(Now updated with Radio Free Skaro’s contribution in Part Two. Scroll to the bottom of this article to listen.)
As most of you know, to be a Doctor Who fan in the UK right now is to be on top of the world. The show is a ratings hit, and everywhere you look, you are surrounded by Doctor Who hype unlike any seen in the programme’s long history.
For Doctor Who‘s worldwide fan base, though, things are not as cheery. Each series of Doctor Who is often broadcast months after it is shown in the UK, or, in the case of the past two gap year specials, The Next Doctor and Planet of the Dead, they might not have even been shown on TV in your area at all. As a result, fans from outside the UK have to resort to alternate means to view new episodes of the show. This means that the fans most likely will not watch the episodes when they finally arrive on their local TV station, which diminishes the viewership ratings, which lends the TV stations to believe that the show is unpopular, which leads them to further scale back their broadcasting plans of the show, and so on.
The fine fellows from DWO Whocast, Thie Week in Doctor Who, and Two-Minute Time Lord have pulled together a few of the Doctor Who world’s finest Doctor Who podcasts (they even invited us!) to raise awareness of what Doctor Who fans in all parts of the world are having to go through to follow their favourite TV show, and to offer ideas of what can be done to remedy the situation.
This project has manifested itself as an unprecedented two-part version of the DWO Whocast. Part One (Whocast #118) is being released today, and involves Trev and Marty (The Whocast), Ben Elliott (This Week in Doctor Who), and Chip (Two-Minute Time Lord) discussing the issues as noted above.
Part Two (Whocast #119) will be released on Saturday, May 16, and will feature contributions from Dave AC (Cultdom in Audio), Louis, Ken, and James (Doctor Who: Podshock), Luke (The Minute Doctor Who Podcast), Michael (Tin Dog Podcast), and Warren, Steven, and Chris from this very podcast, Radio Free Skaro.
(Here’s Ben Elliott’s manifesto that unofficially sparked this whole event.)
Click below for the links to each episode, and thanks for listening!
 direct download: Doctor Who Worldwide – Part One |
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