Outpost Gallifrey

Outpost Gallifrey

URL	http://www.gallifreyone.com
Commercial?	Yes
Type of site	Fan site
Registration	Free
Owner	Shaun Lyon
Created by	Shaun Lyon
Current status	Closed for all but Gallifrey One news. Succeeded by Gallifrey Base.

Outpost Gallifrey was a fan website for the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It was active as a complete fan site from 1995 until 2007, then existing solely as a portal to the still-active parts of the site, including its news page and forums (rebranded as The Doctor Who Forum and The Doctor Who News Page, but still part of the original site architecture) until July 31, 2009.

Main site

Launched on December 11, 1995, the site was created and administered by Shaun Lyon. The site was based in the United States, and was primarily created to promote the annual Los Angeles Doctor Who convention Gallifrey One.

In January 2005, SciFi.com named Outpost Gallifrey its "Sci-Fi Site of the Week", noting its comprehensive coverage of all things Doctor Who.^[1] In March 2006, the Los Angeles Times referred to Outpost Gallifrey as "the premier Doctor Who website" in America.^[2] In November 2006, an interviewer for bbc.co.uk recommended Outpost Gallifrey as a "terrific fan site", along with the BBC's official Doctor Who website.^[3] The site's news page was known in the Doctor Who fan community for being a generally reliable source of news for the programme. Its front page claimed that the website received over 25,000 readers every day, rising to up to 50,000 at times of peak interest in the show such as a series premiere or finale.

The site had numerous sections such as an episode guide (giving cast and crew details and story outlines), feature articles and a reviews section. Reader and member submissions were accepted by Lyon.

On October 9, 2006, Lyon announced that he would no longer be updating the news pages due to the fact that his "heart was no longer in [the constant news collection and editing] anymore." The initial plan was that most of the website would be archived, with only the forum and pages related to the annual Gallifrey One convention continuing to be updated regularly. However, on November 2, 2006, Lyon announced that the site's news page would be returning in a new form, with Lyon as editor-in-chief and a committee of reporters from the US, UK and beyond.^[4] The news page was relaunched on 1 December, along with the newly-incorporated Web Guide to Doctor Who, a manually maintained listing of Doctor Who websites. Previously this web guide had been a separate site, edited by Paul Harman over ten years.

On January 21, 2007, the website became affiliated with the popular Doctor Who podcast Doctor Who: Podshock.

On August 27, 2007, Lyon announced that the majority of the site would no longer be updated; its most active parts would split into four separate websites, with the rest of the site to be archived. Specifically, the Outpost Gallifrey News Page was relaunched as the Doctor Who News Page (at www.doctorwhonews.com); the Outpost Gallifrey forum became the Doctor Who Forum (at www.doctorwhoforum.com); the address www.gallifreyone.com was retained for the Gallifrey One convention in Los Angeles; and the Web Guide to Doctor Who continued at www.doctorwhowebguide.com. However, it was not until December 1, 2007 that those changes came about, when the front page became a single links page to the various new sites, and Outpost Gallifrey was formally closed as a one-stop site. As of 2008^[update], the component sites of the former Outpost Gallifrey are still referred to by the site's old name.^[5]

On June 2, 2009, Lyon announced that the site, including the news page and forum, would close completely on July 31, 2009, save as the portal for the Gallifrey One convention.^[6] The closure was noted by Charlie Jane Anders of io9, who described Outpost Gallifrey as "the best Doctor Who fansite".^[7]

Discussion forum

As of June 2009^[update], the site's discussion forum has over 40,000 registered members, of whom over 15,000 are considered "active". (During the UK broadcasts of the 2008 series of Doctor Who, there were over 31,000 active members.) The site's chat room also remains popular. The forum is actively moderated. The forum had close contacts with the production team and writers associated with the series, several of whom had been known to post on the forums. In April 2005, when the news of Christopher Eccleston's departure from Doctor Who broke, discussion on the forum became so heated that Lyon shut the section down for two days; the closure was reported in The Daily Mirror.^[8] The British news media regularly used the site to garner examples of fan reactions to Doctor Who.^[9]

Current Doctor Who lead actor David Tennant admitted in a 2005 interview with Doctor Who Magazine that he had visited the Outpost Gallifrey forum shortly after his casting had been announced, to gauge fan reaction. "Well, when it was announced, I admit, I did go on Outpost Gallifrey to have a quick look, because I just couldn't help myself, and everyone was encouraging me to go on and see what the fans were saying about me," he told the magazine.^[10]

Gareth Roberts, one of the writers of Doctor Who, complimented the persistence of fans on the website's forum who were able to track down the locations where the series was being shot. "These people should be working for MI5, they're wasted on Outpost Gallifrey," Roberts said in a December 2006 interview with Doctor Who Magazine. "To be able to comb that amount of media and make contacts and find this stuff out... they should be hunting Al-Qaeda, not stalking Nick Briggs in a van in the middle of nowhere."^[11]

On January 12, 2007, the MediaGuardian.co.uk website's "Media Monkey" diary column reported that Doctor Who fans from the Outpost Gallifrey forum were attempting to organise mass downloads of the song "Love Don't Roam" from the programme's soundtrack, which was available as a single release on the UK iTunes store. This was in order to attempt to exploit the new UK singles chart download rules, and get the song featured in the Top 40 releases.^[12] The attempt failed, with the song not even making the Top 100.

The forum's popularity and reputation for debate over Doctor Who-related matters had even been acknowledged in the programme itself. In 2004, when the first photographs of the new series' TARDIS prop were revealed, there was a vigorous discussion of the box's dimensions on the Outpost Gallifrey Doctor Who discussion forum, in which some fans complained that the prop's windows were too big. In the episode "Blink" one character tells another that the TARDIS is not a real police box and mentions that the windows are the wrong size as evidence. Episode writer Steven Moffat confirmed that this line was an in-joke aimed at the Outpost Gallifrey forum.^[13]

In early 2008, the Outpost Gallifrey Forum was rebranded as "The Doctor Who Forum". The British press continues to use the forum as a gauge of Doctor Who fan opinion.^[14] The forum was closed along with the rest of the site on July 31, 2009, with the passing of the banner to its successor, "Gallifrey Base", run by most of the Forum's support staff.^[6] Gallifrey Base officially opened on June 13, 2009.^[15]

References

External links

• The Former Outpost Gallifrey (Currently used for Gallifrey One convention.)
  • Gallifrey Base - Registration required.
  • Outpost Gallifrey on the Internet Archive - The site can be accessed in an archival status from December 1998 onwards.
• Science Fiction Weekly's review of Outpost Gallifrey