I've had the pleasure recently to talk to Mark Baumgarten and Christian Basel who are the guys that make up the excellent Doctor Who podcast MarkWho 42 which I found out is more than just a Doctor Who podcast. If you are in the Florida area check them out at local conventions as they will be at the Paradise City Comic Con in Fort Lauderdale this weekend December 9th to the 11th so stop by their table 2131 and say hi.
How did MarkWHO42 come about and how long has it been around?
MARK: I had been a Doctor Who fan for a long time, and my girlfriend told me with as much knowledge I had on the subject I should do something with it. You know, "With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility " and the like. She said I should start a blog. I decided against it. But then I met the show's co-creator Patricia Helm on Facebook and we decided to start a fan page on Facebook and Tumblr. The Facebook page came on line on April Fool's Day in 2012. It got a lot of attention, and had some Doctor Who book authors as followers as well. I decided I wanted to do a blog after all, but not written. I wanted to do a podcast.
So Trish and I came up with an idea to do a show that was done with an improvised storyline and characters. MarkWHO42 was a Time Lord who was exiled from Gallifrey and came to Earth and reviewed the "real" adventures of his old friend Theta Sigma which was adapted for the show Doctor Who. I played MarkWHO42 and Trish played the TORRID (which is what we said the TARDIS was really called as Susan said she came up with the name TARDIS in the first episode of Doctor Who) as a Idris type character. During episode 2, we added a UNIT field officer, played by Eduardo M Freyre, and a plot line that featured a uncast character villain called Mad Jaspers. As we did the story we also reviewed the first half of Series 7 as it was aired each week in character.
I made a unilateral decision, since I was editing, directing and producing the show myself (which I still do to this day), that even though this idea made us different than other podcasts, it didn't work in my opinion. So in episode 8 of "markwho42 and the TORRID Tori Podcast Blog", after we reviewed Angels Take Manhattan, Mad Jaspers came back and sent us through a dimensional portal into reality. The last words of the episode were, "I'm Mark Baumgarten and you've been listening to MarkWHO42's WHOniverse." We didn't do a show for about a few weeks and came back on Halloween weekend of 2012 with episode 1 of MarkWHO42's WHOniverse... and the world was never the same again!
How did you guys come up with the name?
MARK: I've given a different answer to this question over the years including that it was my email address (which it was) but really it comes from my name Mark, the show title Doctor "WHO", and The Ultimate Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything (DnA's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is one of the funniest books ever written). So Mark + Who + 42 or as we write it: MarkWHO42
What is the main purpose of the podcast?
CHRISTIAN: We want to bring listeners the latest "news, reviews and interviews from the Doctor WHO WHOniverse and BEYOND!"
MARK: I think we do the show to share our love of Doctor Who and the sci-fi genre in general. We fulfill what I call the three E's. I think we try to Educate, Entertain, and Enjoy Doctor Who.
Is it hard to produce a podcast every week and keeping it fresh and different each time?
