KTEH Doctor Who Blog

Last week I left off talking about the making of our winning short "Dr. Who 45 years and Beyond." This week I'll pick up where I left off which was right around the deadline of March 15th 2009.

We had submitted our finished video to compete against what appeared to be 9 other entries. While we had fun making ours we thought for sure other entries like The Doctor's Destiny, The Evil Bubblebot and The Burning Giraffe had a better chance of winning than we did.

For a start, they all had a nice short narrative and were generally all very effective if not a lot of fun.  While we had nice costumes and 'canon' Doctors going for us I thought the novelty of the short would wear thin.

Well I was soon to be pretty surprised! After some delays the voting finally commenced on May 15th right here on the blog. My friends and I felt pretty honored that we took the lead quickly and by the time voting closed on June 17th, we had won by a landslide. We felt pretty happy about that, until we realized having won, we had no idea how we'd approach hosting our own marathon.

There were to be a few more bumps in the road. Once I was contacted by Stacy about how to move forward I was told we were given carte blanche to come up with whatever we wanted. So many ideas were proposed and discarded. A Mock "Trial of a Time Lord" linking theme. Doctors introducing their favorite episodes in character. A Mock PBS Pledge Drive and even a Star Trek parody crossover were among those brainstormed and finally discarded for lack of time/resources.

I lucked out making contact with some fellow prop builders/cosplayers (such as Robert Kovacs and Paul Salamoff featured on tonight's show) at Gallifrey One last February who were all willing to help out, show off their cool wares on camera and talk about their hobby.

From here, I based the framework of our hosting which was presentational/educational on the series itself as the best route to go given our timeframe… (more…)

Thanks for watching the first installment of the Doctor Who Marathon.  We'll have more next week!

Last night's transmission is on its way to Mars. Luckily, we saved a copy on YouTube:

From "How Who Are You?" Winner Bob Mitsch –

I hope all the San Jose Dr. Who fans have enjoyed the start of the "How Who Are You?" marathon!

The one thing we've been asked that we didn't have time to cover in the studio was how we made our winning short entry. Well… it all started with one e-mail.

The subject line was "Dr. Who Fan Film Competition" and it simply contained a link to this blog discussing the rules for the "How Who Are You?" Competition. It was forwarded to me by my friend who cosplays the Third Doctor in our group and wishes to remain anonymous. I shall refer to him appropriately as John Smith.

He knew what with all the Who costumes and props I've assembled and my desire to eventually make a fan film, that this would be right up my alley. I told John I'd think about it. It was the day after Christmas and I was in a post-holiday meal coma, so fan films were not foremost on my mind.

Fast forward 7 weeks later with the Gallifrey One convention in Los Angeles approaching quickly. My friends were lined up to play all 10 incarnations of the Doctor for a skit in the Masquerade, which you can still watch here:

as well as a photoshoot we'd planned for that Saturday.

It occurred to me to use this opportunity to shoot a fan film entry for KTEH while we were at it.
So I took inspiration from Tony Lee's rather fabulous comic book mini series Doctor Who: The Forgotten and decided to focus the short on the Doctor himself through-the-years using our costumes/props as a linking motif.
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They hog the set!

KTEH let Doctor Who fans take control of the studio for three nights of amazing costumes, fabulous props and deadly menaces. The top vote-getters of KTEH's "How Who Are You?" video competition were Bob Mitsch, Aubrey West and Van Donovan.

In the first segment, they introduce themselves and play their winning video: "45 Years and Beyond." Filmed at the Gallifrey One convention in Los Angeles, the video features sonic screwdrivers, trusty umbrellas, psychic paper and… ten, count 'em, TEN DOCTORS!

In the second segment, the Doctors discuss the history of the sonic screwdriver and show us replicas of every design that was used in the classic series, TV movie and new series of Doctor Who.

In the next video, the Doctors defend KTEH from cyber-conversion!