Just like we all forgot about the War Doctor in the seven months between John Hurt's cliffhanger introduction and the anniversary special. Tom Baker, Peter Davison and David Tennant also failed dismally because we forgot all about them in the long gaps following their regenerations. Colin Baker, however, benefited greatly from a rushed introduction, full of creative decisions which were best made with great haste.

NO evidence for any of this.

I believe Doctor Who would benefit from at least two people show running to split the workload but most of what you say is simply assumption.


Yeah, course they will. The audience are as dumb as a bag of rocks.

Dear The Judge. Thank you for thinking of us "non-British" viewers with this query. In short (yes) for us viewers (here in the Antipodes at least) this will impact us. Due to the threat of downloading, we now get Dr Who pretty quick after being shown in the UK. Last season was only a week after! Which is great. So that means it was recently an autumn/ winter screening for us (which too was good as others have mentioned the show suits this). So moving to a UK autumn will mean moving to a Southern hemisphere spring (which isn't quite as good here (sports/ season)).

What I really have a problem with is the chopping & changing and the lessening number of shows. Why can't they keep it constant & do more shows? They can in the States. I've raised this already in another thread & I still don't buy the response: "but they have more money & more viewership for their sci-fi shows". Dr Who is watched globally to greater audiences & has far more money spent on it than ever before (even with inflation), but they produced more & I believe better quality shows/ stories, and for a shoe string in comparison (in the mid 70's at least).

The only show which has been remade with much more spent on it than the original that is vastly better than the original is Battlestar Galactica (IMHO).

I pissed me off is essentially us fans got ripped off getting a 2009 & 2013 series with these specials & split series.

I wish we could get back to a April start so it leaves a while before we get the christmas episode.

One thing I am sick of is these missing episodes delays because of supposedly the new series airing.

Please check your facts before ranting, no one got "ripped off"; the specials year was RTDs idea because most of the crew were moving on from the show at the same time he was. The amount of time it takes to get a whole new production team/ crew assembled meant that without the specials year we would have had precisely 0 Doctor Who on the tv. So thank God RTD came up with something. It's hardly like RTD was sat at home thinking "MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAA NOW THE WHOVIANS WILL HAVE LESS THAN THEY USUALLY DO THIS YEAR!!!!!! 3>: D" He isn't a supervillain aiming to deprive you of episodes!

Similarly the split series 7 was due to production delays; even if they hadn't split series 7 there would have been no time to make and air a whole series 8 before the 50th, and as Matt intended to leave after that, we would all have lost out in terms of new stuff to watch during 2013, which wouldn't have been right IMO. On top of which the whole of series 7 wasn't ready to go at the time 7A aired anyway.

Also, the BBC have stated over and over again. There is no conspiracy. They have had NOTHING ELSE returned to them. Whilst I don't doubt there are more missing eps waiting out there to be discovered (and Phil Morris thinks so) the BBC aren't super villains. They want to make money so delaying announcements makes absolutely 0 sense.

So you're sick of new episodes not airing often enough, but you're also convinced that the airing of new episodes is somehow delaying the announcement of missing episode recoveries?

As for the gap between Series 8 and Christmas 2014, a continuous run of twelve or thirteen weeks from the August Bank Holiday will end around the middle of November. According to doctor blue box on this thread, the goldfish-like British public will have already forgotten the finale by Christmas.

I prefer docyor who in the Autum so hopefully they'll stick to this schedule

If I'd known them for 50 years under various different guises, of which this is the latest one, then yes, I would wait patiently.

you and every other die hard fanthink like this, but I'm talking about the casual viewer perspective

Wasn't there quite a large gap between Tennant's first appearance and his first full episode at Christmas? I think he proved to be quite popular with casual viewers.

that was four months, nothing like 9 months

I just double checked and it was six months.

Some people could forget all about him for all it matters.

Because it doesn't. Not until his first episode. That's when opinions should start to be formed - when the character is *there*

"What kind of line is Kidneys?! I don't like him already! grumblegrumble"

By *there* I of course mean Tennant's "did you miss me?" and Smith's "Basically, run."

okay, longer than I thought at a quick estimate, but this is still the longest in the entirety of new who that we've had to wait between regeneration and new doctor's first full ep

would rather not have the wait, but in all fairness, I see what your saying

Blimey, I'd hardly call 9 months a hiatus! And people are humans not goldfish, so I suspect they'll remember what the Doctor looks like, even after such a lengthy gap.

I always used to love Doctor Who in the autumn and winter - something about the dark evenings just made it work. It was a beacon of light through the seemingly endless winters. Gave you something to look forward to in the run-up to Christmas, and made January bearable.

Having said that, I liked the way the Christmas episodes always seemed to be just around the corner. Shame I found them a little bit rubbish more often than not.

Moffat kept millions of fans and casual viewers waiting and wondering about Sherlock jumping off a roof for TWO YEARS. Did everyone forget and stop caring? No. Record numbers tuned in. Can we not tar all viewers with the attention span of a five year old who has been at the blue smarties? It makes less sense to properly introduce the new Doctor for one episode, allow everyone to like/love/loathe him and then snatch the show off air again for months.
Patience.

Ah, but the face of Sherlock was already known by that point, as opposed to Mr. Capaldi. After all, it's not like he was already in - oh, hang on, erm. Ok, then it's not like he he's been in it twice as the Doc - no, ok. Right, well it's not like they unveiled him in some prime time BBC1 - what's that you say? He was? Blimey. I'd forgotten about that. It was what, 5 months ago? Sure it wasn't 9?