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Past Doctor Adventures

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Science fiction first appeared in television programming in the late 1930s, during what is called the Golden Age of Science Fiction . Special effects and other production techniques allow creators to present a living visual image of an imaginary world not limited by the constraints of reality.

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98-711: The Past Doctor Adventures (sometimes known by the abbreviation PDA or PDAs ) were a series of spin-off novels based on the long running BBC science fiction television series Doctor Who and published under the BBC Books imprint. For most of their existence, they were published side-by-side with the Eighth Doctor Adventures . The novels regularly featured the First through Seventh Doctors . The Infinity Doctors had an ambiguous place in continuity and featured an unidentified incarnation of

196-625: A 26-part animated children's series, K-9 , to be written by Bob Baker. The article in The Times also featured a picture of the redesigned K-9 for the animated series. Each episode will be 30 minutes long, made by Jetix Europe and London-based distribution unit Park Entertainment. According to a report in Broadcast magazine, the BBC opted out of involvement in order to focus on Torchwood , meaning that BBC-owned characters are unlikely to appear in

294-477: A fate for Ace that differed from later original novels, and Philip Martin 's adaptation of the Mindwarp segment of The Trial of a Time Lord included an ending that completely contradicted the scripted ending of the televised serial. After Virgin began its New Adventures and Missing Adventures line of original novels in 1991, it also published several additional novelisations both on their own and under

392-528: A female superhero, wears traditional folkloric clothes and tries to save traditional elements of Dutch society against the factory owners. Italian TV shows include A come Andromeda (1972) which was a remake of 1962 BBC serial, A for Andromeda (from the novels of Hoyle and Elliott), Geminus (1968), Il segno del comando (1971), Gamma (1974) and La traccia verde (1975). French series are Highlander: The Series , French science-fiction/fantasy television series (both co-produced with Canada) and

490-453: A group of Dutch space explorers and their adventures, De duivelsgrot (The devil's cave), broadcast from 1963 to 1964, about a scientist who finds the map of a cave that leads to the center of the Earth and Treinreis naar de Toekomst (Train journey to the future) about two young children who are taken to the future by robots who try to recreate humanity, but are unable to give the cloned humans

588-611: A growing number of followers. The British series, Doctor Who , has similarly attracted a devoted following. In the late 1990s, a market for celebrity autographs emerged on eBay , which created a new source of income for actors, who began to charge money for autographs that they had previously been doing for free. This became significant enough that lesser-known actors would come to conventions without requesting any appearance fee, simply to be allowed to sell their own autographs (commonly on publicity photos). Today most events with actor appearances are organized by commercial promoters, though

686-525: A guest star during the 2006 season, returned in a different role. A second major spin-off of Doctor Who was The Sarah Jane Adventures , created for a younger audience on CBBC , starring Elisabeth Sladen as the Doctor's former companion Sarah Jane Smith . It began with a 60-minute pilot episode co-written by Davies and Gareth Roberts , premiering on BBC One and the CBBC channel on New Year's Day 2007;

784-474: A large amount of superhero -themed animation, much of this adapted from comics series, while the impossible characters and settings allowed in animation made this a preferred medium for both fantasy and for series aimed at young audiences. Originally, animation was all hand-drawn by artists, though in the 1980s, beginning with Captain Power , computers began to automate the task of creating repeated images; by

882-423: A locally produced non-sporting event) high rating of 2.4 million viewers. The first series (Oct '06 – Jan '07) comprised 13 episodes broadcast on BBC Three, and was followed by a second 13-part series (Jan '08 – Apr '08) broadcast on BBC Two. A third series was written as a five-part mini-series titled Torchwood: Children of Earth , airing on five consecutive nights from to 10 July 2009 on BBC One. A fourth series

980-630: A man who becomes trapped in a telephone booth, while passersby seem unable to help him, won the 1973 International Emmy Award for Fiction. The series Plutón B.R.B. Nero (2008) was a brutal SF comedy by Álex de la Iglesia , in the line of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy , Red Dwarf , or Doctor Who , with 26 episodes of 35 minutes. Other series of the 2010s were Los protegidos (2010-2012), El barco (2011-2013), and El internado (2007-2010), all three inspired by North American productions, with minor SF elements. The latest success

1078-469: A number of fan-run conventions still exist, such as Toronto Trek and Shore Leave . The 1985 series Robotech is most often credited as the catalyst for the Western interest in anime. The series inspired a few fanzines such as Protoculture Addicts and Animag both of which in turn promoted interest in the wide world of anime in general. Anime's first notable appearance at SF or comic book conventions

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1176-428: A number of smaller fiction/fantasy television series, including Tang in 1971, about a secret organization that attempts to control the world with a new super weapon, "Les atomistes" and 1970 miniseries "La brigade des maléfices". Another French-produced science fiction series was the new age animated series Il était une fois... l'espace (English: Once upon a time...space ). Anime-influenced animation includes

1274-503: A pyrotechnic during filming, and then an optical glowing line added to the film image in post-production. Stunts are another important category of physical effects. In general, all kinds of special effects must be carefully planned during pre-production . Babylon 5 was the first series to use computer-generated imagery , or "CGI", for all exterior space scenes, even those with characters in space suits. The technology has made this more practical, so that today models are rarely used. In

1372-587: A regular basis, initially based upon the then-current Third Doctor 's episodes, but soon expanding to include all past Doctors as well. The initial three novelisations had been published in various editions both inside and outside the United Kingdom (editions appeared in the Netherlands , Canada and the United States). Further foreign editions of the novelisations appeared from the 1970s, with

1470-400: A series of French-Japanese cartoons / anime , including such titles as Ulysses 31 (1981), The Mysterious Cities of Gold (1982), and Ōban Star-Racers (2006). The first Spanish SF series was Diego Valor , a 22 episode TV adaption of a radio show hero of the same name based on Dan Dare , aired weekly between 1958 and 1959. Nothing was survived of this series, not a single still; it

1568-462: A soul. All three of these television series were aimed mostly at children. Later television series were Professor Vreemdeling (1977) about a strange professor who wants to make plants speak and Zeeuws Meisje  [ nl ] (1997) a nationalistic post-apocalyptic series where the Netherlands has been built full of housing and the highways are filled with traffic jams. The protagonist,

1666-492: A staggering array of models; the USS Enterprise had to be built in several different scales for different needs. Models fell out of use in filming in the 1990s as CGI became more affordable and practical, but even today, designers sometimes construct scale models which are then digitized for use in animation software. Models of characters are puppets . Gerry Anderson created a series of shows using puppets living in

1764-404: A time restricted to a maximum page length as they were considered children's literature. Not all Target novelisations faithfully followed the scripts. John Lucarotti 's The Massacre (1987) completely changed the plot of the source serial, The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve . Some guide books (notably 1999's A Critical Guide to Doctor Who on Television by Kenneth Muir) describe the plot of

1862-553: A universe of models and miniature sets, notably Thunderbirds . ALF depicted an alien living in a family, while Farscape included two puppets as regular characters. In Stargate SG-1 , the Asgard characters are puppets in scenes where they are sitting, standing, or lying down. In Mystery Science Theater 3000 , the characters of Crow T. Robot and Tom Servo , two of the show's main (and most iconic) characters, are puppets constructed from random household items. As animation

1960-484: A webcast in 2003) was finally released by BBC Books in 2012, adapted by Gareth Roberts . Adams' scripts for City of Death and The Pirate Planet were novelised by James Goss and published in 2015 and 2017, respectively. In 2018, BBC Books began a line adaptations of episodes from the 21st-century revival of Doctor Who as part of "The Target Collection". The earliest original Doctor Who spin-off fiction appeared in children's annuals from 1964, and over

2058-505: Is El ministerio del tiempo ( The ministry of time ), premiered on February 24, 2015 on TVE 's main channel La 1 . The series follows the exploits of a patrol of the fictional Ministry of Time, which deals with incidents caused by time travel. It has garnered several national prizes in 2015, like the Ondas Prize , and has a thick following on-line, called los ministéricos . Serbia produced The Collector ( Sakupljač ),

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2156-404: Is and where he came from,". He instead suggested The Sarah Jane Adventures (see above). A further spin-off of Doctor Who — Rose Tyler: Earth Defence , a 90-minute special that could possibly become an annual event—was cancelled by Davies at a late stage of its development. He considered it to be "a spin-off too far", despite the production having been commissioned and budgeted by

2254-469: Is completely free of the constraints of gravity, momentum, and physical reality, it is an ideal technique for science fiction and fantasy on television. In a sense, virtually all animated series allow characters and objects to perform in unrealistic ways, so they are almost all considered to fit within the broadest category of speculative fiction (in the context of awards, criticism, marketing, etc.) The artistic affinity of animation to comic books has led to

2352-438: Is not known if the show was even recorded or just a live broadcast. The 60s were dominated by Chicho Ibáñez Serrador and Narciso Ibáñez Menta , who adapted SF works from Golden Age authors and others to a series titled Mañana puede ser verdad . Only 11 episodes were filmed. The 70s saw three important television films, Los pajaritos (1974), La Gioconda está triste (1977), and La cabina (1972), this last one, about

2450-404: Is on screen at once. In general, science fiction series are subject to the same financial constraints as other television shows. However, high production costs increase the financial risk, while limited audiences further complicate the business case for continuing production. Star Trek was the first television series to cost more than $ 100,000 per episode, while Star Trek: The Next Generation

2548-429: Is set in modern-day Cardiff and revolves around a team investigating alien activities and crime. The series features John Barrowman , playing former Ninth Doctor companion Jack Harkness , police officer Gwen Cooper , computer expert Toshiko Sato , medic Owen Harper and "support man", Ianto Jones . The first episode aired 22 October 2006 and received a record BBC Three (and all British cable television record for

2646-477: Is that many of the television writers and stars have been directly involved in the production of spin-offs. For example, it has become common for a former television actor to reprise their character for an audio play. The BBC holds no position on Doctor Who canon . Although the spin-offs generally do not intentionally contradict the television series, the various spin-off series do occasionally contradict each other. The first spin-off attempt that actually reached

2744-511: Is the earliest known original long-form prose Doctor Who adventure. Short stories also appeared in other venues such as two anniversary specials produced by the editors of the Radio Times . The first of these (1973) was Terry Nation 's "We Are the Daleks!" while the second (1983) had Eric Saward's "Birth of a Renegade". The former explains the origins of the Daleks and the latter reveals

2842-527: The Australian Broadcasting Corporation . Later series made in the 1960s included The Interpretaris (1966) Vega 4 (1967), and Phoenix Five (1970). The country's best known Science Fiction series was Farscape ; an American co-production, it ran from 1999 to 2003. A significant proportion of Australian produced Science Fiction programmes are made for the teens/young Adults market, including The Girl from Tomorrow ,

2940-538: The Doctor Who DVD releases. In 2011, Confidential was among several shows cancelled by BBC Three to free up space for new programming. Following the success of the first series of the revived Doctor Who , a new spin-off titled Torchwood became the first to be commissioned as a full television series. In contrast to its parent show, Torchwood was initially conceived by creator Russell T Davies as an "adult" programme to be broadcast post- watershed . It

3038-472: The Lost Stories series, with actress Jean Marsh reprising the role of Sara. There was some discussion about spinning off the characters of Henry Gordon Jago and Professor George Litefoot from the 1977 serial The Talons of Weng-Chiang into their own series, but this was not taken forward on television (although it has been produced on audio). The concept art for an animated Doctor Who series

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3136-716: The New Adventures and Missing Adventures ranges. However, following the Doctor Who television movie in 1996, the BBC did not renew Virgin Publishing 's license to continue publishing Doctor Who material. Instead, they opted to publish their own range beginning in 1997 with The Devil Goblins from Neptune by Martin Day and Keith Topping . The range continued to be published through to 2005. Virgin had distinguished

3234-572: The Ninth Doctor , Tenth Doctor , Eleventh Doctor and Twelfth Doctor , and a hardback script book containing the shooting scripts for the 2005 series. Scripts for later seasons have not yet been published as of 2018, though 2005–2009 lead writer Russell T Davies has made his scripts available online. In 2007, Penguin Books revived the novelisations concept for the spin-off series, The Sarah Jane Adventures . As of early 2010, all stories from

3332-729: The Super Robots such as Mitsuteru Yokoyama 's Tetsujin 28-go ( Gigantor ) and Go Nagai 's Mazinger Z , and the Real Robots such as Yoshiyuki Tomino 's Gundam series and Shōji Kawamori 's Macross series. Other primary aspects of Japanese science fiction television are the superhero tokusatsu (a term literally meaning special effects ) series, pioneered by programs such as Moonlight Mask and Planet Prince . The suitmation technique has been used in long running franchises include Eiji Tsuburaya 's Ultra Series , Shotaro Ishinomori 's Kamen Rider Series , and

3430-619: The Super Sentai Series. In addition, several dramas utilize science fiction elements as framing devices, but are not labeled as "tokusatsu" as they do not utilize actors in full body suits and other special effects. Among the notable German language productions are: Danish television broadcast the children's TV-series Crash in 1984 about a boy who finds out that his room is a space ship. Early Dutch television series were Morgen gebeurt het  [ nl ] (Tomorrow it will happen), broadcast from 1957 to 1959, about

3528-587: The TARDIS , and ends when the Titanic crashes into the TARDIS. For the 2011 Comic Relief Red Nose Day appeal a two-part story was shown. It starred Matt Smith , Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill and did not have any guest stars. The first attempt to produce a spin-off television series for Doctor Who occurred in the mid-1960s when Terry Nation attempted to launch a US-produced serialised series focusing on

3626-493: The "missing season" but never produced due to the 18-month hiatus in 1985–1986 ( The Nightmare Fair , The Ultimate Evil and Mission to Magnus ), the spin-off K-9 and Company , and even a 1976 children's story record ( The Pescatons ), which has the distinction of being the final Doctor Who book published under the Target imprint. (The Target logo was retained for later reprints and intermittent new titles up to 1994 and

3724-594: The 1950s". Doctor Who , which launched in 1963 and ran until 1989, then was revived in 2005, was listed in the Guinness World Records in 2006 as the longest-running science fiction television show in the world and as the "most successful" science fiction series of all time. Other cult British series in the science fiction genre include The Tomorrow People , Space: 1999 , Blake's 7 , Star Cops and Red Dwarf . Science fiction in Canada

3822-477: The 1990s, Marvel Comics commissioned the writers of the various original novels under Virgin's New and Missing Adventures lines (see below) to write short pieces entitled "Preludes" which were run in Doctor Who Magazine . These short stories (never more than one magazine page in length) usually focused on an event just prior to a particular novel, or on a character prior to his or her encounter with

3920-485: The 1990s, Virgin Publishing launched a series of Doctor Who -based short story anthologies titled Decalog . A total of five volumes were published, and the last two, Decalog 4 and Decalog 5 were published after Virgin had lost the Doctor Who franchise and did not feature the Doctor. Decalog 4 concentrated on the family of Roz Forrester—a companion introduced in the NAs—over a thousand-year time span. Also during

4018-425: The 1990s, CGI required expensive processors and customized applications, but by the 2000s (decade), computing power has pushed capabilities down to personal laptops running a wide array of software. Models have been an essential tool in science fiction television since the beginning, when Buck Rogers took flight in spark-scattering spaceships wheeling across a matte backdrop sky. The original Star Trek required

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4116-604: The 1990s, hand-drawn animation became defunct. In recent years as technology has improved, this has become more common, notably since the development of the Massive software application permits producers to include hordes of non-human characters to storm a city or space station. The robotic Cylons in the new version of Battlestar Galactica are usually animated characters, while the Asgard in Stargate SG-1 are animated when they are shown walking around or more than one

4214-565: The Curse of Fatal Death , a parody starring Rowan Atkinson as a future incarnation of the Doctor in his final battle with the Master ( Jonathan Pryce ), was created for the charity Comic Relief . During the parody's climax, when the Doctor regenerates several times, actors Richard E. Grant , Hugh Grant , Jim Broadbent and Joanna Lumley all had a chance to play the character. Richard E. Grant would go on to play another unofficial incarnation of

4312-467: The DWM comic strip.) Science fiction on television The need to portray imaginary settings or characters with properties and abilities beyond the reach of current reality obliges producers to make extensive use of specialized techniques of television production. Through most of the 20th century, many of these techniques were expensive and involved a small number of dedicated craft practitioners, while

4410-538: The Daleks. A pilot-episode script entitled The Destroyers was written but no pilot film was ever produced. Years later, an outline of the story (which would have featured at least one character, Sara Kingdom , later featured in the parent series) appeared in The Official Doctor Who & the Daleks Book . The US Dalek pilot was released on audio by Big Finish Productions in 2010 as part of

4508-574: The Doctor for the webcast of Scream of the Shalka . BBC Video released the special in the same format as regular Doctor Who releases. A second Children in Need special, but one that was part of the series' continuity, was produced for the charity's 2005 appeal. This 7-minute "mini-episode" starred David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor and Billie Piper as Rose Tyler , and filled in a gap between

4606-463: The Doctor. Some non-novel related short stories titled "Brief Encounters" were also written, including one in which the Seventh Doctor met a future incarnation of himself. (The illustration accompanying this story based the future Doctor on actor Nicholas Briggs , who had played the Doctor in unauthorised audio dramas produced by the fan group Audio Visuals . The Briggs Doctor also appeared in

4704-702: The Doctor. The Eighth Doctor co-starred with the Fourth Doctor in one novel ( Wolfsbane ) and, after the Eighth Doctor Adventures had ceased publication, a novel ( Fear Itself ) featuring the Eighth Doctor and set between two earlier Eighth Doctor Adventures ( EarthWorld and Vanishing Point ) was published within the Past Doctor series. Between 1991 and 1997, Virgin Publishing produced successful spin-off novels under

4802-660: The Doomsday Weapon (based upon Colony in Space ) which as written depicts Jo Grant 's first adventure with the Doctor, even though the television series introduced her several serials earlier in Terror of the Autons (which was novelised at a later date and ignored the discrepancy). Authors sometimes added epilogues to their novelisations which were at odds with other material: The Curse of Fenric by Ian Briggs suggested

4900-568: The Missing Adventures label. These were two Dalek stories from the Troughton era, The Power of the Daleks and The Evil of the Daleks , which—along with another radio novelisation The Paradise of Death —are considered to be the last of the Target run. Later novelisations tended to be included as part of the original novel series from Virgin. The Ghosts of N-Space , a second radio serial featuring Jon Pertwee produced in

4998-473: The New and Missing Adventures with different cover designs . BBC Books, however, did not differentiate their novels featuring the current and past Doctors in this way, although they were listed separately within the books. Fans, however, continued to distinguish the ongoing story of the Eighth Doctor from the more stand-alone adventures of past Doctors. Despite moving to the BBC, the writers (many of whom wrote for

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5096-600: The Past Doctor Adventures, but that decisions had not yet been taken. Beginning in 2012, hardback books featuring past Doctors are being published, with longer books and in a larger format, though at a much reduced rate compared with the pre-2005 output. Including books featuring two of the Doctors, the numbers of books each appears in are as follows: Doctor Who spin-offs Doctor Who spin-offs refers to material created outside of, but related to,

5194-428: The Shalka . Adams' stories were never novelised, reportedly because he wanted to do the job himself. However, soon after his tenure with Doctor Who ended, the author had gained considerable popularity because of his The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy franchise and became (depending upon the source of information) either too busy or too expensive (or both). Adams would later recycle elements of City of Death and

5292-587: The Virgin series) have broadly attempted to maintain continuity with the New and Missing Adventures and many elements from these series have appeared in the Past Doctor Adventures (which replaced the Missing Adventures). Indeed, one of the novels — Millennium Shock by Justin Richards — was a direct sequel to System Shock , a Missing Adventure published by Virgin. Another notable release

5390-495: The background of Susan , but both contradict the series and many other stories on the subject. There were also stories in newspapers and comics, storybooks and even serials published on confectionery wrappers and trading cards. In 1979, Nation wrote "Daleks: The Secret Invasion", a novella included in Terry Nation's Dalek Special ; this was the first original Doctor Who -related fiction to be published by Target Books. During

5488-454: The books being translated for readers in the Netherlands, Brazil , Turkey , the US (where the texts were slightly tweaked to eliminate unfamiliar Anglicisms), Japan , West Germany , Portugal , France and Finland . By 1994, when the final Target book was published, all but six of the broadcast Doctor Who serials had been novelised, as well as a radio serial ( Slipback ), stories slated for

5586-482: The character since 1981), and more than a dozen former companions. Not meant to be taken seriously, the story had the Rani opening a hole in time, cycling the Doctor and his companions through his previous incarnations and menacing them with monsters from the show's past. It also featured a crossover with the soap opera EastEnders , the action taking place in the latter's Albert Square location. In 1999, Doctor Who and

5684-529: The controller of BBC One. Novelisations based upon individual Doctor Who serials were first published in the mid-1960s, the first being Dr. Who in an Exciting Adventure with the Daleks by David Whitaker , a loose adaptation of the show's second serial, The Daleks . Doctor Who novelisations became something of a tradition beginning in the early 1970s when Target Books (initially published by Universal-Tandem, later to become part of W.H. Allen & Co and then Virgin Publishing ) began publishing them on

5782-533: The domestic television market, most Canadian productions involve partnerships with production studios based in the United States and Europe. However, in recent years, new partnership arrangements are allowing Canadian investors a growing share of control of projects produced in Canada and elsewhere. Australia's first locally produced Science Fiction series was The Stranger (1964–65) produced and screened by

5880-425: The early 1990s had become one of the most popular dramas on American television. Star Trek fans continued to grow in number, and first began organizing conventions in the 1970s. No other show attracted a large organized following until the 1990s, when Babylon 5 attracted both Star Trek fans and a large number of literary SF fans who previously had not been involved in media fandom. Other series began to attract

5978-671: The episodes " The Parting of the Ways " and " The Christmas Invasion ". A third Children in Need special, but one that was part of the series' continuity, was produced for the charity's 2007 appeal. " Time Crash " starred David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor and Peter Davison as the Fifth Doctor , and filled in a gap between the episodes " Last of the Time Lords " and " Voyage of the Damned ". This takes part directly after Martha leaves

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6076-456: The first decade of the 21st century, changes in provincial tax legislation prompted many production companies to move from Toronto to Vancouver . Recent popular series produced in Vancouver include The Dead Zone , Smallville , Andromeda , Stargate Atlantis , Stargate Universe , The 4400 , Sanctuary and the reimagined Battlestar Galactica . Because of the small size of

6174-583: The fourth series in 2010. A second animated serial, Dreamland , aired on CBBC in Autumn 2009. David Tennant voiced the Tenth Doctor, and the serial also starred Georgia Tennant (who appeared in Doctor Who 's 2008 series as the Doctor's daughter, Jenny ). On 24 April 2006 The Independent , the Daily Star and The Times confirmed, following past rumours, that K-9 would be featured in

6272-455: The full series started on 24 September 2007, consisting of two-part serials with half-hour individual episodes. Five series were produced altogether, the first four series consisting of twelve episodes each; the fifth series was truncated with only six episodes having been produced before Sladen's death in 2011, as a result of which the programme was cancelled. Sarah Jane's Alien Files , a spin-off of The Sarah Jane Adventures , aired along with

6370-505: The long-running Mr. Squiggle , Halfway Across the Galaxy and Turn Left , Ocean Girl , Crash Zone , Watch This Space and Spellbinder . Other series like Time Trax , Roar , and Space: Above and Beyond were filmed in Australia, but used mostly US crew and actors. Japan has a long history of producing science fiction series for television. Some of the most famous are anime such as Osamu Tezuka 's Astro Boy ,

6468-409: The long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who . Both during the main run of the series from 1963 to 1989 and after its cancellation, numerous novels, comic strips, comic books and other material were generated based on the characters and situations introduced in the show. These spin-offs continued to be produced even without a television series to support them and helped keep

6566-428: The main Doctor Who series and her adventures would be continued in audio form by Big Finish Productions in the 2000s. Since the return of Doctor Who in 2005, the show was accompanied by a documentary series, Doctor Who Confidential , broadcast on BBC Three . Episodes were also edited to a 15-minute run time and rebroadcast with the title Doctor Who Confidential: Cut Down ; these edited versions were included on

6664-413: The majority of science fiction media fandom has been represented by males of all ages and for most of its modern existence, a fairly diverse racial demographic. The most highly publicized demographic for science fiction fans is the male adolescent; roughly the same demographic for American comic books . Female fans, while always present, were far fewer in number and less conspicuously present in fandom. With

6762-481: The mid-1990s was novelised, as were several non BBC spin-off video productions such as Shakedown (as one section of a larger original novel) and Downtime , adding an air of official sanction to them. In 1996, BBC Books published a novelisation of the Doctor Who television movie . A one-time return to serial novelisations occurred in 2004 when BBC Books novelised the made-for-Internet adventure, Scream of

6860-459: The network to demand the show remain on the air. Network executives were overwhelmed by an unprecedented wave of correspondence, and they kept the show on the air. Although the series continued to receive low ratings and was canceled a year later, the enduring popularity of the series resulted in Paramount creating a set of movies, and then a new series Star Trek: The Next Generation , which by

6958-416: The novel rather than the original serial due to the fact the original serial is one of the many that were lost. Also, when Target launched the novelisation line, there was no inkling that ultimately more than 150 of the show's storylines would be adapted; as a result, there are numerous continuity gaps between early Target books and the scripts and/or later published novelisations; one example is Doctor Who and

7056-472: The only way for these "lost" adventures to be experienced prior to the release of soundtracks for those episodes and/or recovery of lost episodes (the Pertwee era, in particular, has been rendered intact since the early 1990s, and several Hartnell and Troughton stories are once again complete). Although novelisations became more elaborate in later years, the early books usually followed a set formula and were for

7154-436: The production stage appeared in 1981, when a 50-minute pilot episode for a series to be called K-9 and Company was aired. It focused on the adventures of former Doctor Who companions Sarah Jane Smith and K-9 , a robot dog. The pilot, subtitled "A Girl's Best Friend", despite receiving high ratings of 8.4 million, was not commissioned for a development into a series, though Sarah Jane and K-9 would later reappear together on

7252-578: The reusability of props, models, effects, or animation techniques made it easier to keep using them. The combination of high initial cost and lower maintenance cost pushed producers into building these techniques into the basic concept of a series, influencing all the artistic choices. By the late 1990s, improved technology and more training and cross-training within the industry made all of these techniques easier to use, so that directors of individual episodes could make decisions to use one or more methods, so such artistic choices no longer needed to be baked into

7350-404: The rising popularity of fanfiction , a large majority of which is categorized as slash fanfiction . Female fans comprise the majority of fanfiction writers. U.S. television science fiction has produced Lost In Space , Star Trek , The Twilight Zone , and The X-Files , among others. British television science fiction began in 1938 when the broadcast medium was in its infancy with

7448-424: The rising popularity of fanzines, female fans became increasingly vocal. Starting in the 2000s (decade), genre series began to offer more prominent female characters. Many series featured women as the main characters with males as supporting characters. True Blood is an example. Also, such shows premises moved away from heroic action-adventure and focused more on characters and their relationships. This has caused

7546-403: The second serial of the programme if it had not been rejected. The story features the Doctor and his companions encountering an ancient civilisation of deactivated robots. Doctor Who was successfully brought back to television in 2005, but for many years there were no plans to novelise episodes from the 21st century version of the programme. Instead, the BBC published original novels featuring

7644-419: The series concept. Special effects (or "SPFX") have been an essential tool throughout the history of science fiction on television: small explosives to simulate the effects of various rayguns , squibs of blood and gruesome prosthetics to simulate the monsters and victims in horror series, and the wire-flying entrances and exits of George Reeves as Superman . The broad term "special effects" includes all

7742-525: The series had been cancelled. A new animated series called Daleks! , which consists of five 10-minute long episodes, was released on the official Doctor Who YouTube channel in 2020. On 30 October 2023, it was announced that "The Whoniverse ", a new section on BBC iPlayer dedicated to Doctor Who content, would release spin-offs, with the first being Tales of the TARDIS which first premiered on 1 November 2023. On 27 January 2023, Russell T Davies confirmed that future Doctor Who spin-offs were in

7840-446: The series' first season, two from the second, and one from the third, have been adapted. The third-season novelisation, adapting " The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith ", marked the first appearance of the Doctor in a TV-based novelisation since the 1996 TV movie was adapted. Shada by Douglas Adams (not originally completed for broadcast after television production was postponed in 1979, but completed with narration for video, then remade as

7938-543: The series. K-9 was first premiered on 31 October 2009. The 26th and final episode was aired on 25 September 2010. On 1 October 2015 the BBC announced a new spin-off titled, Class , which is set in Coal Hill School . It premièred on BBC Three on 22 October 2016. The eight-episode series is written by Patrick Ness . In March 2016, it was announced that Greg Austin would be cast as Charlie. On 7 September 2017, BBC Three controller Damian Kavanagh confirmed that

8036-560: The show alive in the minds of its fans and the public until the programme was revived in 2005. This entry mainly concentrates on "official" spin-offs, that is to say, material sanctioned by the British Broadcasting Corporation , which produces the series, as well as material sanctioned by the copyright holders of characters from the series. One aspect of Doctor Who spin-offs which makes them different from many spin-offs from other science fiction franchises

8134-580: The spring of 2005, BBC Books began publishing a series of hardcover books, the New Series Adventures . The BBC Past Doctor paperback series continued for the remainder of 2005, but no titles were announced after Andrew Cartmel 's Atom Bomb Blues , which was released in November 2005. In a talk in July 2006, commissioning editor Justin Richards said that BBC Books have plans for the future of

8232-411: The techniques here, but more commonly there are two categories of effects. Visual effects ("VFX") involve photographic or digital manipulation of the onscreen image, usually done in post-production . Mechanical or physical effects involve props, pyrotechnics, and other physical methods used during principal photography itself. Some effects involved a combination of techniques; a ray gun might require

8330-406: The title of Short Trips , which feature all eight (at the time of publication) Doctors. These were also inherited from Virgin, a version of their Decalog short story collections, and when the BBC ceased publishing them, a licence to continue was sought by Big Finish Productions , who continued to publish their own range of Short Trips collections until 2009. The range has ceased publication. In

8428-455: The transmission of a partial adaptation of Karel Čapek 's play R.U.R. . Despite an occasionally chequered history, programmes in the genre have been produced by both the BBC and the largest commercial channel, ITV . Nigel Kneale 's The Quatermass Experiment (1953) and its sequels have been called "one of BBC Television's earliest audience successes" and Kneale became "one of the most influential television and film writers to emerge in

8526-457: The unbroadcast Shada into his Dirk Gently novels. As for Saward's two Dalek serials, Target Books was unable to come to an agreement which would satisfy both Eric Saward and Terry Nation's estate for the novelisations. Virgin tried again at a later date and authors were assigned for both books, but again an agreement was not reached. Since the release of the last published book by Target in 1994, six titles remained as yet unpublished: Shada

8624-545: The works. One spin-off is centered around UNIT and starring Jemma Redgrave as Kate Stewart . Doctor Who also appeared on television in the form of special one-off productions to benefit charity. In 1993, Dimensions in Time was produced for the benefit of Children in Need , coinciding with the series' 30th anniversary. It was a special in two parts, running about 12 minutes in total, which featured all surviving Doctors (including Tom Baker in his first appearance as

8722-484: The years many short stories, novellas and full-length novels have been published. The earliest original Doctor Who fiction were short stories that appeared in the official BBC Doctor Who annuals, which were published from 1964 to 1985 (and later revived by Marvel Comics as Doctor Who Year Books and as annuals by the BBC in 2005). A 45-page novella titled Doctor Who and the Invasion from Space , published in 1966,

8820-408: Was Scream of the Shalka , a novelisation of the webcast of the same title and the only release in the Past Doctor range that did not feature an "official" incarnation of the Doctor. The Infinity Doctors , written by Lance Parkin , featured an unidentified Doctor. In addition to the Past Doctor Adventures and the Eighth Doctor Adventures, the BBC also published three short story collections under

8918-473: Was by this time used exclusively for Doctor Who .) Most of these novelisations contained minimal amounts of original material and were (usually) adapted closely from the shooting scripts, with the intent of the books being souvenirs of previously aired shows in the pre-VCR era; the decision by the BBC to delete many episodes from the Hartnell, Troughton and Pertwee eras resulted in many of these books becoming

9016-588: Was in the form of video showings of popular anime, untranslated and often low quality VHS bootlegs. Starting in the 1990s, anime fans began organizing conventions. These quickly grew to sizes much larger than other science fiction and media conventions in the same communities; many cities now have anime conventions attracting five to ten thousand attendees. Many anime conventions are a hybrid between non-profit and commercial events, with volunteer organizers handling large revenue streams and dealing with commercial suppliers and professional marketing campaigns. For decades,

9114-401: Was presented by CBBC and Smile presenter Barney Harwood and Blue Peter presenter Liz Barker . For the show's second series Barker was replaced by SMart presenter Kirsten O'Brien . During the second series, an animated serial, The Infinite Quest , was featured. David Tennant and Freema Agyeman reprised their roles from the live-action television series while Anthony Head ,

9212-611: Was produced by the CBC as early as the 1950s. In the 1970s, CTV produced The Starlost . In the 1980s, Canadian animation studios including Nelvana , began producing a growing proportion of the world market in animation. In the 1990s, Canada became an important player in live action speculative fiction on television, with dozens of series like Forever Knight , Robocop , and most notably The X-Files and Stargate SG-1 . Many series have been produced for youth and children's markets, including Deepwater Black and MythQuest . In

9310-470: Was produced by the Canadian animation company Nelvana in the 1980s, but the series was not produced. CBBC originally expressed an interest in a Young Doctor Who series, chronicling the childhood of the Doctor. Russell T Davies vetoed this concept, saying "somehow, the idea of a fourteen-year-old Doctor , on Gallifrey inventing sonic screwdrivers , takes away from the mystery and intrigue of who he

9408-710: Was published on 15 March 2012 by BBC Books , and is still the only remaining book of the original show's run to not be published by Target Books . Target did publish City of Death on 5 April 2018. The Pirate Planet , Resurrection of the Daleks , Revelation of the Daleks , and The Doctor Who TV Movie , were all published on 11 March 2021 by Target Books. Three novels of the original run were rewritten as audiobook exclusives, but were later published in print, once again by Target: From 1988, Titan Books released script books of Doctor Who serials. This included an unproduced serial, The Masters of Luxor (written 1963–1964, published 1992) by Anthony Coburn , which would have been

9506-454: Was similarly structured as a single story told as a ten-part mini-series, titled Torchwood: Miracle Day ; unlike previous series, Miracle Day was a co-production between the BBC and the US cable television network Starz . The fourth series premiered on 8 July 2011 on Starz in the US and on July 14, 2011 on BBC One in the United Kingdom. The 2006 and 2007 series were companioned with a CBBC show entitled Totally Doctor Who . Series 1

9604-486: Was the first to cost more than $ 1 million per episode. One of the earliest forms of media fandom was Star Trek fandom . Fans of the series became known to each other through the science fiction fandom . In 1968, NBC decided to cancel Star Trek . Bjo Trimble wrote letters to contacts in the National Fantasy Fan Foundation, asking people to organize their local friends to write to

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