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Sci-Fi Media Television

Doctor Who Series Four Is A Go 259

Posted by Zonk from the killl-the-dokkkkktoooorr dept.
netglen writes to mention that the fourth series of Doctor Who is a go. The BBC confirms that another season of the popular sci-fi series will be made, although the article is sketchy about the current doctor and his attachment to the next season. The third series starts at the end of this month in Britain with new companion Martha Jones, played by Freema Agyeman, replacing Billie Piper's Rose. "Tennant, who plays the time-travelling hero, would not talk to reporters about his role in future series. 'Do you know how many times I have been asked that question? Do you know how many times I have answered it?' said the actor. "
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Doctor Who Series Four Is A Go More

Doctor Who Series Four Is A Go

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  • Woo Hoo. (Score:5, Funny)

    by eriks ( 31863 ) on Thursday March 22, 2007 @03:42PM (#18449431)
    The first episode airs on my birthday! Too bad I'll have to wait a year or more to see it, since I'm not in the UK... NOT! starts up torrent client and waits patiently...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Hatta ( 162192 )
      Is this really series four? Isn't it something more like series 24 by now?

      In any event, does anyone have a good torrent site for the old Dr Who? I've been looking but I
      can only find the odd episode or two, nothing nearing any sort of completion. Is there an
      equivalent to DapCentral for Dr Who fans? There's just gotta be.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by admdrew ( 782761 )
        I think it's fourth series/season of the *modern* Dr. Who (featuring the 9th and 10th Doctors, so far).

  • Who? (Score:3, Funny)

    by strredwolf ( 532 ) on Thursday March 22, 2007 @03:44PM (#18449455) Homepage Journal
    "The Doctor"

    "Doctor who?"

    "Precisely."

    Something tells me there's an Abbot and Costello joke there to be found....

  • Billie Piper (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MikeDataLink ( 536925 ) on Thursday March 22, 2007 @03:46PM (#18449489) Homepage Journal
    The most common rumor is that Billie Piper [waystupid.com] (--YUM See pic at link--) wants to play the doctor in the next season. The theory is that the doctor will regenerate as her because of his love for her and because he misses her. My opninion is that they could do this and make it an incredible season, or totally ruin it. we'll have to see.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Guntram Shatterhand, ( 1078103 )
      I don't think she can really pull it off. Plus this whole 'Doctor as a woman' thing was played for laughs during Curse of Fatal Death and it just wouldn't work very well. Also, as a big Doctor Who fan, Rose has really annoyed the hell out of me. Total Mary Sue character, and that would take it way over the edge.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by bmsleight ( 710084 )
        Well - As a big Doctor Who fan myself - Billy Piper was one of the best assistants IMHO, but I think Catherine Tate was the best.

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by ben0207 ( 845105 )
          Well - As a sensible human being who pays a TV license - Billie Piper was a pretty good assistant IMHO, but I think Catherine Tate should die in a fire.
        • >Catherine Tate
          Can't stand her. I missed that episode because I knew I'd probably have trashed the TV if I had to watch her.
      • Actually, I had a different experience of the whole "Doctor as a woman" thing. I'd never heard of Curse of Fatal Death before (sorry, not a die-hard Dr. Who fan), but when I was an undergrad, MITSFS [mit.edu] ran a marathon for incoming freshmen which included some amusing fan-produced "episodes" of various shows. There was an entire tape full of episodes featuring a female Doctor, though I don't remember who played the role. It was fun, though, with production values that approached those of the real show. I gue

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by fermion ( 181285 )
      This is not completely unheard of. Lalla ward originally played Princess Astra on the last segment of the Key To Time series. She then took over from Mary Tamm as the Time Lord named Romana. While Ms. Ward was not nearly as entertaining as MS. Tamm, it was a useful diversion.

      It certainly would be nice to see the Doctor become a female. Most science fiction has delved into the gender non specific domain, often with good results. I hate to say it, but Ms. Piper seemed to be cast mostly as a fluff chara

  • Fantastic! (Score:5, Informative)

    by RyanFenton ( 230700 ) on Thursday March 22, 2007 @03:47PM (#18449505)
    For those who haven't checked it out recently, the new Dr. Who has been a wonderfully creepy, charming and clever British fantasy/"sci-fi" show. It constantly transcends the borders between being powerfully authentic in a moment, breaking/mocking convention (many that it invented), and being surprisingly authentic in its morality and complications. Not complicated in the usual soap-opera way either - but in the real sense of exploring the unknown in wild new ways. Sure - it bullshits on its way to tell a story, but even its bullshit is more authentic than most "sci-fi".

    Check it out, if you have time for a new minor curiosity in your life.

    Ryan Fenton
    • The new Doctor has been a hoot, both of them.

      I started watching WAY back in the Tom Baker days. I'm the same age as Russel T. Davies, in fact.

      Hmm, is Sci-Fi going to pick up Torchwood, or should I just DL it? How is Torchwood? Have you seen it yet?

      • Re:Fantastic! (Score:5, Informative)

        by pluther ( 647209 ) <plutherNO@SPAMusa.net> on Thursday March 22, 2007 @04:23PM (#18450031) Homepage
        Dr. Who switched to color before I did. It wasn't until I got to college that I found out that Tom Baker's episodes weren't black-and-white.

        Torchwood is *excellent*! Though, completely different from Dr. Who. It's set in the same world, and stars Captain Jack, but the only other crossover element is that the Tardis sound makes a couple of guest appearances in the last episode. If Sci-Fi has any plans on picking up Torchwood, they're being very quiet about it. Even if they did, they'd edit it quite a bit. (You can say/show things on British TV that Americans are too uptight for.)

        • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

          by Phoobarnvaz ( 1030274 )
          If Sci-Fi has any plans on picking up Torchwood, they're being very quiet about it. Even if they did, they'd edit it quite a bit. (You can say/show things on British TV that Americans are too uptight for.)

          If you haven't noticed...Battlestar Galactica has used the "F" word on several occasions this season on several episodes. This being the case...the language isn't going to be an issue...but the form of the naked persons is. With Sci-Fi not being on broadcast TV...the FCC has no control over anything t

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by pluther ( 647209 )
            I haven't noticed, no. But I'm only about halfway through season 3.

            You mean they have actually switched to saying "fuck" instead of (or in addition to?) "frak"?

            For the love of Baltar... why??

            (I still miss Feldercarb, too!)

        • Re:Fantastic! (Score:4, Insightful)

          by shewasmadeofchimps ( 1011165 ) on Friday March 23, 2007 @04:36AM (#18455911)
          torchwood is awful. buffy the vampire-slayer wannabe that fails hopelessly. they have decided that the definition of a mature programme is just to add dollops of sex to the storylines.
        • >Americans are too uptight for
          Russell T Davis issued an edict that every major character in Torchwood had to have some same-sex action. He also wrote the rather good Queer as Folk (not the poor US version) and is a tad gay himself so he has a bit of an agenda.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by mgblst ( 80109 )
          Maybe I am an old fool, (it has been said before), but i don't like the new dr who, and definately not the new torchwood. I like the characters of doctor who, I liked the two latest doctors, but I did not find the story lines particularly good. Am I alone (I seem to be alone in the UK), but the lines are not very complex. Maybe they never were, but I remember them being quite good.
      • I would be pretty surprised if anyone in the US picked up Torchwood. It's a much more adult show than Doctor Who. An adult show in Britain isn't so afraid of a little skin and naughty language as the US is. If Torchwood is picked up, be ready for it to be censored.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by itsdapead ( 734413 )

          An adult show in Britain isn't so afraid of a little skin and naughty language as the US

          True, as long as they don't decide that, because its Fantasy it has to be for kids. The BBC cut "Buffy" so they could show it at 6pm, and what Channel 4 did to "Angel" can't be mentioned on a forum like Slashdot where Wheedon-loving nerds of a sensitive disposition may be reading. Then the BBC suddenly find the cojones to ignore the silly complaints about Doctor Who scaring kids* (could the good ratings have anything

          • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

            by meringuoid ( 568297 )
            Then the BBC suddenly find the cojones to ignore the silly complaints about Doctor Who scaring kids* (could the good ratings have anything to do with it?).

            Well, that and the fact that most of those kids' parents grew up being terrified by the show on a regular basis. Everyone had nightmares about one monster or another, everyone's hidden behind the sofa. I mean, if you don't want your kids to be scared by dreadful monsters, watching Doctor Who is a bit silly.

            * Hah. Kids these days never watched Pertwee

      • How is Torchwood? Have you seen it yet?

        Variable - its wort a watch, but it is trying to be an "adult" show in a universe established by a "family" show. As a friend of mine nicely put it "Its not really adult, just unsuitable for children".

        I felt a bit let down by the season finale which degenerated into the "big giant monster summoned by creepy bad guy for no readily apparent reason" mould. Plus, the characters tend to spontaneously change depending on who's job it is to french the alien this week. As

  • Sounds great... (Score:3, Funny)

    by supersocialist ( 884820 ) on Thursday March 22, 2007 @03:49PM (#18449541) Journal
    I love David Tennant, but I'm hoping he gets encased in carbonite and Rose takes the Tardis back to grab Chris Eccleston.
    • Seriously, a 2 doctor ep with these two would be amazing! What's Tom Baker doing noeadays? Put the three of them in an ep and you've hit gold.

  • A fourth season (Score:5, Funny)

    by 91degrees ( 207121 ) on Thursday March 22, 2007 @03:49PM (#18449547) Journal
    Well, I expect to see William Hartnell will reprise his role for the first couple of stories, but I expect they'll recast. I'd say the actor Patrick Troughton, who played Phineas in the recent Jason and the Argonauts movie would be a good choice.

    Hold on. It is 1966 isn't it? My TARDIS often gets the date wrong.
    • Since you have a TARDIS, would you mind dropping by 1970 London and grabbing the famous missing tapes? (Hey, now we know what happened to them!) And while you're at it, you should probably acquire a compatible [wikipedia.org] deck!

  • Series 4 ? (Score:5, Informative)

    by rossdee ( 243626 ) * on Thursday March 22, 2007 @03:55PM (#18449647)
    Surely seies 4 of Dr Who was around 40 years ago with Patrick Troughton.

    There have been quite a few different Doctors since then.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by OzPhIsH ( 560038 )
      We must be caught in some kind of time hole..

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by itsdapead ( 734413 )

      (Yawns and dons anorak) the revied series is made by a totally different production team in a different branch of the BBC (BBC Wales) so for administrative purposes they started from 1 again. Fortunately, I think the "classic" series still ran long enough to piss on Stargate SG1's "longest running sci-fi show" fireworks so its not a big deal.

      Anyway, the new version would count as a Galactica-style reboot if the original show hadn't rebooted more often than Windows ME anyway.

  • Translations for U.S. Fans (Score:4, Informative)

    by bokmann ( 323771 ) on Thursday March 22, 2007 @04:08PM (#18449817) Homepage
    In the U.S., the new Dr. Who is on both SciFi and BBC America.

    In America, what the british call a 'series' we call a 'season'. So, to our ears, this is an announcement that yes, there will be a 4th season.

    The first season is curently being played on BBC America (last time I checked).
    The second season, with Tennant, is airing on the Sci Fi Channel.
    The third season should be airing in England - almost immediately, if it isn't already.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Sigh...

      OK, For the last time: "England" != "UK".

      I quite understand the mistake, but feel obliged to correct it.

      Mostly because this year is the 300th year of the Act of Union http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acts_of_Union_1707 [wikipedia.org].

      That's right - 300 years and people still get it wrong.

      Actually quite a big topic over here come May. Mainly because the way things are going with the UK government, during the upcoming elections of the Scottish Parliament the Nationalists might just get a foot in the door and mo

      • Maybe we can start calling bits of the US by the state name, cos it's really just the same thing. So there'll be a story about a new start-up with an odd service in say San Francisco and I can come on spouting stuff like "yeah, these guys in Mississippi must be on crack if they think this'll work". Or say a tale of police brutality in New York could be met with "I for one welcome our new Californian police overlords". Let's see how they like it.

  • Turned Off by (the new) Season 1 (Score:3, Interesting)

    by foo fighter ( 151863 ) on Thursday March 22, 2007 @04:12PM (#18449869) Homepage
    Season 1 of this new run really turned me off and I haven't come back.

    When I first saw the original series as reruns on over-the-air public television back in the late-80s to early-90s I thought the terrible special effects and camp were charming. The underlying plots were usually OK and kept me watching since they were so different from what Star Trek or Star Wars offered.

    But now that I'm older I find the new series dependance on terrible, cheap special effects, mediocre acting and dialog, and camp just offputting. Also I'm much more busy with a wife and kid and don't (won't) devote as much time to television as I used to. My sci-fi budget is filled with Battlestar Galactica.

    It's somewhat ironic that I prefer the new Galactica and old Who and very much dislike the original Galactica and new Who.

    Do I lose my geek card for posting this?
    • Original Galactica had a really depressing premise, the utter decimation of almost all of mankind except for a ragtag fleet and perhaps a few others. But they ignored that and did some kind of love-boat clone instead. The new Galactica is much more true to the premise and seems a lot better planned too. I actually believe that they could take years to get to earth and not have a single 'filler' episode.

      Galactica Grew up.

      I don't know about original dr. who, but the recent series is pretty juvenile, cheesy

    • Re:Turned Off by (the new) Season 1 (Score:4, Insightful)

      by rucs_hack ( 784150 ) on Thursday March 22, 2007 @04:52PM (#18450425)
      actually a lot of the early Doctor Who was written by some very talented people (eg Terry_Nation) who often worked to incredibly short deadlines, and had crap all in the way of money to back of the special effects they wanted in.

      Bizarrely that produced some wonderful SF and social commentary that is still of interest to SF buffs old and new.

      I don't like to say that I disapprove of special effects, I don't, and sometimes I even like the very latest thing. Let me say right off that my primary interest in SF is on the cheaper end of the scale. I'm a H2G2/pulp SF fan, I don't much go in for the extravagant approach currently being taken in SF drama (I don't want to talk about the H2G2 film, no really, I don't..).

      'Star wars that was' rocked, but the new stuff is crap I feel. Not because of the special effects, but because they weren't the kind of thing you'd stick on after a night out to watch for the n'th time and quote your way through, they had no depth, you couldn't relate to the characters. That was what Star wars was about to me, pure, unadulterated escapism, masterfully done, You wanted to *be* Han Solo or Obiwan (or Luke, if you're some kinda pooftaah :). The most I got out of Phantom Menace was an urge to make JarJar real so I could kill it oh so many times.

      Blade Runner was full of special effects, and that is an awesome film, so it can't be that all SFX are bad.

      I think the problem isn't something you can lay at the feet of Electric Light and Magic and their ilk. Nope, the problem is that Film and television SF makers seem to have forgotten that SF is as much about social commentary as it is about lasers. My problem with adaption of old Pulp SF stories to multi million doller SFX orgies is not that they've changed the story as a rule, that can't be helped. It's that they have often removed the entire point of the story and extracted just the SF bits.

      And yet I like Blade runner. Why is that? Because while they almost entirely changed the story, they left the underlying point, the way in which man might treat a self aware creation that does not do as it is told, intact, and expressed it using the same general idea but with some innovative alteration to the core story.

      I'm not against all new SF. I liked Stargate, and I do enjoy a bit of star trek on the side from time to time. That said, my favorite Stargate Episode is 'Window of Opportunity', not some of the later SFX crazy episodes.

      I wait hopefully for a new SF film that can be truly considered a classic, and has all the very latest SFX bells and whistles. I'm sure it will happen eventually.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ettlz ( 639203 )

      But now that I'm older I find the new series dependance on terrible, cheap special effects, mediocre acting and dialog, and camp just offputting.

      And some. That recent Primeval thing on ITV beat seven shades out of the modern Doctor Who. It might not have been as sparkly or as hyped or have the pedigree (which the new Doctor Who series almost criminally squandered) but at the very least it had decent dialogue, consistency, non-dumbass characters and a certain measure of restraint.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by prandal ( 87280 )

        That recent Primeval thing on ITV beat seven shades out of the modern Doctor Who. It might not have been as sparkly or as hyped or have the pedigree (which the new Doctor Who series almost criminally squandered) but at the very least it had decent dialogue, consistency, non-dumbass characters and a certain measure of restraint.

        You have got to be kidding. Primeval was dire beyond belief. Lousy acting, characters who were totally unengaging, the same story told half a dozen times with only the monsters changed.

        Utter bilge.

        • Lousy acting, characters who were totally unengaging, the same story told half a dozen times with only the monsters changed.

          So you're saying it's worse than Who, but better than Torchwood? ;-)

          Torchwood had promise. So much promise, so much of it squandered. Every single episode threw away a little bit more of it - push the reset button, Owen's now an arsehole again. Push the reset button, Gwen's now got a thing for Owen. Push the reset button, Ianto's now thinking about Jack & stopwatches. Push the re

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by ettlz ( 639203 )
            Quoth the grandparent:

            Lousy acting, characters who were totally unengaging

            Is the grandparent trying to use this to argue against Primeval? This is the single, greatest failure of the new Doctor Who series.

            Torchwood had promise. So much promise, so much of it squandered.

            Torchwood never had any promise as long as Russell T. Davies was involved. That man shouldn't be let anywhere near a science fiction series.

            At least "Primeval" has that blonde bint - I presume she's some English pop-tart? - running around

  • What happened to season 30 or whatever the current ones are up to? I'm pretty sure season 4 was wrapped up pretty well back in the '60s or whenever.

  • Or thank us, actually. You should notice at the end of each episode that "Doctor Who" was produced in co-operation with the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation). In spite of this the CBC aired the second season months later than the BBC or Sci Fi, and took a six week break over Christmas. And they still haven't aired the Christmas special "The Runaway Bride" (even though I gather we haven't missed much.)

    No word of "The Sarah Jane Adventures", either, with is a pity, because I think Elizabeth Sladen is st

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