TVSquad

Every once in a while, the British television show Doctor Who is revamped. This is usually done by replacing the lead actor and his supporting crew. However, it is also done by changing the logo of the series. As a result, certain logos are associated with certain eras. Yesterday, the BBC has revealed on their website the logo to be associated with the Matt Smith era of the show. They also have a video of the historical logos of the show.

I don't have a particular favorite logo, although I liked both the "diamond" logo of the 70's, most closely associated with Tom Baker's era, and the "neon" logo of the 80's, which spanned three Doctors (Tom Baker, Peter Davison and Colin Baker). The current one isn't bad either with the cylinder thing with pointy ends (what is that shape called?).

A video preview of thenew logo is available on certain sites such as Topless Robot. What do you think of it? Which logo has been your favorite?

Get your scarves out. Tom Baker is returning to the lead in Doctor Who after 30 years of pretty much abandoning the role (playing it again only for a fraction of a second in the 1993 Children In Need special). He'll be starring in a set of BBC audio plays along with Richard Franklin, who will return alongside the fourth Doctor as Captain Mike Yates, one of the Doctor's companions from that era.

This is big news. Until David Tennant, Baker was synonymous with the role yet absolutely refused to do any performances related to it. Big Finish has been doing Doctor Who audio dramas for a decade with four of the other actors who played the part, yet the company was never able to snag Tom Baker for one.

I'm certain going to seek out this audio. Hopefully this is only the beginning of more Doctor Who audio plays starring Mr. Baker. He has been sorely missed.

This should be considered rumor until officially confirmed by the BBC, but apparently the seven living actors to play the character of the Doctor in Doctor Who are set to all appear together in this year's Children in Need special on the BBC.

While I would absolutely love it if this could actually happen, I have to question the veracity of this claim. At least the Telegraph isn't the Sun or I'd dismiss it outright. Tom Baker has historically had a problem with attending reunions (he wasn't in "The Five Doctors", but he did participate in a 1993 special "Dimensions In Time").

Okay, when I posted about the television personalities that have pitched computers, I didn't think that this would become a series. Yet, when I saw a comment from reader ThomasD, I had to prep another one because, frankly, this one is weird.

The ad features the fourth Doctor, played by Tom Baker, and then-current companion Romana, played by Lalla Ward, which puts the commercial sometime around 1980. The Prime automated office system seems to be a part of Prime Computer, a Massachusetts-based company that produced microcomputers from 1972 until 1992. According to the wonderful world of Wikipedia, the office automaton system that Who and Romana talk about featured electronic mail that functioned between Prime networks only and word processing on dumb terminals.

This is a very unusual ad. Even for the Doctor Who episodes of the era, the writing on this commercial was sub-par. Plus, why would the doctor need a rigid computer system like this when the systems on the TARDIS could probably handle billions of processes trillions of nanoseconds faster. Coming from such an advanced race as the Time Lords you would think that they would have some form of word processing! Unless, they were all using Windows. Ohhh, the horror!