Talk:Spin-off (media)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[edit] Doctor Who

The article currently reads:

By 2007, the long-running BBC series Doctor Who with 9 in total, is the show with the most amount of spun off media. The first was a one episode spin off made in the 1980s based on the character of Sarah Jane Smith called K-9 and Company. The film Shakedown: Return of the Sontarans features one of the race of Dr Who Villains, but for licensing reasons not the Doctor himself. In 1989 the spin off [wartime] was made, about the adventures of some of the UNIT personnel. In the 1990s, Reeltime distributed PROBE a series of five made-for-video movies featuring Caroline John as her Pertwee-era character, Dr. Elizabeth Shaw. BBV, on their part, produced and released a series of movies based on one of Dr Who's Villains: Auton, Auton 2: Sentinel and Auton 3. In 2006 the BBC launched another spin-off, Torchwood, aimed at a more adult audience and featuring Captain Jack Harkness from the newer series. The Sarah Jane Adventures is currently airing, however is more child-oriented than Dr Who. K-9 is currently in production, and there is also an animated serial The Infinite Quest.

This seems kinda disingenuous to me. Shakedown, Wartime, PROBE, and BBV stuff hardly counts, does it? None of that was broadcast, and they aren't fully professional productions. The still-in-production K-9 is not a spin-off of Doctor Who, because the use of the character is intended to be in situations intentionally dissimilar to the Doctor Who usage. Even the character design is unfamiliar. For all we know, it might be K9 mk 14, effectively making it a wholly different character. And The Infinite Quest isn't even a series in its own right, but a segment of another series. To my mind, proper spin-offs of DW are:

K9 and Company

Torchwood

SJA

Doctor Who Confidential

Torchwood Declassified

Totally Doctor Who

Maybe I'm missing the definition of spin-off here, but I think this passage needs major restructuring to reflect only those broadcast television programmes that are official BBC products. CzechOut 08:06, 9 August 2007 (UTC)