This Week In Doctor Who - August 10th

SPACE - the final chaos.
These are the adventures of the cable network "Imagination Station".
It's mission - to seek out new time slots and new scheduling changes.
To boldly confuse the heck out of this column's editor like no cable network has done before!
(Crescendo into opening credits)

This Week In Doctor Who - August 10th

Surprising developments abound today. SPACE has made another change in its way of airing Doctor Who, and this time they didn't tell anyone. Details below. In Australia, FOXTEL's UK- TV is completing its current run of Doctor Who in an interesting way. UK Gold pulls a Pertwee out of its Hartnell. And I've learned news about an upcoming video release that was important enough that I'm including it, even though it's very unlikely to turn out on any TV station anywhere.

But, before we go into the regular column, I have an announcement. This Week In Doctor Who (the Monday international column) and This Week In Doctor Who USA (the Friday narrower focus column) are merging. I split the columns last month early on in fear that the column would be too long to read and that it would take me too long to write it. Well, I've since found a few tricks that make writing it easier, and it's now quicker to do one large column then two medium ones. I've also noticed that by Friday, it was easy to find out what most stations were airing, while information on some services (UK Gold, this means you!) might not be available for a Monday deadline. Also, the Monday editions always seem to appear late, while the Friday edition appears on time. So, beginning Friday, August 21st, one column titled This Week In Doctor Who will cover every Doctor Who station worldwide. This is the final Monday issue.

Canada

SPACE has done it again. First they were cutting back the number of showings of Doctor Who due to ratings. Then there was the confusion about the Sunday broadcasts (they're staying, by the way). Now they've started pre-empting broadcasts. They are bumping shows around on late Friday nights / early Saturday mornings to accommodate movies. The 3:30AM Eastern broadcast is being affected. Last Friday late week, TombOfTheCybermen part 4 did not air. This week and next week, the late Friday broadcasts will air at 4AM instead of the regular 3:30AM. August 28/29th's broadcast is scheduled to air at its regular time.

Oh, you want to find out what they're actually showing? Oh well. The weekday showings this week will feature the 5 episode story The Dominators, the first complete story with Zoe in it. Quarks appear in a pre-DS9 role. Do the Dull-cians have a prayer? Only if the Doctor intervenes. The Sunday episode is Planet of Giants: Crisis, the conclusion to that Hartnell story. Hard to imagine that it was 2 episodes until some judicious editing took place. It also teaches an important lesson about things a villain should never leave near flammable objects. Next week the weekday story is the Troughton 5 part adventure The Mind Robber, which picks up right after The Dominators and throws our heroes into a place of utter unreality. This story featured the shortest episodes ever in Doctor Who (the conclusion was 18 minutes long), so expect filler material after each episode. The weekday showings for these two weeks will be at 7:30AM, 1:30PM, and 3:30AM the following morning (4AM on those two Saturday mornings). The Sunday show airs at 8AM with a repeat at 3:30AM the next day. SPACE is available to Canadian viewers who pay for the specialty cable package.

Some Canadians can also see KSPS from Spokane, Washington and KBDI from Denver, Colorado, PBS stations that also air Doctor Who. KSPS will air Genesis of the Daleks in movie format Saturday night at 10:30PM Pacific (11:30PM Mountain), probably with pledge drives. KBDI, however, is not airing Doctor Who this week due to pledge specials. Hopefully it will return next week.

Australia:

FOXTEL's UK-TV is showing the final week in its current cycle of Doctor Who stories. They plan to resume airing episodes in October with the 1st Doctor. No word on an exact date or if they will air any Who specials during their break. The weeknight episodes air at 11:30PM. Monday and Tuesday they show the concluding two episodes to Survival, the final regular story in the series. The Master is trapped on the Cheetah planet, where it is driving him mad. Now the Doctor and others are stuck there, and someone the Doctor cares for may not be able to resist the siren call of this dying planet.

Wednesday thru Friday they are showing THE 1996 TELEMOVIE in EPISODE FORMAT!?! This may be the first time that story has aired in this format. The story was 90 minutes long, so these episodes must be being aired without commercials. The weekend omnibuses will make their final appearances this weekend Saturday afternoon at 1, Sunday early morning at 2AM, and finally Sunday at 8AM. Survival will air in a 90 minute slot (probably with commercials), followed by THE 1996 TELEMOVIE in a 90 minute slot. The final hurrah (for now) of Doctor Who in Australia. Shame the first day without it is my birthday!

The UK:

UK Gold continues getting its schedules out late, though this is the last time that'll be a severe problem. Saturday morning they have two omnibus stories to run - The Rescue and The Romans, two stories which dovetail into each other. The Radio Times listings in England appears to be a trifle confused about these stories, claiming that they starred Jon Pertwee as the Doctor, with Katy Manning. They actually star William Hartnell as the Doctor, are in Black and White, and introduce us to Vicki, Susan's replacement. Around 3 hours of Doctor Who which runs from 9:05AM to 12:05PM. Sunday's featured omnibus actually will star Jon Pertwee, but not Katy Manning. It's Doctor Who And The Silurians (blame the guy who put the titles on the episodes, not me). The Doctor, Liz, and the Brigadier try to find out why there are so many power outages and nervous breakdowns at a nuclear power facility. The answer will shock them all and bring humanity face to face with Earth's previous tenants. This very long story will run from 9:05AM to 12:30PM. I don't know if this will be the colourized or the black and white version.

The rest of Europe:

BBC Prime offers millions of Europeans the chance to see Doctor Who 3 times on Saturdays. An episode airs at 5:30PM Central European time and repeats at 1:05AM and 10AM the next Saturday. This week's early broadcasts feature The Robots of Death: Part One while the later broadcast features The Robots of Death: Part Two. The Doctor tries to prove to Leela once and for all that if you are polite to people they will be polite in return. So of course they're promptly arrested and charged with murder.

Special Video News:

This column's focus is on the TV present and future of Who, not the videotapes, so this is slightly out of the regular news. Friday morning new information came out about the video release of The Ice Warriors. It is scheduled for release in England in November, Australia probably soon after, and September 1999 in North America. They really should retitle this release "The Ice Warriors, Everything Else, And The Kitchen Sink!" Fans already knew that the release would feature the 4 surviving episodes of The Ice Warriors, linking footage including some telesnaps, a 35 minute documentary about the junking of Doctor Who stories including most surviving snippets from incomplete Hartnell and Troughton episodes, The Underwater Menace: Episode 3, and a CD with the audio of the missing "Ice Warriors" episodes. Now there's more. For months a story traveled the internet that someone had filmed behind the scenes footage of The Evil of the Daleks and Fury From the Deep. The person apparently with the copy of this footage promised the maker of it that he wouldn't distribute it without that person's permission, and he had forgotten that person's name. Steve Roberts (or someone on his staff) has gotten through the red tape and has access to these films. They're real and about 15 minutes total in length. Footage of the battle scene in the Emperor Dalek's headquarters in Evil 7 and footage of the weed creature from Fury will definitely be on the video now. No telling whether the full material will appear on the video release or later in another release.

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Thank you for enjoying the final Monday "This Week". Remember to look for the new unified edition of "This Week In Doctor Who" beginning August 21st. The final US only edition will come out on Friday, August 14th.

Benjamin F. Elliott

"This Week In Doctor Who" and "This Week In Doctor Who USA" are written and produced by Benjamin F. Elliott. Doctor Who is a trademark of the BBC. Webspace for this column was provided by Shaun Lyon and Siobahn Morgan.
Copyright 1998.