First of all, there’s Take Two – 50 Years of the Second Doctor, an article on the Patrick Troughton era of the show. Hopefully I say a few things that haven’t been said before, point out some things that have been overlooked. As it is, it’s more about the way the programme changed as Patrick Troughton became the second Doctor, but with the change of Doctor reflecting the way the programme was changing under producer Innes Lloyd rather than the change of Doctor causing the show to change. And at no point do I use the term ‘cosmic hobo’, which is a first.
Secondly there’s a Fact
of Fiction article on The End of the
World. Which, thanks to an extremely lovely person, includes a large amount
of hitherto unpublished information about the first draft of the script,
including lots of deleted scenes. The whole point of doing these articles is to
uncover new information, stuff which hasn’t been covered in previous archives
or The Complete Series magazines; it
makes life difficult but that is also the fun of it, and hopefully it will make
going to back to watch the episode a richer experience (in the same way as
reading Revolution in the Head and The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions
might increase a fan’s appreciation of the Beatles).
Plus, marvellously, the wonderful Russell T Davies agreed to
answer a few questions about the episode, so even if you’re not fascinated by
differences between script drafts and which bits of dialogue were late
additions in ADR there is a lot of entertaining and illuminating stuff in there.
And, in four weeks’ time, there’ll be another one. A Fact of Fiction on The Runaway Bride – which includes a rather amazing thing that no-one
has noticed, hidden in clear view all along...