doctor who

My Top 6 Picks for the Next Doctor Who

/ Jen E @ mommablogsalot / 3 Comments

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News is spreading throughout the Geek Kingdom of Whoville that Peter Capaldi has announced that he’ll only do one more season of Doctor Who. This shouldn’t surprise us as three seems to be the magic number for most actors who pick up the helm of the TARDIS. The Internet is, of course, doing what the Internet does best – churning out lots of speculations about who will steer the TARDIS next.

In years past, this has been a difficult prospect for me – it’s hard to accept an entirely new personality in the same role you’ve been knowing and loving for years. But I’m starting to get the hang of it and I have a few suggestions of my own. I tried to narrow this down to three people but failed miserably so you’ll have to settle for this list of 6 people that I think are worthy of the blue box.

Richard Ayoade

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Ayoade seems to actually be in the running already and this mystified me for a hot second but honestly I am loving the whole idea the more that I think of it. I absolutely loved him on The IT Crowd and I think his quirky, Dork Chic kind of throwback classic vibe would be perfect for The Doctor. We seem to oscillate towards brooding and comedic on Doctor Who and I think the show could use a comedic breath of fresh air. He’d be great at this.

Eddie Redmayne

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There is no doubt that Redmayne would have the acting chops to handle one of the most beloved roles of all time. He’s funny and charming and British, obviously. He has that lanky nearly awkward thing going which I find important in my Doctor and he’s not bad to look at. I think the biggest problem with Redmayne is that he’s possibly too Big Hollywood right now and perhaps far too busy.

Craig Ferguson

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Is it cheating if we had his bandmate as The Doctor already? Is that too keeping it in the family? I don’t care because Scottish Doctors are my favorite variety and I need more Craig Ferguson in my life anyway. If he wants to come take over my favorite tv show, I won’t hate him for it. If you want your Doctor to be sarcastic and irreverent and just a little bit creepy, Craig is your guy. And maybe he could sneak Geoff into the TARDIS while he’s there?

Stephen Merchant

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I know he’s technically more of a writer than an actor but I love him and I think he’d be pretty fantastic. If he doesn’t want to be the lead, maybe we could just get him to do a long guest spot on the show? Merchant was co-writer for The Office in the UK and the voice of Wheatley in Portal 2.

Richard Hammond

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Okay, I know. Weird choice. He’s also not really an actor – but Richard Hammond is my very favorite thing about Top Gear The Grand Tour and I’ve always thought he’d make an excellent Doctor. He is super funny and has a penchant for getting into trouble, likes fast cars and if he can put up with Jeremy Clarkson, I think he can handle some Daleks and The Master.

Kelly Macdonald

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Lastly, obviously, I have to mention a female actor worthy of the TARDIS. Because it’s time, of course. I’m not sure that the show is ready for a female Doctor, but if they are then Macdonald has my vote. She’s been a gutsy princess in Brave, a witty writer dreaming of travel in The Decoy Bride (alongside David Tennant) not to mention Trainspotting, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Nanny McPhee and Boardwalk Empire. She’s funny, clever, has mad acting chops and most importantly – she’s Scottish.

Your turn! Who would you like to see as the next Doctor Who?

Weekly Geekly: 03.11.16

/ Jen E @ mommablogsalot

I’ve got a veritable stock pile of amazing things I’ve seen online that need to be shared with you so buckle your seat belts.

Did you see the new Ghostbusters trailer yet? I’m personally super excited but apparently a lot of people are upset particularly about Leslie Jones’s character in the movie. Probably the same people who were upset about the Starbucks cups. And while I understand their critique, I also think people just need something to hate on and Donald Trump must have been quiet that day.

Also: GeekMom shared a list of 5 movies that should get the Ghostbusters treatment. What would be on your list?

There’s a new kids RPG called Book Fair that is making the book nerd in me squeal with delight because I totally want to play. I mean I totally want my kids to play. Yeah. It does sound a little intricate to plan out but I think it would be awesome for a group activity for a classroom or summer camp or when your kids are bored and you’ve run out of Gilmore Girls episodes to marathon.

Do you think they should have just let Top Gear die with dignity or are you cautiously optimistic about BBC’s new cast / the original team’s new show on Amazon? I’m torn.

Ready to flex your word nerd muscles? There’s a great roundup at Real Simple of 11 weird words you’ve never known how to make plural (but probably have strong opinions about).

Geek and Sundry recently shared this infographic that will tell you what your beard says about your D&D Alignment. I’m pretty sure this makes my husband Chaotic Neutral which sounds about right.

Have you already seen Doctor Puppet? My son and I just watched all the episodes on You Tube and were kind of despondent when we realized we’d finished all the ones currently released. Watch it slower if you haven’t already. Speaking of The Doctor: What are your thoughts on these suggestions for the thirteen Doctor? We obviously need to start planning now while there are likely / hopefully years to decide.

Now that Downton Abbey is officially over ::sobs:: we can all attempt to recover from the pain by curating lists about the show like The Lazy Genius’s list of The Best Boyfriends of Downton. At first I was outraged that Matthew wasn’t number one – until I saw her pick for number one and was like – nope, you are definitely right. Never mind, carry on.

Lastly, I’ll leave you with this dramatic reading from Morgan Freeman:

 

 

 

Weekly Geekly: 01.22.16

/ Jen E @ mommablogsalot

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I think we geeks have had a rough go of it, losing a few too many legends lately. I’m trying to get my hands on a copy of Dogma to watch with my husband this weekend but it’s proving more complicated than I anticipated. While I figure that out…

I think this would be my kids’ favorite subject in school. And mine, too. Can I take this class?

This would be a very different television show. Related: now you can knit the damn scarf yourself. Properly.

When worlds collide adorably. One of the better Star Wars inspired things on the internet right now.

GeekMom says 2016 is going to be the year that Harry Potter returns. I’m not hating this. Speaking of Potter and the image above: Apparently ‘always’ was a weighty word for Professor Snape.

And now I think I’ll be a dear and leave you guys with something a little lighter:

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Have a great weekend guys!

Weekly Geekly: July 10, 2015

/ Jen E @ mommablogsalot / 1 Comment

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I feel like I blinked and it was Friday. I had a fairly busy week but it went by at lightning speed. While I eat my breakfast as slooooowwwwwllllly as possible compensate, here are some terrifically geeky things to read online this week:

The Doctor Who Season 9 trailer is here!

5 things to do before passing on fake news on social media. parents read this.

Geek Mom ranks the 3 different Platform 9 3/4s for us. If there’s butter beer, I’m there.

These seven stages of not loving an “it book” are spot on.

Which super witty tv woman are you? I got Liz Lemon which seems pretty accurate.

weekly geekly links: 2.6.15

/ Jen E @ mommablogsalot

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I know you’ve been dying to know what your Star Wars Personality Type is. Fair warning: It told me I was Luke Skywalker (INFP) so no guaruntees it will be nice to you. Do you really want to find out that you are Jar Jar Binks? Don’t say I didn’t, say I didn’t warn you.

LEGO is working on Doctor Who and Wall-E playsets. No they don’t go together (although it’s LEGO so they can if you want them to). I just mean they are working on two different sets: one for Doctor Who and one for Wall-E. These look really cool but we already have ALL of the LEGO Doctor Who figs so I’m assuming it’s just the Tardis and stuff that’s new.

Apparently the latest hair trend is to make your hair look like computer pixels? That might sound confusing but the pics over at this Buzzfeed article are gorgeous and totally explain what that means and then you can go to the salon and let your geek flag fly with confidence!

And now for two videos and a picture:

Amazing.

Yes the fangirl in me absolutely lost it over this one.  I was seriously waiting with bated breath for Slater to say “What’s up preppies?” Then I died. This whole video made my year.

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Happy Friday guys!

2 Super Important Doctor Who Links.

/ Jen E @ mommablogsalot

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Who wants to make me a TARDIS bird feeder? I’ll add this to my list of projects to nag my husband about because he doesn’t have enough important things to do already. Because you never know when a time traveling hummingbird might need to stop for a snack in our backyard.

Did you hear the BBC is releasing a ‘Doctor Who’ game to teach kids how to program? According to Entertainment Weekly, “the educational game is being released via the CBBC website as a means of teaching programming to younger children. The game’s puzzles will actually complement a computing curriculum that has been instituted across the U.K.. The Doctor and the Dalek tasks players with repairing the Dalek back to full strength through a series of coding-focused puzzles.” I’m going to need a mega geek to find a loophole so that us non U.K. residents can play, too.

Eight: A Who-vian Birthday Celebration.

/ Jen E @ mommablogsalot

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Today is my son’s eighth birthday! Hard to believe how quickly eight years have gone by – we have been celebrating all weekend, kicking it off on Saturday with a birthday party with close friends. We’ve been trying to simplify the holidays around here so we stuck to just two close friends and their families and invited them to join us for pizza and arcade games at a local pizzeria then back to our place for cake and ice cream and a movie.

First we needed to send them an invite. We had a loose Doctor Who theme (of course) for the party and I spent a lot of time looking online for graphics to make something fun. I loved this idea but wanted to incorporate the Doctor and make it our own. But I downloaded her template and played around with it on picmonkey – I googled for images of Matt Smith’s Doctor online because he’s my son’s favorite and this was the end result:

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I put in coordinates of the location of the pizzeria on our invitation which you can get just by looking for the location on google maps and then right clicking on the location and clicking “what’s here” – the longitude / latitude coordinates will show up in the search bar. Rather than fussing with printing the invitation and finding envelopes and postage, I just emailed the whole image to each friend’s mother and printed out one copy for the birthday boy who thought it was the coolest thing ever – and the whole thing cost me basically nothing except time and a bit of ink and paper.

I tried to keep it simple for party decor – we get pretty far on plates and napkins around here. I did decorate some goodie bags to look like the TARDIS again just googling for images online and printing and cutting and pasting them to the bag. I made the window squares in picmonkey just by making a bunch of layered square shapes.

Since the boys ate their weight in pizza beforehand and were having cake and ice cream – snacks were just some popcorn, pretzels and lightly salted chips.
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The cake ended up just being store bought cupcakes because  I was rushed and injured (I’m always injured, aren’t I?) or maybe I just like a good excuse to get out of baking for some reason. Anyway, we bought a few packs of Jammie Dodgers at World Market (the Doctor’s favorite cookie) and broke them in half and stuck each half on top of a cupcake to decorate, which left just enough room for a candle for MM to blow out.

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Otherwise it was a very low key night – we put on Despicable Me for the kids and they actually sat and watched it! By the time the movie ended it was wayyyyy past everyone’s bedtimes so his friends headed home and the kids went to bed and everyone was happy and birthdayed out. A successful evening for sure!

You aren’t seeing double: This is cross posted at Jen’s personal blog.

Thoughts on: The First Three Doctors

/ Jen E @ mommablogsalot

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You may have picked up on the fact that my husband and I are giant Doctor Who Nerds or Whovians. We have seen all the of seasons of the newest reboot of Doctor Who which includes all episodes from 2005-present. We have been anxiously awaiting a new episode on BBC America since Christmas.

So you can imagine we were all kinds of delighted when we noticed that Netflix has now compiled Classic Doctor Who episodes in one handy little link on Netflix Instant. We spent the weekend watching episodes from the first three doctor’s collections of work. The collections or seasons are pretty sparse with just four episodes each for the first two doctors but I actually found this to be a nice manageable way to get a taste for each doctor and sample 20 years or so of Whovian history.

We are about halfway into the fourth collection of episodes, The Three Doctors (1972) which actually has all three of the first three doctors working together to solve an attack at Unit HQ. So while I am certainly not an expert on the first three Doctors, I have seen enough to throw in my two cents on each of them.

The First Doctor (played by William Hartnell) played the doctor from 1963-1966. To be fair I’ve only seen 4 or 5 episodes of Hartnell’s (mostly The Aztecs) portrayal as the Doctor but if I’m going to be honest, I wasn’t a fan. His version of the Doctor felt a bit stiff and boring and occasionally mean. He didn’t seem to have that urge to Save the World that his later incarnations had and I didn’t necessarily buy him as this amazingly brilliant guy who could figure anything out. The show itself just wasn’t as fun. If this had been my first introduction to Doctor Who, I’m not convinced I’d still be watching…

The Second Doctor (played by Patrick Troughton) starred in Doctor Who from 1966 to 1969. He is definitely a much sillier Doctor and appealed to me quickly in the Mind Robbers episodes that I watched as well as his stint in The Three Doctors in the 70’s. He is much more youthful as the Doctor and has that amazingly intelligent thing down. Perhaps this had more to do with the era in which he played the doctor than anything, but either way it made for a much more enjoyable watching experience. My six year old Whovian fanatic son would agree with this assessment. I also really liked his companions in the Mind Robbers a lot, where I never really took a shine to the first doctor’s companions.

The Third Doctor (played by Jon Pertwee) played the Doctor from (1970–1974). Netflix has a lot more of Pertwee’s episodes available to watch and luckily for me I like him perhaps best of the first three. He has the same smarty pants quality but charm to spare as well. His companions have been intelligent but not boring and his story lines good though the first couple of episodes were a bit trying on my patience as they mostly featured the other actors (members of UNIT and the bad guys, etc.) and though the plot was interesting, the good Doctor definitely made the shows worth watching. Luckily he got a lot more screen time as the episodes progressed!

That’s just my take of course. What did you think of the original Doctors? Who were your favorites / least favorites?

You aren’t seeing double: This post is cross blogged at Jen’s personal blog.

VIDEO LOVE: CALL ME MAYBE DOCTOR WHO PARODY

/ Jen E @ mommablogsalot

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Sometimes I see a video online that is so fantastic that I just have to share. This parody of the current hit song, Call Me Maybe by Carly Rae Jepsen is both clever and awesome. It makes me want to say Allons-y and wear old Converse sneakers, so really, it’s pretty great, right? And also, thank goodness there are other people in this crazy universe that get as unreasonably obsessed about television as I do.

I found this video at Anglophenia, a blog that any Who-vian needs to know about, btw.

And no, you aren’t seeing double. This was cross posted at Jen’s personal blog.