Canadians Miss Out On Doctor Who Season Finale 303
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."
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).
lolwat? (Score:5, Funny)
Do you also need to buy CliffsNotes for Teletubbies?
Re:BitTorrent (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:Spoiler alert! (Score:1, Funny)
A screw it... cover your eyes, Canadians...
John Pertwee transmogrifies into Tom Baker! Don't worry, you'll become familiar enough with Tom in 20 years when you eventually see a show called Little Britain.
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*."
Re:Spoiler alert! (Score:2, Funny)
and failed; pretty pathetic for an advanced race
Actually, since they assimilate species that lost to them, they are an aggregate of failures.
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.
mised 20 minutes, eh? (Score:1, Funny)
Re:BitTorrent (Score:3, Funny)
Re:CBC on strike... (Score:3, Funny)
...and nobody noticed.
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.
Re:A new companion? (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:BitTorrent (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:A new companion? (Score:2, Funny)
I have to say, the most notable example of this appears to be David Caruso on CSI Miami. He is the only person I have ever seen that ALWAYS stands in profile, no matter what is going on. Lying down after being shot, sitting in court, bending over collecting evidence, and especially standing and talking with anybody, he is ALWAYS in profile (body at an angle to the camera, head turned to face camera).
Ignoring the fantastic, yet completely inappropriate technology they display on the show (hello, picking out fine details of a photograph, while it is displayed on a transparent screen with people talking behind it? And the picture itself displayed with some transparency as well), it's the most bizarre part of the whole show. He never stands up and faces anyone. Both discussing something with a co-worker and when getting in some baddies face, he's always at a stupid angle with his head turned to one side. This is what happens when an actor gets too big for his position (from the NYPD show, he got too big for TV, but couldn't make it on the big screen, so he went back to TV and they signed him to a contract that gave him way too much influence on the show).