Slashdot Mirror
BBC To Revive Doctor Who Next Year
Jordan writes: "Orange Today is reporting that the BBC has hired a scriptwriter from Buffy the Vampire Slayer to work on a new Doctor Who series, in celebration of the show's 40th anniversary. And Buffy's Anthony Head, who plays Giles, may be up for the role of the doctor." Update: 07/03 12:27 GMT by T : LoadStar writes: "The Beeb has an official denial that a new Who series is in the works with members of the Buffy production team, as reported yesterday on Slashdot. They report 'Whilst the Cult team quite like the idea of Tony Head as the Doctor in a show guided by members of America's finest fantasy production team, the BBC aren't currently making any such plans.'"
Exec1: Hey, here's an idea... Let's get George Lucas and ILM to remake Plan 9 From Outer Space. We can get M. Night Shyamalan to rework the script and a get a few big name stars in there.
Exec2: No no no, we need to make another movie based on a comic book.
Exec3: Why don't we come up with something original. Y'know, like a new story, new characters...
[blank stares all round]
Exec3: ...or not. Let's get back to that Dr Who concept.
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Yeah, well, that's just, like, your opinion, man.
Can you imagine a Beowulf cluster of Daleks?
In a dark room, from a pile of pizza boxes and makeshift rackmounts, hundreds of nodes start croaking through their motherboard speakers: Exterminate!
"Mod, mod, mod...and another troll bites the dust."
"The rumors are flying... but as usual, media reports have gotten ahead of the truth. Following the interview in the recent Dreamwatch Magazine with David Fury ("Buffy, The Vampire Slayer"), as we reported a few days ago, several online news sources (such as the usually wildly inaccurate Ananova, plus Peoplenews and other sources) are now reporting that Anthony Stewart Head (Giles in "Buffy" and recently a guest star in the Big Finish Doctor Who "Excelis" trilogy) will be a new Doctor in a new series produced next year. Even the Daily Express paper has picked it up (as an 'exclusive')... But it's not true. Producer Dan Freedman ("Death Comes to Time") did visit the Buffy producers, and there was a bit of talk about procedure... but nothing came of it and Freedman has moved to other projects. A quote by Tony Head in the Dreamwatch interview was taken out of context by these news 'sources'. Meanwhile, we continue to get tons of email this morning about it (it's not true, folks) and the official BBC website BBCi even issued a statement about it this morning: "Whilst the Cult team quite like the idea of Tony Head as the Doctor in a show guided by members of America's finest fantasy production team, the BBC aren't currently making any such plans."
As noted, the BBC web site confirms this is a rumor. Anthony Stewart Head has done some fine work in the Excelis series of Big Finish Doctor Who audio dramas though.
-fh
Geez! Some folks need a new meme! Wherever you sit on the TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY continuum, they're all great shows, different strokes for different folks.
IMO there is plenty of space in "Doctor Who" for some fantastic new stuff. And it doesn't have to be cheezy to be great! I watched Dr Who when I was 8 - 12 and it certainly wasn't cheezy to me, in fact a lot of it was damn scary and thought provoking. I can see a wonderful "New Doctor Who" being all that and more, for an adult audience and more.
Another pet peeve? People who think that talented writers have only one style. Just because they hire a writer from Buffy, DOES NOT MEAN that a "New Doctor Who" would resemble Buffy in the slightest. Writing talent is writing talent. Do you enjoy Bradbury for his science fiction or his gothic horror stories, or the gothic horror science fiction he also writes, to choose one bad example off the top of my head.
Most Buffy fans I know are in their 40s, and have a strong opinion on Dr. Who. You'd be surprised at who exactly comprises the Buffy fandom.
Incidently, the BBC was supposed to be doing a new Buffy series starring Giles (Anothony Head's character) reprising his role back in England (much in the same way Angel spun off in LA). The series, often referred to as Ripper, hit budget snags, but Mutant Enemy and the BBC forged a relationship there. I'm curious if this series is connected in any way to ME... who are also doing a new SF series, Firefly, soon.
As for ASH (I've been a fan of his stagework for many years), he's currently doing the BBC series Manchild, kind of a "Sex in the City" with men instead of women. It's also shown on BBC America. David Fury is the "good" Buffy writer, or at least has a much better fannish reputation than Marti Noxon, who is widely "credited" with the Season Six (just finished) change in tone. Since many people despise S6, they aren't too keen on MN, either. Joss, of course, is the creator and head writer, and has no following whatsoever in Fandom - he does have a large group of fervent worshippers, however. ;)
As an aside, David Fury is in the musical - he's the one singing about how they got the mustard out. Marti Noxon is the one who got the parking ticket and tells the officer she's not wearing underwear. ASH is, of course, the quite excellent vocalist he's always been since the days he was Frank'n'Furter in the Rocky Horror Show (not to be confused with the movie version which starred Tim Curry in that role).
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Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
Sadly, the Beeb deny this here.
When are they going to realise that Dr Who could be a major money spinner and stop being so phobic towards anything science fictional? Sigh.
I've been watching Doctor Who since Tom Baker still had the role. To see new episodes after a fifteen-year hiatus honestly makes me apprehensive. Sure I'd like to see new stories, but it would be so easy for them to lose the charm of the show under the weight of stuffy production values.
See, I've always seen Doctor Who as a "fragile" show, one that doesn't survive much tampering. Everyone likes to poke fun at the incredibly cheap sets and effects, but that cheapness, IMHO, is what made Dr. Who a good show. Because the writers/directors/producers couldn't fall back on lavish production values, they had to focus on quality of stories and development of characters to hold the audience's attention. You looked forward to the next show, not because you wanted to see new effects and 3D-rendered alien worlds, but because you wanted to see how the Doctor and Zoe and Jamie and Liz Shaw and Jo Grant and Sarah-Jane Smith and Harry Sullivan and Romana and Nyssa and Peri and (God help us) Mel coped with it, and how it affected them. (As for Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart, we always knew how he would react. He started shooting, blindly faithful that, perhaps this time, the bullets would actually have an effect.)
John Nathan-Turner, Dr. Who's final series producer, is a controversial figure among fans. Many believe -- me included -- that he sacrificed story quality in favor of production values. Compare, for example, Frontier in Space (Jon Pertwee era, produced by Barry Letts) with Vengeance on Varos (Colin Baker era, produced by John Nathan-Turner). While both stories utilized elements of violence, Vengeance on Varos seemed to revel in it. In Frontier in Space, the violence is almost completely confined to simple exchange of blood-free gunfire. The plot was advanced by intrigue and the Doctor's endless battle with slow-witted bureaucracy. In Vengeance on Varos, however, we are offered much more graphic violence: A man falling into pool of acid (and then struggling vainly to get out); slow exposure to lethal radiation; death by poison sting; and near encounters with hanging by the neck and falling in lava. Further, the villain, Sil, is physically repulsive. In previous years, the writers would have been content to make the audience despise the villain via his behavior and personality, and did so very successfully. Given that, it's unclear why they went to the extra trouble to give Sil a stomach-turning appearance, other than, "Because we could."
Advance a few more years to the Sylvester McCoy seasons, and things start to turn downright depressing. Delta and the Bannermen has almost no redeeming value whatsoever, being one long almost-continuous gunfight. There's the bizarre and disturbing The Greatest Show in the Galaxy , whose only saving grace is McCoy doing a series of vaudeville-style acts. And the final serial episode, Survival , has you shaking your head going, "What was the point?"
To his credit, Nathan-Turner did turn out some winners. Of note are The Caves of Androzani , Peter Davison's last, and arguably best, episode; and also featuring Morgus, one of the most deliciously despicable villains ever to appear on the show. Also good was Battlefield , where Arthurian legend and two generations of UNIT Brigadiers intersect with a small country village. Watching the new Brigadier kick the crap out of Ancelyn is by itself worth the trouble of watching.
If you're in the San Francisco Bay Area, the good Doctor can still be seen every Sunday night (barring pledge drives) on PBS station KTEH in San Jose, CA. They've broadcast every Doctor Who episode available over the years at least twice, and are currently running through the Jon Pertwee era.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
And for a very simple reason. The BBC used to be able to make programming on merit. Now it's full of spineless plonkers in expensive suits dribbling on about mindshare and demographics and return on investment.
In an era where there were only three (or four or five) channels available in the UK, Dr Who was tolerated because chances are, there wouldn't be anything better on elsewhere. But now it would have to fight for audiences among many quality mainstream and SF channels, worldwide.
And that means going toe to toe with the likes of Stargate, the Trek franchise, with Farscape, and with the all powerful Buffyverse.
To do that, you need the Buffy formula of good writing (which it always had) but also good acting (leads and support), costume, lighting, sound, editing, and FX, which, let's be honest, Dr Who was never overburdened with.
And all that costs, and that means risk, and that means it won't happen. It doesn't have the luxury of Red Dwarf, of coming from nowhere, starting out with zero budget and building up. It'd have to come back with a vengeance and go toe to toe with the big guns. And frankly, I don't think the BBC could do it. Not any more. It simple wouldn't have the courage to commit the necessary resource, and if it did try it, it would cut corners, produce something that was too safe to be cult and too sucky to be mainstream, which would just further reenforce the BBC notion that SF is expensive and risky.
There is actually a third option. Between expensive and good, and cheap and crap you can do cheap and good, if you have the vision and the courage. Look at the stunning Ultraviolet, done by the UK's Channel 4. Dark and gritty, completely believable, driven by story, drama and characters, dealing credibly with seriously adult issues like cancer, abortion and child abuse in six perfect, breathtaking, deeply moving episodes. It just happened to have vampires in it.
But that was Channel 4, not the BBC. C4 is now breaking the ground in the UK, with the BBC following on, assimilating the safer ideas. The BBC couldn't do a credible big budget Dr Who, and it hasn't got the talent or the courage to create a new vision for it. Channel 4 could, but they don't have the license. And think what Joss Whedon or Chris Carter could do with it, given half a chance.
So consider my name on the huge petition to get the BBC to stop clinging to past glories. Either use the license, or pass it on. But don't sit on it for fifteen years, exploiting the memory and teasing us with the possibility of a return, while the audience ages and we simply stop caring. Use it or lose it!
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