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Canadians Miss Out On Doctor Who Season Finale
Posted by
timothy
on Sun Dec 14, 2008 03:23 PM
from the splicing-time-never-had-such-immediacy dept.
from the splicing-time-never-had-such-immediacy dept.
darthcamaro writes "Canadians were among the last people in the world to get the season 4 finale of Doctor Who which already aired in the UK and Australia. The Canadian public broadcaster — CBC — decided to cut out nearly 20 minutes from the episode, leaving fans wondering what was going on. Doctor Who isn't the easiest show to follow at the best of times — but Canadians are now up in arms (or at least hockey sticks) over their taxpayer-funded broadcaster's lack of respect for SciFi hosers."
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A new companion? (Score:2, Flamebait)
I thought the Doctor's companion was an attractive black woman, but instead I see a redhead pictured in the article. Boy I've really fallen behind. What season is USA's Sci Fi Channel currently airing? 3?
Re:A new companion? (Score:5, Informative)
Martha Jones was The Doctor's companion in the third season, and the redhead is his fourth season companion, yes.
Parent
Re:A new companion? (Score:5, Insightful)
The turnover is only "much faster" because A.) you're older; and B.) the seasons are shorter and the stories aren't episodic serials anymore.
David Tennant has already played the Doctor for three seasons. That's as long as William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton, or Peter Davidson, and longer than Colin Baker or Sylvester McCoy. Historically most of the Doctor's companions have only lasted one season, and the current show has actually made them all into recurring characters, so you can't exactly call it "turnover."
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I only mentioned Tennant's term coming to an end because he's so terrific; even only seeing most of his first season, he's one of my favorites, and - in that limited sense - his departure is too soon.
I agree. I wouldn't mind seeing Tennant rival Tom Baker's seven seasons.
Eccleston's one + Tennant's four(ish) seasons are still below average.
4 seasons is perfectly average for a Doctor. Ecclestone's one season was a disgrace, though. (In longevity, that it. He was a perfectly good Doctor.)
Re: (Score:2)
Apparently Season 3, the black woman left at the end of it. The redhead is Donna, who is there all through S4 (with some cameos from the others, naturally).
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:A new companion? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I downloaded the rest of the season after a time glitch cut out the end of "Doctor's Daughter".
Luckily for my mom, she was over last Friday to babysit, so she got to watch the whole episode. (The power was out at her place, too, so it was doubly lucky.)
I can download the shows and then watch them on my regular TV, which is very nice. I've got a $20,000 DVR - at least according to Bill C-61.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
And they wonder why TV shows are so popular on Torrent sites..
You put people in the backseat not give them what they want and then wonder why they circumvent your revenue stream..
Re:A new companion? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'll admit that I wasn't very pleased with the decision to have 'the bride' return as a regular companion for the Doctor, precisely because she was portrayed by Catherine Tate. The only thing I found remotely humorous on the Catherine Tate Show was Lauren ("am I bovvered"); the rest was just unfunny (IMHO).
I stuck with it though. As the series progressed I got over the things that annoyed me (I think they toned her down a little as time went on too, which helped) and ultimately I think I'll miss her a little now that she had to have her memory wiped and leave the Doctor's side.
I'm with the other posters who mentioned this too: I think the rate at which Doctor Who is going through companions lately is too rapid and they're not really fully coming into their own.
I'm also going to miss Bernard "Diggin' a 'ole'" Cribbins, for entirely different reasons :)
As for TFA, that's quite appalling. Cutting 20 minutes nigh on halves the length of the episode. Tsk, tsk, CBC, and tsk again. It's little wonder people are downloading shows, it's possibly now the only way they can be sure it hasn't been ridiculously cut down to size.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
The only thing I found remotely humorous on the Catherine Tate Show was Lauren ("am I bovvered"); the rest was just unfunny (IMHO).
Have you seen this bit [youtube.com] from one of the Comic Relief specials?
Re:A new companion? (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually Catherine Tate is a rather talented character actress who has her own comedy show. I don't think she is especially like her character in Doctor Who, at least not in the interviews that I've seen.
TV is a horrible method of judging someones character. If I want to know what someone is really like I talk to their Black Jack dealer.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
So, you know her in real life then?
I thought not. Look at her other work (I somehow doubt you've seen any of it) and you'll see just how wide her range is. "Donna Noble" is not Catherine Tate.
For some reason she is now slated to be a more permanent companion for the fourth year of the New Series.
Obviously you're not much of a fan if this is news to you. She's not eyecandy like Billie Piper(Rose) or Freema Ag
Re:A new companion? (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
BitTorrent (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:BitTorrent (Score:5, Interesting)
The wife and I watched it months ago. The Internet is my TV station.
As you mention BitTorrent, I'm assuming there were no commercials in the version you received. Since you're paying a "tax" on things like blank media anyway, I'm surprised more Canadians don't do this.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
The internet is also my TV station.
Signed, another Canadian who has to bypass the CBC to watch shows shown on CBC.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I don't even have cable...
--another Canadian
Hulu [hulu.com] + Bittorrent [thepiratebay.org] + TVersity [tversity.com] + XBox 360 MCE [microsoft.com] = Call me when a la carte cable service hits the streets.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Hulu.com = USA-only.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I am fairly sure this will not work, because it uses Flash to detect your native IP address and then effectively denies your connection. BBC iPlayer and, even more on-topic, the CBC copy of the Doctor Who show do not work whatever proxy server you use even if you know for a fact it's hosted in said "legal" country.
Configure your firewall to transparently proxy, Flash won't have any idea what your real IP address is.
You're on Slashdot and your UID is under 100,000... you REALLY should know these things.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:BitTorrent (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, Doctor Who is produced in conjunction with another organisation. Amusingly enough, that organisation is the CBC. So Canadian taxpayers (who actually FUND the program) are more than entitled to download it, I reckon.
Parent
Spoiler alert! (Score:5, Funny)
Doctor Who thwarts the Dalek invasion of Earth. Earth is not destroyed. None of the main characters die.
Re:Spoiler alert! (Score:5, Funny)
Didn't I see that episode back in 1967?
Or maybe I'm thinking of 1973.
Or was it 1986?
Ahhh..... it's so hard to keep track of all these Dalek episodes. Almost as difficult as keeping track of how many times the Borg attacked a Federation vessel (and failed; pretty pathetic for an advanced race).
Parent
Re:Spoiler alert! (Score:5, Interesting)
Because - oh god, this will cost me karma! - Star Trek autors are pretty pathetic themselves. (The best example is that nearly all extraterrestrial life [not just "humanoids"] is like earth, just extremely different where you can't look at.)
If they had invaded and won, the authors would have been unable to come up with a continuation. In Star Trek, everything has to be OK at the end of a show. Only Movies are allowed to change fundamental things. They would be forced to end the show.
If there were more creative authors around, an won invasion by the Borg would be the greatest opportunity of all!
Think of that invasion happening in a movie.... and the movie ending with the borg winning and dominating the whole federation. People would have thought: "What the fuck? Why did it not have a happy ending?" But they would never forget it!
The following TV show would have a continuous storyline. Starting with everybody - and I mean everybody - being Borg!
Then the magic would happen: Somehow, a child of a Human and one of the other major Species, would be able to resist in it's innermost Soul. Like i tiny flame in a storm, struggling to survive. You would experience this feeling with that child.
No cheap tricks about a special race, a data disguising as a Borg, or some crap. No. Just the plain spirit of Humanity and the Federation... ...fighting, and growing... ...spreading to other humans on earth too... ...until the resistance would be so big, ...that the whole Borg collective would be assimilated by it!
Assimilated by the spirit of individuality and freedom of the mind. By what we think is right an wrong.
And the Borg would not know how to handle such a very strange weapon / enemy within. They would traverse all kinds of strange changes in their society, to cope with it, making the Borg something far from what they originally were. All their technology would be useless.
The Borg would be assimilated themselves. It would be a very very hard war on so many and so strange fronts as the mind itself.
Until just a small group of some thousand Borg would be caught... the last resistance against the new resurrected Federation. (Everything would still be very temporary, unstable in the background territory, and semi-Borg, using Borg technology.)
But the surviving Borg were changed so much, that they were no enemy anymore, but a helpless race, struggling to survive... with right so survive on its own.
So the Federation would let their old enemies live, and make a historic agreement with them, adding them *to* the federation, as the first advanced - and now good - race.
This would also make for some very interesting inner conflicts in the later federation! (27th-31th century?)
As a last plus, the Federation, together with Borg technology, and the new born power of the inner spirit (explained as some electromagnetic power of the brain),
would make humanity a new advanced race themselves.
And just as with the first warp flight, this would call for some other advanced - elder - races, who would ask them for contact, allowing inter-galaxy flights and contacting a ton of non-humanoid species (which is possible, now that CGI is good enough).
Oh: If anyone important reads this and wants to contact me, to work on a realization: Bring some money with you! I have much, much more ideas! :)
Parent
Re:Spoiler alert! (Score:4, Insightful)
'We can win, we have the power of SOUL!'
Seriously, your Star Trek idea totally sucks. And the borg would probably be even more dangerous to the federation when they adopted humanity's standards for what is right and what is wrong.
In a way, the Borg have dealt with this crap already, if memory serves, there was this unimatrix zero thing in the voyager series. The borg queen found a way to detect the borg that were affected by it, and blew up their ships. Along with millions of unaffected borg, but she figured it was more important to be perfect.
What's the fun of karma when you never lose it once you get to excellent?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
No. You misunderstood me. I think the whole concept of the existence of a "soul" is horsecrap, just like religion.
My idea was more like: We have something special. A will/power to survive, that outweighs even the Borg assimilation nanites.
Of course, in reality, such a thing does not exist too. But it can be explained on a basis of physics in the movie.
The whole experience of seeing that struggle of humanity to survive, when it's as close to dead as it possibly could be... is the point of it. The rest only e
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"My idea was more like: We have something special. A will/power to survive, that outweighs even the Borg assimilation nanites."
Welcome to Star Trek, you must be new here.
This is essentially the idea of Star Trek. Humans somehow have something special in them so they can do what other races cannot.
Humans have:
-Cured the phage(thought incurable)
-Make piece between Vulcan and Andoria(thought impossible)
-Prevent civil war on Vulcan
-Travelled to the center of the universe(I, NEED, MY, PAIN!)
-Beat the borg on mul
Re:Spoiler alert! (Score:5, Insightful)
Then the magic would happen: Somehow, a child of a Human and one of the other major Species, would be able to resist in it's innermost Soul. Like i tiny flame in a storm, struggling to survive. You would experience this feeling with that child.
It was all going well, then you had to ruin it with this cheesey shit. Yes, humans are so advanced, that not even the borg can hold down our amazing spirit. Fuck this shit, really.
You want good sci-fi, you don't watch Star Trek.
Parent
lolwat? (Score:5, Funny)
Do you also need to buy CliffsNotes for Teletubbies?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
That's why your not making sense of it.
You've got to love the idiots who run TV stations. (Score:5, Informative)
You've got to love the idiots who run TV stations. Why? Because they're simply perfect idiots. Cutting 20 minutes from an episode? Such amazing idiocy.
Reminds me of a couple of years ago when I set my VCR to tape the weekly episode of 24. Yes I said VCR. Now get off my lawn.
There was a football game before 24. No problem right? Game will be over. I'll still be able to get all of 24 taped and watch it when I get home.
I get home. VCR is going. Great. I'll just let it finish taping 24 and then sit down and watch it from the beginning. No problem.
Problem. The football game was over before 24 was set to air. But someone decided that it was imperative to air commentary and discussion of the football game that was just played and this ran 15 minutes or so into 24. Was there really a need for this? I mean, come on, you just watched the fucking game so you know what happened.
Did they decide to delay 24 so people could see all of it? Nope. Just cut right on into 24 minus the first portions that they'd blotted out with football commentary.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Here's why. [wikipedia.org]
Be honest, what would you want to face as your adversary as a program planner? An angry mob of beer filled football fans or a bunch of geeks? I mean, let's be reasonable. One group will show up at your doorstep and crush a beer can on your head, the other one might write you an angry email. IN RED.
The Internet is my DVR. (Score:3, Informative)
For the truly lazy, this article [cnet.com] describes how to use Miro, the open source media player and download app [getmiro.com] to find and download TV series from the Internet via BitTorrent.
Be aware, in the article one VITAL step in the set up process is left out, but IS covered in the comments.
Set it up and let it run in the background. No more compulsively checking trackers, Miro does it all for you.
18 minutes out of . . . ? (Score:4, Funny)
Hmmm ... was this a 12+ hour "War and Peace," watch-until-you-drop mini-series episode? Or a normal 2 hour special, or what? 18 minutes sounds like an awfully lot of footage.
I know that one of the "C's" in CBC stands for Canadian, but it sounds like the other one stands for circumcision: "Hell, you can cut 18 minutes off the top of *anything*."
Plot/Series Branching (Score:5, Interesting)
Doctor Who really seems to make the most sense if you watch it in the UK in sequence with its spin-offs such as Torchwood or the Sarah Jane Adventures, because in the Season 4 finale there are tie-ins to the spin-offs as well as some earlier episodes in the season that refer to story lines happening on the spin-offs. In other words, watching Doctor Who in America on the 1 season delay sans spin-offs leads to confusion because you don't know what's going on.
I applaud the BBC folks for thinking so creatively about spin-offs playing off against Doctor Who, and vice-versa, but it falls apart against the reality of the region-segregation that they still like to practice.
It's a pity, because many BBC shows are more cutting-edge than Hollywood fare these days and they would play really well here as-is. Except, Hollywood likes to re-produce and re-package them as watered-down, lamer versions. A couple examples are "Coupling," a Friends-like show written by Steven Moffat that was hilarious, that Hollywood tried to Americanize and which was done so poorly that it was DOA; "Top Gear," which is an entertaining auto program and which would do just great here, but which Hollywood has again felt the need to destroy by Americanizing it. "The Office" and "What Not to Wear" are two other examples.
Accordingly, maybe Bit Torrent is the only real way to go in the end.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"The Office" and "What Not to Wear" are two other examples.
The Office? WTF? It's on par with the British version. In some ways it exceeds it, because it has managed to sustain itself with many more episodes, while the British version was a very short run - it's much easier to reach heights when you can pack it all into a short series.
The US version of The Office is also great because it doesn't just mimic the British show - it is well translated to the American paradigm. America has its own unique business culture, which The Office reflects very well.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Utterly and profoundly terrible as well as completely unfunny come to mind as a equally valid descriptions of the US version
On what basis? If you don't find the US Office funny, then I doubt you have much of a sense of humor.
Even worse (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Even worse (Score:5, Informative)
It is indeed (partially) Canadian taxpayer funded.
Parent
Unwatchable? (Score:5, Funny)
I watched the CBC broadcast version and didn't notice anything odd. It was fast-paced toward the end, but then a lot of them are like that. Am watching the full-length version on their site now to see what difference I can see.
Maybe the CBC could get the same editor to cut the Pirates of the Caribbean movies down to a reasonable length. That would be sweet.
So that's what happened... (Score:3, Insightful)
Changing the topic a bit, I find the new Dr. Who series to be overly sentimental, even maudlin. I prefer good ol' space opera without all the tears. Give me "Annihilate them!" over "I'll miss you, Doctor." any day.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I it too!
However, I think it is perhaps over-wrought in general. any 'positive' feelings equally overblown. The Doctor (and companion) seem to transition from maudlin to flippant within a fraction of a second.
For lack of a better term springing to mind the show seems bi-polar. Week in week out I find that a bit tiring to watch.
I wouldn't mind the next incarnation of The Doctor being a bit more enigmatic, I don't think we nee
All Depends What You are On (Score:5, Funny)
My sister had broken her arm. It was so bad, they put some sort of metal bar through her arm to hold her arm in a single position. Because of the pain, she was on some powerful medication. To put it mildly, she was not her normal self. Many hippies have spent decades attempting the mental state those drugs put my sister in.
She was watching TV late one night and called me up and told me about this great science fiction show. It was witty, the writing was wonderful. She laughed, She cried. She was on the edge of her seat. But she couldn't remember the name. She remembered that there was a doctor or surgeon on it and they were in a phone booth...
Dr. Who?, I suggested.
That's it!
Dr. Who? I replied again. Are you sure it was Dr. Who?
Yes, she told me, it was wonderful.
The next week, she saw the show again. This time, not enwrapped in her druggy little fog. She called me up the next day and told me she changed her mind about the show.
I've watched the show many times since then, and as far as I am concerned, being sober doesn't help improve the coherence of the plot. Frankly, I would find it hard to tell if our local station cut out vital scenes which hurt the clarity of the overall plot.
Camp as a row of tents (Score:5, Insightful)
Take off eh (Score:2)
And hand me another Elisnore!
Re:CBC on strike... (Score:3, Funny)
...and nobody noticed.
Errr stupid... (Score:3, Interesting)
You do know who makes Dr Who don't you? Its the BBC which is pretty much quasi-government (its independent in terms of editorial control but its budget gets set by the government).
So your argument that a government controlled entity can't possibly show decent quality TV produced by another government controlled entity really doesn't make sense. The BBC is probably the finest global broadcaster in terms of overall content, originality and political coverage. HBO will have a shot from a quality perspective