Remember Mario Paint, that basic drawing “game” for the SuperNES that came with a mouse? Remember that it had a simple little music-sequence tool built into it? Well a while back someone made a standalone Windows program based on that tool (albeit with a little more flexibility) and I recently found, via Wil Wheaton’s Tumblr, that someone’s used it to recreate the current version of the Doctor Who theme.

I can’t slap it up here – unfortunately my posting privileges here at URP! don’t allow me to embed YouTube videos – but you can click this link and check it out for yourself. It’s pretty bloody spectacular.

Doctor Who struggled with its premiere episode. As we all know by now, “The Beast Below” was intended to be the first episode but Fox decided to dick around with the broadcast order as well as demanding that a brand new, more “introductory” pilot be filmed. Then they cancelled the show halfway through the series anyway. Bastards. A shame too, because we were just getting to know that funny old young man and his travelling machine.

Fortunately for us, the original ending for “The Eleventh Hour” has found its way onto YouTube. A DVD release looks uncertain, but if Fox get off their arses and actually release the show on DVD then this is the sort of extra I’d like to see.

The original ending can be found here.

Yes, I’m looking at you, Digital Spy and IO9.

This is the “story” it is originally sourced from. It is obvious to ANYONE with a functioning brain that it is COMPLETE AND UTTER FICTION. So stop bloody giving it currency by repeating the once/twice-removed versions (I’ve seen a number of places quoting IO9 already, even though IO9 got it from Tor who got it from Pub Articles) without checking where it came from! It’s BULLSHIT.

(I’m not saying the movie isn’t happening, or anything. But this story, which purports to contain actual quotations from RTD and Depp, is a complete fabrication, and if you can’t tell that simply from reading it, you’re a MORON.)

Well, Series Fnarg is over. And we’ll have plenty of comment to come – we’ve still got reviews of both eps 12 and 13 (as it happens, a wedding – yes, on 26.06.10 – got in the way of Capps doing “Pandorica”, and I’ll do “Big Bang” once that one’s clear) to post, but as well as that we’ll also do a big old retrospective of the series as a whole, and how the episodes stand up in context, and that sort of thing.

In the meantime, though, there’s one thing that surely everybody with any sense can agree on – Matt Smith was fucking brilliant. Not just “the Eleventh Doctor”. Not just “the new Doctor”. Simply… the Doctor. Effortlessly, wonderfully so. And in reflecting on just how perfect he turned out to be in the role (and from his first moments onscreen, to boot), thoughts naturally turned to how we reacted to his casting back when it was first announced.

I like the USian nerdy pop-punk band Nerf Herder very much. I like pop songs about Doctor Who very much. So, this pop song about Doctor Who by the lead singer of the USian nerdy pop-punk band Nerf Herder? Well, I like it very much.

We’ve recently had a number of people hit Unlimited Rice Pudding! by searching for terms including jo grant dalek, jo grant darlek picture and picture of jo grant with a dalek. Unfortunately, these people are presumably arriving at the site unsatisfied by what they’ve encountered, as there are no pictures of Jo Grant with a Dalek to be found here. Until now. For I’ve decided to do these people a favour and post what is presumably the picture they’re looking for, so that now on, if someone arrives here having searched for a “jo grant dalek picture”, they’ll get what they want. Aren’t I nice? Find it after the jump.

I always thought it was a shame that, although the classic “so-and-so is The Doctor!” covers have become a Doctor Who Magazine tradition ever since the Peter Davison (sorry, Davidson) one in 1981, the previous four Doctors never got their chance to have an equivalent. I mean, imagine how great it would look to have all eleven alongside one-another! Better than it does with the first four conspicuously absent, anyway.

But! It seems I was wrong! Because I – like many of you, I’m sure – was previously unaware of the first volume of Doctor Who Magazine, which started up alongside the series in 1963 (originally known as Doctor Who Monthly), before being cancelled six months prior to the launch of Doctor Who Weekly in 1979. At a recent car boot sale, however, I found a stack of old mags from the ’60s and ’70s, and among them were a number of issues of the original DWM – including all the “first appearance” covers of Hartnell, Troughton, Pertwee and Baker T! I’ve finally got round to scanning them, so for the first time, you can put together a full set* of “… is the Doctor!” covers! Enjoy!

* er, not counting Sylv, as his announcement cover simply said “The New Doctor!” You’re on your own for that one.

Will Seb and Cappsy kick me thoroughly in the balls for posting fan-art? I bloody hope not, because this is stunning. A Gallifrey Base member has posted his schematics for what the exterior of the TARDIS might look like in its pure form. No Chameleon Circuit, no transcendental dimensions. Just the TARDIS.

And my word, is it impressive.

I’d love to embed the images here but DeviantArt is being shit, so instead allow me to link you to the top elevation view and the bottom elevation view.

Do you know about Insomniac Whovian? It’s rather brilliant: They throw on a Doctor Who story old or new at midnight UK time (occasionally an hour or so later) and watch it, live-tweeting together as they go. Isn’t that lovely?

They’re doing a Dalek themed week in the lead-up to this Saturday’s “Victory of the Daleks”. In fact they’re watching “Day of the Daleks” right now. Tomorrow they’ll be watching “Genesis”, then “Resurrection” on Wednesday, “Revelation” on Thursday, and “Remembrance” on Friday. Which is nice. You can join in, provided you have the story they’re watching and you press “Play” at the same time they do.

I don’t usually get to join in with this, what with living eight hours in the past and everything, but assuming I’m not working on Friday I should be able to join in for “Remembrance”, which is inexplicably my favourite classic series Dalek story.

…did anybody actually bother watching K9 on Disney XD? I would’ve watched it but I wasn’t, er… that is to say I couldn’t, um…

…yeah. So. Did anybody see it?