No Series Five Pod Casts?

[Admiral_Young]

Anyone have any news on Series Five pod casts? Two episodes in the bag so far and nothing available. Moff has done them before of course...I'm not sure what his stance is on audio commentaries or maybe they are just going to record them for the box set release later this year?

 

[Phillip Culley]

There's no budget for them and so they've been dropped.

This was confirmed by the BBC in the e-mail below which someone on Digital Spy sent to them asking for confirmation:

Thanks for contacting the BBC regarding our Podcast.

I understand you would like to know if commentaries and/or podcast is available for each episode of new series of 'Doctor Who'.

Firstly, we are glad that you liked the news series of 'Doctor Who' and hope you will enjoy the complete series.

I'm afraid neither podcasts or commnetaries of BBC TV programmes are currently available.

Nevertheless, I can assure that I have fully registered your comments on this issue. They have been made available to those responsible for maintaining the BBC iPlayer service.

Thanks again for contacting us.

Regards

Usha
BBC Information

 

[Admiral_Young]

Oh that's lame...I guess I won't be buying the Series Five DVD's then.

 

[Venardhi]

There is no way they can be blaming the budget for not being able to record a commentary. Moffat could record it on his home computer in his underwear and e-mail it to someone to toss online and people would still download it.

 

[Phillip Culley]

Oh that's lame...I guess I won't be buying the Series Five DVD's then.

Nothing has been said about the DVDs yet - the only things in question are the free podcast commentaries which we've had for the last few years.

I would be very surprised were the Series 5 box set to be commentary-free, although after the precedent set by the Complete Specials set, I wouldn't be surprised if the eventual box set didn't have commentaries on all 13 episodes.

 

[Rosalind]

what happened with the complete specials set?

ETA: I see, only End of Time got commentaries. Did the individual release of the other specials get commentaries?

 

[Admiral_Young]

^ No. Only End of Time contains commentaries.

Philip Culley...that email claims that pod casts or audio commentaries are available for BBC TV programs at this time so that makes me think we aren't going to get them at all when the box set is released. How much does it cost to produce a commentary track? Do the actors and principals actually get paid to do them...I'd do one for free! I love them.

 

[Saul]

Why not just do what Ron Moore did and just do them from his living room at home with a bottle of scotch and a few cigars.

 

[The Mirrorball Man]

Why not just do what Ron Moore did and just do them from his living room at home with a bottle of scotch and a few cigars.

I'm sure there's an arcane clause of the almighty BBC charter that would prevent Moffat from doing that.

 

[Phillip Culley]

How much does it cost to produce a commentary track? Do the actors and principals actually get paid to do them...I'd do one for free! I love them.

They definitely get paid to do them - when it comes to the classic Doctor Who DVDs the commentary is the most expensive extra, and to make matters worse I suspect the participants in those commentaries would not cost as much as the new series actors.

 

[Sci]

That's a real bummer. I love hearing the commentaries, and in particular I love hearing from the writers about their creative processes and thoughts on characterizatons.

 

[David cgc]

Why not just do what Ron Moore did and just do them from his living room at home with a bottle of scotch and a few cigars.

Well, it's not just the recording, there's also the issue of distribution and bandwidth. Might be the BBC just doesn't want to pay to send a 20 megabyte file to quarter a million people every saturday anymore.

Yes, I just pulled that subscriber number out of my ass.