From: ira2p@faraday.clas.Virginia.EDU (Iain Robert Asplin)
Subject: American Who?
Organization: University of Virginia
Distribution: rec.arts.drwho
Date: Thu, 27 Aug 1992 04:26:48 GMT


I felt it was time I offered my little opinion on the American
Who or Not American Who debate.

There can be little doubt that one of "Doctor Who"'s unique qualities
is its British production at the BBC.  I feel British production
ensures three essential ingredients all-too-often absent from American
television:

1)  Intelligent scripting (usually)
2)  First-class acting (usually)
3)  Creative freedom in almost all departments

I believe the main reason the British excel above the Americans in these
areas (IMHO), is the two countries have two different approaches
to television:
When television first began, each country approached TV from the mediums
that each country knew best and gradually over time have worked towards
much the same thing, but with these fundamental differences intact.
American television came at the new medium from what it knew best:
films and movies (Hollywood).  British television approached it from what
they did best: theatre (the West End).
Look at the early Hartnell stories and you can clearly see the almost
theatrical presentation present in those stories.  I believe Marc Platt
once referred to them as six-act plays rather than a television film or
movie.
In theatre the script and the acting necessarily must be the essential
ingredients, whereas in film direction and design look seem to be emphasized
more frequently, (often to cover up for bad scripts, perhaps?).

However, does this still apply these days?  And does all this really
essentially effect Who?

Personally, I am very glad that when the series returns it will most 
likely *not* be made by the BBC.  
The BBC has *never* been very nice to Doctor Who; it has always been
seen inter-departmentally as a nuisance and troublemaker, and in
recent years this attitude has heightened.
There is also the fact that British Bureaucrat Corporation is a better
term for the firm.  
The Beeb is now so bogged down with budget fights and labour unions
that I seriously think it will not and should not survive past 1995 when
it's charter comes up for renewal.  
There have been *SO MANY* STUPID, and INCOMPETENT decisions made at all
levels at the BBC that I don't think it deserves to continue existing,
and I am very glad that if some grain of sanity permeates the command
structure and gets them to license out Who once and for all that
the series will be clear creatively at least of the incessant infights
and competition for studio time that forever plagues the BBC.

As for outside producers, I have to really question if any of them
have the scope they would need to full-time produce Doctor Who.
I've already said the BBC are not saints, but they do have resources
when they can muster the paperwork to use them, as is evidenced by
the sheer number of times Who went on location.   By contrast, how
many times has Star Trek: The Next Generation ventured outside its
studios?  
I just don't think any little licensee has got the resources.

So where does that leave us?  

Let's back up a second.  Is American television all-bad?  Not quite I
think.  We do indeed have large monetary advantages over British 
productions, and visual effects are also something we do well.
What we don't do so well are scripts and acting.

So here's "my" humble ideal:

A partnership between an American production comapny and a British
company.  The American company would provide funding and facilites
for visual effects and perhaps a little creative say (we can get lucky
every once in a while!).  The show itself would be produced in studio
in England and on location anywhere they can afford to send the crew.
(Anyone can be in the crew).  Most of the creative juices should
come out of England however, writing and acting.  Directing can perhaps
be mixed up.
Once those on the American side learn by experience what the "magic"
of the series is, their ideas will rise to the levels of the British
writers certainly, and of course if their ideas already are that high,
there should be little reason for excluding them just on the basis
of nationality, but I do think that at least at first, a British writer
who most likely literally grew up with the show would be more
qualified to write a script than an American completely new to it
(or anyone else completely new to it for that matter).
For example, I've been watching the show here in America now for over
ten years and have literally grown up with it.  Perhaps I would be
qualified?  :)

 
				My humble thoughts,
						Steve



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