Quotulatiousness

March 27, 2013

A collaboration that should have happened

Filed under: Britain, Media — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:48

I missed this when it was posted last week:

Paul McCartney has revealed how he once asked electronic music pioneer Delia Derbyshire — creator of the Doctor Who theme music — to remake one of the Beatles’ most famous songs, Yesterday.

The former Beatle said that as a fan of experimental music he wanted the BBC Radiophonic Workshop composer to create a different version of the song.

[. . .]

Derbyshire is hailed as one of the most important figures in the history of electronic music in the UK. As part of the Radiophonic Workshop — the avant-garde wing of the BBC’s sound effects department — she created the distinctive signature tune for new TV series Doctor Who in 1963, using musique concrète techniques and sine- and square-wave oscillators to realise Ron Grainer’s score.

Derbyshire stopped making music in the 1970s, only rekindling her interest after working with Pete Kember (once of the group Spaceman 3) shortly before her death in 2001 at the age of 64.

Yesterday originally appeared on the Beatles’ 1965 album Help!. It is one of the most covered songs in the history of popular music, with more than 2,200 versions thought to exist.

May 9, 2011

Gadgets from science fiction

Filed under: Media, Technology — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:55

Caleb Cox rounds up ten geeky gadgets from science fiction shows and movies that he thinks we’d all like to have:

Tomorrow is always round the corner in the world of tech, and gadgets that started life in the imaginations of mad folk are starting to become a possibility.

Tools that give us superpowers may seem impossible, but ultramobile computing is a reality these days, with commonplace kit that seems more capable than devices Gene Roddenberry dreamt up.

As we’ve already looked at fantasy blades you wished you owned, it’s about time we talked-up the fantasy tech, after all, we are Reg Hardware. So here’s ten of our favourite gadgets from popular culture that may or may not be the tech of the future.

Let us know if there’s anything you think we’ve missed and give us your views on its commercial prospects in the comments section at the end.

His choices are:

  • Cloaking device — Predator
  • Holodeck — Star Trek: The Next Generation
  • Hologram communication — Star Wars
  • Orgasmatron — The Sleeper
  • Peril Sensitive Sunglasses — The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
  • Personality glasses — Joe 90
  • Sonic Screwdriver — Doctor Who
  • Timebooth — Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure
  • Telepathic Lens — The Lensman series
  • Teleportation belt — The Tomorrow People

January 6, 2011

Even Time Lords could get confused by this matchup

Filed under: Britain, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 07:18

I can’t improve on The Register‘s take:

Doctor Who the 10th, David Tennant, is planning to get hitched to his fictional daughter Georgia Moffett, who also happens to be the real daughter of his fictional fifth incarnation.

Moffet is the real-life fruit of former Time Lord Peter Davison’s loins, and played Who offspring Jenny in 2008’s The Doctor’s Daughter. Davison and his future son-in-law Tennant appeared together in 2007’s Children in Need Doctor Who special Time Crash, well after Ms Moffet really existed, but before she was spawned as her soon-to-be husband’s television child.

Paradoxically, this means that Davison and Tennant came together as both individuals and the same person, while one was the father of the future daughter of the other.

December 10, 2010

The people behind the original Doctor Who

Filed under: Britain, History, Media — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 08:08

A photo set on the BBC Archive shows some of the folks who made the original Doctor Who series:

Also from BBC Archives, the Radio Times review of the first episode:

Also of interest, the original notes on creating a BBC science fiction series.

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