Doctor Who drowns Dalek in possibly epic battle

Apparently, The Doctor has been having a bit of Dalek trouble recently, and decided to drown one in a pond in the UK.

Sales executive Marc Oakland was pushing a rake around the bed of the shallow pool when he found the object with its distinctive eye stalk.

So speculation time! What sort of adventure was The Doctor having when this unfortunate Dalek drowned?? Me? I think it had something to do with ducks.

[Link: BoingBoing Gadgets, thanks Deems!]

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New Who needs haircut

New Who

BBC reports that Matt Smith has been named as the new Doctor Who, the Eleventh Doctor. Smith is the youngest actor ever to take on the role.

I await his first appearance but hope to G_d he gets a good haircut before stepping into Tennants Chucks.

[Link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7808697.stm%5D

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Doctor Who forgets mini Swiss watch at archaeology dig

Incredibly careless of him, I guess, but let this be a lesson to all time travelers. Don’t leave your possessions lying around when visiting the past! So heed this tale of caution: a group of Chinese archaeologists are in a state of intense confusion after discovering a ring in the shape of a Swiss watch in a 400-year old tomb.

“We picked up the object, and found it was a ring. After removing
the covering soil and examining it further, we were shocked to see it
was a watch.”

The time was stopped at 10:06am, and on the back was engraved the word “Swiss”, reports the People’s Daily.

Local experts say they are confused as they believe the tomb had been
undisturbed since it was created during the Ming dynasty 400 years ago.

Well, it was either the Doctor or Slartibartfast!

(Yes, I know that Ananova stories should be taken with a large rock of salt!)

[Link: Ananova.com - Swiss watch found in 400-year old tomb]

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Doctor Who news: Name of the new Doctor accidentally revealed?

So it appears that certain suspicions may have been confirmed with regards to the identity of the new Doctor. The oops was revealed by Phillip Rhys in an interview. I’m not going to run any spoilers, so if you want to know, you can watch the video clip.

[Link: io9.com - And the New Doctor might be...]

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More Doctor Who news: New Doctor NOT Paterson Joesph, John Simm or James Sesbitt

Sci-fi blog io9.com has an article that details the reasons behind Tennant’s departure from this brilliant series:

So was David Tennant’s leaving the show all down to his need to move on? A now or never thing? Not quite. He had been in negotiations with the BBC for a fifth, even a sixth full series, but wanted another 2009-lite Doctor Who break in 2011, a film pursued, and money above the current BBC wage cap. It didn’t happen.

There’s also some information about the River Song story arc:

The one bigger casualty, as well as casting for The Doctor sooner than expected, has been an arc in Series Five for the River Song character, revealed in Series 4 as the Doctor’s possible future wife.

I speculated in a previous post’s comments that the whole River Song story shouldn’t be affected too much–the way she went through that book in the show indicates that, although she recognized the Doctor for who he was, it wasn’t the same incarnation that she’d  been familiar with. This means that there was at least one regeneration between the tenth Doctor and his adventures with Professor Song.

Finally, the article mentions the possibilities of the eleventh Doctor:

I have it on veeeeery good authority that the next Doctor has already been chosen. It’s an interesting new direction, and the choice (assuming no changes of heart) will probably surprise – and divide – many. The name I’ve heard isn’t Paterson Joseph. Or John Simm. Or James Nesbitt.

Any speculation on what “interesting direction” could possibly mean?

In other Doctor Who news, it seems that I missed something interesting: turns out that Jenny might make a reappearance in the 2009 special series! According to the Sun:

David’s real-life love Georgia Moffett, 23, returns as his daughter Jenny for one of the Who specials.

Update: According to Doctor Who blog, Outpost Gallifrey, the odds are tipped in David Morrisey’s favor 2:1. Paterson Joseph comes next at 6:1 odds. Very interesting odds include Anthony Head (Buffy’s Giles, for those who don’t know the name–stacked at 12:1 odds), Alan Davies (18:1), Steven Fry (40:1), and trailing at the back, Robbie Williams (200:1).

[Link: io9.com - Doctor Who: What--and Who--is Next for New Who?]
[Link: The Sun - Doctor Who bosses try to keep Tennant with £1.5m deal]
[Link: Outpost Gallifrey - The New Doctor Update]

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New Doctor to be female?

According to this article in the Daily Fail..err Daily Mail, there’s talk of the next Doctor being female.

Very Interesting, I say.

Then they go on to say Billie Piper may be candidate of choice.

Hell no, I say.

I have nothing against a female doctor, in fact I’m very intrigued by the possibility, but I’m just not sure that Billie Piper is the right lady for the job. What do you think?  Which actress would you choose to take over from David Tennant?

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David Tennant resigns from Doctor Who

Doctor and TARDIS

It’s official. The BBC, Guardian, and Gallifrey One all confirm that David Tennant has announced, he will quit Doctor Who at the end of 2009, following the four specials planned for the year.

I think I need a hug.

[ Link: BBC News report ]

[ Link: Gallifrey One report ]

[ Link: Io9.com report ]

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Today’s insanity: How to decipher alien languages (for real!)

Dr John Elliott of Leeds Metropolitan University believes that he might have a solution for humanity should we ever encounter an alien species that doesn’t possess

a) Babel fish,
b) a TARDIS,
c) telepathy, or
d) C-3PO.

I think the article explains it all better than I ever could:

…John Elliott of Leeds Metropolitan University believes he has come up with software which at least will decipher the structure of their language – and be the first step in understanding what they are saying.

Dr Elliott’s programme would compare an alien language to a database of 60 different languages in the world to search see if it has a similar structure.

It would work great at deciphering our own human languages to start with! Imagine having a universal translator pinned to your lapel!

Because languages have different word orders, Dr Elliott is amassing a library of the syntaxes of 60 human tongues.

If a message is received from outer space, it could be compared against this database. Scientists would then be able to see if it resembled anything human, or a mix of Earthly languages.

The tiny kink in the plan, of course, is that we receive a written alien language before a spoken one…

Mind you, Dr Elliott might just have the perfect people to contact to test his program. According to sci-fi site io9.com, there are people who specialize in building non-human languages:

they’re called conlangers, and they construct elaborate languages for fun or to make the portrait of an alien race more believable.

[...]

Conlangers include everyone from Marc Okrand, the linguist who wrote Klingon, to the nerds who invented the most perfectly logical language in the world, known as Lojban. Anthony Burgess invented a little conlang for his characters in Clockwork Orange, and Suzette Haden Elgin’s Native Tongue trilogy is all about a group of rebel women linguists who create their own language to subvert their ultra-sexist society. Sometimes Hollywood employs conlangers to make alien talk seem more realistic[...]

Now that sounds like a really fun job!

[Link: The Telegraph - Scientist develops programme to understand alien languages]

[Link: io9.com - Want to invent an alien language?]

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Is this the new face of Doctor Who?

David Tennant, who plays the current 10th Doctor in the brilliant series, Doctor Who, may be replaced come 2011 by Paterson Joseph. What makes this interesting is that he’ll be playing the first non-white Doctor. Mind you, at this point it’s still rumour (remember to keep your pinches of salt handy, people!), but I’ll definitely miss Tennant’s depiction of this quirky character if it’s true.

[Link: io9.com - Doctor Who: Is this the new Doctor Who?]

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Today’s insanity: human electricity! (well, almost)

Scientists have found a way to create bio-batteries, similar to the electrocytic cells of electric eels and other such electric animals. The idea behind this is to power artificial limbs and internal machinery, but of course, the idea could be taken a step further and into the creation of “wetware”, or cybernetic implants. Mind you, according to the article:

There’s a long way between the drawing board and the cyber-implant in the world of biotechnology, at least for those of us outside of Marvel, and several “How do we actually build this?” questions have to be answered.

Ok, so it’s not quite reality yet, but the fact that there are blueprints means that at least it’s a big step toward seeing this come to light.

I’ve recently been watching Doctor Who, so of course, the first thing to that came to mind was that, if these cybernetic implants come to be, we might need The Doctor to come and bail us out…

[Link: The Daily Galaxy - Super Cells to Power Cyborgs]

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