Fandom News

John Sim to return as the Master in Doctor Who

The BBC have announced John Sim will be reprising his role as The Master in the new series Doctor Who.

This surprising news was also accompanied by the revelation that Michelle Gomez, who plays the current incarnation of The Master (known as Missy), will also be appearing alongside her predecessor.

John Sim first appeared as The Master opposite David Tennant in 2007 (the Russel T. Davies era) and reprised his role in the 2009/10 New Year’s Special.

The forthcoming series, which will also be featuring a new companion played by Pearl Mackie and will be Peter Capaldi’s last series as the Doctor, will air this April on BBC One.

Marvel apologise for comic containing ‘bigoted’ views

Marvel have apologised to fans after anti-Semitic and anti-Christian material was spotted in a recent comic.

The artwork within X-Men Gold #1 featured references to ongoing Indonesian protests against the Christian governor of Jakarta.

Indonesian artist Ardian Syaf was responsible for inserting the references. The most prominent was a t-shirt worn by the mutant Colossus, which featured QS 5:51, a reference to Qur’an Surah 5:51.

In a statement Marvel said the references were inserted without their knowledge behind their meanings.

They also said the artwork would be removed from subsequent printings, digital versions, and trade paperbacks, and reported that disciplinary action is being taken.

Carrie Fisher will appear in Star Wars: Episode IX

Carrie Fisher’s brother and daughter have given Disney permission to use the recent footage of Fisher in Star Wars: Episode IX.

The late actress, who played Princess Leia, died at the age of 60 in December 2016.

Filming for the currently untitled Episode IX is set to begin this July.

Jurassic World director Colin Trevorrow will direct the film, due to be released in cinemas on 23 May 2019.

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child casts a spell over the Olivier awards

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child won a record breaking nine awards at the prestigious Olivier awards.

The west end show was named best new play, and its director, John Tiffany, won best director.

Jamie Parker, who played the now adult Harry Potter, was named best actor, and Noma Dumezweni, who plays the grown up Hermione Granger, was named best supporting actress.

Anthony Boye won best supporting actor for his portrayal of Scorpius Malfoy, son of Draco Malfoy.

The play also won other awards for lighting, sound, costume, and set design.

The Cursed Child stole the record for the most decorated show in the ceremony’s history from Matilda and The Curious Incident of the Dog in Night-Time, which had both won seven.

Disney files patent for ‘humanoid robots’

Disney is filing a patent application for a “soft body robot or physical interaction with humans”.

The Disney research team are exploring the manufacturing of robots that can safely interact with young people.

The robots would have their limbs programmed by a nearby controller, who would operate the robot.

The design of the robot is similar to that of Baymax, the soft bodied health care robot featured in the Disney and Pixar film, Big Hero 6.

A Series of Unfortunate Events renewed for a third series by Netflix

Before the second series has even been aired, Netflix has already renewed A Series of Unfortunate Event for a third series.

The show has been adapted from Lemony Snicket’s (AKA Daniel Handler’s) popular children’s book series of the same name.

The show follows the three Baudelaire orphans and the unfortunate events that happen to them, often at the hands of the evil Count Olaf, who will stop at nothing to obtain the fortune left to the Baudelaire’s by their parents.

The first series is currently available to watch on Netflix.

San-Diego Comic Con badges sell out in lightning speed

Tickets for the world’s first and biggest Comic-Con have once sold out in just a few hours after becoming available to the general public.

Some of the guests already announced to be appearing include one of MAD magazine’s longest running cartoonists, Sergio Aragones, and New York Times bestselling comic book writer Marguerite Bennett.

The full line-up and schedule will be available two weeks before the event itself.

New Adventure Time miniseries to be released

Cartoon Network’s animated Adventure Time has confirmed the release of a new miniseries.

The eight-part series will be called Adventure Time: Elements, and will air this April.

Elements is the third Adventure Time miniseries to date, following Stakes and Islands, which was watched by nearly four million people earlier this year.

“Quidditch” has been added to the Oxford dictionary

The word Quidditch from J.K Rowling’s bestselling Harry Potter series has been added to the Oxford dictionary.

The once made up word was created to name the mythical game the students of Hogwarts School for witchcraft and Wizardry enjoyed playing.

The official definition of the word is now as follows:

Noun – A team sport played while straddling broomsticks, in which goals are scored by throwing a ball through any of the three hoops fixed at either end of the pitch.

“she’s a multisport athlete who fell in love with quidditch”

[as modifier] “the university quidditch team plays in multiple tournaments each semester”

Real Life Quidditch

Scott Brown, 21, is a second year mechanical engineer student at the University of Portsmouth. If asked to guess the sport Scott plays, you might guess rugby due to his build and apparent upper body strength. However he doesn’t play rugby, or any other traditional sport. Scott plays quidditch. In fact he has recently been selected as a player for the Southeast Knights, one of the quidditch teams in the newly founded Quidditch Premier League. In his first interview, Scott explains why he loves the sport so much and what it’s like to be a premier league quidditch player.

Why did you decide to try quidditch?

I wanted to do some form of physical activity when I joined university, so I went to a dodgeball taster session, but it wasn’t really for me. Some of my friends played quidditch so I tagged along to a session and just never left.

What was it like the first time you played?

The first time I played was interesting because the club didn’t really know what we were doing. A lot of us didn’t realise that quidditch existed in a wider community, that there was an actual rule book, and an actual organisational structures within the county and the world. Chaos would be the best way to describe it. When I first joined I asked how do I play and they just went “you’ll pick it up as you go along” which is kind of how you play it because it is chaotic. It’s chaotic when you first look at it, because there is so much going on at once. It’s difficult to pick it out, especially when you’re completely new to the idea. At the time we were just a bunch of mates messing about in a park.

What was the first tournament you took part in?

The first tournament I took part in was Southern Cup 2015. It was cold and wet. The UK was hit by a hurricane the couple days before and we were in the tail end of that hurricane. We camped out as it was a two day tournament over a Saturday and Sunday. We camped in a field somewhere in Oxfordshire. I was sharing a tent pod with my friend Luna and if I hadn’t have been in that pod with her the tent would have lifted away. The number of times I got woken up in the night from the tent lifting up and her rolling into me. It was great fun though. No one knew who we were then and we kind of stormed on to the scene, a team of players with some players who probably shouldn’t have been playing due to health reasons, but we had to play them anyway because we needed the players. People were injured, people got cold. We had three people hypothermic. It was a cold, wet miserable tournament, but it was so much fun.

It was interesting to see for the first time all the other teams from the south and how they interacted with each other. Everyone knows each other, everyone knows the other teams, and it’s a great community to be involved with. It was awe-inspiring to rock off the bus and just see the field with six or seven quidditch pitches set up and all the teams there nattering amongst themselves. It was just amazing. It was like nothing else, you’re just hit by a wall of awe at the whole experience.

What is your favourite memory from playing quidditch?

I think my favourite memory would have to be from Southern Cup this year. We beat the Bristol Brizzlebees, Bristol’s second team, for the second time. Our first ever win as a team was against the Brizzlebees at White Knights last year and that was a fantastic moment, but I think this tops it, because we beat them for a second time and that game was what determined us to make the upper bracket for Southern Cup. It’s what made us place eighth in the south and qualified for the second season of the national championships. Going from the previous season of us not winning a single game, losing heavily, and having injuries, being tired, just having games being drawn out in the cold and the rain to going and winning two out of our three group stage games making the upper bracket ultimately placing eighth, is what makes it my favourite memory.

I almost cried I was so happy. Seeing the progression from the tiny little society it was when I first joined not really knowing what we were doing, basically a bunch of wheezing nerds in a field, to the athletes that we are now winning, it’s just amazing.

You are going to be a part of the newly established Quidditch Premier League. What made you decide to try out for it?

For two reasons mainly. The Premier League has been set up as an in between season competition because the current quidditch seasons are based around the academic term times, because the sport has sprung out of universities and so still heavily revolves around university timetables. But that means there is a big gap over summer where no quidditch happens. There’s a couple little tournaments here and there but there are no big national fixtures.

Last summer I got incredibly bored and unfit because I didn’t play any quidditch for the whole summer. So that’s the first reason, but the second reason is because this is something new, something that has never been seen before. It’s developing the sport further and it’s becoming better known. It’s a fantastic thing to be a part of and it’s incredibly humbling to be part of such a fantastic organisation.

What were the Premier League try-outs like?

They were interesting. For Southeast Knights they held two try-out sessions, one up in Oxford and one in Southampton. Southampton is the closest to Portsmouth, so that’s the one I went to. The try-outs had a lot of players from the Southampton team, which is to be expected, but we get along quite well with them as we are so close together. We play a lot of varsity matches together, we’ve even got a Portsmouth player now dating a Southampton player. So we knew quite a lot of the other people playing relatively well.

It was interesting though because no one was there as a team. Everyone was there on their own trying out to be part of this wider community and squad. Everyone is there to do their best and everyone was showing off, but not trying to show off too much. It was an interesting dynamic.

The first half of the try-outs everyone was eyeing everyone else. Everyone was there to do the best they could to make the squad, however it’s a team based sport so you wouldn’t make the squad if you couldn’t work well with others. By the time we got chatting more we realised that everyone was as nervous as each other, so we settled into it more and it became a lot more fun. It also helped when Southampton stopped showing off!

How do you feel about the prospect of playing in the Quidditch premier League?

It’s a bit daunting if I’m honest. Everyone is going to be watching and it’s going to be a very high level of play and it’s a new team with a new dynamic. It’s not my Portsmouth team, it’s not my friends.

It’s going to be different and it will take time to settle in as a new team and then find the dynamic and how that works, the chemistry of that. But it’s going to be fun. It’s daunting and exciting at the same time. I can’t wait to get my exams out of the way and start playing.

What is your ultimate future goal playing quidditch?

My ultimate goal would be making Team UK and playing in the Quidditch World Cup. That is my dream. I mean who wouldn’t want to say that they have represented their country in a worldwide sport tournament?

Playing for Team UK is the highest achievement you can currently do in quidditch, and it would not only be an amazing achievement but a great honour to reach that level.

For the full interview buy our latest print edition of Geek Week.

The Growth of Superheroes

In case you haven’t noticed, superhero movies are all the rage and have been dominating the box office. Marvel is finding such huge success with its cinematic universe surrounding the Avengers, and it’s got stuff in the works all the way through 2020. DC will soon beef up its offering, with a movie slate that extends into 2020. Why is this genre doing so well now, when past efforts haven’t worked as famously?

Between Bryan Singer’s first X-Men movie and Jon Favreau’s Iron Man, superhero movies were wary about adopting anything that was too comic book-like – especially narrative tropes like crossovers, multiverses, events and team-ups. It wasn’t only that they were too cumbersome, even ambitious, to implement; studios also generally feared that mainstream audiences wouldn’t accept them. Marvel’s gamble to directly transplant the storytelling devices they had been using for decades in their comic books to the big screen changed things.

The advancements in technology behind moviemaking have made Superman-worthy leaps and bounds in the past few decades. From motion-capture, IMAX cameras and CGI; filmmakers can pull off the effects required of these characters and pull them off right.

The Avengers’ success launched a golden age of superheroes, in which the stories of the caped and cowled are TV-rating dependables and box-offices behemoths. What’s more, they’ve increasingly embraces crossovers, team-ups and shared universes that characters can navigate freely outside their own immediate worlds and lives. Captain America’s Falcon enters fisticuffs with Scott Lang in Ant-Man. Spider-Man and Wonder Woman appears in movies like Captain America: Civil War and Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice before even getting their own stand-alone stories.

As the superhero genre pushes forwards toward longevity with more TV shows on the horizon, it will face challenges. Challenges that may entail for it to transfer the movie magic onto TV. Daredevil is the most successful superhero TV show, it boomed the first weekend it came out during its opening weekend. Again, we can all thank the great advancements in technology for creating this TV show.

With the massive surge of comic book lovers coming out of the proverbial closet, audiences have proven they’re ready for a geek-centric slate of movie. They’re infiltrating the awards race: Captain America 2, Guardians of the Galaxy, Big Hero 6 and X-Men: Days of Future Past, have earned Oscar nominations. The question is, will this hype ever die out?

Jason Fan Theories

1. Betty Cooper

•  The Betty/Polly role play was disturbing. Betty slipped and called Chuck ‘Jason’, while she was channelling her sister.
•  What if she killed her sister’s ex-boyfriend, while in this fugue state?

2. Betty and Polly’s Parents

•  Within the first 5 minutes of the 1st episode, it was made explicit that Alice Cooper resented Jason. Surely, the hatred would act as a catalyst to kill Jason Blossom?
•  It was uncovered that there was a family feud during the 1800s, that Jason’s great grandfather betrayed Betty’s great grandfather. It seemed that ? was still hung up on the ancient feud – could that be enough reason to kill the Blossom family? Talk about holding grudges.

3. Cheryl Blossom

•  She loves Jason a little too much, this show gives off incestuous vibes.
• There seems to be an unhealthy obsession with Jason, literally makes you feel a little bit uncomfortable watching it.
• If Cheryl can’t have Jason, no one can.
• Were the two siblings’ part of a cult? Could Jason’s murder have been an initiation gone wrong? Why did Cheryl ask Jason if he was scared?

4. Polly Cooper

•  For the majority of the show, Polly has been held at a religious home.
• Betty’s parents made her believe that Polly has been suffering from mental illness.
•  She seems to be hung up on the fact that she and Jason were going to run away together and start a new life as a family. It was clear in the episode where Betty and Jughead visit Polly.
• Could Polly somehow be involved in this murder?

5. Clifford and Penelope Blossom

• I mean, they aren’t the nicest parents going in Riverdale.
• They threatened to ship Cheryl away to boarding school – in Europe.
• Who knows that they could’ve been the same with Jason, probably didn’t like that he was having a relationship with Polly/ and how close he is with Cheryl.

6. Archie

• Let’s be honest, Jason and Archie both look-a-like. They are redheads.
• What if the gunshot was meant for Archie?
• Or perhaps Archie was jealous of Jason’s popularity – he was Captain of the football team, had ‘music’ lessons with Ms. Grundy – maybe he wanted that life for himself.

Fandom That Almost Wasn’t

Though Star Trek is now one of the most popular shows on television, with sequel TV programmes such as The Next Generation, film franchises and a gigantic following, back when it was being first broadcast it wasn’t so much of a hit.

Created by Gene Roddenberry in 1964, it was considered to be a niche show on NBC, and was almost cancelled three times, but was saved by all the backlash producers got when fans heard their beloved show would be taken off the air.

When the news leaked the first time round, in January 1968, that the show would be leaving our screens, the network was overcome with more than a million letters pleading for the show to keep broadcasting.

There was NO way that the producers could have ignored that kind of dedication, because they listened to the fans and announced how they would be continuing the Enterprise’s 5 year journey.

The December of that year NBC announced plans to cancel the show, which was met with a great amount of uproar. 500 fans from a Caltech arranged a march outside of Burbank studios in protest, but that did nothing to stop the network’s decision.

Executives decided to end the series after the season three finale “Turnabout Intruder” in 1969.

Unfortunately for the original crew members of the Starship Enterprise, they never got to finish their five-year mission, leaving fans disappointed and demanding more content.

That wasn’t the end of Star Trek altogether but it easily could have been if it hadn’t been for the thousands of fans who wanted it to keep broadcasting. Due to having a bad time slot on television which affected the viewing figures, and not enough support on a daily basis from the network, the show had little argument to continue being funded.

But thankfully the original series was not the only chance we had to follow Captain Kirk and his crew through space, as viewers had several films to sink their teeth into, as well as the getting to know the new crew members in the sequel series Star Trek: The Next

Generation, Star Trek: Voyager and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

Walking dead’s top 3 villains

3 – Shane Walsh

Shane featured heavily in the first two seasons as Rick’s friend-turned-rival after the outbreak of Walkers. When Rick is shot and put into a coma in the first episode he is left in a hospital and assumed dead. Shane then assumes the role of husband and father to Rick’s family, Lori and Carl. Although he is happy to see his friend alive and well when he thought he was dead, Shane does not take kindly to Rick returning and taking charge of his group of survivors.

On another supply run, Shane gets into an argument with Rick about his wife and son- specifically about how he is not an effective leader and cannot protect anyone of them because he is still operating on the morals he had before the outbreak, and then soon attempts to kill him.

His resentment towards Rick warps his character throughout the series from the good policeman to a rage filled murderer until Rick is forced to stab him in the chest at the end of season two- “Better Angels”. He then reanimates into a zombie, and gets shot by Carl, the very person he wanted to protect.

Though his actions had reasons behind them, the way he executes his actions presents him as he really is-an unmistakable villain who was once a really good man and friend.

2 – Negan

After hearing many rumours and threats from survivors about an unknown leader called Negan, Rick’s group ran into and killed a small part of Negan’s group earlier in the series, and after some conflict killed them. They thought “The Saviours” were no longer a problem for them until they were ambushed at the end of the series and Negan appeared for the first time, a barbed wire covered baseball bat named Lucille in his hands.

As punishment for killing some of his group, Negan picks one of the group to be beaten to death with his bat whilst the others watch. His enthusiasm at this task makes it clear he does not care for any of their lives, and may even take a private joy in asserting his dominance over everyone there.

Negan’s whole demeanour shows his indifference to the suffering of others. He puts people who cross him, even with the misplacement of a word that is taken as an insult, into serious danger just on the basis that he can. He also uses this power as a constant message to others to deter them from making the same mistakes.

1 – The Governor

The Governor, who featured as the main antagonist in seasons three and four, presented himself as the caring and fair leader of a town called Woodbury. It is soon revealed he is anything but that.

An example of his ruthlessness is in “When the Dead Come Knocking” when Glenn and Maggie, two of Rick’s group, are captured by the Governor and interrogated about where they are staying. The Governor interrogates Maggie, and after refusing to talk, forces her to undress and threatens her with rape in order to frighten her to get information. The fact that he would threaten and humiliate her this way shows how little he cares for her feelings all for the sake of getting information that may not even prove beneficial.

In “Arrow on the Doorstep”, Rick and The Governor arrange to meet to discuss peace between their groups. Rick proposes that they divide territory and stick to their areas in order to save any more fighting. Even though Rick’s proposal is reasonable and well thought out, The Governor is so consumed with pride and anger over the trouble that Rick’s group have caused that he demands Michonne be handed over or the whole group will die.

The Governor is the worst villain of this list, as he manipulates and deceives everyone he meets in order to survive. Though the death of his original family has made him the survivalist that he is today, he demonstrates the capacity to care for others, and then decides to kill them when they don’t suit his agenda. He is ruthless, callous and uncaring for those he has no use for, and cannot be deemed as anything other than the villain he really is.