Dr Who

[Green1]

Skip the fourth. Go with the seventh. You will be fine. Tom Bakker is over rated.

I got through re-watching The Happiness Patrol. Amazing how I have read the main villain of that story was supposed to be an analogue to Margarete Thatcher! It also has some of the best speeches by McCoy.

[Buster's Uncle]

Wow Green, you are putting on one of your most awesome displays of charm evah in this thread.

[Green1]

Wow Green, you are putting on one of your most awesome displays of charm evah in this thread.

Can not help it. The seventh doctor makes me an irrational fan boy. More so than Trek or Wars.

[Buster's Uncle]

Bittervet

[Green1]

Bittervet

Yes! I am STILL bitter.

Mad because they only gave awesome doctor limited time in that backdoor pilot in the 90s to lame 8th doctor. It would have been re-upped if they did not kill off awesome doctor.

Well, at least they have John Hurt coming up in the 50th. A cross between mcCoy ( not McGann) and Eccestone would be awesome.

[Valka]

I'm pretty sure he shouldn't.   Eccleston does rock the universe pretty hard, mind, but I saw him humping in one of the Elizabeth movies and wish I hadn't.  He was also butt-nekkid that time he played John Lennon...

I thought he was delightfully evil in Elizabeth (from a purely eye-candy pov; there is no way that Norfolk could ever not be evil, no matter who plays him).

"Stones of Blood" -that is hilarious, because it makes Mylochka vomit blood.

Amelia Rumford is one of my favorite guest characters!

Gonna go over to the Lolpics thread and post some of my Whovian ones... 

[Mylochka]

I watched "Reign of Terror" this week.  It's a first Doctor adventure during... wait for it.. the Reign of Terror after the French Revolution.  It's one of the ones where they filled in missing episodes with animated versions.  It's not a perfect solution.. but I've enjoyed the two semi-animated series I've seen.  I really love Patrick Troughton's Doctor and would love to see more of those get the animation fix.

After watching some of the very old Dr. Who episodes this summer, I wish they'd go back to doing some purely "Let's go visit a historical event and not run into space monsters" episodes occasionally.  Sometimes the series tries so hard to out-do itself on the CGI-ed monsters that it gets a little repetitive...

[Buster's Uncle]

A Cosmic 'Tardis': What the Universe Has In Common with 'Doctor Who'
SPACE.com
by Elizabeth Howell, SPACE.com Contributor  19 hours ago



A TARDIS from the TV show "Doctor Who"


     
Look out, dark energy: A TARDIS may be the real reason the universe is accelerating.

Regions in space-time that are bigger on the inside than the outside — just like the sci-fi character Doctor Who's TARDIS (Time and Relative Dimension in Space) time machine — could help explain the universe's quickening expansion.

These theoretical bubbles are named "Tardis regions." They're not a perfect explanation of how the expansion occurs, but they are a first step in making a model that is closer to reality, its proponents said. [Gallery: Dark Matter Throughout the Universe]

"The idea was to get this proof of principle, that this is possible that you can do it," Syksy Rasanen, a lecturer in theoretical physics at the University of Helsinki, told SPACE.com. "We're not claiming the inside of the hole is realistic, but it's the first model where we have an exact solution where structures that are distributed randomly in space have a significant effect on the expansion rate."



Tapping the accelerator

The universe is not only expanding, but its growth is accelerating. That startling realization occurred in 1998 after two research groups measured cosmic distances using Type Ia supernovas, which all have similar absolute brightnesses. A Type Ia appears fainter the farther away it is from Earth.

Instead of gravity slowing things down as expected, the universe was growing at a faster rate. A popular explanation offered today is a mysterious force called dark energy, which is believed to make up nearly three-quarters of the universe. No one knows what substances are in dark energy, but the leading theory proposes it is a property of space itself.

Dark energy is not the only explanation out there, however. Perhaps gravity does not behave as scientists expect it to. At great distances, maybe gravity speeds up expansion instead of slowing it down, or perhaps the acceleration is due to how certain types of structures form.

Rasanen's team is looking at that third possibility. Their model assumed that small perturbations in the structure of the universe at the age of 10 million years (an arbitrary starting age for the model, he said) could alter the universe's growth in a few billion years. The aim was to better understand how the universe evolved if, as the model assumed, the structures have a large effect.

"In this model, at early times, the holes expand [at the same rate] as the background, but as the universe becomes older and older, the hole expansion becomes more and more," Rasanen said. "The expansion rate is bigger than what you expect."



Cosmological Swiss cheese

Rasanen's team built on a cosmological model first proposed by Albert Einstein and Willem de Sitter. In simple terms, it portrays the universe as mostly homogeneous, but peppered with regions that are different than the background — almost like Swiss cheese.

Most variations of the model have the regions and the background grow at the same rate, but Rasanen's team put in variables to make those inhomogeneities grow independently. (One limitation of the model is the regions do not interact with each other or the background, something the researchers plan to address in the future.)

"With the holes in the Swiss cheese, we have built them so they are specially curved such that they get the expansion rate that we want," Rasanen said. "Though the Tardis regions we used are not realistic, the property that regions can have larger volume than expected based on their surface area is a general feature of gravity."

"This is an expression of the fact that according to general relativity, the geometry of space is not Euclidean," he added, referring to the type of geometry taught in a typical high school class. "Different regions of space are curved differently: Some have smaller volume than in the Euclidean case, others are larger. In the case of our model, we only have regions that are larger. When you take a realistic model, it is not clear whether the regions that are smaller balance out the regions that are larger."

One demonstration of space-time curvature occurs with gravitational lensing, a phenomenon that happens when a huge mass (such as a group of galaxies) bends the light of stars or galaxies behind the mass from Earth's vantage point.

The research has been submitted to the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics and was detailed online on the preprint website Arxiv.

http://news.yahoo.com/cosmic-tardis-universe-common-doctor-223921484.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Doctor Who turns 50: Watch the BBC's commemoration
This minute-long clip features appearances by all 11 actors who have played the legendary sci-fi character
By Scott Meslow | 10:05am ET

'Doctor Who: 50 Years' Trailer - The Day of the Doctor - Doctor Who 50th Anniversary - BBC One

Doctor Who fans have been waiting for months to see Doctor Who star Matt Smith make his penultimate appearance as the character in next month's "The Day of the Doctor." But while the upcoming episode will feature no less than three confirmed actors playing Doctor Who in his various incarnations, fans can get a glimpse of all 11 actors who have played the Doctor in this minute-long teaser designed to promote the show's highly anticipated 50th anniversary episode.

As the clip indicates, the episode is designed to pay tribute to the character's extended history. "The Day of the Doctor" will feature current Doctor Who stars Matt Smith and Jenna-Louise Coleman and their predecessors, David Tennant and Billie Piper. John Hurt will also appear as another "forgotten" Doctor — a role that was briefly teased in "The Name of the Doctor" earlier this year. Persistent rumors suggest that one or more of the show's older Doctors might also make an appearance.

While "The Day of the Doctor" is the main attraction, it's not the only thing the network has in store for Doctor Who fans. The BBC has announced a wide range of programs designed to commemorate the Timelord on his 50th birthday, from a drama about the creation of the series (An Adventure in Space and Time) to a screening of a restored version of An Unearthly Child, the first-ever episode of the series. Diehard fans can even buy tickets to see "The Day of the Doctor" live in movie theaters for a special 3D screening on November 23.


http://theweek.com/article/index/251415/doctor-who-turns-50-watch-the-bbcs-commemoration

[Buster's Uncle]

The Night of the Doctor: A Mini Episode - Doctor Who: The Day of the Doctor Prequel - BBC

[Buster's Uncle]

You must watch this very funny vid...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01m3kfy

[Mylochka]

Quel domage!   

[Valka]

The Five(ish) Doctors is wonderful! I loved the part where the "Daleks" are asked if they understand how important this whole thing is, and the "Dalek" nods its eyepiece!

[Rusty Edge]

I started watching Dr III, saw all of IV, some of V. 
While it 's true that I was losing interest, because V just didn't seem that serious about saving the world...
There were multi-year periods in my life when I thought I had better things to do than watch television intentionally. That was probably one of them.

I never got back into it afterwards, although I saw episodes now and then.

I much preferred IV and his sidekicks.


I am glad to see a science fiction series about time travel last so long.

[Buster's Uncle]

I can't get past Rory being a 2,000 year-old Auton...