TVXOHOF UPDATE - HANNA CALLED UP

 
April 21, 2026

Tonight, TVXOHOF member Sam Hanna adds another episode to his collection of appearances on the main show in the 'NCIS' franchise.  There will be another before the season ends and then he'll have another series to add to his tally in the Fall.

Here's TV Insider Matt Roush with a preview:

LL Cool J can’t get enough of the 'NCIS' universe, and the feeling is obviously mutual. The rapper-turned-actor, who played Sam Hanna on 'NCIS: Los Angeles' for 14 seasons and made guest appearances on the Hawaii spinoff and the original series, was recently tapped to star alongside 'Hawaii Five-0' alum Scott Caan in a New York spinoff to air in the fall. But before then, he’s back on the mothership for the first of two guest appearances.

Sam steps into the darkness to help Kasie (Diona Reasonover) and a skeleton crew when they’re stalked and bunted by an unknown intruder in an otherwise abandoned building, with the mainframe shut down for an overnight upgrade and the rest of the regular NCIS crew nowhere to be seen.

THE WHO'S ON FIRST BLOG-A-THON 2025

 

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I hope everybody had a great New Year's Eve?

Welcome to the 17^th anniversary edition of the "Who's On First?" blogAthon.  For the next 24 hours, there will (hopefully) be twenty-four posts about 'Doctor Who', one every hour.

I wrote this WELL in advance:
This round-the-clock celebration of 'Doctor Who' began somewhat modestly - there were only seven "episodes" for that first outing.  But it has grown to the point where for the last couple of years we have tried to present a new blog post about the universe of the Doctor every half hour.   That may not be the case this year.  We'll at least try to get one in every hour.

And I always amaze myself that I find enough topics each year.  But then, I have yet to see every episode of the 59 year old series.

Because of their time-sensitive nature, there were a few posts I published earlier in the year.  Some are just mentions of the Doctor, most of them dealt with the breaking news about the show.  If so, I'll re-post them early in the day's schedule (when it's the middle of the night for most visitors.)

This edition will hopefully be special.  (I'm setting up this post on January 1, 2024!)  And I see this as the perfect moment to thank everybody who came up with the wonderful memes and artwork which I hope is okay to share.  (If not, I'll replace it.)

So here it is - the kick-off to the 2025 edition of 'Who's On First'!  And as always, we begin with the frame grab from 'Robot Chicken' which has become our mascot.... 

EARLY GATWA SHOTS

From the moment Ncuti Gatwa was announced as the “next Doctor” (which eventually had to be revised to him being referred to as the 15th Doctor*), the pictures began flooding the Interwebz of Gatwa with the TARDIS.  And once Millie Gibson was announced to play Ruby Sunday, she was added to the mix as well.

Many of those pictures were professional, produced as either press releases from the BBC, or publicity shots for various media outlets.  But there were also those images made by the fans, which I hope the suits at the Beeb accepted with grace because it all translated to good mojo for the upcoming transition.

Now that we have marked that auspicious occasion, here’s a look at some of that Who15 fandom….

All credit goes to those who made these works of art.

* Here at Toobworld Central, he is the 15th Incarnation.  There is only the one Doctor....

BARBIE/DOCTOR WHO SYNERGY

 

The benefits recognized early on that it could only benefit them when it came to publicity if they tipped their cap to the summer's mega-hit "Barbie".

Especially since one of the many Kens in the movie was Ncuti Gatwa, who had been cast to be the Fifteenth Incarnation of the Doctor....

THE NEW WHO DUDS

On December 17, 2022, the new look for the 15th Incarnation of the Doctor was revealed.

My instant reaction upon seeing it – I like it.  I gives me a 70s vibe, reminding me of the fashion catalogue pages which still rise up from memory of those nightmare trends.

But this is a muted design and I especially love that top with the chain.  Definitely 70s cool.

As for Millie Gibson’s outfit for her role as Ruby Sunday, I feel as though it evokes an 80s, maybe 90s, flavor.  Perhaps it means that she will be a Companion from either of those two decades.

I won’t make any other suppositions than those.  I’m usually wrong anyway....

ECCE PROMO! THE 60th ANNIVERSARY TRAILER AND BREAKDOWN

Just a week ago, the BBC gave us a nice Christmas present with a 60th Anniversary trailer for ‘Doctor Who’ which will be returning in November for the celebration.

If you haven’t seen it yet, take a look:

And here’s a video from the Nerd Den which breaks down what we’re shown.

Two big take-aways –

• Beep the Meep transitions from the comix universe of ‘Doctor Who’ to Earth Prime-Time.
• The background seen behind Ncuti Gatwa as the Fifteenth Incarnation will be replaced.  So there goes the Future Limbo theory I had in mind.
  
   

GATWA!

 

Well, there’s no sense in delaying the inevitable any longer….

Last year it was announced that Ncuti Gatwa would be playing the Doctor.  Almost everybody assumed that it meant that he would be the 14th Incarnation of that Time Lord.  But when the 13th Incarnation regenerated, she became an older version of the 10th Incarnation.

So Gatwa will be the 15th Incarnation.

So far we may have seen him in action, but in a promo for David Tennant’s stint as the 14th Incarnation [Pictured up top]. 

Whether that is canon or not remains to be seen.  It’s only 3 seconds long at best, but it could be his future incarnation already existed but was trapped in some kind of limbo.  Not unprecedented – we saw several of the previous incarnations in a limbo at “the edge” in the 13th Incarnation’s final regular episode.

So he won’t be appearing in the actual series before the year is over – it most likely won’t be back until the 60th anniversary as it is.

In the meantime, here are pictures of Gatwa in connection to his upcoming role as the Doctor.  These are publicity photos, fan-made photo-shopped images, plus Gatwa with Russell T. Davies as the returning showrunner.  

He’s also seen with Millie Gibson who will be playing the new Companion, Ruby Sunday.

I’m looking forward to his work as the Doctor.  When he was announced, I started watching him in ‘Sex Education’ and enjoyed his vitality in his role.

It's usually reported that the actors chosen to be the next Doctor participate in the choice of their costume.  In Gatwa's case, I hope his input is limited if his choice for his personal wardrobe is any indication of his tastes....

Good luck, Ncuti!

NPH - WHO'S HE PLAYING?

Everybody should know by now that Neil Patrick Harris is playing the villain in the 60th Anniversary celebration of ‘Doctor Who’.  But little is known about his character other than the statement that he is the most dangerous foe ever faced by the Doctor.  (Sorry, to me that means the Master.)  

The prevailing theory is that he’s playing a regenerated Celestial Toymaker.

Maybe, but from the surviving episodes of his only adventure against the Doctor (William Hartnell as the Doctor; Michael Gough as the Toymaker), he doesn’t really come as much of a threat.

And if that does come across in other media incarnations – novelizations, audio dramas, comic strips – those belong in their own fictional metaverses and have no bearing on Earth Prime-Time.

One thing we have learned about his character is that he is sporting a Germanic accent.

THE RETURN OF JO GRANT

One of the many reasons why Steven Moffat was a great show-runner for ‘Doctor Who’ was because he was such a fan himself and he wrote as one.  He came up with the idea of sonic sunglasses so that little kids with little access to their own funds could still play as the Doctor – cheap sunglasses are easier to get than a fancy toy sonic screwdrivers.

But another facet he utilized was putting in what I call “limbo periods.”  In the past, a lot of ‘Doctor Who’ adventures led directly into the next with little room for the fans to imagine their own adventures for the Doctor, with or without their current companions.

Under Moffat’s stewardship, Amy and Rory, followed by Clara, and then Bill, all had time away from the TARDIS.  That gave their Doctors the chance to have solo adventures – or picking up new companions for a few spins in the blue box – before reuniting with the current Companion(s).

That’s why this collection of public city pictures are so great.  It’s not just Katy Manning visiting the TARDIS with Peter Capaldi as the Doctor’s Twelfth Incarnation; instead of just the usual, bland poses on the set, with a few smiles and waves, but it looks like they were involved in some kind of adventure as the Doctor and Jo Grant.

I could see Capaldi’s Incarnation as enjoying his reunion with Jo.  She never saw the Doctor regenerate during her own time as his Companion, but she knows it could happen since she got to meet the Eleventh Incarnation in a two-part story of ‘The Sarah Jane Adventures’.

And I’d like to think that she might have truly admired the look of the Twelfth Doctor since he wasn’t too far off the mark from the appearance of her own Doctor as played by Jon Pertwee.  (And by “appearance”, let’s just say I mean “distinguished gentleman”.)

Here’s hoping that one day Katy Manning can return to ‘Doctor Who’ proper as Jo Grant Jones.

GAME OF ZONKS - A WHOLE LOTTA WHO LATTE

May 6, 2019

From CNN:
What's this? Oh, just a coffee cup. A coffee cup on a table in the great hall of Winterfell in the fictional, very coffee-less realm of Westeros.

Sharp-eyed viewers noticed the anachronism during Sunday night's episode of "Game of Thrones," and, well, it's going to be a long time before anyone lets this mistake go.

Each Season 8 episode reportedly cost $15 million to make, so the fact that a grande mocha from Starbucks or whatever passed so many eyes and so many levels of experts and edits is very hilarious. That coffee cup is Arya Stark levels of sneaky.

Twitter is convinced it's a Starbucks cup, but it really could be from anywhere.

O'Bservation - Personally, I think it came from the craft services table.

There is nothing new about anachronistic items finding their way into ancient time periods of Toobworld.  But in most of those other cases, they were placed there deliberately as a joke point of reference in TV commercials.  These blipverts include


Pepsi


FedEx


Capital One


Bud Light


M&Ms
(The Dirty Dealer meant no harm.)


Winston Cigarettes
(Although granted, that was in the Tooniverse.  Anything goes over there!)

It’s been the Toobworld Central position that these were all caused by one of the oldest ‘frienemies” of the Time Lord known as the Doctor – the Meddling Monk.  After two run-ins with the First Incarnation of the Doctor when he was trying to make grand scale alterations to the timeline of the Earth, the Monk must have decided to make small, subtle changes that would pass unnoticed at first until it was too late to revert back to the original timeline.  And he chose to introduce modern day innovations into those simpler times.

In this particular case, the Monk has mixed things up a bit – he – put that cup of coffee into the feast hall of Winterfell, one of the kingdoms in the North.  But as far as Toobworld Central is concerned, the contnent of Westeros is to be found on the planet of Mondas, Earth’s twin world from the stories of ‘Doctor Who’.

How it changed the timeline of Mondas, I know not.  Its original timeline was bad enough!  But maybe the discovery of the addictive qualities of the cocoa bean accelerated the desire of the inevitable Cybermen to reach Earth sooner.

Luckily the Doctor was there to go back in Time to “put right what once went wrong.”

By the way, that had to have happened – HBO has announced that the offending coffee cup has already been digitally erased from the episode. What does that mean within the reality of the show?

Time travel!

My thanks to Lucas Garrett, one of my Facebook crossover buddies for that meme.

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