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Bad news for 2012

And as we all know, the route to business success is completely ignoring the wishes and opinions of everyone below you in the totem pole!

Now, Now, it's not phrased as ignoring. It's more akin to

"After listening to our colleagues and target market, we have decided to proceed as originally planned"
 
^That's more like it. ;)

A production source on the Doctor Who Forum (apparently a reliable one, though I'm out of touch as to who is and isn't) said this about the schedule:
My understanding is the Xmas special will prep in aug and shoot in sept.
From there, as husked [another member] has mentioned there's the sizable task of moving studios between oct and December. For the start in Jan.
In Feb series 12 starts shooting in earnest and the who experience moves to it's new home.
Who will shoot till oct/ nov.
Broadcast of the first 6 or 7 is from sept 2012 and a Xmas special.
My understanding Is that the split is treated contractually as separate series and therefore easier to budget per quarter.
The rest of series 7 b will broadcast from march 2013.
Whatever plans for shooting series 8 I'll marker as Feb 2013.
This could mean the series from here will run sept to Xmas then march to may.
For whatever it's worth. If that's accurate, I don't think they could be planning a 13 episode series 8 for autumn 2013; there wouldn't quite be enough time to film it. 10 or so episodes for that time frame, though, would technically make an "extended run" (16ish total eps in 2013).
 
He only does a handful of episodes a season, of which he's getting paid extremely well, but the reason for limiting it is given as "he needs to sleep?"

And you Brits call Americans lazy...
 
He only does a handful of episodes a season, of which he's getting paid extremely well, but the reason for limiting it is given as "he needs to sleep?"

And you Brits call Americans lazy...

He's the show runner (And also showrunner for Sherlock, correct?) So, sure, he only writes a handful of episodes, but, he's responsible for whatever goes into each episode
 
I'm still on the wonderful season 5 (or 34 or whatever it is) and I'm loving it, so I'll worry about 2012 season in 2013. :lol:
 
So it looks like the seasons might go like this in the future :-

Autumn 2011 - Season 6A
Autumn 2012 - Seson 7A
Spring 2013 - Season 7B
Autumn 2013 - Season 8A

and so on...

Of course moving the airdates to Spring and Autumn, moves the airdates out of the summer months, where tradionally audiance figures go down.
 
Of course moving the airdates to Spring and Autumn, moves the airdates out of the summer months, where tradionally audiance figures go down.

And potentially puts it in line with more of ITV's biggest rating shows...
 
I guess this could be worse... It's putting a 7+ month break back into the show, but our reward is only 6-7 episodes at a time instead of a full 13. I almost preferred it in one slog, as you could remember what you needed to about the overall arc to not have to worry abotu forgetting it.

If all this is true, perhaps they'd give us a Spring special in 2012 to help tide us over? Or would that be too "break year" to make sense?

Mark
 
Hmm, I don't mind what they end up deciding to do, I'd just like it to be consistant, say what you like about Series 1-4, they all ran for the same length at roughly the same time!
 
So to sum up things


2012


-7 episodes in April 2012


-Christmas special


-April 2013- The 6 remaining episodes



That cliffhanger's going in April 2012 is going to be a bitch
 
^Not April 2012; there'd be no way to do the studio move and complete six or seven episodes for then. They might be able to do a single FX-light episode (a la "Planet of the Dead") for Easter, but not much more. If there's a half-series in 2012, it'll be in autumn or winter.
 
Pllanet of the Dead didn't seem that FX lite. I guess predominantly being shot in a desert. Then the makeup and giant set piece for the Fly-like alien space craft, the cgi work for the flying sting rays, the wormhole and the flying double decker bus. I guess compared to other specials it is more on the lite side.
 
^It may not have been FX-lite so much as using primarily FX that could be prepped without the finished episode, so post-production could be shorter than on a typical special. But I don't remember where I got that idea from, so I might be misremembering something entirely different.
 
He only does a handful of episodes a season, of which he's getting paid extremely well, but the reason for limiting it is given as "he needs to sleep?"

And you Brits call Americans lazy...

They do 13 episodes a season, and they spend the same amount of time working on them as American productions do on 22. Further, unlike U.S. shows, U.K. shows like Doctor Who typically don't have full-time writing staffs -- the writing staff on Doctor Who literally consists of Steven Moffat, who must hire ever other writer as a freelancer and supervise them all as they work remotely. Add to that the fact that Who does way more location shoots than most TV shows, and add to that the fact that he's also working on Sherlock, and I really don't think it's fair to accuse the guy of laziness.
 
More to the point, the bit about him needing more time/sleep was a joke. This decision most likely has more to do with budgeting issues and the need to shift studios.
 
And this all contradicts what Moffat said about the (season 6) splitting.
First half Spring 11 (done)
Second half Fall 11
then Christmas Special
7th season
Spring - 1st half
Fall - 2nd half
and so on

this so we'd never be more than a few month between something Dr Who.

So what happened?

:(
 
He was, er, putting a good spin on a development that probably had more to do with production logistics than ideal scheduling or storytelling.
 
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