Sunday, September 24, 2006

The TARDIS Is Landing!

Just a reminder for those Americans who are interested: Doctor Who is starting up again on the Sci Fi channel this Friday. They're going to be showing the 90-minute -- well, 90-minute when you add the commercials -- Christmas special at 8 PM Eastern, followed by the first regular-length episode of season 2 (or, if you're a diehard traditionalist, season 28).

Also, it's recently been announced that the season is slated for DVD release in the US on January 16. I'll be saving up my pennies!

12 comments:

  1. Octobre 9th on CBC. Of cours eit has already run in New Zealand and Australia...

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  2. I'm looking forward to it, despite what I've read about the season overall.

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  3. As I think I've said here before, I did have some issues with it (i.e. a couple of plot trends and one fairly sweeping characterization complaint), but I also think it contains some of the best individual Who episodes ever, and I do like Tennant's performance, overall. So, yeah, a mixed bag, but IMHO one that's well worth watching.

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  4. Watched a few on You Tube, since my TV has decided to crap out and I am not sure it will be ready by the 8th. Liked most of what I have seen, but throught Fear Her ended poorly.

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  5. Yeah, I agree about "Fear Her." I know a lot of people quite disliked that episode. I thought it was OK, but the ending definitely suffers from, um, a lack of subtlety. On several levels.

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  6. Have to say I was a bit dissapointed that the next companion is yet another young female with a London accent. How about an actual Welsh companion? Or a nice girl from Yeovil? Or maybe a reformed Cyberman? The colour thing - could care less. Just tired of London accents.

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  7. I think Russel Davies' take on it -- and, in the case of newer viewers, in particular, he might have a point -- is that there ought to be a companion who is easy to identify with, especially for his presumable main target audience of young British people.

    He's also said in an interview I read somewhere recently that, despite popular outcry for it, we're not going to see more alien planets in the near future, because it's too expensive to do them, and that viewers today will laugh at you if you film in a quarry and try to pass it off as being someplace in the Andromeda galaxy. (Personally, I'm quite happy to go along with that act of suspension-of-disbelief, myself, but maybe I'm something of a holdover from the rubber-monster days, and general audiences today do feel differently.) Anyway, he said that he fully intends to keep coming back to London because he thinks, for most of his viewers, it's sort of the "default" place.

    As one of those people who would love to see reminders that the things travels in space as well as time, I can only sigh...

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  8. It has nothing to do with London itself, or setting stories in the here and now (well, round about) and on terra firma. I appreciate that budgets only go so far, even if the likes of Charlotte Church don't.
    Despite being a small country, Great Britain is a big place in terms of people. One of the things I like about Eccleston is that he kept his accent. It just seems like the Londonification of Britain. Sort of like how so much of American television took place in either New York or Los Angeles for so long.

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  9. For the record, I can only think of one show that was ever set in New Mexico and that was Alice.

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  10. See, I don't actually have a problem with it being London-centric if it has to mostly be confined to the UK. I just think a show about a guy who can travel anywhere in time and space should travel in time and space. And that it is possible to do interesting things on a modest budget if you're creative and feel like you can trust your viewers to meet you halfway.

    Davies has said, by the way, that he's considering filming in Manchester at some point, and I'm sure we haven't seen the last of Wales, for fairly obvious reasons.

    As for shows set in New Mexico, well, I suppose there was Roswell, although I haven't ever seen that and would be extremely surprised if it bore any resemblance to the real Roswell at all.

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  11. Why has no one commented on the new season yet!!!!!! Dad?????? where are you???
    Of course no one but Betty will be reading comments on this thread because it's old :(

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  12. I was wondering that, myself. I haven't actually seen any discussion of it anywhere lately. I suspect most of the Americans who were really interested found the means to watch it before it came out here, but I know several people reading this blog hadn't.

    So, what do you think so far? I am listening, if no one else is. :)

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