BBC radio news decided it was a record, the folks on the news board of the Doctor Who official site are more confused. The 2007 Guinness Book of World Records does indeed mention our venerable Time Lord as the longest-running TV SF show, although it gets the number of episodes wrong. However for the longest consecutively-running TV SF show the same book lists Stargate SG-1. Nothing against SG1 which is a fave with many of the staff here and has notched up an impressive run, but even with the mid-80s hiatus and the longer gap between old and new series Doctor Who, beginning in November 1963 (famously held up because of the Kennedy assassination) outpaces relative ‘newcomers’ like SG-1 by an enormous margin.
Come on, Guinness, get with it – simple arithmetic, even counting from 1963 to the first hiatus in 1985 (for which we will never forgive diminutive, cigar-chompin’ TV supremo Michael Grade) it is miles ahead in both years showing consecutively and the number of episodes. Guess you can’t trust the Guinness figures and facts as much as we thought.
Thu, Sep 28, 2006
Awards, Film, TV and radio, News