Category: Blog

Picture this: You’re in a meeting room at your tech company, and two people are having what looks like the same conversation about the same design problem. One is talking about whether the team has the right skills to tackle it. The other is diving deep into whether the solution actually solves the user’s problem. Same room, same problem, completely different lenses.

This is the beautiful, sometimes messy reality of having both a Design Manager and a Lead Designer on the same team. And if you’re wondering how to make this work without creating confusion, overlap, or the dreaded “too many cooks” scenario, you’re asking the right question.

The traditional answer has been to draw clean lines on an org chart. The Design Manager handles people, the Lead Designer handles craft. Problem solved, right? Except clean org charts are fantasy. In reality, both roles care deeply about team health, design quality, and shipping great work. 

The magic happens when you embrace the overlap instead of fighting it—when you start thinking of your design org as a design organism.

The Anatomy of a Healthy Design Team

Here’s what I’ve learned from years of being on both sides of this equation: think of your design team as a living organism. The Design Manager tends to the mind (the psychological safety, the career growth, the team dynamics). The Lead Designer tends to the body (the craft skills, the design standards, the hands-on work that ships to users).

But just like mind and body aren’t completely separate systems, so, too, do these roles overlap in important ways. You can’t have a healthy person without both working in harmony. The trick is knowing where those overlaps are and how to navigate them gracefully.

When we look at how healthy teams actually function, three critical systems emerge. Each requires both roles to work together, but with one taking primary responsibility for keeping that system strong.

The Nervous System: People & Psychology

Primary caretaker: Design Manager
Supporting role: Lead Designer

The nervous system is all about signals, feedback, and psychological safety. When this system is healthy, information flows freely, people feel safe to take risks, and the team can adapt quickly to new challenges.

The Design Manager is the primary caretaker here. They’re monitoring the team’s psychological pulse, ensuring feedback loops are healthy, and creating the conditions for people to grow. They’re hosting career conversations, managing workload, and making sure no one burns out.

But the Lead Designer plays a crucial supporting role. They’re providing sensory input about craft development needs, spotting when someone’s design skills are stagnating, and helping identify growth opportunities that the Design Manager might miss.

Design Manager tends to:

• Career conversations and growth planning
• Team psychological safety and dynamics
• Workload management and resource allocation
• Performance reviews and feedback systems
• Creating learning opportunities

Lead Designer supports by:

• Providing craft-specific feedback on team member development
• Identifying design skill gaps and growth opportunities
• Offering design mentorship and guidance
• Signaling when team members are ready for more complex challenges

The Muscular System: Craft & Execution

Primary caretaker: Lead Designer
Supporting role: Design Manager

The muscular system is about strength, coordination, and skill development. When this system is healthy, the team can execute complex design work with precision, maintain consistent quality, and adapt their craft to new challenges.

The Lead Designer is the primary caretaker here. They’re setting design standards, providing craft coaching, and ensuring that shipping work meets the quality bar. They’re the ones who can tell you if a design decision is sound or if we’re solving the right problem.

But the Design Manager plays a crucial supporting role. They’re ensuring the team has the resources and support to do their best craft work, like proper nutrition and recovery time for an athlete.

Lead Designer tends to:

• Definition of design standards and system usage
• Feedback on what design work meets the standard
• Experience direction for the product
• Design decisions and product-wide alignment
• Innovation and craft advancement

Design Manager supports by:

• Ensuring design standards are understood and adopted across the team
• Confirming experience direction is being followed
• Supporting practices and systems that scale without bottlenecking
• Facilitating design alignment across teams
• Providing resources and removing obstacles to great craft work

The Circulatory System: Strategy & Flow

Shared caretakers: Both Design Manager and Lead Designer

The circulatory system is about how information, decisions, and energy flow through the team. When this system is healthy, strategic direction is clear, priorities are aligned, and the team can respond quickly to new opportunities or challenges.

This is where true partnership happens. Both roles are responsible for keeping the circulation strong, but they’re bringing different perspectives to the table.

Lead Designer contributes:

• User needs are met by the product
• Overall product quality and experience
• Strategic design initiatives
• Research-based user needs for each initiative

Design Manager contributes:

• Communication to team and stakeholders
• Stakeholder management and alignment
• Cross-functional team accountability
• Strategic business initiatives

Both collaborate on:

• Co-creation of strategy with leadership
• Team goals and prioritization approach
• Organizational structure decisions
• Success measures and frameworks

Keeping the Organism Healthy

The key to making this partnership sing is understanding that all three systems need to work together. A team with great craft skills but poor psychological safety will burn out. A team with great culture but weak craft execution will ship mediocre work. A team with both but poor strategic circulation will work hard on the wrong things.

Be Explicit About Which System You’re Tending

When you’re in a meeting about a design problem, it helps to acknowledge which system you’re primarily focused on. “I’m thinking about this from a team capacity perspective” (nervous system) or “I’m looking at this through the lens of user needs” (muscular system) gives everyone context for your input.

This isn’t about staying in your lane. It’s about being transparent as to which lens you’re using, so the other person knows how to best add their perspective.

Create Healthy Feedback Loops

The most successful partnerships I’ve seen establish clear feedback loops between the systems:

Nervous system signals to muscular system: “The team is struggling with confidence in their design skills” → Lead Designer provides more craft coaching and clearer standards.

Muscular system signals to nervous system: “The team’s craft skills are advancing faster than their project complexity” → Design Manager finds more challenging growth opportunities.

Both systems signal to circulatory system: “We’re seeing patterns in team health and craft development that suggest we need to adjust our strategic priorities.”

Handle Handoffs Gracefully

The most critical moments in this partnership are when something moves from one system to another. This might be when a design standard (muscular system) needs to be rolled out across the team (nervous system), or when a strategic initiative (circulatory system) needs specific craft execution (muscular system).

Make these transitions explicit. “I’ve defined the new component standards. Can you help me think through how to get the team up to speed?” or “We’ve agreed on this strategic direction. I’m going to focus on the specific user experience approach from here.”

Stay Curious, Not Territorial

The Design Manager who never thinks about craft, or the Lead Designer who never considers team dynamics, is like a doctor who only looks at one body system. Great design leadership requires both people to care about the whole organism, even when they’re not the primary caretaker.

This means asking questions rather than making assumptions. “What do you think about the team’s craft development in this area?” or “How do you see this impacting team morale and workload?” keeps both perspectives active in every decision.

When the Organism Gets Sick

Even with clear roles, this partnership can go sideways. Here are the most common failure modes I’ve seen:

System Isolation

The Design Manager focuses only on the nervous system and ignores craft development. The Lead Designer focuses only on the muscular system and ignores team dynamics. Both people retreat to their comfort zones and stop collaborating.

The symptoms: Team members get mixed messages, work quality suffers, morale drops.

The treatment: Reconnect around shared outcomes. What are you both trying to achieve? Usually it’s great design work that ships on time from a healthy team. Figure out how both systems serve that goal.

Poor Circulation

Strategic direction is unclear, priorities keep shifting, and neither role is taking responsibility for keeping information flowing.

The symptoms: Team members are confused about priorities, work gets duplicated or dropped, deadlines are missed.

The treatment: Explicitly assign responsibility for circulation. Who’s communicating what to whom? How often? What’s the feedback loop?

Autoimmune Response

One person feels threatened by the other’s expertise. The Design Manager thinks the Lead Designer is undermining their authority. The Lead Designer thinks the Design Manager doesn’t understand craft.

The symptoms: Defensive behavior, territorial disputes, team members caught in the middle.

The treatment: Remember that you’re both caretakers of the same organism. When one system fails, the whole team suffers. When both systems are healthy, the team thrives.

The Payoff

Yes, this model requires more communication. Yes, it requires both people to be secure enough to share responsibility for team health. But the payoff is worth it: better decisions, stronger teams, and design work that’s both excellent and sustainable.

When both roles are healthy and working well together, you get the best of both worlds: deep craft expertise and strong people leadership. When one person is out sick, on vacation, or overwhelmed, the other can help maintain the team’s health. When a decision requires both the people perspective and the craft perspective, you’ve got both right there in the room.

Most importantly, the framework scales. As your team grows, you can apply the same system thinking to new challenges. Need to launch a design system? Lead Designer tends to the muscular system (standards and implementation), Design Manager tends to the nervous system (team adoption and change management), and both tend to circulation (communication and stakeholder alignment).

The Bottom Line

The relationship between a Design Manager and Lead Designer isn’t about dividing territories. It’s about multiplying impact. When both roles understand they’re tending to different aspects of the same healthy organism, magic happens.

The mind and body work together. The team gets both the strategic thinking and the craft excellence they need. And most importantly, the work that ships to users benefits from both perspectives.

So the next time you’re in that meeting room, wondering why two people are talking about the same problem from different angles, remember: you’re watching shared leadership in action. And if it’s working well, both the mind and body of your design team are getting stronger.

As a product builder over too many years to mention, I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve seen promising ideas go from zero to hero in a few weeks, only to fizzle out within months.

Financial products, which is the field I work in, are no exception. With people’s real hard-earned money on the line, user expectations running high, and a crowded market, it’s tempting to throw as many features at the wall as possible and hope something sticks. But this approach is a recipe for disaster. Here’s why:

The pitfalls of feature-first development

When you start building a financial product from the ground up, or are migrating existing customer journeys from paper or telephony channels onto online banking or mobile apps, it’s easy to get caught up in the excitement of creating new features. You might think, “If I can just add one more thing that solves this particular user problem, they’ll love me!” But what happens when you inevitably hit a roadblock because the narcs (your security team!) don’t like it? When a hard-fought feature isn’t as popular as you thought, or it breaks due to unforeseen complexity?

This is where the concept of Minimum Viable Product (MVP) comes in. Jason Fried’s book Getting Real and his podcast Rework often touch on this idea, even if he doesn’t always call it that. An MVP is a product that provides just enough value to your users to keep them engaged, but not so much that it becomes overwhelming or difficult to maintain. It sounds like an easy concept but it requires a razor sharp eye, a ruthless edge and having the courage to stick by your opinion because it is easy to be seduced by “the Columbo Effect”… when there’s always “just one more thing…” that someone wants to add.

The problem with most finance apps, however, is that they often become a reflection of the internal politics of the business rather than an experience solely designed around the customer. This means that the focus is on delivering as many features and functionalities as possible to satisfy the needs and desires of competing internal departments, rather than providing a clear value proposition that is focused on what the people out there in the real world want. As a result, these products can very easily bloat to become a mixed bag of confusing, unrelated and ultimately unlovable customer experiences—a feature salad, you might say.

The importance of bedrock

So what’s a better approach? How can we build products that are stable, user-friendly, and—most importantly—stick?

That’s where the concept of “bedrock” comes in. Bedrock is the core element of your product that truly matters to users. It’s the fundamental building block that provides value and stays relevant over time.

In the world of retail banking, which is where I work, the bedrock has got to be in and around the regular servicing journeys. People open their current account once in a blue moon but they look at it every day. They sign up for a credit card every year or two, but they check their balance and pay their bill at least once a month.

Identifying the core tasks that people want to do and then relentlessly striving to make them easy to do, dependable, and trustworthy is where the gravy’s at.

But how do you get to bedrock? By focusing on the “MVP” approach, prioritizing simplicity, and iterating towards a clear value proposition. This means cutting out unnecessary features and focusing on delivering real value to your users.

It also means having some guts, because your colleagues might not always instantly share your vision to start with. And controversially, sometimes it can even mean making it clear to customers that you’re not going to come to their house and make their dinner. The occasional “opinionated user interface design” (i.e. clunky workaround for edge cases) might sometimes be what you need to use to test a concept or buy you space to work on something more important.

Practical strategies for building financial products that stick

So what are the key strategies I’ve learned from my own experience and research?

1. Start with a clear “why”: What problem are you trying to solve? For whom? Make sure your mission is crystal clear before building anything. Make sure it aligns with your company’s objectives, too.
2. Focus on a single, core feature and obsess on getting that right before moving on to something else: Resist the temptation to add too many features at once. Instead, choose one that delivers real value and iterate from there.
3. Prioritize simplicity over complexity: Less is often more when it comes to financial products. Cut out unnecessary bells and whistles and keep the focus on what matters most.
4. Embrace continuous iteration: Bedrock isn’t a fixed destination—it’s a dynamic process. Continuously gather user feedback, refine your product, and iterate towards that bedrock state.
5. Stop, look and listen: Don’t just test your product as part of your delivery process—test it repeatedly in the field. Use it yourself. Run A/B tests. Gather user feedback. Talk to people who use it, and refine accordingly.

The bedrock paradox

There’s an interesting paradox at play here: building towards bedrock means sacrificing some short-term growth potential in favour of long-term stability. But the payoff is worth it—products built with a focus on bedrock will outlast and outperform their competitors, and deliver sustained value to users over time.

So, how do you start your journey towards bedrock? Take it one step at a time. Start by identifying those core elements that truly matter to your users. Focus on building and refining a single, powerful feature that delivers real value. And above all, test obsessively—for, in the words of Abraham Lincoln, Alan Kay, or Peter Drucker (whomever you believe!!), “The best way to predict the future is to create it.”

Of all the so-called “Neo-Westerns” produced in the modern era—which is to say Oaters made after the ’70s—few have enjoyed as much longevity as Tombstone. Released sheepishly in 1993 by a studio so preemptively embarrassed about behind-the-scenes troubles that Disney elected to not screen it for critics, Tombstone was expected to come and go. Instead […]

The post Stephen Lang on Tombstone’s Troubled Production: Kurt Russell ‘Refused to Let It Die’ appeared first on Den of Geek.

Doctor Who turned 62 this week, but the celebrations were decidedly muted. This makes a certain amount of sense, given that the franchise is in what can only be called a state of considerable flux—the Disney deal is dead, the spinoff The War Between the Land and the Sea hasn’t aired yet (and won’t for a while in most countries), and we have no idea who the next Doctor will be, or why Billie Piper’s back on the canvas for some as-yet-undetermined reason. It’s, to put it mildly, a weird and slightly frustrating time to be a Whovian, which probably explains why one of the few items released to mark the occasion was a batch of deleted scenes from the series’ most recent outing. 

To be fair, this isn’t nothing — there’s almost 20 minutes of new footage from what turned out to be Ncuti Gatwa’s final season, with snippets from every episode except “The Well.” (Instead, we get one from the preceding Christmas special, “Joy to the World.”) It’s easy to see why most of these scenes were cut, if only because outside of Fifteen’s New Year’s Eve phone call to former companion Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson) and Conrad’s (Jonah Hauer-King) visit to see Ruby’s family in “Lucky Day,” none of them add all that much to the stories the larger episodes were telling. 

In fact, what’s most interesting about these deleted scenes is the fact that the one we all most want to see has been completely left out: “The Reality War’s” original ending. 

It’s a truth universally acknowledged that the most recent season of Doctor Who wasn’t originally supposed to end with Fifteen’s regeneration. In fact, according to former star Carole Ann Ford, it appears as though it was set to reintroduce the Doctor’s granddaughter, Susan, and perhaps even lead into some sort of answers about the long-standing mystery surrounding what actually happened to her character. Ford described filming a scene in which she and an unidentified child actor assumed to be Sienna-Robyn Mavanga-Phipps, who played Poppy, watch Fifteen and his companion Belinda (Varada Sethu) dance at a party. Viewers never actually saw that moment onscreen — in fact, the episode’s ending was almost entirely changed — and if Disney+ hadn’t accidentally used a promo photo from that moment on their landing screen, they might have never known it existed at all. 

Maybe it’s a lot to ask Doctor Who to release something like this to the public. After all, it would require publicly admitting to whatever massive changes clearly went down behind the scenes that so clearly altered the course of Gatwa’s time in the TARDIS in a way they’ve never been willing to do before. But don’t we kind of deserve to see it anyway? After bringing back Ford for a quick cameo in “The Interstellar Song Contest” and seeming poised to finally confront literal decades of Susan speculation, it’s almost insulting to pretend like it all never happened. And that it wasn’t obviously going somewhere very different from Piper poking her head out of the TARDIS door in the season’s final moments. Sigh. Maybe we’ll get it in a box set someday. 

The post Doctor Who Season 15 Deleted Scenes Still Leave Out the Most Important Bit appeared first on Den of Geek.

This article contains spoilers for Talamasca: The Secret Order episode 6. While Talamasca: The Secret Order is the third installment of AMC’s Anne Rice television universe, it’s the first to truly strike out on its own path. Based on an original concept rather than a specific piece of source material, the series follows the story […]

The post Talamasca Showrunners Provide Answers to That Complicated Season 1 Ending appeared first on Den of Geek.

Doctor Who turned 62 this week, but the celebrations were decidedly muted. This makes a certain amount of sense, given that the franchise is in what can only be called a state of considerable flux—the Disney deal is dead, the spinoff The War Between the Land and the Sea hasn’t aired yet (and won’t for a while in most countries), and we have no idea who the next Doctor will be, or why Billie Piper’s back on the canvas for some as-yet-undetermined reason. It’s, to put it mildly, a weird and slightly frustrating time to be a Whovian, which probably explains why one of the few items released to mark the occasion was a batch of deleted scenes from the series’ most recent outing. 

To be fair, this isn’t nothing — there’s almost 20 minutes of new footage from what turned out to be Ncuti Gatwa’s final season, with snippets from every episode except “The Well.” (Instead, we get one from the preceding Christmas special, “Joy to the World.”) It’s easy to see why most of these scenes were cut, if only because outside of Fifteen’s New Year’s Eve phone call to former companion Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson) and Conrad’s (Jonah Hauer-King) visit to see Ruby’s family in “Lucky Day,” none of them add all that much to the stories the larger episodes were telling. 

In fact, what’s most interesting about these deleted scenes is the fact that the one we all most want to see has been completely left out: “The Reality War’s” original ending. 

It’s a truth universally acknowledged that the most recent season of Doctor Who wasn’t originally supposed to end with Fifteen’s regeneration. In fact, according to former star Carole Ann Ford, it appears as though it was set to reintroduce the Doctor’s granddaughter, Susan, and perhaps even lead into some sort of answers about the long-standing mystery surrounding what actually happened to her character. Ford described filming a scene in which she and an unidentified child actor assumed to be Sienna-Robyn Mavanga-Phipps, who played Poppy, watch Fifteen and his companion Belinda (Varada Sethu) dance at a party. Viewers never actually saw that moment onscreen — in fact, the episode’s ending was almost entirely changed — and if Disney+ hadn’t accidentally used a promo photo from that moment on their landing screen, they might have never known it existed at all. 

Maybe it’s a lot to ask Doctor Who to release something like this to the public. After all, it would require publicly admitting to whatever massive changes clearly went down behind the scenes that so clearly altered the course of Gatwa’s time in the TARDIS in a way they’ve never been willing to do before. But don’t we kind of deserve to see it anyway? After bringing back Ford for a quick cameo in “The Interstellar Song Contest” and seeming poised to finally confront literal decades of Susan speculation, it’s almost insulting to pretend like it all never happened. And that it wasn’t obviously going somewhere very different from Piper poking her head out of the TARDIS door in the season’s final moments. Sigh. Maybe we’ll get it in a box set someday. 

The post Doctor Who Season 15 Deleted Scenes Still Leave Out the Most Important Bit appeared first on Den of Geek.

Like a ship blown from its mooring by a wind off the sea, or like a seed dropped by a sky bird in a distant wood, it’s safe to say that the November box office has been changed for the better, because it knew Wicked: For Good. If you can pardon us for bastardizing a […]

The post Wicked: For Good Box Office Proves Splitting Musical in Two Was Right Call appeared first on Den of Geek.

Doctor Who turned 62 this week, but the celebrations were decidedly muted. This makes a certain amount of sense, given that the franchise is in what can only be called a state of considerable flux—the Disney deal is dead, the spinoff The War Between the Land and the Sea hasn’t aired yet (and won’t for a while in most countries), and we have no idea who the next Doctor will be, or why Billie Piper’s back on the canvas for some as-yet-undetermined reason. It’s, to put it mildly, a weird and slightly frustrating time to be a Whovian, which probably explains why one of the few items released to mark the occasion was a batch of deleted scenes from the series’ most recent outing. 

To be fair, this isn’t nothing — there’s almost 20 minutes of new footage from what turned out to be Ncuti Gatwa’s final season, with snippets from every episode except “The Well.” (Instead, we get one from the preceding Christmas special, “Joy to the World.”) It’s easy to see why most of these scenes were cut, if only because outside of Fifteen’s New Year’s Eve phone call to former companion Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson) and Conrad’s (Jonah Hauer-King) visit to see Ruby’s family in “Lucky Day,” none of them add all that much to the stories the larger episodes were telling. 

In fact, what’s most interesting about these deleted scenes is the fact that the one we all most want to see has been completely left out: “The Reality War’s” original ending. 

It’s a truth universally acknowledged that the most recent season of Doctor Who wasn’t originally supposed to end with Fifteen’s regeneration. In fact, according to former star Carole Ann Ford, it appears as though it was set to reintroduce the Doctor’s granddaughter, Susan, and perhaps even lead into some sort of answers about the long-standing mystery surrounding what actually happened to her character. Ford described filming a scene in which she and an unidentified child actor assumed to be Sienna-Robyn Mavanga-Phipps, who played Poppy, watch Fifteen and his companion Belinda (Varada Sethu) dance at a party. Viewers never actually saw that moment onscreen — in fact, the episode’s ending was almost entirely changed — and if Disney+ hadn’t accidentally used a promo photo from that moment on their landing screen, they might have never known it existed at all. 

Maybe it’s a lot to ask Doctor Who to release something like this to the public. After all, it would require publicly admitting to whatever massive changes clearly went down behind the scenes that so clearly altered the course of Gatwa’s time in the TARDIS in a way they’ve never been willing to do before. But don’t we kind of deserve to see it anyway? After bringing back Ford for a quick cameo in “The Interstellar Song Contest” and seeming poised to finally confront literal decades of Susan speculation, it’s almost insulting to pretend like it all never happened. And that it wasn’t obviously going somewhere very different from Piper poking her head out of the TARDIS door in the season’s final moments. Sigh. Maybe we’ll get it in a box set someday. 

The post Doctor Who Season 15 Deleted Scenes Still Leave Out the Most Important Bit appeared first on Den of Geek.

Stranger Things offers a lot to viewers. The Netflix series has become a sensation thanks to its expansive monster mythology, its use of needle drops like “Running Up That Hill” by Kate Bush, and a cast that ranges from reliable stars like Winona Ryder to breakouts such as Sadie Sink. But, let’s be honest, there […]

The post Stranger Things Season 5 Trailer Puts Steve and Dustin Bromance Front and Center appeared first on Den of Geek.

Doctor Who turned 62 this week, but the celebrations were decidedly muted. This makes a certain amount of sense, given that the franchise is in what can only be called a state of considerable flux—the Disney deal is dead, the spinoff The War Between the Land and the Sea hasn’t aired yet (and won’t for a while in most countries), and we have no idea who the next Doctor will be, or why Billie Piper’s back on the canvas for some as-yet-undetermined reason. It’s, to put it mildly, a weird and slightly frustrating time to be a Whovian, which probably explains why one of the few items released to mark the occasion was a batch of deleted scenes from the series’ most recent outing. 

To be fair, this isn’t nothing — there’s almost 20 minutes of new footage from what turned out to be Ncuti Gatwa’s final season, with snippets from every episode except “The Well.” (Instead, we get one from the preceding Christmas special, “Joy to the World.”) It’s easy to see why most of these scenes were cut, if only because outside of Fifteen’s New Year’s Eve phone call to former companion Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson) and Conrad’s (Jonah Hauer-King) visit to see Ruby’s family in “Lucky Day,” none of them add all that much to the stories the larger episodes were telling. 

In fact, what’s most interesting about these deleted scenes is the fact that the one we all most want to see has been completely left out: “The Reality War’s” original ending. 

It’s a truth universally acknowledged that the most recent season of Doctor Who wasn’t originally supposed to end with Fifteen’s regeneration. In fact, according to former star Carole Ann Ford, it appears as though it was set to reintroduce the Doctor’s granddaughter, Susan, and perhaps even lead into some sort of answers about the long-standing mystery surrounding what actually happened to her character. Ford described filming a scene in which she and an unidentified child actor assumed to be Sienna-Robyn Mavanga-Phipps, who played Poppy, watch Fifteen and his companion Belinda (Varada Sethu) dance at a party. Viewers never actually saw that moment onscreen — in fact, the episode’s ending was almost entirely changed — and if Disney+ hadn’t accidentally used a promo photo from that moment on their landing screen, they might have never known it existed at all. 

Maybe it’s a lot to ask Doctor Who to release something like this to the public. After all, it would require publicly admitting to whatever massive changes clearly went down behind the scenes that so clearly altered the course of Gatwa’s time in the TARDIS in a way they’ve never been willing to do before. But don’t we kind of deserve to see it anyway? After bringing back Ford for a quick cameo in “The Interstellar Song Contest” and seeming poised to finally confront literal decades of Susan speculation, it’s almost insulting to pretend like it all never happened. And that it wasn’t obviously going somewhere very different from Piper poking her head out of the TARDIS door in the season’s final moments. Sigh. Maybe we’ll get it in a box set someday. 

The post Doctor Who Season 15 Deleted Scenes Still Leave Out the Most Important Bit appeared first on Den of Geek.

Who you gonna call? Long before everyone in the world knew the answer to that question was “Ghostbusters,” Dan Aykroyd and Ivan Reitman called Eddie Murphy. And Murphy said no. Along with fellow Saturday Night Live alumni John Belushi, Murphy was one of Akroyd’s first picks to star with him as a team of paranormal […]

The post Eddie Murphy Regrets Turning Down Ghostbusters appeared first on Den of Geek.

Doctor Who turned 62 this week, but the celebrations were decidedly muted. This makes a certain amount of sense, given that the franchise is in what can only be called a state of considerable flux—the Disney deal is dead, the spinoff The War Between the Land and the Sea hasn’t aired yet (and won’t for a while in most countries), and we have no idea who the next Doctor will be, or why Billie Piper’s back on the canvas for some as-yet-undetermined reason. It’s, to put it mildly, a weird and slightly frustrating time to be a Whovian, which probably explains why one of the few items released to mark the occasion was a batch of deleted scenes from the series’ most recent outing. 

To be fair, this isn’t nothing — there’s almost 20 minutes of new footage from what turned out to be Ncuti Gatwa’s final season, with snippets from every episode except “The Well.” (Instead, we get one from the preceding Christmas special, “Joy to the World.”) It’s easy to see why most of these scenes were cut, if only because outside of Fifteen’s New Year’s Eve phone call to former companion Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson) and Conrad’s (Jonah Hauer-King) visit to see Ruby’s family in “Lucky Day,” none of them add all that much to the stories the larger episodes were telling. 

In fact, what’s most interesting about these deleted scenes is the fact that the one we all most want to see has been completely left out: “The Reality War’s” original ending. 

It’s a truth universally acknowledged that the most recent season of Doctor Who wasn’t originally supposed to end with Fifteen’s regeneration. In fact, according to former star Carole Ann Ford, it appears as though it was set to reintroduce the Doctor’s granddaughter, Susan, and perhaps even lead into some sort of answers about the long-standing mystery surrounding what actually happened to her character. Ford described filming a scene in which she and an unidentified child actor assumed to be Sienna-Robyn Mavanga-Phipps, who played Poppy, watch Fifteen and his companion Belinda (Varada Sethu) dance at a party. Viewers never actually saw that moment onscreen — in fact, the episode’s ending was almost entirely changed — and if Disney+ hadn’t accidentally used a promo photo from that moment on their landing screen, they might have never known it existed at all. 

Maybe it’s a lot to ask Doctor Who to release something like this to the public. After all, it would require publicly admitting to whatever massive changes clearly went down behind the scenes that so clearly altered the course of Gatwa’s time in the TARDIS in a way they’ve never been willing to do before. But don’t we kind of deserve to see it anyway? After bringing back Ford for a quick cameo in “The Interstellar Song Contest” and seeming poised to finally confront literal decades of Susan speculation, it’s almost insulting to pretend like it all never happened. And that it wasn’t obviously going somewhere very different from Piper poking her head out of the TARDIS door in the season’s final moments. Sigh. Maybe we’ll get it in a box set someday. 

The post Doctor Who Season 15 Deleted Scenes Still Leave Out the Most Important Bit appeared first on Den of Geek.

Hugh Jackman is the best at what he does. And what he does is apparently play Wolverine until the day he dies. At least, that’s what we have to think after the Australian actor talked about donning Logan’s adamantium claws again while visiting the Graham Norton Show. When Norton pointed out that the actor has […]

The post Hugh Jackman Might Return as Wolverine, and He Really Shouldn’t appeared first on Den of Geek.

Doctor Who turned 62 this week, but the celebrations were decidedly muted. This makes a certain amount of sense, given that the franchise is in what can only be called a state of considerable flux—the Disney deal is dead, the spinoff The War Between the Land and the Sea hasn’t aired yet (and won’t for a while in most countries), and we have no idea who the next Doctor will be, or why Billie Piper’s back on the canvas for some as-yet-undetermined reason. It’s, to put it mildly, a weird and slightly frustrating time to be a Whovian, which probably explains why one of the few items released to mark the occasion was a batch of deleted scenes from the series’ most recent outing. 

To be fair, this isn’t nothing — there’s almost 20 minutes of new footage from what turned out to be Ncuti Gatwa’s final season, with snippets from every episode except “The Well.” (Instead, we get one from the preceding Christmas special, “Joy to the World.”) It’s easy to see why most of these scenes were cut, if only because outside of Fifteen’s New Year’s Eve phone call to former companion Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson) and Conrad’s (Jonah Hauer-King) visit to see Ruby’s family in “Lucky Day,” none of them add all that much to the stories the larger episodes were telling. 

In fact, what’s most interesting about these deleted scenes is the fact that the one we all most want to see has been completely left out: “The Reality War’s” original ending. 

It’s a truth universally acknowledged that the most recent season of Doctor Who wasn’t originally supposed to end with Fifteen’s regeneration. In fact, according to former star Carole Ann Ford, it appears as though it was set to reintroduce the Doctor’s granddaughter, Susan, and perhaps even lead into some sort of answers about the long-standing mystery surrounding what actually happened to her character. Ford described filming a scene in which she and an unidentified child actor assumed to be Sienna-Robyn Mavanga-Phipps, who played Poppy, watch Fifteen and his companion Belinda (Varada Sethu) dance at a party. Viewers never actually saw that moment onscreen — in fact, the episode’s ending was almost entirely changed — and if Disney+ hadn’t accidentally used a promo photo from that moment on their landing screen, they might have never known it existed at all. 

Maybe it’s a lot to ask Doctor Who to release something like this to the public. After all, it would require publicly admitting to whatever massive changes clearly went down behind the scenes that so clearly altered the course of Gatwa’s time in the TARDIS in a way they’ve never been willing to do before. But don’t we kind of deserve to see it anyway? After bringing back Ford for a quick cameo in “The Interstellar Song Contest” and seeming poised to finally confront literal decades of Susan speculation, it’s almost insulting to pretend like it all never happened. And that it wasn’t obviously going somewhere very different from Piper poking her head out of the TARDIS door in the season’s final moments. Sigh. Maybe we’ll get it in a box set someday. 

The post Doctor Who Season 15 Deleted Scenes Still Leave Out the Most Important Bit appeared first on Den of Geek.

One of the most intriguing aspects of AMC’s larger Anne Rice universe is the potential for crossovers and connections amongst its various shows. While Talamasca: The Secret Order may be the franchise’s newest property, it’s also the series whose story has the most potential to easily intersect with the others. (That whole “we watch and […]

The post Talamasca’s William Fichtner Hopes Jasper Will Meet The Vampire Lestat appeared first on Den of Geek.

Doctor Who turned 62 this week, but the celebrations were decidedly muted. This makes a certain amount of sense, given that the franchise is in what can only be called a state of considerable flux—the Disney deal is dead, the spinoff The War Between the Land and the Sea hasn’t aired yet (and won’t for a while in most countries), and we have no idea who the next Doctor will be, or why Billie Piper’s back on the canvas for some as-yet-undetermined reason. It’s, to put it mildly, a weird and slightly frustrating time to be a Whovian, which probably explains why one of the few items released to mark the occasion was a batch of deleted scenes from the series’ most recent outing. 

To be fair, this isn’t nothing — there’s almost 20 minutes of new footage from what turned out to be Ncuti Gatwa’s final season, with snippets from every episode except “The Well.” (Instead, we get one from the preceding Christmas special, “Joy to the World.”) It’s easy to see why most of these scenes were cut, if only because outside of Fifteen’s New Year’s Eve phone call to former companion Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson) and Conrad’s (Jonah Hauer-King) visit to see Ruby’s family in “Lucky Day,” none of them add all that much to the stories the larger episodes were telling. 

In fact, what’s most interesting about these deleted scenes is the fact that the one we all most want to see has been completely left out: “The Reality War’s” original ending. 

It’s a truth universally acknowledged that the most recent season of Doctor Who wasn’t originally supposed to end with Fifteen’s regeneration. In fact, according to former star Carole Ann Ford, it appears as though it was set to reintroduce the Doctor’s granddaughter, Susan, and perhaps even lead into some sort of answers about the long-standing mystery surrounding what actually happened to her character. Ford described filming a scene in which she and an unidentified child actor assumed to be Sienna-Robyn Mavanga-Phipps, who played Poppy, watch Fifteen and his companion Belinda (Varada Sethu) dance at a party. Viewers never actually saw that moment onscreen — in fact, the episode’s ending was almost entirely changed — and if Disney+ hadn’t accidentally used a promo photo from that moment on their landing screen, they might have never known it existed at all. 

Maybe it’s a lot to ask Doctor Who to release something like this to the public. After all, it would require publicly admitting to whatever massive changes clearly went down behind the scenes that so clearly altered the course of Gatwa’s time in the TARDIS in a way they’ve never been willing to do before. But don’t we kind of deserve to see it anyway? After bringing back Ford for a quick cameo in “The Interstellar Song Contest” and seeming poised to finally confront literal decades of Susan speculation, it’s almost insulting to pretend like it all never happened. And that it wasn’t obviously going somewhere very different from Piper poking her head out of the TARDIS door in the season’s final moments. Sigh. Maybe we’ll get it in a box set someday. 

The post Doctor Who Season 15 Deleted Scenes Still Leave Out the Most Important Bit appeared first on Den of Geek.

The news that House of the Dragon was officially getting a fourth season probably didn’t surprise anyone. It’s one of HBO’s most successful post-Game of Thrones projects, after all. But the announcement that the fourth season — initially presumed to be the series’ last – might not be the Targaryens’ final outing after all was […]

The post We Might Be Getting a Game of Thrones Sequel Whether We Want It Or Not appeared first on Den of Geek.

Doctor Who turned 62 this week, but the celebrations were decidedly muted. This makes a certain amount of sense, given that the franchise is in what can only be called a state of considerable flux—the Disney deal is dead, the spinoff The War Between the Land and the Sea hasn’t aired yet (and won’t for a while in most countries), and we have no idea who the next Doctor will be, or why Billie Piper’s back on the canvas for some as-yet-undetermined reason. It’s, to put it mildly, a weird and slightly frustrating time to be a Whovian, which probably explains why one of the few items released to mark the occasion was a batch of deleted scenes from the series’ most recent outing. 

To be fair, this isn’t nothing — there’s almost 20 minutes of new footage from what turned out to be Ncuti Gatwa’s final season, with snippets from every episode except “The Well.” (Instead, we get one from the preceding Christmas special, “Joy to the World.”) It’s easy to see why most of these scenes were cut, if only because outside of Fifteen’s New Year’s Eve phone call to former companion Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson) and Conrad’s (Jonah Hauer-King) visit to see Ruby’s family in “Lucky Day,” none of them add all that much to the stories the larger episodes were telling. 

In fact, what’s most interesting about these deleted scenes is the fact that the one we all most want to see has been completely left out: “The Reality War’s” original ending. 

It’s a truth universally acknowledged that the most recent season of Doctor Who wasn’t originally supposed to end with Fifteen’s regeneration. In fact, according to former star Carole Ann Ford, it appears as though it was set to reintroduce the Doctor’s granddaughter, Susan, and perhaps even lead into some sort of answers about the long-standing mystery surrounding what actually happened to her character. Ford described filming a scene in which she and an unidentified child actor assumed to be Sienna-Robyn Mavanga-Phipps, who played Poppy, watch Fifteen and his companion Belinda (Varada Sethu) dance at a party. Viewers never actually saw that moment onscreen — in fact, the episode’s ending was almost entirely changed — and if Disney+ hadn’t accidentally used a promo photo from that moment on their landing screen, they might have never known it existed at all. 

Maybe it’s a lot to ask Doctor Who to release something like this to the public. After all, it would require publicly admitting to whatever massive changes clearly went down behind the scenes that so clearly altered the course of Gatwa’s time in the TARDIS in a way they’ve never been willing to do before. But don’t we kind of deserve to see it anyway? After bringing back Ford for a quick cameo in “The Interstellar Song Contest” and seeming poised to finally confront literal decades of Susan speculation, it’s almost insulting to pretend like it all never happened. And that it wasn’t obviously going somewhere very different from Piper poking her head out of the TARDIS door in the season’s final moments. Sigh. Maybe we’ll get it in a box set someday. 

The post Doctor Who Season 15 Deleted Scenes Still Leave Out the Most Important Bit appeared first on Den of Geek.