Doctor Who - US Style

[WhiteCrow]

I was thinking about this the other day - I know the TV movie was partly US.

But what if in another reality Doctor Who had gone lock, stock and barrel over the the US?

What kind of program would it have been then?

I think most noticably we'd have a string of semi-historical stories, but all based in America. So no "Doctor meets Shakespeare", expect "Doctor meets Samuel Clemens" (or Mark Twain).

However you just have to look at recent movies to understand how Hollywood rewrites history in Americas favour (U571 anyone).

So potential stories,

• it's 1940, and the boys of the American Army Air Force take to the skies night after night to stop Hitlers bombers, led by mad English accented General, in the Battle of Britain
• the Doctor lands on a plantation in the 17th Century, where evil English landowner keeps slaves in terrible conditions. However neighbouring plantation owner (played by Mel Gibson), whose slaves are all free, decides to revolt.
• there is an ancient evil lurking the halls of Bletchley Park, California

[Perry Vale]

The Doctor would have been played by Will Smith.

[Logo Polish]

They're supposed to be working on several TV series set in the Tudor era in America, so I wouldn't have ruled out the possibility of a Shakespeare story. And Victoriana is often popular in the US so that's not impossible either. Maybe ancient Rome too, bearing in mind the recent mini-series set then, and the tradition of using such imagery in things like Star Trek.

[Alex]

The Doctor would refer to President Bush's current reign of terror as "A Golden Age in Earth's history", the Daleks would suddenly all have strong English accents, and the companion would have huge perky breasts which'd almost always nearly escape from their tight top.

So it wouldn't be all bad then.

[shada pavlova]

If only we could pass into such a parallel universe.

[Andrew Curnow]

American TV seems to have a bit of an obsession with Jack the Ripper (he's popped up in Babylon 5 and Star Trek at least) so I think we'd have got a J the R tale before too long.

[shada pavlova]

Just you wait until christmas!

[Llordllama]

They'd remake Daleks in Manhatten, and this time it would be all the English accents that would be awful!

[shada pavlova]

Yes, well. Time is relative. Space is relative. Direction is relative. My cousin is a relative.

Somehow it all makes sense.

[Dirk Gently]

Well, mostly.

[Pip Madeley]

@ Tim

I think if Doctor Who was a US series, Britney Spears would've made a guest appearance by now.

[WhiteCrow]

But we did get her Toxic song in Season 1.

[Zbigniev Hamson]

the Daleks would suddenly all have strong English accents

suddenly?

[Captain Tancredi]

Bearing in mind that we're talking about the late nineties, I'd guess that if they'd kept the Vancouver base it would have looked a bit like Stargate SG-1 in terms of using strange buildings and a lot of CGI. There probably would have been a pressure to build up a supporting cast of semi-regulars as well because we'd presumably be looking at 22-26 episode seasons.

[shada pavlova]

Well, they could have done that over here if they had kept the 25-minute format of the old series.

[Zbigniev Hamson]

If they'd reduced the episodes to 12 mnutes it could have been running all year!

[shada pavlova]

But that would have been rubbish.

[Zbigniev Hamson]

I guess that was sort of my point

Acutally that wasn't really my point at all. My point was that halving the episode length and doubling the number of weeks it runs for, isn't quite the same as keeping them the same length AND doubling the number of weeks it runs for.

[shada pavlova]

That would create massive DRAAAAAAG!