Dr. Who Is Now Officially The Most Successful Sci-Fi Show
- Thread starter DWF
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Star What?
Star Who?
Battle what?
Star Who?
Battle what?
Damn straight. More years, more episodes, more running time. And then there's all of the novels, comic books, and audio plays. Fuck, yeah. 
Oh my giddy aunt!
Sweet.
Since most Americans don't care about it, this doesn't really matter. 
Star Trek might have made more money but it's also had much greater expenses (Patrick Stewart in Nemesis for one)
The Guinness Book of Records isn't really the authoritative tome it used to be when the McWhirters were in charge. (We'll overlook their crypto-fascism for the moment.)
Oh lord, I remeber the shock when Newsround told us that one of the McWhirter twins out of Record Breakers had been murdered by the IRA.
As an eight, nine-year old, I knew nothing of the McWhirters' politics, and not much of Irish politics in general, I just 'knew' that anyone who'd kill the guy on Record Breakers had to be really evil.
I wonder how many British people of my age had their view on the Irish Troubles defined in the same way, and had to grow out of it before they could understand the roots of the conflict (I don't think I did until I started dating a Belfast Catholic at uni).
Perhaps, but the record DW has is for a single series, not a franchise.
Not that I generally care about this forum, but I just wanted to chime in because this is a great example of lies, damn lies and statistics: rejiggering a definition so that you skew it towards the answer you want.
It's useful to learn to recognize BS like this when it appears in other guises (politics, for instance) where it does a lot more damage.Obviously, the money made by the whole range of any franchise, including movies, TV, books, video games, DVD sales, action figures, commemorative plates, etc, is the truest gauge of the success of any franchise. It's meaningless to single out TV from all the other media (unless that's part of your statistics-skewing agenda.) Why artificially separate out the story told by Star Trek's movies from the story told by the TV series? Star Wars' novels and video games do a lot to advance the whole story (and have done a better job than the movies have lately).
I would guess that Star Wars has got to be the champion of sci fi franchises. Lucas may be a shitty storyteller, but he sure knows how to squeeze the last dime out of his story.
Not that I generally care about this forum, but I just wanted to chime in because this is a great example of lies, damn lies and statistics: rejiggering a definition so that you skew it towards the answer you want.
Obviously, the money made by the whole range of any franchise, including movies, TV, books, video games, DVD sales, action figures, commemorative plates, etc, is the truest gauge of the success of any franchise. It's meaningless to single out TV from all the other media (unless that's part of your statistics-skewing agenda.) Why artificially separate out the story told by Star Trek's movies from the story told by the TV series? Star Wars' novels and video games do a lot to advance the whole story (and have done a better job than the movies have lately).
I would guess that Star Wars has got to be the champion of sci fi franchises. Lucas may be a shitty storyteller, but he sure knows how to squeeze the last dime out of his story.
The catagory is only confined to TV shows and while there's been five Star Wars TV shows they're no match for Dr. Who.
WHO also does have a considerable "Expanded Universe"-There's roughly 300-400 novels (Although a good chunk of those are adaptations of the source material similar to James Blish's work on Star Trek), over a hundred audio plays (Featuring cast from the show reprising their roles, something Star Trek and Star Wars have only dabbled in) Various stage productions , concerts, etc. Not to mention the spinoffs Torchwood, SJA, K-9 and company, (and semi-official ones like Shakedown, P.R.O.B.E and Downtime) The only area where Doctor Who is lacking is in video games, and I think that's mainly because they haven't caught on in the United Kingdom as much as they have in the US and Japan-but that's being fixed with titles for the PC and Wii coming out lately.
Here's a list of all the books:
http://www.drwhoguide.com/books.htm
and the audios:
http://www.drwhoguide.com/bfaudio.htm
Although WHO has had it's share of hiatuses (1984-1986, 1989-1996, 1996-2005 and the 2009 'specials year'), it has run a combined 32 seasons and spawned at least two movies (Although unlike Star Trek and Star Wars they're remakes of the TV show and not canon) .
As for popularity, WHO might have trouble in America but it's done well in most other countries (Like a good chunk of Europe and Australia), and it's American popularity has certainly grown the last few years.
Here's a list of all the books:
http://www.drwhoguide.com/books.htm
and the audios:
http://www.drwhoguide.com/bfaudio.htm
Although WHO has had it's share of hiatuses (1984-1986, 1989-1996, 1996-2005 and the 2009 'specials year'), it has run a combined 32 seasons and spawned at least two movies (Although unlike Star Trek and Star Wars they're remakes of the TV show and not canon) .
As for popularity, WHO might have trouble in America but it's done well in most other countries (Like a good chunk of Europe and Australia), and it's American popularity has certainly grown the last few years.
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Also even as a just a TV series Doctor Who has a considerable length.There's roughly 70 new series stories so far (Not counting Torchwood and SJA), and about 700+ (if I remember correctly) classic TV episodes (Although they are mostly part of serials, but even then that's about 160 stories).
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