The current season of Doctor Who has seventeen episodes. Only thirteen will air on the BBC. The other four are free downloadable games for the Mac and PC from the Doctor Who website, the first of which, “City of the Daleks” will be available on June 5th 2010.
The TARDIS materializes in London of 1963, the city is in ruins. Most if not all of humankind is dead (yes folks, heartening for the kiddies). The Daleks, or rather the particular Daleks featured in the recently aired WWII based episode “Victory of the Daleks” have seized control of time. The Doctor and Amy have to make a desperate quest to Skaro, the Daleks’ home planet. However thanks to causality, not all of Amy’s ancestors are still alive, there is a ticking clock until time catches up with Amy.
Lately Doctor Who writers have been playing with the consequences of time travel (think of the episode “Blink“, or the Bad Wolf themes) and this is repeated here. The games also allow things to happen which would be very expensive to put on TV. “We destroy London even before the credits role - so you can only begin to imagine where we travel to from there. ” said the game’s writer Phil Ford, “City of the Daleks is as big-budget as you can imagine: from London we head to Kaalann, the capital city of the Daleks, one constructed from pure anger and hate.”…”And these new Daleks don’t like to be messed with.”
Nicholas Briggs provides the voice of the Daleks, alongside Matt Smith and Karen Gillan who reprise their roles as the Doctor and Amy. The interactive episodes are executive produced by the show’s production team Steven Moffat, Piers Wenger, Beth Willis as well as Anwen Aspden of BBC Wales Interactive and Charles Cecil. The games are being developed by Sumo Digital.
The other three episodes are written by Phil Ford and James Moran who also wrote Severance and the Torchwood Children of Earth series. Somehow I think these may not be suitable for younger gamers.
UPDATE Friday 23 April 2010
The Guardian have video footage of school children in Sheffield (where Sumo Digital is based) testing out the first game.
