Loose Cannon Reconstruction: The Wheel in Space

From the Loose Cannon mailing list:


Hi There

This is the first Loose Cannon mailing update for quite a while, it is around 2 years since we released Faceless Ones but we haven’t been sat idle in that time, we have been working away on new recons despite a lack of an update to our website

There have been several things gone on in that period which have delayed us from releasing stories, at present we have several stories which have episodes complete but not the usual extras we release along with them, we had been endeavoring to get these releases ready to go but there has been a recent development which has caused us to have a little bit of a rethink

As you will probably know Loose Cannon has always insisted on releasing our stories in VHS quality, the reason for this is we fully respect the BBC’s copyrights in the situation and have no wish to tread on their toes, we have been led to believe that the BBC are unlikely to take any action whilst the releases are in a degradable format, despite our best attempts to stop it our stories have been made available again and again over the years on eBay converted from our VHS versions onto DVD, this has become an increased problem as VHS as a format has now all but died, I suspect most of you keep your VHS players simply to play the recons on, indeed it’s the only reason we keep ours! As people get rid of their VHS machines an unfortunate side effect has been that eBay is an even more popular place to try to sell recons, in addition to this in more recent years YouTube has become a more and more popular place for people to view and share video content, once again we prefer to avoid YouTube for fear of offending the BBC, however as YouTube has increased in popularity it has become more and more difficult to avoid this, we have asked people again and again to remove our recons, most people are happy to comply and often do not realize we have an issue with it being on there but no sooner has one recon being removed someone puts it back up again, usually in all innocence, indeed in recent years we have simply given up trying to prevent it, we cannot force people to remove our stuff and YouTube is crammed full of Doctor Who related items other than recons varying from full episodes to peoples own edits of stories to animations, indeed not only are our recons up there, often in horrendous quality, people see fit to reedit them on occasion and add in a narrated audio, thus totally opposing our wishes not to distribute something the BBC could sell, in short whatever we do we cannot seem to stop the YouTube floodgates.

Now the recent development that has happened is one of our unreleased stories has appeared on YouTube, as episodes are completed we do give copies to people who have contributed to the recon, people often contribute photos, information, CGI etc, and we do ask them to keep the copy to themselves until the story gets a wider release, however the world being as it is people inevitably do a copy “just for my mate” then that person does one “just for their mate” and before you know it the episodes are beginning to circulate, in this case someone has uploaded The Wheel in Space to YouTube, once again without necessarily realizing the implications, this has left us in a bit of a quandary as we don’t yet have the extras ready we would like for a full release, however we would like the people who enjoy recons to be able to see this story, with that in mind we have decided to send this update to people explaining the situation and to see how things go, it seems churlish to ask for it to be taken down as it will inevitably be back up there again within days!, obviously at this stage we have no idea what will happen from this point but one way or the other we simply want as many people as possible to enjoy our work so whilst it is up there please follow this link to enjoy The Wheel in Space http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZZNyYwJOXo all of this story is now up there and we understand Web of Fear will be following, feel free to check in on our forum http://ianlevine.forumco.com/forum.asp?FORUM_ID=24 and keep an eye on our website www.recons.com and maybe even submit a review for this or any other story.

Thanks

Derek, Dean & Russ

Loose Cannon


Well, there you have it - enjoy! :-)

DVD Review: Doctor Who - Day of the Daleks

I must admit that like many fans who saw Day of the Daleks as a kid I was rather let down by the battle scene at the end. I think it was the second video I ever bought after Death to the Daleks - which I think is still awesome and under-rated to this day! So, when I heard that the DVD release was coming up, and that new CGI effects, footage and Dalek voices (by Nick Briggs) were to be added I was quite excited.

I must admit (and I hope my bosses don't read this!) that I took the day off work to watch this in one sitting. And being older I can appreciate the complex storyline a lot more than I ever could have as a seven year old. This pre-dates Terminator by over a decade and there is a similar complex script from Louis Marks revolving around time-travel paradoxes with complex characters from the 22nd Century attempting to alter the course of history. It is a bleak and dystopian vision of the future and it made all the more richer by the wonderful new CGI effects shots that blend in seamlessly with the original '70s ones.

I think that the new Dalek voices are excellent, more on par with the new series' ones. The original voices for this story were downright awful in my opinion - although some might disagree. I also think the new CGI work done for the battle scenes at the end are superb, and I ought to say a big 'well done' to all the team involved in bringing them to life. Barry Letts would've been proud!

For all it's original production faults, Day of the Daleks has been glossed up here and given a new lease of life. It means a whole new generation of fans can look back to it and discover the magic of the classic series again.

I must say that it's worth purchasing just to see the wonderful scene with Jon Pertwee as the Doctor drinking wine and eating cheese! A real gem, it gets a big thumbs up from me. One of the best DVD releases so far!

Let's just hope that Death to the Daleks gets equal treatment, it's long overdue... ;-)

DVD Review: Doctor Who - The Mind Robber

This one stands out in my mind, not just because it was the first black & white Doctor Who story I saw during a BBC2 repeat as a child in 1992, but because it has some really far out ideas in it. Far out ideas, even for a show like this, and brilliant performances by the lead cast - Patrick Troughton shines as the Doctor! I watched the DVD again this week and it still looks as fresh as ever thanks to the Restoration Team cleaning up the fuzzy old film print (you'll notice this if you've seen the VHS release) and the bonus material on the DVD is excellent too.

So what's the score? At the end of the previous story The Dominators the TARDIS is stuck in lava from a volcanic eruption... Of course, the Doctor panics and hits a switch on the TARDIS console and the travellers are transported out of time and space to a void where an alien intelligence has made a fantasy world out of people's imaginations. Episode 1 stands out on it's own as a masterpiece, even though it was rushed together by the production team because there wasn't enough in the script to pad out over the five episodes of this story. I won't spoil it too much but in this episode we do get that lovely infamous scene of Zoe draped across the TARDIS console...

This episode is pure 1960s' psychedelia. Peter Ling (the story's writer) pushes the boundaries of the show, and this story stands out from the rest of Troughton's other ones. Whereas most of his stories are famous for being monster mash-ups, we don't actually see the main baddie or alien in this story. We never learn who created the fictional world that the TARDIS crew find themselves in. And that makes it even more mysterious and eerie. (All the great science fiction and horror writers know that keeping your enemy hidden adds to the atmosphere of the story!)

This story leads directly into the next serial, The Invasion which is to be reviewed another time...

Book Review: A Princess of Mars

I have been reading a lot of science fiction recently, mainly books from the seventies/eighties era of the genre such as Philip K. Dick's Valis and William Gibson's Neuromancer which are in the more brainy/cyberpunk spectrum of things. With the announcement that Disney/Pixar are now in production of the live-action John Carter of Mars movie, I decided to check out Edgar Rice Burroughs' pulp classic myself, having heard so much about it over the years (and having heard it inspired my favourites Flash Gordon, Star Wars and Avatar).
This one is surely a classic! An American civil war veteran called John Carter wakes up on Mars, a planet no so barren as the Viking probes found it to be (hey, come on - this came out in 1912 when people thought there were canals on Mars!)
He meets the green Martians (known as Tharks), fights in epic battles, explores ancient cities and to top it all off wins the hand of a beautiful princess called Dejah Thoris. This is certainly more of a swashbuckling fantasy romance than hardcore science fiction, but hey it's supposed to be pulp fun - a nice and easy read, I had great fun with it and may yet check out the sequels. Let's just hope that the live action film does it justice on it's release in 2012!