Doctor Who: the end of a very big era approaches

New Doctor Who tonight! Its been too long and I can't wait to see what Moffat and Capaldi have in store for their final season. What the trailers have revealed have more than whet my appetite: Ice Warriors, proper Cybermen, Missy (oh, Bill's going to love her).

Then there's the future...

Now, absolutely nothing is known or announced about Chris Chibnall's Doctor Who and this time I don't even have tea leaves to read. With Davies I'd seen Bob & Rose and the odd episode of Queer As Folk and I was a massive fan of Coupling so I had some idea of Moffat's style before he blew all our minds with The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances.

Chibnall? Well, to my mind his Doctor Who and Torchwood episodes are a bit of a mixed bag and Wikipedia lists for me a bunch of things I've never seen like Law & Order: UK and Broadchurch.

There's another aspect to it, though, in that up to now the modern series has been massively influenced by the wilderness years material. Russel T. Davies and Steven Moffat both contributed to the Virgin novels (albeit only a short story in Moffat's case), both have employed other multiple writers from that era including Gareth Roberts, Paul Cornell, Mark Gatiss, Matt Jones and Gary Russel as well as early Big Finish stalwart Rob Shearman.

A lot of motifs the modern series plays with extend pretty naturally from things the various wilderness years spin-offs did: pansexuality as the future majority; Daleks straight from the Nick Briggs school of thought; the destruction of Gallifrey; Rassilon as a living villain; companions who live on the TARDIS part time and even have their own adventures and agendas (River in particular has a lot of Benny Summerfield about her and not just because of their joint profession); and four of the first five seasons have an adaptation in them, though admittedly a loose one in series two.

Its not exactly a massive debt the modern series owes to the wilderness years, everyone who wrote for both did a lot between times and developed a greaty deal, but it is unavoidable.Potentially, this season is where that train of thought ends and the generation of fandom that I grew up with checks out, Moffat and Gatiss really being the last ones standing at this point.

And that excites me. I got into Doctor Who in 1992, in the wilderness years. In a way, I've only experienced the evolution of one era of Doctor Who in terms of influence and core beliefs. Its been a hell of a ride but I am so ready to see what a series that doesn't come out of that long tradition looks like.

No, Capaldi will not "un-regenerate" into Matt Smith

I don't even mean this in a canon sort of way. The canon and continuity of regeneration is nonsense and always has been. The idea that any sort of consistent rules exist that preclude Matt Smith coming back as the Thirteenth Doctor is just mad. I'm taking this from a more practical yet seemingly less discussed avenue.

We've been here before, of course. When Smith was leaving the rumour did the rounds that Tennant would be coming back to “save the series”. It was piffle then and it is piffle now which, as I say, this has nothing to do with anything as involved as canon or continuity...

No, it is because Tennant and Smith are actual human beings with actual careers.

They've moved on. They aren't coming back. I don't care if Smith says he regrets leaving when he did. He's not going to take a massive pay cut compared to his current work and lock down nine months of his schedule to go back to an old role. Actors who do that, let's be brutally honest, tend to be ones who haven't got much else going on.

And even beyond those practicalities, I'm not certain who it would actually benefits. Certainly not Smith, who gets to experience a pay cut and a significant step back in his career. Definitely not Chibnall, who gets to write someone else's version of the Doctor instead of his own because bringing Smith back is a nostalgia move so he'd have to be ultra-faithful to the character as written by Moffat. Not the BBC, either, who get to market the big relaunch of their flagship sci-fi series by admitting they have no better idea than call a mulligan on the last three seasons which'll look great to both the general audience and overseas buyers alike.

And not the fans who want it, either, because they get a showrunner shackled to his predecessor's creative vision which is a recipe for success every time I've seen it happen, let me tell you.

The Helbrute leak and what I hope it means

They've been taken down now but pictures leaked onto the internet earlier in the week of a new Helbrute model, multi-part with options to represent all the Chaos Gods. The pictures were from the next issue of Warhammer Visions so we can expect the model to be solicited in the next White Dwarf.

This is good. I like (even prefer) the Dark Vengeance Helbrute but it'll be good to have the option of a second without buying a whole other starter set. It'll be nice to have one I can built to be clearly Nurglesque for my Death Guard (the Dark Vengeance one will be painted for my Word Bearers). Has to be said, though, I like it mainly because of what it might mean in the future.

Right now the Helbrute is a big draw for Dark Vengeance, an exclusive mini you can only get in the big set and there are other models fitting that description I'd like to see as separate kits. I know I bang on about the Lost And The Damned but a proper Cultists kit would be lovely. Let's face it, compared to the Helbrute a bunch of expendable mortal plebs with shitty guns is not a huge draw (unless you're me).

And then there are the High Elves in Island Of Blood. Two of those exclusive units are Core choices. I say that the contents of this set need making into proper kits out of pure selfishness since the two High Elves themes that really appeal to me are Lothern (with Sea Guard from one horizon to the other) and Hoeth (with a Loremaster at the head of a big block of Swordmasters).

Of course, the Helbrute isn't even the first kit of this kind. The clampack Space Marine Captain from last September was a blatant retread of the Captain from Assault On Black Reach just with one of the new grav guns slapped on the model.

I guess what this comes down to is that I like buying certain models and I would like the option to buy just those. I want a Chaos Space Marine army with lots and lots of Cultists being callously pushed towards the enemy by their Astartes masters but I don't want to end up with half a dozens Helburtes and endless Chosen to make that a reality.

You never know, we might finally see plastic Deffkoptas. 

Mandatory lost episodes wish list

And my grand run of being behind the times continues. In brief: sometime in the last week or so a random African television station (sources conflict on it being Ugandan or Nigerian) sent the BBC three tonnes of old film canisters sold to them by the BBC in the 1960s. Rumours abound that this haul contains many, many missing episodes of Doctor Who. One source estimates as high as 90 of the 106 missing episodes.

I am trying desperately not to believe this wildly exaggerated bit of wishful thinking but hoping against hope that two or three missing episodes come to light. Two or three film canisters out of three tonnes doesn't seem too unrealistic to me. On these occasions it is customary for fans to list the things they'd like to see if there are lost episodes hidden in there:

Are Susan and Ping-Cho as shippable as they seem in the Loose Cannon reconstruction? Seriously, every shot of them the reconstruction team managed to find have them hugging, standing close or (and this is the kicker) snuggling together in bed. Ladies and gentlemen, this is a Ship that sails itself.

More extant Sara Kingdom could only be a good thing.

Victoria kisses Jamie when she leaves in Fury From The Deep, you can hear it on the audio, but is it on the cheek? Lips? Forehead? (Okay, that last one is impossible given the size of Deborah Watling).

Is the rest of The Savages as subtly directed as that final clip when Steven looks back longingly before disappearing into the Elders' city?

Troughton. Lots of Troughton, please. Troughton is amazing but his performance is so physical and so little of it survives.

Any extra episodes with the Ben-Polly-Jamie companion dream team please. Yes, I know the dynamic never really worked but I have an irrational love for that team.

The dance number in The Celestial Toymaker.

And finally, if there's one story I'd like back in its entirety Tomb Of The Cybermen styles, I'd plug for The Myth Makers. Its genuinely funny, full of cracking performances, one of those rare late-Hartnell stories where he seems energised by the script and has a fantastic switch of tone in its final, apocalyptic episode.