Tag Archives: Doctor Dances

I Bet Battlestar Galactica are Annoyed By This…

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You might have missed the news, but the first series of Doctor Who, which has recently been shown in the US, did rather well at the Hugo Awards.

Three stories from the series were nominated in the Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) category in a total field of seven, including an episode of Battlestar Galactica, and Jack-Jack Attack the Pixar short that featured on the DVD of The Incredibles. The Doctor Who episodes nominated were the Steven Moffat two-parter The Empty Child and The Doctor Dances, Robert Shearman for Dalek, and Paul Cornell for Father’s Day.

Last year, Galactica won the category, and they were favourite to do it again this year. However, this year they were beaten into fourth place, with the episodes of Doctor Who taking the first, second and third places – Steven Moffat taking the prize, with Robert Shearman in second and Paul Cornell in third. Certainly a great result.

However, things get interesting when you see the voting breakdown, and certainly if I were involved with Galactica I’d feel a bit annoyed. The voting appears to operate on a single transferable vote system, with multiple votes. In the first place vote, Battlestar Galactica got the most votes in each count, right up to the final round where the Doctor Who episode sneaked ahead. The same happened with the second place vote – Battlestar Galactica again got the most votes in every round until the final round where the Doctor Who episode went ahead. In the third place vote, it happened again, with Doctor Who being behind, until in the final count it beat Battlestar Galactica by one vote. After that, Battlestar Galactica won the fourth place vote after just two rounds, getting more than 50% of the vote.

Paul Cornell went along to the ceremony to represent the Doctor Who writers, and his account of collecting the award can be seen on his blog. You can also read his pre-ceremony posting where he is “reassuringly certainâ€? that Doctor Who can’t win.

All in all it was a great showing, and an interesting counter-balance to the aborted American Doctor Who, that changed elements of the show on the basis that a purely British Doctor Who wouldn’t go down well in the US.