The 2007 Guinness Book of Records apparently has listed as the World's Longest Running Science Fiction television series (consecutive)... STARGATE SG-1 for having reached its tenth anniversary and 203 episodes.
To add insult to injury, they say that it has taken this record from THE X-FLIES which had 202 episodes over nine years and was CANCELLED ages ago!
Now I may be a very backwards fluffy thing, but I think I can think of a television series that has been running for a bit longer than that. In actual fact, at about four DECADES, that's QUITE a bit longer than that.
Here is a clue: DOCTOR WHO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(Ooh, that rhymes!)
Oh, it doesn't count, though, because it got stopped in 1989 when Mr Dr Sylv went off into the sunset to stop the tea getting cold.
Well, excuse me but wasn't that STILL some twenty-six years of being on the telly EVERY YEAR?
(I think I should WARN anyone approaching who is going to WHINGE about the eighteen month DOCTOR-IN-DISTRESS gap when Mr Dr Colin was almost cancelled from going to BLACKPOOL, that I am FULLY ready to give them a good thump with my big fluffy nose!)
I have made Daddy Richard get out the big book of Dr Who and do some counting up for me.
Doctor Who has 203 consecutive episodes running from "An Unearthly Child" to "The Fury from the Deep, episode six", almost without any breaks at all, and certainly shorter gaps than Stargate's annual summer holiday.
Doctor Who continues with ANOTHER 203 consecutive episodes from "The Wheel in Space, episode one" to "Planet of Evil, part one".
It then has a THIRD run of 203 consecutive episodes from "Planet of Evil part two" to
And then another 88 episodes until the end of "Survival, part three". Making 697!
Plus one episode in 1996. (Mr Paul McGann DOES count!)
And now another 21 episodes and counting!
In fact by 1989, Dr Who had accumulated of seventeen thousand screen minutes. And by now it is over EIGHTEEN! More than DOUBLE certain Vancouver based series.
It is simply DAFT to say that those first 203 episodes and the next 203 episodes and the next 203 episodes after that somehow stop being consecutive episodes just because of the SUBSEQUENT hiatus in 1986 or the post 1989 gap.
The argument appears to be that if Doctor Who had been CANCELLED in 1986 then it WOULD have a longer run than Stargate, but since it returned it somehow DOESN'T.
Maybe it is GALLIFREYAN maths!
PS
Counting on my FLUFFY FEET...I have tried counting in MINUTES too, because Stargate episodes are LONGER than Dr Who's episodes used to be.
Let us say that they are 45 minutes long (and that is being generous!): 203 times 45 is 9135 minutes of airtime.
But even by the end of Mr Dr Twerpee’s time Dr Who had already racked up 9217 minutes of airtime.
So it had actually already gone past Stargate’s ten-year total in eleven years.
During "Planet of the Spiders".
Episode Three.
About fifteen minutes in.
Ish.
2 comments:
"And now another 21 episodes and counting!"
27 even :-)
Oh dear, Daddy was counting STORIES instead of EPISODES, wasn't he, Mr Will.
I hope that will teach him not to stay up until two in the morning inputing episode lengths from the Dr Who handbooks!
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