I don't really understand how you can say the 30th anniversary was better, unless it's nostalgia. We got Dimensions in Time, 30 Years in the Tardis, and a repeats of Planet of the Daleks.
This time we got three specials, a Children in Need skit, The Daleks colourised, six Tales of the Tardis, new documentaries including loads of audio content, the repeat of AAIST with added Ncuti, and the entire back catalogue on iPlayer. And most importantly, we got the show revitalised and renewed for a whole new era.
And we shouldn't forget that Power of the Doctor was only a year earlier and brought back all the surviving classic Doctors (except Tom), plus Tegan, Ace, Jo, Mel and Ian bloody Chesterton! It would have been redundant to bring them all back again in the 60th specials, but they still included Mel and the Toymaker, on top of all the returns in Tales of the Tardis.
Can we all just agree that the 60th anniversary was miles better than the 40th!
More was done for the thirtieth, outside of any new Who on TV, including and particularly by the BBC. Pertwee in particular was *everywhere* at the time. (A pattern repeated for the fiftieth, and not at all for the fortieth)
The Children in Need Skit wasn’t really anything to do with the anniversary, they do them in non-anniversary years. The Tales Of The Tardis was not broadcast, but was good, and was a last minute addition. The new documentaries on TV… weren’t up to much. What was a little… disappointing, was that the ‘anniversary specials’ really were naff all of the sort. It was a short series 4 redux, and *all* about that. I haven’t listened to all of the radio ones yet, but the wilderness one was too short.
The Power of the Doctor was absolutely better as an anniversary Who (ironically) and it almost feels like they swapped scripts when no-one was looking. Heck, the stookie bill stuff would have made *more* sense for the BBC Centenary, in exactly the way the past Doctors and Companions (by far the best bit of that show) and the running time itself made more sense for Who’s own birthday.
There’s still merch coming now with the 60th logo on, but that was… last year.
You couldn’t move for that 30th diamond on tat back in 93. 24 novels was it? Radio Times style special mag, video cabinets, the last legs of the Dapol range maybe? Bunch of VHS releases — many of which were being thrown on Breakfast TV as competition prizes. Even the aborted Dark Dimension was nabbing full page news stories. Thirty Years in the Tardis, and that single story repeat led to a whole few years of repeats. (Not to mention the era of Def II The Daleks…)
The Daleks in colour felt like an interesting oddity in comparison.
It was a different time, but corporation and public interest certainly seemed so much higher. Public interest, not fan interest, and not viewing figures alone either. In an era where geek has been mainstream a couple of decades now, and Picard will redecorate an entire Tube station as an ad stunt, it all seems very low key.
Even the official Beeb response to the viewing figures manages to *not talk about Who*.
Funnily enough, it’s a similar tack they took with Top Gear when that wasn’t en vogue or entirely in house.
It’s fairer to compare it to the fiftieth, but it would come up short again.
Ncuti may be the last Doctor for a while, and I am not sure I am as bothered by that as I used to be. I am bothered by some of the shoddiness around his introduction. All of the shoddiness in fact. It should have been *more*.
