Cool News
BBC America Has A Christmas Opportunity For AICN Readers!! For 6 Hours Only...TORCHWOOD!! PLANET EARTH!! DOCTOR WHO!! More!!
Merrick here...
BBC America is offering you a chance to snag some cool swag for Christmas! This contest is simple: below you'll learn what items are included in 1 (one) prize pack being offered to AICN readers by BBC America.
This is a micro-version of some of our previous contests...the name of the game here is to e-mail me (via the special e-mail address provided) at, or closest to, a pre-selected time between now and 4:59:59pm CST USA (today, 18 December).
ENTER HERE!!!
The person whose e-mail arrives at, or closest to this pre-selected time will receive the items enumerated below.
BE SURE TO INCLUDE YOUR NAME & ADDRESS IN YOUR ENTRY FORM! This is to better expedite prize shipment only - no spam lists, etc. Also, BE SURE TO SUBMIT FROM A FREQUENTLY CHECKED E-MAIL ADDRESS!! If we need to reach you and can not do so quickly, we'll move on to the next closest correct entry.
Here's a look at what's waiting for you:
...and there's evidently a DOCTOR WHO T-shirt being offered as well (I'l ltry to get a pic of it before contest's end.
More information about the title being offered in this giveaway, as well as many other cool DVDs and whatnot, can be found at BBC America's webshop (HERE).
That PLANET EARTH DVD is pretty awesome. If you haven't seen it yet, check it out. It's exhaustive, exhausting, and amazing. It's also available on Blu-Ray, but the Blu-Ray is not being offered in this contest.
So there you have it! The clock is now ticking - good fortune to you, and have fun!
--- Follow Merrick on Twitter! ---
ENTER HERE!!!
...and there's evidently a DOCTOR WHO T-shirt being offered as well (I'l ltry to get a pic of it before contest's end.
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+ Expand All
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WHOO HOO
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is always more expensive where I shop than other TV series, so this is good news.
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Keeping up Fucking Appearances. Of the utter quality UK TV has produced and Keeping up Appearances is on AT ALL? Fuck me.
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So, fuck you indeed.
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Is without a doubt the worst sitcom in history. I would rather stick rusty needles into my bell-end whilst being raped by a rhino than watch it.
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I think 'My Hero' is the largest and indeed smelliest turd to have come from the BBC, but the choice is enormous. Why you Americans choose to watch our shit like Torchwood and Doctor Who is beyond me. Blackadder is a jewel in a massive sea of cack.
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I think KUA and MH are tied - both are equally bad.
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Dec 18, 2009 12:35:45 PM CST
Anyone seen the ads for BBC's DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS?
by richard_gere_raped_my_gerbil
Looks great. Eddie Izzard's in there!
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DOCTOR WHO has three consecutive Hugo Awards and two BAFTA Awards. If only more shows were that bad.
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Doctor Who was designed to be a show for kids and teens...the fact that it is enjoyable for whole families is what makes it great.
I am interested to know what you think is great family entertainment... -
Only good thing i see for sale on that list...
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/ programmes/b00plcl4
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What a krap channel. Here in the greater Sacramento metropolitan area, it doesn't matter if you are on Comcast, AT&T, or DirecTV, the channel looks worse than a VHS tape recording set at EP mode. It is a travesty of a channel. And as for BBC America HD, who the hell has that channel available? The last I heard, only Time Warner Cable in New York City is carrying it. Yet the chuckleheads at BBC World Wide Americas has decided they need to boost the ratings of third tier digital plus platinum BBC America channel by giving them exclusivity of Doctor Who over the current home channel of SyFy which is in probably 100% of cable homes in America and just about every provider offers their HD channel. Good job, BBC World Wide Americas. You suck and you continue ripping off American fandom just as you did back in the 80s when you bought Lionheart Television, jacked up the fees to carry Doctor Who on PBS through the roof which caused almost all the stations to drop it, and then forced that hokey traveling convention on the fans which caused the Doctor Who Fan Club of America to go under due to your own actions of trying to create a rival official fan club to rubber stamp the shlock you were peddling to us. Say what you will about NBC Universal/SyFy and the pending "merger" with Comcast, they still suck less than you.
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And G4 got worse ratings than the TV Guide Channel and the Golf Channel.
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I meant no offence to anyone with the affliction of liking Keeping up appearances....ha! Her name's "Bucket"....very funny. There's SO much better out there from the UK. The original Coupling, before Jeff left - I know they showed that. Things they won't have showed that are great and worth looking out, The Armando Iannucci Shows, Time Tunnel, Garth Marenghi's Dark Place, Mitchell and Webb - loads.
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Are these the preferred mode at AICN because it requires the least amount of work, or what? Because if you think about it, it is not as fair as a random drawing contest. I think it's a sucky way of doing it.
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..."Children Of Earth" was actually pretty good. It's like they looked at the first three seasons of TORCHWOOD, realised how bad they were and upped the quality by 200%. Honestly; check it out. I dismissed everything TORCHWOOD related until i watched it.
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And it fucking rocks. I dunno what you're on about unless you have a crappy TV or crappy cable provider.
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Dec 18, 2009 3:37:48 PM CST
BLANK is shit! I can prove it by my lack of a coherent argument!
by wickedjacob
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...who likes keeping up appearances. I must say i'm surprised to find a 60 year old, demented, blind, tasteless mong woman posting on an AICN talkback
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Children of Earth was the third Torchwood series.It is, I agree head and shoulders above the first two.
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One of the best shows that Americans don't know about. Makes 24 look like shiite.
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are the only decent things on that list. Doctor Who is shit 70% of the time (mostly whenever the grand moff has nothing to do with it) , Torchwood is just shit full stop.
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I have a Sony Bravia 42" LCD with DirecTV. My TV does not suck but BBC America certainly does. But BBC America on DirecTV looks just as sucky as it did on Comcast. Their feed for Northern California is atrocious. VCDs look better than their SD feed and their HD feed is non-existent here. If you don't believe me, you can see the postings of plenty of other NorCal'ers complaining about how much BBCA sucks over at doctorwhoforum.com. Other than the SFX, "The Waters of Mars" sucks because once again it is another lousy Russell T. Davies episode where he tries to ape Moffat's writing and falls flat yet again. Torchwood never compared to Angel except with Children of Earth and the end result is they ruined Captain Jack as a character. Hell, Jack's characterization in Torchwood was never as good as it was in Who. Davies is a poor-man's Joss Whedon - and I'm not even a big fan of Whedon - and one day the majority of fandom will come to realize this.
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Fantastic picture crippled by sucky shows for the most part. But at least Doctor Who looked decent on it in SD. And at least SyFy could be televising "Planet of the Dead" and "The Waters of Mars" in HD to nearly 100% of the US unlike BBCA who is televising it in HD to Dumpwater, FL and that's about it.
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You want to see something ridiculous? Watch Gwen Cooper supposedly firing off her hand guns in Children of Earth. Can't BBC Wales find a trainer who actually knows how to handle weapons or have the atrocious British gun control laws doomed those skills from the sacred realm once and for all?
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1) BBC America has gotten to the point where they are now airing episodes of DOCTOR WHO one day after they air in the U.K. ONE FUCKING DAY!
2) BBC America actually advertises that they have DOCTOR WHO in numerous promos and other media. Don't believe me? Check out recent issues from DC Comics. Siffy, meanwhile, rarely aired commercials for the show when they had and never even featured it in their own bloody magazine.
3) BBC America has episodes of the show on their On Demand channel, something Siffy never did because (as far as I can tell anyway) they don't even have an On Demand channel.
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Lynxpro, I couldnt agree more with your assessment of BBC WorldWide Americas and their infinite suckage. I had the unique displeasure of meeting with the top dogs from their NY & LA satellite BBC Americas offices (our company once created a channel 'brand makeover’ for them) and first of all, as a fan since my youth of some of the BBC’s output from England that aired on PBS (e.g. Doctor Who, Red Dwarf), I was shocked by how incompetently run their US business is. Exhibit #1: They were spending millions of $$$ alone on BILLBOARDS for their series but I KNOW FOR A FACT the series they were promoting got less than 40,000 viewers in prime time! (Compare that to a prime time network flop that gets 5 MILLION!) Thats the thing we later found out with research (the hard way) – their viewers are almost exclusively 65+yo Emmy voters in NY & LA...or Emmy voters who are British ex-pats! In fact when another gigantic check would arrive for our surhvices, he creative director I worked for joked to accounting about rushing to the bank to make sure the check cleared...because there is no way they were ever going to make that kind of money back selling ads for whatever kitchen product Billy Mays was hawking on their channel.And then the executives we worked with all fell into the stereotype of the stuffy insufferable British prick variety. When we were in their NY office there was a shrewish old British woman whose main job in every meeting seemed to be to disagree with any idea we had; she would scrap plans at the last minute and then expected us to redo our entire campaign from ‘the drawing board’ (without additional recompense, against the terms of our contract .) Their LA office was ALL British people with HUGE egos and none of them seemed to have a clue what was going on, but they were all very good at pissing us off and making our jobs difficult (I could go on). If we hadnt already been making money hand over fist from them, we would have dropped out a long time before the end of the campaign. But the real travesty is like you mention the channel is of terrible quality while the programming itself is often of the highest quality. Rather than ever pay the premium for their channel, you can just do like I do and make a quick easy hack to the BBC.CO.UK website media player (and see things when they air in England) or just upload the torrents like anyone with a laptop newer than 2004 can do. My last point: If your in England and your reading this, we love your shows but we can’t stand paying for BBC America! You should complain to your taxpayer funded BBC channels that your taxpayer British pounds are going towards defaming your reputation in this part of the world!!!!
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I wont spoil it but. Russell t Davies got a backlash for the departure of Certain torchwood character. from the gay community.
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Look, I'm all on board with the lack of availability of BBCA-HD and whatnot (though the SD version looks decent on AT&T in the midwest), but going on a rant about how DWFCA got put out of business?
A life. You should get one. -
I have to agree with Lnyxpro. The picture quality that I get for BBC America, from DirecTV is runny, smelly, diarrhea shit. I'm watching WATERS OF MARS right now and it looks like the broadcast of a fucking VHS video tape. No, wait, scratch that -- even that sounds too good to describe it. It actually looks like an OLD VHS video tape that you wore down in a VCR through continual use AND by running it over a damaged playback head. Lynxpro is right: if this was on SyFy, at least the broadcast standard would look acceptable. Seriously, I've come to believe that BBC America operates like Woody Harrelson in 2012 and broadcasts out of an RV with an antenna next to it that's parked in someone's driveway.
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Dec 19, 2009 9:03:40 PM CST
Waters of Mars = MORE gayness from Russell T. Davies
by starship captain
Oh, and it cracks me up that Russell Davies has to work gay characters yet again into a DOCTOR WHO episode. I'm watching WATERS OF MARS right now, and I cracked up when Yuri (the Russian astronaut) is talking to the Black girl, while playing a tape of his brother calling from back on Earth. In turn, the brother is complaining that his "husband" spends too much money and just bought a car that's too big for them and they need to save more as a couple.WTF? Everyone talks about DOCTOR WHO being a family friendly show, yet can't Davies get through ONE episode of Doctor Who without ramming his personal politics and pro-gay marriage views down everyone's throat? I'm sad that Tennant is leaving, but Davies overstayed his welcome around minute five back in the first season. Good riddance!
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Gotta say, as much as I loved the HD on DirecTV when I had it, the SD video quality on almost ALL channels was utter shit. Downscaled to 480x480, craptacular bit rate...blech.
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If a one-off remark about a guy having a husband isn't "family friendly" in your view, then perhaps you should re-examine your bigotry or whatever. Then again, since there's no *logical* reason to oppose gay marriage (in other words, if you're opposed to it yourself, why do you care if others do it), there's probably not much point in asking why you think a child shouldn't be exposed to the idea.
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My POINT was that Davies does this SO much and SO consistently that it's become truly laughable and utterly ridiculous. It's reached the point of being a big thumb that sticks out and causes people to snicker -- and I don't mean in a good way. For the last two seasons (and all through TORCHWOOD) Davies' gay political stances have been forcibly rammed down viewers' throats like the cock he so desperately wants to suck. As I said, the man can't make it through ONE episode anymore without making sure he throws something in. Note to Davies: WE GET IT. You're gay and support gay issues. Now shut the fuck up and stop writing/producing shows that always come to a screeching halt due to some hammy "time out for a gay pride" moment that you perpetually feel obligated to put in. It's gotten heavy-handed and tiresome.
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Why would one get so worked up over a character's offhand mention that his brother has a husband? There was nothing more to the reference. Nothing salacious. Nothing but the implication of a simple reality that seems to upset you so much: Gay people exist, and they fall in love and get married. So why shouldn't they be a part of a story, even as a mundane detail?
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1. BBC AMERICA *SHOULD* BE ABLE TO NEGOTIATE A SWEETHEART DEAL WITH THE BBC PROPER TO GET THE EPISODES TO THE USA THE SAME DAY AS THE UK DEBUT BECAUSE THEY ARE *FUCKING* OWNED BY THE BBC AND SYFY IS OWNED BY NBC UNIVERSAL YET "THE WATERS OF MARS" IS AIRING 1 MONTH AFTER THE UK AIRING. 2. WHO GIVES A FUCK THAT BBC AMERICA ADVERTISES THE PROGRAM WHEN THE SD CHANNEL IS NOT PART OF BASIC CABLE BUT STUCK IN THE THIRD TIER DIGITAL PLUS PLATINUM BRACKET AND THE HD CHANNEL DOES NOT EXIST OUTSIDE OF DUMP WATER, FLORIDA; and 3. BBC AMERICA HAS THE EPISODES AVAILABLE ONDEMAND BECAUSE THEY GOT A DEAL FROM THE BBC - which SyFy didn't - BECAUSE THE BBC FUCKING OWNS THE CHANNEL AND NBC UNIVERSAL OWNED SYFY IS OBVIOUSLY SEPARATE. I'm sorry I had to put that in all caps but it appears a lot of people fail to understand why giving BBC America exclusivity to Doctor Who in the USA is a big fucking mistake. SyFy is available almost everywhere and usually in the basic cable package; BBC America is not because they cannot seem to negotiate their way out of a paper bag and are kicked up into the higher brackets because each cableco seems to have to carry 40 fucking Spanish language tv channels in the basic package because those subscribers are poor and the companies don't want to be sued for being racist for making them pay extra for their heritage channels because our government is full of a bunch of fucking politically correct pusses - unlike the French - in that they are afraid to actively *encourage* people who illegally immigrate to our country to speak our [unofficial] official [in practice] common language.
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I brought up the past regarding the DWFCA to make a point that BBC Worldwide Americas has done nothing but fuck over American fandom since the 1980s. Moving Doctor Who from SyFy to BBC America is just more of the same. The same goes for having the stones to charge $100 for a DVD box set or encoding the Blu-Ray disc releases in VC-1 [instead of AVC] and then only encoding them in 1080i instead of 1080p. What Doctor Who needs in the US to get to critical mass is to be accessible to the public. You don't get that by dumping SyFy to go to a wholly owned channel with 1/10th the audience base. Those BBC Worldwide Americas douche bags told the British press recently that American fans would be willing to spend $10 to watch *Torchwood* online on the same day UK fans get to watch it. Who exactly would pay $10 for a single episode view of *Torchwood*? I wouldn't even pay that for *Angel* back in the day if that were an option and *Torchwood* is a poor man's attempt at aping *Angel*. I doubt Ben Edlund would even bother to wipe his own ass with a Torchwood script if it were laying around the bathroom of the *Supernatural* set when they accidentally ran out of toilet paper.
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Since when has The Doctor worried about breaking the laws of time? Until RTDWho, he was always a RENEGADE TIME LORD! That's the point. His own people have put him on trial for his life twice for it. He sought to interfere and actively change things for the better which obviously changed the time line every time his feet were not planted firmly on Gallifreyan soil. Yet in RTDWho, The Doctor has to debate actually saving the humans from an alien invasion from Mars. WTF? And then the ungrateful human captain - who pleaded with him to save her ass - kills herself after he saves her life and deposits her back on Earth in reaction to The Doctor's earned bravado? Please oh please get us to the Moffat Era faster and banish this hack writer from Whodom forever more. His "talents" would be better spent writing a British adaptation of the Power Rangers.
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Why does BBC America feel compelled to hog so much screen space for their text ads at the bottom right of the screen for the majority of the program's broadcast? If you are going to do that, how about you make them more translucent - like SyFy - so it doesn't offend my eyeballs or block actual parts of the scenes? And what was with this alleged Graham Norton "Doctor Who" special that was only on for 30 minutes and had two other non Doctor Who guests on? Talk about false advertising!
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dont give RTD any ideas.
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Ignore that email I just sent you guys. LOL
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Rage against the Machine are this years UK christmas Chart toppers. nice as smashy and nicey used to say.
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Well apart from the occasional Doctor
Who episode ,in a kids ,horizontal, eyes half shut ,
kind of a way...
America shits on English Drama x10..... -
Oh, boo-hoo, someone has a different sexuality than you and you feel "fweatened." Grow up and kindly shut the fuck up. As one of the previous posters stated: Gay people exist, they fall in love and they GET FUCKING MARRIED. And it doesn't impact your pathetic little life one iota. So, again, kindly SHUT THE FUCK UP!!
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There's no "straight" agenda if a show caters to 90% of the public [okay, maybe that's an "agenda" of the "status quo"]. But when a show chooses to cater to 10% of the population, then it becomes a themed show. I have no doubt Logo would be playing Torchwood or even NewWho today if the BBC probably didn't want to overcharge them for repeat rights. But what I find interesting is the fact that RTD's pet project - Captain Jack Harkness - is better written by straight writer Steven Moffat than he ever has been by gay RTD. That smacks of RTD just using his sexuality as his shtick just as Richard Lewis uses his ethnicity as his. I've yet to see RTD write anything for Captain Jack that elevated his character to anything remotely what was done for Jemima Rooper's lesbian ghost character Thelma from *Hex*.
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Thanks for the insight on the BBC World Wide Americas wankers. Although I thought the abandoned rebranding with that atrocious logo was terrible. Why would they even consider dumping the iconic BBC letter logo? They must be snorting some high quality blow from all the money they're making off the US version of *Dancing with the Stars*. What I also despise on the BBC America website is the history of Doctor Who. They write that the 1996 tv movie was a "total flop". No it wasn't. Its ratings in the UK were almost as high as the 2005 relaunch even though the BBC had been selling the tv movie on VHS for two weeks prior to the broadcast. In the US, Fox did fuck up the broadcast by pitting it against the cliffhanger Roseanne episode, as well as baseball and basketball in many of the markets. It was still the most recorded tv show of the week according to the Nielsen ratings. Despite all the competition, it still had 4-7 million people watching. The true reason why it "flopped" is that the BBC had no balls when it came to going it alone and continuing with a series themselves after Fox said they'd rather go with *Sliders*. At any point between 1996 and 2005, the BBC could've brought the show back with Paul McGann but they didn't. They wanted to have an American studio foot the bill and them sit back and collect the royalty checks. True. I also find it embarrassing that NewWho's TARDIS set still looks like a piece of crap compared to FoxWho's TARDIS set despite it having been done a decade before. I guess you truly do get more bang for the buck up in Vancouver B.C. than in Blighty.
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Amen. For years, mainly British Doctor Who fans have heavily criticized [online] the portrayal of The Master by Eric Roberts yet his performance was far more menacing than what John Simm did in the role as instructed by RTD. The Simm Master has been nothing but a buffoon, and one who is even less threatening than Cesar Romero's version of The Joker. And considering the posted interview - from Sylvester McCoy's video tape - of what Paul McGann wanted to do with the character if the show had been relaunched, it is obvious where RTD got his best ideas from. McGann wanted to explore The Doctor's darker elements and tragedies. McGann showed up on set with a shaved head. In fact, if you watch McGann as David Talbot in *Queen of the Damned* from 2002, Eccleston as the 9th Doctor from 2005 looks like his spitting image. McGann got robbed.
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RTD as an atheist has also had quite the agenda during his tenure into making The Doctor as a substitute Jesus. That was quite evident in "Last of the Time Lords" which also had the ultimate anti-climactic showdown, so much so that it redeemed the mega disappointing Peter Petrelli/Syler showdown from the *Heroes* Season 1 finale.
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