2013 Transmission / Shooting Details

Discussion in 'Doctor Who' started by StCoop, Dec 12, 2012.

  1. MacLeod

    MacLeod Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Mar 8, 2001
    Location:
    Great Britain
    Perhaps from 2013 we'll still have 14 episodes a year. Just split between Spring and Autumn. But in order to do one year with only 6 episodes airing.
     
  2. Andrew_Kearley

    Andrew_Kearley Captain Captain

    Joined:
    Jan 13, 2007
    Location:
    Moonbase Alpha
    Why not? My experience means I've long since passed the point of expecting anything from the tv companies.

    Anyway, the point is, I'm not aggrieved by the recent scheduling decisions. Doctor Who is my favourite tv show, but I don't need it to be shown to me at any regular times. There's plenty of other things to do in the meantime. Whatever PR bullshit mind games Moffat likes to play, well that's not affecting me - I don't take it as a personal affront. I don't care. I'm happy when the programme comes back on, but there's loads more Doctor Who to occupy me the rest of the time.
     
  3. Brendan Moody

    Brendan Moody Vice Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Apr 26, 2003
    Location:
    Maine
    An old man sits on his porch rocker at dusk, smoking a pipe or doing something equally picturesque. His grandson sits on the porch floor beside him.

    "Quite a storm we had last night," the old man says.

    "Yep," his grandson replies. "Not out of the ordinary for December, though. More or less what you'd expect."

    "Well, as to that, when you've been watching the weather as long as I have, you don't come to expect anything. Storms come back when they come back. Why, once it snowed like that in April."

    The young man hesitates. "Did it, grandfather? That must have been quite a time. But still, you know, it doesn't usually snow in April, and it usually does in December. And they say storms come for a reason. The, um, weather experts, and all."

    "Weather experts!" The old man snorts. "Thinking there's all these patterns to it, and they still get things wrong half the time! Don't you listen to them, my lad. Don't you bother!"

    "But," the young buy continues after another pause, well aware that he's out of his depth when it comes to meteorology, "even when they get things wrong, can't they usually explain why? What changed unexpectedly, or what improbable thing happened that made their forecast go wrong? I mean, isn't there still a logic to it? And isn't the weather usually one way in one month and another way in another? Even if strange things happen sometimes?"

    The old man smiles indulgently. "You'll see what I mean when you're older, my boy. My experience means I've long since passed the point of expecting anything from the weather."

    Has anyone in this thread claimed to be aggrieved, to be taking anything as a personal affront, or to need Doctor Who shown to them at regular times? It's possible to be sarcastically dismissive of PR bullshit mind games without feeling any of those things. I'm sure there are people out there in the dark corners of the Internet who do feel those things, and that's a little sad, but what's it got to do with the present discussion?
     
  4. Andrew_Kearley

    Andrew_Kearley Captain Captain

    Joined:
    Jan 13, 2007
    Location:
    Moonbase Alpha
  5. Candlelight

    Candlelight Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Apr 12, 2000
    Location:
    New Zealand
    That's very disappointing. I knew the split season would be wrong. Is it Moffat pushing this or the BBC?
     
  6. The Wormhole

    The Wormhole Fleet Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Jul 23, 2001
    Location:
    The Wormhole

    I'm fairly certain the split season was Moffat's choice. I can't see BBC madating that such a short season be split up.

    Besides, split seasons are more an American thing, and even then there's been debate for years as to whether it actually helps a show or hurts it. Splitting a season seems more like part of Moffat's agenda to make Doctor Who more appealing to Americans.

    Of course, my main problem is that Doctor Who has had practically no presence at all in 2012. Five episodes, plus an upcoming Christmas special, three new novels, one of which was a novelization of an unaired script from 1979. A graphic novel which has actually been sitting on the back burner since Tennant's run and had to be updated to feature Smith instead of Tennant. Character Options was forced to create something new in order to have Doctor Who toys for Christmas. If it weren't for the steady stream of new DVDs from the classic era, you could say there was practically nothing from Doctor Who this year.
     
  7. The Nth Doctor

    The Nth Doctor Infinite Possibilities... Premium Member

    Joined:
    Jul 20, 2000
    Location:
    Lost in a temporal and spatial anomaly
    Except the giant ton of Big Finish audio plays.
     
  8. The Wormhole

    The Wormhole Fleet Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Jul 23, 2001
    Location:
    The Wormhole
    True, which of course those have been in regular production even before the 2005 revival.

    I guess my point is there has been practically jack shit done with the incumbent Doctor this year. Hell, of the three new novels I mentioned, only one was about the Eleventh Doctor.
     
  9. ATimson

    ATimson Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

    Joined:
    Jan 3, 2003
    Location:
    Andrew Timson
    We split seasons that are twice the size, simply because we don't allow for as much lead time before airing the first episode of the season as the BBC does. The split is causing BBC America headaches (and money for ads to get the viewers back come spring); it's not making anything more appealing...
     
  10. Allyn Gibson

    Allyn Gibson Vice Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Oct 16, 2000
    Location:
    South Pennsyltucky
    The BBC in general is causing BBC America headaches. :)

    The BBC's inability to decide when "Asylum of the Daleks" was going to air made it almost impossible for BBC America to promote the season before it launched -- they couldn't produce posters, ads, commercials, etc., that had a specific date.

    Specifically on the split seasons, BBC America doesn't have the budget for promoting both halves.

    Also, on split seasons on American television in general...

    We had a discussion at work about split seasons, and we were trying to figure out who to blame. (My coworkers were upset at the midseason break for The Walking Dead.) The thing is, no one's to blame. American television has always had split seasons, it's just that we never advertised them as such. Shows usually take a breather in the schedules during November and December. The networks use that as a time to put specials and other events on the schedule, while the programs can catch up productive-wise and build up another bank of episodes. It was always an informal thing, but shows like Battlestar formalized the broadcast break into a narrative break.
     
  11. Cutter John

    Cutter John Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

    With all the horror stories I've seen about the BBC's budget, maybe we should be happy the shows even still on.
     
  12. Starkers

    Starkers Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Apr 22, 2001
    Location:
    Behind Enemy Lines
    :techman:
     
  13. The Wormhole

    The Wormhole Fleet Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Jul 23, 2001
    Location:
    The Wormhole
    In the past, a show traditionally began in September, continued airing new episodes until the end of November, then took a break for December. After that, you could be guaranteed of new episodes in February, but otherwise the remainig episodes of the seasons would be stretched out so that the season could last until May.

    These days the episodes are clumped together, which usually means splitting the season in two halves. With some shows like Lost and 24 it was felt that a mid-season split actually hurt them, and they actually did air all episodes consecutively, with a season starting in January and ending in May.

    Maybe I'm ignorant here, but it does feel like BSG and the Stargates were the pioneers of the mid-season split with having mid-season cliffhangers. Hell, I'm fairly certain BSG started the tradition of releasing half-seasons on DVD.
     
  14. Sindatur

    Sindatur The Gray Owl Wizard Admiral

    Joined:
    Jan 2, 2011
    Location:
    Sacramento, CA
    I'm pretty sure Farscape did the Half Season splits before NuBSG was a twinkle in Moore's eye. In fact, when they promised to renew Farscape for S4 and S5 at the same time, they tried claiming that S4 part 2 was S5 to avoid looking as if they had backed out of the renewal for S5.
     
  15. captcalhoun

    captcalhoun Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Apr 29, 2005
    Location:
    everywhere
    i miss the old days when the Beeb would wait for three years and then show all three years of an American show in one block, week in, week out. by the end of which, they'd probably have years four to seven to carry on with.
     
  16. The Wormhole

    The Wormhole Fleet Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Jul 23, 2001
    Location:
    The Wormhole
    That wouldn't be practical these days due to the readily available alternate methods people would turn to.
     
  17. diankra

    diankra Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

    Joined:
    Jun 22, 2005
    Location:
    UK
    It wasn't even practical back then, such as when the BBC turned down Next Generation ("I've seen it, it's awful," said BBC1 Controller Jonathan Powell. Actually, he'd watched the first 15 mins of Encounter at Farpoint, according to Private Eye), and then picked it the terrestrial rights after Sky had been running it for three years. Aside from the Sky showing, there'd been rental video releases of the whole of season one (bar two episodes... wonder if you can guess?) and sales of dual standard VHS players got a very noticeable boost around that time... :-)
     
  18. Candlelight

    Candlelight Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Apr 12, 2000
    Location:
    New Zealand
    The main problem with season breaks is not that they're there, but if they have enough episodes to cover it. Shows like TNG which had a solid 26 episodes to play with, they could split the show and you'd still have ~13 episodes before Christmas.

    But shows these days like Game of Thrones or True Blood only have 12 episodes, so it makes sense not to split them - and they don't.

    With Doctor Who having 14 episodes a year there really is no point splitting them (especially as the Xmas special is already separated from the group anyway).
     
  19. Candlelight

    Candlelight Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Apr 12, 2000
    Location:
    New Zealand
    Yeah, we got Babylon 5 delayed by a season and a half, which effectively gave us seasons 1-3 back to back without breaks, an unbroken 68 weeks of the show (The Gathering was split into 2x 1 hour episodes at the start). Really helped me get into the story arc.
     
  20. Lonemagpie

    Lonemagpie Writer Admiral

    Joined:
    Jan 31, 2007
    Location:
    Yorkshire
    ...in a totally random order...