A while back I complained that the BBC's parochial attitude that was making Neil Gaiman furtively obtain Doctor Who - expat fans were being treated like Madame de Pompadour in The Girl in the Fireplace, only getting the Doctor on DVD, after waiting long enough to die.
They solved this problem for Neil by having him write The Doctor's Wife, so he gets to carry round the series on a flash key. It almost seemed like the BBC got the message, boasting in the New York Times that the US premiere will not be delayed. But that was like the promise to Amelia Pond that they'd be right back, while we pay iTunes or Amazon for the new series, and are left sitting on our suitcase in our nightie and wellies, while nothing downloads for us.
Instead, because they fret archaically about TV ratings, we're supposed to wait 13 hours after the UK sees it, and then, like Rose in Journey's End, we're stuck in a parallel universe with a pale imitation of the Doctor - BBC America's letterboxed, pillarboxed, advertisement-infested, scenes-cut-for-time version that I truly hope Steven Moffat, Russell Davies, Neil Gaiman, and everyone else who worked so hard to imagine these adventures for us, never gets to see. It's like the Dream Lord from Amy's Choice seized control of the Tardis from us.
So what can we do? We can be like River Song in the Impossible Astronaut, and fly the Tardis properly, sweetly warn of spoilers, and get the episode from BitTorrent instead.
If the BBC were smart about this, they'd offer the diehard fans a pay-to-download package that started downloading during the UK première TV showing. If they were even smarter they'd charge a super premium to get access the same time they do the press previews the week before.
RIP Elisabeth Sladen, like us fans in the 90s, dropped off in the wrong place, with just memories and a bad robot dog to keep us going, but we held out hope and saw the Doctor again.
7 comments:
Brilliant. Also, do download the tribute to Elisabeth Sladen. This wasn't broadcast to us here in the US, and was well worth seeing.
Hey, at least your series of choice is dual released! I know, this global rights business is maddening.
No, this isn't fair. BBC America offers an HD version, it's not their fault if Comcast doesn't want to carry it. You can't get EPL soccer football on BBCA in HD either.
The running time of the HD torrent was 43 mintues, so I don't think any scenes were cut to make the BBCA version fit around their commercials and annoying tutorials about "what is a Dalek" and all that crap.
Regarding your complaint about the time zone lag with GMT, if that's all we have to complain about, things are pretty rosy.
Just watch it on MegaVideo about an hour after it shows in the UK
It would be even worse if, after you'd watched the series, they erased it from your memory -- like Donna.
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