Slashdot Mirror
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.
does anyone else find it odd that he only planned on being in one season...
An insightful post. One has to wonder what Eccleson thought, signing on to a series that one must have thought he must have hoped would have been successful? Either he was banking on Dr. Who tanking (doubtful) or simply wasn't thinking ahead.
Now this is just a wild-assed guess, but perhaps he's trying to make the leap off the small screen and Dr. Who was seen as a mechanism for him to make the transition. He certainly has recieved more media attention in light of this move - the initial reports of his departure from the show as well as the reports of the BBC apology?
Suppose that's just free publicity. He did get two appearances on Slashdot however.... and that can't mean nothing can it?!
"There's no success like failure, and failure's no success at all."
- Bob Dylan
I just re-watched Rose (oh thank you bittorrent for given me the chance to watch these even though being out of the uk), and realized that the doctor could very well have recognized Rose from previous interaction with her. So if Eccleston guest stars and Piper is still on the program, it wouldn't necessarily violate continuity. I personally have very little problem with Eccleston's decision. I think that he's done so far a marvelous job in re-igniting the Who franchise. I think his reading of the doctor is marvelous and hope they find someone else who interpret the character so excellently. What about the doctor being his own companion for several episodes, if Eccleston returns for a guest spot? That would be interesting. I always thought "the * doctors episodes" were among the most compelling as a child.
Networks can be incredibly forgiving of actors if they really want them - the one-season limit of Christopher Eccleston seems to fall under that rule. Hell, The producers of Witchblade kept Yancy Butler when filming Witchblade, even though she had a substance abuse problem. They went so far as bringing her mom on set to keep her sober and filming shots where she wobbled after throwing a punch again.
Whereas if a crew member showed up once just a bit inebriated, they'd probably have been sacked. Cogs in the wheel, I suppose.
What are they going to do for next season, though? Ignore the elephant on the sofa, and change characters? Do an episode where Dr. Who wakes up in a different body due to some bizarre transformation gun he gets hit with? Deal with it Ed Wood style and have him killed off-screen?
The BBC seems to apologize a lot for their reporting, do a quick search and you will find many examples Probably because, unlike the American press, they really do reporting i.e. they don't just print off Press Releases & Talking Points. If 95% of your reporting were based off Press Releases + Talking Points issued by different people, then there would very little reason why the press would need to apologize.
If the show does well, they sign him for another season. If he gets sick of it or it tanks, he isnt tied to it. Sounds like smart carreer planning to me.
Dr. Who is a Timelord (or is that Time Lord?), bending space and time is what he's about. Why not extend that to his face? At least in sci-fi you can invent some vaguley plausible (in the context...) excuse for using a new actor. In soaps they just stick someone else in and carry on regardless. Of all the series where you have to worry about replacing an actor Dr. Who ranks pretty low, even without the reincarnation mechanism.
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
Actually, I have a theory that they are hinting to a huge temporal war that ended up in the death of the timelords except for the Doctor (and perhaps what the celestine conciousness was blaming the doctor for when he gets made at him in the premier). It's a pity that Enterprise has kind of poisoned that concept, but it seems pretty different, considered the tragic outcome has already occurred. I hope I'm right. A subtle interlocking arch tying together the seasons of Who is exactly what is needed to keep this on the air for another 26 years.
I find this part quite insightful:
the other way could be he's trying to revive Dr. who so it will open up sci fi again
A-men. I have no idea how popular it is, but my suspicion is that they got a very good, non-genre actor to fill the part, to get people excited about it, and then (as someone posted in the prior thread about The Doctor) regenerate him to someone else, both showing off the ability, as well getting higher ratings.
Doctor Who fanboy comments follow:
All that being said, I'm really curious how they're going to deal with regeneration #12 (especially since 12 merges with 4 to help regenerate into 5). Then again, it took us 10 years to go from 8 to 9, so maybe I shouldn't worry so much.
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
This isn't something found in one particular media outlet, all media outlets have to be on guard and keep this from occuring. Just seems that some media outlets have had particular trouble with the problem in the recent past.
There is also another issue especially in the USA.
Many times even if a news organization publishes a true report, corporations have ways & means of silencing them i.e. by expensive lawsuits, by pulling out Advertising etc. Hence sometimes press has to apologize. Because of this I think the press in the USA atleast has decided that investigative journalism is just not worth pursuing.
Check this link for the Food Lion & Monsanto
incidents.
They would make taking a turn as the Doctor into something all well-known actors would aspire to, just like the guest spot on the Muppet Show used to be.
This would set off raging discussions online about who the next Doctor will be, who the next Doctor should be, who the best Doctor was, etc.
Built-in buzz. C'mon BBC get with it.
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
Gee - I though Dr. Who was all washed up after he turned into a woman and ran off with the Master in the Curse of the Fatal Death?
*Seriously, if you are, were or ever will be a Dr. Who fan you must see this!
Sometimes my arms bend back.
The stories of the doctor's side kicks are often, perhaps usually, redemptive. To run a redemptive story arc you have to start with someone who makes you want to beat them around the head with the clue stick.
Rose is being played as someone who has stupidly wasted her opportunities and is being given a chance to try again. She's clearly supposed to be brighter than her initial situation would imply. She's being played as one of the comanions who can hold their own against the Doctor (Liz, Sarah Jane, Leela, Romana) arther than a screaming unit.
As to her accent, her English is no more non-`standard' and low-value than Eccleston's. His is the real departure, all the previous doctors have had high-status accents. Combined with his clearly being deeply fucked up over what has happened in the recent past, he's definitely an interesting doctor.
_O_
.|< The named which can be named is not the true named
Hm. Translation.
Imagine Rose is speaking white trailer-trash, the Doctor some variety of black English.
Her accent nails her to a social and educational background (she wasn't going anywhere without losing that dialect), his is one which would have traditionally have had been associated with strong, mostly negative, steriotypes, but more recently has become sonewhat cool, especially with younger people.
Here's a theory. Given the translation effects of the tardis, perhaps we hear the doctor as his companions see him/need to see him. Hartnel is the slightly old fashoned schoolmaster two 60s teachers expected, Pertwee had to be the kind of expert who the brigadeer would listen to etc.
Rose, of course, meets a figure she has to instantly respect and listen to -- ``I'm the Doctor, run for your life!'' -- that can't be the kind of authority figure she has clearly rejected from school etc, nor the kind of people she lives amongst (consider that awful boyfriend), so she hears a slightly exotic, slightly cool dialect which is not `them', but distant enough from `us' to carry some weight.
_O_
.|< The named which can be named is not the true named
You know it makes sense!
I find the criticism of Billie Piper's English quite amazing... Personally I react extremely strongly to dialects I don't like. I find many English dialects extremely painful to listen to, but I haven't even noticed hers. Perhaps it's the fact that I live in London, and it's more common than not for me to hear young people talk like that on a daily basis - including in the upmarket parts. As for language understanding when travelling time, it's a moot point as someone else has pointed out, as the second episode made a big point of how the Tardis would translate for them.
Well, quite. Sure I watched the first episode of the new series, the other week. Since then, I saw a handful of news articles touting it as a `great success' based on audience/viewer figures - all based on *JUST ONE SHOW*. So the past couple of weeks, I've missed it entirely, partly because I want to expose their "statistics", and partly because I'm not such a Dr Who fan anyway... Funny, I've not heard anything about repeat-viewing stats since..
~Tim
--
Rushing on down to the circle of the turn
This isn't BBC News apologising, it's the BBC channel. If a complaint is upheld against any of the UK broadcast channels they are obliged to apologise. I don't know why this was described as "unusual" because it's actually quite common.
As far as the quotes go, it seems you don't know how journalists work (in the UK anyway, I don't know if it's worldwide).
Step 1: Write your story with likely sounding quotes
Step 2: Secure your quotes
Journalist: "So, would you say you don't want to be typecast as The Doctor?"
Christopher: "Yeah, I suppose so"
Step 3: Print
"I don't want to be typecast as The Doctor," said Christopher.
Someone screwed up and forgot to do Step 2.
Igor Presnyakov stole my hat
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.
Look, I don't even pretend to have writing skills popular enough to merit working on a TV series, but this is science fiction: Nothing is out of bounds.
Even I can come up with a number of plot twists or elements which would allow for "extra" lives, so to speak:
The Doctor & Rose visit an ancient alien who seems kind enough, but turns out to be draining the life-force out of all manner of beings. After meeting the Doctor, the alien starts draining his life-force. After the menace is defeated cleverly, the Doctor gets his life-force back, but as a bonus, all the other life-forces which were previously stolen go to him.
-or-
The mysterious events of the Time War are revealed, and the Doctor may have been the cause of it all. But is he really the Doctor, or did he just go mad after accidentally destroying his race across the entire span of history? Enter the real "Doctor," and the Gallifreyans are saved.
-or-
Side effect of surviving the Time War.
-or-
Extra Lives for unexplained reason. Starts to make the Doctor question his own nature.
-or-
Half-Human hybrid has unexpected bonus.
Criminy, the list goes on and on. Doctor Who has repeatedly and chronically presented situations which seemed hopeless in the last half of an episode, then shown them to be completely harmless in the first 30 seconds of the next episode. "How will the Doctor escape the Dalek bearing down on him? Tune in next week... to find out that Daleks are blind as bleedin' bats. Or that it wasn't there. Or that it's a friendly Dalek, part of the Dalek Resistance. Or that the Doctor wasn't actually standing where we thought he was. Or..."
You get the idea. No problem is out of bounds for a good writer, and very few problems are out of bounds for a mediocre one, even.
Happiness is relative, Based upon the way we live.