Does anyone else here watch Doctor Who? My local government-sponsored TV station, the ABC (which once co-funded Dr Who episodes in the '70s) has been showing all the episodes at a rate of four per week, starting from the very first. I wasn't a fan, but started watching toward the end of the last Jon Pertwee season. I didn't like him much, but because there was a story happening, I had to watch the next episode, then the next. Before I knew it, he died and regenerated into Tom Baker. Now I'm totally hooked on the show. Thanks to a set-top box with a hard disk, I don't miss a single episode. Yay!

The movie was okay - nothing special in the way of story, but it was way more polished. There was nothing dodgy about the special effects. The whole thing just looked good, even if the script stank. After seeing some episodes and then remembering back to the movie, they actually changed a few things in the movie. For instance, in the movie, the Doctor is half human. What a load of crap. Also, the eye of harmony is in the Doctor's TARDiS. I think it powers it or something. Also a load of crap. On top of that, not only did they kill a doctor pointlessly, wasting one regeneration cycle, they killed another character and had the doctor regenerate her, wasting yet another regeneration cycle. That's what happens when you look for funding offshore.

Well the good news is that BBC is currently filming another season of Doctor Who, after all these years. Yay!

I heard Billie something-deep-inside Piper will be his lovely assistant. Who knows how that will turn out though. The arrangement of the title theme will be faithful to the original version, so they say. Although the BBC is government run and subsidised, I'm sure the show could make quite a bit of money from DVDs, other merchandise and offshore licensing. Do people in non-Commonwealth countries actually watch this sort of thing? I hope so.

I never watched Doctor Who; I think it must have been before my time or something, and I don't watch much TV (I don't watch any here because I don't have a licence and have enough other things to do). But I do remember a Doctor Who game for the BBC Microcomputer, and it had nice graphics. Can I have my jelly baby now?

Your avatar is evil!

You need a licence to watch TV? That's absurd.

Not really, the licence fee enables the BBC to produce quality TV & Radio. There was a thread on this recently.

Back on topic: Doctor Who is great! Having the ability to visit any where in the universe at any time point gives more scope for stories than other sci-fi. Some of the books are really good as well, and hopefully the new modern Doctor Who (with a darker edge and modern SFX) will be good too.

Akhem. Stargate SG-1, Star Trek Anything and others don't count as being able to visit anywhere in the universe, I guess?

EDIT: Oops. You said any time point... Hm, guess I can't beat that .

Star-Trek has quite a few time travel episodes. But in Doctor Who, every episode (pretty much) is in a different point in time. This also leads to strange other realities where the Daleks have taken over the World or time travel paradoxes.

EDIT:

Here's some links which give you more detail of some of the new books which have been written since the series ended on TV:

The Book of the Still
Vanishing Point
Slow Empire
Infinity Race

There is still huge demand for Doctor Who material here in the UK as you can see.

And several movies, including the best-of-all movie: First Contact where they go into the past which is really the future - for us (2063).

Dr. Who is great. I've been watching it semi-regularly with my girl-friend and recording the episodes that we miss. (I also live in Australia, where Dr. Who is on four times a week.)

Hell, it was before my time when I was enjoying it at age ~7. Now that it's on again, before pretty much everyone's time, and still it's a great show. It's about the only TV I watch at all. There are two things that I really really hate about TV: ads and canned laughter. Fortunately, Dr. Who has neither.

Never watched, never heard of it too. SG is great though.

I remember Doctor Who? as a kid... but I don't get the jelly baby joke... it's been so long ago that I can't remember much. It's cool they are making it again, I thought it was dead forever

Now has anyone here gotten into Battlestar Galactica the new miniseries on Sci-Fi... one thing about Sci-Fi is they are finally making some top notch series with good stories and effects

re: Jelly Baby

If I recall correctly the Tom Baker Doctor was fond of Jelly Babies and was never without. They were always offered to others.

He was The Doctor from 1974-1981, the favourite of many.

Steve++ you need to make a pacman clone with your avatar When he eats the ghosts red goo flies everywhere You can even make him leave puddles of blood behind. That or perhaps the dots themselves are little happy-go-lucky creatures that get eaten alive... ones nearby can look startled but they have no legs to escape the wrath

The new Battlestar Galactica is great - it's the best science fiction show to thing to hit the airwaves since Farscape.

It's got almost everything - an interesting setting, good acting and believable characters, no (or a minimum of) technobabble, extremely good and refreshing writing (just wait till you see episode 8, "Flesh and Bone"), and a very appealing visual style.

It sounds like it allows the government to control the population's TV viewing and rubs salt into the wound by making them pay for it. I suppose the main argument for the licence is that allows TV to be broadcast virtually ad-free. This system already exists elsewhere - it's called pay TV. If you want it, you pay for it. If you don't, you can still watch TV and just put up with the advertising. Maybe the UK government will snap out of it one day.

1974-1980 I think. The music in the title sequence was almost identical to the previous Doctor (Jon Pertwee), except for the last season - the music was completely rearranged, adding an electric guitar. Clicky. Melodically, it was more faithful to the original, bringing back the other section of the melody (in the closing sequence at least) that was dropped since 1970. Tom Baker was just about everyone's favourite. He was allowed to bring his own personality to the show and improvise a lot. A lot of the scripts were pretty bad; if he wasn't around, the show may have been axed. He's certainly the Doctor most non-fans think of. He even shows up in The Simpsons.

That was exactly the plan. It was called Pacula. I just lost interest over a year ago. I salvaged the graphics for my new avatar just the other day.