If ‘Doctor Who’ Had Been an American Show
Mind. Blown.
Too cool — check ‘em out!
More: If ‘Doctor Who’ Had Been an American Show - Dorkly Article
Mind. Blown.
Too cool — check ‘em out!
More: If ‘Doctor Who’ Had Been an American Show - Dorkly Article
15 comments
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 |
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.