BBC America Success!

It's good to see that BBC America has had success with Waters of Mars.

And here are some clips from them in support of The End of Time which are coming the next two Saturdays on BBC America. I'm quite excited at this point!

The End of an Era

One thing that it just dawned on me is that this is the first time in a very long time that Doctor Who has had such a clear end of an era like the one that we're getting this New Years. And arguably, it is the most complete end-of-era ever where the show was still carrying on.

The Ninth Doctor to Tenth Doctor change wasn't really changing the era -- while when you look at the Christopher Eccleston year it's incredible to see how the production team has matured, it wasn't really a different era when David Tennant took over -- I look at it as the successful reestablishment of the series.

Doctors Six through Eight never really had that end-of-an-era element to it -- none of them can really be looked at as having successful complete runs.

While Caves of Androzani is one of the high water marks of the series -- and Doctor Who wouldn't be that good again until the 2005 revival -- it was really only the Doctor and companion that changed in that time. In fact, it could be argued that by not changing out the creative staff at this point, it was what led to the decline of the series.

I'm tempted to say that Logopolis was an end-of-an-era - and in many ways, if you look at Season 18 as a transition year, the series is radically different between the end of Season 17 and the start of Season 19. But it is difficult to say that Logopolis is as complete a change as we are going to be witnessing now with the show. After all, Logopolis was really the middle chapter of the three part reintroduction of the Master. I'm a big fan of Logopolis -- and you don't need to read any spoilers to feel comfortable in saying that it will be an influence on The End of Time.

The change between Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker is much more like this change is. Liz Sladen stays as Sarah Jane, but that is it. Barry Letts moves on and is replaced by Philip Hinchcliffe, and Terrance Dicks is replaced by Robert Homes.

The War Games shares some of this end-of-era feel; but it is really the rise of the Terrance Dicks era of Doctor Who -- the cast changes completely when Patrick Troughton and his companions depart; and the change to color is absolutely a major change. But it isn't until Doctor Who and the Silurians that Barry Letts is producer.

And while the change between the First and Second Doctors was the radical change that created a format that could last forever, the production staff didn't change at that time. One of the convincing parts of Lawrence Miles and Tat Wood's About Time 1 is that the story of the William Hartnell era is how the pieces of the Doctor Who concept really come together over that whole era; and in many ways, you don't get the definitive Doctor until Patrick Troughton takes over from William Hartnell.

One thing that I realized as I have been writing this all up is that the change of eras happen over a more extended period of time in the past -- a much more gradual change. That change happened over an extended time this time as well -- but there wasn't a full year of Doctor Who to see that change evolve on screen; instead we will see one series end and a completely new Doctor Who begin in 2010.

So it's going to be very exciting to see The End of Time -- and if stories like Logopolis, War Games, and Caves of Androzani can be taken as precedent, we should be in for some very good Doctor Who over the next two weeks.

Merry Christmas from Doctor Who and BBC

David Tennant in Review

Here we have a new clip from BBC America about David Tennant -- one thing that is especially clear after seeing something like this is how much Tennant has made this role his own over the last four years and has been quite an achievement. This might very well be the sort of ephemera that I would send back to the teenage David Tennant to see as a clip where it says that he'll be Doctor Who and Hamlet and work with Derek Jacobi would almost certainly be the sort of thing that would mess with young David McDonald

Inside the TARDIS

One of the things that I find interesting about this clip is that it's an introduction to the TARDIS for a "new" audience. One thing that the new series hasn't had a lot of is very good *specific* American marketing or materials in the past -- it has always been aired, but there hasn't been any solid attempt to expand the audience of the series besides the natural expansion that it would normally have.

More on BBC America's December Doctor Who Airing

I've heard a bit more about what BBC America plans to do when Waters of Mars and The End of Time air in the upcoming month or two.

Television’s longest-running science fiction series, shot in HD, has just three episodes to go before a new Doctor arrives on screen next year!

The next special, Doctor Who: The Waters of Mars airs on BBC AMERICA, Saturday December 19th at 9pm/8c. All will be revealed as the Doctor and his companion Adelaide face terror on the Red Planet in one of the scariest adventures yet. It stars David Tennant and British stage and screen actress Lindsay Duncan (Rome, Langford) as Adelaide, his cleverest and most strong-minded companion.

An extended inside-look and other bonus content will air immediately after Doctor Who: The Waters of Mars. Immediately preceding the special, BBC AMERICA will be airing Inside The Tardis (8/7c), a catch-up special on the series through the eyes of the Doctor’s companions.

Doctor Who: The End of Time, Part 1 and The End of Time, Part 2 will air on BBC AMERICA during the holiday season.

And here are some trailers:

Fantastic RTD and David Tennant Interview

If you haven't seen it already... good stuff.

Closing the Window

I'm impressed about how quick Torchwood:Children of Earth is showing up on iTunes. And considering that it is showing up the day after it airs on BBC America -- which is only a couple of weeks after it aired in the UK -- I hope that this trend continues with the rest of the David Tennant specials and the new Matt Smith episodes in 2010.

Speaking of Matt Smith, my favorite collection of pictures from the first public days of shooting are at blogtorwho. There is something magical about seeing the show renew itself yet again....

And I'm really interested to hear what comes out of San Diego Comic C0n this weekend; as this will probably be the biggest promotional appearance Doctor Who has ever had in the US.

The Writer's Tale

I picked up Doctor Who: The Writer's Tale over the weekend at Chicago TARDIS and I devoured it almost immediately. It's an incredibly detailed look at the creation of the fourth series of Doctor Who through a series of e-mails between Russell and Ben Cook.

There are a lot of things that you realize very quickly -- first of all, that yes, the complete set of departures and gap year have all been part of the plan for quite some time -- down to even Tennant's departure. It felt that way when you watched Series Four -- it felt like RTD had wrapped up almost everything that started all the way back in 'Rose', after all.

You also get a feeling for the insecurities of Russell T Davies -- and how it people that focus on how the "other" writers are better than Russell miss the point -- Russell rewrites almost everyone, and his fingerprints are all over the series as a whole. There's a notable piece where Russell feels sorry for himself for people not giving him any credit for his work on Human Nature, when he certainly helped on it. (Paul, in fact, has mentioned Russell's contributions.) That doesn't discredit that Human Nature is fundamentally Paul's story -- the novel, after all, is proof of that.

One of the best things is that part of Russell's strategy is clear -- there is certainly a risk that the new Doctor Who became so strongly associated with Russell, or the current cast, that when they inevitably leave, the show can continue -- but even that, it's part of the set up that the show may go away for a year or two -- but then will come back. Doctor Who becomes something that comes back; so we'll have Doctor Who now, and there will be Doctor Who for the fiftieth anniversary, and it will come back and regenerate itself again, and again.

And one part of the Writer's Tale is that it's part of one very strong strand of Doctor Who history. One of the reasons why Doctor Who was successfully revived is that people like Russell T Davies, David Tennant, and Steven Moffat learned about how televison was made by reading old Doctor Who magazines or books like 'The Making of Doctor Who'. This book will be read by people who will write for Doctor Who twenty years from now. They'll write other things as well -- just like RTD and Moffat have written wonderful things like Bob & Rose and Coupling -- but future writers will also continue to contribute to their favorite television show; the reason why they got into the business to begin with.

I can't recommend the book enough. It is a fascinating insight into this era of Doctor Who, and the writing process of Russell T Davies. It's accompanied by some wonderful sketches -- I'd love read a full Russell T Davies Doctor Who comic strip as well.

Thank You David Tennant

It's a year before we see his last story as the Doctor, but he is moving on at the end of 2009. I'd expected one more year, to be honest, but it'll be nice to see a reinvigorated series from scratch in 2010 as well.

Because that's how the series works...

It's even more the Doctor Who channel than I thought...

The episode of Graham Norton tonight that airs after the first episode of Torchwood on BBC America is an episode with David Tennant.

The airing of The Christmas Invasion tonight was hacked to bits though, to fit into an hour time slot with commercials. I mean, even The Song For Ten sequence was cut -- though at the same time, it's all easily enough obtainable in a complete form on DVD.

Doctor Who Tube

The BBC has worked out a deal to put some video clips on YouTube, and that includes David Tennant's Dr Who Video Diary 1 and Freema Agyerman in the other.

And thankfully, this is something that's not UK only, so the quality is much better than we're used to seeing on video posted on the BBC site...

SCI FI Weekly Interviews David Tennant

I haven't seen a lot of interviews of David Tennant from the American side, so this SCI FI Weekly Interview is interesting from that point of view. It's pumping up the next series of Doctor Who, which is scheduled to start in the UK at the end of the month and on Sci Fi in June.