The BBC should be celebrating doctor who's 50th anniversary

[dalekkiller]

http://www.planetmondas.com/forum/vi...hp?f=11&t=2537

according to some posters on Planet Mondas

[Si Hunt]

Could you cut and paste? I don't have membership.

Nor do we really want to be suggesting our cherished PS posters register for another forum. Hey, they might stop visiting ours!

Si.

[dalekkiller]

Allright

Note to the BBC. It's Doctor Who's 50th 2013

Re: Doctor Who 50th Birthday 2013 - 'Was Doctor Who rubbish in the 1980s?'

BBC >>>>> "Wake Up" <<<<< It's the 50th Birthday of Doctor Who and 'You' are doing virtually nothing to CELEBRATE the fact! Isn't it worth SHOUTING FROM THE ROOF TOPS that you have a worldwide hit show that's half a century old? BBC AMERICA is doing more than you!

Quote from Steven Moffat "Doctor Who will take over TV in 2013" ..... In America perhaps!

Where is all the missing programming celebrating the series. Repeats? A full season of new episodes.

Instead we get Newsnight 'Was Doctor Who rubbish in the 1980s?' by Shaun Ley. You should be promoting the show not rubbishing it and producing less of it.

This Birthday year = TOTAL wash out so far. Shocking (:-<}
richt1963



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Re: Note to the BBC. It's Doctor Who's 50th 2013
by paulhickling » Thu May 30, 2013 2:31 pm

And I thought I was angry! I'm getting accused of being so. Just for convenience here's my own little rant from elsewhere on this site. I have to agree that it's amazing that not only has there been precious little celebrating so far, but they then trash part of the heritage on a major BBC news programme. It's almost as if they're trying to kill it. Knocking a third of it's history, for all of it's faults (and we all know there are many, even fans aren't blind to them but ALL ALONG IT'S HISTORY) is hardly celebrating the past. :

What a pathetic show by the BBC in anniversary year. We can all take pot shots a any era for it's inadequacies.

Great bit of Who bashing there Newsnight.

The gall of the BBC to look at the thing 15 years ago and knock it. Shall we go back and knock early Hartnells and laugh at how primitive it was? I can think of many Hartnells that make some 80s ones look like epics, but where's the fairness in that?. Let's do a piece on Terry Nation and show what a crap idea he had of science fiction. Lets poke fun at Peter Glaze in a silly outfit. Lets stick on sequences featuring butterfly men and cloth clothed grubs jumping around.

Both RTD and Moff have been supportive of the eighties, and realise eighties Who like any other is a product of it's time.

The BBC made DW, so if it was naff they should have done something about it. But the cooperation hated it and wanted rid. If they had the slightest interest they could have reappointed new staff, but what did they do after that initial rest? Keep the status quo hoping it would die, and it did. I'm no lover of the McCoys or Cartmel, but I am still aware that they did what they could with the resources they had, which was pretty little from a cooperation that hated it.

For all the bashing JNT gets, he was the only one trying to keep it going. As far as quality goes FOR THE TIME, for every Paradise Towers there's an Earthshock. Every Warriors of the Deep, a Caves of Androzani. Every Timelash, a Keeper of Traken. What's next the (early) 70s? Anyone against kipper ties, flares and squeaky synth music will have a field day.

Very poor show in Anniversary year. Shame on you BBC.


Good 80s Who? For what it's worth on a personal level:

Season 18
Most of Davison (with a few clunkers, mainly Time=Flight and Warrirs of the Deep)
Most of Season 22 (except Timelash)
Now I AM struggling, but the opening sequence of Trial shows what was possible at the time fx-wise, and there's the odd well made gem like Remembrance.
That's still the majority.
paulhickling



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Re: Note to the BBC. It's Doctor Who's 50th 2013
by ianj » Thu May 30, 2013 2:37 pm

Its always had the piss taken out of it by bbc staff,etc..and it was put down at the end of the 80s....it looks like they are touring of the comeback series too.I think there a lot of animosity,and trouble behind the scenes.Expect, at some point,dramatic changes,or sidelining/cancellation.Lots of programmes sell well overseas,but that doesnt stop cancellations.

ianj
The Dominator


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Re: Note to the BBC. It's Doctor Who's 50th 2013
by paulhickling » Thu May 30, 2013 3:28 pm

Yep. It does look like it's biggest time is past. For now. Till someone else wants to fill the schedules with it again. At a time when we can't even muster a full season anymore, it does seem a long time since RTD's days when everything he asked for he seemed to get. Oh for the days of a certain actor moaning that all the BBC was bothered about was Doctor Who and it's spin-offs!

And I say that as someone who didn't even like them! I just loved the fact that Who had presence just about everywhere. That to me seemed like it was all in very good shape. Despite two special programmes, as well as the Christmas Special, and a series STARTING next year it just doesn't feel the same. Granted one could argue it's still better than what we had between 1989 and 2005......
paulhickling



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Re: Note to the BBC. It's Doctor Who's 50th 2013
by OptikaNET » Thu May 30, 2013 3:58 pm

I can't help thinking that the programme isn't actually 50 years old until 23rd November 2013. At the moment it is merely 49 years old!!!

Of course, it may be that the BBC has no plans to celebrate Doctor Who in 2014, but maybe, just maybe, that's when all the good stuff is going to happen? After all, eleven months of the Anniversary Year happen in 2014 not 2013...

[Rob McCow]

Don't know if I agree with any of that! We've had a good season of 8 episodes this year, but it all hinges on how good the Anniversary Special is. I'm not ready to get my disappointed cap on yet.

I'd rather have one truly excellent episode of Doctor Who than a whole series of weak episodes...

[Antony Cox]

I didn't see the Newsnight thing, but if some hardcore fans are 'frightened' when someone (and I accept that it's the BBC in this case) decides to highlight some of the (presumably fairly universally accepted) shortcomings of DW in the 80's, then they need to wake up and smell some stong coffee - DOCTOR WHO WAS/IS NOT ALWAYS BRILLIANT!

Also, said fans seems to think they they have a right to demand this and that - where do they get this from?? I'm not the biggest fan of Nu Who but I still think we are extremely lucky to have the series on TV again after such a long break between runs, and especially to the quality that it is (whether you like or dislike this or that story notwithstanding). Plus, we're getting a special docu-drama to show how it all started - how is this not celebrating??

Some people REALLY do need to get a life...*

*I'm having a bad day today.

[dalekkiller]

It seems there main cmplaint is that there hasn't been a repeat season of classic Doctor Who

[Antony Cox]

Whilst that would be nice, there are DVDs of almost the whole of the classic series available...

[Lissa]

It is also six months until the 50th anniversary. That's a long time to maintain peoples interest in a television programme's birthday. Even much bigger events only really kick in their hype and coverage a few weeks before the big day. It's slightly annoying that BBC America has shown things that BBC Proper hasn't (eg the Doctor by Doctor retrospectives) but that doesn't mean the BBC doesn't care about the anniversary.

If the people on that forum want Doctor Who on TV every day then put a DVD on (even if it means wearing gloves to protect them from finger marks) rather than insisting in capital letters than the 63 million people who don't watch Doctor Who should be bombarded with it for the entire year. Better that the focus is on a few weeks in November than start now, bomb in the ratings like all Classic Who repeats have done in living memory and fizzle out long before we put the clocks back.

[SiHart]

It's a good point and always worth remembering, that whatever you do, there will always be fans somewhere moaning about it!

[Si Hunt]

That doesn't mean they don't have a point. Arn't we allowed to complain?

It doesn't "feel" like an Anniversary Year, let alone the 50th. I can't recall really seeing the wishy-washy 50th Logo many places, but then again maybe I have. Because it doesn't actually feature the number "50" it doesn't even feel like a celebratory logo, just another slight design tweak.

Yes, we've had a series. Um... like the previous seven years. Not being ungrateful, that's lovely, but it's nothing EXTRA to celebrate the 50th is it? Where are the repeats? Where are the special celebration documentaries?

It may be six months until the anniversary DAY itself, but that day comes 11/12ths into the Anniversary Year! Does starting in November mean Doctor Who will only celebrate for eight weeks of it's half-century year? No-one is going to be partying on in February 2014 on the technicality that Doctor Who's ACTUAL 50th year of being runs November to November, just as no-one was celebrating the Millennium at the correct time.

I figured the whole year would be a bit of a celebration, but aside from having half a series (made a year ago) and a special, there's not really anything SPECIAL about this year is there?

I've a horrible feeling we're all waiting for it to "kick in" and it won't until the last few weeks. Pfft. Some celebration.

Si.

[Dirk Gently]

Er no, the anniversary doesn't start in November & stop December 31st, it starts in November & ends next November, making a year.

You don't start celebrating your 50th birthday the year it's in, only after you actually turn 50.

[J.R. Southall]

Ahem, the fiftieth year starts at the 49th birthday and runs until November of this year. We then enter the 51st year...

I would suggest that the BBC will probably celebrate the anniversary for around a month, during November. Nobody but nobody actually celebrates their birthday for the entire year, either prior or post.

If there are no documentaries and other external programmes during November, then you can complain.

Meanwhile we've already had an edition of Pointless, the production of which was doubtless inspired by the anniversary.

And off the television, we've had celebratory stamps, a new Trivial Pursuit edition, various anniversary jigsaws, a DVD set, a collection of books, the Dalek "book-azine", framed anniversary prints, mugs and tumblers and God knows what else. I only wish I could afford any of this stuff.

On the television, we've already had a series of eight episodes specifically written to tie-in with the anniversary, paying homage to and referencing any number of stories from the classic and new series, and culminating in an episode featuring the kind of celebration of the show we would have been given to expect in the anniversary special itself. Heaven knows what that might bring, then. And there's a Christmas Special too, to round the year off.

All in all, I'd say we're being treated pretty well this year.

And I haven't even mentioned The Reign of Terror, The Mind of Evil, Spearhead from Space on Blu-Ray, The Ice Warriors, The Moonbase and The Tenth Planet...

[dalekkiller]

Are those stamps still available?

[Dirk Gently]

Ahem, the fiftieth year starts at the 49th birthday and runs until November of this year. We then enter the 51st year...

Yes, you ARE IN your 50th year, but you don't celebrate it UNTIL you have passed the anniversary of your birth, i.e your 50th birthday...or in this case anniversary.
We are in the 2014th year of the Gregorian calender but its still 2013.

[J.R. Southall]

Yes, you ARE IN your 50th year, but you don't celebrate it UNTIL you have passed the anniversary of your birth, i.e your 50th birthday...or in this case anniversary.
We are in the 2014th year of the Gregorian calender but its still 2013.

Not sure. Many people would celebrate a birthday by going out the night before, but very very few are still celebrating a birthday a month or even a week after. I would expect the bulk of what the BBC have to offer for Doctor Who to happen in the week leading up to the anniversary, but I'm not expecting much if anything in the week afterwards (perhaps again a little towards Christmas and the second special), and I'm not expecting anything after Christmas. On the other hand, there have already been any number of anniversary-themed releases (and eight episodes! - And don't tell me those weren't anniversary-themed), plus the BFI screenings, and we still have months to go.

We're in the anniversary now. We will not be celebrating it in 2014.

[Simon R]

How was Hide anniversary related?

[SiHart]

Delta's costume from delta and the Bannermen made a reappearance

[Andrew Curnow]

Dare I say, if Moffat & co hadn't seemed to make quite such a big thing of it in DWM we probably wouldn't be that bothered at this point? It's the killer hype - nothing can live up to "Doctor Who is going to take over TV" and there's a danger that nothing will live up to six months of hype about the anniversary special (if that's now on the cards).

The BBC does also have to cater to the vast majority of viewers who DON'T watch Doctor Who - and if I didn't like Doctor Who, I can certainly imagine I'd be moaning if it was on TV a lot this year, just because of some slightly spurious 50th Anniversary. Yes, it IS 50 years since it started, but we haven't actually had (in TV terms) 50 years of Doctor Who, because it was off-air for 15 years!

Certainly, I would like to see more episodes a year (the 13+1 format of the RTD days was lovely) but that's not a moan linked to the anniversary, I was complaining about that last year as well!

[Si Hunt]

But TV anniversarys arn't the same as birthdays are they? I notice the BBC Marketing department (the bit that sells us stuff) are branding it all year.

Si.

[SiHart]

Well of course they are, because they can sell stuff.

I suspect we're not going to get a sustained lot of repeats of anything through the year, just a concentrated burst of activity later on this year around the special and Adventures in Space and Time.

I'm not sure I understand the clamour for repeats though. After all the only anniversary where we got repeats was the 30th!

[brandynigma]

Tonight was a heavily publicised event in Sydney. The last month has seen buildings around the Opera House become screens for amazing projections of art and animation.

Tonight's event was to be a special, 50th anniversary Doctor Who projection on the five-storey customs house. We ended up watching from the nearby raised railway station, as the Customs House courtyard held about 600 people.

The show was great, running through the Cybermen, Silurians, Sontatans, Angels- all 'interacting' with the building magically. Then, all 11 Doctors flashed across the building and... it ended.

All of three minutes, and the building went dark.

My first thought was for all the children in the audience. I feared many tears before bedtime.

My second thought, and one that I now realises applies to all of the BBC's celebrations, was "Is that it?"

Big Finish are the only people I feel who are really embracing the anniversary (how Mel met the Doctor, The Beginning, the 1963 trilogy...).

[Stuart Wallis]

We are in the 2014th year of the Gregorian calender but its still 2013.

Lord Pedant declares: since there wasn't a year nought, we are theoretically only in the 2013th year of that calendar, which is merely a subtle reworking of the Julian Calendar. In practice, the Gregorian calendar was only introduced in 1582, so noone's been using it for more than 430 years - the Russian Orthodox Church are still on Julian Time in terms of when they celebrate Easter and Christmas.

I'll get me coat...

[Dirk Gently]

I thought that might be picked up early on after I posted it, but it was late & I couldn't be bothered to edit it.

[J.R. Southall]

How was Hide anniversary related?

The entire half-series has been made up of stories that both "quote from" and pay homage to the classic Doctors.

Specifically in Hide, the use of the Metebelis 3 crystal (it wasn't necessary to the plot to have included that at all, they added it because Hide was the third Doctor "celebration"), and the plot itself: a haunted house, where it turns out the "haunting" is actually somebody from the future? It's an homage to Day of the Daleks.

In a similar way, the plot of Rings of Akhaten (Doctor & co arrive on alien planet, to find the local inhabitants worshipping as a God an alien presence that is actually anything-but benign) paid homage to The Web Planet, Cold War obviously The Ice Warriors and other stories of the second Doctor's era, Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS made right on those last two instalments of The Invasion of Time, and The Crimson Horror was a reinvention of elements of The Visitation (local population being taken under the 'fluence as part of a plot to use plague to rid the world of humanity). Even The Name of the Doctor borrowed elements from Battlefield (the importance of a "mythical" grave, and the references to the Doctor's unknown future).

This is way more than coincidence! The seven episodes have paid homage to the seven classic Doctors in order (albeit Nightmare in Silver is far less clear, although it's patently there), and they've also "quoted from" those eras in the same sequence as well: Grandfather/daughter; the HADS; the Metebelis crystal; "a permanent state of decay"; the gobby Australian...

[Rob McCow]

This is way more than coincidence!

I disagree!

There were a few kisses to the past and maybe they swapped the episode order round a bit... but I don't buy it!

Cute theory though.