hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr4200.txt

Episode: 4200
Title: HPR4200: Intro to Doctor Who
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4200/hpr4200.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 21:16:19

---

This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4200 for Friday the 6th of September 2024.
Today's show is entitled Intro to Doctor Who.
It is hosted by Avukha and is about 19 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is an introduction to one of my favorites, Doctor Who.
Hello, this is Aukha, welcoming you to Hacker Public Radio in another exciting episode.
And I'm going to continue my series on science fiction and fantasy by giving kind of an overview
of Doctor Who, which is one of my particular passions.
And if you ever have been to my site, pelling.com, you would have noticed that there's a lot
of Doctor Who content there.
Now I've been a fan for a long time.
It actually started for me in the early 1970s, and that's when I came across the John
Pertwee stories on a UHF channel in Boston.
I really liked the stories, but didn't know anything about the background.
Now John Pertwee was actually the third person to portray the Doctor, but I didn't know
anything about that.
He dressed in evening clothes and a cape, and then drove a classic car that he called
Bessie.
Then one day I tuned in and they had some goofy looking guy in a big floppy hat and
a long scarf running around.
He was calling himself the Doctor, but I was totally put off by that, which delayed my
introduction to Doctor No. 4, Tom Baker.
Now after I moved from Boston to my current home in Michigan, Ypsilani, Michigan, which
I did in 1981, I found that my local public television station was playing stories of
Doctor Who Late on Saturday Night, and I got back into the show.
It was very popular on that station, and I have since learned that many of our public
television stations similarly played Doctor Who.
And I quickly learned that many different actors had portrayed the Doctor over the years.
But the first two would never show on our public television station, or I think any others,
because they were black and white.
I did see them later on though.
What looked like the show ended in 1989 when the BBC announced an indefinite hiatus.
Then there was a movie done in 1996 as a co-production between the BBC and the Fox Network.
It was intended as a pilot for a revived series which thankfully never happened, because
the Fox Network would have made it an American show, and Doctor Who should always be British
in my opinion.
Now, but the idea would not die.
So when Doctor Who stopped producing in 1989, other things started to happen.
First, there was a company called BBV Productions.
Now I've put links to these things in the show notes, just in case anything happens to
the catch your attention.
And BBV Productions was founded in 1991, and they created original videos using cast members
from the Doctor Who.
Now they weren't Doctor Who stories per se, but they bore a general similarity.
So a good example of what I mean is the air zone solution, which was all about people,
the air becoming unbreathable, and people having to wear gas masks to survive.
And the cast included John Partley, who was Doctor No. 3, Peter Davison, who was Doctor
No. 5, Colin Baker, who was Doctor No. 6, Sylvester McCoy, who was Doctor No. 7, and
Nicola Bryant, who was a companion to Doctors 5 and 6.
Well, you can see they were really loading up on Doctor Who staff.
Another company called Real Time Pictures was actually founded in 1984 by Keith Barnfather,
and he was a founding member of the Doctor Who Appreciation Society, and Real Time Pictures
started to create documentaries about the series, as well as spin-off stories using characters
they could license from the authors.
You see, in Britain, it was apparently normal for the authors to retain the commercial
rights to the characters they created, and the most important example being the Dolex,
which were created by Terry Nation, and are still owned by his estate.
You cannot do a TV show with Dolex in it until you get a license from the Terry Nation
estate.
It's that simple.
And even the BBC can't do it until they get that license.
Now Real Time brought in a British actor named Nicholas Briggs to act as host for some
of their documentaries.
He later became a principal member at Big Finish, which was started to create audio dramas
of Doctor Who, and that was started in 1996, and Nicholas Briggs is still primarily responsible
for the Doctor Who audios.
Now Big Finish has gone on to add audio dramas from other shows, and these are all original
scripts that they commissioned, but they do other shows like The Prisoner and so on.
There's a link in the show notes to the website if you want to check that out.
If you like audio drama, this is a place to get some good stuff.
Nicholas Briggs has since gone on to be the voice of the Dolex.
So if you have listened to any of the Doctor Who or watched any of the Doctor Who programs
since 2005, anytime you hear the Dolex, you're hearing Nicholas Briggs.
So from all of this, you can see that there was a strong fan base that was demanding
more Doctor Who, and since the BBC wasn't giving it to them, other companies stepped
in to fill the void.
Then there were print properties that enabled fans to get their fix.
One of them was Doctor Who magazine, which was started in 1979 and has published continuously
ever since.
Now, you can actually get it in the USA, but it is expensive since it has to be shipped
from England.
So unless you're a total fan, I'd skip it.
It's certainly nothing I'm going to spend money on.
But another one that you might look at is there have been novelizations of the stories
in a series from a publisher called Target.
Those are favorites among many of the fans because the novelizations expand on the story
as presented on television and offer additional information.
Now, all of this activity eventually caught the attention of the BBC.
Now following the 1996 movie co-production, which Fox declined to pick up an option on,
the BBC attempted to find backers for another movie, but without success.
As this was going on, BBC Wales approached a successful writer from Wales named Russell
T. Davis to see if he would create a new show for them.
And his response was he did not want to do a new show.
He wanted to bring back Doctor Who.
Well, apparently everything aligned.
The BBC was now willing to take a look at it and they had a respected and successful
person to take it on.
And so in 2003, the BBC announced that Doctor Who would be coming back with Davis as the
head writer and showrunner.
Now this new series of shows began in 2005 with Christopher Eccleston as the doctor and
became an immediate hit.
Now because of the 26 year gap between, not 26, 16 year gap between shows, many things
had changed.
The budgets had gotten a bit larger.
The technology had improved and there was a distinct difference.
So now people refer to Classic Who as the series from 63 to 89 and New Who as the series
from 2005 on.
And there may be another breakpoint coming up.
In 2015, two of the original BBC Wales production team for Doctor Who, that being Julie Gardner
and Jane Tranter, left BBC Worldwide to set up their own production company called Bad
Wolf Limited.
Now that name comes from the 2005 series of Doctor Who.
Then in 2017, they set up a new studio in Cardiff called Wolf Studio's Wales.
And then in 2021, they announced two things.
First, that Bad Wolf would take over production of Doctor Who beginning in 2023.
And second, that Sony Pictures had purchased a majority share of Bad Wolf for a substantial
amount of money that poured into their coffers.
Then in late 2022, it was announced that Disney Plus had made a deal with the BBC to get
all streaming rights to Doctor Who outside of the UK.
Now, for UK residents, the BBC would still be the source for Doctor Who.
And all available episodes, over 800, plus other material, would be found on what they
call the Hooniverse, an online platform that is for UK residents only.
I would imagine if you had a VPN, you could probably get it.
Then Disney Plus would get streaming rights to the three David Tenant Specials in 2023,
and then everything going forward from there.
Davis has said that this will provide a lot of cash to help improve the show further,
which is all to the good.
I just hope they don't screw it up.
I don't think Disney always does a good job with the stuff down.
Now, Davis has said that he thinks Doctor Who should be another big sprawling property
like the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
And he has plans for additional spin-offs from Doctor Who.
It seems pretty clear right now that one of them will probably be a series around unit,
which is a kind of military organization, the show has had going back to the 1960s.
And he has done spin-offs before, such as with Torchwood, which was reasonably successful.
Now how do you get Doctor Who?
Well, if you're in the UK, it's simple.
Hooniverse is your one-stop shopping for all Doctor Who streaming.
Outside of the UK, it's a bit more complicated.
Starting from 2023 specials and going forward, Disney Plus has the rights in every country
of the rest of the world.
I would imagine their global reach is pretty inclusive.
But what about everything that went before?
This probably depends on where you live.
And I cannot tell you anything about most other countries.
If you're interested, you need to do your own research on that.
But in the US, the classic Hoos series from 1963 to 1989 can be streamed from Britbox.
And then the new Hoos series from 2005, up through the end of 2022, can be viewed on Macs,
which used to be called HBO Macs.
And there is a free streaming service that has a lot of the classic shows called toobie.tv,
link in the show notes, it's tubie.tv.
Apple TV Plus also has most of the new stuff and some of the classic stuff.
And you can purchase episodes at the usual places like Amazon Prime Video and Google Play.
Now this information is, I think, reasonably accurate as of the time I am recording
this in 2024.
But one of the things that you have to be aware of is these things change.
Companies make deals.
It used to be that Dr. Who was on the sci-fi channel in the United States and then BBC America
picked it up and now BBC America has been cut out of it to bring in Macs and Disney Plus.
It's a constantly changing landscape.
So just be aware of that.
Other ways, DVDs, OK?
BBC has been licensing Blu-ray box sets of all the shows up through the end of 2022.
What will happen going forward with Disney in the mix is any buttons guess.
Disney tends to play a lot of games with DVD releases.
If they can still make money from streaming, they're not interested in DVDs.
And then they might eventually put a DVD out and then decide they're going to pull it off of the market.
And we've seen that with Disney over and over.
So I don't know what's going to happen.
Now, the classic Who shows, that's the 63 through 89.
The BBC has been putting them out in box sets of one year at a time.
Now, with the classic Who, that was basically one year was a season.
So you might have a given doctor might have three seasons or five seasons or, you know, I think,
Tom Baker had seven or eight and he was just there forever.
But if they're just doing it a year at a time and they're jumping around, they're not doing it in order.
So they might do it one year from the seventh doctor and follow that with one year from the third doctor.
Now, they're not all done and they've been coming out at about the rate of two a year.
They're pretty good value since they not only have all of the shows, but lots of extras.
Now, I have been buying them as they have been released.
Generally, they're released first in the UK and then they hit the US about six months later seems to be my experience with that.
So here on the fan sites that, you know, box set coming out and then I go to Amazon and nothing there.
But in about six months later, we'll show up now for the new who from 2005 to 2022, the pre Disney run of new who is you can get even better deals because they've been doing sets of an entire run of a given doctor.
So for instance, David Tannen, who did three full seasons plus a few specials, you can get a box set of everything that he did or all of Matt Smith or all of Peter Capaldi.
And, you know, generally three years at this point seems to be the standard for most people who take on the role.
They do three years and then they pass it on to someone else.
So, you know, getting those box sets is a really pretty spectacular deal.
Now, there's other sources of Doctor Who content on the internet such as websites, discussion boards, use net news groups and so on.
You can find them using the usual search engine strategies.
So, to sum it up, this is a general introduction to this program that I love and that a lot of people love and this is just giving you an overview of what has happened with it over the years.
We haven't discussed any of the specific doctors or specific shows or anything.
So, I plan to start digging into some of those and I want to look particularly at some of the classic shows that I think fewer people know much about them.
And I'm going to start at the beginning, which is what were they doing in 1963 and how did those early shows set the pattern for what we have now?
You know, Doctor Who, 63 through 2023, that's a 60-year span, right?
That makes it, I believe, the longest running science fiction show in history and it's still going on.
So, they must be doing something right.
So, that's what I want to talk about and I will pick that up next time, but for now, this is a hookah for hacker public radio signing off.
And as always, encouraging you to support Free Software. Bye-bye.
On this otherwise status, today's show is released under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.