BBC One Christmas 2009 - Doctor Who ident revealed

It's a shame that all the tosh talk has taken away from the fact that it really a very beautiful ident. Try for a moment, if you can stomach this, watching it again and admiring the beautiful colour and execution of the ident which easily puts it as one of the best BBC1 Christmas idents for a long time.

It has a lovely sense of depth and I just love the resolve of the ident as well - the sunlight just peeping through really makes it feel Christmasy/Wintry enough but also feels warm as well. Great soundtrack as well.

Sorry sportsfans, I'm a Doctor Who fan anyway so I was probably going to like this anyway but I think it has exceeded my expectations. And I would say that even if you swapped David Tennant for Santa and the Tardis for the sleigh. It has so many other good points to it.

Completely agree, and I also peronally feel like a lot of the 'discussion' is of someone thinking their opinion is the majority, when in reality its far from it. The obvious logic for the BBC is that Doctor Who is a very popular product/brand, and that by using it at the start of every programme like Wallace & Gromit last year, it'll cheer people up during the festive period. Something that it WILL do. The Beeb aren't going to spend money, and designate an entire block of filming, to create an ident most people will dislike...

How about the entire Dancers set of idents? Almost universally loathed.

I concede with the others, the symbols used should be generic. Wallace & Gromit just about got away with it but this just doesn't work.

Here's another one.

"tosh talk"- a lot of these Doctor Who fans have really embraced yob culture. You'd think their teddy bears had been attacked. [reactionary sarcasm]

All that's happened is that a few people have disagreed with their collective view and, constructively, pointed out why. The Doctor Who ident is fine in itself- and it could certainly have been a lot worse- and all that some of us are stating is that a generic ident is preferable as it doesn't just foreground one programme. It's hardly a controversial view.

True, and as a more constructive comment that makes more sense. But this is more about Tennant's passing on as The Doctor, than the programme itself... seeing Doctor Who is probably the biggest franchise the BBC has. It's more than obvious they're wanting to celebrate his final episodes, something which everyone knows is this Christmas, whether they're Who fans or not [not to mention that this ident has been requested by fans ever since they saw W&G with their own last year] . I personally think regardless of fandom or not, the majority of people will see the amusement in Reindeer pulling along the TARDIS for the sake of a lighthearted Christmas ident... especially when most 'normal' viewers found the penguins ident entertaining. Which makes less sense than a fantasy sci-fi character managing what he's done this year.

I know why the ident has happened, it's just that I don't agree with the notion.

You haven't tackled the fact that the ident signifies just one programme.

It's way beyond overkill with Doctor Who this Christmas. Look at the list of related programmes:
http://gallifreynewsbase.blogspot.com/
(you'll need to scroll down the page a little)

The conclusion I draw from this is that there's not nearly enough popular entertainment being made/shown by the BBC. I suppose that's true.

If anything the return of Who 5 years ago helped bring back family entertainment. Without Doctor Who there wouldn't have been Robin Hood, Merlin, Primevil, Demons... created spinoffs such as Torchwood and Sarah Jane... allowed more grown up products like Misfits and The Prisoner. And if it wasn't for the success the BBC has had with such programmes, ITV wouldn't have made programmes such as The X Factor's spin offs to compete, such as Britain's Got Talent. So if anything, we're better off for family entertainment programmes then before Doctor Who came back. There are a lot of programmes out there, just this Christmas is a special exception celebrating the one programme. Something I think it deserves, seeing it came from a stereotypical sci-fi geeky background of wobbily sets and stupid costumed aliens, and has become one of the biggest programmes around the world... I say bring on the stupid 30 second little ident, they've deserved it!

Totally agree (except for the wobbly sets / stupid costumed aliens bit ) but then again I would be biased.

Wasn't there a similar argument about the W&G ident last year IIRC? Plus the average Joe probably won't care & will probably like it more than complain

Two hours on and nobody's replied to this comment screaming "Daily Mail reading scum!!!". It's a Christmas miracle.

I completely disagree, by the way - I think there's a lot of snobbery around Doctor Who actually.

I can safely say I'm not snobby when it comes to Who at all, if people like a story I dislike, etc. I have absolutely no problem with that. Unfortunately there's one or two (not on here) that tell you you're wrong for liking certain stories or characters in Who (one I can think of in particular is that I stated I did like Rose & I got told how I was jealous of the relationships she has with the Doctor, erm, B*ll*cks)

One thing at a time. I'm still scratching my head to understand if you were joking when you said, "that's not a Christmas tree - that's a cone".

If it were it would take some size of 99, let me tell you.

No I'm serious - it was a number of giant red baubles arranged in the shape of a cone. To call that "a tree" is ridiculous.