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Canadians Miss Out On Doctor Who Season Finale
darthcamaro writes "Canadians were among the last people in the world to get the season 4 finale of Doctor Who which already aired in the UK and Australia. The Canadian public broadcaster — CBC — decided to cut out nearly 20 minutes from the episode, leaving fans wondering what was going on. Doctor Who isn't the easiest show to follow at the best of times — but Canadians are now up in arms (or at least hockey sticks) over their taxpayer-funded broadcaster's lack of respect for SciFi hosers."
The wife and I watched it months ago. The Internet is my TV station.
Doctor Who thwarts the Dalek invasion of Earth. Earth is not destroyed. None of the main characters die.
Do you also need to buy CliffsNotes for Teletubbies?
Martha Jones was The Doctor's companion in the third season, and the redhead is his fourth season companion, yes.
Learn something new.
You've got to love the idiots who run TV stations. Why? Because they're simply perfect idiots. Cutting 20 minutes from an episode? Such amazing idiocy.
Reminds me of a couple of years ago when I set my VCR to tape the weekly episode of 24. Yes I said VCR. Now get off my lawn.
There was a football game before 24. No problem right? Game will be over. I'll still be able to get all of 24 taped and watch it when I get home.
I get home. VCR is going. Great. I'll just let it finish taping 24 and then sit down and watch it from the beginning. No problem.
Problem. The football game was over before 24 was set to air. But someone decided that it was imperative to air commentary and discussion of the football game that was just played and this ran 15 minutes or so into 24. Was there really a need for this? I mean, come on, you just watched the fucking game so you know what happened.
Did they decide to delay 24 so people could see all of it? Nope. Just cut right on into 24 minus the first portions that they'd blotted out with football commentary.
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Hmmm ... was this a 12+ hour "War and Peace," watch-until-you-drop mini-series episode? Or a normal 2 hour special, or what? 18 minutes sounds like an awfully lot of footage.
I know that one of the "C's" in CBC stands for Canadian, but it sounds like the other one stands for circumcision: "Hell, you can cut 18 minutes off the top of *anything*."
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Doctor Who really seems to make the most sense if you watch it in the UK in sequence with its spin-offs such as Torchwood or the Sarah Jane Adventures, because in the Season 4 finale there are tie-ins to the spin-offs as well as some earlier episodes in the season that refer to story lines happening on the spin-offs. In other words, watching Doctor Who in America on the 1 season delay sans spin-offs leads to confusion because you don't know what's going on.
I applaud the BBC folks for thinking so creatively about spin-offs playing off against Doctor Who, and vice-versa, but it falls apart against the reality of the region-segregation that they still like to practice.
It's a pity, because many BBC shows are more cutting-edge than Hollywood fare these days and they would play really well here as-is. Except, Hollywood likes to re-produce and re-package them as watered-down, lamer versions. A couple examples are "Coupling," a Friends-like show written by Steven Moffat that was hilarious, that Hollywood tried to Americanize and which was done so poorly that it was DOA; "Top Gear," which is an entertaining auto program and which would do just great here, but which Hollywood has again felt the need to destroy by Americanizing it. "The Office" and "What Not to Wear" are two other examples.
Accordingly, maybe Bit Torrent is the only real way to go in the end.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
If you watch the credits I believe it mentions the Canadian Film Board which has always made me believe that it is partially funded by Canadian tax payer dollars.
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
I watched the CBC broadcast version and didn't notice anything odd. It was fast-paced toward the end, but then a lot of them are like that. Am watching the full-length version on their site now to see what difference I can see.
Maybe the CBC could get the same editor to cut the Pirates of the Caribbean movies down to a reasonable length. That would be sweet.
Who actually watches Doctor Who on CBC? It's been available on isohunt.com for a year now...
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
I'll admit that I wasn't very pleased with the decision to have 'the bride' return as a regular companion for the Doctor, precisely because she was portrayed by Catherine Tate. The only thing I found remotely humorous on the Catherine Tate Show was Lauren ("am I bovvered"); the rest was just unfunny (IMHO).
I stuck with it though. As the series progressed I got over the things that annoyed me (I think they toned her down a little as time went on too, which helped) and ultimately I think I'll miss her a little now that she had to have her memory wiped and leave the Doctor's side.
I'm with the other posters who mentioned this too: I think the rate at which Doctor Who is going through companions lately is too rapid and they're not really fully coming into their own.
I'm also going to miss Bernard "Diggin' a 'ole'" Cribbins, for entirely different reasons :)
As for TFA, that's quite appalling. Cutting 20 minutes nigh on halves the length of the episode. Tsk, tsk, CBC, and tsk again. It's little wonder people are downloading shows, it's possibly now the only way they can be sure it hasn't been ridiculously cut down to size.
"Three eyes are better than one" -- Lieutenant Columbo
My sister had broken her arm. It was so bad, they put some sort of metal bar through her arm to hold her arm in a single position. Because of the pain, she was on some powerful medication. To put it mildly, she was not her normal self. Many hippies have spent decades attempting the mental state those drugs put my sister in.
She was watching TV late one night and called me up and told me about this great science fiction show. It was witty, the writing was wonderful. She laughed, She cried. She was on the edge of her seat. But she couldn't remember the name. She remembered that there was a doctor or surgeon on it and they were in a phone booth...
Dr. Who?, I suggested.
That's it!
Dr. Who? I replied again. Are you sure it was Dr. Who?
Yes, she told me, it was wonderful.
The next week, she saw the show again. This time, not enwrapped in her druggy little fog. She called me up the next day and told me she changed her mind about the show.
I've watched the show many times since then, and as far as I am concerned, being sober doesn't help improve the coherence of the plot. Frankly, I would find it hard to tell if our local station cut out vital scenes which hurt the clarity of the overall plot.
The turnover is only "much faster" because A.) you're older; and B.) the seasons are shorter and the stories aren't episodic serials anymore.
David Tennant has already played the Doctor for three seasons. That's as long as William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton, or Peter Davidson, and longer than Colin Baker or Sylvester McCoy. Historically most of the Doctor's companions have only lasted one season, and the current show has actually made them all into recurring characters, so you can't exactly call it "turnover."
Breakfast served all day!
Interesting factoid I just discovered, Georgia Moffett is the real life daughter of the fifth doctor Peter Davison! I guess it's kind of an in joke to have her portrayed as the doctor's daughter =)
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
The US's SciFi channel was no more then 2.5 weeks behind the UK airings of the fourth season. It aired quite a while back though in TV terms, April 5th - July 5th in the UK and not too far behind in the US. So the fact that the fourth season finale is only airing just now in Canada means that they're somewhat behind.
As usual, it was a Russell T Davies campy almost-but-not-quite musical cheesefest. Just about any fact about Doctor Who that you thought was canonical was blatantly ignored. The greatest sin of all was throwing away a regeneration. For god's sake. Regenerations are probably the most precious thing in the Doctor Who universe and Davies thought he'd end his Who career (after all, he doesn't have to fix the plot holes he made) by simply throwing one away for a completely dumb plot twist. Of course it doesn't matter now that no rules are followed any more. And could anything have been more sickly that seeing all of the Doctor's wannabe lovers (and their pathetic families) fawning after him? The whole finally was nothing but laughable. The scene of the Tardis towing the Earth was beyond laughable. The faster Stephen Moffat takes over, the better.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
And they wonder why TV shows are so popular on Torrent sites..
You put people in the backseat not give them what they want and then wonder why they circumvent your revenue stream..
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