Posted on 01/12/2006 5:04:33 PM PST by Panerai
The good Doctor is finally coming to the United States! The SCI FI Channel and BBC Worldwide Americas announced today that the new Doctor Who series will debut this March on the cable network.
The 13-episode first series (or 27th season of Doctor Who, depending on who you ask) will air Fridays at 9 p.m. Eastern/Pacific starting in March -- taking over Stargate Atlantis's regular timeslot, no doubt after new episodes have finished. The series drew big ratings when it premiered on BBC ONE in the U.K. last spring.
Doctor Who stars Christopher Eccleston as the Doctor and Billie Piper as Rose, his travelling companion. The duo risk their lives in new adventures battling monsters and aliens and travelling in time and space via the famous TARDIS.
"The Doctor's made all sorts of journeys in time and space, but this is one of his most exciting yet," head writer and executive producer Russell T. Davies said. "I'm a huge fan of The SCI FI Channel, and I'm delighted that Doctor Who is appearing on a channel that supports and enhances the entire genre."
The deal also includes an option for the season season of the new series, which stars David Tennant as the Doctor's latest reincarnation and begins airing in the U.K. this spring.
Meanwhile, Who's upcoming North American DVD release has been pushed back from February to July 4 to capitalize on the television debut.
The classic Doctor Who series won the hearts of many science fiction fans in the U.S. during its run on public broadcasting stations, but has never had a wide distribution in the States. As the longest-running genre series in TV history, Who's ever-changing leading men, TARDIS, K-9 robotic dog, and evil Daleks have become cultural icons since the show's original debut in 1963.
Read the BBC's complete announcement at the network's official Web site. Check out fan site Outpost Gallifrey to learn more about the Doctor Who universe!
Although I did like Baker as Dr. Who...the 2005 Doctor was even better. And Piper.../tiger growl...if only I were 15 years younger.../sigh
Brings back memories of my college days, of being ad hoc faculty contact of my college's SF club (called the Survivors of the Big Bang abreviated SOB2), being a member of a group called Companions of Dr. Who and spending many hours at SF conventions....ah, those were the days...
But I don't think I want to do that again.
Yep, Piper is a stunner.
How about Louise Jameson (Leela)?
The stuff may be routine today, but it wasn't in 1963 when the show debuted.
Some parts of the show were just plain silly, granted, and certain production decisions seem pretty questionable, but the show nonetheless provides an interesting glimpse into how television production has changed over the years.
Since the 19th century, people have realized the possibilities for editing film by cutting and splicing. Video, however, was not readily edited. Sections of tape could be cut and spliced together, but such cuts were not precise. Many early episodes of Doctor Who were shot in four or fewer sections. Even when it was necessary to insert film footage, that would often be done "live" during recording. If there was a four-minute film insert, the actors would wait four minutes while the film ran before the camera returned to them.
One of Jon Pertwee's innovations, which some of his fellow actors liked and the producers hated, was swearing when something went wrong in production. This would force the director to stop and reshoot the scene. Otherwise, if not forced to, the director would just keep going right on through mistakes. Even when a wooden sword broke during a sword fight in "The Aztecs", recording continued as the character grabbed another sword off a table and kept fighting (according to the DVD commentary, the sword wasn't supposed to break).
To be sure, the special effects in Doctor Who could be hit-or-miss. This was largely a consequence of doing many of them "live". If tape was rolling and an effect didn't work, too bad. Unless it made a scene unwatchable, it wouldn't be worth re-recording (especially since it may be necessary to redo not just the effect, but scenes before and after).
I will confess to being puzzled by some of the effects, though. Perhaps most notably in "The Dalek Invasion of Earth". In the early days of Doctor Who, each episode's recap of the last episode's cliffhanger would usually be produced by having the actors re-act it. It might not match perfectly, but since nobody had VCRs in those days, nobody would notice. One episode of TDIoE ends with a model shot of a warhead being partially-lowered into a shaft.
The aspect that puzzles me is that when the cliffhanger was shot, the model wasn't completed; it was finished in the week before shooting the next episode. The recap, however, reuses the previous week's shot of the unfinished model, though, which produces a highly-visible continuity error when the continuation of the episode uses the finished one. I wonder why they didn't reshoot the lowering of the warhead since it would only have taken a few seconds and nobody would have noticed the discontinuity from the previous week.
These guys were cool
"Rose, you were fantastic. Simply fantastic..."
Pssst! Sarah Jane -- with K-9 -- will be back in at least one episode in Season Two (starting in March)...
She is definitely "drool-worthy"...
I am stuned! Series!
That's four whole fried chickens and a coke.
Don't forget the dry white toast...
It's about time.
It’s the show that’s most highly regarded by SF writers like Harlan Ellison who hated stuff like Star Trek. The SF Encyclopedia, which is a primary scholarly source on the subject matter, ranks it highly as well.
What, I’ve been watching this on SCI FI for years now, I love it ...
When he had a good script to work from (e.g. The Curse of Fenric). With poor scripts (e.g., Dragonfire) it was hard to watch.
The beauty of Tom Baker, and to a lesser extent, Jon Pertwee, was that they could carry the show over the bad storylines.
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