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Well, if you're buying your DVDs new, the BBC home media branch surely appreciate your patronage. Part of that money will probably find its way back to the broadcasting and production companies?

But of course, DVDs don't count toward those vaunted viewer ratings, and that's another thing that skews those numbers.

Fair. I can definitely sympathise with the vinyl comparison.

Very interesting, and I'm happy to be corrected. I'm wondering what other factors there could be to that segment opting out of an iPlayer offering?

Sorry, humour doesn't always translate in text only 🙂

I don't think a licensed show like Doctor Who would count as super profitable compared to IP like Stranger things that they own wholly? They're pretty secretive about the factors behind their programming choices, so I dunno.

The way Netflix cancels shows at the tip of a hat, their involvement would be anything but "ensuring audiences will enjoy the show for years to come"... Netflix has a big reach, that's for sure. I just doubt their commitment beyond the next fiscal quarter report.

As for people involved,

• Random youtuber with no TV drama experience — that'll be a no from me. I know a handful of those have taken the step to directing movies in the past years, but there's a long stretch from Fallout commentary to taking the reins of a (faltering) classic science fiction show.
• Charlie Brooker ("the guy who does Black Mirror") — not very likely, he has his own, fairly weighty show to maintain.
• Jordan Peele — this is a man doing multimillion dollar Hollywood movies. I highly doubt he would be a realistic candidate, but if he did join as showrunner or producer, against all odds? I bet some external investor purse strings would loosen right there. Then again, counterpoint: he has worked almost exclusively in the horror genre for the past decade.

This sent me down a rabbit hole, and I'll freely admit I only went as far down as I could still see the entrance behind me, because man, that is a rickety warren.

IRL there would be mind boggling complexities of calculating an objective system for marking time, when you have starships zipping about at faster than light speed. The subjective time of those crews would diverge from standard observed time, and between ships traveling in different directions, at different warp speeds, and for varying stretches of (subjective?) time.

The above is my dumbed-down understanding of time dilation. But the real real life explanation is that Gene Roddenberry and writer Samuel Peeples got tipsy and drew up their own galactic map with travel itineraries (presumably on napkins and backs of coasters 🙂):

"For the starship captain's log entry narrations, Roddenberry wanted to devise a futuristic measurement of time reference. He called (Sam) Peeples (whom Roddenberry had contacted early on for help in learning about science fiction, a subject he knew nothing about; it was Peeples who wrote "Where No Man Has Gone Before," the pilot that sold ST). The two men had a few drinks while brainstorming, and soon began chuckling over their imaginative 'stardate' computations. 'We tried to set up a system that would be unidentified unless you knew how we did it,' Peeples says."

"They marked off sections on a pictorial depiction of the known universe and extrapolated how much earth time would elapse when traveling between given points, taking into account that the Enterprise's warp engines would be violating Einstein's theory that nothing could exceed the speed of light. They concluded that the 'time continuum' would therefore vary from place to place, and that earth time may actually be lost in travel. 'So the stardate on Earth would be one thing, but the stardate on Alpha Centauri would be different,' Peeples says. 'We thought this was hilarious, because everyone would say, "How come this date is before that date when this show is after that show?" The answer was because you were in a different sector of the universe.'"

— Joel Engel, Gene Roddenberry: The Myth and the Man Behind Star Trek, cited in the Memory Alpha entry for "Stardate".

Oh, that's supposed to be Ro in the header image? 😳 Hoo boy, they weren't going for likeness, were they.

Not just pick-up, they're willing to deliver them apparently 😄

Yeah, the thing to watch now is the BBC opportunities page where their public tenders are announced. Until production of future Doctor Who seasons show up there, interested parties can't even pitch or submit a preliminary budget. And only then do we have a ballpark idea of the timeframe — assuming it goes like a recent tender for the hospital drama Casualty.

I believe it's a projection from the latter that has given the guesstimate that Who could be back on screen in 2028 at the earliest? I'm not sure that production will be quite as fast considering the amount of visual effects required for Doctor Who, but I'm optimistic 🙂

That's more generous than I'm willing to be towards "Flux" 🙂

At least Thasmin (in some form) was spelled large in the specials and "Power of the Doctor"... but it was a bit late in the day.

Onward and upward. I hope.

Yep. The show is a bloody mess right now, but my hope is somebody will turn out a fresh take within the next couple of years. There has to be somebody who can build from here and focus on making fun/scary/weird time travel stories without being bogged down by the history of it all.

No, but a segment of fans were irked that the official season numbering was reset in 2024... There are people who want all of the show numbered consecutively since 1963... You know we can't have nice things, that's all I'm saying