Doctor Who Journey’s End Edited by CBC in Canada December 13, 2008
Posted by showmescifi in scifi.Tags: CBC, doctor who, Dr. Who, science fiction, sciencefiction, scifi
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What a joke. The CBC in Canada aired the final episode of Doctor Who season 4 (4×13) in Canada on Friday night – in a bastardized edited form that made the show impossible to watch.
The CBC editted nearly 20 minutes out of the episode which was the season finale!
There are a lot of people that are complaining about this (check out the CBC forums) .
Was the show too long? Something politically incorrect in it? Too much nudity?? What?!! Why would the CBC do such a thing? It’s just madness.
CBC is funded by the Canadian taxpayers. I suggest that all Canadian’s demand a refund.
Show Me SciFi 
That’s why I illegally download the UK versions instead of watching it on Sci Fi. Who knows what those network idiots edit out of the American version.
Why the outrage? Everyone in Canada already knows if it isn’t hockey, you don’t watch it on CBC. They have always ruined anything worth watching by editing, skipping, and rescheduling episodes. Not to mention the average 2 year wait for new episodes whenever some US station decides they want to pick something up.
If it’s on CBC I rent or download it.
Unwatchable? I think that’s an unfair statement. I’ve already watched it and enjoyed it and wouldn’t even have known about the cut scenes had I not found an article about it on Slashdot. It didn’t seem like there was something missing.
Paranoid theories aside, I think the only reason it was chopped up was to fit it within the one hour time slot and include commercials.
“Paranoid theories aside, I think the only reason it was chopped up was to fit it within the one hour time slot and include commercials.”
20 mins of commercials on a state funded Station, so where does that money go?
If it has any edits you are being short changed, and losing the plot…literally, these stories spin together, are these the idiots who butchered firefly on US TV, or did they all get there Advanced degrees together.
dr who is already formatted that way, unless they need to ad more commercials than the shows editing supports?
I can’t recall for certain but I think the episode that aired on Sci Fi in the US was aprox. 1 1/2 hours with commercials. This is quite unusual for most shows in general. Cutting 20 minutes of show to get it into an hour timeslot was a bad judement call, especially with this episode.
The last ep. was that long, because it was essentially 1 1/2 episode, running a total of 1:02:47, without the commercials as opposed to the normal 45 minutes (again without the commercials).
That explains why the show seemed to move at a much faster pace than the previous ones.
Fortunatly, this british icon is available on every respectable bittorrent tracker, as well as usenet. Dr Who just shouldn’t be cut, ever – it’s too detailed. Even a few minutes missing is sure to cut something important.
I think this happens a lot to BBC programs – we show them without adverts, so they don’t fit within the much shorter timeslots of commercial broadcasters. A typical commercial channel spends about 25% of it’s time showing advertising.
That’s funny, ’cause you can stream the uncut episode on the CBC website: http://www.cbc.ca/doctorwho/#clipId=961275034