The contest is only open for children in the UK, and only those agde 6-12. The lucky child with the winning design gets to meet the Doctor Who cast and crew, and perhaps best of all gets to help oversee production of the design.

The re-design is specifically for the TARDIS console - not, sadly, for the outer appearance of the ship as well. The winning design will be used in a new upcoming episode of the show. We're curious to see how they work this in and even more curious to see the TARDIS console as designed by a ten-year-old.

The new branding was released in a video by the BBC this morning:

New showrunner Steven Moffat is, of course, pleased with the new look:

A new logo. The eleventh logo for the eleventh Doctor - those grand old words, Doctor Who, suddenly looking newer than ever. And look at that, something really new - an insignia! DW in TARDIS form! Simple and beautiful, and most important of all, a completely irresistible doodle. I apologise to school notebooks everywhere, because in 2010 that's what they're going to be wearing.

The new logo will debut onscreen next year with Matt Smith's arrival as the Doctor.

[BBC America]

Can people in the UK confirm that this is not how female police officers actually dress? Not that I'm opposed to fetishwear on Doctor Who — far from it. I'm just curious. And yes, you can glimpse Matt Smith wearing the ruined remains of David Tennant's costume in some of these photos, which come from the season opener. Apparently the new Doctor gets the post-regeneration munchies really bad, and runs to an ice cream truck. Or is there more to it than that?

Many thanks to Alun_Vega for these pics. And there are tons more at the link. [Alun_Vega on Flickr]

Suck
Vampires and rock stars together and rocking the stage, what are the odds? The latest whack at the dead horse we call vampire movies, Suck, is on its way to Toronto's Film Festival. But this isn't your average Vampire Rock Star film with actors in fake leather gyrating about on stage with fangs - This movie has leathery old rock stars gyrating with vampires on stage. For instance...

Written and directed by musician/actor Rob Stefaniuk - and featuring acting turns from
the likes of Iggy Pop, Alice Cooper, Henry Rollins and Moby - SUCK, follows a group of rock ‘n' roll wannabes in search of immortality and a record deal. Seemingly doomed to roadtrip doldrums and dives, the band The Winners break their slump when their female bass player disappears one night with a studly, stylin' vampire. She returns charged with sexual charisma that creates audience frenzy and eventually ensnares the rest of the band. Their "hook" launches them to fame. But fame turns out to be a different
kind of Hell than AC/DC promised.

Following an "incident" on a national radio show with "Rockn' Roger" The Winners hit mega-stardom beyond their wildest dreams. But Joey is haunted by an eerie bartender with a dark secret. And legendary vampire hunter, Eddie Van Helsing, is on their tail tracking them down despite his fear of the dark. But when a veteran music producer calls them on becoming a vampire freak show, their rock'n'roll bubble bursts.

Dust
Next up are two heavy on the art and emotion films pointed out by the lovely people over at Quiet Earth. First up is Dust: the movie that brings brother and sister together in the biblical sense, after the world had been all-but-destroyed in an outbreak. But what happens when the female half of the twins meets a new man?

DUST Trailer from Dust Trailer on Vimeo.

Here is the official synopsis:

Elodie and Elias are sixteen-year-old twins who live by themselves in the shadow of the dam of a man-made lake. We slowly find out that the world they are living in is depopulated, except for a few scattered survivors with whom they have no contact. Surrounded by this total emptiness, Elodie and Elias have gotten closer to each other than ordinary twins.

One day, on their way home after bathing in the lake, they discover Gabriel. He is a boy slightly older than them who just escaped a vicious attempt on his life. The twins agree to hide him at their place so he can recover from his wounds. This out to be a fateful decision: soon, Gabriel and Elodie fall in love with each other. Although they try to hide it from Elias, he is bound to find out eventually that he has lost his sister to someone else.

The conflict that slowly developes between the three teenagers is amplified by the isolation they find themselves in. Living in this empty world, they have no one else to turn to but themselves. This only serves to complicate an already tense situation which have dire consequences for one of them.

Womb
Do you love your significant other so much you'd grow a clone of them inside your womb if they tragically died before their twilight years? I still think that it's awfully creepy, but you be the judge. Also good eye readers that is the new Doctor Matt Smith.

Official Synopsis:

When Rebecca returns to her grandfather's house, she meets her childhood sweetheart Thomas again. Thomas leaves his girlfriend Rose and their love picks up where it left off, until Thomas dies in a car accident. Devastated, the young woman contemplates suicide until she finds consolation in the idea of cloning. Although society does not fully accept it yet, she plans to give birth to Thomas, bringing her lost love to life (again). Living in Rebecca's grandfather's remote old house, Thomas grows up believing his father died in an accident. Rebecca never mentions cloning. In spite of their secret, Rebecca and Thomas lead an almost normal life until Rose finds out about them …

Smith announced back in February that he was about to start work on Hungarian director Benedek Fliegauf's first English-language feature, about a woman (Casino Royale's Eva Green) so stricken with grief after her husband's death that she decides to clone him in the hopes of bringing him back. Now the trailer has been released, along with a more detailed synopsis:

When Rebecca returns to her grandfather's house, she meets her childhood sweetheart Thomas again. Thomas leaves his girlfriend Rose and their love picks up where it left off, until Thomas dies in a car accident. Devastated, the young woman contemplates suicide until she finds consolation in the idea of cloning. Although society does not fully accept it yet, she plans to give birth to Thomas, bringing her lost love to life (again). Living in Rebecca's grandfather's remote old house, Thomas grows up believing his father died in an accident. Rebecca never mentions cloning. In spite of their secret, Rebecca and Thomas lead an almost normal life until Rose finds out about them …

Certainly, with this blurring of lover and offspring, Womb will likely veer into some seat-squirmingly uncomfortable territory, but unlike certain other movies about trying to bring back loved ones via cloning (read: Godsend), it actually sounds like Womb will explore the ethical issues that surround human cloning, and the relationships and expectations that could severely impede a cloned person's individuality. And, though we get disappointingly little Matt Smith in the trailer, Womb could be an excellent opportunity to watch him spread his emotional wings.

[via Quiet Earth]

Seriously, if "Fantastic" was Christopher Eccleston's catch phrase as the Doctor, we've decided that "I'm sorry" is Tennant's. What's fascinating is to watch all the different ways Tennant can apologize, from flippant mania to utter agonizing sincerity. That one word actually captures something about the range of emotion his Doctor displays. Matt Smith has a lot of work to do to win us over, after Tennant.

How about that bow tie? Also, are those pants TIGHT ROLLED at the bottom? I fear that the new Doctor may be . . . a hipster. Then again, it always takes me an episode or two to warm up to the new face of the Doctor. New companion Amy Pond (played by Karen Gillan) is stop-in-your-tracks gorgeous, she's certainly giving Rose a run for her money.

Here's a bigger and better picture of the two.

It's Matt Smith's first day on set and the two have been filming the episode titled "Come Alive."

Picture via BBC

Here are five pieces of wisdom that we've gleaned from the last six months (and handful of days):

President Obama Is The Greatest Hero Of All
As his many comic book appearances have demonstrated, there's no end to our current president's ability to save the world from any genre of threat. Amazing Spider-Man has him fighting supervillains, Youngblood shows him carrying massive laserguns to shoot renegade soldiers taking over the White House, Drafted gives us an alien-invasion-battlin' Barack and Barack The Barbarian brings everything back down to sword and sorcery basics. He's like a modern-day Arnold Schwarzenegger - and enough to make us wonder just how the comic industry would've dealt with John McCain winning the election instead.

Threats To Humanity Are Getting Weaker
Last year, it was the Large Hadron Collider and the possibility that it would rip existence apart when someone flipped the switch, and this year, it was... Swine Flu. It can't just be me, can it? I mean, Swine Flu... Doesn't that seem like a step down from the technological "Our Quest For Knowledge May Destroy Us All" conceptual genius that threatened us last year? Even calling it "the H1N1 Influenza Virus" still sounds kind of shit. Okay, so there's no chance of "hardon" spoonerisms, but still: Pandemics? Haven't we done that already? I'm holding out hope that sewer monsters will brighten the remaining months of the year, however.

The BBC Should Stop Making Us Feel Old
Yes, we know that it's just one of those aimless homilies that you know that you're getting old when the policemen and doctors start looking younger, but selecting a twelve year old to be the new Doctor Who really doesn't make us feel very good about ourselves nonetheless. I know that we started with the oldest of the Doctors and have progressively gotten younger since then - well, roughly - but between David Tennant and Matt Smith, I'm convinced that we'll have our first pre-teen Timelord by 2015. And then, the next one will be a little baby, just like in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Joss Whedon Can Defy The Laws Of Nature
If nothing else, the renewal of Dollhouse proves that he can defy the laws of television. I wouldn't put money on him being unable to fly if he really wanted to.

Fuck Dystopia
Terminator Salvation and Watchmen - two downbeat movies offering popcorn versions of pessimistic views of humanity ("Ultimately, man's greed and laziness will lead us to become disconnected from our fellow man and controlled by the machines and mechanisms that we created to ease our daily existences - but doesn't this slow-motion action sequence look hot?") - both failed to meet expectation at the box office, while Star Trek's hopeful, colorful version of a future that may be too lens-flarey to be cuddly but is nonetheless positive surpassed expectations. Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles also died a slow death on television. The obvious conclusion? No-one wants to their entertainment to end with the lesson "We're all screwed." The Dark Knight's glossy hopelessness was so last year, people. We hadn't experienced so much of the economic downturn and/or the hopetrain of Obama back then. We were all so much more innocent and desperate to be mistreated by our movies. (Along the same lines - Size Matters: Terminator, featuring human-sized robots, fails to become a hit. Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen, featuring giant robots, breaks box office records. I think you can see what I'm saying here. See also: Robot On Robot Action Is More Acceptable Than Robot On Batman Action and Megan Fox Is Hotter Than Moon Bloodgood. Sorry, But There It Is.)

Bolstered with this new knowledge, we look forward to what the rest of the year can teach us - presuming, of course, that the sewer monsters don't decide to team up with Joss Whedon and end the world before then. Pray for us.

According to British tabloid the Daily Star, Who producers have decided that Smith's first nemeses will be... the Daleks. According to the traditional anonymous source,

Fans may take a while to get used to Matt as the Doctor so it makes sense to have him fight his most famous enemies.

I believe there's a one word answer to this, and it goes a little something like this: No. Yes, audiences may need some time to get used to Smith, but that is no excuse for bringing back the over-used Daleks yet again (Especially if they're going to make an appearance in David Tennant's last episodes, as is likely knowing Russell T. Davies' love for reusing characters until you're sick of them), especially when using the Daleks runs the risk of making those audiences feel as if Smith's Dalek story isn't as good as any of Tennant's. Here's hoping that this rumor turns out to be yet another random tabloid fantasy.

Daleks To Return To Doctor Who? [Press Association/Google]

Apparently, there are rumblings that spring 2010 will only see the transmission of the first six episodes of the eleventh Doctor's debut series. The show would then take a break until around October, at which time the BBC would broadcast the remain seven episodes. A Christmas special would then close out the year.

If I had to guess, this could have something to do with the World Cup, which will take place from June 11 to July 11 in 2010. The BBC might well remember the last episode to come into conflict with a big World Cup match. The series two episode "The Satan Pit", which faced off against England's first match in the 2006 tournament, was the lowest rated episode of the new series. The move to split the series in two might also be meant to avoid the more general ratings drop Doctor Who experiences in the summer, as the weather gets nicer and more families spend Saturday evenings outside.

On a less pragmatic and more creative level, this could allow for the series to put in a truly massive, months-spanning cliffhanger at the midseason break, something the series has never really done before. Generally speaking, the need to preserve the Christmas specials as events unto themselves has meant they had to be separate from the stories before and after them, precluding the possibility of a big cliffhanger at the end of either the previous episode thirteen or the special itself. (Admittedly, "Doomsday" and "Last of the Time Lords" threw in random teasers for their subsequent Christmas specials, and "Journey's End" almost did the same. But those were all incidental to the story that had preceded it and neither of the two that actually aired placed the Doctor in danger.)

There's something wonderfully cruel and perverse (and thus very Steven Moffat) about the thought of ending episode six with Matt Smith and Karen Gillan in mortal peril from some terrible enemy, only to suddenly cut to the words, "See you in six months!" Frankly, I'd be disappointed if Moffat didn't do it.

[Life, Doctor Who & Combon]

All the Doctors from Patrick Troughton to Sylvester McCoy had their faces superimposed on their respective time tunnels and/or star fields. Generally speaking, the images were from photos taken just after the actors were cast in the role, which meant they often looked a bit ridiculous and less and less like the Doctor as the years passed.

Easily the silliest of these title images was Sylvester McCoy's, for which his face was inexplicably painted silver and he was made to wink at the screen. It really has to be seen (or reseen) to be believed:

This all may sound like a rather minor change, but I have to admit I was slightly disappointed way back in 2005 when the new series's opening titles didn't feature a crappy picture of a shell-shocked Christopher Eccleston. For whatever reason, I find this silly little convention to be an important part of the original show's charm. With all the other classic parts of the series's history already having been revived, this is one element I'm very glad to see make a comeback.

[Bleeding Cool]

Gillan previously appeared in last year's "Fires Of Pompeii" as a soothsayer, and she's also appeared in the Scottish drama Rebus, plus Stacked, The Kevin Bishop Show and James Nesbitt's forthcoming film Outcast. "When she auditioned alongside Matt we knew we had something special," said Piers Wenger, head of drama for BBC Wales.

New showrunner Steven Moffat also gushes:

Writer and executive producer Steven Moffat said they saw some "amazing actresses" but Gillan "walked through the door the game was up".

He described her as "funny, and clever, and gorgeous, and sexy. Or Scottish, which is the quick way of saying it".

"A generation of little girls will want to be her. And a generation of little boys will want them to be her too," he added.

Insert obligatory comment about how young she is, and how young the new Doctor is, and why can't the Doctor still be a crotchety old man traveling around with a couple schoolteachers and his granddaughter. [BBC News]

British newspaper the Daily Mirror is reporting that the interior of Doctor Who's home will be given "a radical new look" when the show returns for its fifth season in 2010. The decision was, according to the paper, made by incoming showrunner Stephen Moffat, in part to make sure that the time machine will look good in high-definition.

An anonymous source told the paper that the new look will be "the most hitech, intricate Tardis ever," which makes me a little nervous. The Tardis... high tech? I kind of liked the steampunk chic of the Russell T. Davies era, myself...

Tardis to be redesigned for arrival of new Time Lord Matt Smith [Mirror.co.uk]

British newspaper The Sun is reporting that Smith has signed on for a three-year stint as the BBC's new Timelord, with the option for the contract to be extended a further two years if necessary. The reason for the long term nature of the deal, according to the papers' anonymous source? Abandonment issues, apparently:

Bosses don't want Matt doing a David and leaving when things are going great.

So, in order to stop Smith "doing a David," they sign him up for three years... which is a year less than Tennant spent on the show? Something tells me that the anonymous source may not be entirely real here.

'Who' star to earn £1m in five-year deal [Digital Spy]

Womb — which will also star Bond Girl Eva Green (Casino Royale) — is being marketed as "one of the most touching and impressive love stories we have read in recent times," and takes place in a future where a grieving widow turns to cloning to return her husband to her. Expect moral and ethical dilemmas more than explosions and running around, perhaps, but still; there's something about this announcement that gives me hope about Smith's Who after all.

Eva Green To Star In Womb [Empire Online]

The make-your-own-tenth-Doctor kit is something you can make yourself at home — all you need is the card, the little bottle full of some kind of green liquid, a hand (from an action figure), and a chain. Sadly, I can't find the original source of the image — all I found is this person on Etsy begging for someone to make it for them and send it to New Zealand for $5.

If you're the creator of the kit, or you know who is, please drop me a line and I'll credit her or him properly at once.

But don't panic! The new eleventh Doctor, Matt Smith, got a ringing endorsement from the Moff himself (no, not our Moff), Steven Moffat. Says new executive producer Moffat:

The Doctor is a very special part, and it takes a very special actor to play him. You need to be old and young at the same time, a boffin and an action hero, a cheeky schoolboy and the wise old man of the universe.

As soon as Matt walked through the door, and blew us away with a bold and brand new take on the Time Lord, we knew we had our man.

Haters of his current hairstyle will be sad, though, to know that Moffat also cited Smith's touseled coiffure as one of the reasons he'll be a great Doctor. Also, says producer Piers Wenger:

There's a quirkiness to him, an unevenness to his face, a lot of stuff going on behind the eyes. He hasn't got an entirely modern face.

(Honestly the more I think about it, the more I agree with Tom Baker, who always said the role of the Doctor is "actor-proof.") But should you still entertain nagging doubts, here's a clip of the new Doctor hooking up with Rose Tyler, from episode six of "Diary Of A Call Girl":

[clip via SunnyTyler001]

Britain's Daily Telegraph is reporting that singer Lily Allen is in the lead for taking over the co-driver's seat when Matt Smith takes over as the Doctor in 2010, although new executive producer Piers Wenger isn't giving anything away:

Having got the casting of the Doctor out of the way, the companion role is where we will be looking next. Someone terribly exciting like Billie Piper, who was at the beginning of her acting career but who had a profile for other reasons, would be great. We are looking for someone whose light can burn brightly... We would never cast anyone on the basis of their celebrity, but if Lily wanted to audition we would be delighted. It would be a lot of fun.

According to the newspaper, Smallville alumnus Kelly Brook and former teen popster Rachel Stevens are also in the running for the role. Well, it worked for Billie Piper, after all...

Search for new Doctor Who's partner begins [Telegraph.co.uk]

Yes, this poll is slightly tongue-in-cheek, but I've also tried to isolate a bunch of moments where the show's format changed significantly and semi-permanently. You could make case for any one of these being the show's shark-jump-of-no-return. What do you think — has the show managed to time-warp past the downsides of all of these changes?

It's not an age thing, I should point out. Although, yes, 26 seems a little young to me to be a Doctor, that's entirely a thought probably based more in my own bitterness at realizing that I'm eight years older than a timelord and feeling as if all of my life's achievements pale in comparison to singlehandedly saving the universe on a weekly basis or traveling around all time and space in a blue police box; Peter Davison was only three years older when he got the role back in 1981, and I didn't have any problem with his age, after all. It's also not a comment on whether or not Smith will be any good in the role; I can't think of that many things he's done that I've seen, so I don't have any real opinion one way or another.

No, my problem with the choice is this: He's a white male.

I shouldn't be surprised, of course; the Doctor has, since his creation, always been a white male. Ten actors have played him previously "in canon" (Peter Cushing and the all the stars of the Children In Need special being ignored), and each one of them has been distinctly caucasian and possessing of a penis (Well, to the best of my knowledge). But this was the regeneration where we were led to believe that anything was possible and that things could change. This was the regeneration where names like Patterson Joseph and Chiwetel Ejiofor were not only raised as possibilities but named by the BBC themselves as frontrunners for the role, with the Corporation also happily teasing that it was also very possible that a woman might be taking over the Tardis this time around.

Put it down, perhaps, to naivety and post-Obama optimism, but there was a buzz and excitement about the idea of the new Doctor being something other than the establishment figure that we'd been used to all these years. For my part, it wasn't any kind of affirmative action or "political correctness gone wild" (Hello to our Daily Mail readers) that made me eager to see Joseph in the role; it was the statement that such a choice would have represented. The Doctor is everyone, it would have said, and for everyone, and this particular Doctor is something you've not necessarily seen before. Even if he was a man, he wouldn't necessarily have been The Man, if you know what I mean.

Instead, we have Matt Smith, whose age is apparently controversial, but about whom, everything else seems... well, pretty conventional. And perhaps that's the point. Maybe the BBC didn't want to bring too much upset to their flagship family program, especially with the change in producers and showrunners, and worried that moving too far away from the familiar would make viewers leave the show in concern that it's not the same show they've loved for the last X number of years. If so, it's a shame, and - I think - a miscalculation; I really doubt that audiences would have had any problem with a black Doctor, or a female Doctor (or, for that matter, a black female Doctor, for anyone who wants to write fanfic that Martha Jones is actually a future Doctor herself); despite a stereotype and tradition for stuffiness, Britain is a strongly multicultural environment, and even if it wasn't, characters like Martha, or the admittedly-annoying Mickey, or even Captain Jack Harkness, had been quietly pushing the envelope on Who since its revival. Even if the BBC wasn't ready for a different kind of Doctor, the audience, I believe, was.

I'm almost left wondering, does this choice send the opposite message? Is there an accidental, implied "It's okay to be a companion if you're not white and male, but you'll never be the star of the show?" in selecting Smith over Joseph or someone else? The BBC was ready to tease the potential for a bold new era for the Doctor, after all, so they must have been aware of the messages that such a choice would have been sending. Does shying away from a non-white male lead after raising such hopes make the BBC look worse than just being a PR cocktease? Does it make them look racist, or afraid?

None of this is meant to suggest that Smith won't be a great Doctor. He certainly has a great team of people behind him, and I highly doubt that his selection was made without a lot of thought, auditions and back-and-forth; it's just that it feels like we were offered something more, for a brief second, and I'm still hung up on what might have been.

The Ruby in the Smoke

The Shadow in the North