"Thank you. I have no idea who I am, and you just summed me up."
I don't care how big a geek it makes me. Doctor Who: The Christmas Invasion filled me with obscene glee. It was like everything good about when I was twelve years old crammed into a half hour. UNIT? UNIT?! And add on the previews of the new season ... gahhhh.
Too often in American television, we're so damn self-aware, and so worried about seeming ridiculous. One of the reasons I occasionally run into trouble with suited humans -- I like writing Big Damn Moments and Speeches. Sure, when they fall flat, a bad day. But when they hit: that's WHY WE DO THIS in a nutshell.
67 comments:
it is, and I quote: "Too British."
"Too British?"
So was THE AVENGERS, THE SAINT, UFO, FAWLTY TOWERS, MR. BEAN, THUNDERBIRDS, CAPT. SCARLET AND THE MYSTERONS, THE TRIPODS, THE NEW AVENGERS, SPACE: 1999, TOMORROW PEOPLE, etc...
They seemed to do all right on American Television - network, syndicated, cable or PBS...
It's an excuse and nothing more. Maybe the asking fee is too high? Especially for something that they don't own outright.
As I understand the Beeb's deal for selling the new Who to any stateside broadcaster was linked to also buying the broadcast rights to the 63 to 89 run. I can certainly see Sci-Fi Channel running the new Who but I'm not sure if old Jon Pertwee stories would fit with Sci-Fi's new image.
Okay, goddamnit. I'm about to admit that I'm not in on this. I'm aware it will blow my street cred, but I guess it's necessary. How do I see if this show is my style? I've never seen anything Doctor Who in my entire life. I'm aware of it in the sense that I know it's British, and I know it's existed on some level for some time now. What is the name of the pilot episode of it's new incarnation so I can ILLEGALLY obtain it?
Bendavid: search the usual sources for some reasonable variation on "Doctor Who S01E01 - Rose".
(That said, I'd say that "Rose" was actually one of the weaker episodes of this season.)
"Too British." Wow. What planet do these guys live on? On MY planet, called EARTH:
-The most popular rock band of all time is The Beatles, who hailed from Liverpool, England.
-The most famous literary creation ever is Sherlock Holmes, an English consulting detective.
-The longest running film series is about James Bond, a British secret agent.
-The bestselling children's book series maybe EVER is about Harry Potter, an English wizard in training.
-The most successful fantasy movies of the last few years that weren't about Harry Potter were based on Englishman J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy (themselves the most popular and influential fantasy novels ever) --set in a sort of mythical Britain.
The SCIFI Channel must be rife with the kind of stupid that one fears can only be cleansed by fire.
Having said that, I thought THE CHRISTMAS INVASION was fantastic! Christopher Eccleston's Doctor didn't have an active enough role in the first series (he rarely seemed to be the one who saved the day). David Tennant's Doctor seems very much more my kind of hero.
Can't wait till spring!
Well here in Canada the CBC played the previous season with only a few weeks' delay on the BBC airings, and just broadcast The Christmas Invasion a day late on Boxing Day, which is pretty cool. And they do not air the old episodes.
I hadn't ever watched old Dr Who before the start of the new series (and still haven't, to be honest), but I was intrigued by it (and by some discussions friends had), read up on old episodes to get a feel for it, and I must say I'm now hooked. Some of my brother's friends got him totally into it, and he knows barely anything about the series even compared to me.
This episode was good fun. I just discovered that a 5-minute short, titled "Children in Need", aired in November, provides the missing scene between the end of last season and the start of the special.
Honestly, if you're going to quote the new Doctor Who, could you please provide transcripts of the entire episode for those of us impenetrably insulated in American culture? Over Xmas, I watched "An Unearthly Child" again on a VHS tape I'd recorded from a PBS broadcast (in the late 80s). Something has obviously happened to our entertainment-industrial complex since then.
As for checking out the new series, the official BBC Doctor Who website has lavished attention on it, including clips, previews, interviews, behind-the-scenes, etc. "john doe" should be able to get a good idea of what it's like from that. It's certainly the only taste of it I've been able to get.
"...sorry, that's from The Lion King..."
Proper good fun it was, too. The new bloke seems to have the job well in hand, and I'm afraid I let out a big girly squeal when I saw a Cyberman in the previews. My one wish is that the Brigadier will return at some stage, so he can shout a lot.
That BBC site has a free downloadable commentary track, too, and plenty of other cool stuff.
My friends, who are normal and not geeks, are all notorious for having no interest in British humor of any kind. Somehow, through the power of miracles or the deft hand of Wright/Pegg, they all ended up loving Shaun of the Dead. I think Shaun and The Holy Grail are some sort of exceptions that their government was given a free pass based on their artistic merit, while the rest of the entertainment is deemed unecessary due to specific brainwashing codes within the flouride.
"It was like everything good about when I was twelve years old crammed into a half hour."
Did Mr Rogers see an abbreviated version? ;)
As for an American network not carrying the show, I must say the "too British" comments make me guffaw! Still there's no arguing with the terminally ignorant.
Before the Christmas Invasion, they trailed Life on Mars, which looks interesting. It's about a modern day policeman who finds himself back in time as a copper in the Seventies.
It's produced by the same company that does Spooks (MI5 to my Colonial cousins) and Hustle.
Life on Mars looks interesting, as does that show with, gahh, the fellow from SPACED on the crappy space trawler
In the early days of the SciFi Channel, back when they were all reruns, they had the rights to Dr. Who, the Prisoner and a few other British series. They all tanked in the ratings even by the very modest standards of a fledgling cable network. They've been shy of all British programming ever since. With a few minor exceptions (Dog Soldiers and Ultraviolet) I think they've stuck to it.
"They've been shy of all British programming ever since. With a few minor exceptions (Dog Soldiers and Ultraviolet) I think they've stuck to it."
And yet the cable world around them has changed dramatically since then:
- A&E picking up several British shows including MI-5 (Spooks), UFO, Hornblower, etc
- The launch of BBC America.
- The launch of A&E's DVD catalog of British shows - some of which they don't even broadcast.
- not to forget PBS's long standing success with British television (including sci-fi)
It's a different world out there. SciFi is still stuck (in the mud).
As long as you keep the budget low and the quality of writing high, the mantra "if you build it they will come" is very appropriate. Sci-fi is a troublesome genre, because you need to appear cool without being something that belongs strictly on the fringe. A lot of people write the genre off based on bad experiences with horrible genre offerings, basically anything in syndication and the majority of Star Trek etc. It's an uphill battle.
BenDavid said...
"As long as you keep the budget low and the quality of writing high, the mantra "if you build it they will come" is very appropriate."
That's always been the mantra of British SF Shows, whose productions values were shabby when compared to US shows, but the writing was always way, way better for the most part.
Stephen Moffat who wrote The Empty Child and The Doctor Dances for Who series one is doing a modern Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde for the Saturday tea-time slot over here. And ITV are countering with The Eleventh Hour (with Patrick Stewart) and Primeval (from the Walking With Dinosaurs team).
The Nick Frost BBC2 comedy is called Hyperdrive by the way.
Oh, and there's Torchwood from RTD!
(They should bring back Star Cops!)
Are any other Shaun of the Dead fans worried about the relevance of Hot Fuzz in a post Kiss Kiss Bang Bang era?
Star Cops was excellent.
Would be interesting to see a "remake" with the new US-Russian relationship.
As for UK Sci-fi we've had good stuff we've also had bad stuff.
Dr Who was excellent when it was good - but awful at other times.
UFO is on A&E ? Is that the same UFO we know from Gerry Anderson?
Talking of whom... I recommend the new Captain Scarlet CGI Show. While I will always love the models and puppets (If only because I knew they had working models and that was super cool) the new all CGI look coupled with a clear story really shows how good Anderson was/is.
"UFO is on A&E ? Is that the same UFO we know from Gerry Anderson?"
They ran it for a little while per their agreement with Carlton America, then they released the DVD set.
I was obsessively watching the torrents on Sunday, and sure enough, it made my Christmas.
Did you catch the props from the old series when he was picking out the new costume? Great stuff.
David Tennant was amazing. I LOVED the Ninth Doctor, but Tennant was so good, regarding Eccleston I just think "Doctor who?" I will be a happy fanboy if they do a multi-Doctor story, though.
And how much do you wanna bet Torchwood will be more like what GF could've been, had it gone to series?
There's a huge clue as to how Sci-Fi channel thinks when it comes to program acquisition:
It's currently running episodes of Seaquest DSV and promoting the newly released DVD set --Both "coincidentally" come from the same corporation.
Holy shit. I forgot Seaquest existed.
In the early days of the SciFi Channel, back when they were all reruns, they had the rights to Dr. Who, the Prisoner and a few other British series. They all tanked in the ratings even by the very modest standards of a fledgling cable network.
As I recall it, they also ran these shows in the highly sought-after 11am-2pm weekday timeslots, so it's not like they didn't give the shows a chance. There has to be something wrong with any series that doesn't create some sort of Nielsen singularity, nestled right there between Dark Shadows and classic Outer Limits like that. Must just be that British TV stinks, and they should just ignore that insignificant little island of philistines for the rest of time.
You're Irish, aren't you, Rob?
There's one PBS channel which has been (or had been, till 2000 or so) running all the Doctor Who episodes for years, every Saturday night: KSPS in Spokane. One of the reasons, I think, was that half their funding came from Calgary and Edmonton, and we were absolutely insane for Doctor Who. I probably watched the Pertwee-to-early-McCoy series through about three or four times.
That's one of the things I really, really miss, now living in Toronto and being stuck with the Buffalo PBS channel.
But as to this new episode -- wonderful!
I loved Ecclestone, and was waiting to see how well Tennant would do, but he was marvelous, so I'm very happy.
I enjoyed the "Lion King" reference, but I screamed in utter GLEE when the Doctor mentioned ARTHUR DENT, while standing in his pajamas and bathrobe, just before going to pick out his new costume. Hilarious! (And didn't Douglas Adams write a Who episode or two, in the past?)
I am so looking forward to this season!
Douglas Adams wrote what has usually been considered to be the best story of the classic series, 'City of Death', which starred Tom Baker as the Doctor and classic Bond/Indiana Jones/Star Wars/Harry Potter villain Julian Glover as Count Scarlioni. Oh, and it had a cameo by John Cleese.
He also wrote the slightly-less-popular story, 'The Pirate Planet', script-edited numerous other stories, and wrote the actually-never-finished Shada. Which has since been "completed" in numerous other ways.
'Trek' has Harlan Ellison, 'Who' has Douglas Adams, but at least Adams didn't accuse 'Doctor Who' of turning his script into unwatchable shite. :)
You're Irish, aren't you, Rob?
Heh. Only in the most distant hereditary sense. I'm just deeply afflicted with a most incurable sarcasm.
I, too, got my Doctor Who fix as a youngster through assorted PBS outlets in the States. My favorite stations were the ones that would start Doctor Who at a preset time (usually 11pm on a Saturday night) and then play an entire story, however long, before signing off.
Honestly, as good as the new series has been, I've spent a little time considering how they succeeded in "contemporizing" Doctor Who when the Fox movie failed so miserably. The best I can come up with is that the movie didn't take the source material seriously, and even that is a hard notion to nail down with specifics.
Except, you know, Eric Roberts turning The Master into a thug. That was pretty lame.
"I'm just deeply afflicted with a most incurable sarcasm."
Me too, hence the Irish remark. I was going to say French, but that was a cut that took the friendliness out of it all...
I always wanted to do a show for the BBC and have the freedom they do, the respect for the intelligence of the audience, the willingness to cast the best actors not the prettiest. Is there a way to combine the best of US and British comedy? My partner and I tried to do that with a pilot for Fox this year and big surprise -- they passed.
kenlevine.blogspot.com
You think you're a geek, John? Literally one of my first thoughts when the show finished on Christmas Day was "Rogers is going to love that" - I'm figuring out how someone I don't even know is going to react to the show. That's geeky, my friend.
It was a great episode though. "Harriet Jones - Prime Minister" with the ever present badge sealed it for me, and the Doctor's total control of the entire situation from the moment he stepped out of the Tardis at the end.
I hope when you guys get the DVDs you get all the extras in the massive R2 box set. Commentaries on every ep and a good video diary by Mark Gatiss on writing "The Unquiet Dead". Roll on Torchwood (name-checking, anyone?) and roll on series 2.
Is there any possibility of Doctor Who coming to BBC America?
Doctor Who rules!!!
Rogers -
Are you sure that the reason was "Too British" and not "Too Good"? 'Cause I've seen a lot of the crud they spew on that channel, and frankly some Dr. Who could do it a lot of good.
> It was a great episode though. "Harriet Jones - Prime Minister" with the ever present badge sealed it for me
But Simon, what did you think of Harriet's action at the end, telling them to fire at the alien ship? I was unnerved, a bit, though on further reflection I suppose it does make her a more complex character.
I feel for you, my Who-deprived brothers and sisters of America. It was a damn good episode all right (Not bad for a man in his jim-jams)Tennant's going to be a solid Doctor. I was crazy about the original series, and my wife had never seen an episode before the new series launched, and we're both just as bananas about the whole thing. (Except she was considerably more traumatized by the regeneration... guess I shoulda mentioned that... she still misses Eccleston something fierce, but she'll get over it. You never forget your first Doctor.)
I did not just download it from the internet because it would be a no-no. But if I did I would have loved it! It was stupid in all the right ways and so much fun!! Even Jackie didn't annoy me this time.
Speaking as somebody who has watched Doctor Who since the late 70s on PBS, I really like most of the new series and so happy it is back.
That is, if I actually downloaded it.
I really don't think the new Doctor Who series would do well. America has gotten more and more xenophobic since 9/11. (Freedom Fries?) You can hear people talk about it openly against the muslim world and the french, but a sense I get is a lot of Americans consider the rest of the world the enemy. Or even other cultures within America. I grew up a christian in a primarily jewish neighborhood, so saying Happy Holidays is almost second nature to me. This year I got a lot of dark looks for saying it while I was travelling.
I read comments about 28 days later saying that it was hard to relate to since it didn't take place in America. I got a lot of people to watch Ultraviolet and a comment I heard a lot was, "Too British." If they thought Ultraviolet was too British, I am not even going to try to get them to see the new Doctor Who series.
Forget the SCI-Fi channel, why isn't this being shown on BBC America or A&E?
I think that Doctor Who is too british of American television, but that is more of a comment on Americans than it is on the quality of the show.
I don't mind too much though. This just means that Russel T. Davies doesn't have to ask himself, "Would American audiences like this?" Doctor Who is allowed to be too british and I wouldn't want it any other way.
Omega the Unknown (known to lesser mortals as John Seavey) neglected to mention that Douglas Adams recycled the basic plot of "City of Death", and the character of Professor Chronotis from "Shada", into the novel "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency". And I think the best summary of Sci-Fi's general programme planning habits was Paul Riddell's description of them as "Where Bad Genre Movies and TV Shows Go to Die".
Douglas Adams was also Doctor Who's Script Editor or some such for a while I believe.
There was one thing I would wonder if American audiences would get from 'Christmas Invasion' was the twist at the end. [since we don't seem to be too worried about spoilers in this thread]The moment Harriet Jones said "Fire", I immediately thought "Belgrano". Which I think was confirmed by what the Doctor said a moment later. But then a large chuck of the British audience, including the younger viewers, might not have picked up on that either.
Oh, and (although this will probably get old pretty fast) ...Don't you think Bush looks tired?
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