Okay, after careful thought and examination of your signature... I think I understand now. This Christopher dude is playing Dr. Who in a new version of the show?
Congrats!
I wondered how T-M would feel about this.
Now I know.
I've been reading Douglas Adams' biography recently, in the course of which it appears that the only reason there are no books of Adams' Dr Who stories is that the BBC weren't willing to increase their standard £600 fee, so it's a bit of a surprise that they've got a quality actor with solid film experience to do this.
Mind you, reading T-M's sig, I'd be worried - wouldn't the makers of those shows make Dr Who too comedic (and with a Romana-esque male assistant...)?
The BBC didn't publish the "Doctor Who" novelisations, PG. That contract was owned by a company called Target Books, a division of WH Allen.
Besides, he did novelise two of his stories, he just changed the title to "Dirk Gentley's Holistic Detective Agency".
:-)
Dirk Gently includes cannibalized elements of the Who stories, at best.
You're right abour Target, although the point I was trying to make about Dr Who previously being made on the cheap would have stood up with a better example.
Yes I know, and to be fair he probably considered "Shada" fair game as an unfinished show.
Well yes, it was never the most expensive of shows originally, but when it was originally on it didn't seem to matter a great deal to anybody. Nowadays, however, you can't get away with so much on television so it stands to reason they'd put more money in. They also want to make this re-launch a flagship show to anchor their new-look Saturday night line-up.
I couldn't wait before, goodness knows how I'm going to cope now...
I too have a talking Dalek. My brother gave it to me for Christmas a couple of years ago... However, attempting to ascertain his/her/its verdict on Eccleston's casting solicits only a reply of "Seek-Locate-Ahnialate".
Great, for a while it looked like we were going to have Eddie Izzard ! the problem I have with this is, can is really work in 2004? part of its charm was the wobbly sets and silly costums, but in 2004 they will do cheap cgi and slightly better costums, so it could well look really naff, when compared to the quality of the stuff we are all used to from Star Wars and LOTR etc.
Fingers crossed.
It won't work in 2004, because it's not on until 2005! ;-)
But on a more serious note, the idea that anyone watched "Doctor Who" *because* of its cheapness and home-baked quality is rubbish. In my experience anyway. People watched it *in spite* of these things, because it was fun, exciting, interesting and occassionally scary for the young'uns.
Well agreed, I wasn't suggesting that's why they watched it, but I was saying it was part of the charm and one of the reasons we look back on it with fondness.
IMO the 2005 (date corrected) version will have a lot to compete with that didn't excist in the 70's & 80's, lets face it on TV it only had the likes of Blakes Seven to worry about, come to think of it that probably came later, now we all get 200 channels with high quality films every night.
I hope it works, but I wonder on the wisdom of bringing it back, it has a lot to live up to.
There is an idea in "Who" circles that "Star Wars" killed "Doctor Who". Not only is this chronologically questionable (DW was still being made for 12 years after "Star Wars" came out - few shows even last 12 years) but people had *always* had shows and films around with better effects.
From the 1960s, all of the glossy ITC shows had production values that blew "Who" out of the water, and in the cinema you had the likes of "2001: A Space Odyssey" and so forth.
Nobody seemed to think these would kill "Who" off, and they didn't. It exists in a very different world to those, and only suffered from comparison in the 1980s when Producer John Nathan-Turner made a conscious effort to try and compete. Occassionally he managed it (the stunning opening to 1986's "The Trial of a Time Lord" being a case in point) but more often than not it left the show looking more exposed than it ever had done before.
Nowadays, with the rise of computer technology and just changing market forces, it's much easier to do better special effects far more cheaply. Add to that the fact that new "Who" will be either shot on film or a high-quality progressive video format. (One of the original show's weaknesses was always its BBC standard video shooting. Can you imagine anyone in America, or even the likes of the UK's ITC and its fellow companies, trying to shoot a sci-fi show on video rather than film? And yes, for pedants, I am aware that ITC made "Sapphire & Steel" on video.)
Best of all we have one of Britain's greatest contemporary television dramatists overseeing the project, one of the finest English actors of his generation starring and firm backing from the BBC across to board to give the show the backing and the publicity of a flagship programme.
If this doesn't succeed, then nobody will be able to blame the BBC. They're giving it their very best shot and getting the best people to work on it.