For fucks sake, I just forget how to spell it. I know you want to try to get me in trouble to shut me up, but its an honest mistake. Its a surname I've never heard said out loud and probably doesn't even exist outside of fucking England/the UK, its not a simple name like Moffat or an easily memorable abbreviation like RTD or JNT. As for the rest, I'm tired with arguing with people who defend the BBC like the place has a gun to their head. There is NO reason why they can't realistically produce 12 episodes a year, none. The BBC isn't that hard up that it can't produce what is probably its most mainstream TV show. Even if it means more studio sets and less pointless field trips to other countries, they can still get 12 hours of a TV show done a year if the person running the show wasn't terrible at it.
Spare us. It's not a complicated name by any means and you've been corrected multiple times. His name isn't complicated like Scheherazade (which I literally just looked up to get the correct spelling because I can never get it right). I've seen Moffat's name misspelled regularly, either with an "e" instead of an "a" or with two "t's." Hell, I've done the latter a few times. The problem is you never seem to "remember" or bother to check what the correct spelling is, so yeah, when you misspell his name during yet another unjustifiably angry rant, it's suspect.
Expensive foreign shoots on the Canary Islands was the beginning of the end of classic Doctor Who (Planet of Fire). The show was quickly cut down to seven hours a year, replaced by Star Cops (which I would not object to a reboot of) and then canceled. Is modern Who following the same pattern?
No? I don’t know. In America, more often than not a show is cancelled because it’s costs outweigh the profit. Could be in its 5th season, could be after its 7th episode. But, mostly shows go because they are to expensive. Doctor Who has a deal to keep it financially afloat through to the 15th series. Beyond that? It’s a tv show like every other that has to face certain economic realities. And, let’s be real, the new series has been on a long time, that’s nothing to shake a stick at.
Everything must end. I have a feeling after 20 years the new series will end. Maybe take a rest over being canceled IMO
As this is 2020, there are many, many ways to overcome the issues of cost if there is an interest from the IP owners if a show is deemed too expensive by its original producers. I wonder though, the reaction if Doctor Who found itself in a similar situation as Star Trek has? Would we hear howling of, "This is not Doctor Who!", "I'm not going to pay for a streaming service to watch Doctor Who!" as ridiculous as it has been for Discovery and Picard? Given Doctor Who's rich history and multigenerational audience, some enterprising streaming service could easily run 52 weeks of DW and DW related series 52 weeks a year like CBSAA will soon be running with Star Trek.
until we enter into a utopia were it costs nothing to make a show, production of a tv show will never be able to leave profitability behind. A streaming service could pick up all of Doctor Who, but unless the subscriptions cover the cost of production, that streaming service will go out of business. Choices would be, make less and continue the production value on the screen, make more and reduce the production value on screen. What would you like? Less of quality? Or more that look cheap? Currently a streaming service has stepped up to help out with the cost: HBO Max. Cost is a thing that cannot be escaped.
Are production values more important than good scripts? Doctor Who has produced many of its best stories in an era that numerous claim looked 'cheap'. Some very engaging shows over the past decade I've enjoyed have obviously very low production costs (The Booth At The End, Brent Spiner's Fresh Hell, Stan Against Evil, Extinct, Z Nation etc.), some have offered what appears to be quite pricy productions (Black Sails, The Man in the High Castle, Star Trek Discovery, Westworld, Pennyworth etc.). Would Doctor Who be a less engaging show if it had smaller budgets to work with? Maybe. Maybe not. But logistically, the script is typically the cheapest portion of a TV production and a decent one isn't much pricier than a bad one.
In this day and age: as important. When there are so many things competing for eyeballs, eyeballs who are watching on high definition TVs.... Yes. In an era where we didn’t have computers in our pockets, unlimited videos on our computers and how many channels... And it did look cheap, because it was cheap. And it was fine in that era. I can’t speak to how they do things in the UK, but a part of the production budget goes to the writing staff, obviously. The more money you have, arguable you can use it to hire better talent. One could make a case that yes, a good script can cost more than a bad one. You would be surprised how much an episode a tv writer is making when they get above staff writer. Craft services is probably the cheapest part of the production. Consider the shows with low budget you found engaging: how were the ratings? Now certainly there’s not necessarily a causation and high budget shows also can get low ratings. But, outside of reality, low budget shows pull in low numbers. Consider Game of Thrones, do you think it would have been nearly as successful with half its budget? A third? People now expect a certain level of production value from shows. Especially science fiction. Long gone are the days of bubble wrap monsters being enough.
But as has been said numerous times, that schedule almost killed RTD! By his second series Moffat had to split his series in half and gaps between series started to get longer.
With standing sets and endlessly redressed sets on a standing stage, on a budget multiple times DW's budget, and ket churning out reptetive filler for a lot of it, yeah. What we have now is more like Westworld or GOT, production-wise, and still on a much lower budget than either of those. It's almsot as if the two things are so different as to be like comparing apple and duck a l'orange
How many staff did they have? How much budget did they have? How many writers did they employ? Were they effectively script editing every episode written? Comparing a US production with a BBC one is comparing apples and oranges. (also I'm not sure Braga was running two Trek shows at once given he was only show runner on Voyager and Enterprise which didn't run at the same time) Looking online it appears the average episode of Discovery costs $8 million, it's doubtful Who gets much above $1million for an episode. More than happy to be proven wrong on these figures as it was a quick scout but I'd be amazed if Who's budget came anywhere near Disco's.
Sorry @Lonemagpie I was composing my response as you were posting yours so apologies for going over a lot of the same ground, even down to reference to apples and oranges which is damn spooky!
1.5 million in USD for a DW episode these days. Death In Paradise costs at least that much and only gets 6-8 episodes per year. Call The Midwife, mentioned earlier, had a 37 million dollar budget for three eight-episode seasons plus three Xmas specials, which makes about 1.3 million USD per episode.
Why are you comparing two different environments for making shows and expecting the same results? The financial demands and returns were different for Paramount than the BBC.
Compared to BBC's remarkable special effects of the moon being an egg? No loss to either side really.