Doctor Who

Started by FSBlueApocalypse, June 20, 2011, 04:19:16 PM

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Also, which soundtrack is this music from?

Okay. Just saw the last episode of season 6.1. I only have one thing to say.

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Anyone who can say that line with a straight face deserves an Oscar. :-P

But I have a couple of questions. Why did Doctor Who get cancelled back in the 80s? I mean, alot of people seemed to like the 7th doctor, and the wikipedia article makes it seem like there's quite a bit of similarity between the 7th and 11th doctors. So, what happened there?

Politics at the BBC, and from the recent actions by that one BBC guy (don't remember his name) to try and claim that there wouldn't be a full season of DW next year, it seems a lot of those forces are still in place.

Some say producer John Nathan-Turner overstayed his welcome. That's probably correct, but in the McCoy years he was doing everything to keep it fresh and new (mostly due I think to story editor Andrew Cartmel).

I did a bit of Googling and found this web page which details all of the things that went into Doctor Who's demise in the '80s. I read over it and everything meshes with my memory of what happened, so I'm sure it's accurate.

http://roswell.fortunecity.com/angelic/96/controvs.htm

I just don't get the BBC. In a time when the Brits are cutting back their funding, Doctor Who is the kind of show that brings in tons of extra revenue.

It's government TV. What do you expect?

Quote from: MrBogosity on July 30, 2011, 06:11:25 PM
It's government TV. What do you expect?

Sad but so very true

Really though the BBC screwing with Doctor Who goes all the way back to the 3rd Doctor, when they cut the budget back bigtime and almost all of his stories were based in 1970's Earth.

Then you had the real downfall which was the conservative backlash towards the Tom Baker years, which resulted in John Nathan-Turner being installed in the first place.

Quote from: FSBlueApocalypse on July 30, 2011, 06:41:48 PM
Really though the BBC screwing with Doctor Who goes all the way back to the 3rd Doctor, when they cut the budget back bigtime and almost all of his stories were based in 1970's Earth.

Yes and they mandated long 7-part episodes. And according to then-script-editor Terrance Dicks, it didn't actually save them money doing that!

QuoteThen you had the real downfall which was the conservative backlash towards the Tom Baker years, which resulted in John Nathan-Turner being installed in the first place.

That was mostly during the excellent Philip Hinchcliffe years. Then thanks to Mary Whitehouse's brigade they brought in Graham Williams with the instruction that he make the show light and funny. There was still a lot of good stuff, but on the whole it was bad for the show. That's why JNT was brought in.


One criticism I might make of Doctor Who isn't really anything that big. It might seem a bit like I'm nit-picking, but here we go.

There have been some pretty wretched decisions made when it comes to titling episodes. For example, season 1 of nu-Who. The doctor is shocked to find a surviving Dalek... And so would the audience, had they not been tipped off by the episode's title "Dalek". In "Revenge of the Cybermen", the Cybermen don't actually show up until the second part at the end in what is apparently a shocking reveal. I know it's a bit of a strange criticism, but couldn't they have come up with a different title that didn't give away the main bad-guy right up front? Something that leaves a bit for the audience to be surprised from?

They used to do that back in the '60s, when each episode was given individual titles. But yeah, it is pretty bad when the episode titles get spoilerish, but usually the media and the previews give it away anyway. I remember the preview for Bad Wolf gave away the fact that the Daleks were behind it when it would have been an INCREDIBLE reveal otherwise.

Quote from: FSBlueApocalypse on July 06, 2011, 02:14:05 PM
Hah, yeah when the initial reports were that Torchwood would air on FOX I had some bad flashbacks. Although I still think Paul McGann was good as the 8th Doctor.

I'm a bit surprised Torchwood didn't end up on Showtime, considering their history with the BBC.

I mentioned this bit to my sister, who came up with an idea that could either be horrible, hilarious, or both. Director Dalek. A member of the cult of Skaro gets stuck in Hollywood after attempting to escape the series 2 season finale, damaging their equipment in the process. In an attempt to fit into this strange world while determining a way to get home and reunite with the other cult members, he takes a job as a director of a sitcom/various low-budget movies.

Although I think my sister came up with it just to have an excuse to say this line-

"You have DEviatED from THE scripTED reSPONse. EXplAIN! EXplAIN! EXplAAAAIIIINNNN!!!!"

I stumbled across this just now and thought I'd post it here.

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I noticed a couple of new things this time around. For one, the viking playing chess at about 1:53 seems to also be wearing the eyepatch sported by Kovarian. That could either mean that the eyepatch thing is a fakeout, or the viking is also involved in some way and the eyepatch is more representative of something else.

Quote from: Virgil0211 on August 04, 2011, 05:35:55 PM
One criticism I might make of Doctor Who isn't really anything that big. It might seem a bit like I'm nit-picking, but here we go.

There have been some pretty wretched decisions made when it comes to titling episodes. For example, season 1 of nu-Who. The doctor is shocked to find a surviving Dalek... And so would the audience, had they not been tipped off by the episode's title "Dalek". In "Revenge of the Cybermen", the Cybermen don't actually show up until the second part at the end in what is apparently a shocking reveal. I know it's a bit of a strange criticism, but couldn't they have come up with a different title that didn't give away the main bad-guy right up front? Something that leaves a bit for the audience to be surprised from?

Actually, I just remembered a counter-example: the Jon Pertwee serial The Invasion of the Dinosaurs was just titled The Invasion for its first episode, to prevent spoiling the cliffhanger. Unfortunately, there already was a story in the 1960s called The Invasion and this has created a bit of confusion. Even when they got it right, they got it wrong...