Tennant the doctor no more!

A collective sigh was heard across the world this morning as David Tennant announced he is stepping down as Doctor Who next year.

Here is the story:

>>>"David Tennant will take his last trip in the Tardis in Doctor Who next year after deciding to quit the hit television show.
The British actor has announced he will no longer play the Timelord after he finishes filming four more special episodes to be screened in Britain next year and in early 2010.
Tennant, 37, is the 10th actor to play the role and has been hugely popular with fans of the long-running BBC sci-fi drama.
''When Doctor Who returns in 2010 it won't be with me,'' Tennant said in a video message to the crowd at the National TV Awards in London where he won the outstanding drama performance prize.
''The 2009 shows will be my last. I love this show and if I don't take a deep breath and make the decision to move on now, then I simply never will and you'll be wheeling me out of the Tardis in my bath chair.''
Bookmakers are already taking bets on who will replace Tennant as the Doctor in the fifth series scheduled for 2010, with Cold Feet star James Nesbitt, Life on Mars actor John Simm and fellow British actors Paterson Joseph and David Morrisey the favourites.
Tennant went on his first intergalactic adventure in the Tardis when he took over the role in 2005 from Christopher Eccleston, who starred as the Doctor when the BBC resurrected the show after a 16-year break.
Fans were left wondering in the last episode if Tennant would return in the role after the Doctor defeated his enemies the Daleks to save the universe and then began to regenerate but did not complete the process. Tennant will appear in a Christmas special, The Next Doctor, before filming his final four special episodes in January.
The show's long-time executive producer and writer, Russell T.Davies, said, ''I've been lucky and honoured to work with David over the past few years and it's not over yet, the 10th Doctor still has five spectacular hours left; after which, I might drop an anvil on his head. Or maybe a piano. A radioactive piano. But we're planning the most enormous and spectacular ending, so keep watching.'' AAP >>>

I dont know what I shall do. David has made Dr Who my intellectual man crush and I have enjoyed him so. I will miss him muchly.

Fey as Palin? Oh its too good.

I am going to be a vulture with this post. I'm stealing it from this page. This is one of those shows I'd watch if I had more time.

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The premiere of the 34th season of Saturday Night Live was one of the most eagerly anticipated events of the TV year. And, for the most part, the production lived up to the hype.

Much of the buzz came from having Baltimore's Michael Phelps, the eight-time gold medal winner at the summer Olympics, as host. Phelps made his acting debut in eight sketches - a demanding load for any comedy rookie - and did OK until losing his concentration in the very last sketch of the night, a spoof of his high-calorie diet.

But the real comedic thunder, the sketch that folks will be talking and arguing and getting all culture-war-crazy about, was the show opener with Emmy-award-winner and SNL veteran Tina Fey as Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.

Fey appeared with the gifted SNL regular Amy Poehler, who portrayed Sen. Hillary Clinton, in a joint "nonpartisan" address on the "ugly role that sexism is playing in the campaign." Palin was also the target of innumerable barbs in the "Weekend Update" segment.
All praise to executive producer Lorne Michaels: He knew what the politically savvy core audience of SNL wanted and he gave it to them before anyone even yelled, "Live from New York."Playing off the news of ABC anchorman Charles Gibson's interview with Palin on Thursday, the sketch has Poehler's Clinton saying she doesn't agree with the Bush Doctrine. And then, Fey's Palin quickly adds, "I don't even know what that is."

The studio audience screamed in delight.

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whatcha watching?

Last night was the finale of Attenboroughs 'Tiger - spy in the jungle'. Awesome, awesome viewing. And sunday night was 'Wild China: Tibet'. Also very awesome tv!

There isnt much better than a good nature doco to open your eyes and connect with your spirit.

Speaking of tv, there are a few ads that I am liking currently.

1. Cant go past a bit of frank singing about a bus.

2. The new Saab animal ad with great music.

3. What is it with car ads at the moment? Cant go past a bit of biased volvo action.

I have my sources..

I just got a really interesting email from my Mum. We share a love of documentaries but she is more into the gritty stuff. She is a big fan of medical shows such as RPA and Medical Emergency whereas you wont get me watching those. I dont like gore. I stay away from horror movies and roller coasters.

I thought the message she sent was very important and I do try to be on the frontline with my issues. So, here is her email in its raw form... edited only slightly by me.

Dear Reader,

I watched this documentary on tv the other night about China's one child policy, which left me feeling very sad and frustrated.

While I can understand that years ago something had to be done about China's exploding population the 'one child policy' has caused problems.
The situation today is that in the rural areas alot of male children around four or five years old are being kidnapped by child traffickers and taken hundreds of miles away and sold to families who have either been unable to have a male child or who do not want the inconvenience of rearing a baby so opt to have a ready made child.

The Government representatives in those outlying areas have told the parents of kidnapped children not to speak to foreigners or make a fuss about losing a child but a couple of families desperate to find their children came forward to meet in secret and talk.

Some parents after looking everywhere for two years for their child end up having another baby but because of the one child policy you cannot get a birth permit and if found out the fine is so huge that the parents often have to sell the child to the traffickers to pay off the fine. You see, if a child has no birth permit then that child does not exist and cannot register for anything in life.


One couple had to go to hospital because of birth problems and so the authorities realised they had no birth permit and they had to sell their baby.
Abortion is legal and encouraged in China and so now many parents wait for the first ultrasound and if it is not a boy then they abort as in Chinese society only a male child is treasured. As a result of this there are millions more males than females and hence another problem has occured. Many men will never find a wife.
In the rural areas young girls from 14 - 18 are being kidnapped by the traffickers and sold to wealthy city families and kept as upcoming wives for the male sons. Again families are devastated to lose their daughters.

This program followed a private investigator who tried to help families recover their children - as he said finding the small children is impossible because they are too young and too traumatised to speak up but with the teenage girls some of them when they get a touch of freedom do call their parents or write letters giving information and we were able to see one girl snatched back for her family.

It seems to me that these parents whose hearts were breaking spoke with such gentleness, whilst tears ran down their faces and it is obvious they have been brought up with such submissiveness. Alot of them who had lost boy children cried most of all when they talked about letting down their parents who no longer had a male child to carry on their name.

One mother said "I worry when it is raining that my child may get wet and I worry when it is hot that he may need a cool drink. I worry when it is cold if he is warm but most of all I worry because one day when he was being noisy I said to him 'you must behave or I will have to give you away' and my heart breaks because he will think that I have done that."

-Mum

A letter from Palin..

Saturday night I turned the tv over to watch a new series, that of Michael Palin and 'New Europe'. I dont really watch much tv but I am a huge fan of nature and travel documentaries. Particularly those narrated or hosted by intelligent, witty and... well... older men. I grew up watching David Attenborough and Parkinson. It's ingrown. And episode one of this new series was really good. Who better to introduce it than the man himself. Over to you, Michael.


WELCOME TO NEW EUROPE


Like all my journeys, New Europe was largely the product of an insatiable curiosity. I thought I knew my own continent, but I realised that almost half of it had been closed to me, by politics and ideology, for most of my life. The closer I looked at the eastern half of Europe the more I felt that it had been misrepresented, or even ignored during this time, lumped together in a great blur called Eastern Europe. The predominant colour was grey, the predominant images were of scarcity or conflict. I couldn’t believe that Eastern Europe was as depressed and lifeless as the clichés portrayed it and set out to make a series which would hopefully show the other side of the far side of the continent.



We began filming on May 16th 2006 in the Julian Alps in Slovenia and I delivered my last piece to camera on Rugen Island in the Baltic almost a year later. Our total filming time was just short of six months, approximately the same time it took me to write the book. As soon as we arrived in Slovenia I knew that we were not going to be short of natural beauty and throughout most of the filming the sun shone and revealed eastern Europe as anything but grey. The Danube Delta, the Carpathian Mountains, the Curonian Spit on the Baltic Coast and Cappadocia in Turkey were strikingly beautiful locations. But the main bonus of this journey was the rich variety of people and countries. Since the collapse of the Soviet Empire , a host of new independent states has emerged , all anxious to establish their own identity, parade their own culture and celebrate their own history. The filming and the writing of the book was an intense experience, but an uplifting one, as I learnt so much about my fellow Europeans and came away from it all feeling a cautious but encouraging optimism. As I conclude on camera at the end of the series, there does seem a real hope that Europe could, for the first time in many centuries, be united by co-operation rather than conflict.



We visited twenty countries, twice as many as in Sahara and Himalaya combined, so there was no way that this series seemed tight or constricted. Six one-hour episodes turned into seven but despite that there wasn’t time to do justice to every country we went through. I can only apologise for those that felt hard done by, but everywhere is covered in much more detail in the book and in the DVD.



My account of New Europe is made up as ever from the contents of hand-scribbled note-books which are my most precious travelling companions. For the first time in seven series I lost one of my books, stolen, together with my shoulder bag at Budapest airport. It contained my notes on the Baltic states. But the experiences were so vivid in my memory that I was able to piece most of them together, and with the help of impressions recorded into my personal recorder( as used by Jack Bauer in 24) the damage was not fatal !



I've called eastern Europe New Europe because I had a string sense of vigour and vitality and hope in the countries liberated from years as anonymous pieces of someone else’s empires. They want to speak for themselves and I hope New Europe gives them a voice.



Europe is a much more tangible concept than I thought when I set out. East and west share a heritage and a history going back over centuries. We need to find out more about each other, to learn respect for each other and to do away with the old ideas of Us and Them. The future will be that much more secure if we can all be Us.

Michael Palin, London.
September 2007.