Pages
1 sauceruney  Sun, Feb 16, 2014 7:59:39pm

It would’ve been canceled while the second season was in pre-production, and its fan base devastated for decades.

2 TedStriker  Sun, Feb 16, 2014 9:04:30pm

re: #1 sauceruney

It would’ve been canceled while the second season was in pre-production, and its fan base devastated for decades.

Yeah, Firefly syndrome; Fox just couldn’t give even a full season to see if the series would get its legs. However, there’s another example.

Star Trek has become a pop sci-fi institution over the past 45+ years, but it wasn’t always that way. Seeing as TOS was contemporary with the first years of Doctor Who, a lot of people forget that NBC decided to can TOS after three seasons due to low ratings (the network wanted to kill it during the second season, but, even then, Trekkies lobbied the save the show for one more season).

It wasn’t until the mid-70s, when Paramount wanted to start its own network to compete with ABC, NBC, and CBS, that Star Trek was reborn, first as the flagship series for the proposed network, then, once the Paramount Network plans fell through, reworked as a feature film.

The rest is history.

3 freetoken  Sun, Feb 16, 2014 9:47:49pm

Ah, but there was an “American” Dr. Who. Remember the movie? Yeah, a love story - that’s what an American Dr. Who could only be.

4 The War TARDIS  Sun, Feb 16, 2014 10:24:18pm

re: #3 freetoken

To be fair, that is what NuWho has now.

9/10 and Rose

11/River

possibly one more….

5 BusyMonster  Mon, Feb 17, 2014 5:36:17am

re: #2 TedStriker

Yeah, Firefly syndrome; Fox just couldn’t give even a full season to see if the series would get its legs. However, there’s another example.

Star Trek has become a pop sci-fi institution over the past 45+ years, but it wasn’t always that way. Seeing as TOS was contemporary with the first years of Doctor Who, a lot of people forget that NBC decided to can TOS after three seasons due to low ratings .

The ratings were figured differently, and it was in the summer after it was canceled that they discovered the 18-35 demographic (or, I think, the idea of demographics at all maybe) and suddenly the series looked really good.

I think there is an entirely different reason, though, and one that had nothing to do with ratings: inherently these sci-fi shows tend to present challenges to the status quo, and I think that they used to get pushed right to the front of the cancellation queue because of their risky nature. I don’t think until “geek culture” became a cash cow that the (usually) stale old farts who ran television networks were comfortable with so many blunt challenges to the established order.

6 hartly  Mon, Feb 17, 2014 5:46:20am

I don’t know, some of those names seem a little optimistic. Christopher Walken? Nicolas Cage? Harrison freaking Ford? About as likely as Sean Connery being on Jeopardy.

7 hartly  Mon, Feb 17, 2014 5:47:58am

#3 Freetoken - Despite the famous kissing scene I don’t remember the love story angle being that prominent. What really ticked me off about the film was the whole “the Doctor’s half-human” thing.

8 hartly  Mon, Feb 17, 2014 5:52:27am

#4 The WAR TARDIS - I often disagree with your Doctor Who judgement, but it’s nice to see someone else notice how prominent the gooey love stuff has been in NuWho, though I suspect we’d be at loggerheards over its effect on the series. Mind you, I’ve been watching some of the Matt Smiths I missed and I actually think he became a pretty good Doctor - that is when he wasn’t written as 10th Dr lite.

9 The War TARDIS  Mon, Feb 17, 2014 7:56:04am

re: #8 hartly

Love is something perfectly natural here.

You have someone to along along with you on your travels. As you travel more and more, you become closer, especially if there is some level of threat going on around you.

There are usually 2 ways this goes. Either, you become extremely close friends, or if the circumstances are right, you fall in love.

One thing that does keep me from much of Science Fiction is a complete inability to deal with that range of the emotional spectrum.

10 Shiplord Kirel  Mon, Feb 17, 2014 8:52:29am

An American version would have guns, lots and lots of guns. They could be blasters, phasers, or Colt SAAs; it doesn’t matter, but they would be there. They would also need a big budget for blank ammunition if plain lead-spitting types were used, since you would have a wild shootout every other scene, with thousands of rounds fired but nobody hit except for a bad guy now and then.

11 hartly  Mon, Feb 17, 2014 9:39:50am

#10 Shiplord Kirel: Well, the old show actually had a lot of guns too, not just during the UNIT years either. However, often good guys got hit, so I suppose that’s a difference. (That’s one thing I really miss with NuWho - the violence. Please, please, puhleeeaaaaze bring back the violence!!!!)

12 William Barnett-Lewis  Mon, Feb 17, 2014 12:18:43pm

Gotta admit, my favorite is the idea of Ford as the War Doctor.

Cage is a stretch but I’d have never thought Eccleston would work until seeing him bring in a dark energy that had been missing for several doctors.

13 The War TARDIS  Tue, Feb 18, 2014 9:08:06pm

re: #11 hartly

What I find interesting is, in New Who, every (save Martha, Wilfred and Nefertiti) Companion has ended up killing.

Rose Tyler- Daleks, alot of them.
Jack Harkness- Whole Hell of a Lot of things
Mickey Smith- Cybermen and Daleks
Donna Noble- Pompeii, Many, many Daleks
River Song- Dalek, Silence Extremists
Amy Pond- Saturnyne, Madam Kovarian
Vincent Van Gogh (!)- Krafayis
Rory Williams- Cybermen, Headless Monks
Canton Delaware- Silence Extremists
Vastra- Headless Monks
Jenny- Headless Monks
Strax- Headless Monks
Craig Owens- Cybermen
Clara Oswald- The Great Intelligence, Akhaten, Cybermen.

Davros is right, the Doctor does turns his companions into weapons.

14 hartly  Wed, Feb 19, 2014 6:08:31am

re: #13 The War TARDIS

I’m thinking more of flesh and blood on flesh and blood violence, like Sarah beating an Exxilon to death with a crank, Peri doing the same thing to a mutant with a log, and Leela’s numerous knifings/arrowings/janis-thornings. Obviously Cybermen and Daleks (especially Cybermen) don’t really count as “flesh and blood”. Much of the violence that I’ve seen in New Who is too cartoonish to feel violent. A case in point: Family of Blood tries to bring the horrors of war to us by showing a bunch of scare crows getting shot in slow motion; the beginning of Genesis of the Daleks does the same thing much much more effectively by showing us actual people getting gunned down.

It also depends on how the killing is done, whether or not it counts as violence. I wouldn’t call Clara’s killing of Akhenaten violent…or particularly believable.

15 The War TARDIS  Wed, Feb 19, 2014 10:38:30pm

re: #14 hartly

Thing is, Britain and the US are now infested with Busy-bodies that will cause a hysteria if that is shown today. And I would argue Amy’s jamming in of Kovarian’s Eyepatch was probably the most vicious thing a Companion has done to an opponent.

As for what Clara did to Akheten, I found it reasonable. I think of it this way: If the Doctor can explain it in a way I understand, then everything is ok.


This page has been archived.
Comments are closed.

Jump to top

Create a PageThis is the LGF Pages posting bookmarklet. To use it, drag this button to your browser's bookmark bar, and title it 'LGF Pages' (or whatever you like). Then browse to a site you want to post, select some text on the page to use for a quote, click the bookmarklet, and the Pages posting window will appear with the title, text, and any embedded video or audio files already filled in, ready to go.
Or... you can just click this button to open the Pages posting window right away.
Last updated: 2023-04-04 11:11 am PDT
LGF User's Guide RSS Feeds

Help support Little Green Footballs!

Subscribe now for ad-free access!Register and sign in to a free LGF account before subscribing, and your ad-free access will be automatically enabled.

Donate with
PayPal
Cash.app
Recent PagesClick to refresh