Thanks for that link - bookmarked now! - and the analysis. I have a nice share of figures from the Matt Smith era of Doctor Who, and still check in some times to see if any more figures have been created. But as you noted, they haven’t been producing much since that heyday. Huge gaps in the line were left as they slowed down - no Paternoster Gang, no modern Cybermen, just to start with the obvious ones that would have sold very well. Your account of how they lost access to North America sounds like a sensible explanation for why they left money on the table.
The Draconians and then the Zygons set a high standard by which the Sontarans are distant also-rans for me. Fascinating alien species though! I remember something about the actor really suffering in the costume in those '70s appearances, although it was Tom Baker who got a serious fracture.
The actor (Kevin Lindsay) who played the Sontarans in the first two Sontaran stories had a heart condition, so that contributed to his discomfort. They had to climb a pretty big hill to film The Sontaran Experiment. While the other actors came down the hill for their lunch, Kevin stayed on the hill because it was too much effort to climb up twice in one day. (I've been to the filming location and can attest that it's a bit of a workout.) Sadly, Kevin Lindsay passed away less than two months after The Sontaran Experiment aired.
I'm told they say, never go back. But 'morning tv whiner' Chibnall doesn't look to have gone forward, so the return of RTD can't be all bad. RTD's programmes over the last few years have been excellent so perhaps he'll give it the kick up the **** it needs. I was at my sister's the other week and she said I should watch the Chibnall series. We watched four. Unremarkable at best. I realise at 50 I'm not the target audience as I don't buy toys to look at on the shelf. Perhaps better scripts will help. Stephen Graham for the 14th Doctor Who. If only...
Now that would be worth watching, sadly though I don't think he fits the BBC's current vision of what they think the Doctor Who demographic should be... Seriously though what RTD needs to sort out is the writing because for the past few years whoever the Doctor is they have been hampered by that.
The thing is, it wouldn't have required that much reworking to be a more satisfying story: you could withhold the revelation of how the Doctor saved Yaz from seemingly-certain death, intensifying audience curiosity; instead of having the nouveau-fam hanging round in their timestreams until the Doctor pops up to tell them what's happening in blocks of expository dialogue, they could proactively work it out for themselves; you could establish the consequences of failure (if they can't work out/remember how they were plunged into the past, they'll be subsumed or obliterated). Aside from Vinder's girlf, what the characters were actively doing in the dramatic present wasn't clear: they were just revisiting past events and waiting for the Doctor to pop up again. And the Doctor said she was "working on" a way to extricate them, but how, exactly? Spouting exposition in front of a shonky CGI background doesn't really register as meaningful activity. Chibnall drama: lots of characters passively hanging around waiting to have things explained to them.
Well I liked seeing the backstory of the dude who was posted to the desolate space station. Didn’t like much else.
Long time fan of The Doctor. Tom Baker is "my" doctor. Who can argue with a character who said "You know, you're a classic example of the inverse ratio between the size of the mouth and the size of the brain". The Master is the greatest enemy..... ever...
I disagree pretty much with your speculation. I think if the show was hugely popular then there would be a much better line of toys in the UK and ultimately someone in the US would find a way to sell them there, as people rarely give up the chance to make money, and there are huge margins in these cheaply produced kids toys. The fact that this isn't the situation is pretty much a result of no-one caring about Who anymore and a rapidly dwindling audience. They are not making and selling these toys as they know they can't sell them. I mean it's not rocket science. A hugely popular show = lots and lots of toy sales, a very poor show = hardly any toy sales. That fact that the toys that are made are store exclusives just reinforces this point. Shelf space is valuable to the big stores and supermarkets here in the UK and their buyers are not prepared to stock the toys clearly. There isn't a toy seller in the world who would willing limit their potential sales by only selling it certain stores, the truth is that's all they could get.
I think you’re a bit out of touch with the current toy market. First, toy manufacturing costs have been skyrocketing (even before the logistics issues that came with the pandemic), and toy margins are pretty tight these days, especially for licensed products. You can check out annual reports from Hasbro and Mattel to confirm that. (Short version: Hasbro would have had quite a few really bad years in the last two decades if they hadn’t had Wizards of the Coast’s Magic: The Gathering trading card game sales, which benefit from relatively low production costs compared to plastic toys… and with no intellectual property licensing fees.) And keep in mind that the big guys like Hasbro and Mattel benefit from economies of scale that teeny companies like Character Options just don’t have. Second, I have a hard time thinking of any toy manufacturers who haven’t been shifting their adult-oriented lines heavily towards exclusivity. I’d estimate that close to half of the releases in Hasbro’s collector-oriented action figure lines (Star Wars, Transformers, GI Joe) are retailer exclusives. And Funko’s very popular Pop! line has more exclusives than regular releases. Even a fair number of LEGO releases are exclusive or semi-exclusive (sold through only one retailer in addition to their own direct sales). The big difference in exclusive sales between CO and the others is that CO has been selling almost all of their exclusives to the same outlet, while the bigger players like Hasbro, LEGO, and Funko sprinkle their exclusives across multiple outlets (this one to Amazon, that one to Target, etc.). I do agree that if the current series were more popular, Character Options would have a lot more options when it comes to finding their way out of their predicament, but their inability to distribute a trio of action figures from “The Five Doctors” has little to do with how many people tuned in to the latest episode. If a better managed, better funded company than CO had the Doctor Who action figure license, I’m confident their products would at least be available in the US.
Hi, I was just wondering if by any chance anyone has every compared the animated releases on DVD vs Blu-Ray. I think most of you know for some reason we are only getting the DVDs in North America of the animated stories. Previously I've waited for price drops and ordered the Blu-Ray versions if it shows up on Amazon Canada shipped from a UK reseller. Somehow my local Walmart here always gets the DVD versions and I noticed they had the recently released Evil of the Daleks. I'm wondering if I should just pick that up instead of holding out for a Blu-Ray if I can find it (it doesn't show up on Amazon Canada). If the difference in video quality isn't too large maybe that's the way to go?
While I can’t answer your question as I haven’t done a comparison I’ve had great luck just ordering the Blu-rays from Amazon UK. I realize you’re in CA so I’m not sure if you have the same options. But price drops seem to happen pretty fast on Amazon UK.
Yeah I've done that also. But a year or so ago something changed as shipping is crazy nowadays when you order from Amazon UK. I checked this one Evil of the Daleks and currently it would cost 30 Euros with shipping. That's about $43 Canadian. The last couple of the animated stories I was able to order from a UK Reseller on Amazon Canada directly for about $30. Maybe this one will show up sometime.
IDK. To me, in this age of 30, maybe 60 minutes stories, it would appear difficult to avoid expository dialogue. It's not like the old days of 4x25min sets, where there was time for a story to breathe. So I can't get all twisted over bouts of data dumping. It's the lesser of two evils; I'd rather have the info "told" where there isn't time enough to "show it", than be scratching my head saying "WTF just happened".
Flux Part 3: Phenomenal. Chibnall has brought terror back to the Weeping Angels where The Angles Take Manhattan had turned them into a bad joke. Loved the return of Spoiler the Fugitive Doctor and Bel is a great new character I hope we see a lot more of. It was also one of the more complex stories maybe in the history of Who...and I loved it.
Smart **** comment for the day: I'd like to see Alex Brooker (of "The Last Leg" fame) be the next Doctor. I don't see why a regeneration couldn't go wrong, resulting in missing limbs. And the twist is there would be just as much running as normal. If this post offends anybody with missing limbs, I'm sorry, but I don't see why missing limbs makes you any less of a person or, in this case, The Doctor less of a Time-Lord!
Oxford Dictionary of English. Flux. 2. Medicine. An abnormal discharge of blood or other matter from or within the body. Archaic - diarrhoea or dysentry. Well, at least it has an apt title. Roll on 2023.
Reminds me of fan fiction. Probably the craap he wanted to write back when he was whining on daytime tv about JNT in the 80's.
