Dr. Who To Come Back To The BBC
Posted by
timothy
on Sun Jun 10, 2001 09:31 PM
from the new-adventures dept.
from the new-adventures dept.
-douggy writes: "According to the BBC news site, the world's best-loved time traveller, Doctor Who, is returning to the BBC -- this time to battle evil aliens in cyberspace. This is along with an audio stream of a special 30 min. ep later in the year. It looks like there will be an air of interactivity in the show as well."
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
Dr. Who To Come Back To The BBC
|
Log In/Create an Account
| Top
| 158 comments
(Spill at 50!) | Index Only
| Search Discussion
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Audio-only: the answer to cheesy special effects? (Score:3)
An audio-only version has the great advantage that the cheese-ball special effects no longer get in the way of the story. Of course, this is *only* an advantage if the writing is good, but I think the Beeb's radio version of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" demonstrates that quality sci-fi-like material can be presented well in this medium.
OTOH, perhaps the BBC could just subcontract the production design for any "Dr. Who" TV revival to World Productions. I thought they did a nifty job on "Ultraviolet" using only minimal special effects and a few sets reminiscent of USA's "La Femme Nikita" series.
This is actually an old rejected radio pilot (Score:4)
There have been many Dr Who audio adventures made by Big Finish Audio Productions [gallifreyone.com] since 1999, sold on cassette and CD. "Death Comes to Time" was comissioned by the BBC speach network Radio 4 from Big Finish as a pilot episode for a proposed new radio series.
This pilot episode was rejected and never broadcast.
This pilot episode is now being webcast. There are still no plans to broadcast the episode on radio.
There are no official plans for a new Dr Who series on TV nor radio, nor another film, although as always with Dr Who there is plenty of speculation.
If you have digital terrestrial TV (OnDigital), cable or satellite you can catch old episodes of Doctor Who on UK Gold at 8am on Sundays (last Sunday's episode was Invisible Enemy which featured Tom Baker, leather-clad Leela and the first appearance from K9).
--
Some problems with bringing back Dr.Who (Score:4)
First of all, there is the matter of special effects. When I was a kid, the low-cos special effects of Doctor Who did not bother me, because I had rnough imagination to pretend that the special effects were not so cheesy. Also, the level of expectation people had for quality special effects in the 1970s and 1980s were not the level of expectations people have today.
While computer graphics can do much to minimize the cost of special effects, it is still more expensive to do the level of special effects today's TV viewers expect than it was when Doctor Who was made in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s.
The other is that Doctor Who ran for nearly 30 years, with a wide variety of different actors playing the lead role, and a variety of producors producing the show. Needless to say, the "flavor" of Doctor Who has changed greatly over those years.
Doctor Who has many different fans: Some expect the Doctor Who of the Pertwee years, others expect the Doctor of the early Tom Baker years, and others yet expect the doctor of the late Tom Baker years.
When the TV movie came out, many were shocked that it included a car chase scene, saying that this was not a part of Doctor Who. Of course, the John Pertwee and early Tom Baker eras had plenty of car chases (the one from Planet of the Spiders comes to mind), but there is a large group of fans who were not aware of this.
No matter what the BBC does, it will be impossible for them to make a Doctor Who that meets the expectations of what all their fans want. Even if they make an excellent TV show, and I believe they could if they threw the money at it to give it decent special effects, a lot of fans will complain, no matter how excellent it is. Look at the number of fans of Dune who complained about the excellent recent TV miniseries for an example of this.
Do I want to see Doctor Who come back? Yes. The BBC can not expect to make many long-standing fans of Doctor Who happy.
As an aside, anyone know what is happeneing with the new TV episode of Blakes' Seven that they have been talking about?
- Sam
Re:Semantics (Score:3)
Re:NOT the real Dr. Who! (Score:3)
One is this is in-line with the Dr Who linage. Pick up where it left off. Tom Baker left Dr Who.
The doctors that came after Tom Baker were made into clones of Tom Baker. Preveously each Dr had his own unqiue personality tallored to the actor. Tom Baker himself was a dramatic shift from the preveous whos.
On that note. I'd like to point out that Dr. Who is for you the first Dr. Who you see.
Someone in DC comics pointed out this was the case for Superman artists. The Superman you grow up with is the one you expect. But there have been many artists each with a slightly diffrent take on his apperence.
But Dr Who transends it's actors. With a new generation of producers is Sylvester McCoy dosn't work out we'll see someone new.
I personally liked all the Doctors. Even the post Tom Bakers. It did appear they reduced the carricter to Tom Bakers take and that was a bit sad.
Also I'd like to quickly note while a lot of people keep bringing up the cheap specal effects Doctor Who uses what was available at the time. Near the end they were using some pritty spiff computer graphics.
What Doctor Who didn't do was push the edge. The BBC was just using equipment they had on hand. Dr. Who was never about flashy effects but about great story telling. But the effects were not always cheap.
It could be becouse Dr Who near the end was entering a time when FX was a big deal. Every movie or SiFi had to have advanced FX. If it was a SiFi movie they had to blast your eyeballs out with it.
The Tartus going through time image.. an old anolog FX machine.. probably cerca 1960s. While Dr Who dates back earlyer so I expect there is an older version of that.
Then there is the newer version using digital graphics.. 1980s...
A Dr Who today could use advanced make up and CGI. But the story will never rely on it.
Now I did say there were two good reasons for this.. The second?
The FOX Dr Who made for TV movie is removed from the conical Dr Who history.. much the same way the Star Trek cartoon series was removed from the Star Trek history when Rodenbury took control again.
That means the Master lives again...
As for "FanBoy writing"...
A lot of Dr Who was "FanBoy writing" So was Star Trek. The TV movie was a profesional hack job.
Writers do better when they are familure with the show and are themselfs fans of it.
The ultimate fan of any given SiFi is it's crator.
Battling Aliens in Cyberspace? (Score:3)
Dr Who opens a nasty shell script, which references all the servers he secretly incorporated into his DDOs attack. Flinging an barrage of syns, acks, and errant ICMP messages at the evil aliens, slowing their terrible invasion.
After scanning their ports, and gaining anonymous ftp access, he finds their unprotected password file and runs john the ripper on it. Hours later, he finds the worlds worst password... invasion
DrWho@:~$ telnet aliensupercomputer.invasion.org
Connected to aliensupercomputer.invasion.org
Debian GNU/Linux testing/unstable aliensupercomputer
aliensupercomputer login: alienoverlord
password: *******
Don't forget to insult the intelligence of humans before you destory them!
alienoverlord@aliensupercomputer:~$ su
password: ********
aliensupercomputer:/# rm -rf /
...and thus, in the season finale, Dr Who deletes the aliens from cyberspace...
The following season, it's found that the aliens were stored in off site backups, and reloaded by script kiddies, who wanted to use them to take down their friends 1337 b0x0r!!
No brainer (Score:4)
Wrong. This isn't along with anything: the entire episode is 30 minutes long, broadcast as six real audio files. There is only one episode, singular, and the audio stream you mention above doesn't accompany it, as the words along with imply. The audio stream (although in six parts) _is_ the episode.
It looks like there will be an air of interactivity in the show as well."
Sort of. The listeners will be able to vote on whether they want the Doctor to return. There isn't any interactivity in the show, no outcomes to be decided pertaining to the episode, but a simple vote by listeners as to the Doctor's return.
You would think that this one would be a no-brainer: do we resurrect one of the most popular SF franchises in the world?
Orbital's cover of the Dr. Who Theme (Score:3)
In the past, Orbital refused to release a legit copy of their cover of the song, because they believed it didn't do justice to the live version they use to close out their concert sets. In their live performances, they'll segue from their mix of the Dr. Who theme into a higher paced version of their classic "Chime." However, the version included on "The Altogether" is only the Dr. Who theme. Hopefully, their upcoming DVD will include the 12 minute monster.
There is a sample of the theme [loopz.co.uk] available on their official web site, Loopz [loopz.co.uk].
Doctor Who returned to the BBC a few years ago. (Score:4)
As far as audio adventures go, this is nothing new, either; the BBC has licensed a company named Big Finish to produce a series of audio adventures available on CD (website here [doctorwho.co.uk]) featuring the fifth through eighth Doctors, accompanied by most of their companions. They're also in talks to bring in Tom Baker, as well as Anthony Ainley (the Master), but nothing concrete has come out of them yet.
This is news, but it implies Doctor Who has been dead. It's not; it's still alive and kicking...
Re:Fighting in Cyberspace (Score:3)
Re:Doctor Who returned to the BBC a few years ago. (Score:3)
Re:Doctor Who should play on its strengths (Score:3)
Fish called Wanda? That was American money without the interference... besides, you can hold up the ratings and the finished product of Fox's first attempt... and then talk about the ratings of the series.
RE: BTW You're right about Brain of Morbius - that's the best Dr Who ever. All those Gothic ones are pretty good, but Brain of Morbius is by far and away the best.
Genesis of the Daleks was by far the best... creepy as hell, with allusions to warnings about fascism, blindly trusting scientists with an agenda, eugenics etc. but the Goth ones have the most special place in my heart. When I saw Gallifrey for the first time in the Deadly Assassin, a cross between a church, university convocation and a parliament, I was blown away - they'd come up with exactly the kind of environment gung-ho academics hate and try to leave.
Doctor Who should play on its strengths (Score:5)
- Decent writing
- Engaging characters
- Mixture of Baroque/High Victorian charm and high-tech
- Some clever sci-fi/horror hybrids
What they need to get rid of is:
- "fanboy" writing (dear God - let us forget the TV movie! The horror! The horror!)
- Overacting (RADA's finest, at their worst.)
- Reducing people to set pieces
- low budgets (they should remake it with Fox money)
- cameos where the people are demonstrating it's a cameo (e.g. that Richard Briers twit in a Hitler Moustache doing his usual set piece)
Let's face it - there was nothing engaging about the final series nor the TV movie. It was an attempt to do a more action oriented piece without the money. I'd take Tom Baker in a pirate shirt taking someone on in a dimly lit fencing duel in the Phillip Hinchcliffe era, than someone taking out a Dalek with a magic softball bat.
The show had atmosphere and tension and a curious interplay with high tech themed High Victorian Gothic/60s modernist and a main character who was Old World in style but McGyver and the Lone Gunmen when it came down to it. When they started dressing up the doctor in bright tartans and playing the same old "kill the menacing alien" routine, it was over. Where was the Green Death of the 90s? The Brain of Morbius of the 80s?
I think the USA and the BEEB should reconsider a merger, cause Who in its heyday was a GREAT show. They should do the Fish Called Wanda and do it American Money, British writing and acting, not American acting and writing, British money.
But it's not really the same... (Score:3)
Reversing the Polarity of the Neutron Flow, yours truly, vistas.
Nostalgia... (Score:4)
I really would love to see how the pull off more of their fine tradition of cheesy special effects.
I don't know about anyone else, but I watched Dr. Who as a small kid, and was really scared by lots of it. Mostly I think it was scary because the props and special effects were so bad. You'd see some monster that was just a guy dressed in green garbage bags, but you KNEW that it was just a guy in green garbage bags. I used to sit in front of the TV at my grandmother's eating french fries going: "oh geez! that's a guy shambling around in cut up green garbage bags trying to take over the universe! That's really freaking me out!"
Ahh - the memories...
Blake's 7 (Score:4)
>As an aside, anyone know what is happeneing with the new TV episode
>of Blakes' Seven that they have been talking about?
I don't know about a new TV episode; AFAIK the movie is about curently in pre?) production, starring Paul Darrow as Avon... set five years PGP (p[ost Gauda Prime.) Dr WHo I can take or leave (although I gre up withit); it's B7 that I've obsessively collected on video. 25 tapes at $25 a pop... worth every penny. I'm a fan, does it show? ;) (google for my username for further evidence...)
Some random B7 resources from my bookmarks:
http://ernie.bgsu.edu/~sclerc/Blakes7.html [bgsu.edu]
http://www.horizon.org.uk/ [horizon.org.uk]
http://lcw.simplenet.com/b7lib.html [simplenet.com]
For the benefit of anyone unfortunate enough to miss out on on B7, it absolutely rocks, being a cheesy low-budget BBC take on Star Trek - except the Federation are an evil repressive authoritarian state and the good guys are outlaws on the run - and they all argue/distrust/betray each other. A refreshingly cynical worldview...
--
"I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"
Re:Licensing issues (Score:3)
At least they didn't take it seriously. There's a bit in "The Invasion of Time" where Tom Baker stops, looks directly at the camera, and says, "Even the sonic screwdriver won't get me out of this one."
"What are we going to do tonight, Bill?"
Ugh (Score:3)
I guess the audio only will save us from realizing how old the Doctor and Ace have become as of lately.
Daleks DID climb stairs... (Score:3)
'Remembrance of the Daleks' [bbc.co.uk]
... in a 7th Doctor episode. It looked so stupid, I think it helped get the show off the air in the first place!