The Tour is preparing the way for the final run of Tennant stories the best way we know how, with the largest site update we've ever had, adding over 5000 images to bring the overall image count to 75000.  Check out The Master List for a complete overview.   This site update covers every corner of the site, including Matt Smith, but from here until the end of the year (and very slightly beyond by all accounts), the update focus will be all-Tennant-all-the-time.

Of special note the Tour Brain Trust thanx Chad Moore for his cap contributions in donating Hartnell and Troughton caps.  Many thanx to all thus far who've answered the call.  More will be coming in 2010.

BTW did anyone notice the November 15th airdate for The Waters of Mars coincides with another classic Mars-influenced story?

Here at THT Towers we like to fancy ourselves as iconoclasts.  Still it is nice on occasion to see your own good taste ratified in other forums.  Notably in this case we're referring to DWM 413 and the Best Story EVER Poll conducted.  The favorite there, as here, is The Caves of Androzani.  The reasons for it's much deserved status are numerous and well discussed elsewhere, but even now it holds up, giving the fan those tell-tales chills which signify the special from the rest.  As for the rest of the results, there are the inevitable quibbles and disagreements, the most obvious of which is how post-2005 stories, such as The Empty Child can be chosen when they're only half of a larger story.  That's why we're fans I guess.

While we're tipping our collective caps to Caves, we're also doing something at Tour HQ we've seldom done before.  As this long, lean, Who-less stretch enters the home stretch, we're always thinking about ways to continue to grow Tour content, one that has a definite goal in mind.  Despite other signs on the site of lethargy or outright hibernation, we continue to amass images for the next site-wide update (timeline TBA) but in consideration of attempting to reach 100,000 images total for the site by the end of 2010, we are turning to you (yes YOU, and YOU and quite possibly you) for help in reaching this goal.  And here's the way in.

Screen caps.

Going through any of the Doctor's index pages show any number of gaps where a specific story has no, or very few, screen caps attached to it.  Should you have SC's for any of these stories in above average quality (at least 600×450 pixels in size) or would be willing to undertake capping these stories to help us fill in the gaps here at the Tour, we would be quite appreciative.  The person(s) doing the capturing would get credit for their work for the relevant pages (fair is fair, and make no mistake–it is work) as well as our warmest personal regards.  Such a deal! 

Of course there are the inevitable caveats… namely that we reserve the right to edit, retouch (for color-correction, cropping, sharpening and general image improvement), or even delete any images for redundancy as we see fit.  But with that understood, we hope to be hearing from some of you soon.

– DSW

Lost in the translation with the premiere of Planet of the Dead was a slight style revamp for images on story pages.  In short, slideshows are back.  Long time visitors will remember that slideshows have been around before, and annoyed more than a few in the process.  The implementation is better now, and most importantly optional, now being just a gentle gliding through episodes on any story page.  It should also be noted that navigation through images can also be simply done manually just by using the arrow keys on your keyboard.

Now for a bit of HTML help.  Something of a plea really,  The THT Brain Trust is being driven batty by the inability since the move to a WordPress-style blog for our front-end to see header icons on any story index page.  The images, used for navigation, are being properly pointed to on story index pages but aren't showing up in any display variation we've thrown at the site.  Anyone who can help solve this puzzler will earn…. our warmest personal regards.