days! 

Also fake!

The Short-Lived Doctor Who Fotonovel Series

Remember Fotonovels? Back in the late seventies, before the advent of domestic video tape recording, they were a popular way of reliving your favourite movie or TV show - especially if the latter was Star Trek. 

A company called Mandala Productions produced the majority of these little paperback visual treasures. The books used what we today would call 'screencaps' and comic-strip style speech bubbles to tell their tales as dynamic colourful photo stories. 

Twelve episodes of the original Star Trek were given this treatment as well as the first two motion pictures - though the Wrath of Khan one was a very disappointing black and white version.

Sadly they were short-lived; no doubt replaced by then fledgling video tape market in the early eighties. They were also dominated by US material and the chances of any British TV show - let alone Doctor Who - getting the 'Fotonovel' treatment were minuscule to say the least.

Until now... 

Oh and this one was probably highly unlikely as well...

BBC Worldwide's Plans for Doctor Who on DVD in 2015

If you want to own the complete series of Classic Doctor Who on DVD then you're pretty much living in cloud cuckoo land. At least, that's the opinion of BBC Worldwide. They have confirmed that the DVD of The Underwater Menace has been officially cancelled. Citing the reasons for this, they stated that it was due to the fact that the company producing the animated versions of the two missing episodes has ceased trading and they do not want to release orphan episodes on their own. 

However, a recent tweet from BBC Worldwide suggested that they still planned to release more Classic Doctor Who in the future. 

???

What is happening? Has the work experience guy who handles their Twitter account noticed that there are still many Hartnell and Troughton stories that remain unreleased little realising that a quick check of the archives will confirm they are currently missing (or at least in the hands of a madman with a box of magnets)?

Anyhow, closer examination suggests that the new 'Classic' Doctor Who DVDs may be a little desperate to say the least. 

The Failed History of Doctor Who on VHS and DVD

There's a rather wonderful publication out now from those nice people at Panini's official Doctor Who magazine that celebrates 'The Art of Doctor Who'. In amongst sundry interviews and features is a piece or two chronicling the many cover designs of licenced merchandise over the years.

Sadly there are no illustrations featuring the rare unreleased items that I have uncovered* in the Doctor Who back catalogue over the past year.

Here, for your convenience and possible pleasure, is a complete (ish) list of the VHS and DVD releases that never were.

The BBC's Early Attempts at Doctor Who DVDs - a selection of complete covers including blurb for the earliest DVD range.

Doctor Who - The Original VHS Branding - Full covers from the mid-eighties of three specially edited titles from the fledgling BBC Video.

More Early Doctor Who VHS Branding - A selection of designs that blended in other successful best sellers for BBC Video.

Doctor Who Video Nasties - Three Tom Baker tales are released into the early eighties video-nasty market with serious consequences for the credibility of their content.

Great Unreleased Doctor Who Merchandise of the 20th Century - part six - The earliest attempts by by BBC Enterprises to release Doctor Who episodes to the (very rich) general public in the early seventies.

The Devolution of Doctor Who on VHS - How the design of Doctor Who video sleeves changed over the years making an example out of Peter Capaldi's first adventure 'Deep Breath' 

* By which I mean 'invented'.

Great Unreleased Doctor Who Merchandise of the 20th Century - part eleven

There's an awful lot of missing episodes of Doctor Who from the 1960s.

Most fans agree that it should never have happened in the first place. 

But there could have been some hope if one of the many companies producing licenced Super8 movies had stepped in and released episodes of the series on film.

If only...