This’ll probably be quite good then, what?

You know how this works by now. Thread for all your comments/discussion below, and then a Proper Review in a couple of days’ time. GO.

And so the dance begins again. With the launch of a new series of Who a matter of weeks away, suddenly we’ve been hit by all manner of promotional images, blurbs, video clips and so on – making the urge to sit and figure out what it all means an irresistible one. It’s often a futile game, and there’s an argument – one that I’m sort of coming around to – that it’s better off just to keep away from the forums, the set reports and the endless fan-fictiony predictions of what the plots might be that litter Gallifrey Base around this time of year, and instead just sit back and enjoy the episodes as they come. It’s especially pertinent when it comes to Moffat, who’s already shown a singular inclination towards wrong-footing the viewers, and building complex and misleading plots that can’t be pieced together simply by people standing watching location filming with a camera phone.

Nevertheless, it can be fun, particularly if you lay down various predictions about what things mean and they turn out to be utterly, utterly wrong. With that in mind, I’m laying on the table everything that I think is the case about the first seven episodes of the series, and I fully expect to be proven wrong on most of them. But to enjoy being proven wrong and having my expectations confounded. Because there’s only one prediction that really matters, and that we all know will come true: MoffatWho is going to be bloody spectacular.

Note of course that after the jump there will be spoilers – nothing much that hasn’t been seen in trailers, mind (if I end up getting anything right, I assure you it’s a lucky guess), but if you’re sensitive to that sort of thing you might want to avoid reading any further. And I’m also aware that the opening two-parter has now been seen in its entirety by a number of people – so please, if you happen to be one of those people, don’t spoil the game by giving away anything that’s either right or wrong out of the below. With that in mind, and with a healthy pinch of salt at the ready, let’s see what we think we know…

Okay, I’m officially pooing myself, now.

So, as I’m sure you’re aware, last night a brief teaser trailer for The Impossible Astronaut aired across the various BBC channels at 9pm. If you haven’t already seen it, head on over to the main site now. Not much to see, right?

Well, er, wrong. Because there were actually two different versions. And depending on what channel you were watching – and even, it seems, what region you were in – you may have seen one or the other.

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.

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…

Yes, alright, slightly slow on posting these – but if you haven’t yet bought the series five boxset (or you don’t want to out of general principle based on the addition of a fucking stupid animated BBC logo to the opening titles), you may well want to watch the two Meanwhile In The TARDIS insert scenes. Just two little extra pieces, written by Moffat, that bridge the gaps between eps one and two, and then eps five and six. They are, of course, utterly wonderful – and each involves Moffat being far more fanboy than one suspects he’d ever be allowed to be in the main show…

Thanks to Hendiadys for sticking the links in comments DAYS ago.

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.

There were rumours that they’d be filming bits of series six in the US, and now there aren’t. This is largely because the rumours have been replaced with cold, hard FACT. The official BBC America Twitter wossname tweeted about it three hours ago, then they posted a news article about it with quotes from the Moff and Piers Wenger.

The first two episodes will be filmed in part in Utah, forming two parts of a single story (opening the series with a two-parter, eh? A bit cheeky, that). Oh, and Alex Kingston is in ‘em as River Song. Lovely.

Well, it looks like that was a temporary cover as the ridiculously-named but otherwise fantastic Blogtor Who have posted the cover artwork along with the revelation that it’s going to be lenticular, much like the Series Two cover. Amazon UK currently shows what seems to be an earlier version of the cover, using a different pose for Amy and lacking the monsters.

Meanwhile Amazon US is still using the artwork I showed you, so it’s possible that American audiences will wind up with that along with their slimmer packaging.

I live in LA now, and I had been importing my Doctor Who DVDs from the UK (I still do with the classic stuff so that my collection looks uniform on the shelf). Doctor Who: The Complete Specials was the first set I’d bought from the US. If BBC America doesn’t use the cover Blogtor Who have shown us then I’ll be left with little choice but to import from the UK. Or something.

SERIES 6 IS GOING TO BE SPLIT IN HALF AND PARTLY AIR IN SPRING AND PARTLY IN AUTUMN, WAH.
The split transmission is the result of a request from Steven Moffat to write a new Doctor Who story arc which involves a big plot twist in the middle of the series. By splitting the series Moffat plans to give viewers one of the most exciting Doctor Who cliffhangers and plot twists ever, leaving them waiting, on the edge of their seats, until the autumn to find out what happens.
Massive plot twist, eh? Unannounced regeneration, perhaps? I FUCKING WELL HOPE NOT.