Doctor Who Blog

Further Than We’ve Ever Gone Before: US Morning TV

OK… late night with Craig Ferguson was cool, and an achievement, but Ferguson’s an intelligent Scottish nerd and it would be more of a surprise if he didn’t like the show.

But Today—the most popular morning show in the United States—OK, now we’re well and truly through the looking glass. Here’s Meredith Viera on set. WARNING: Minor, possibly significant SPOILERS for Episode 7 or 8…

I don’t know what’s bizarre: that Meredith Viera is reporting from Upper Boat in Cardiff on the making of Doctor Who… or that her whole report on Doctor Who is more accurate than any American TV news report I’ve seen on Doctor Who, ever.

4 Comments...

Actually, the most bizarre thing was Al Roker’s enthusiastic “Oh yeah!” when Meredith asked if any of her colleagues knew the show. Roker’s a Whovian!

I was quite impressed at how accurate the report was. The only misstep (and really only diehard fans care) is using the “Dr. Who” abbreviations. So what?

The best bit - the fact they showed flashes of all 11 Doctors! Whoever put that piece together knew his or her stuff!

Amazingly, I read a few posts on another board of the “who cares?” variety. But this was huge. AND - I’m told it was the very first thing people saw after Viera announced her departure from the show, so that means fans were watching extra-closely. And the good Doctor effectively helped get the hosts out of the little funk they got into when Meredith announced she was leaving.

Far from a “who cares”, this was a home run. Now let’s see if we can’t get 60 Minutes to devote an hour to ... OK, maybe that’s hoping for too much! A crossover with NCIS, then… wink

Posted by Alex  on  05/09  at  05:06 PM

Meredith Viera’s has a fantastic line

Posted by Dave  on  05/11  at  08:20 AM

Actually, there was one minor error, and that was Matt Smith’s. Meredith wouldn’t be the first American companion as that honour went to Peri (although the accent might have been what fooled him).

Interesting as much for what it says about US TV’s interest - NBC never showed as much interest when Doctor Who was on SciFi (now SyFy) - as for what tidbits were released for public consumption. Just where is Mr. Moffat’s wild ride taking us?

Posted by David H. Olivier  on  05/12  at  04:22 AM

@David Actually Matt didn’t make a mistake because while Peri was an American character, the actress was British, so it wasn’t really an “American companion”.

Posted by Alex  on  05/14  at  05:01 AM

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