There was a time before Buffy. And it wasn't all bad.


You are The Years Of Tom And Lalla. You are a thing
of immense joy and happiness. All should
worship before you. On the negative side,
you're a bit too clever for your own good.


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In the final years of Tom and Lalla, John Nathan-Turner was hired as Executive Producer, and he hired the phenomenally erudite Christopher H Bidmead as script editor, which led to the end of the Tom and Lalla era including a number of the most erudite scripts and best episodes in the history of the program. Then, however, Bidmead went off to do something else, Nathan-Turner continued into be Executive Producer, and Dr Who sank slowly into the sludge, admittedly along with the rest of the BBC. (I don't think Nathan-Turner was a bad producer, at least not initially. However, Dr Who was a program that worked best when the people both on and off screen did it for a few years and then went away to do something else. The trouble was that in the 1980s and early 1990s the people controlling the BBC developed a disdain for the program, and they wouldn't give Nathan-Turner a different job so that somebody else could bring fresh ideas to Dr Who).
(via Iain Murray).

Update: Speaking of the years of Tom and Lalla, the BBC has just released a Flash animation version of the famous Douglas Adams written but unfinished and unaired season 17 episode Shada. This is interesting, but it misses out on the beautiful photography of Cambridge that is central to the episode, or which is at least central to my viewing of it. (Both Douglas Adams and I attended St John's College, although obviously at different times, and this gives us a similar perspective on the city, I think. For that reason, I find the unfinished version of Shada (available on VHS) incredibly familiar, somehow).

(via slashdot).