Doctor Who Marathon!

For those of us who get WTTW 11 in Chicago, tonight Saturday the 10th of July will have a 14 episode marathon starting at 8 pm. I

I know in this age of DVD, Torrents and BBC America it is kinda redundant, but there are still a lot of people who dont have cable or do the torrent thing, and it takes me back to when they had the marathons when I was a kid.

I have a feeling the 14 episodes will be Donna's season as all the promos for the 'new' season that is premiering on Sunday looks to be the specials.

I still have some of these on tape. It was great to just stick in a tape and let it run all morning / afternoon, picking up Doctor Who. Not only that, but the pledge breaks themselves were often pretty hilarious. The very first thing I ever taped was the Five Doctors with Tom Baker co-hosting the pledge break, which is pretty ironic as he was only in it for about five minutes via stock footage from Shada. Rich Campanella, one of our local PBS dudes who co-hosted with Tom, made a few flirtatious comments about Lalla Ward, clearly unaware that she and Tom were once married (at that time, they had only been divorced for about a year)! Tom took it in stride, however.

Other fun ones I remember are Gordon Jump (Mr. Carlson from WKRP) being unable to pronounce "Weng-Chiang" correctly (yes, I got it on tape before it was banned!), and Nichelle Nichols referring to our hero as "Doctor Hugh." And it was always cool to see the phone banks staffed by all those folks decked out in Tom Baker scarves! The most enthusiastic guest host ever was John Levene, who stayed the entire morning / afternoon; that was nice of him. Just writing about these marathons makes me nostalgic for those tapes; maybe I'll dig them up and watch them.

Oh, one more awesome memory was how they would pick the absolute worst moments to interrupt the episode for a pledge break! It's like they couldn't have made it more agonizing if they had tried on purpose!

The marathon is actually of series three and not four, bugger!

I have a DVd of myself answering phones at WTTW 11 when they held a Master marathon one spring. It was the most surreal experience I had up to that point in my life.

Quote :

It was the most surreal experience I had up to that point in my life.

You can't leave us hanging like that! What's the story?

Another awesome memory that just came back to me is the fully functioning TARDIS that was offered as a prize if you pledged! It was a Dapol TARDIS, which the host enthusiastically demonstrated for us. He took off his watch and held it up to the camera, and asked the audience to look at what time it was. He then put it inside the TARDIS, and a minute later, he took the watch out and once again held it up to the camera to show us that IT WAS A MINUTE LATER! Yes, the watch had traveled forward in time by a minute! This TARDIS was actually a fully functional time machine, and it could be yours with a pledge of x dollars!

The surreal element was sitting at the tables answering phones then looking up and seeing yourself on Television. The whole aspect of being on 'the other side' of the camera was weird.

My first PBS station was bidding off a scarf that was being knitted on screen. I sooo wanted to pledge to win it, but wasnt alloowed to, it went for a paltry $10.00! WPTS never interrupted the show, they came on just before and after the show.

My local PBS affiliate was always funny, when they had any sort of pledge drive because they'd drag out Doctor Who, Are You Being Served?, Red Dwarf, and a couple other British Comedies.

And the lady in charge of our PBS affiliate hated British Television (Indeed, she eventually managed to get all British programming tossed off my PBS affiliate, to this day. The Old Bat hasn't keeled over yet). Though I didn't realize it at the time, she often was gritting her teeth when forced to try to be 'excited' about the 'wonderful' programming we were all watching.

And the best thing we ever got on Pledge Drives was a Tote Bag you got with a $100 donation. Coffee Mug was $50. And you got a friggen pen at the $20 mark. Not even a good pen, one of those pens you can walk out with by the handful at any Bank.


My local PBS affiliate is essentially a "History Channel-lite" now a days.

Rust wrote:

My local PBS affiliate was always funny, when they had any sort of pledge drive because they'd drag out Doctor Who, Are You Being Served?, Red Dwarf, and a couple other British Comedies.

And the lady in charge of our PBS affiliate hated British Television (Indeed, she eventually managed to get all British programming tossed off my PBS affiliate, to this day. The Old Bat hasn't keeled over yet). Though I didn't realize it at the time, she often was gritting her teeth when forced to try to be 'excited' about the 'wonderful' programming we were all watching.

And the best thing we ever got on Pledge Drives was a Tote Bag you got with a $100 donation. Coffee Mug was $50. And you got a friggen pen at the $20 mark. Not even a good pen, one of those pens you can walk out with by the handful at any Bank.


My local PBS affiliate is essentially a "History Channel-lite" now a days.

I stopped watching PBS a long time ago. Apparently, though, they do air New Who.

I remember some of my pledge gifts. One was the 20th Aniv. magazine that Radio Times put out. Another was a Colin Baker poster, which was autographed. I can't remember any others, but I know they were cool. But the cool part was watching the episodes with the pride of know I helped bring Jon Pertwee to WILL-TV!

One unusual pledge break gift I remember was a car sunshade (the kind you attach vertically at one end of your windshield, then pull horizontally across the length of your windshield) with a huge Sylvester McCoy logo across it. It struck me as unique at the time as you could find lots of items with the "diamond" logo and "neon" logo, but not that McCoy logo.