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New Animated Dr. Who Series
smak writes "To celebrate the doctor's fourtieth anniversary, the BBC and Cosgrove Hall Films are webcasting a fully-animated adventure starring Richard E. Grant. You can watch the first episode of Scream of the Shalka and new episodes will be launched every Thursday. Enjoy." It requires Flash 4, but also looks pretty damn cool.
At the moment in Australia, we're enjoying Dr. Who weeknights at 6:00. The ABC (Our government run station), is showing them from the very first episodes. Great days for Australian 'Who' Geeks. It's great seeing the emergence of the Daleks and all your old fav's.
Refuse to make a statement in your sig!
I hate it when a site thinks they are so big and cool and make you upgrade to the latest player.
What? Flash 3 couldn't cut it. ARE THEY TOO GOOD FOR FLASH 3?! Geez.
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Should provide adequate sustinence for the Animated Dr Who marathon!
It occurred to me the other day that there was a 4th Doctor story ("Deadly Assassin") involving a computer-generated world called the Matrix. One sat down, put some gear on one's head, then appeared inside this world using a virtual body. If one's Matrix body dies, one's real self dies as well. The lone hero struggles against an enemy who can take advantage of the fact that the "laws" of physics, well, aren't.
No bullet dodging, but given that the BBC's special effects budget was about the price of a cheeseburger, that should come as no surprise.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
There is no spoon.
Here - all six episodes.
I'd never really watched Dr. Who before, but I enjoyed this - probably because of Professor Chronotis and good ol' Adam's wit. I'll watch the newer ones when I get a chance, but I figured I'd point this out for those the Adam's fans that didn't see the link on the bbc page.
(There's also another 6 episodes called 'Real Time', talking about the return of Cyber Men. Probably an inside Dr. Who thing - if you've never seen Dr. Who but are interested and are a Douglas Adam's fan his series is probably the best introduction.)
R: That voice. Where have I heard that voice before? B: In about 365 other episodes. But I don't know who it is either.
What can I say other than it seems to me the BBC has an amazing handle on the Internet, and how to use it to its fullest potential. It seems every week something prompts me to say out loud: "BBC Rules!".... ..In fact, so much more than any other pre-internet broadcaster I have seen. "Major Kudos", its nice to watch some Doctor for the first time in a long time.
---Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A START
Richard E. Grant is the new doctor. There is some resemblance and of course it is his voice.
r vi ews/grant/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/doctorwho/shalka/inte
The BBC's web site also says:
"Scream of the Shalka
Richard E Grant stars in the Ninth Doctor's debut adventure."
its clearly the best show. you have a time traveller who goes around solving other peoples problems and dependning on which one you watch he has a different personality. but always he is knowledgeable and intelligent moreso than everyone else. he also frequently changes nice looking english hoes. might i add, also from all time periods.
a rmageddonfactor/quote.shtml
:)
of course the 4th and 7th are most memerable to me. maybe the 2nd one was good too.
Marshal: 'How can we have peace until we have the ultimate deterrent that will ensure a lasting peace?'
Doctor: 'Tell me Marshal, if you had this ultimate deterrent, what would you do?'
Marshal: 'Use it of course, make sure it works.'
Doctor: 'Yes... You have a true military mind, Marshal.'
Marshal: 'Thank you.'
--
k9 rocks the casbah too:
Drax: 'Blimey, it's a dog! Who's a little tin dog, then?'
K9: 'Your silliness is noted.'
http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/doctorwho/episodeguide/
also i have tonnes of pirate dr who. if anyone has a nice ftp or collection of torrents i would be happy to trade.
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
Because MPEG is expensive, both in bandwidth and server CPU. It can't be easily compressed further during transport (like Flash) and is terribly inefficient at simple animation like this series (at least not without a lot of optimization and tweaking). It's also resolution dependant meaning if they did offer it in MPG, it would be painful to watch, in a tiny 320x240 size.
Flash is vector based graphics with some code to make it all move and some sound. It has the added benefit of being both animation studio and viewer of the final product, which makes it a perfect choice for animation like this, so much that there is a whole genre of (entertaining) flash mini-series out there on the 'net.
Get off your righteous high arse, download Flash, disable it if you must, and enable it when you want to view things like this. Personally, Flash ads are offensive and annoying, but I find I can quickly ignore them -- filter them out, or turn them off within an instant when the need arises. Flash itself isn't bad, just like HTML itself isn't bad. That doesn't mean I am going to uninstall my web browser because I can't stand the latest X10 (HTML) ad.
"I'll just chip in a bit for RedHat: I actually have that installed on my university machine." - Linus, '95
There is a scholl of doctor Who continuity which goes for in-depth exhaustive analysis of past stories. However, one of the core features of Doctor Who to date has been that it consists of multi-part stories (usually 4 or 6 parts but up to 12 occasionally), at the end of which the Doctor and his travelling companion depart for a new destination and the reset switch is thrown. Knowing that the setting of Shalka is somewhat reminiscent of the early 1970's TV stories adds a certain rich piquancy for the long term fan, but with a new Doctor (Richard E Grant) introduced somewhere in the middle of his life here, he arrives into a strange and dangerous situation and proceeds to investigate and make things better: that's all you need. Absolutely no prior knowledge *needed*.
Go on, it's fab.
The deep, repetitive da-na-na-nnn, da-na-na-nnn, ...
There is a story behind the music. It was written by Delia Derbyshire, who was working for the BBC Radiophonics workshop. She was an absolute pioneer in electronic music, who worked by physically cutting, pasting, splicing and stretching pieces of tape to creat some real groundbreaking noises.
Her work was hugely influential on modern music - you can see her influence in The Beatles, and many fashionable young electronics gurus cite her (e.g Aphex Twin, Autechre).
I guess this is one of the things that makes a cult program - all the stories and folklore that enshroud it.