I’ll tell you what, Doctor Who fans don’t arf like buggering about with the show’s IMDb page. Back in 2005, the week before the first-series finale aired, some cheeky monkey went in and added Norman Lovett to the cast list – an unlikely choice for the role of Davros, which was our first red flag at the time. Now, some six years later, some bugger’s only gone and done something similar for this year’s finale.

It’s obviously bollocks, but I’m going to go ahead and put it below the fold anyway to avoid any potential spoilers. Unless you’re reading this on an RSS reader, of course, in which case RUN FOR IT.

Ever heard the phrase “the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand’s doing”?

While we’re all feverishly anticipating the “game-changing cliffhanger” (and I’ll have more on my speculation/theories about the nature of that cliffhanger at some point soon) that’s known to be coming at the end of episode seven, “A Good Man Goes To War”, you may recall that The Grand Moff mentioned just before the start of the series that “You’re going to get several cliffhangers will end with an absolute cracker.”

That impression has been furthered by the news from Den of Geek that they won’t have an advance, spoiler-free review of “The Almost People” this week, because “the BBC are keeping this one under wraps”. That’s been confirmed also by the news that while some outlets have been given review DVDs, they’ve been specifically asked not to say anything anywhere about the ending.

All well and good. Were it not for the fact that the BBC themselves have already given away the end of the episode, courtesy of their official preview synopsis for “A Good Man Goes To War”. I won’t quote it here, I’ll simply link to it, but with the proviso that you shouldn’t read it if you don’t want to have a major plot point given away. I mean, I suspect there’s still more to the cliffhanger than what they’ve given away there (and I think I know what it is), but even so… that’s some fabulous internal communication there, guys.

Slow clap.

As we gear up for what promises to be one of Doctor Who‘s most exciting series, it’s hard for things not to be overshadowed by the absence of two of the programme’s dearest friends.

We posted a brief tribute to Nicholas Courtney after his passing earlier this year, but the untimely death of Elisabeth Sladen has shaken us even further. Others have paid tribute in far more elegant and correct fashion than we could hope to, so all I can really add is that she, along with Nicholas, will be sorely missed. That she was able to become a hero to countless children across the country entirely independently of her appearances in Who itself is testament to what a brilliant, lively, wonderful and inspiring figure she was. It’s arguable that she has had a greater impact on Doctor Who than any actor outside of its lead eleven, and she has been taken from us far too soon.
Elisabeth Sladen 1946-2011
The Doctor’s best friend – and all of ours, too

Really not very much more than can be said about this at the moment. RIP Brigadier Sir Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart.

Nicholas Courtney 1929-2011

Well, I said it would happen, although to be fair that’s because Craig Ferguson hinted at it enough – the recorded rehearsal of the Doctor Who theme dance number that was originally going to open The Late Late Show‘s Doctor Who episode has finally found its way onto the internet:

I think the studio audience reaction is ours. The dance number was recorded during rehearsals before we were let in to the studio, but they did show it to us on the day and we did clap in time with the music. I can’t imagine them going to the trouble of putting in canned laughter/clapping for something like this, especially when the equipment to record our reaction hovered mere metres above our heads.

Also born on this day: Miley Cyrus, Zoe Ball, Ross Brawn, Joe (Parting of the Ways) Ahearne, Kelly Brook and Billy the Kid.

On Tuesday Matt Smith appeared as a guest on American late-night chat show The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, and Yours Truly was lucky enough to be in the audience. It didn’t occur to me to actually write about it until I mentioned it to some of the other URP!ers, at which point I’m sure they all tried to reach across the Atlantic and throttle me to death with their bare hands. Or something.

Oh, if you’re not interested in reading my lengthy recap because “Studio audience story, boring”, you might be interested in reading it to find out how long Matt Smith intends to continue playing the Doctor for. Read on…

As you’re doubtless aware, Doctor Who has a longstanding association with Children in Need (ah, who can forget… actually wait, no, that’s better). The link with tonight’s edition of the annual telethon is that the opening of this year’s Christmas special (we never got round to mentioning the news of its title, did we? Oh well, it’s called A Christmas Carol, in case for some baffling reason we’re the only Doctor Who outlet you ever read) will be shown (as with The Next Doctor two years ago); but there’s something else that I thought was worth flagging up.

Writer of the IDW comics series, Tony Lee, is selling his own copies of issues #1-16 of the series (the entire Tennant run – the Smith comics kick off early next year with a brand new #1), all signed with a personal message to the winning bidder. Tony is a massive supporter of Children in Need himself, for reasons outlined on his blog, and this gesture is particularly apt given the existing link between CiN and Who. As it happens, if you’ve never read them, the IDW comics are pretty darned good – and the single issues are generally quite tricky to get in the UK (though the auction is open to anyone, Tony will ship ‘em worldwide), so this is well worth a look, and it is – of course – in a good cause to boot.

Incidentally, I was pondering sitting and liveblogging CiN – including the Who segment – for your pleasure tonight. But I’ll probably just end up playing Pro Evo instead. We’ll see what I feel like when I get home.

Have two people ever enjoyed quite such diverse career trajectories in such a small space of time?

In Between Men, her seminal study of homophobia in history and literature, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick posited a phenomenon which she called ‘homosexual panic’. According to Sedgwick, homophobia is an offshoot of sexism, since keeping women subordinate means rigidly separating heterosexual marriage from the homosocial relationships (male friendships) required on a daily basis in the running of government, in gentleman’s clubs, in public schools and so forth – institutions from which women were omitted, to be confined to the home which is deemed their proper sphere. As long as men are defined in relation to women the power of the male hierarchy will always depend on women being defined as subordinate (and upon the perpetuation of the myth that their subordination is not a construction, but an innate feature of their biological nature). Such a system is totally upset when men are seen to be just as good as women for the purposes of certain social roles – such as love making, or life companions. Society is policed through the collective making a pariah of anything beyond the proper bounds of behaviour as collectively conceived. Hence, homophobia, which polices the proper parameters of what it means to have a relationship with a male or female acquaintance.