There's a story about Dr Who in the current Private Eye- 1260- saying the producers were not happy having budget cuts when BBC Marketing blew £1 million on that 3D trailer before Alice in Wonderland. "'Look out for some amazing found-at-the-back of the cupboard monster cameos towards the end of the season,' a show insider tells the Eye."

It also says BBC Worldwide has made £15 million off Dalek toys, and came up with some of the budget for this series, after the cuts, and in return they asked for new Daleks to be introduced so they had more toys to flog, which, the Eye claims, is the sole reason for the multi coloured versions we're about to be introduced to.

Doesn't ring true to me. I very much doubt the Rabbit Hole trailer cost anything like a million quid and nor to buy that the change in design is purely down to marketing.

In fairness, if anyone would know, it would be private eye editor Ian Hislop. He is after all the next Doctor Who.

Certainly not £1m to make, but add in the cost of advertising in cinemas - it wont be cheap

Ian Hislop would be great as the Doctor, as would Paul Merton....

....and Angus Deayton would be brilliant as the Master!

....not to the tune of a million quid though.

And also I think it's pretty clear the rabbit hole trailer was part of SM wish to promote the series in the "fairytale" story style he has spoken of quite often. That doesn't tally with it being "forced" on him at all.

There have been budget cuts, but the general view seems to be it's more like 3% over three years, not some drastic cut back as seems to be implied here.

Wow if it was indeed £1M to make that 3D advert bit of a waste seeing as i've seen Alice in Wonderland twice and many of my friends have seen it plus a few of my relatives up North all at Odeon in 3D and none of us had seen the 3D trailer and i've seen various other people on this forum who haven't either.

Whats the point of making it if you don't show it at every Odeon every screening

they would have to pay for every time it aired, you know....thats why it won't be shown at every showing.

anyway, there is no way cost a million quid. Also, the costing for promotions is from a different pot and actually isn't connected to the shows budget in any case. So the attempt by this "article" to connect the two points is rather dubious in any case.

There's a (spoilery) review of Victory here: http://totalscifionline.com/reviews/...-of-the-daleks which does rather back up what Private Eye says.

Did the 3D trailer look any good when in 3D

I skim read that!!! That is the first time I have done that for this series...for the first two stories, I just read any reviews I could get my hands on...or eyes on....but this one I am really looking forward too, so don't want to read....the only good thing is from that review, despite it not being over all positive is that it was this same site that gave quite high praise to the Eleventh Hour...which I didn't agree with in the end...so that may mean I may disagree with his ratings here too

As for the length...there was aprt of me that felt that just from the trailers it looks so epic...how will they fit it all in 45 minutes....but saying that the best Dalek story of the New Series is just 45 minutes...so we shall see...

Scarily...I find this all too plausible: and it is a corkingly funny article...mind you, Doctor Who makes it into "Private Eye" means it is seriously on the map, especially during Election Season

I don't see how it "backs up" anything that PE say, other than the fact we are getting new daleks in this episode, which everyone knew already.

And this part doesn't agree with the notion of the change being forced on anyone:


Besides which people who have seen the episode have made it very clear that there very clearly IS a reason for the different colours, plot wise.



yes it did actually look quite good. I wasn't keen on it when I saw it on tv, but it rather comes alive in 3D. I think more importantly it went down very well with the audience.

As entertaining as it is, you can't completely trust what the Private Eye says anymore than you can any newspaper. They have a history of being wrong just as much as other publications, often with serious consequences. This is just another story. Not a report.

The MMR issue being a good example....

dont get me started on that one

I'd say the most interesting thing about that review is the line "thanks to the Mark Gatiss script (which shows all the signs of having been tampered with by head writer Steven Moffat)."

I agree on the advert. But having a friend who works in pre-school children's TV, certainly there where the money is coming from toy manufacturers the needs of the toys comes top in everything about how the programme is made. I think it's very likely that BBC Worldwide are asking for new toy possibilities, and new Daleks would be the thing they'd want. It's like new football club strips. It's just life now. I'm not saying the new design is only motivated by tie-ins, I'm sure there are all kinds of great story reasons for how it's been done, but the fact that they've been redesigned at all being for the toys sounds really believable to me.

Doesn't stop me looking forward to Saturday like mad.

I haven't really got a problem with that. It's up to parents to decide what toys they want to buy for their kids. If it means that more money ploughed back into making quality UK programming, so much the better.

I must admit, the khaki coloured Union-Jack Dalek in this week's episode looks rather fetching. I hope they sell loads of 'em.