Doctor Who

I don't normally plug my Doctor Who blog (other than it being in my sig all the time). However there was recently a load of Torchwood Promo Photos (and i mean loads!) released. There's way too many to post on here (they would easily take up a sizable chunk and download time) so instead, here's the link to my blog post about Torchwood.
As a sample, here's some of the new promo photo's
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There were a bunch of high schoolers (or college students, they all look the same to me) in Harvard Square putting up Vote Saxon posters. Good to see that some kids over here are getting a proper education.
 
So I was browsing The Onion...

Onion AV Club said:
By the way, would anyone else watch a spin-off in which Madame Vastra and her longtime companion solved late-Victorian crimes, occasionally by eating the guilty? Because I would.
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YES. PLEASE MOFF, MAKE THIS HAPPEN.
 
simple enough.
Serenity crashes into the TARDIS (like the Titanic at the start of "Voyage of the Damned"
Doctor and Mal are appropriately angry at each for harming each other's sexy.)
rory dies... again
Amy Pond gets it on with Inara
Zoe and River Song running around with two guns killing Daleks. Cybermen and anything that moves.
Doctor fixes River Tam, cures Inara and gives everyone a lollipop.
and of course episode ends with Doctor wearing a Browncoat. "what? i wear a browncoat now, browncoats are cool"
nerds have a collective crisis
job done

now where's my money.
 
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^ :lmao:
 
unfortunately, i post bringing bad news. Its looking incredibly likely now that there will be no full series of Doctor Who next year. There are reports that Series 7 is going to be split into two. Some episodes screened next year, while the remainder screened in 2013. BBC have not given a reason why, although some are saying that its due to Moffat's responsibilities with Sherlock (don't know why, that's only 3 episodes a year). Lizo Mzimba, BBC reporter and so-called Doctor Who superfan has tweeted
There will not be a full series of Dr Who in 2012! BBC confirms that BBC One Controller said this earlier today. #drwho

BBC also says Danny Cohen's remark that short series was because Steven Moffat needed time to write Sherlock was meant to be light hearted.

The BBC has, of course, commissioned 14 new episodes of Dr Who (hurrah) so looks like some will go in 2012 and remainder in 2013.
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when i find out more, i'll post more information. its all a bit of a mess at the moment and i'm waiting for a comment from the mouth of god (moffat) himself.
 
http://scifibulletin.com/2011/06/14/bbc-admits-no-full-series-of-doctor-who-in-2012/

the comment lays out the problem quite well

Cohen blaming Moffat is ingenuous at best?

This actually isn?t news ? as soon as this season was split, it was obvious that they were going to move to an autumn premiere in time to line up to have a season on air during the Anniversary in 2013 (November 23 2013 is a saturday!). To do this, they had to either make more episodes, leave an extra six months? gap between premiere dates, or split a season and have the next year start one year after the premiere of the second half ? that?s what they did.

Season 7, confirmed as commissioned last week, is, I?m told, budgeted as being split (somehow it makes a difference to the moneymen when done this way) ? that means an autumn 2012 premiere and a spring 2013 second half.

They have to make the move to autumn this production year for practical reasons, because they?re moving studios in Oct/Nov/Dec and so can?t shoot then anyway. So there couldn?t be a spring 2012 series filmed in time. (Xmas 2011 is being filmed around August, AIUI)

So, we get:

Spring 2011 ? season 6.1
Autumn 2011- season 6.2
Xmas 2011- Xmas special
Autumn 2012 ? season 7.1
Spring 2013- season 7.2
Autumn 2013- season 8 (whether split or otherwise, but I suspect that by that point the audience will be used to midseason splits)

Where this leaves a 2012 Xmas special is anyone?s guess, though?
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I would rather they took their time and miss a year instead of trying to rush it out inbetween scheduling conflicts and the change of studio.
 
The Xmas Day specials have always been a good ratings earner for the BBC. i seriously doubt they'd be looking at stopping the Xmas specials.
 
still waiting more from Stephen Moffat and the BBC, the news isn't looking good.

Doctor Who is in trouble
Sources claim the revived series may be on its last legs. Earlier this month, Private Eye, a British investigative journalism magazine published a story about BBC funding which indicated that Doctor Who would not be returning properly until 2013, after showing only a few special episodes in 2012 (like they did back in 2009). Soon after, Sam Hodges, the Head of Communications for BBC, decided to come out and dispel the rumors on his twitter feed. Now we?re getting reports that the truth may be somewhere in the middle. The show is apparently having lots of behind-the-scenes issues, most of them stemming from BBC budget cuts, as the Eye reported. Steven Moffat, the show?s lead writer and executive producer, has been struggling to keep the show inside the budget, and even had to ask Neil Gaiman to rewrite parts of his episode, The Doctor?s Wife, to cut back on effects (originally, Nephew was not originally written as an Ood).
Due to disagreements about what to cut, the producers and executive producers have had a falling out, seemingly centered on Exec Producer Piers Wegner. The rest is a little confusing, as different outlets seem to have different stories on the matter of who angered who, and so forth, but the end result is that Wegner is gone from the show - and the BBC entirely - along with Producers Tracie Simpson and Peter Bennett - who moved to the new BBC program Baker Boys. As far as I can tell, this leaves just Exec Producer Beth Willis and Moffat himself in charge of the show.
What does all this come down to for fans? Firstly, It means that the second half of the current season is going to be late. Currently it is only announced as premiering sometime this year, but still planning to run all six episodes before the Christmas special (which only means it needs to start in early November). This means that the DVD will likely not be out in time for holiday gift-giving. Secondly, it means that, in order to increase the amount of funds available per episode, the next season of Doctor Who is being split between years, with the first half showing in the Fall of 2012, and the second half beginning after the New year, with the Christmas special between.
It?s not so bad as the wait we had a couple years ago between seasons four and five, but it is disappointing, and it makes one wonder what is going on over at the BBC that they don?t think their most popular show (internationally) deserves a big enough budget to continue on course. Hopefully they get it figured out soon. Or perhaps, they?ll completely give up on it, and an American production company will take over Doctor Who, like what happened with Torchwood. That would certainly be interesting.
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Source
 
I think part of the problem with budget is that they constantly have to build new sets for each and every episode. The only constant is the TARDIS set and that doesn't usually make up most of the episode.
 
Blah blah budget cuts. If one is a keen Memory Alpha reader one knows that things like with the Gaiman episode (making a previously-unseen alien one that's already known to save on make-up and CGI) were everyday business for all the years Star Trek was broadcast. Doctor Who is a major cash cow for the BBC, so, like Top Gear, they'd never sacrifice it completely (i.e. have a year without a new series) as the panic blog post above speculates.
Cut down on the budget per episode? Yep. Have more stories set on Earth/in Britain/in our time to save money? Probably. Sacrifice one of the major BBC staples for a year? NEVER.
Emarline said:
I think part of the problem with budget is that they constantly have to build new sets for each and every episode. The only constant is the TARDIS set and that doesn't usually make up most of the episode.
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You'd be surprised about the amount of prop and set recycling that's going on on this kind of shows. It's fascinating how many "new" locations are just redresses/different angles of well-known ones. Once again, Star Trek set new standards for this kind of re-uses.

ANOTHER EDIT: Some personell shuffles on the executive production level would never delay the production of a TV series in the way the blog posts suggest. If we suppose a planned air date of the first episode of the second half of the series in late September or October, pre-production right now is advanced to a stage where halting it would cost the BBC more money than going through with it....
...and that's not even mentioning the lost DVD sales if the series isn't broadcast early enough to have the DVD as a Christmas gift.

EDIT III: Maybe the BBC just has to learn to deal with things like bottle shows to keep DW afloat during the economic troubles. Again, Star Trek (and most other SF shows) have done so for years.
 
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