The Year in News: What Happened Next (Stories From March-April 2017)

It’s that time of year again when we look back at some of the news stories we’ve covered in 2017 and update you on later developments. Turning to March, Richard E Grant said it was time for a female lead in Doctor Who. Four months later he got his wish with the unveiling of Jodie Whittaker, who formally took over the role in last night’s Christmas special.

Netflix announced it would try out branching storyline shows along the lines of the “Choose Your Own Adventure” books. The initial episodes were aimed at children and appeared to be a success despite being unavailable on some platforms (including the Netflix website itself) and the company is now working on a show for grown-ups.

An unnamed US ally used a Patriot missile to shoot down a quadcopter drone. While the details weren’t released, it was likely in Iraq where drones are used as a guerrilla tactic to remotely drop grenades. At three million dollars, the strike was somewhat more expensive than the solution found by an Argentinian football fan.

In April music service Pandora launched a premium tier that allowed users to play tracks on demand. It seemed somewhat bizarre as the whole point of Pandora was that it uses the Music Genome Project to automatically curate the order songs appear, with each sharing characteristics with its predecessor. The paid option doesn’t appear to have been a major hit as the company is now offering the ‘choose your track or album’ feature to free users in return for watching a 15 second video every time they want to change their selection.

Nintendo revealed it would follow up the NES Mini with a SNES version for this year’s holiday season. It delivered, though stocks are variable to say the least. Meanwhile Sega has reached a licensing deal with Retro-bit, with an announcement due at CES next month.