"I could never resist a countdown."

 

"Is this Neil Armstrong?"

Bill Potts, God Save the Queen, Doctor Who

My girlfriend Karli has been watching this year's season of Doctor Who with me, which is a wonderful thing for her to do.  I honestly feel that it's a labour of love, because Doctor Who is not always as approachable as it could be.  (Which is an odd comment to make about a mass market televison series, but it's generally agreed that Doctor Who may not be for everyone.)

The down side of this shared experience is that, due to scheduling issues caused by work, social obligations, grocery shopping, laundry, and all the other things that make up life as a couple, we're down a few episodes - the final episode of the season has already been broadcast*, and we've just recently watched Episode 9, God Save the Queen.

As you might expect from a program that's over 50 years old, there are Doctor Who scripts that rely heavily on nostalgia - in this storyline, they revisit the Ice Warriors of Mars, who made their first appearance on Doctor Who in 1967. Unfortunately, that's not enough to save the episode. This is one of those disappointing outings by the Doctor that has an intriguing premise, but which fails to follow through to an innovative and interesting conclusion.

The BBC production department versus...

I was also a bit disappointed by the BBC's set design for Mission Control at NASA. The episode begins with a NASA ground crew anxiously awaiting the video stream from a Mars probe. It's okay, but compared to something like the sets for The Martian, the BBC version comes off a poor second.

...The Martian's set designers versus...

But let's be fair, The Martian had a budget of $108M USD, compared to the £800,000 to £1M per episode** of Doctor Who, although obviously you need a lot more money to hire Matt Damon than Peter Capaldi.*** (No offense, Peter.)

On the other hand, NASA has an annual budget of $19.5 BILLION USD, and I don't know if the real thing is all that impressive.****

....the United States Government.

 Ah, but the actual NASA version is already just sitting there, no production costs involved - maybe the Doctor Who principals should have just flown over to Florida and shot a few minutes of video there, which would only have cost the BBC some equipment rentals and a couple of tickets on British Airways.  And I almost guarantee that they wouldn't need to hire extras - I'm willing to bet that there are more than a few people at NASA who would be happy to make a free cameo appearance in a Doctor Who episode.

- Sid

* And frankly, the BBC's YouTube™ channel makes absolutely no allowance for people who aren't up to date - have they not heard of PVR? Damn it, you could at least make the thumbnail frames free of spoilers!!

** Probably. I was unable to find a hard statement online regarding the Doctor Who budget, but there seems to be a general consensus of about £13M per season, give or take.

*** $25M USD for Mr. Damon's turn at Mark Watney, versus about £17,000 an episode for Mr. Capaldi's work as the Doctor.  And now you know why everyone wants to work in Hollywood.

(Actually, even with the conversion rate on the pound, that doesn't seem like a ton of money for being the last Time Lord.  By comparison, the stars on The Big Bang Theory pull in a million bucks an episode.)

**** To be fair, the Jet Propulsion Lab version looks a bit cooler (or least their photographer is clever enough to kill the room lights:

And finally, the original Saturn mission control - old school cool, but let's be honest, the gigantic screens were NOT part of the original setup: