Depp as Who?

Okay, so you may have heard the rumour that Johnny Depp is to play Doctor Who in a new American feature film.
No? Oh, well here’s the link.

I’m very unsure about this.
There’s obviously scope to do things right, and if done right it could certainly add longevity to the character. Remember that The Doctor only gets 12 regenerations, so there’s only two more incarnations left to come – this is assuming they tie in any possible film with the canon of the the TV show.

There’s nothing to say that the TV show hasn’t shown us all the Doctor’s versions and we are currently on the final one in TV land. Depp’s Doctor could be the version where we finally get to see the time war in all it’s big-screen glory.

It’s nice to speculate, but at the moment this is all just based on a rumour. It’s likely a rumour set in motion by someone at a big Hollywood studio just to gauge the reception a likely film may get. Johnny Depp may just be a name that’s thrown out there as he’s a popular actor of the day.
Who knows?

(8+)

Doctor Who : The Pandorica Opens [REVIEW]

The beginning of the end of season 31, and what a beginning it was.

This was always going to be a confusing episode, simply because of everything that has gone before it.
Time travel can be a difficult subject to broach at the best of times, but when you’ve a whole season of jumping backwards and forwards (not necessarily in chronological order, I might add), with cracks appearing all over the universe, people seemingly being erased and then suddenly popping up as programmed Autons and a hitherto never-to-happen unholy alliance of every foe that The Doctor has ever (?!?) encountered, well then, it’s going to make for a very fast paced, confusing story.
Hooray, we weren’t disappointed.

There’s a lot going on in this ep. so if you don’t think I’ve done it justice by the end of the review please tell me in the comments box.

Where to start?
Exploding TARDIS!
This has been building to a climax and the audience has had enough time to prepare for it but did we really have to see another exploding TARDIS? The season opened up with the TARDIS crash landing back on Earth do we really need to end the season with another wrecked blue box?

Auton Rory seemingly killed Amy, who incidentally remembered everything that had been wiped from her head previously. Is Amy dead? If so, well, we now know that time can be re-written, so if she is dead now who’s to say she’ll be staying that way for very long. Will Auton Rory be the catalyst to bring the alliance of The Doctor’s enemies crashing down? Speaking of which …

The unholy/unusual/unlikely alliance that every alien race in the Whoniverse that’s ever had a run-in with The Doctor suddenly starts working together in a bid to trap The Doctor?!? What the what.
If we forget for a second that the Daleks and the Cybermen almost annihilated each other in a previous season of the show, and we put aside the many times that The Doctor has snatched victory from the jaws of failure on any number of occasions that these evildoers have tried to take over the universe, not just Earth, the very first time all these alien races get together is actually to save the universe?
I’m not buying that for a second.
Which race decided that this was a good idea? Which race was responsible for creating this alliance? Which race/s are powerful enough to draw all those thousands of different ships together to converge in that one point in space and time?

When the Pandorica first opened and we heard the disembodied voice my very first thought was of Davros. That turned out not to be the case (unless Davros is inside one of the new super-Daleks) but I think it would take a singularly dastardly brain to come up with a plan like this to trap The Doctor.
Then again, River Song (*sigh*) said about the Pandorica “A box, a cage, a prison. It was built to contain the most feared thing in the entire universe.” Even she doesn’t know what it is exactly, and something being built “to contain” something doesn’t necessarily make it a bad thing, it could actually be used to protect it’s contents from destructive outside forces.
This is what I suspect it really is for. If the universe is going to go bang what thing would you want to preserve? The one thing that could possibly put it all right once the big bad thing has happened. That would be The Doctor.

Of course, this is just all speculation. There’s a wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey constant flux in Doctor Who, but one thing’s for certain, whatever happened in this episode regarding the Pandorica, it’ll have to be dealt with in the next and final episode of the season. Even if that means repercussions in future episodes a resolution will have to be proffered of some sort.

I can’t wait.

Torchwood 4

It’s been confirmed, Torchwood season 4 is go!
This makes me very happy.
It was looking decidedly unlikely that Torchwood would get comissioned for a fourth season after the very well received season 3 ended on the 10th of July 2009. The fact it’s taken quite so long (almost a full year) to get to the point where the BBC is comfortable enough in announcing the fourth season is a go is a good indication that a lot of backroom dealings have likely taken place to get to this point.

No matter. I’m just really pleased that Torchwood will be making a return to our screens.

It’s had a very impressive career as a show, first premiering on BBC3 for it’s first season, then moving to BBC2 for it’s second and shifting to BBC1 for it’s five night Children of Earth season 3. Now  we’re told that season four will “see storylines widen to include locations in the U.S. and around the world.”.

This show just keeps going from strength to strength and moving from primarily U.K. based stories to be more inclusive of the rest of the world is a natural progression. After all, Torchwood is a global organisation, so why not show some of the other operations from around the world.
Let’s also not forget that the show has very strong relations with Doctor Who. Could we see The Doctor , Amy (or whatever companion The Doctor has at that time) and the TARDIS  land in America for a cross-over? Who knows!

Links
Torchwood returns with international flavour
International partnership secures new series of Torchwood

Spoon

If you’ve seen the film District 9 you may be familiar with Sharlto Copley who played Wikus in that film (he’s also playing ‘Mad’ Murdock in the upcoming A-Team film).
Well, apparently before he took up acting in films he was directing films.
A long gestating project of his is a film called Spoon. According to IMDB, Spoon is “A thriller with supernatural overtones about a man with a medical condition that causes him to black out during moments of extreme stress and leads him to make a remarkable discovery about himself.”.

Starring Darren Boyd (The Green Wing & Magicians) as the titular character Darren Spoon it also features Rutger Hauer as his father Victor Spoon.

Linked below is a short teaser trailer to announce the project.
The main feeling I get from this is a Videodrome sort of film, possibly with a bit of Scanners thrown in.
There’s really not much to go on but it looks like an interesting project. The official ‘site for the film SpoonTheMovie.com is sparse of material at the moment but I guess it’s only a matter of time before something is done with it (at least I hope so).

Looking around the ‘net for any more information relating to this project I happened across a very detailed blog concerning the whole production process of the film. I haven’t read nearly all of the entries yet (there’s a lot of ’em) but what I have read has been very insightful.
Take a look for yourself over at indefilmlive.blogspot.com and see what you think.

Anyway, the teaser for the film is here, you’ll need to scroll a little down the page to get to it.