Nelvana's Doctor Who

[DG Valdron]

Nelvana's Doctor Who, Episode 4, Ancient Aliens

Opening scene - a fleet of saucers approaches planet earth.

Cut to scenes scenes of endless herds of bison roaming the American plain, in the arctic, wooly mammoths and rhinos look up at the shooting stars, elsewhere humans live in mud and thatch huts. The saucers descend on Egypt. The door to the lead saucer opens, and a trio of gray space aliens step out to greet the Pharaoh.

Next scene - the pyramids are being built. As the camera zooms in, diminutive gray space aliens are everywhere, pushing blocks, hauling them with ropes, wielding primitive stone tools as they struggle to build the pyramids.

In fact, everywhere on earth, from Easter Island, to Mesopotamia to Central America, gray space aliens toil as unpaid slaves to build with the most rudimentary techniques available to them, as humans plan and direct.

The Tardis materializes in the midst of the struggling aliens. The Doctor steps out, takes a look around and says "That’s not how it’s supposed to happen." He and Casey are surrounded by men with spears.

SERIES MONTAGE

The Doctor and Casey are among the grays, struggling to push a giant pyramid block up a ramp. As they work, they are talking.

"So aliens really did build the pyramids?" Casey asks.

"It appears so," the Doctor replies.

"I didn’t think that they would be doing it like this."

"Well, it’s obvious when you think about it. Earth was very thinly populated in ancient times. There wasn’t much manpower around. Suddenly, millions of aliens show up who barely eat or drink.... That creates a gigantic pool of surplus labour. So of course, people will put them to work in all sorts of ways, serving them, building monuments to each other, and so forth.

"But why do the aliens allow it?"

"As nearly as I can sort out their language, they have no choice. They’re stuck here. Their ships are drained of power and need to recharge."

"But still..."

"They’re not very big or strong, you may have noticed. And unfortunately, this is an age where the mighty enslave the weak."

"But they are aliens, why are they working in such primitive ways."

"Well, really Casey, you’re a sophisticated 22nd century Earth girl. If I set you down in the middle ages, do you think you could build a vaulted archway or a windmill?"

"What?"

"Precisely. Most of these aliens are just regular people, telephone sanitizers, manicurists, waitresses, accountants, secretaries, etc. They don’t automatically have impressive engineering or architectural skills, any more than most people."

They pause to watch one group of aliens try to push a stone which has tipped into a pothole.

"And they’re not an especially bright species."

"How is that possible, Doctor?"

"Oh easily, they may not be smart, but they’ve had a very very long time to learn how to do things like build spaceships. You’d be surprised what can be accomplished with time."

Just then a burly Egyptian guard near Casey looms menacingly, looming over her, club raised to strike her. "No talking! More working!" he cries. But before he can strike, the Doctor’s watch on the end of its chain whips around the club, binding it tight. With a yank, the Doctor jerks it out of the guard’s hand.

"I think it’s time to leave," the Doctor says cheerfully, taking Casey’s arm.

The two of them run off.

The Gray aliens look up, watching the duo run, and then return to work.

*********

Casey and the Doctor flee the Egyptian guards, ducking in doorways, running through tombs, hiding among statuary, posing as hieroglyphics. At one point, they are trapped before a chasm. But the Doctor uses his fob watch and chain to snare an overhead beam and swing across Indiana Jones style.

Eventually, hiding behind the back side of the sphinx, the Doctor and Casey lose the guards. They make their way back to where they left the Tardis, but it isn’t there.

Cut to, the Tardis on its side, being used by the Pharaoh as a couch on his pleasure barge. As he is fanned by space aliens.

Cut to, the Doctor and Casey surrounded by men with spears, once again.

"I hope this doesn’t become a habit," says the Doctor.

**********

The Doctor and Casey are chained to a dungeon wall, next to an old man in robes. It turns out that he was the Pharaoh’s advisor. The Doctor and Casey are listening sympathetically to his story of how he came to be in the dungeon.

"My device could do the work of a dozen men," he is saying, "but the Pharaoh only laughed and asked why anyone would need such a device, since any man could have a dozen slaves to do the work directly..... And here I am."

"Just as I thought," replies the Doctor, "we must get rid of these aliens, before they bring all human progress to a halt."

"How are they doing that, Doctor?" Casey asks.

"With an endless supply of slaves to do all the work, there’s no motivation to invent or create or develop anything. Indeed, we can see that even now, the Egyptians are giving up their inventions, to rely entirely upon infinite slave labour. That’s not good for them. Human civilization is going in reverse."

"And not good for the slaves either," Casey asserts.

"Very true," the Doctor replies, "I suppose we need to save humanity once again, and these aliens too."

"How do we do that?"

"Very simple," the Doctor replies. "I have K9's whistle in my pocket, all I need to do is take it out and ...."

They look at each other, all three’s hands are chained high above their heads....

*************

The Pharaoh is knocked off his couch as the Tardis doors open and K9 flies off, cruising over the pyramids and zipping into the dungeon. He finds Casey with the whistle between her teeth, the Doctor contorted upside down, with one foot resting on the equally contorted rump of the advisor. All three are twisted awkwardly like a cirque du soleil performance.

"Master?"

K9's lasers cut the chains, and the three of them ride the overburdened robot dog back to the Tardis on the Pharaoh’s barge. K9 disables the Pharaoh’s guards, while the Doctor retrieves his watch. Casey remarks sarcastically that they should have done that from the start. The Doctor responds that then they wouldn’t have seen so much of Egypt.

The Doctor orders the Pharaoh to set the slaves free. The Pharaoh, clutching his Staff of Horus, refuses.

The Doctor then tells the gray alien slaves that they are free. The slaves refuse. It turns out, they’ve signed a contract. They must serve until their ships are fully recharged and they can continue on their way.

The Doctor asks for the contract. The aliens produce a scroll, which the doctor unfurls with a flick of his wrist.... The scroll unrolls, and unrolls, and unrolls reaching the length of the barge and beyond.

"I see that the Egyptians managed to invent lawyers," the Doctor comments.

"What are lawyers?" The aliens ask.

*************************

The Tardis materializes next at Stonehenge, then at Easter Island, then Mesopotamia. In each place, the aliens are busy struggling to erect tall stones or strange conical towers. Human overseers crack whips over their head.

The Doctor, inside the Tardis turns to Casey and the Pharaoh’s former advisor and says that there’s something wrong. The aliens ships should have recharged long ago. Why haven’t they? And why are the aliens still here?

The Doctor resolves to locate the aliens motherships and examine it.
The mothership, it turns out is located in Ancient Egypt, and has been incorporated into the Pharaoh’s palace.

The Doctor talks his way and his friends way into the grounded spaceship/palace, and make their way past guards into the deep sections of the ship. They discover burly Egyptian blackmiths hammering away at the controls.

"Doctor, they’re trying to wreck the ship to make sure that the slaves will never leave!" Casey is outraged.

The Doctor is unperturbed. The alien ship’s systems are almost indestructible, and primitive savages can do no damage. After all, the ships were originally designed to be idiot proof... As K9 shoos away the glowering Egyptians, the Doctor examines the instrument panels.
It turns out that the ships are fully recharged, and have been recharged for some time. But the signal has not gone out.

The Doctor and his friends trace the machinery back to the signal generator, but the central antenna is gone. The Doctor notes that it would be a golden staff, about so long, with a power crystal at one end.

Just then, the Pharaoh comes storming in with his guards, and with his alien slaves, some of whom he has convinced to arm themselves with energy weapons. He demands that the intruders leave as these chambers are sacred to the gods. He points his staff of Horus at them, a long golden pole with a falcon’s head mounted on it.

The Doctor marches up to the Pharaoh, eyes flashing, and snatches the staff away. He smashes the head of the staff against the wall, and the Falcon’s head shatters, revealing the jewel beneath. The aliens gasp. The Doctor presents it to one of the aliens who replaces it in their ship. As the ship hums and powers up, aliens all over the world look up, drop their stone tools and begin to walk away.

"You are a very bad man," Casey tells the Pharaoh.

*********************

As the Pharaoh watches his palace fly away, he turns to his advisors and complains that the pyramids are half built. Who can they enslave to finish them? The advisors look at each other nervously.

*********************

The Tardis floats in space, as the Doctor and his companions watch the alien fleet swarm up into space and vanish among the stars.

The Doctor sighs that this experience has left its mark. Human progress probably been delayed by at least a thousand years, and all sorts of unhealthy ideas have taken root.

An alien face appears on the viewscreen, the alien leader thanking the Doctor for allowing them to continue on their journey. The Doctor asks them where they are going, what they are seeking. The alien replies that they are fleeing, fleeing to the ends of the universe.

The screen goes blank, and the ships continue to leave earth and vanish.
The Doctor remarks that the incident has given Earth such a bad reputation among spacefaring races, that it will be thousands of years before any other aliens will dare to come near the place.

Ah well, the Doctor dismisses the thought. He must return the Pharaoh’s former chief advisor. Egypt isn’t too friendly right now. Where would he like to be dropped off? Mesopotamia? The renaissance? Chichen Itza?

Casey wonders out loud what the aliens were fleeing from.

*********************

Final shots of the incomplete monuments on earth, giant upright boulders, pillars or cones, all of which are partially textured in increasingly obvious ways.

The image zooms in on ancient Sumer, city of a thousand Ziggurats. Ziggurats are steep conical structures, many partially built, some with platforms of varying states upon them. In the center of a city are a handful of gigantic stone edifices, completed ziguratts. Above the sloping sides with their rows of rounded semi-spheres, are several stories of platforms and above those a dome. From the upper corners of the dome project two bumps or horns, and from the center an eye stalk. In front of the Ziguratt’s body there are two stylized projections - a gun and a claw. They are giant stone Daleks.

*********************

ROLL CREDITS　
　

 

[DG Valdron]

Time Lords and Tardises, and a Doctor named Who




The demands and limitations of Saturday morning cartoon animation, Nelvana’s Doctor Who diverged considerably from the BBC series. The fundamental parameters that the series was operating on was quite different.

Briefly - Saturday morning cartoons were shorter than BBC episodes. 22 minutes compared to 25. This time was further shortened - the opening montage or theme song was intended to summarise the premise of the show in a cartoon, so that a child coming new would not be lost without backstory. This took anywhere from one to three minutes, closing credits might take a minute. Your 22 minute episode might actually be 18 minutes of story, or roughly two thirds of a BBC episode.

The American television half hour was 22 minutes because the remaining eight minutes of a half hour were allocated for commercials. The need to insert commercials at predictable intervals drove the story structure and framework. You didn’t want the viewing children to be confused, so plot points had to be clearly developed before a commercial break, and you wanted them to stay through the commercial rather than change channel, so the moments before a commercial had to be dramatically critical. The BBC didn’t have this constraint at all.

In fact, the BBC, with somewhat more time for storytelling and without the need to write around the artificial structure of commercials, had an added advantage. It’s Doctor who stories were serials, ranging from three to eight episodes. The result was complex layered narratives with multiple subplots, each peaking at a different point in the serial. There was room to develop not only the protagonists and antagonists but multiple supporting characters.

You weren’t going to get this in a Saturday afternoon cartoon format. The target demographic were kids between 8 and 14, with a lot of demand on their time. American television executives had very little faith in their ability or willingness to follow a sustained narrative over several episodes. There might be an occasional two part episode, but mostly, that was as far as they were willing to go.

On the other hand, repetition was a prized commodity. Repeating or continuing antagonists or supporting characters, often in relatively similar situations was desirable. So GI Joe regularly tussled with Cobra, He-Man duked it out Skeletor, and G-Force waged repetitive battles with Zoltar, and Inspector Gadget was always foiling the schemes of Doctor Claw. At times, an overall plot-arc could be hidden in the background and advance from one episode to the next, but the fact remained was that the episodes had to be stand alone.

The result was simplification everywhere. Simpler stories told much more broadly, there wasn’t going to be a lot of nuance because the kids weren’t going to understand nuance. There wasn’t time for complex characterizations for the main cast, much less supporting characters.

When it came to adapting Doctor Who as a Saturday afternoon cartoon, these factors were at work. The BBC live series was one with twenty five years of accumulated history and mythology. It simply wasn’t practical to fit that all in, no matter how much the purists might demand.

Take the name - the series insistence that despite the title, the character was simply ‘The Doctor’ didn’t hold up very well. In fact, for the first 18 years of the live action series, the character had been referred to as Doctor Who in the credits. The media constantly referred to the character as Doctor Who. Both the Cushing movies, the British comic strip and at least one of the Hartnell serials had the character as ‘Doctor Who.’ Like it or not, if the title was ‘Doctor Who’, that was going to be how children referred to the character, and what the character was going to be called.

The backstory of the Doctor as an alien Time Lord from Gallifrey was also subject to revision. In the Cushing movies, the Doctor was a terrestrial human, although arguably it was never really addressed one way or the other. In the British comics, the issue had been glossed over through much of the Hartnell era. The Nelvana cartoon was essentially silent on the Doctor’s origins and nature. He was simply a strange man with a time machine that was a funny blue box.

The Time Lords would appear, but the mythology would be condensed. Only Two Time Lords, Magnar and Cellus would appear, but their role would be simply to give instructions and orders to a resentful Doctor, usually on his viewscreen. The ceremonial robes of the Time Lords would be kept, but the elaborate collars would be dropped as being too ‘satanic.’ Rather than clearly identified as an alien race with their own world, Gallifray, they would be presented as a beings charged with keeping order in universe, much like the Guardians in the Green Lantern comics. The Guardians of the Doctor Who universe, would be reduced to being a ‘title’ in the Order of Time Lords. Time criminals might appear, but they would not be identified explicitly as renegade Time Lords.

As for the Doctor himself, he would be presented as simply a ‘time policeman’ taking orders from the Guardians of the Time Lords, and travelling through time and space in a ‘Police Time Machine’ called Tardis for convenience, which now meant ‘Time and Reality Detention/Arrest Service.’ The backstory of a broken chameleon circuit, or being stuck imitating an obsolete telecommunications installation from another country was just out the window.

There would be some ambiguity. The Doctor was not going to be just a ‘time policeman’, but a disgraced one. Earth was not just his assignment, it was his punishment, something alluded to occasionally, and good for flashes of resentment from the character, which the more sophisticated children might pick up on, but which could be happily overlooked without causing any confusion by the casual watchers.

The Doctor’s history would be essentially dispensed. That he’d fled Gallifrey, that he had stolen his Tardis, that he had a granddaughter, had gone through prior regenerations, all that was unnecessary and superfluous to cartoon. The Doctor might meet an older/younger version of himself, but it would not be a recognizable character from the live series. At best, there might be a throwaway allusion or reference to some adventures of the BBC series. But on the other hand, this Doctor might not have previously met either the Cybermen or Daleks.

There would not be any explanation for K-9, which would simply be a standard issue ‘Time Police’ robot dog.

Nor would there be any explanation for Casey Jones travelling with the Doctor. If the series extended past thirteen episodes, that might be addressed. At the same time, there’d be no specific allusions to prior companions. By the same token, if the series extended, Casey might be replaced by another companion, with no explanation for the departure or arrival committed to.

As for supporting characters, in Earthbound stories set in the present, the fat detective and the skinny sheriff would either alternate or appear together. Apart from that, a supporting character might be created and used for a single science fiction episode, though there was some hope to re-use a character's animation cycles.

Nelvana was prepared to risk one or two, two part stories. But everthing else would be self contained single episodes, capable of being shown in any order, with the possibility of continuing characters, but no iron continuity.

 

[DG Valdron]

NELVANA'S DOCTOR WHO, EPISODE 5, THE CYBERMAN MELTDOWN


Opening shot of the exterior of a nuclear power plant with the distinctive cooling towers. The image opens up to a group of Cybermen. There are several different designs, apart from the skeletal version, including a heavy duty truck like model, one with fused legs ending in caterpillar treads, another with arms replaced by exotic tools and torches, and another on metallic spider legs. The obvious leader is a tall Cyberman whose head is a swollen glass dome with an exposed brain.

The Cyber-leader explains that so far, their plans to convert Earth have come to nothing because of the interference of Doctor Who. Their latest plan will not fail, however. They will use Earth’s own vulnerability against it - there are nuclear power plants all over the world. Radiation is harmless to Cybermen, but dangerous to organic beings. The Cybermen will attack the world’s nuclear plants causing them to melt down. As the radiation spreads, humanity will have no choice but to upgrade.

One of the Cybermen asks, what of the Doctor?

The Cyber-Leader ominously replies that plans are already under way to take care of the Doctor and prevent his interference.

Camera pulls back to show that the Cyberman ship is in space, orbiting the Earth.

ROLL OPENING

The Sheriff is visiting his cousin the Detective in the big city and the two of them are walking along. The Detective is talking about the greatest burrito place on Earth. They turn a corner and and suddenly come face to face with a trio of Cybermen, classic metal skeleton types.

The Cybermen demand the lawmen give them Doctor Who. The Sheriff pulls his gun and shoots, but the bullets bounce off. The Cybermen repeat their demands. The Lawmen flee. There is a chase scene, as the Cybermen tear through walls, smash down doors, overturn vans and rip doors off of cars, continually demanding Doctor Who.

Finally, the Lawmen are trapped up against a brick wall, the trio of Cybermen closing in. Once again, they demand the Doctor.

From behind them, the Doctor announces that he is here. As the Cybermen turn to advance on the Doctor, he and Casey strike a heroic pose. He pulls out his fob watch and swings it on the end of the chain. The watch chain lengthens as it swings, wrapping around the Cybermen like a bolo. The Doctor pulls the chain and the cybermen are drawn into a tight knot, bound together by the golden chain. The fob watch dangles against a Cyberman’s chest.

The Doctor walks up casually. ‘Gentlemen,’ he announces, popping the watch open, ‘your time is up.’ He presses a stud on the watch, and electrical currents surge through frying the Cybermen.

‘That takes care of that,’ the Doctor says, rubbing his hands. He explains that they’re not killed, only knocked out. He doesn’t believe in killing. The Cybermen aren’t fundamentally bad, just misguided. The big question is why, they were looking for him. There are easier ways to get his attention, and after all, he can travel anywhere and any time with his Tardis.

Off in the distance, Casey screams and points. The scene cuts to a group of the deviant Cybermen binding the Tardis in a metal casing, and loading it onto a shuttlecraft. The doors open and K9 breaks free, calling out, and flying towards the Doctor. He is struck by a blue beam from one of the Cybermen and falls to the ground. Casey rushes to pick him up. K9's sensors flicker.

The Doctor rushes forward raising swinging his fob watch on its chain. But suddenly, the Fob Watch is caught in the metal hand of one of the trio of Cybermen behind them. They have gotten to their feet, apparently unaffected. It crushes the watch in its hand and drops it. The Doctor, powerless faces the trio of Cybermen. He demands to know what they want from him.

"Nothing." The Cybermen walk past him. He can no longer interfere with their plans. Therefore he is no longer relevant. The shuttle flies off, as the Cybermen leave, ignoring him.

Casey asks what is going on. Grimly, the Doctor replies that it might be the end of the world.

*******************

Back to establishing shot of the nuclear plant. A delivery truck pulls up at a checkpoint. Cybermen burst from the truck, overturning vehicles and smashing everything in sight. Ignoring a hail of gunfire, they march on the nuclear plant, while civilians flee in all directions.

The image pulls back to the Doctor, Casey and the Lawmen watching on a bank of television screens. This is the eleventh nuclear plant the Cybermen have attacked, the Detective states. Casey is holding the damaged K9 in her arms, a quiet voice announces repairs are under way. Casey observes that once they enter the nuclear plant, they don’t do anything.

The Sheriff says that they are trapping themselves, they can’t escape. The Detective notes that the Cybermen are almost unstoppable, they can walk through machine gun fire like it was a spring shower, he doesn’t understand what they are doing.

The Doctor tells them that they are waiting until everything is in position. They are taking over all the world’s nuclear plants. When they control them all, they will cause them to melt down simultaneously flooding the world with radiation and forcing every human to convert to cyberman or die.

The Sheriff says that they must take the nuclear plants back, and put heavy guards, time to call out the army. The Doctor replies that it will not do any good. The only way to stop the Cybermen is to strike their central control.

Where is that, Casey asks? The Doctor looks up.

**********************

Up in space, immense Cyberman ship hangs, shuttles full of cybermen leaving for earth. Inside the Cyber-Leader is addressing the assembled Cybermen. Thirty per cent of Earth’s nuclear plants are under their control, and despite increasing resistance, more are falling all the time. Soon they will be in a position to flood the earth with Radiation. The Doctor cannot stop them.

Just then a giant viewscreen turns on. Doctor Who’s face appears. The Doctor orders them to cease their plans immediately and depart Earth. This is his final warning. The Cybermen tell the Doctor that without his Tardis he is helpless. The Doctor warns that he is not without resources. The Cyber-Leader dismisses his threats as hollow, and tells him that afterwards, when humanity has converted to Cybermen, they will thank us. He turns off the viewscreen.

Back on Earth, Casey looks out from behind a video camera and asks that Doctor if he got that. The Doctor pulls out his watch, clearly bent and mangled, but still functioning somewhat, and checks it. Triangulated, the Doctor says. He knows where they are now, and how to access their communication codes.

The Doctor then asks K9 whether he was able to download the ship’s schematics while the channel was open. K9 confirms. He advises the Doctor that 40% of self repairs are completed.

The Doctor rubs his hands together happily. All they have to do now is get to the Cyberman ship in orbit, access their central computer banks, initiate shutdown, and the problem is solved.

The Detective asks how they are supposed to get into Orbit? Steal a rocket? Much too obvious, the Doctor replies, they will spot that coming. Does anyone have a car or something? The Sheriff tells them he has an old yellow jalopy. When he sees it, the Doctor announces that it is perfect. He pulls out his bent and broken watch, presses a few studs. It turns into various hand tools, all of them bent or distorted, until settling onto the form of a twisted wrench. Perfect, he announces. Time to get to work, after all, they only have three hours to the end of the world.

**********************

A rocket rises into the sky, heading towards the Cyberman Spaceship. The Cybermen watch it on their view screens. The Doctor’s face appears on the screens, telling them it is their last chance to surrender.

The Cyber-Leader mocks the Doctor for trying to reach them in such a pitiful vehicle. It orders the lasers to be armed. The Doctor protests. The Cyber-Leader says ‘Goodbye Doctor Who.’ As the Doctor cries out to wait, that they must listen, a laser beam blows up the rocket.

One of the Cybermen turns to the other and says he is sorry that the Doctor has been killed. He could have been made into a good Cyberman instead.

***************************



Image of a heavily modified yellow jalopy, Bessie, flying along the length of the immense Cybermen spaceship, passing under the vanes. The vehicle is packed - The Doctor, Casey, K9 and the two Lawmen are wedged into a cramped space. K9 has manifested a screen for the Doctor to talk to the Cyber-Leader which goes blank.

That was disappointing, the Doctor muses. He had hoped they would listen to reason. But at least the decoy worked.

Cybermen scanners have still not detected us, K9 reports, internal repairs 55% completed. Docking imminent.

The Detectives asks what they are supposed to do once they have gotten into the ship. Distract them, the Doctor replies.

Bessie flies in through the airlock, but instead of landing, simply flies down corridors bowling over Cybermen like tenpins. They drive through a Cyberman fabrication center, scattering components and shells. A Cyberman helmet lands in the lap of the sheriff. The sheriff and detective look at each other.

************

The Cybermen finally halt Bessie, converging on the car, they find it empty. Meanwhile, some very ungainly looking Cybermen, the Doctor and his companions, wearing bits and pieces of Cyberman armour and headpieces, sneak off to cause trouble.

Shots of the Detective and Sheriff pulling pranks on Cybermen, directing them down empty elevator shafts, tricking them out of airlocks. Plugging in and unplugging wires.

Cut to the Cyber-Leader, receiving one error message after another, expressing increasing frustration. The malfunctions must stop, it announces. They are only ten minutes from commencing worldwide melt down of earth’s nuclear plants. At that moment, the countdown clock freezes, and an error message appears. What now? The Cyber-Leader complains.

Do you have a moment, the Doctor asks, removing a Cyber helmet. Suddenly, he is surrounded by Cybermen of all sorts, most pointing weapons at him. The Doctor is unperturbed. He pulls out his watch, still bent, and checks it. ‘Last chance,’ he says, ‘and this time I mean it. Call it off.’

The Cyber-Leader dismisses his demand. The countdown cannot be halted, the Cyber-Leader states. Earth will be converted, it is more than inevitable, it is good. The Doctor is in their power, he is helpless, and he will be witness to Earth’s transformation.

Ah, but the Doctor admits he’s been doing a little rewiring while he’s been on the ship. The countdown clock is now tied into the Cybermen’s auto-destruct. When it reaches zero, Earth’s nuclear reactors will not melt down. Instead, every Cyberman in the solar system will terminate.

The Cyber-Leader tells the Doctor he is bluffing. The Doctor shrugs, pulls out his watch, he pushes a stud. The error message disappears and the clock begins counting down. He pushes another stud, and the countdown doubles.

The Cyber-Leader accuses the Doctor of bluffing, but with much less certainty. The other Cybermen are looking at each other. How could the Doctor get into their computer systems.

The Doctor presses another stud. K9 appears on the viewscreen, numerous cables are connecting K9 into the Cybermen’s computer banks. Ready? The Doctor asks. Ready, K9 replies.

Your time, the Doctor announces, is up. He is about to close the watch, when the Cyber-Leader cries out ‘Wait.’ They surrender. They will shut down and leave Earth forever.

*******************

The Tardis materializes back on Earth. The Doctor, Casey, a fully operational K9 and the two lawmen step out. There is a Cyberman waiting for them. Behind it, Cybermen are marching into the last of their shuttles. It tells the Doctor that the Agreement will be abided, the Cybermen are leaving, it is the last.

The Cyberman asks the Doctor why he fought them, when they only wanted to improve the human race and make it better. The Doctor replies that they went about it wrong. They tried to trick people or force people or bribe them. They never offered it as an honest choice, but always tried to take people’s choice away, it was about freedom.

The Cyberman tells the Doctor that freedom does not compute. The Doctor says that was always their problem.

The Cyberman wishes the Doctor good luck for the future. Earth needed what the Cybermen could give humanity. Without them, how will they face the Daleks. It walks away.

As they watch it depart on its shuttle, the Detective asks the Doctor how he was able to rewire the Cyberman’s self destruct so quickly.

The Doctor says he couldn’t. That’s much too well protected. Instead, he just got K9 to patch into the communications systems. He bluffed. Machines don’t understand bluffs. They congratulate the Doctor.

The Sheriff asks a final question - ‘What are Daleks?’


********************

Production notes: Nelvana's third cyberman story had a tortured production history. It was originally scheduled to the third episode in the series. However, concerns over possible over-use of the Cybermen raised concerns. It was decided to move the story further back in the series, and run a couple of more light hearted stand alone episodes.

Following this, the episode was originally conceived as a two parter. A number of variant cybermen were drawn for possible toy applications, including the Cyber-Leader, the 'tread' Cyberman, the 'heavy duty' Cyberman, etc. At the last minute, in response to concerns from CBS which was carrying the cartoon, Nelvana backed away from the concept and recut it as a single episode, leading to an occasionally disjointed narrative.

No copies of the two part version survive, however, an extra length version of the episode was included with the two earlier Cyberman episodes on a 2006 VHS release titled 'Doctor Who versus the Cybermen'

 

[DG Valdron]

Hmmm. Not a lot of comments. But people do seem to be reading this. I would have expected at least some bitter outrage from hard core Whovians.

 

[ScrewySqrl]

Its interesting.

A 1986 run on ABC? Is this showing before, after, or bundled with The Real Ghostbusters?

I can easily see this as a companion to that show before Slimer ran away with it.

 

[DG Valdron]

Its interesting.

A 1986 run on ABC? Is this showing before, after, or bundled with The Real Ghostbusters?

I can easily see this as a companion to that show before Slimer ran away with it.

Not bundled per se, but following after the Real Ghostbusters, either directly after, or within the next two or three slots.

It's the Egon thing right?

Coming up next, we'll meet some of the talent involved in the production, maybe discuss a bit of the merchandising, and explore reactions to the show in both America and England, particularly when fans get their hands on the show's bible.

Meanwhile, in the next episode, Casey will meet a much older Doctor who might really be a much younger Doctor, in 'Whose Two Doctors.' And then the series second half will get darker as the Daleks dominate four of the remaining seven episodes.

 

[ScrewySqrl]

Not bundled per se, but following after the Real Ghostbusters, either directly after, or within the next two or three slots.

It's the Egon thing right?

Coming up next, we'll meet some of the talent involved in the production, maybe discuss a bit of the merchandising, and explore reactions to the show in both America and England, particularly when fans get their hands on the show's bible.

Meanwhile, in the next episode, Casey will meet a much older Doctor who might really be a much younger Doctor, in 'Whose Two Doctors.' And then the series second half will get darker as the Daleks dominate four of the remaining seven episodes.

'Partly the Egon thing, but more I see it as a show aimed at the upper end of the 6-14 bracket, just like Real Ghostbusters did. Who seems to be aimed the same way

 

[DG Valdron]

'Partly the Egon thing, but more I see it as a show aimed at the upper end of the 6-14 bracket, just like Real Ghostbusters did. Who seems to be aimed the same way

Quite right. It's kind of a crapshoot as to where on the demographic Nelvana would target. In OTL they made their big hit with the Carebears, and several of their later productions targeted young. But I think that those decisions were more about survival as a company than desire.

But then again, if you look at Rock and Rule, which I think defined the 'heart' of what Nelvana was about then and what they really wanted to do, their contribution to the Star Wars Holiday Special, their work on Droids, then its pretty clear that their preference would be the older end of the bracket rather than the younger. This was an animation company that had been invited to work on the Heavy Metal movie. Within the limitations of the format and marketplace, I think that Nelvana in the 80's, particularly the early and mid eighties, wanted to be and had the potential to be cutting edge and innovative.

Just a thought to throw out there, I find myself wondering about the potential butterflies of a successful or semi-successful Doctor Who cartoon, produced by a company with at least some tangible connections to Lucasfilm. Spielberg and Lucas were relatively tight. Would this have kept Spielberg involved in the Doctor Who revival project in the 1990's a little longer, would it have possibly engaged Lucas' interests, would it have lead to a slightly different take on the project and a better chance for the American movie or a possible series....

 

[Clorox23]

Hmmm. Not a lot of comments. But people do seem to be reading this. I would have expected at least some bitter outrage from hard core Whovians.

I really don't have any hatred over the idea of Doctor Who having a cartoon adaptation.

Hell, part of me wishes this came to fruition...

 

[DG Valdron]

The Office of the BBC Comptroller, April 7, 1985​

[ NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART, MAYBE YOU SHOULDN'T READ THIS.]

​

​

(Hey, it could have happened this way)​

​

​

Michael Hirsh and the BBC Enterprises Executive were ushered into Michael Grade’s office. To Hirsh’s surprise, Grade was a huge man or cyclopean proportions. Eight feet tall, and almost as broad, he wore a smartly tailored business suit which barely reached half way down his forearms. One eye was swollen and bloodshot under heavy brow ridges covered with a thick unibrow. He looked up at them and scowled.

"Who the duck are you twinks?" He roared.

"Excellent," the BBC Executive whispered, "he’s in a good mood."

"Did that little bunt Capaldi let you in? Damn that Intern. All he’s good for is shoving a piano up his arse and then getting dragged by my car through a field of burning barbed wire."

Grade glanced around peavishly.

"I"m a busy man," he said, "I’m the Controller of the BBC. Do you know what that means? It means I’m the Controller! I control.... Things. All kinds of things. Get out of here, I’m busy. I have an appointment to shag Colin Baker’s wife, and then I shall set fire to his aunt’s dog."

"Colin Baker?" Michael Hirsh said uncertainly... "Isn’t he..."

"A tosser," snapped Grade, "a quiffer, a yanker, an all about forklift, a vile squidge, a haemorhoid based lifeform of the lowest variety. There’s nothing in the world that I hate more than Colin Baker."

"Yes," the BBC Executive said smoothly. "Well, we won’t take up much of your time. We do have an appointment."

"You have an appointment?" Michael Grade whispered suspiciously. He squinted at the Executive. "Do I know you from somewhere?"

The Exec grinned bashfully and said "Well, yes, we do. You once stapled my head to a piano. Perfectly natural under the circumstances. You had no choice. I had to beg you to do it...."

"I staple a lot of heads to pianos," Grade said dismissivily. "It's practically expected of me. That doesn’t narrow it down at all."

"Well, anyway, it’s about the Doctor Who project. I, of course, represent BBC Enterprises. This is Michael Hirsh from the Nelvana Animation company in Canada, and their proposal to do a Doctor Who animated cartoon series."

Michael Hirsh was disturbed to note that at the mention of Doctor Who, Michael Grade’s bloodshot eye grew three shades more bloodshot and a prominent vein in his forehead began to throb tumescently. He did not think it was a good sign.

"Now, as you are aware, BBC Enterprises makes a great deal of money off of international sales of Doctor Who and related merchandise. More money, actually, than it costs to make the show."

Grade ground his teeth together, a sound like chalkboards fornicating.

"However, one are of merchandise, toys and such, do not sell especially well in the United States. Several toy companies which sell quite successful lines of Doctor Who toys in England have parent companies in America. These parent companies note that the toy designs, production lines, promotional material are all in place already ‘on the shelf’ as it were. They have approached BBC Enterprises with the suggestion that the lines could be profitably exported if there was a Saturdy morning animated series."

"So essentially, we are proposing that BBC Enterprises, not the BBC per se, authorize and produce a second, animated, Serial, with the assistance of Nelvana productions."

"Herm...." Michael Grade rumbled menacingly. I seem to remember some proposal of this sort.

"It’s been sent to you several times," the BBC Enterprises Executive said smoothly.

"What did I say the first time?"

"Bollocks!"

"And the second time?"

"Double Bollocks!"

"The third time?"

"Shag me with a three sided spoon, but this will never happen until the Queen grows a horsecock to sodomize Muammar Quaddafi."

"The fourth time?"

"You said you’d kill the next person who sent this proposal to you, using nothing but a carrot, a small vaccuum pump, and a jar full of ants."

Grade rubbed his knuckles against his chin, in a manner that could be mistaken for thoughtful. "I see, so I wasn’t exactly saying no, technically speaking."

"Indeed, Sir," the BBC Executive said brightly. "So we here at BBC Enterprises felt perhaps it was time for a personal meeting, to ahhhh clear the air, and examine the proposal in detail. My colleague has a full set of drawings and proposals...."

"You know what I hate more than anything?" Grade asked menacingly.

"Colin Baker?"

"Besides that."

"Doctor Who?"

"Besides that."

"Television."

"Besides that!"

"Kittens!"

"Besides that!!"

"Scotland!!"

"Besides that!!!"

"Creme de menthe!!!"

"You’re making fun of me you little quiff," shouted Michael Grade, seizing the BBC Enterprises executive by wrapping one immense paw around the squealing excutives head, he began swinging the hapless body against the wall, smashing it against furniture. Finally, in a ruputure of fury, Grade pulled down his trousers, rammed the head of the executive against his bottom, and commenced an interminable and thunderous breaking of wind.

"Is the air clear! Is the air clear!" Grade screamed over and over again, laughing hysterically. "Are we clearing the air for you?"

For sheer minutes, all that could be heard was a rumble of internal thunder. the executives panicked screaming, and the maniacal booming cackling of Michael Grade as he continually repeated himself. Finally, Grade threw the broken body of the executive into a corner, straightened his tie, and sat down.

He pressed the intercom.

"Jennifer, could you be a dear and send in a latte?... thank you."

Then Michael Grade turned his glowering gaze upon Hirsh, who was desperately glancing around the room for something that might be used as a weapon.

"Now... as I was saying," Grade said dangerously, "do you know what I hate more than anything, with the exception of Colin Baker?"
　
"Just for the record," squeaked the broken body of the BBC executive, extending a mangled corner. "I really deserved that. I had it coming. Anyone could see it. I’m so sorry Michael, I don’t know what came over me..."

"Shut yer yap," Grade snapped, "before I slap it full of my side of triple Grade A supreme beef, currently being reserved for Mrs Colin Baker."
He turned back to Hirsh, not waiting for an answer.

"I hate Canadians," Grade said.

"Canadians?"

"Yes," Grade sneered, "Pluckin’ Canada. Frozen boil on her majestie’s ass, the open running sore of Empire, the worst Dominion ever. You know who lives in Canada? Canadians - when those Yanks had their revolutionary war, there was a group of British subjects that they didn’t want and we refused to take back, so we sent them all to the most godforsaken and inhospitable collection of swamp, rocks, tundra, glacier and mosquito infested hell in the hopes that they’d die quickly and we’d have all memory of the miserable episode of the revolution expunged."

"But you know what? It turned out they liked it there! Flopping about in the mire, mingling with the french, in a land so disgusting and worthless we wouldn’t send prisoners there. No, we were stuck with Canadians, the entire revolutionary war being fought to determine who would get stuck with those potlickers. There’s nothing so vile as Canadians. Hate em all."

"We thought we'd ditched them when the Americans bought Alaska. There were were all prepared with maps showing the Alaskan border out to Newfoundland. But the goddammed licken-plucking yanks wouldn't take it. So there we are, stuck with Canada."

"I’m Belgian," Michael Hirsh said quickly.

For a second, Grade was nonplussed. His monobrow curled in the center, as if trying to squint, and his BBC executives wig slid to the side of his massive cranium.

"That will be good to know if I ever want some waffles," Grade snapped.

"I hate small talk. I’m an important man. I have things to do. Meetings to take. You think if I sat around making small talk, I’d ever get anything done?" He paused and then mimicked Hirsh in a boyish falsetto "‘I’m Belgian!’ Well, what do you want for that? A medal? Who the shark cares?

"Do you go around all day announcing your nationality to random strangers? You just waste everyone’s time as if no one else has anything of import. Well I won’t stand for it. No small talk in this office. It’s just straight to business! Business, and ruining Colin Baker’s life."

"Well...." said Hirsh, slowly opening and reaching into his briefcase, knowing that there were only papers and drawings there, but wishing desperately that he’d had the presence of mind to put a gun in. Perhaps he had and had absent mindedly forgotten? It seemed his only hope.

"So you’re a cartoonist," Grade said suspiciously.

"What?" Hirsh replied, taken by surprise, "well yes and no..."

"Pronking Belgians," Grade rumbled, "never a straight answer. It’s never a yes or no, its always equivocation and nuance and ‘ahhhh senor please don’t throw my children into that bonfire at the bottom of a cliff’ - yes, Cartoonist. Paper and ink and paints, moving pictures, all that rubbishy nonsense. I hate it..."

Hirsh froze.

"Well, let’s get down to brass tacks, my boyo, I’m a busy man, and I can’t sit around here forever with you using up all the oxygen. Some of the rest of us need to breath, what? Not Colin Baker of course. Why if I could, I’d load that art broker and shoot him into the sun, provided the sun had an arsehole."

"Hey!" Grade asked, a a thought having occurred to him, "does the sun have an arsehole?"

"I don’t think so," the broken BBC Enterprises executive replied, "but we’ll get right on it."

"Scratch that then," Michael Grade rumbled.

"So anyway, here in Britain, of which England is the only important part, we have this television program called Doctor Who, which basically amounts to a steaming tower of utter shite shaped like a horse cock. Now, the essential fact of the matter is that I have done the human race a great service by cancelling it... A fate, I assure you is far too good for it. Alas, had we a real TARDIS I could use it to travel time and space setting everyone connected with the show on fire and pissing on the remains."

Michael Hirsh looked at the BBC Executive.

"Unfortunately, it appears that the show has a few fans, retarded cock-weasels that they are, and these velcro eating snapple heads, some of them have been literate enough to complain.... About me!"

"The unfairness of it all, Sir!"

"Damned unfair!!!" Grade thundered. "Did you know, they all got together and released a song? 'Doctor in Distress!' God-lamb that Ian Levine, what a crass, mahogany piece of shite. Until I heard that, I thought nothing could be worse than the show itself. Little kids in Africa would volunteer to starve after they heard that, undoing all of Michael Jackson's good work. Damned unfair. Cancel the show, and they piss and moan about it like it was my fault."

Hirsh thought about mentioning that Grade had already said he’d cancelled the series, so it wasn’t like they were incorrect in saying that he had done it.... But then his life flashed in front of his eyes pre-emptively, particularly the part about Grade dropping his pants to fart in a BBC executives face which replayed several times.

So he said nothing.

"So here’s the thing. It may be that I might, and I loathe the conditional item, be required to uncancel the show. And I will tell you that before that happens, I will fry Colin Baker’s testicles on a barbecue skewer and feed them to wolverines. But it might occurr."

"So here’s where you come in," Grade said smoothly.

"Rather than un-cancelling that that Taj Mahal of burning maggot infested lard of a show, I shall divert the mindless drooling sub-worms who constitute Doctor Who’s devoted fandom by authorizing a cartoon version of the show. Which my friend..."

"He called me ‘friend!’" the broken wreck of a BBC Executive burbled in a corner.

"Shut your gob!" Grade snapped, "Before I tear it off and mail it express post to Timbuk-Too as a loincloth scrubber."

Grade turned back to Hirsh.

"That way I can tell the drippy little morons that there will be new Who, whilst I proceed to drive a stake shaped like a dildo modeled upon my own prodigious eiffel tower, through the show to ensure it never ever returns from hiatus."

"You can make your cartoon," Michael Grade said, "on the condition that Colin Baker or his voice or image not be associated with it in any way whatsoever. I hate the bunt. Oh, and I would offer the further stipulation that it must be the most worthless pile of steaming shite that you can manage, but that would be redundant since I don’t expect anything else out of you."

"Oh," said Michael Hirsh, "thanks I think. Uhm... If we can’t use Colin Baker.... what about Tom Baker."

Grade’s eyes crossed as he thought about that. "Nah, people like him. It might help your show. No, you can’t use him. You can’t use Davison either. Or Troughton. Or Pertwee. Or Cushing. You can use Hartnell if you want."
"Hartnell is dead."

"I knew there was something I liked about him," Grade rumbled. "Dead and all, I mean. Best thing about a Doctor Who actor. That and not being Colin Baker."

Grade reached out and seized Hirsh’s hand in his, the size difference being such that Grade’s hand encompassed Hirsh’s forearm all the way up to the elbow.

"Pleasure doing business with you. Remember, make sure it’s shite. The dribbling bog-suckers won’t know the difference anyway. Now get out of my office!"

Needing no further invitation, Hirsh bolted from the office, and stood there shaking violently.

From outside, the office, Michael Grade’s promethean bellow rumbled, "Jennifer, come and take this box of used prophylactics from last night with Mrs Colin Baker, I’d like them smeared evenly over Colin Baker’s automobile with an appropriate note. Oh, and give his parking spot to lepers."

The BBC Enterprises executive sidled up to him.

"Wow, was he ever in a good mood. It’s rare to see him this outgoing and cheerful. That went so well, don’t you think? Told you it would be a snap."

 

[DG Valdron]

Apologies to Monty Python and their Piranha Brothers sketch, by the way.

 

[DG Valdron]

In 1984, Michael Grade became Controller of BBC1. Prior to that he had worked with London Weekend Television and Tandem Productions television in the United States. He was one of the first outsiders recruited to a high post within the BBC.

Grade was, to put it simply, not a fan of British Science fiction. He had seen Star Wars, Star Trek, Close Encounters of the 4th Kind, Alien and Terminator. Compared to that, he’d seen Peter Davison’s ‘Warriors of the Deep’ featuring a tosh pantomime monster dragging itself across a studio floor. He was, especially not a fan of Doctor who.

His dislike for the series increased exponentially with Colin Baker. He disliked Baker’s costume and disliked Baker’s theatrical acting style. Even worse, during this period, Baker was going through a difficult divorce from his then wife Liza Goddard, who was living with Michael Grade during the period of estrangement. There was no question as to Grade’s sympathy or affection for Goddard and his determination that Baker not work for the BBC.

In February, 1985, it was announced that the series would be put on hiatus, following the completion of the season on March 30, 1985. On March 2, 1985, the Daily Star printed an article about the hiatus of Doctor Who, beginning a ‘Save Dr Who’ campaign. A flurry of letters were written to the newspapers and the BBC.

Meanwhile, Ian Levine, a long time fan and record producer, organized a ‘Doctor in Distress’ style record - along the lines of ‘Band-Aid’. Recorded on March 8, it was released March 15, 1985, and was absolutely terrible.

Under fire, Grade had no choice but to retreat, instead of carefully turning the hiatus into a termination in eighteen months, either throughout right execution or further postponements.

Under pressure and hoping to quell the outrage and fan agitation, Grade sought to placate fans by approving BBC Enterprises plans to license an animated adaptation of the series. The animated series could be run on the BBC during the hiatus period.

Fans were not impressed. Most British fans saw the move as another backdoor effort to kill the series, this time by substituting a tosh cartoon. A number of paranoid theories circulated in British fandom, the most prominent of which was that the animated series would be scheduled to minimize ratings, and that these continually diminished ratings would be applied to decisions regarding the live action program.

No less than Ian Levine denounced the cartoon. Colin Baker publicly wondered why a cartoon series did not employ him, or any other previous Doctor. British fandom reacted to the animated series with fascinated loathing. Almost any decision made by Nelvana was accompanied by screaming denunciations.

By early 1986, when the series began airing in Canada and the United States British fans were actually circulating petitions against the airing of the Cartoon on the BBC. The animated series had become known as Michael Grade’s Ant-Who.

Ultimately, the series was not aired in England, although quixotically, bootleg episodes from America circulated through fandom, usually to hysterical denunciation.

 

[DG Valdron]

BBC Enterprises

In 1979, BBC Enterprises was established as a commercial subsidiary to BBC. The mandate of BBC Enterprises expanded to include home video, audio recordings in the form of records and cassettes, films and merchandising, publications and international sales and distribution. By April 1, 1986, all commercial activities by BBC entities had been subsumed under BBC Enterprises.

By far the most profitable area of BBC Enterprises was Doctor Who. Between international sales and the licensing of books and merchandise, BBC Enterprises was grossing as much from Doctor Who as the series was costing to produce.

Michael Grade's antipathy to the show, and his decision to engineer its termination, early in 1985, starting with a hiatus, produced something close to panic in BBC Enterprises. He might not like the show, but to BBC Enterprises, it was their golden goose he was proposing to kill.

But there wasn't much they could do about it. BBC Enterprises was technically an independent operation and Grade had little say over it. But at the same time, it had no production facilities, no production experience or ability. They couldn't save Doctor Who themselves.

At best, they needed to figure out a way to maximize its revenue before the series was gone for good.

What BBC Enterprises was good at, however, was licensing. They licensed television shows for international distribution, they licensed BBC intellectual properties for toys, mementos, books and publications.

So.... theoretically, if a foreign company, somewhere abroad, wanted to produce a version of Doctor Who.... they could license that.

And in fact, there had been many American television programs that had been successful or unsuccessful remakes of British Programs. But Doctor Who was different. Doctor Who was a live, very well established program. A 'core' program from the BBC. Licensing a version of Doctor Who to another country, while the series was being produced at home.... that wasn't going to happen. It was a bad, bad, bad idea.

But Doctor Who as a series on potentially indefinite hiatus, riding the edge of termination... that offered possibilities.

There was still no option of a live action series of course. Nothing too close to the original. But an animated series? Perhaps something developed for the burgeoning American Saturday morning and afternoon audience? Something that could be used to boost licensing and merchandising revenue through toy sales?

Doctor Who toys and merchandising had been extremely popular in Britain, and there were numerous toy lines based around or inspired by the series. The bottom line was that there was a lot of established product available. Designs were completed, packaging was completed, even production lines. All of the R&D and development costs had already been paid. Essentially, everything was sitting on the shelf in England, waiting to be picked up by America, by American parent companies, affiliates or licensors. Even a tiny fraction of the American market would be lucrative.

All BBC Enterprises needed, all the toy-makers and sellers needed, was a company that could produce an acceptable half hour cartoon series for the children's market....

And Nelvana stepped forth...

 

[AltBBCGordon]

This is a grand wee timeline. I like it alot. Especially some of the internal BBC posts you've recently put up.

 

[DG Valdron]

Thanks for the feedback. It's a tough audience.

 

[eltf177]

Nelvana also did the BRACEFACE cartoon FWIW.

I think this would have been worth a look...

 

[Clorox23]

Two things:

A)

In February, 1985, it was announced that the series would be put on hiatus, following the completion of the season on March 30, 2005.

Self explanatory.

And B)

Under fire, Grade had no choice but to retreat, instead of carefully turning the hiatus into a termination in eighteen months, either throughout right execution or further postponements.

I take it this means Doctor Who doesn't get cancelled ITTL?

 

[DG Valdron]

Two things:

A)

Self explanatory.

And B)

I take it this means Doctor Who doesn't get cancelled ITTL?

Corrected.

This timeline basically continues the track... At the end of the 18 month hiatus, Doctor Who goes back on the air, but with financial constraints. The previous season had been reduced to 13 episodes, but with a trade off that the episodes were increased to 45 minutes each. The upcoming season is held down to 13 episodes but the time is reduced to 25 minutes. At the end of the next season, Michael Grade will have Colin Baker fired. After which Grade will move on.

A lame duck series, broken in many ways will linger on for three more seasons under JNT, before being cancelled.

However, there may be an interesting butterfly. In OTL, in 1993, BBC Enterprises tried to launch a Doctor Who special, the Dark Dimension. It never got off the ground, because BBC Enterprises had no production experience or contacts.

In this timeline, they've had Production experience and contacts through their affiliation with Nelvana, so they actually have half a chance of getting something up off the ground. Of course, there was a lot of politics and a lot of competing 'Doctor Who' projects around this time, getting in each other's way. So.... it's still iffy.

The other possible Who butterfly might be that the Shalka Doctor on BBCi might get a few more serials before ending up on the heap. Who knows.

 

[DG Valdron]

I'm fairly astonished by the lack of comment so far. It looks from the views that people are looking at it. But there's almost no comment. Is it all meh.

Anyway, new episode coming up. Casey steps into the Tardis and meets a completely different Doctor, an old man who claims to be the younger version.

 

[Orville_third]

I just rediscovered this and I think it's cool!
A few thoughts:
-In regards to Pertwee, he DID do Spotty's voice in SuperTed.
-Your redefinition of TARDIS left out the "I"- Intervention, perhaps? (Perhaps you could work in the CIA...)
-Is this show on ABC or CBS?
-Given that Nelvana is doing this, are they going to try and do some CanCon stories, or would it be CanCon enough already?
-Terry Nation worked on MacGuyver- which was filmed in BC.

Even though I liked Tom Baker, I could see myself watching this as a kid.