I assume this refers to Network (now defunct UK home video company) founder Tim Beddows, who passed away unexpectedly in 2023. I remember reading an article about the drama that unfolded thereafter (sorry, no links), which mentioned him having a large, private collection of vintage material, and the first thing I thought is that he probably has a missing episode or two of Who.
Obviously the missing episode of The Web of Fear is out there somewhere [0], and I recall speculation, probably from the Roobarbs web board [1] that "a couple lost episodes of The Dalek Masterplan are in private hands".
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Web_of_Fear [1] https://www.zetaminor.com/roobarb/forum.php
Unless you mean we manage faster than light speed, and we get ahead of it.
Another film that had a huge impact was monty python and the holy grail which was produced with a budget of 75p and ends abruptly because the money ran out. But they just turned that into a running joke throughout the whole movie.
It is a literal cop-out.
The regained interest surely allowed to assign more money to the series. DW was at the peak during 11th and 12th Doctors tenure with BBC America involvement in production - the low-quality is mostly gone and more CGI was utilized, and so the stories were good. Not mention the good chemistry between all main actors.
I suspect there’s a strong negative correlation between audience appreciation and production budget.
If you know you have 2 weeks and 100k to shoot an episode, and that everyone from the top down knows more money and time isn't coming, then you have no choice but to deliver it, no matter the corners cut. It's very hard to keep that attitude and pressure if people are aware that the budget limits are a polite fiction if you're convincing enough. (One might draw parallels to Steve Jobs' remarks about how the most important thing is not knowing when to say yes, but knowing when to say no.)
One might look at Team Cherry (Hollow Knight, Silksong) for an example of maintaining this - they made an enormous amount of money off Hollow Knight's success, and instead of scaling out the team markedly for Silksong, they mostly used the money as padding against any pressure to deliver it sooner, and worked at their own pace, to their own satisfaction.
But yeah, since 2023 Disney has been co-producing. It certainly explains some of the choices, but I don't know if they can be entirely blamed for the decline of the franchise.
BBC should back then pause everything and let fans take a break but instead they decided to continue with new companion. When that didn't go as expected they tried with new showrunner and Doctor; Moffat knew how to run this playground, Chibnall despite earlier good contributions did not. Then pandemics happen which resulted in delays - they tried with shorter series a'la classic show format of story split into parts but it was already too late. Not mention the stinking bomb Chibnall decided to launch to get few minutes of cheap thrills, nullifying over 50 years of creative contributions to this franchise.
Then there are socio-political elements but that just a minuscule of the whole problem.
For a casual viewer like me — I haven’t seen any of the new episodes — I’m struggling to find what this is referring to.
What happened with Clara and the doctors, and Capaldi, and what was this thing that nullified 50 years of the show?
The nullified thing is known as the “timeless child” storyline. The Doctor is retconned to not be a Gallifreyan at all and also the source of everyone’s regenerative powers (or something, I honestly forget). It was a totally unnecessary retcon but IMO much worse it was incredibly self indulgent. Most of the audience cares very little about the Doctor’s backstory, they just want enough setup to enjoy the adventures.
The older look doesn't bother me, though. The same thing happened with The Expanse.
The listing of seasons on Wikipedia goes:
Season 1-26 (1963-1989)
Series 1-15 (2005-2025)
A time traveling alien with a Northern accent investigates killer mall mannequins, one of which possesses a trash bin that then eats the costar's boyfriend and transforms him into a plastic golem. They get to the heart of the infestation, and the Doctor readies his weapon -- "anti-plastic," of course -- but desires not to use it as he struggles to talk intergalactic law with the malignant plastic blob. Then he runs off with the girl for adventures in future episodes.
Many of the flavor-of-the-week sci-fi concepts were quite good, and some were not. But anthropomorphic cat nuns! A giant head! Evil buckets with eye stalks! Killer statues that can only move when you're not looking!
Maybe it was some inner child aging out of me, but I feel like the show's writing took a nose dive about halfway through Peter Capaldi's Doctor.
Starhunter (Caravaggio) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starhunter
Farscape (Claudia Black before her voice was in every computer game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farscape
[0] if you need an American English translation, maybe "theater kid energy".
It wouldn't have occurred to me to call twee a foreign word. However, my feeling of its meaning was... very close to the gloss given on wiktionary (and marked "UK"):
>> Overly quaint, dainty, cute or nice.
The unambiguously American Merriam-Webster agrees:
>> affectedly or excessively dainty, delicate, cute, or quaint
"Characteristic of theater kids" conveys something different to me. Do you disagree with the dictionary gloss, or do you think it's a good description of how people might describe a performance by theater kids?
https://www.edwest.co.uk/p/the-unstoppable-rise-of-british-t...
(nb I'm not sure about the political analysis here but the citations are good.)
Ironically, The Chase often has rights clearance issues when it comes to home release because of this. Beatles music costs a fortune to clear, making releases untenable.
Double ironically. This is because the Beatles chose to mime to their studio record for Top of the Pops. If they had played live, it would have been less of a problem.
The scary thing with streaming services is that even modern productions can become inaccessible via legal means e.g. the 28 Days Later film wasn't available when the 28 Years Later film was being shot.
Personally, I'm not a fan of the BBC as their online iPlayer service is terrible at letting me (a license payer) watch older productions that my money has contributed towards. Even shows from a few months ago become inaccessible as their default lifespan is 30 days on iPlayer. Some real old classics are easier to find on YouTube than BBC's iPlayer service.
There's definitely a "dark ages" of TV shows and films from the 70s/80s/90s as digital recording wasn't as common, so unpopular shows will just slip through the cracks as no streamer will be interested and there won't be decent copies available to be pirated.
Perhaps letting a few 'slip through the cracks' is the Bbc's way of purging the "dark ages...of TV shows". A lot of strange things were happening around TV during those times.
Always great to see folks trying to save history (of any kind).