Kamelion
Active member
An exceptionally rare 2017 film narrated by David Tennant as 'The Time Traveler" and only previously shown in Houston Texas has made it's way to Sacramento California this week. No fanfare. No advertising. Complete surprise. Limited time. In fact it may be shown for the final time this weekend.
My Time Scales review is here:
https://thetimescales.com/Story/story.php?audioid=12455
""Time travel like never imagined. To the beginning of the universe and back. From human time to cosmic time. From the microcosm to the macro cosmos. Time is a slippery thing. Elusive. Impossible to hold. It can't be owned. It can't be stored. You'll journey through space, you'll experience time. I'll be your guide through all of time. Time's beginnings and endings. From your personal sense of time, to earth time. Star time. And finally cosmic time. Get ready to journey. Tales of a Time Traveler." - David Tennant as The Time Traveler.
I write this review while still being fully admittedly in shock about what I just experienced quite by happy accident. A small group and I while on an unplanned day trip to our State Capitol took in a movie projected into the domed theater (think planetarium) in Sacramento California without knowing that it is one of the rarest and finest performances of David Tennant. All we knew of was the title 'Tales of a Time Traveler', which obviously does sound like Doctor Who doesn't it? We were not even planning to watch a movie until learning that tickets to this were free with a museum entrance. What we also did not know is that this movie was in fact presented by David Tennant, the 10th Doctor as 'The Time Traveler'. Now this came as a particular shock to me as I have spent going on 4 years now trying to complete The Time Scales catalog of stories with every known performance, TV show, movie, book, comic, game, etc. related to Doctor Who and I was unaware of the existence of this film. Not to say that I have become any sort of an expert on all things Doctor Who, but overlooking this comes as a great surprise as it is an extremely important piece of David Tennant's career. While he never states "I AM THE DOCTOR" for obvious reasons that would have required licensing the term "The Doctor' from BBC, it is clearly evident from the opening seconds to the very end that this is in fact the 10th Doctor speaking to us 'humans' as he calls us several times. The graphics and visual effects with repeated and changing variations of the 'time tunnel' or vortex so prominent on Doctor Who TV opening and closing themes are bleedingly obvious. While the music by Chance Thomas, BMI does pay a huge nod to Star Trek movies at the onset, the Murray Gold style of Doctor Who music throughout makes this as close to Doctor Who as it could ever possibly be without David Tennant ever uttering the word 'Doctor'.
What I have since learned is that this film was created by Carolyn Taylor Sumners in 2017 while she was the vice-president of the Houston Museum of Natural Science. David Tennant even has a web page for this production on his personal / professional website with a photo of the audio recording studio where he did the performance. It appears to have only been shown in Houston at the Burke Baker Planetarium in Houston Texas in 2017.
Turn up your clock to 2022 and this gem is now being shown in Sacramento, California with no advertising at all. The only way you can watch it is to show up in person at the University of California Davis Multiverse Theater which is located inside the SMUD Museum of Science and Curiosity in Sacramento and even then you can't buy tickets to it as not only are movie tickets free with entrance to the museum, there's no advertised schedule. I did see that it is playing again this Saturday morning at 10 am, with no other listings. In fact the movie schedule is not advertised on the Multiverse theatre or the museum website. Only on a piece of paper on the front desk that changes from day to day. That's just crazy. I suppose that in theory a Doctor Who fan in California could phone the museum and ask when the next showing of this is.
So was it any good? Yes, it's a masterpiece. Did I learn anything from it? Way, way more than I would have ever expected. I am not certain what type of a screen this was projected on in Houston Texas, but here in Sacramento it was projected into a planetarium dome with surround sound where when looking up and being able to feel the sound one could easily escape into the 'screen' itself and feel inside the projection. All while be led by hand by The Doctor through the history of time and our universe. From where our planet was born and how, to how it will end when the Sun expands. From black holes to the extraterrestrial compounds found in our own blood, to the history of earth evolution, dinosaurs and even our non human ancestors this is an epic adventure that delivers exactly what the title promises with a real big surprise... By the Doctor himself.
http://www.david-tennant.co.uk/2017/10/video-trailer-david-tennant-narrates.html
The special effects and imagery are grand and breath taking time after time. Some of the video from the International Space Station was unlike any that I have ever seen before and from a docudrama standpoint all of the history of time and space is factual, and from one of the finest Doctors ever. Everyone loves David Tennant as the Doctor as far as I know. I truly believe that every Doctor Who fan would love to see this and it should be more widely distributed and advertised. The very fact that all evidence leads to it only being shown in Houston Texas in 2017 and then suddenly appearing as an unadvertised shocker surprise at California's Capitol city as of today does show promise that perhaps it may be shared more by planetariums at least in the US, in the future."
Doctor Who fans attempting to view this film in Sacramento can phone SMUD Museum of Science and Curiosity which hosts the UC Davis Multiverse Theater for possible show times at (916) 674-5000.
Kamelion
Outpost Gallifrey News
San Francisco, California
My Time Scales review is here:
https://thetimescales.com/Story/story.php?audioid=12455
""Time travel like never imagined. To the beginning of the universe and back. From human time to cosmic time. From the microcosm to the macro cosmos. Time is a slippery thing. Elusive. Impossible to hold. It can't be owned. It can't be stored. You'll journey through space, you'll experience time. I'll be your guide through all of time. Time's beginnings and endings. From your personal sense of time, to earth time. Star time. And finally cosmic time. Get ready to journey. Tales of a Time Traveler." - David Tennant as The Time Traveler.
I write this review while still being fully admittedly in shock about what I just experienced quite by happy accident. A small group and I while on an unplanned day trip to our State Capitol took in a movie projected into the domed theater (think planetarium) in Sacramento California without knowing that it is one of the rarest and finest performances of David Tennant. All we knew of was the title 'Tales of a Time Traveler', which obviously does sound like Doctor Who doesn't it? We were not even planning to watch a movie until learning that tickets to this were free with a museum entrance. What we also did not know is that this movie was in fact presented by David Tennant, the 10th Doctor as 'The Time Traveler'. Now this came as a particular shock to me as I have spent going on 4 years now trying to complete The Time Scales catalog of stories with every known performance, TV show, movie, book, comic, game, etc. related to Doctor Who and I was unaware of the existence of this film. Not to say that I have become any sort of an expert on all things Doctor Who, but overlooking this comes as a great surprise as it is an extremely important piece of David Tennant's career. While he never states "I AM THE DOCTOR" for obvious reasons that would have required licensing the term "The Doctor' from BBC, it is clearly evident from the opening seconds to the very end that this is in fact the 10th Doctor speaking to us 'humans' as he calls us several times. The graphics and visual effects with repeated and changing variations of the 'time tunnel' or vortex so prominent on Doctor Who TV opening and closing themes are bleedingly obvious. While the music by Chance Thomas, BMI does pay a huge nod to Star Trek movies at the onset, the Murray Gold style of Doctor Who music throughout makes this as close to Doctor Who as it could ever possibly be without David Tennant ever uttering the word 'Doctor'.
What I have since learned is that this film was created by Carolyn Taylor Sumners in 2017 while she was the vice-president of the Houston Museum of Natural Science. David Tennant even has a web page for this production on his personal / professional website with a photo of the audio recording studio where he did the performance. It appears to have only been shown in Houston at the Burke Baker Planetarium in Houston Texas in 2017.
Turn up your clock to 2022 and this gem is now being shown in Sacramento, California with no advertising at all. The only way you can watch it is to show up in person at the University of California Davis Multiverse Theater which is located inside the SMUD Museum of Science and Curiosity in Sacramento and even then you can't buy tickets to it as not only are movie tickets free with entrance to the museum, there's no advertised schedule. I did see that it is playing again this Saturday morning at 10 am, with no other listings. In fact the movie schedule is not advertised on the Multiverse theatre or the museum website. Only on a piece of paper on the front desk that changes from day to day. That's just crazy. I suppose that in theory a Doctor Who fan in California could phone the museum and ask when the next showing of this is.
So was it any good? Yes, it's a masterpiece. Did I learn anything from it? Way, way more than I would have ever expected. I am not certain what type of a screen this was projected on in Houston Texas, but here in Sacramento it was projected into a planetarium dome with surround sound where when looking up and being able to feel the sound one could easily escape into the 'screen' itself and feel inside the projection. All while be led by hand by The Doctor through the history of time and our universe. From where our planet was born and how, to how it will end when the Sun expands. From black holes to the extraterrestrial compounds found in our own blood, to the history of earth evolution, dinosaurs and even our non human ancestors this is an epic adventure that delivers exactly what the title promises with a real big surprise... By the Doctor himself.
http://www.david-tennant.co.uk/2017/10/video-trailer-david-tennant-narrates.html
The special effects and imagery are grand and breath taking time after time. Some of the video from the International Space Station was unlike any that I have ever seen before and from a docudrama standpoint all of the history of time and space is factual, and from one of the finest Doctors ever. Everyone loves David Tennant as the Doctor as far as I know. I truly believe that every Doctor Who fan would love to see this and it should be more widely distributed and advertised. The very fact that all evidence leads to it only being shown in Houston Texas in 2017 and then suddenly appearing as an unadvertised shocker surprise at California's Capitol city as of today does show promise that perhaps it may be shared more by planetariums at least in the US, in the future."
Doctor Who fans attempting to view this film in Sacramento can phone SMUD Museum of Science and Curiosity which hosts the UC Davis Multiverse Theater for possible show times at (916) 674-5000.
Kamelion
Outpost Gallifrey News
San Francisco, California