h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I speak of none other than the nasty Micheal Grade, past BBC controller. Recently interveiwed on British TV, he stated the reason for cancelling the series was that "he thought it was rubbish". Note the key word "He". Apparantly no consultation or other opinions were sought at the time.

Being a self-confessed SF hater, he lampooned the dodgy effects and acting of one or two carefully selected episodes in order to illustrate the point. He also dismissed all the letters of protest as being "sent from a total of three fans" and stated the viewing figures were dropping. Well, what do you expect if you install Langford as the Doctor's companion, much more scary than a Dalek - at least they don't try to sing.

Even though it was said with tongue firmly in cheek, he came across as an arrogant, self-opinionated boor who could give the Master a lesson or two in arch-evil.

So thank you MG, it's good to know that someone out there is confident enough to know what's good for the paying punters - soap operas and bloody game shows.

Calm down, Earwig, a lot of what Grade said on the telly last week was - frankly - cobblers.

He didn't axe DW, he postponed season 23 for nine months. The postponement was originally done to make room in the BBC drama budget for the launch of EastEnders. It was purely a financial decision and not a comment on the quality of the show... at first.

What happened next was that a couple of big name fans, encouraged by JNT, rang round all the press screaming the show had been axed - a lie - and forcing Grade onto the defensive. It was only at this point, after taking some fairly serious abuse from fans and the press, that he first criticised the show. And, let's face it, season 22 was neither a ratings hit nor very successful in terms of storytelling.

If the fans hadn't overreacted to the initial postponement, the show would have kept the 26-episodes a year format, the watering down of its dramatic elements wouldn't have occurred, Colin Baker would never have been sacked and it might have run into the 90s. (Having said that, it surely needed a kick up the backside in the mid-80s...) The final 'axing' decision happened after Grade had left the BBC.

So Grade isn't an idiot, just a fibber (and a faintly vainglorious fibber at that).

Well spin my nipple nuts and call me Frank. Thanks for explaining that Awix, I bow to your greater knowledge. It sounds much more likely and something only the BBC could be capable of doing. I agree that a few of the last series were poor (always been a Tom Baker man myself). I remember a rumour at the time that the BBC were running it down on purpose to dilute the eventual backlash - not too far from the truth.

What puzzles me is why would MG want to be credited for something he wasn't directly responsable for? I thought I was sad...

I think MG just nominated the show because a) 'axing' it is something he's still famous for, accurately or not and b) you can always have a good laugh at DW's expense, few programmes suffer so badly from having clips shown out of context.

A friend of mine suggested the 'running it down or purpose' idea to JNT at a convention and he pointed out that even run-down DW cost 1.6m pounds a year - no backlash would be so bad as to justify at least 1.6 million pounds simply to minimise it!

Hmmm, 1.6 million a year. Wasn't Next Gen trek something like a million an episode? Which would explain the difference. Now I come to write that number down I'm beginning to doubt my memory for such useless trivia, so I may be wrong.
While I'm here, what do people think to the online version currently running? Took me a while to get the hang of it, and I'm not sure where it is going, but I am enjoying it.

Some of the best Who was "run-down" Who, such as the whole Unit concept, filming on location for "Sontaran Experiment" and re-using props for "Ark In Space"/"Revenge Of The Cybermen" (okay, so "Revenge" wasn't the best cyberman story). They could have made Doctor Who look effective on a small budget if they had used a lot of Tardis-based stories after the Paul McGann pilot, and simply re-used the sets, or use the sets for long, 7 part stories so you do not need to spend that much money on a large number of props and sets such as the first season of Jon Pertwee's Doctor.
But will they.....?

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