Stuck on Earth

I just received the most recent issue of Doctor Who Magazine, which contains the Russell T Davies interview that has gotten a lot of coverage in the UK press about the new series staying stuck on Earth for financial reasons and for the attempt to keep it suitable for a mainstream audience instead of the niche audiences of Stargate or Star Trek.

I think one of the things over here is that Doctor Who is a niche series in the United States by nature of its British origins. England is practically as foreign as the planet Vortis. And so perhaps our expectations are a little different than the UK audience.

At the same time, Doctor Who is going right before Battlestar Galactica on Sci Fi. And the new Galactica also has a constrained view of their world. It's not a series with massive alien life forms; and the Colonials are deliberately made as much like 21st century humans from Earth as reasonably possible. They're very different types of series -- Galactica aims as an adult drama where Doctor Who is aimed for a family audience. But they're both series that have mainstream aspirations (in their home countries, at least) instead of just being for a cult audience.

Doctor Who has been more successful in obtaining a Brtish mainstream audience than Battlestar Galactica has in obtaining an American mainstream audience.

At the end of the day, the series is unquestionably working in the UK. So the nitpicks are a matter of personal taste, as it would be difficult to have the series be more successful in the UK. With something as rich and as deep as Doctor Who, everyone's tastes are a little different. One of the great things about the spin-off media was that they were extremely varied. And the new series is varied as well -- just with a different set of guidelines than we might have seen in audios or books or comics. And all of those media continue to have more voyages to other planets, where the canvas isn't limited to what can be done in a television studio or the Welsh countryside.