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BBC Apologizes To Who Star
An anonymous reader writes "SciFi Wire is reporting that 'The BBC, which earlier reported that Doctor Who star Christopher Eccleston was leaving the show after the first season, issued an unusual apology to the actor for mischaracterizing his reasons for departing...the network broke an agreement with Eccleston not to reveal that he had planned to film just one season of the hit show all along.'" We covered the announcement of his resignation late last month.
The BBC seems to apologize a lot for their reporting, do a quick search and you will find many examples. Here is a few:
0 000/newsid_4222300/4222353.stm 0 000/newsid_4273300/4273385.stm 0 000/newsid_4032600/4032665.stm a dio/1544897.stm s tm s html i n545215.shtml h tml
http://news.bbc.co.uk/newswatch/ifs/hi/newsid_422
http://news.bbc.co.uk/newswatch/ifs/hi/newsid_427
http://news.bbc.co.uk/newswatch/ifs/hi/newsid_403
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/tv_and_r
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/1050290.
http://www.vermontguardian.com/dailies/0904/0322.
http://cbsnews.cbs.com/stories/2003/03/21/iraq/ma
http://www.iht.com/articles/2004/12/03/news/beeb.
http://www.rediff.com/news/2004/jan/28bbc.htm
Some are serious, some are ridiculous. But in the end, apologies result from improper reporting, much different than a simple correction.
There is a wikipedia article on Dr. Who:
Doctor Who - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
It was the maintainer of Slackware. He mysteriously became "fine" again shortly thereafter. Hypchondriac, basically.
-cough- bittorrent -cough- Here in Canada, they are only on episode 2, yet you can just go and download episodes 1, 2, 3 off some torrent site.
Fortunately it is easy enough to change actors - regeneration. They have been doing it since the 1960s. And the previous actor isn't necessary for the regeneration to occur - just put the current actor in a wig (although that might be a bit difficult in this case). The only problem will be when they have the twelfth regeneration and reach the limit - although exceeding that limit has already been done by the arch nemisis.
This guy isn't exactly small potatoes, he had a great role on 28 Days Later, and a bunch of other films.
Timelords are supposed to have 12 regenerations, so there is still a little leeway.
http://jesus.everdense.com/
You recall incorrectly. Doctor Who gets 13 lives, and his main rival has already broken that rule.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
It was Patrick Volkerding.
Yes, the hit show.
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The hit show that recently beat out the Royal Wedding in UK ratings (8.3 million viewers vs. 6.2 million):
http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/news/drwh.../10/18419
As an American who has watched Dr. Who from Pertwee on, I have absolutely no clue as to what class status UK accents signify.
I do, however, like Eccleston's accent, and dislike Piper's accent.
I fink th' fing tha' 'appened is tha' she loses letters, yeh? I guess if you ah an actuh, you ain't got to use em all! Meh opinion is tha' et ain't no big fing!
UUUUGH. She's pretty, she's smart, she's a great character on the show, but when she has extended dialogue it starts to grate on me. Nothing horrible, but the accent is definitely a negative, imo.
P.S. I love the internet... I've gotten all the new eps (and documentaries surrounding same) on the day of broadcast, practically at the equivalent broadcast time of 7PM. My compliments to your government for sponsoring such wonderful programming.
I'm American and I tend to favor the American versions (plural because it varies state by state) of the libel laws. If you're interested about the British libel law and why it's bad, check out the McLibel trial brought by McDonalds.
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Some postulations and potential spoilers.....
About the temporal war, something very much like it has already happened in the 8th Doctor novels. Granted, I haven't seen Unquiet Dead for myself and can only guess, but if Davies is actually answering the age-old DW fandom question of "Will the TV series accept the continuity of the novels?", he might be opening a bigger can of worms that he suspects.
But questions of canon aside, if the Time Lords really are gone, leaving no "ultimate authority" over Time, then timestreams can be messed with at will. Eccleston could be retconned out or made the First Doctor, maybe even both - making Rose (the character AND the episode) a temporal paradox. Yeesh, makes the brain hurt.....
first ep was 10m, second weas 7.3 (great weather that weekend, remember?) and ep 3 came in at 8.3m which was higher than the wedding of his royal frogness and the rotweiller princess.
By contrast, Farscape, even at it's tops in the USA was doing only 3m.
Most show developers would sell their soul for those kind of ratings, so yea, it's a hit.
flames > dev/null
The Problem was The Sun (the most awful newspaper in the universe - think the NY post x10), which keeps trying to pretend that it's the shows great champion (and wrongly takes credit for bringing the Daleks back) got wind of Chris leaving and asked some BBC flunkie - who stupidly confirmed it and made up some stock reason (ie. typecasting).
What this means is, that thanks to The Sun, the end of series suprise has been soiled and Eccleston is now unjustly tarred with the Brush of "The Guy who quit Dr. Who because he didn't want to be typecast."
Don't belive me? Check out April 8 here
http://www.gallifreyone.com/newstv.php
There's a reasonable chance Tennant will stick around. He's on record saying that he's a massive Who fan and has been since childhood, that Who was a major motivator in his becoming an actor, that he's wanted the part since he was five years old (all this well before the new Series was announced in 2003). He's also taken part in several of Big Finish Productions' Doctor Who audio stories, as well as their Dalek Empire series, for money that's massively below what he could earn elsewhere, which is another positive sign.