Is Joss Whedon's 'Ripper' still being made?

Not really. Technically, all of Buffy's "demons" could just as easily be termed "aliens from another dimension," and its conception of magic could just be written off as being the same kind of advanced science used by the Carrionites in Doctor Who's "The Shakespeare Code."

The REAL problem comes from Doctor Who's assertion that it is virtually impossible to travel between dimensions now that the Time Lords are extinct, since interdimensional travel is so much more common in the Buffyverse and doesn't necessarily lead to universal calamity like Doctor Who claims it will if it happens too often. That's not impossible to overcome, of course...

 

Re: Torchwood and Angel.

The parallels are definitely there, but I don't think that the big problem with TW S1 was that it was trying too much to be AtS or that it was taking itself too seriously. The real problem is that it would consistently undercut its own aspiration to do "Doctor Who for adults" by doing stuff that was incredibly sophomoric.

Take, for instance, the episode "Cyberwoman." That episode could have been frickin' brilliant, taking the somewhat cheesey DW villains and rendering them in a way that's very real, very visceral, very gorey, very scary, very adult. Instead, what do they do? They put the actress playing the half-Cyberfied woman into a fetish outfit with high heels... and all for no particular reason. It completely undercut the dramatic integrity of the entire episode.

Torchwood's premises in S1 were usually wonderful, but the execution was always off. Take Jack, for instance; I absolutely love the idea that for Jack, the character of the Doctor -- this sort of national icon of childhood, a la Superman in the US -- has become this unattainable aspiration that he's waiting to find again to make his life all better. The Doctor has become the absent god that he's longing for. "What are you looking for, Jack?" "The right kind of Doctor." And yet, the series never develops this notion, this very dark and adult approach to an icon of British childhood that children themselves could never understand, and when the Doctor returns to Jack's life, it all gets resolved far too quickly.

 

I remeber reading a few year back on Ceffax that BBC was going to produce this thing. I'd love to see it. I'm not a fan of Buffy but I like the character of Giles and Anthony Stewart Head is a cool actor. Loved him on Doctor Who.

 

I see that Head is also playing Uther Pendragon in the BBC's new "Merlin" tv series.

 

"Oh, 'dimensions' is such a nonspecific term.....these are different. You can't travel between dimensions on the reality axis, but the metaphysical axis? No problem!"

(How else does the Doctor's cameo in my Firefly mod for EVN make any sense? Well, it doesn't, but it's fun. That seems to be a good enough justification for anything else the Doctor does....)