Did anyone besides me see this story about scientists catching a black hole in the act of munching a star and think of “The Beast Shall Rise from the Pit,” the two-part Dr. Who episode (the first half of which just aired in Canada on Monday night)?
Speaking of which, I just learned from The Dr. Who Blog that that cliffhanger does not get resolved until January–not that the CBC bothered to inform anyone watching of that fact.
And while we’re on the subject of the unprofessional way CBC handles Dr. Who, don’t they have anyone on staff who could actually, like, watch the show and ensure that commercials are not (as they appear to be) simply randomly dropped into place without regard to narrative flow? In this week’s episode a commercial popped up right after a quick camera cut, so we got a fraction of a second to register the Doctor’s face–and not quite enought to figure out his expression–then we were looking at an ad for something or other (I don’t remember watch; all our TV watching is recorded so naturally I fast-forwarded through the commercials). And when we came back, we did not get the rest of that reaction shot, which means something was edited out to make room for commercials. That kind of editing has been blatantly obvious before. Bizarre, and frustrating. If editing is necessary because British TV and CBC commercial requirements don’t match up, at least make some slight effort to make it invisible to the viewer!
I remember the same thing happening when I used to watch Star Trek on CKOS out of Yorkton, probably at the time (late 1970s or early 1980s) the worst television station in the world. One doesn’t expect the same level of amateurishness from the CBC.
Or, perhaps, one does–which is sad.
1 comments
You can, ahem, acquire the entire season 2 of Dr. Who via BitTorrent, if you’re in the mood to see all 45 minutes, commercial-free.
I have yet to sort out CBC’s pay structure – either they should have ads, or they should take public money, but not both. They can afford to charge advertisers fees that the other stations can’t match, because they’re not subsidised by the government. If they moved (back) to their ad-free structure, your problem with their cuts would also disappear.