Whoa, there went the summer. We got most of the police scenes shot, but unfortunately, we're not happy with about half of them. When you see the finished movie, you'll realize that that's about 1/3rd of the movie, and we've got to re-shoot half that... so really the things' about 1/6th of the way done. I eagerly anticipate a Christmas '14 release!
What else happened this summer? I got a new guitar, which will feature in the movie. And I spent a lot of time putting blisters on my fingers and wondering what that ringing in my ears was. I learned a lot of Iron Maiden songs as well: The Trooper, Fear of the Dark, Killers, Murders in the Rue Morgue, Wasted Years, Powerslave, Ancient Mariner... to my eternal surprise, the first album that I know half the songs from is not an AC/DC or Metallica album, but is in fact the Number of the Beast!
There wasn't a great deal of Doctor Who to be watched. I did see a couple more classic serials - The War Machines and The Power of Kroll. And I got Series 4 (30) on DVD... despite the production team's boasts, it did lag horribly in the middle, especially the Agatha Christie episode, my reaction to which alternated between "zzz" and "wtf" for most of the episode's running time. The Doctor's visited H.G. Wells (way back in a forgettable Sixth Doctor serial called Timelash), Charles "Paid-by-the-word" Dickens, Shakespeare, and Agatha Christie (and I don't hold very high opinions of any of those episodes, except maybe the Shakespeare one). High time he visited H.P. Lovecraft, in my opinion.
But here's the thing: they already did a story where the Doctor went to a Roaring 20s-esque setting, way back in the old series, in a serial called Black Orchid, and that wasn't very good either.
Now, my favorite part of Season 30 comes in the penultimate episode, when the Doctor starts going all nostalgic on Davros, in the same way he went nostalgic on the Master at the end of the previous season. Then he subverts it. Brilliantly: "After everything we've been through, I have only one thing to say to you... bye!"
As for the older serials I watched, The War Machines feels like a precursor to The Invasion, though I must admit that it is very, very good for the last intact Hartnell adventure. The Power of Kroll starts off very promising with the hovercraft stuff, but making a majority of the characters half-naked and covered in green paint was probably not the series' best move ever. Also, after the first episode the plot doesn't feel like it's going anywhere particularly fast, and while the giant octopus moster looks halfway decent by 1978 standards, the modelwork is godawful.
