To Be Continued…

Closing out ‘Dark Water’ with a ‘To Be Continued’ harks back to one of the greatest traditions of Doctor Who. While the two-part story has been seen only once this series, it used to be the case that every Doctor Who story would end on a cliffhanger, the scream of the theme-tune overlaid on the last moments of action, before the howling would start over the end credits.

It’s now a little-used tool in a Doctor Who script. There’s no need for a story to automatically run over four Saturdays, six Saturdays (or even over twelve or fourteen nights, both of which have been attempted in the life of this British sci-fi show). Instead Doctor Who follows the trend of the ‘arc’, with elements from one story dotted through the stories over an entire series of the show, only to tie them back up in the final episode

At this point the hardcore fans can point to ‘The Key To Time’ to show Doctor Who was there long before the current fascination with plot arcs outside of soap operas – and I’ll point out that this was an exercise that was never repeated until Russell T. Davis looked to ‘Buffy The Vampire Slayer’ to shape the return of the show in 2005.
Doctor Who, ‘Dark Water’ (image: BBC PRess)

Doctor Who, ‘Dark Water’ (image: BBC Press)

The show now has, like most television, a faster pace than the older seasons. Try introducing older stories such as ‘The Brain of Morbius’ or ‘City of Death’ to a modern audience and the slow and deliberate pacing (in modern eyes) will make it harder for those brought up on a diet of slick and speedy shows such as The West Wing, Spooks, and Spaced.

That pace was slowed even more by the cliff-hanger, asking the audience to think about what might happen next for the whole week.

The chat of the playground from those early shows is replaced with a flood of arguments on social media and online forums. Doctor Who fans are even more engaged than every with their show, but they are engaged at a level that would be unrecognisable even ten years ago.

The question is never ‘how does The Doctor get out of this trap’, but what does The Doctor do next? It’s noticeable that in the majority of recent cliffhangers on Doctor Who, very few of them place The Doctor in peril – instead they reflect a change in the storyline, the reveal of information, or a new focus on an existing storyline.

Moffat manages all of these in the first part of the two-part finale.

Looking at ‘Dark Water’, and looking beyond what is essentially a reworking of ‘The Invasion’ from 1968 (except Tobias Vaughan’s lead role has been replaced by Michelle Gomez’ this is what I see. A show that is confident in its past to look to it for inspiration and key moments, confident to look to other genre shows and take the elements that work for those programmes into the DNA of the show, and the utter confidence that it has that this is the way to tell a complicated story that deals with death, resurrection, power, emotion, hopes, fears, and body horror… to a family audience on prime time television.

Doctor Who tells stories. It tells them well. It knows it. And that makes it the most adept and adaptable television show in the world today. (Forbes)

And as person who grew up with TV as very different animal and no internet whatsoever (oh no! how ever did he survive such primitive conditions! 🙂 ) I see his point and as I concluded yesterday I liked the old fashioned “OMG!” kinda cliffhanger. It does remind me of Caves of Androzani Part 3 or Pyramids of Mars or other great cliffhangers.

The Cliffhanger is a dying and nearly lost art form because of the hyper-caffeinated nature of TV nowadays where everything has to finished PDQ because I have other things that require my hyper-activity.

I am happy but then again, TV was different back in the day. If you had 7 channels when I was growing up you were lucky. Cable had barely started when I was teenager and the big one was, if you didn’t see the program live– that’s it. Either don’t get to see AT ALL or you have to wait until thing calle Summer Re-runs when they would show some but not all of the episodes from the show during the summer before starting a completely new season in September (usually).

That’s it.

There was no after-life. No Nethersphere were you could download or stream the episode later on.

That was just it!

Period.

Which is why I find shows that I watched as a kid coming out on DVD so damned amazing because I really haven’t the in decades.

They may not be as great as from the eyes of child, but damn, it’s great to see you again anyhow.

But still many more than that still live only in my head and will probably go to dust with me some day.

There was this thing that was invented in the 1970’s called syndication, where they would show old show that were before your time or that you missed but you had to a) know about it and b) wait and see if the episode or show you wanted to see was going to come around in the first place. And if you missed it, you have to wait until the rotation came around again or watch for it because the rotation wasn’t rarely in order to begin with.

It was a complex game of cat and mouse, and usually you were the mouse! (And I’m not talking Jerry The Mouse either).

So, yes, kids today do have it incredibly easy. So do I. I don’t have to deal with things like missing an episode and having to wait for re-runs and the like. I like that.  I just have the experience of not having had it, which makes me the more grateful I think.

So we all get to sit back, talk, chat, and social media or little hearts out until next week to find out what happens next.

I like “To be Continued”.

I appreciate it’s vintage feel.

Much like the record albums of my youth…Vinyl, of course! 🙂

Global Scale

Technology is moving us closer to ‘event television’ on a global scale. Social media, a barometer for opinion, has changed the way we view television and broadcasters are pushing the envelope in terms of production and marketing to open up new channels of engagement with shows like Doctor Who.

While there are still problems in terms of social media such as second screen viewing – where even the smallest delay between original broadcast and fans consumption leave audiences with no option but to ‘go dark’ – and that’s not to mention spoilers; international viewers cannot say that their opinions have been ignored.

Ewan Spence of Forbes has been looking at how Doctor Who has regenerated television through social media. (Katerborous)

Forbes (8/30/14): Anyone keeping even half an eye on media trends in the last few years will be aware of the terms ‘event television’ and ‘second screening’. Television has always been social, but the twenty-first century has seen social groups remaining connected around the world through technology. That places unique demands on broadcasters, but it also places demands on the fans.

How can you join in the global discussions of a TV show if you can’t watch it live?

Outside of sports or major cultural events, there are very few programmes that are simulcast around the world. That said, big shows are starting to get air dates in international markets within a week of the initial broadcast, and some of the big hitters (such as HBO’s ‘Game of Thrones’) will get that rebroadcast within twenty-four hours.

And then there’s Doctor Who.

Last week’s premiere episode of Season 8 (strictly speaking the thirty-fourth year of production) was broadcast at 7.50pm in the UK on BBC 1. As soon as possible after the initial UK broadcast, channels around the world, including those in Germany, Switzerland, Turkey, Finland, Poland, and Austria broadcasted the episode ‘Deep Breath’, with BBC America joining in seven hours later with an evening broadcast at 9/8C.

It’s a far cry from the eighties where television stations could wait years before broadcasting the latest ‘hit show’ from another territory. Dedicated fans would wait for weeks to have a VHS video sent over from an obliging fan on the other side of the Atlantic, but that was still measured in weeks, if not months.

Same day broadcast is not enough for many fans. Even a five minute delay between the original broadcast and fan consumption destroys the ability for a successful social second screen experience. Why would you follow a stream that tells you what’s going to happen five minutes into your future? The choice is relatively clear-cut. Go dark and disconnect until after the show… or find  way to watch the show live.

That’s what countless fans did last weekend as Peter Capaldi took on the lead role of The Doctor, and I’m sure the fans will be doing the same this week as he goes ‘Into The Dalek.’

I asked the team at Twitter analytics platform socialbro.com to have a look at the location of Doctor Who related tweets over two main transmission times – the live UK broadcast from BBC 1, and the live US broadcast from BBC America.

Let me highlight the numbers from Brazil and the USA. Doctor Who aired at roughly the same time in those countries. Yet the US engagement numbers are far higher during the UK broadcast than the expected background chatter – Brazil’s fans maintained a consistent chat throughout the day, while US fans spiked around the same time as the UK fans watching the live broadcast.

The obvious conclusion is that a significant number of US fans are watching online through dubious means.  🙂

There are a number of factors that are going to get in the way of a direct answer to the question of how many fans do this. The sample size is a 5% sampling of the data extrapolated to 100% numbers, and of course fans will talk about Doctor Who outside of the program (every Saturday is Capal-day in the Spence household now!). But it is happening.

Part of the design of the internet is route round obstacles, Originally that was thought to be physical damage, but when you have dedicated fans who want to join in a global conversation, they’re going to use the internet to route round that obstacle as well.

The BBC is to be commended for doing their best to synchronise broadcasts around the world of Doctor Who, and the broadcast partners should also be commended (especially ABC in Australia, who do a genuine simulcast with the BBC at 4.30am in the Australian morning for the dedicated fans, before a more sociable repeat Sunday evening).

The problem of second screening, spoilers, and international viewers has not been ignored, but addressed head on. The answer that is offered now is far better than the answer offered to fans five years ago, and I suspect it will continue to improve until ‘event television; on a global scale will see live as the default position, and not reserved for ‘the very special episodes’.

The internet is not destroying television but it is changing television. That it is doing it through a fifty-one year old program that has continued to push the envelope of production, marketing, engagement throughout its history; with a mercurial central character who has two hearts, a screwdriver, and a love of everything; is just… fantastic.

Kasterborous: What can be drawn from the data is that the BBC and its fellow broadcasters around the world should be commended for catering to fans who do want to synchronise their viewing.

The advancements in technology and marketing have been a massive help for the show, evidenced by the Deep Breath screening, which was broadcast at 7.50pm in the UK, then as soon as possible after that on channels around the world, including those in Germany, Switzerland, Turkey, Finland, Poland, and Austria, with BBC America joining in seven hours later with an evening broadcast at 9/8C.

Doctor Who is at the perfect vehicle to advance smart broadcasting.

 

The Karen Explosion in Waiting

Trailer for Karen Gillan’s ABC series “Selfie”

Best line: “Social Media Obsessed Narcissist”. “Being friended is not the same as having friends”

TARDIS, The Arizona Regional Doctor Who Interest Society , the Doctor Who club here in Phoenix that I have belonged to for 24 years has nearly 200 “friends” but not even 2% of these “friends” show up to a meeting with real live humans. 🙂

I wonder if the all the social media obsessed are ready to be satirized and poked at? 🙂

Then out August 1st is Karen’s other role, In Marvel’s Guardians of  the Galaxy:

And now on sale in the UK, next week’s Radio Times