(Don't) Turn off the TV: Doctor Who - the Commentaries

A previous BBC7 show supporting a TV science fiction show, Heroes: the Official Radio Programme, provided a valuable addition to fans’ enjoyment of the TV show whilst also making great radio.

It’s that last point that fails here. Doctor Who: The Commentaries has not been made for radio at all. It’s a cut-down version of a commentary track designed to be played along with the TV episode, along the same lines as the tracks included on many commercial DVDs.

In the last couple of years, the BBC has provided commentaries for every episode available for download, as well as providing them via digital TV’s ‘red button’ on narrative repeats (e.g., the Sunday BBC3 showing) of each episode. That’s happening again this year, with full episode commentaries available as a podcast, with easy options to subscribe so that future episodes are downloaded automatically.

The trouble is, though, that these commentary tracks are designed to be one half of an audio-visual combination. In the first episode, actrs David Tennant and Catherine Tate join Phil Collinson for a lively, occasionally raucously funny, commentary, which nevertheless requires to be played alongside the original programme to make full sense. The insights and anecdotes the three relate to us depend on the assumption that we are seeing on screen exactly what they are. Play the episode out on radio, and it tends to make very little sense.

To add insult to injury, though, the edition that goes out on BBC7 is not even a full commentary: it has been edited down to fit neatly into a half-hour slot, even though the original length is three-quarters of an hour (i.e., the full length of the broadcast TV programme). So not only can we not see what they’re talking about, but it’s impossible to ever match the words of the BBC7 broadcast up to the pictures for very long.

There must be an audience for a discussion show along the lines of 2007’s Heroes support show. So why go down this half-baked, worse-than-useless route instead? The clue, it seems, may lie in Christmas 2007.

The commentary for Voyage of the Damned, the Christmas Day episode starring Kylie Minogue, was only available to be ‘streamed’ — listened to from a web page, rather than downloaded in a form that could be played at any time.

The explanation from the Doctor Who new media team was:

You’re probably wondering why the commentary for Voyage Of The Damned isn’t available as an MP3 and isn’t on iTunes.

This is because the BBC is only currently allowed to offer big downloads like this if they’re related to radio shows.

And so, one might think, a satisfactory compromise was made. Transmit the commentary on BBC7, which means that it then becomes a ‘radio programme’ and can be downloaded in podcast form as normal.

Except that, as I’ve said above, what results is not a radio programme at all. To call it such to get round a BBC policy demeans both the people who put the commentary tracks together and (especially) BBC7, which gets saddled with inferior output as a result.

And as far the BBC only being ‘allowed’ to offer big downloads if they’re related to radio shows — who says? There’s nothing publicly available that spells out such a rule, if one even exists at all. When the BBC Trust released their final decision on the Corporation’s on-demand offerings, the section on “non-DRM audio downloads”, including podcasts, specified that only book readings and classical music were excluded. An optional commentary for a TV show fits into neither category.

Presumably, then, this rule is one that has been imposed internally by the BBC themselves. In which case, it’s a stupid rule that needs to be revoked. Offer the commentaries as podcast downloads, by all means — but don’t cripple BBC7 by forcing them to broadcast inferior content just to satisfy the bureaucrats.