Have we heard anything about Class since the announcement.. Isn't it suppose to come out this year, there's been no announcements about cast or reports about filming, if its coming out this year shouldn't they be filming already...

I thought the point was to have it fill the gap (some what) of DW not being on this year, but if they haven't started filming doesn't that make it unlikely that it will air around late August early September where we would of thought the latest series of DW would be... Unless the show is quick and easy to film/make due to a scaled down production..

Can't say I like the idea of Class and kind of just forgot about it since the announcement but was reminded of it today and it got me thinking that I hadn't heard anything about it since said announcement.. so what's up?

It's only 8 episode rather than 12/13 so won't take as long to film as DW.

If they are using a real school to film in (which I presume they are) then they can probably only film there (given the bulk of the show will probably be set in the school) during school holidays.

So I wouldn't be surprised if filming doesn't start till June with the show airing Oct/Nov time.

I imagine it will have far fewer CGI effects, so will be quicker to film

I had imagined it would have been filmed before the main series, as that way they could have used the same DW studios and some of the crew, but apparently not

I recommend following Patrick Ness for snippits of Class info.


Also perhaps worth noting that he often refers to it as "the first series" - so hopefully it will surpass gap year filler status.

The idea doesnt sound great.

As the person who's reputation is somewhat intertwined with it being succesful or not, of course he's going to hope it continues and optimistically call it 'the first series'.

Ultimately, it all comes down to viewers. Even if every boss at the bbc has seen it before broadcast and thinks they are on to a winner, there still going to cancel if it is a spectacular flop in terms of viewing figures.

Out of all the many interesting and good ideas that could have been a Doctor who spin off, the whole thing sounds so dull, uninspired, and mostly aimed at kids, that I'm doubtful whether to even give it a try. I know that when the thread talking about it's announcement was around, most of the comments seemed to be of a similar unenthusiastic manner.

If many avid doctor who fans aren't that interested, then I think it will be a real struggle for the bbc to interest the casual viewer, especially when those same casual viewers have lost interest in the main show, as reflected by the ratings decline. The words 'doctor who spin off' won't be as much help to get people interested as they were back in the days of Torchwood and the Sarah Jane adventures.

People were interested in Torchwood? I thought everyone hated it, which I assumed was why the original format only lasted two series, and eventually was sort of lost in obscurity. Besides Children of Earth I never got the impression it was a particularly well-received show beyond having Doctor Who's name attached to it, especially that first series.

I think SJA did well though, at least people generally seemed to like it. To be fair, it was Sarah Jane.

you may of 'hated it' but it got commissioned for 4 series, which just on it's own shows it was successful, and also it's ratings went up substantially every series for the first three. I'm not going to try and defend miracle day, but the first three series were great in quality in my opinion, and successful in terms of factual evidence.

Anyway, my main point is that they were both in a better position to be advertised as a 'doctor who spin off' being linked to the Tennant era when they were first starting out, compared to the fact now that the main show is losing interest itself so 'doctor who spin off' isn't the great bit of promotion is was back then in my opinion. Class will have to have a strong premise of it's own to gain interest, and from what has been said about it so far it really doesn't sound like it has.

Class isn't aimed at middle aged Doctor Who fans anyway.

Patrick Ness is a very popular young adult author, there will be plenty of people who've read his books who will give want to watch the series. And no doubt some adult Doctor Who fans will give it a go too.

After all, how many viewers did SJA get? A fraction of the main show, as it was aimed at a different audience and not expected to get the ratings of a prime time BBC1 show

Whether I hated it or not doesn't have anything to do with it, I just never saw much love for the show when it was on and I still don't now. On the contrary I see loads of people who adored The Sarah Jane Adventures and it just seems to have aged a lot better.

But by this conclusion that 4 series is enough on its own to be a success, then 9 series into Doctor Who with at least two more commissioned (a number which will surely go up) would suggest that it isn't something people are "losing interest" in, surely?

Neither was SJA but it was still popular.

The actual viewing figures were a million or less, excellent for a children's show, but nowhere near the main show (which was at its peak of popularity)

Well, the switch from BBC 3 to BBC1, and change of format to 5 daily episodes, was always going to mean a rise in viewers from S2 to S3 of Torchwood! And thankfully so, as I thought Children of Earth was excellent; admittedly it's probably the only thing I'd personally go out of my way to watch again Torchwood-wise.

eta Well, maybe 'Cyberwoman' for a laugh. Or the PJ Hammond story. I liked that one. And the Helen Raynor episode with Gareth Thomas I enjoyed too, thinking back. Main problem I had with TW is that I didn't really care about any of the characters. Owen's dead, is he? Ah well. There we go. At least he can't use his 'sex drug' to get his jollies any more, the creepy begger!

Children of Earth was outstanding. Where S1-2 thought they were "mature" because there was loads of sex and swearing thrown in (often just for the sake of it), CoE was mature because it told a haunting and dark story that challenged us to think about how we'd all react in that situation and reminded us what humans will do to survive.
Basically the kind of story Doctor Who could never get away with on TV. If you took all the "adult" content from S1-2, it might as well have aired on CBBC, for what the writing was worth.

Still though, at the end of the day a television spin-off of Who aimed at adults is a little unreasonable, as it makes the younger Who fans feel like they're missing out when they can't watch it (and Torchwood did have strong ties to Who for its first few series). I can see where the appeal comes from in making it for a younger audience.

I agree completely. Apart from CoE, Torchwood was utter crap. I just hope it didn't foreshadow anything...

In contrast to what you saw/see I've never heard a bad word about Torchwood in the real world apart from miracle day. Besides, as I said, the ratings went up, and up for those first three series. That's not opinion.


My comment was that they are losing interest NOW, so it has nothing to do with all the previous years. It's an idea as you well know that the ratings seem to back.

It's still being commisioned because at the moment, obviously the ratings haven't dipped quite low enough to be worrying, and the show is still making them money. Plus they know that the show is imminently going to have a new showrunner who will breath fresh air and new idea's into the show, and possibly make it as popular as it once was, so it just makes sense that they'd still be confident enough to recommission it at the moment.

Really? ..you should probably of talked to more people

Torchwood wasn't a beloved show and had lots of criticism from all over the place, criticism that the writers/producers took on board and changed the show as it went into its second series.. It had/has some loyal fans who think its great but they are a small amount.

Lets not rewrite history the show wasn't a big success it was a moderate one, hence why there was no real hunger to keep it around by the BBC, it got a second series but with compromises of also putting out a friendlier version.. and also because of the good will the BBC had for RTD for making Who.. the third series was shortened down and put out as a one week wonder that could easily of served as the shows end (it was certainly intended as such).. that doesn't sound like the BBC put much stock in the show does it.. but COE proved to be a great success critically and did good ratings (which was a surprise) yet still the show couldn't get a 4 series proper and instead had to do a split American deal and that was its end.

No DW series has produced the amount of criticism that Torchwood produced, people complained about it left right and centre, but people forget about this just as they forget that these boards had loads of complaints and moans about the RTD years of DW... if you went only by these boards back then you would of had the impression that the RTD years were a big disappointment and a failure and didn't live up to what Doctor Who is or should be and half way through series 2 we had the fear the show was going to be cancelled because apparently people didn't like Tennant and series 2 and there were doom monger headlines about the ratings had dropped from where they were the previous series, how things change yet stay the same.... now of course that happens to Moffat's era, we humans love to voice our complaints (and I've had plenty with the last series)

Regarding Torchwood for me the only thing note worthy and of quality was COE, the rest is either forgettable, bad or at best decent (as I remember thinking that series 2 had a few decent episodes)

Looking back, there are a lot of very decent episodes of Torchwood that got forgotten along the way that I thought were very decent at the time, and hold up even now. Series 1's Out of Time and Series 2's Adrift, written by Catherine Tregenna and Chris Chibnall respectively explored some fantastic ideas in a way Doctor Who could not. There were others that weren't bad in that respect either.

The Sarah Jane Adventures was always a lot of fun, but it wasn't until its fourth series that I felt that it really started pushing things a bit further, and making some bold decisions that meant it wasn't always just 'that kids spin-off'. There were some rather adult concepts in there, some which it ran with and some which it chickened out of. Series 5 looked set to continue the same - exploring the adopted child angle with Sky, Luke coming out as gay, and the returning character of the Trickster in the finale who also dealt Sarah Jane difficult moral absolutes as well. It was good, but in a sad way I don't felt it ever peaked in terms of potential the way Torchwood did.

I hope Class actually tries to be a bit bolder and a bit less conventional. If it can get the right young actors in, and some decent scripts I don't care if it's set predominantly in a school. The power is in characters and story-telling, and the strongest episodes of the two previous spin-offs proved that. If it doesn't talk down to a young audience, it may even surprise many and be accessible to adults who have an inner-youth about them too.

The fact that you seem to have mostly disliked it means that you are more prone to assessing it as not particularly successful no matter the true case.

When people say things like 'Children of Earth was the only good/sucessful part of it' they see to completely ignore the fact that children of earth would never have happened if the first two series weren't deemed a success. Making a show an 'event' and clearing an hour in the schedules to put it on every night on a special week during prime time is quite risky, so they wouldn't have even considered such a thing if the show wasn't already considered successful and popular during it's first two series.

I hope the children or characters in this show aren't as annoying as the little terrors in Series 8 couldn't stand them!

It does indeed have a loyal fanbase, which is why Big Finish are essentially continuing the series, but I think time has shown it wasn't a very well-loved series, and without the Doctor Who attachment I don't think it would have got very far at all. I don't usually see people asking for it to return to be honest. My brother was a big fan as a teenager but has "grown out of it now" I think it's adolescent nature of thinking it was a grown-up show by using excessive sex and swearing was a big part of it.

There was definitely potential in there, though, and Children of Earth was its realisation. I just hope Class can appeal to the audience it's actually trying to.

I agree, and the fact that it is a show centered around them is one of the many reasons that the premise sounds pretty boring and potentially plain annoying as a show.

To me it's a pretty weak link to the main show to even be classed as a spin off. 'oh look it's a standard school, which the doctor just so happens to have visited a handful of times in the last 50 years'. Also, after seeing Clara there and it being a perfectly normal school, it's going to have one heck of an explanation to explain why now, suddenly, the school is subject to some sort of alien activity or otherwise every week.

That's not the case, people are capable of assessing the situation (without bias) by looking at what happened, nothing what I said had anything to do with my own personal opinion on the quality of the show, but rather the facts of the situation, as spelled out in my post. For example I can say that I thought series 6 of DW was an absolute mess (bar the odd great standalone) but I would never say it wasn't a success because clearly it was and helped increase the series appeal in America and world wide.

You talk about Torchwood being a success and if it wasn't it wouldn't have been given/earned a series 3 event, but that was clear sugaring up the situation, the show was cut down drastically from a full series to a 5 ep series, saying its an event is just clear as day advertisement talk to try and sell it rather than go yeah we are cutting the series down drastically. It aired in the summer which is known as the grave slot, that's not where they air their big shows that they want to be a success and for lots of people to see, that's why I said it was a surprise it did so well as it was during the summer and people wasn't expecting it to do what it did (and it went down critically well too, much like Sherlock's first series which was also in the summer because the BBC had no faith in it, until it exploded and then boom its second series is in the prime winter slot) this also took place during a period where the BBC were experimenting with formats and had several different dramas playing out throughout various different weeks, I remember there was a really good crime one starring Ben Wishaw I believe, so them giving Torchwood prime slot for a week in summer was no big deal at all, they also gave it to brand new unproven one-off dramas, so your points fall flat.

COE was designed as a potential end because they didn't know if it was coming back, again not a sign of it being this great loved successful show, if it was it would of had more series and guaranteed to like DW has for 10 years and counting.

Torchwood got a first series purely because RTD wanted it, and the BBC were hoping he and they could strike gold twice, with RTD name and guidance the BBC were hoping it would be a success and critically be popular like DW was, but you kidding yourself if you think its anywhere close to that or that it was widely popular the fact don't back this up, like I said it had a lot of criticism and was spoofed heavily and not in a loving way but more lets take the mic out of this stupid show way. Series one did well enough (but nothing great) to get a second series with changes, and like I said a part of it was also the goodwill between RTD and the BBC, the second series did ok improved on the first but it still was just ok... no matter how you spin it the interest was lost and COE was designed as an end, just watch it and you can tell, it was only because COE turned out as well as it did that the show managed to desperately scrape out a split funded 4 series that would be its last grasp of trying to hit...

The only one who is letting their personal opinion effect what they say about the situation is you (its quite clear from your posts) you enjoy Torchwood and that's good I'm glad you do but trying to make out it was the kind of success it wasn't is just foolish, and it doesn't take away your enjoyment of the show so don't worry about it, we don't have to validate what we like by trying to say/prove that's its a great success, which is what I guess your doing, in the end what does it matter, if you like something that's all that matters, my favourite band aren't the most successful band in the world and don't get much play on the radio, would I like it if they were/did, sure, but it doesn't stop/dilute the fact that I enjoy them and think they are fantastic/the best.

It was never going to have the span of who, and was likely never intended to. There are lot's of shows that have had 2-3 series in the UK that are heralded as classics.

I think we'll just have to agree to disagree on this one. To me, I see a show which ramped up it's ratings and popularity year on year for those first three series, so considering it on it's own merits, rather than trying to compare it to the extreme success of who (which many shows considered successful would look bad against), I consider it to have been a success, and the advent of the audio stories leads me to believe that there is still an appeal for the show to this day. Here is an article from just last week indicating this to be the case for at least some people.

http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2016-...rchwood-return


You on the other hand, deem it to have not been particularly successful, which any amount of talking isn't going to change, so fair enough. Each to their own, and a difference in opinion and perception is what keeps the forum interesting.

I possibly shouldn't have mentioned it - saved you all some time