Graeme Peckinpah
On the second day of this year’s BBC Doctor Who Website Adventure Calendar (which is the first day that fans outside the UK can enjoy it - apparently us fans outside the UK have been deemed unworthy of receiving David Tennant’s holiday message to the fans) is an interesting interview with Graeme Harper, where he talks about a number of things, including being influenced by director Sam Peckinpah. Given that he has directed such wonderfully violent stories such as The Caves of Androzani, Revelation of the Daleks and Planet of the Ood, this should not come as a surprise, but it is still cool to hear. As John Cleese once said, Peckinpah was famous for “making films where people’s arms were being blown off every 15 seconds” ( inspiring the Monty Python “Sam Peckinpah’s Salad Days” sketch) which sums up parts of those aforementioned stories.
It’s also nice to see that the BBC are starting to use overall stories titles for the two-parters. The interview refers to the two two-part stories Harper directed in Series Two as “Rise of the Cybermen” and “Doomsday”. This follows on from previously referring to the Moffatt two-parters as simply “The Empty Child” and “Silence in the Library”. Having overall story titles makes things so much easier in conversations and less wordy when writing articles or blog posts. Although then they refer to the final three episodes of Series Four as a trilogy (and don’t use an overall title) when most fans have considered them two separate stories, Turn Left and then a two-part finale. CBC viewers will get a chance to judge for themselves starting this Friday.
Posted by Luca on Tuesday, December 2 at 8:34 am
7 Comments...
I consider them a trilogy…Doctor-Lite or not, Turn Left is vital to the last two eps. And it ends on a cliffhanger of sorts, which seems to me to fit the bill.
Posted by Julie on 12/03 at 07:28 AM
I’m curious why there isn’t anything on the DWIN site over the reports that the season finale will be edited down by the CBC to fit a regular timeslot? There’s a lot of annoyance over that.
Posted by Alex on 12/04 at 05:26 PM
While that is a shame that the CBC would do that and yet again not take the program seriously enough, I say oh well. I will just have to watch it THE RIGHT WAY on the new DVD set I very recently purchased. Believe it or not I will watch the CBC’s version first before I view the DVD. I know that probably sounds daft to some but thats just the way I am. By the way I have at last watched VOYAGE OF THE DAMNED (I refuse to wait any longer for the CBC on that one!) and I must say it is very good. I won’t say anything more about it in case I spoil it for someone who may not have seen it yet…or am I the last fan in the country who had NOT seen it until last night. Oh yea I thought I read somewhere that VOYAGE OF THE DAMNED was 90 minutes long but it actually wasn’t. Perhaps I dreamt that. It was longer than 60 minutes though.
Posted by Doug Grandy on 12/04 at 07:47 PM
I think most of us are just resigned to the fact that the CBC will give us the cut-down edited version of the S4 finale - because they do what they want whether it makes sense for the programme or not.
In fact that may be the only one they own, since the BBC does edit two versions of every episode…one for their own transmission/dvds etc, and one for sale to the international market with a shorter timeslot.
Mind you, I may be completely wrong about what versions the CBC has, because as I’ve said to a few others they did have the full length version of Christmas Invasion - it aired on CBC Bold a while ago in a 60 min slot with no commercials at all.
Posted by Julie on 12/05 at 09:56 AM
I’m guessing we’ll lose the goodbyes to Sarah Jane/Mickey/Jack/Martha, a bit of Martha in Nuremburg, probably the *sacrifice* flashbacks, and likely K-9/Luke/recognizing Gwen, Jackie’s joke about naming her son Doctor, and sadly Davros recognizing Sarah…
Posted by Scott on 12/05 at 04:28 PM
We should probably wait until the episode airs before discussing what scenes might be missing as they will constitute spoilers for those watching on CBC.
As for why there hasn’t been anything on the DWIN site as yet about the edited finale, I think Julie probably summed it up well (though personally speaking until now I hadn’t seen any reports). They did the same thing last season as well for Last of the Time Lords, so it isn’t a surprise. The good news this year is that for fans who decided not to download the episodes 6 months ago, the DVD release is already out to allow people to see the episodes un-cut and as Doug points out, to see Voyage of the Damned at all!
I should also add in case anyone is wondering, we’ve heard nothing about the CBC broadcasting the 2008 Christmas Special this month, so I wouldn’t expect it. We’re not sure when they will, or even if they are going to.
Posted by Luca on 12/05 at 07:33 PM
I have to say that I actually preferred in many ways the 45 minute version of Last of the Time Lords to the almost 60 minute version—it was tighter, there was a greater sense of jeopardy and while there was some nice moments lost, the only one I was disappointed to lose was the announcement that Sol 3 was nearing extinction at the start of the episode.
Julie is correct that the extra length episodes have international edits where they’re cut down to 42 minutes. The Christmas episodes however are considered specials, thus we have The Christmas Invasion and The Runaway Bride clocking in at 60 minutes without cuts
Posted by Graeme on 12/05 at 10:10 PM
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