Action Figures

These action figures were just announced: all eleven Doctors in one set! They are also sold separately and in sets with other figures, such as the First Doctor with "The Dalek Invasion of Earth" Dalek and the Second Doctor with a Cyberman from "Tomb of the Cybermen."



I already have five of the Doctors from Character Options, and the three Dapol Doctors. I've just ordered the First Doctor set as well. Before I started roleplaying, I had already begun collecting action figures of Doctor Who and staging scenes with them for photographing, as many people do on Flickr. The selection of action figures from Character Options is very impressive, with many different variants. As is the series of Torchwood figures made by SciFiCollector, though that series has just eight figures so far (also with variations on the Jack action figure).



Seen here are Tosh, Ianto, Jack, Gwen, and John. Other figures in the range are the Cyberwoman, Blowfish and Weevil. This Jack is from the Doctor Who "Utopia" series. There is also a Torchwood version and "The Empty Child" version. I also have these in my collection. The Doctor Who and Torchwood figures are in the same scale, so they can be placed together. They are a great way to display the world of Doctor Who and collect items related to the show.

Thoughts on RP

Writing about roleplaying on Twitter:

RP History
(spoilers up to Torchwood series 2)

From LiveJournal

I answered some of the questions posed on LiveJournal:

The Super Bowl and television events

Education and Career

Favorite Collections (Torchwood, Doctor Who)

The Return

The Return: a Torchwood story

by Monika Lewis

Featuring Captain Jack Harkness

Based on and set between the end of Doctor Who 'Last of the Time Lords' and the beginning of Torchwood 'Kiss Kiss Bang Bang' (spoilers for Doctor Who series 3, Torchwood series 2)

Rating: PG-13

( Read more... )

Originally posted on LiveJournal here.

Twitter and Fanfiction

I've been on Twitter a lot recently, in both the fictional and real life worlds represented there. Though I joined Twitter at first to follow writers and celebrities that are found on the site, I was soon interested in the role-playing communities. I was especially interested in the ones based on Doctor Who, Torchwood, Harry Potter, and Star Trek, and indeed writing for the world of Doctor Who and its spin-offs. The Dresden Files and Twilight RPers sometimes cross over into the other universes, as well as the Cookie Monster from Sesame Street and Tigger. This is an opportunity to act and write stories with other fans and is a great experience overall. I started out as a Doctor Who fan in 1997 watching on PBS- first watched the Patrick Troughton serial "The Mind Robber." I watched most of the classic Who episodes and this month's Doctor Who Magazine cover subject Tom Baker was my favorite Doctor. But I'm even more of a fan of new Who and David Tennant, as well as the whole Torchwood team, who I've gotten to know very well ;) . I did enjoy the five part Torchwood "Children of Earth" 5-part miniseries. My favorite group on Twitter is the #torchwoodRP.

Rose and the Doctor

Rose and the Doctor
Originally uploaded by monikalel42

Rose Tyler and the Ninth Doctor action figures outside the Doctor Who TARDIS interior set. I got the tea-towel of the London Underground subway map on a visit to England in 2000.

I've been doing a lot of Twittering and Blipping lately, as well as watching, reading and writing about Doctor Who and Torchwood.  :)  I just started a new Blip.fm account to listen to music and am also listening to the local radio stations in San Francisco.  I'm now on summer vacation from City College, and will resume library classes there this fall.

Torchwood Gwen Cooper Action Figure

Torchwood Gwen Cooper Action Figure
Originally uploaded by monikalel42

The Torchwood figures pictured on the back of the box:
from Wave One: Captain Jack Harkness, Gwen Cooper, Cyberwoman and Weevil, and from Wave Two: Blowfish, Ianto Jones, Toshiko Sato, and Captain John Hart.

Doctor Who References

Some situations that reminded me of Doctor Who on last night's TV:

Fringe's case of the week involved a woman with an accelerated pregnancy due to paranormal interference (see Torchwood's "Something Borrowed" and Star Trek: The Next Generation's "The Child").  Also Dr. Bishop and his son Peter discovered a car with the scientist's files in it, including the aforementioned hand in a jar.

On House Dr. Cuddy remarked "We know who she is" when told about a prominent feminist leader whose assistant became ill, like Harriet Jones, Former Prime Minister ("We know who you are").  This became a recurring phrase on Doctor Who, when she would introduce herself and even the alien Sycorax were familiar with her identity.

Cyberman

Cyberman, originally uploaded by monikalel42.

The Cyberman action figure which I just got poses with the Torchwood logo.

Torchwood and Fringe Comparisons

The Fringe series premiere and Torchwood radio play "Lost Souls" which aired this week are similar in tone and situations.  When I saw Fringe it reminded me of Torchwood since both shows feature a woman working in law enforcement who comes upon a paranormal mystery and collaborates with a team to keep the threat from the rest of humanity.  

Olivia Dunham (played by Anna Torv) in Fringe and Gwen Cooper (Eve Myles)  in Torchwood are drawn into the mystery and find themselves working with unusual associates.  Agent Dunham of the FBI learns of a chemical that killed all the passengers on an airplane, and during her investigation, her partner Agent Scott (Mark Valley) is taken ill as a result of exposure to the chemical.  The only scientist who is familiar with the condition, Dr. Walter Bishop (John Noble), was sent to a mental institution after a lab accident years before.  They work with Dunham's assistant Astrid Farnsworth (Jasika Nicole) and Bishop's son Peter (Joshua Jackson).  While Gwen Cooper joined the existing Cardiff Torchwood team, Olivia Dunham forms her own group in response to the results of "fringe science."

"Lost Souls, " aired yesterday by the BBC's Radio Four, takes place at the activation of the Large Hadron Collider, a particle accelerator in CERN, Switzerland.  As part of the Big Bang Day, the Torchwood radio play is available at the Radio Four website. Doctor Martha Jones calls Captain Jack Harkness, Gwen Cooper and Ianto Jones to the scientific base to investigate people going missing Both shows include people who exhibit translucent skin as a symptom of a deadly illness, and the team must find the cause and cure it. The team is brought together by circumstance and part of the drama is their attempts to reconcile their contrasting viewpoints in order to find the answer.  

Fringe is very atmospheric and intriguing, and like Torchwood shows the characters' personal lives along with their jobs.  Fringe will also deal with reanimation, supernatural science and even showed someone's hand in a jar in the trailer. Torchwood and Doctor Who viewers will be familar with the Doctor's hand which he lost during the Sycorax battle in "The Christmas Invasion," whereupon he grew a new hand due to his ability to regenerate.  Captain Jack Harkness then retrieved the hand and kept it in a jar to act as a detector for the Doctor, then it was used to clone the Doctor in the fourth series finale.  Fringe also predicts a situation like that in Torchwood's premiere episode "Everything Changes," in which a scientific organization plans to question a character who died by resurrecting that person.  I am interested to see where Fringe is going, but Torchwood is still more entertaining and groundbreaking.

Doctor Who at the Hugo Awards

Steven Moffat received the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form in the Doctor Who episode "Blink," which he wrote for series three. This is well deserved for an entertaining and new kind of episode. "Blink" used the concept of time travel as well as a haunted house story, with statues that transport people back in time. Sally Sparrow receives some messages from the Doctor to help her investigate the statues. Hettie Macdonald's direction builds up the suspense, making the statues menacing and scary. Moffat, who will become the executive producer of Doctor Who for series five in 2010, has won the award three years in a row. In 2006 the award went to "The Empty Child" while in 2007 "Girl in the Fireplace" was honored. This year Moffat wrote the two part story "Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead," a similarly intriguing mystery with lots of surprises and character development for the Doctor.

The other story from Doctor Who that was nominated, "Human Nature/Family of Blood" written by Paul Cornell and directed by Charles Palmer, is also an outstanding journey for the Doctor as he transforms himself from a Time Lord to a human in an attempt to evade an alien family who are chasing the TARDIS. This story was based on the novel Human Nature that Cornell also wrote from Virgin Publishing's New Adventures series. In both the novel, available as an ebook on the BBC Doctor Who website, and the television story the Doctor's companion has the responsibility of looking after the Doctor, who doesn't remember their adventures together. The Doctor becomes John Smith, a schoolteacher who thinks he has always been human. The television story has many references to the classic series of Doctor Who, such as when John Smith writes a diary of his time travel dreams including the faces of his past incarnations, as well as John Smith's parents Verity and Sydney. In 1963, Doctor Who was created by Sydney Newman while the first producer, Verity Lambert, took charge of the show and ensured its success on British television. This is a great tribute to the show's history and its present incarnation.

The other television episodes nominated were Torchwood's "Captain Jack Harkness," the fan produced Star Trek episode "World Enough and Time," and Battlestar Galactica's "Razor." "World Enough and Time" was created for the internet series Star Trek New Voyages by fans as the fourth season of the original show featuring Kirk, Spock and McCoy. Battlestar Galactica has received critical praise as the revival of the 1970s series. I have not seen "Razor" or "World Enough and Time," but I've heard a lot about the New Voyages and Galactica shows in relation to Star Trek and the TrekToday news site. The Doctor Who spin-off Torchwood also entered new territory in series one's "Captain Jack Harkness," written by Catherine Tregenna and directed by Ashley Way, in which Jack and Toshiko Sato are transported back to World War II Cardiff. Torchwood's Captain Jack meets another Captain Jack Harkness, a military man from Earth. The Torchwood protagonist Captain Jack took the other Captain's identity during World War II. This episode effectively shows the contrast between modern life and the previous era. All the nominated episodes are examples of the creativity and great stories going into television science fiction today.

Progress in the Whoniverse Today

Now that the broadcasts of Doctor Who, Torchwood, and The Sarah Jane Adventures have temporarily gone on vacation, but the future of all three are secure, I'm writing a series of articles about the themes that they have in common. In my reviews of the Doctor Who episodes "The Stolen Earth" and "Journey's End" I looked at the convergence of the three series to help defeat the Daleks. Inspired by rewatching series two's "Army of Ghosts" which introduced the Torchwood Institute, and Stephen James Walker's great book about Torchwood Series One, Inside the Hub, I wrote about what makes the show Torchwood unique.

Torchwood is a new kind of show for a mainstream audience that portrays science fiction situations in a real Earth environment. Like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, one of Russell T. Davies' inspirations for the Doctor Who spin-off, the main characters have real-life problems even as they battle extraordinary creatures. Every episode has something different to offer. Torchwood is unconstrained by television censorship rules that might be in effect in America, allowing authentic language and fight sequences, as well as love scenes, to be portrayed.

Captain Jack Harkness is also a progressive leading role. An alien from the 51st century, he makes no distinctions of gender or race, or planetary origin, about who he finds attractive or allies himself with. This leads his team to become more free about their own relationships. This viewpoint may also influence viewers to progress in their societal expectations of others. A science fiction series should portray the diversity of humans, as well as different types of aliens. This is a standard especiallv visible in the new series of Doctor Who, as well as Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures. They all portray many different aspects of contemporary human life in addition to imaginative alien environments and characters.

Welcome to Torchwood

I also went back and rewatched the first episode of Torchwood, "Everything Changes," after viewing the first two series of the television show. The series spins off from Doctor Who with the Doctor's companion Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman) taking the lead role as the director of the Torchwood secret organization branch in Cardiff, Wales. Doctor Who established that a rift in time and space over the Welsh city, which also serves as the base for the filming of the television series, causes aliens to come through to Earth. Torchwood is made as a program for older viewers, with more explicit language and violence, as well as realistic depictions of adult relationships. While Doctor Who is designed for a family audience, Torchwood may not be suitable for younger viewers. Both Doctor Who and Torchwood have a lot of humor and has fun with science fiction conventions as well as aspects of everyday life.

The first episode introduces viewers to Police Constable Gwen Cooper (Eve Myles), who like Rose Tyler in the first episode of the 2005 Doctor Who revival is just discovering the existence of aliens in her world. Russell T. Davies' script, like Joss Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer which was one of the series' inspirations, has lots of unexpected moments and humor as well as shocking revelations. Gwen, like Buffy, meets an enigmatic man (Jack in Torchwood, Angel in Buffy) who she gradually finds out more about. Though Torchwood began in 2006, I first saw "Everything Changes" after viewing Doctor Who series three (2007), so I already knew some more about Jack's story than Gwen did in the episode. I saw the show more from Jack's point of view than Gwen's, since I had seen Doctor Who and knew its backstory. However, someone who was less familiar with the show's history or science fiction might identify more with Gwen who doesn't know what is going on until Jack explains the situation to her. Torchwood can be enjoyed on multiple levels and has lots of fun moments for Doctor Who fans as well as providing a great action adventure and mystery for people new to the series or genre.

Russell T. Davies and his contributions to "Doctor Who"

The New York Times has a new article about Russell T. Davies and how his revival of Doctor Who has improved television in Britain in terms of the quality and range of issues that can be covered: Who Altered British TV? ‘Who’ Indeed. Another New York Times article from 2006 discusses the first series of Doctor Who and how Davies, the executive producer and lead writer, brought the show into the 21st century.

Outpost Gallifrey also reports that Davies will receive the OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire) honor from Queen Elizabeth II for his work in writing and producing drama on television. This honor is well-deserved, since Davies brought Doctor Who back when it seemed like no one else could and made it as good as any dramatic series. After the last original series episode in 1989, and a television film in 1996, the show lived on in novels and audio plays, as well as in Doctor Who Magazine. Many of the writers on the TV show today, such as Davies, Paul Cornell, Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat, previously wrote for the tie-in media.

The new series brought Doctor Who back to popularity among general audiences in Britain, and gained it many new fans around the world. Davies' episodes are fun to watch and include spectacular events as well as character moments. The show today honors the past 45 years of stories as well as being original and unexpected. Since 2005 it has also won many prestigious awards, including BAFTAs and Hugos for best television drama. The spin-off series Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures take the world of Doctor Who in new directions as they explore the impact of alien invasions on Earth. The current fourth series of Doctor Who is the best and most consistent set of episodes ever in the show's history, with David Tennant and Catherine Tate doing excellent work every episode and all the cast and crew making it one of the greatest shows on television.

New Doctor Who Executive Producer

The BBC announced yesterday that Steven Moffat will take over from Russell T. Davies as showrunner and lead writer for Doctor Who in 2010. Davies has guided the series from its return in 2005. Moffat wrote some of the most popular and award-winning episodes of the series, such as "The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances" and "The Girl in the Fireplace," which were honored with Hugo Awards in 2006 and 2007, and the nominated episode "Blink" for the 2008 awards. Moffat's episodes are always interesting to watch and take the program in new directions that haven't been explored before in the series. "The Empty Child" introduced Captain Jack Harkness, who would later go on to lead the Torchwood team in Cardiff, Wales, investigating alien invasions. "The Girl in the Fireplace" had the innovative concept of a spaceship linked to Reinette's life in 18th century France, and a love interest for the Doctor. "Blink" took the concept of a Doctor Who story told through the perspective of a new character further than in the second series' "Love & Monsters." In "Blink," Sally Sparrow took on a time-travel mystery with some unexpected help from the Doctor. I look forward to seeing what Moffat will do with the fifth series of Doctor Who.

The Sarah Jane Adventures

This series based on Doctor Who features the Doctor's former companion Sarah Jane Smith (Elisabeth Sladen), who traveled with the Third and Fourth Doctors in the 1970s, then met the Tenth Doctor many years later in the episode "School Reunion." The Sarah Jane Adventures is similar in tone to Sarah Jane's original appearances, where she takes the lead as an investigative reporter whose mission is to protect the Earth from alien invaders. The plotlines are relatable for viewers of all ages, with their emphasis on family as well as saving the world. Sarah Jane's young friends Maria, Luke and Clyde show as much initiative as she does in uncovering mysteries in ordinary places like school and a local laser tag arcade. The story "Warriors of Kudlak" is the best yet (with two stories still to watch in the first season), tackling issues like aggression in society, acceptance by others and preservation of the Earth. It is also a fun series to watch, since the main characters are relatable and it is closely linked to Doctor Who and Torchwood. Look for Sarah Jane in series four of Doctor Who, when former companions Captain Jack and Rose also return to the Doctor!

Twilight and other characters comparisons

I really enjoyed Eclipse, the third book in Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series, it's one of my favorite books! It is about Bella Swan, a high school girl who falls in love with Edward Cullen, who looks like he is her age but is really a hundred year old vampire. When I was reading the scene in the tent with Edward, Jacob and Bella I was imagining the roles being played by the actors from Torchwood who play the team members Captain Jack, Owen and Gwen (the policewoman). The character dynamic fits them as well. The parallels between Torchwood and Eclipse: Edward, like Captain Jack Harkness is the more experienced one: although he looks young he has lived a long time. Jacob, like Owen the impulsive young doctor of the team, is new to the supernatural lifestyle. Bella, like Gwen, is their link to the normal human world, although she's discovering that a lot of her world is more strange than she first thought, it seems like werewolves and vampires, or aliens, are everywhere!

There is lots of great dialogue and writing in Eclipse, as the characters share their concerns and plans with each other. My favorite characters from TV are the Doctor from "Doctor Who" played by David Tennant and Captain Jack (John Barrowman). From books, I like Edward and Harry Potter, and Professor Lupin! I would watch David Tennant and John Barrowman in any show they were in! What draws people to these characters is that they are handsome (or beautiful), strong and smart. How fascinating that they have extra powers that set them apart from humans, like the Doctor's ability to travel through time and space, Captain Jack's alien origins and experiences, Edward as a vampire, Lupin and Jacob as werewolves, and Harry as a wizard. Edward even reminded me of Mr. Spock from "Star Trek" when he looked at the pack of werewolves and said "Fascinating" like the science officer when confronted with something new (392). Stephenie Meyer said in her interview with Amazon.com that she read lots of sci-fi as well as romance when she was younger. It is such an interesting world that Meyer has created with the Twilight series. Time magazine asked recently in an article, "Stephenie Meyer: A New J.K. Rowling?" I'm looking forward to reading her new science fiction novel, The Host, as well as the fourth book in the Twilight series, Breaking Dawn.