Usually we here at TV Squad try not to post news when we don't have an online article as reference (except perhaps in the Spoilers Anonymous columns), but this is one I couldn't pass up. Plus, it will give Doctor Who fans a head's up with regards to this season's finale.According to Doctor Who Magazine (and repeated on several Doctor Who message boards online), the finale of Season Four ("Journey's End") is going to be 65 minutes in length, as opposed to the usual 45 or 50 minute length of the season's episodes so far. This length, of course, deals with the original broadcast on the BBC and not the American broadcast.
The question is: when it airs eventually on the Sci Fi Channel in America, what will the network do? Will they allocate extra time for the broadcast (as I hope they will) or simply cut the episode to bits? The Sci Fi Channel has cut down the time of Doctor Who episodes before, most notably with the Season Three finale "Last of the Time Lords", the original length of which clocked in at 52 minutes.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
6-26-2008 @ 1:35PM
Oreo said...
They will cut it AND have it on for 90 minutes.
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6-26-2008 @ 1:52PM
Ian said...
And last time they cut out my favorite line of the episode in favor of more commercial breaks:
The Doctor: It just shifts your perception a tiny little bit. Doesn't make us invisible, just unnoticed. I know what's it like: it's like when you fancy someone and they don't even know you exist. That's what it's like.
Jack to Martha: You too, huh?
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6-26-2008 @ 2:14PM
Akbar Fazil said...
they cut that? Other than the fact that since the show is not written with commerical breaks in mind the sci fi airings just loose the momentum of the episode with breaks I am very glad I do not watch the show on SciFi.
6-26-2008 @ 2:18PM
Ashley Boyd said...
Split it in two parts and put more adverts in?
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6-26-2008 @ 2:40PM
ggo said...
Well, the advertising dollar rules all... Why do you need some funny, well-paced lines when you could squeeze in that extra commercial with two mums talking about washing up liquid?
Torrents baby.
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6-26-2008 @ 3:02PM
Ian said...
I am just thankful that SciFi airs the series.
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6-26-2008 @ 3:06PM
Claire said...
and this is why i rent the seasons even after i've seen the episodes. still i'm hoping that they will realize cutting 10 or so minutes can ruin a episode, and leave it intact.
also any idea what day it's supposed to air here in the states?
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6-26-2008 @ 3:08PM
Akbar Fazil said...
probably not til august 1st. Schedule isnt out yet for that but based off of what is airing in July I see that being the air date.
6-26-2008 @ 3:31PM
chadthebad said...
In Last of the Time Lords they also cut the scene where the Master mockingly sings the Scissor Sisters song "I Can't Decide" while wheeling the Doctor about in his wheelchair.
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6-26-2008 @ 4:04PM
hikimori said...
They cut ALL episodes which air on the SciFi channel abd BBc America. The the UK running time 52 minutes from start to end credits.
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6-26-2008 @ 10:16PM
Gene Cowan said...
Well, actually, the running time for Doctor Who on the BBC is usually somewhere between 43 and 48 minutes. They're definitely not 52 minutes; although Christmas specials are usually an hour.
So far this year, the running times have been:
1:12 (Christmas special)
:48
:48
:43
:44
:44
:45
:45
:43
:45
:44
:49
6-26-2008 @ 4:15PM
Oreo said...
No they didn't, I remember that part.
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6-26-2008 @ 8:21PM
RobynM said...
My family and I have already made plans to completely rewatch this season when the box comes out. After the hack job they did on the season 3 finale and completely slicing off the postscript on Fires of Pompeii this season (to cite merely a couple examples), I have complete faith that they'll manage to butcher it somehow.
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6-26-2008 @ 11:43PM
haphamage said...
It's on SciFi? You can just download the ones from the BBC the night they air. Watching a tv show via broadcast... how quaint.
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6-30-2008 @ 6:11PM
Nimras said...
You can only download it from the BBC if you live in the UK. People in the US (with the shortened Sci-Fi versions) can't view it; you just get to watch the opening advert and then get a big, "This content isn't available" notice.
6-30-2008 @ 9:42PM
haphamage said...
I dont download it from the BBC, I think thats streaming anyway though I've never tried the iplayer. I download the one that airs on the BBC the night it airs and I can watch it or convert it from divx to mp4 to play on the AppleTV or my iPod if I'm not going to watch on my laptop.
6-27-2008 @ 10:34AM
Anthony Lynch said...
I'm so very thankful that the BBC has no adverts.
It sounds like programs get butchered to pieces in the US, just to get the ads in.
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6-27-2008 @ 10:36AM
Anthony Lynch said...
Although I just watch Doctor Who on the BBC iplayer,
so my point is moot!
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7-02-2008 @ 3:47AM
Uwe said...
Yeah, they do lose tons of build up when Sci Fi shows the episodes. I'm just hoping the American fan base is large enough that they realize stretching the episode out for 90 min and making it a "Sci Fi Friday Special Feature" is a much better move than cutting out 10 or 15 minutes worth of footage. Besides, if "The Stolen Earth" is any guide, there may just be too much in that episode that they honestly can't cut anything out or the episode will make no sense xD I mean the last episode was jam-packed full of action! I had to watch twice to make sure I didn't miss anything!
But yeah, it's either watching streaming copies on Veoh or downloading from RapidShare for me. But I do watch to support the Sci Fi showing in the hopes they'll one day air the episodes un-edited.
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7-04-2008 @ 12:52PM
James said...
The finale on SCI-FI will air Aug 1 i think at 8:30pm and it will be 90 minutes long. Since the episode has 65 minutes of content there shouldn't be any reason to edit it but to just add commercial breaks. The breaks may have to be longer since 65 minutes is a few minutes short of a normal 90 minute broadcast in the US. It would normally have approximatly 69 minutes of content.
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