Once Upon a Geek

Here is another installment of KID WHO!  “Kid Who” features reviews of Doctor Who episodes from the perspective of a child.  These short audio interviews are between myself and my eight-year old step-son.  Please bear with us as we do these segments.  He’s still getting used to being recorded, and I’m still trying to figure out the best way to interview an eight-year old.

This time we decided to discuss the recent episode, “The Doctor’s Daughter“.  You can now play the audio file right here on the Once Upon a Geek site with the handy-dandy player below!  Thanks to Ed for showing me this utility.

If  you’re unable to play the file above, please download it here.

Welcome to the first installment of KID WHO, a new infrequent segment here at Once Upon a Geek!  “Kid Who” features reviews of Doctor Who episodes from the perspective of a child.  These short audio interviews are between myself and my eight-year old step-son.  He has become more and more a fan of Doctor Who and we decided to record some of his thoughts on various episodes. 

Please bear with us as we do these segments.  He’s still getting used to being recorded, and I’m still trying to figure out the best way to interview an eight-year old.

The first installment is his review of the classic Tom Baker episode, “The Sontaran Experiment“.  I thought this would be a good classic episode for him to watch, especially after he’d seen the updated Sontarans recently in the current series.  Finally, this episode was only two parts, so it didn’t drag on too much.

Link to download Kid Who below:

Kid Who - The Sontaran Experiment - 2 minutes 4 seconds (486 KB)

We hope you enjoy!  Even if you don’t, we had fun doing it! 

Steven Moffat will succeed Russell T Davies as Lead Writer and Executive Producer of the fifth season of Doctor Who, which will broadcast in 2010.

While not unexpected, it’s still pretty exciting news!  I think Steven Moffat is an excellent choice to be the showrunner for Doctor Who.  He’s going to be brilliant! He can do really creepy (”The Empty Child” & “Blink“), he can pull on the heartstrings (”Girl in the Fireplace“) and he can do funny (”Time Crash” & “Curse of the Fatal Death” with Rowan Atkinson).

I liken this to the 1970’s transition from Doctor Who producer Barry Letts to Philip Hinchcliffe. Barry Letts gave us tons of great stories (”Silurians“, “Inferno“, “Terror of the Autons“, “Day of the Daleks“, “Daemons“, “Three Doctors“, “Sea Devils“, “Robot“, etc). But then Hinchcliffe took it in a new scarier direction (”Ark in Space“, “Genesis of the Daleks“, “Terror of the Zygons“, “Pyramids of Mars“, “Brain of Morbius“, “Hand of Fear“, ”Deadly Assassin“, ”Robots of Death“, ”Talons of Weng-Chiang“,  etc). I can imagine we’ll see parallels where Moffat will take us to scarier places. I can’t wait.

I can’t wait for the new Doctor Who Classic Series wave of action figures! The figures from the current show have been great, but these classic figs really make me feel nostalgic.  They are currently scheduled to be released in August.

Character Options has once again done an outstanding job providing high quality figs that look fantastic.  Even my eight year old step-son thinks the Character Options figures I have are cool and wants to play with them as often as I’ll let him. 

Here are the classic figs for wave one…

Each figure pack comes with a different collectable part of the giant K-1 robot from the fourth Doctor’s first story in 1974. When all eight packs are collected, the giant robot will be complete.  How cool is that?!?!

They are already starting to plan wave two. Possible figures for wave two include: 7th Doctor Sylvester McCoy, 8th Doctor, Ice Warrior, Morbius Monster, Mummy with Jar, Tenth Planet Cyberman, Voc Robot, and an extra figure to assemble (like the Giant Robot).

I can’t wait until August!  Yay!

Tomorrow is the start date for Season 4 of Doctor Who!  I can’t wait!  In honor of the special day, below are two pics showing that even at my age, I still enjoy playing with dolls…

These are the guys you want helping you when you stumble over a Dalek in a dark alley.

Oh shit!  Who invited these guys for dinner?!?!

Thanks,

Shag

I’m so excited about the start of Doctor Who Season Four!  It begins airing in England on BBC One next Saturday, April 5.  For us here in the U.S.A., it starts airing two weeks later on the Sci-Fi channel on April 18.  This is really unprecedented for Doctor Who.  In the U.S.A. we’ve always been months (sometimes years) behind the British schedule.  The last time I can recall the U.S.A. and England sharing a similar release schedule for Doctor Who was for “The Five Doctors” that aired WAY back in 1983 in both countries the same week.  That was a special celebrating 20 years of the show (now going on 45 years).  We haven’t been that caught up with England since.

I’m pretty jazzed about this new season.  I hadn’t realized just how much I missed the show until I watched the trailer.  You can see the trailer currently on the BBC Doctor Who site.  Since last season ended, we’ve had Torchwood Season Two and the Sarah Jane Adventures to tide us over.  I’ve really enjoyed Torchwood Season Two.  Admittedly I’m a few episodes behind, but the first seven episodes I’ve watched were really enjoyable.  I’m WAY behind on Sarah Jane.  I’ve got the episodes, it’s just a matter of finding the time to watch them.

So things to watch for in Season Four of Doctor Who… the returns of the Sontarans, UNIT, Donna, Martha, Rose, and much more I’m sure!  Here’s to another … FANTASTIC … season!