Is Doctor Who Taking Over The World?

[Perpetual Man]

Doctor Who has been a major part of British life since it appeared on our screens back in 1963 (although it was the Daleks that REALLY did it).

However no matter how popular it was over here, it never seemed to make the cut in the US - not as something big anyway.

Since the relaunch in 2005, we have seen that change, at least amongst the SF fans. From this site alone we know that people all over the world watch it, and despite the one or two who do not like the new Who it seems to be more popular than ever.

But it suddenly seems to be expanding beyond just the SFF circles.

A recent episode of US show (Castle I think) made reference to it, but as Castle quite happily wears it's SF trappings on it's sleeve, so it was a smirk and forgotten about.

I think DW is shown on SYFY in the states, so other SYFY shows reference it, but recently other mainstream seem to have been picking up on it, almost as though it is making huge ripples.

Criminal Minds episode 3 made a reference to it; while Grey's Anatomy (medical drama) had a whole sequence with references to the show.

It's almost as though it is becoming a social phenomenon in the US, a small British show being referenced in some of the big mainstream shows.

Are there any more places it has started to creep in?

[steve12553]

The previous incarnation (production wise) did have a significant following in the States although it was possibly more of a cult following. I was made aware of it by a friend who had heard about it from another friend back in the late 1970s or early 1980s. The program was shown on PBS stations which, of course, did not have the following or advertising power of the networks. We were usually years behind rathaer than just a week or day as it is with BBCAmerica now. They started us off with episodes from the Tom Baker era (which was probably best because they were probably attactive to a larger audience than some of the earlier series.) I was enough intrigued by the first episode I saw to watch a second and I've seen everything available to me since. I may be that since the show has more up to date special effects available to it now, it has a more mainstream American audience. The old effects were part of the charm of the original shows and there were probably many of us like the cult status.

[j. d. worthington]

When I first encountered it, it was (again) Tom Baker, but not on PBS, but rather a package that Time/Life was offering to various network affiliates for after-prime-time viewing; in this case, it was the NBC affiliate (as I recall) in Houston, which broadcast it following SNL and Monty Python... so roughly 12:30 central time. They continued to carry it for some years, until... again, if I have my facts correctly, Time/Life's rights expired, and then it wasn't shown again until Lionheart acquired the rights for U. S. distribution, and various PBS channels picked it up -- again with Tom Baker, but eventually going back (at least in the case of our local station in Austin) to the very beginning, showing all the episodes known then to exist from the Hartnell, Troughton, and Pertwee eras, then going through Baker, Davidson, and... then back to Baker, before it stopped. (I believe they did finally show the Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy stories, but by that time I was in a position where I did not have a television for some years, so I never got the chance to see them until relatively recently -- about 3 years ago... haven't seen 'em all yet!)

At any rate, I would agree with Steve that it did have at least a respectable following among the sff fans, and I encountered fans of the program who had no other interest in sff as well... some of whom had seen it when they were kids living in New York (which sometimes picked up broadcasts from stations showing BBC material of all sorts) or similar places... and then there were those who were brought into it via the publication by Pinnacle books of several of the novelizations, with their rather aggressive (surprise!) introduction by Harlan Ellison. I wasn't quite one of these, having caught some episodes by then, but this certainly gave me a broader perspective, as these included some of the Pertwee as well as Baker stories (Day of the Daleks and Invasion of the Dinosaurs, for example).

But the interest in the show, to my knowledge, never died down... it just had little to feed on for some time, due to the complications surrounding distribution here... and then there was that odd made-for-tv film, which had some definite promise, but was (in my opinion) horribly mishandled... though I will say that I rather liked the casting of the Doctor there, even if I felt they drew too much on the Baker connection when it came to the characterization.

But, yes, the new Who does seem to have broadened the horizons for the show considerably, which is just fine with me....

Incidentally, I recall an article in an old issue of Doctor Who magazine, which dealt with the distribution of the original series, which was really quite widespread, including several Arabic countries, which caused a bit of a reshuffling of the package when it came to the Hartnell story, "The Crusades"....

[TheEndIsNigh]

I believe there are many of the early episodes that the BBC have 'lost'.

I seem to recall a request from them (the BBC) asking for anyone who had recordings to get in touch.

I wonder if any of those stations you mention have any of those older episodes rotting in the cellar.

The tragedy is that the BBC reused 'expensive' recording media, writing over hours of ground breaking programs (not just DW). You would think someone back then would have had a sense of history. Alas, not the case even in those days.

[Dave]

Originally Posted by TheEndIsNigh

I believe there are many of the early episodes that the BBC have 'lost'.

In the Sixties most TV programmes were either Live or recorded on cheap video tape that was never meant to be kept. No one ever expected that programmes made then would want to be watched in later years, never mind the advent of cheap VCRs in every home, digital recorders, or downloaded TV on demand.

They could only make permanent recordings on 35mm cinema film because of the resolution needed for the British 405-line standard and that was prohibitively expensive.

I think TV was thought of more like home-Theatre than home-Cinema. Not only that, but the cost of the videotape (which was still relatively new and which could be re-used) and of its storage made it impossible and it was short-sighted BBC policy not to keep anything. The other problem was that royalties were only ever paid for a single performance.

There is more here: http://www.btinternet.com/~m.brown1/why.htm

Rather than copies being 'lost' I think it is more a case of those that did survive being the ones that were 'lost' - or stolen (some are copies found in attics and boxes of junk.) It is the same with series such as Dad's Army and The Likely Lads. But there were some very forward-thinking (and rich!) people with video recorders in their own homes: http://www.btinternet.com/~m.brown1/boffin.htm

[PTeppic]

Even in the last week, the UK's "Daily Telegraph" cartoonist used Doctor Who for a cartoon about the BBC.

[j. d. worthington]

On the subject of the lost episodes... yes, a great deal of the Hartnell and Troughton years were destroyed... or at least, so it was thought. In fact, all but a handful of Troughton's first two seasons were wiped out, it seemed, until a few began to surface here and there, and finally they got at least one or two episodes from serials which were thought to be gone entirely. Then there are also the "audiobooks" versions, which are the audio portions of these serials -- originally recorded by fans when they were broadcast, from a number of which recordings they selected the best quality and cleaned them up as much as possible, mostly producing very fine audio quality -- with the addition of some descriptive and linking material narrated by one of the principals (William Russell, Frazer Hines, Carol Ann Ford), which allows one to at least hear the complete episode as it was originally broadcast, with the narrative additions to help visualize them.

And there is the Lost in Time collection put out on DVD, which collects together all the episodes which have been found over the years (save for The Reign of Terror, The Ice Warriors, and one or two others, of which enough were found to allow them -- with audio portions provided for the one or two missing episodes -- to be released as a separate story on DVD or VHS. In the Lost in Time set, things like The Crusades, The Moonbase, etc., also include the two audio episodes where the visuals are missing. And it also has the little clips which have survived from serials where nothing but the audio has otherwise surfaced. (About the only story for which nothing has survived but audio and some stills is the Hartnell story, The Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Eve, a.k.a. The Massacre, certainly one of the grimmest of any of the early Doctor Who tales.)

As I mentioned a few years ago, when I began picking up a lot of these, between this set and the audiobooks, it is now possible to have, in one format or anotherm, the complete Doctor Who as broadcast (at least to listen to, if not always to see). None are missing altogether.

You can find out more about the state of the various stories (which have missing episodes, etc.) here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...s#First_Doctor

And for information on which are available (including the Lost in Time set, which is listed under "Boxed Sets"):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...o_DVD_releases

And for the audio releases:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_...on_soundtracks

Any further information on missing episodes which have surfaced over the past few years would be of great interest... though perhaps that should be a separate thread (one which already exists?).

At any rate, the degree of interest in the program which has resulted in such a search for even the tiniest scrap of footage or audio, rather supports the contention of this thread's title....

[TheTomG]

I, for one, welcome our new Timelord overlords. Or is that Time Over Lords? Or Overtime Lords?

[Perpetual Man]

Not sure if it was intentional or not, I would have thought so, but on a recent episode of Supernatural Jewel (Kaylee from Firefly) Staite guest starred as a character called, ahem, Amy Pond

[Moony]

I think its just that some of the people that make those shows are fans of the show.Most of the references fly over the heads of most people over here.
Though it is getting bigger over here.Probably because its becoming quite the fad to be a geek and like sci fi and fantasy.There will always be groups of us that will love it when the fad goes away.We're just not big enough to be noticed without it.I'm referring to the reboot.I have not gotten to see any of the old episodes from before the reboot unfortunately.
Also,we watch it on BBC America here not Syfy.If Syfy got their claws in it they would ruin it.Instead of airing Being Human they remade it and its awful.They would probably try and remake Doctor who and ruin it.

[JunkMonkey]

Not just Doctor Who episodes that are lost (or partially lost) I remember as a kid being fascinated and gripped by Out of the Unknown a TV series which did that rare thing of taking SF seriously and adapting decent thought provoking stories by REAL SF AUTHORS rather than letting some hack do another 'guest monster of the week' job.
I vividly remember Beach Head adapted from a story by Clifford Simak. Love to see it again but it's gone. Ah well. So it goes.

[Sho Pi]

The series Community has a running Doctor Who spoof in it. Anything that ensures that this show makes it to a hundred years running, I welcome with open arms.

[Perpetual Man]

In the final episode of the season Criminal Minds started with two of it's regular characters - Reid and Garcia - at a SF convention where they had gone as the Doctor (Tom Baker) and the Doctor (Matt Smith), while two recurring characters turned up as the Matt Smith and Amy.

[Mouse]

I heard them mention it in The Big Bang Theory the other day. I know that's a show about geeks anyway but I was still pretty impressed.

[JunkMonkey]

From a book, of which my son is very fond, called, The Octonauts and the Frown Fish. The sub-aquatic heroes find a sad looking fish and try to cheer him up by various means, including dressing him up for various jobs. One of them was as a very Tom Bakery Doctor.

EDIT:
I can't get the image to stick. I'll come back to this.