Doctor Who The Collection: Series 22
Jun 6, 2024 13:26:42 GMT
UncleDeadly, ClockworkOcean, and 1 more like this
Post by Bernard Marx on Jun 6, 2024 13:26:42 GMT
I don’t think anybody watched it, to be honest, that was part of the problem.
Tangentially, Season 20 was the anniversary season- coinciding with massive attendances at the Longleat convention- yet it was surpassed in the ratings by the following two seasons.
I was very concerned about the level of violence in the show…there was a hanging scene….it’s a sign of desperation…so I just told them to cut back on the violence.
Incidentally, Grade's qualms over the death penalty being depicted in the programme are somewhat amusing when cross-referenced with his political sympathies. Although Margaret Thatcher never legalised capital punishment, she expressed support for it multiple times. As the New York Times begrudgingly noted in 1983:
Mrs. Thatcher has spoken out in favor of the death penalty for crimes of violence that have troubled British society in the years since capital punishment was abolished in 1964.
www.nytimes.com/1983/07/14/world/commons-defeats-a-move-to-bring-back-hanging.html
She also openly supported the retention of Capital Punishment in her 1987 Election Campaign, two years after the broadcast of Vengeance on Varos:
When senior politicians widely respected by the Murdoch press and client journalism semantically channel the barbarism portrayed but not condoned in a Doctor Who story, perhaps Grade's 'moral qualms' ought to be redirected.
“My decision was final and I wasn’t going to do any more. I couldn’t justify spending licence fee payer’s money on a show that was so far past its sell-by-date. It was embarrassing. Er, I can remember the meeting with the producer…I said to him “Do you ever go to the movies”? And he said “Yes, Michael, I do.” I said “Have you seen E.T or Star Wars or Close Encounters?”. He said “Yeah, I’ve seen them all.” I said “I’ve got news for you, so has the Doctor Who audience. And what you’re serving up on a Saturday evening just doesn’t cut the mustard, you know, the whole genre has moved on, to a level where the audience really…the show is now risible.
Studio-bound TV is not comparable to blockbuster cinema- they are two separate mediums with entirely separate cultural and economic contexts, and should be assessed as such. Grade knows this more than anyone else, and judging by the programme's viewership, so did the audience (and, as it happens, so did Lucas and Spielberg, both professed fans of the original series).
As noted on a 1985 Saturday Superstore announcement by a man called Michael Evans:
What does the BBC think it’s doing? Doctor Who is very popular, both here and in the USA, so why get rid of it?
One of the most controversial changes he [Grade] has made was to put Dr Who on ice, at a time when it seemed popular. Why?
It gets even more laughable. Grade's gripes concerning "risibility" are again undercut by another statement he makes later in this interview.
I controlled the budget. I controlled the airwaves.
Grade continues:
Just look at one of the shows from that period and tell me if you think it was worth the money and the air time. And remember that every penny spent on Doctor Who and every minute or air time devoted to Doctor Who was stopping something new and innovative coming through that you could have used that time, the air time and that money to do something a bit more relevant and experimental.
(On Blackadder, paraphrasing himself): ““You’re not (doing more series). The first series was rubbish…you don’t know what’s funny, you don’t know what’s working yet, and the result is rubbish”. And they brought it in the studio and the rest is history…”
What an absolute twat.
