American Reacts to Doctor Who vs BBC vs PBS 

Whilst not 100% I suspect the narrator of the original video misunderstood the “remit” and it’s not that each programme should do all 3 of the following (educate, inform, entertain) because that’s simply nonsense and impracticable. Each programme should fit at least 1 of those remits. News programmes for instance are not seen as entertainment,

The guy that did this dr who feature is SO wrong in much of what he says....

I think that this is a fairly inaccurate account. I watched Doctor Who from the beginning and enjoyed it, with part of the charm being that it was done on the cheap. There is no obligation on the BBC to fulfill all the requirements in the charter in every programme - if that was the case, there would never be a Generation Game.

This video you've been recommended has so many factual inaccuracies it's unreal.

The video chosen to review was really bad, condensing, very inaccurate and highly offensive to the legendary creators, writers, actors and fans of Dr Who. Dr Who has always been so loved, a huge critical and commercial success for the BBC, sold around the world and watched by millions in Britain. It was the awful Michael Grade, then controller of BBC who starved it of funds and cancelled it. Millions campaigned for years to have it back and when it was brought back it became an even greater success, here and internationally. Now Disney is partnering with Dr Who as it is one of the worlds favourite shows.

Horrible histories is a staple of every kids childhood in britain 😂❤

David Tennant is now Peter Davison’s son in law.

Whoever informed this guy, pun intended, about the Daleks doesn’t know the first thing about them. They were first created in the show’s second ever serial, in 1963, a time when WW2 was still recent living memory, as a science fiction allegory for Nazis and racial purity. They kill (exterminate) other lifeforms through a dislike for the unlike, anything that is not Dalek is not like them and therefore impure to them. The allusion to fascism could not be clearer.

Doctor who passed me by when I was a child. What I most remember Tom Baker from was a programme called The Book Tower, it was on HTV and was a children's book review programme (yes, I've been a book nerd nearly all my life) 😁 It had a great theme tune

Doctor Who is a classic staple of British TV. As a child you'd hide behind the couch as the Daleks were so terrifying. I just had to hear the theme tune and my heart would start racing. The cheap props and dodgy locations are what make the show. Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker are my favourite Doctors as they are the ones from my childhood. Doctor Who is a British institution! Exterminate... Exterminate... 😮 Still gives me the chills 🤖👾🤖

The BBC didn't decrease the budget, but they did rigidly avoid increasing the budget despite various rising costs/inflation etc ... While most other long-running or new programs' would get larger budgets to keep up with those same rising costs!

9:35 indeed, that’s Joanna Lumley from AbFab, but the other woman in the scene is also from Ab Fab: Julia Sawalha (who played Saffy (the daughter) in AbFab)

Fun fact (and one that tells you a lot about British ideas): Star Trek premiered in Britain in the summer of 1969 - replacing Dr Who in the same time slot - but because it was considered 'good enough' to go out on BBC1 (the more popular and prestigious channel) it had to be shown in black & white. Which doesn't sound like a problem until you realise that BBC2 (which was almost an 'arts' channel at that point) had been in colour for well over a year. And Dr Who has always been for a mainstream popular audience in the UK. My older brothers watched it in the 1960s, I watched it principally in the late 1970s and 1980s. It's kind of for children that never really grew up. Which I think also explains the modern superhero boom (The Avengers and Dr Who debuted - one on TV and the other in comics - in the same month in 1963).

the narrator and writer here clearly hasn't seen dr who, and isn't really that familiar with it beyond reading a few articles. you can just tell when someone tries to pretend they're more familiar with something than they are. Anyway here's a list of every inaccuracy i found -misunderstanding the purpose of the bbc's remit, tv shows dont have to fit all 3, they just have to fit 1. with each catagory being judged by its own metrics. -saying the show started in 1962. it actually started in 1963. -the "magic phone box" is a police box, for detaining criminals, not a phone box, meant for taking calls. -and although it's pedantic to say it's also not magic. The doctor is from an advanced alien society, it's meant to be an advanced alien time machine, that's disguised as a police box because it's cloaking mechanism broke. -whilst nobody can deny that the show's special effects and costuming where pretty rough even for the time, saying it wasn't seen as a british institution until the modern era just isn't accurate. And reducing any sort of quality it had that caused people to like it, purely down to special effects seems quite reductive. -the daleks being a warning against fascism isn't a wierd fan theory made up by critics like the narrator suggests. It's pretty explicit, and was the original goal of the story they first appeared in, as a warning against fascism. anyone who's ever written for them, inculding their creator, has said, that they're an allagory for fascism, and it's extremely obvious in a lot of their better written episodes. -also saying the show was shallow and that any depth it has is being imagined by pretencious fans as is implied by that dalek line really disrespects quite a lot of great scifi stories which covered a tonne of intresting themes, and contained a tonne of solid stories that whilst dated where still writen by phenomenal writers. Good writing didn't magically get invented in 2005 just because the SFX got good enough to do it justice. -they fail to mention the show didn't really drecline in viewership until the mid 80's, when between it's 20th and 24th season it lost most of it's viewship due to scheduling changes , a string of weak episodes, and unpopular status quo changes. -the 6th dcotor's characterisation wasn't cowardly, and irritating? no more than any other doctor really. a lot of those sentiments are based purely on his first epsiode. where like every other doctor he had post regeration madness. Which whilst it effects every doctor differently, is usually just a way to play with the audiance before the characterisation is really set in stone. And to call it "intentionally trying to wean the public off the show" is completely ahistorical. It was a decision made, to make his doctor slightly more arrogent than his predecessor and wear a much more offputting outfit, because head producer John Nathan turner wanted to do something radically differant after the 5th doctors era which was notably bland and milquetoast. -not mentioning big finish isn't an innacuracy, but mentioning the stranger, a little known fan production, whilst not mentioning either big finish's dr who audios or scream of the shalka, 2 officially licensed sequal series to dr who which are quite popular, is a wierd choice. -there was no official remit for the bbc to continue dr who, that was just an arguement made by fans angry it was cancelled. -also not neccessarily an innaccuracy, but this video is really wierdly paced, it puts its emphasis in really weird areas. -the curse of fatal death is really funny. ik it's subjective but reducing it to "haha the doctor was a woman" seems really reductive, given that wasn;t even really what the joke was meant to be in the original. -suggesting the bbc wasn't populist before the 2000's is wierd considering dr who was literally cancelled for low ratings. -them showing darker or more gritty historical episodes isn't to "justify the remit" it's just.. what the creatives making the show wanted to create, because they're creatives, who want to tell a story with a message. not corporate execs trying to make populist media. -saying the quality went down is obviously a subjective metric but using a graph of Audiance appreciation index ratings as the footage behind it seems wierd to me when Heavan sent, the 2nd highest rated episode on IMDB, got the lowest Audiance appreciation index score of series 9 when it aired due to casaual audiances not understanding it. Same with a lot of the shows most popular episodes which have bad Audiance appreciation scores, which broadly makes it a bad metric for judging quality, and only really a good metric for judging what the most casual of audiances will like, which will always inherently have less thought put into it. or atleast that's every one i caught.

Americans watched Doctor Who at least by the 1970s (when I watched it as a kid) so the American Doctor Who movie was hardly introducing the program to us.

In my opinion it’s the wacky nature of doctor who that makes it great and I also don’t think that Disney would have partnered with the BBC if it was considered an ‘embarrassment’ to them.

I have watched Dctor Whosince the delayed first episode. It was delayed because the BBC news was extended to contain film flownacroos the Atlantic of the previous days killing of Kennedy. No television satellites back then.They repeated episode 1 again the following Saturday.

“They didn't censor out the butts.” - Of course, because we have sophisticated, educated bottoms. British accents guarantee that the nudity counts as ‘art’. We even break wind with received pronunciation.

Chris Eccleston even basically plays the Doctor in Sarah Silverman.

Interesting how people on the right of politics insist the BBC is too left wing, and people on the left insist it's too right wing. That probably means that overall it's probably pretty impartial!

Obviously people are already pointing out the factual inaccuracies of the video, but even most of what is kinda true is exaggerated or misrepresented.

Misleading, to say the quality was bad especially when looking at with the new era is absolute rubbish. The writing, acting and attention to moral and historic issues has always been a high priority.

I love the Doctor Who series from 2005 to the present day. The new Doctor is played by Ncuti Gatwar & his assistant is played by Millie Gibson. This years series ended a few months ago, but they usually have a Christmas special.

You're basically watching a video about Doctor Who by a guy who hates Doctor Who! Back in the 70s and 80s, people didn't mind because that's what TV effects usually looked like! There are much better videos out there about the kind of programmes the BBC has made over the years!

You cant beat Classic Who great stories great characters and alot of history you don't get enough of that in New Who.

A lot of factual inaccuracies- but never mind!

_'Something for the Dads',_ is an increasingly creepy factor, as you watch it back especially the older episodes.

The problem with the TV Movie (Someone may have said this), was that it was broadcast at the exact time as another show was ending, possibly pretty ladies or something like that, and people wanted to watch that.

Ironically, something like that would never happen. The comedy sketch, it was penned by Steven Moffat, who'd go on to be a writer for the show, and then show runner bringing it to a world-wide audience.

The BBC is the largest news orginization in the world. The main American networks generally don't have news bureaus around the world so every few years they compete for exclusive contracts to be the BBC's partner for international news coverage. The BBCnews coverage coverage does broadcast its coverage in many languages around the world.

I have to agree with many other comments below that this video is a very inaccurate and biased "anti-Dr Who" video. Also feels a bit anti BBC and anti American. I think the guy is very busy being anti and forgets to be accurate.

I started to view WHO in 1981( I was 11 years), on PBS - one episode at 5pm, and followed by Monty Python FC' - It was the 4th Doctor. Stories between "Sontaran Experiment" and "the Sunmakers" - yet, my Parents, Doctor and Nurse, well, if dinner was ready at 5pm, I had to attend family dinner - if one was still at the hospital, either dinner was later, or my brother and I had to start the cooking,...and I couldn't watch WHO and Python. Yet, soon, PBS started "movie edit" of WHO on Saturday night. when I was in high school, and we had a ver, so even if I was out,....I could program .Viewed Doctors 4, 5, 1, 2, 3,6, 7 - was through college then. The 7th/8th TV Movie on Fox, I was in grad school, and had an exam the night the Fox Movie was broadcast - lucky that I could VCR the program, get back to my apartment, watch with some adult beverage, and my Cat. I kept the video, for years, as it was not on DVD until like 2010, the Rowen A' charity was in 1999. When the 2005 series was broadcast, in Spring 2005, it was co-funded by Canadian TV. I had just finished term of Teaching, on Spring Break, I drove up to Canada to see the first episode, at a hotel. I'm a fan.

I had to give up on this so quickly. Not because of your reaction but because what you were reacting to was so inaccurate on so many levels.

You can't just react to that without reacting to the Doctor who reboot. Go on you know you want to.

The BBC as a public institution was strapped for cash in the 80s and produced very few in house dramas and when they did had little to invest. UK TV was full of cheap US imports. at some point the government through a hissy fit gave them money and demanded home grown big(ish) budget productions

I’d love to see you react to Britain’s Got Talent 2024 winner. Off the charts Amaizing voice 🎤 You will love it! ( her semi final snd final songs 😃)

Of course they finally 'upped the budget' by getting Disney to pay for part of it. Which is normally a hostage to fortune. However, having been cancelled and off air for 15 years once before, fans are sufficiently confident that it would endure in some capacity (even if they had to make it on their iPhones) if the BBC/Mouse deal went down. I mean, there was once an alien race apparently made out of aluminium foil and we took that in our stride...

It’s NOT Tim Baker, it’s Tom Baker.

I really have to disagree with the commentary. Take it all with a pinch of salt

There are TOO many mistakes in this

Doctor Who is very good. Especially from 2005… Chibnall did dirty with the 13th Doctor. That’s a disaster. Now we hope RTD will bring it back again… hoping. So you have 9-12th Doctors to enjoy for sure and Torchwood. Highly recommended. Exceptional actors and good writing.

I'm high right now and even I find this narrator bothersome

Don't forget, you can tell the BBC to up the budget, but we have to pay with that with higher licence fees. Thank you JJ.👵🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🌹🌹🌹

We get PBS in the UK on Freeview. Got some excellent documentaries (a lot of which are British......soz). I love America From The Air on the Smithsonian Channel too. Every state from above. Some gorgeous countryside.

I always felt very much the same way about 'Who' as the Monty Python team did about their creation: that it would never fly in the USA. I mean, why? Most of the references are foreign. The budget is almost subliminal. And we could never produce it in the kind of quantities required. But then I could never quite figure out why The Beatles took off over there. Why The Beatles? Why not The Batchelors? Y'all love the Irish....

Tim baker lol

I love that you know ab-fab🤣

I've been watching Dr Who since the very first episode, but I never knew about the Fox film.

You got Patsy but missed Saffy in the Comic Relief one.

The remit doesn't apply to every show, some shows can do just one. Anyone who watched Open University programs in the 1970's will be well aware that "entertain" was completely missing.

"Un-cancelable and be on air for a long time to come". lol. Then along came Doctor Karen and Doctor Woke. Now it's unwatchable not un-cancelable, It'll be lucky of it makes it to the end of season two.

I have watched Dr Who since the start . The currant Dr Who is extremely good.

I knew there was a reason why I (mostly) liked you ;-) Watched the first episode as an eleven-year-old and seen every one since. My only regret is that it will keep going after have stopped :-(

Hasn't Disney started funding Dr Who now ? Russel T Davies has come back too

Is that legit about Colin Baker's Doctor? Because I have to say, mission accomplished for most people watching at the time - at least as far as I could tell from my neck of the woods in Australia.

Doctor who is goofy af but it’s my favourite show and I love it. Grew up with the new era it’s became part of me lol. The current doctor Ncuti is killing it I love his version of the doctor so much

I think we all recognise that at a certain point in life both butts and buts take on an equal importance.

Back in the 60's, 70's, and 80's the lack of budget was not a problem. The BBC knew that the sets were wobbly, the props often broke. But that was because a larger portion of the budget was spent on the writing. The stories were good, they were the most essential of the 3 parts of the remit - they were entertaining! They were not filled with "the message" which is continually forced down our throats these days. Despite the Disney money - which is very unlikely to be renewed past what has already been spent - Doctor Who is on the verge of being permanently cancelled.

Factually inaccurate and full of misinformation - the budget was only very slowly reduced and initially because the budget wasn't increased in the late 70s during a period of massive inflation (being the equivalent of a budget reduction). Colin's Doctor *wasn't* intentionally made unlikeable in order to give the BBC an excuse to cancel the show - he was made unlikeable as a contrast to his predecessor with the intention of having him win the audience over as time went on. This coincided with an increase in violence on the show influenced by the popularity of action and horror films during the mid-80s which Script Editor Eric Saward saw as a way of pulling in viewers (similar to the way violence and body horror proved popular during the early Tom Baker years). Colin Baker was ultimately removed from the show at the request of the Controller of BBC1, Michael Grade - I'm sure the fact he was very close friends with Colin's ex-wife had no impact on his decision. More can be read about what Grade did in his three years in the position on his Wikipedia page but he didn't like Science Fiction and planned to axe Blackadder after its first series because he didn't think it was funny. The person who put the video together also clearly doesn't like the show and, seemingly, doesn't like research either. The Educational remit of the show was very much at the forefront of the Producers' mind during the first four years it aired - it wasn't junked due to budget limitations and kept only in the form of the two school teachers, Ian and Barbara; stories would switch between historical and Sci Fi every month or so (typical serials lasting 4-6 weeks) with much attention to detail featured in the Historical stories and scientific ideas explained in the serials featuring aliens and the future (albeit filtered through a 60s lens). After a couple of changes of Producer, it became apparent that stories with monsters proved more popular with the audience and the series became more of an adventure show during the late 60s and throughout the 70s. The early 80s saw the showrunners backpedal slightly on the educational remit with stories based on ideas found in contemporary scientific journals, but overall it was still a Sci Fi show for the family. Overall, in the early 60s it was a flagship programme that the BBC invested a lot of time and money in and NOT an embarrassment in any stretch on the imagination. This tailed off by 1969 but the introduction of colour and a new Doctor and production team saw it back as an important staple of Saturday teatime viewing until the mid-Tom Baker era. A change in scheduling - transmitted during the week - and Doctor saw its popularity soar again in the early 80s but the poor writing of the Colin Baker era and Grade's desire to kill the series off was basically the end of the show, despite it notably increasing in quality despite low budgets from 1987/8 onwards when Andrew Cartmel took over as Script Editor and brought in new writers with a more modern outlook. Be careful what videos you watch on RU-vid because any idiot can put something up promoting misinformation about whatever it is they don't like, and whoever made that video clearly doesn't think much of Doctor Who, nor does he know much about it.

the tv movie was never supposed to be considered a movie, just a pilot episode but later people called it the tv movie since calling it the failed pilot isnt very nice lol

"supposedly unbiased" Yeah right!

Daleks defeated by staircases.

Doctor Who is the best TV show ever! Also, the budget is a lot bigger now.

That American Dr Who movie is the ONLY Dr Who show I ever disliked - I have tried a couple times but could never watch the whole thing in a single sitting because it was just that bad. I have watched every single episode of the original series - including the lost episodes. I have only got part way through the new Who, because life got in the way, but I am working my way through the rest - but NOT that one movie - the biggest trouble was the people in charge of that movie didn't understand Dr Who at all, had no idea why it was such a success and they played up all the stuff that was not important and played down everything that was important. They thought that more money was better and bigger effects was better and more realism was better. Wrong - in some ways the cheesy lack of realism in many parts of the show is what makes it work - it moves you out of the real world into a surreal world where you can accept the silly bits in the plot. Dr Who fans, generally speaking, don't want greater realism - we don't want blood and gore and realistic violence - we want to be transported away from all that for a while. We want our imaginations to be used to make it work, whereas getting hyper realistic steals away the imagination and is like being spoon fed the story. No exercise for the mind.

less than fun fact: christopher eccelston quit because between 2004-2008 there was a lot of notable instances of sexual assault on set. and he was unhappy with the producers for not doing enough to stop this, esspecially since out of the cast of series 1, only 3 epsiodes don't feature actors who'd later go on to be convicted or accused of sexual harassment or assault.

As a kid I loved the show. Even on the rare occasions I had to hide behind the couch my parents could not stop me watching. These days, however I don't care enough to watch. It has become woke drivel with RTD at the helm again (and to a lesser extent before that) and even though the last season had Disney money behind it, it had the lowest ratings in the shows history.

The BBC does not make Dr Who, BBC Studios used too before BBC off loaded "Who" to Disney, BBC Studios is indirectly financed by the licence fee and in the last five years BBCS has doubled revenues and profits with the latest Annual Report showing record-level revenues in 2022/23 of £2.1bn and profits of £240m. And plans to double again by 2027/28. So you pay a fee to subsidise a separate company ?????

Both Doctor Who and the BBC have rapidly plummeting standards over the last 20 years. Defunding is definitely a possibility within the next decade or so! Sad to watch its demise.

Doctor Who was wonderful when it was great actors like Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker as the iconic Doctor. sadly, today's BBC is a shadow of its former self- its a London-centric leftwing trash pile. the present day "doctor woke" has been utter rubbish since Whittaker was introduced and not its 100% hot garbage . BBC opted for identity politics and hired woke writers who knew nothing about sci-fi and less about entertainment. Doctor Who is now dead .. BBC and DEI-sney killed it.

Who's narrating this junk? I suppose it's fine I've your not talkibg to a British person just spout any old rubbish they wont know. I've been a Dr Who fan for 60 years. The scenery and effects were not always as they could be but the stories were good. I mean I wouldn't teach a class on the historical references but it was entertaining. Rather than up the budget the BBC, a bunch of upper-class men in suits, have always tried to get rid of it. The movie was junk, although I imagine many will disagree with me. They tried to kill off the series with Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy and for a while it worked. It came back much better with Christopher Eccleston, and for a few years I was happy. It didn't last though, Chibnal can't write for toffee and Jodi's episodes were terrible and it just got worse when RTD can back with an agenda. I've had enough now I'd like to remember it as it was.

last season thy upped the budget and it was total garbage

better now russel t davies is back , it went a bit off when he was away lol.

I watched Dr Who from the beginning of the series, however now it has now become so woke I have found it absolutely unwatchable!

Doctor Who fan for almost half a century, unfortunately It's become unwatchable garbage since 2017. At least during the wilderness years of 89-05 we still had decent Doctor Who novels and audios. Now everything produced by the BBC/Bad Wolf and Big Finish is complete crap.

The Eccleston and first Tennant eras were pretty good, but Dr Wh-oke is just going downhill fast and is now an absolute joke. Steer clear.

Was hoping they'd finally be terminated after this charter ends, but not now labour are in

That Doctor Who movie was 💩. This new Doctor Who is 💩.

calling "The Strangers' bad is really something, Dr Who is the cheapest, nastiest , worst acted show I've seen in the past 20 years. Yeh it used to be ok in the 70s but not in recent times