Okay... What the Frak?

Ever since Doctor Who came back, I've been... well, miffed about the fact that there are only 14 episodes a season. This is the sort of crap that HBO and whatnot can pull, but only because they have to pay their actors so much to get nekkid. (At least, I assume that's the reason.)

Star Trek ran 26 episodes a season, almost every season, for pretty much all of its incarnations. Buffy? 22. Battlestar Galactica ran concurrently with the first three-ish seasons of Who and had 20 a year (sort of).

During its first six seasons, Doctor Who was churning out something like 40 half-hour episodes a year. 40. When they switched to color, that number came down to hover around 26 until the mid-1980s. (26 half-hour episodes = 13 hour-long episodes, but that only matters to DVD owners. I'm talking about the number of days we get new material, not the total number of hours. Not that I want to watch one episode in five-minute installments.)

In 1984, they pulled a stupid stunt and did a season of 13 hour-long episodes. It was such a disaster that the show was put on hiatus for 18 months... and then it came back with 14 half-hour episodes. So yeah, the new show is an improvement over that...

But...

A Christmas special, plus 13 regular episodes. And during the Tennant years, somebody screwed up his contract so badly that he didn't have to be in one of those 13?

And now there's this. Now, I'm not saying that stuff can't be worth the wait (again, BSG's last half-season certainly was). But come on. You're not doing 20, or 22, or 26 episodes. You're doing 13, plus a Christmas special. Are there really that few writers left in Britain that you have to write them all and start so late?

Now, I'd be more forgiving if Doctor Who were of the same caliber as, say, Battlestar Galactica. But this last season has been mostly disappointing, with three or four exceptions. I don't want to wait seven months for another "Night Terrors."

I'm really hesitant about saying this, because the last time an American got his mitts on Doctor Who we got the Movie... but at least we know how to get our shows out on time.