Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2022 February 23

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February 23

Doctor Who: origin of the "season" vs. "series" distinction

What is the origin of the practice of grouping pre-revival episodes into seasons, and post-revival ones into series? Specifically, were the "seasons" always referred to as such, or only after the revival made it necessary to distinguish between them and the later "series"? I am aware that, for other shows, what we in the US refer to as "seasons" are called "series" in the UK. ZFT (talk) 07:54, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

Here's part of the BBC's Dr. Who page as it looked in 2003, before the "new series". You can see that what they would subsequently call the "classic series" was grouped into seasons, even back then. Later on they begin to talk about the new series as "series one", "series two", etc., as you can see if you look at the BBC's Dr Who page today. Why not seasons? This I cannot say. They might have been disinclined to launch the reboot with "Dr Who, season 27", but apparently "Dr Who, series 2, season 1" wasn't good enough either. It was as if they felt the original series to be an embarrassing secret which is understandable since it was much better paced and less pretentious.  Card Zero  (talk) 11:23, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

Just popping in to note that if you work your way through the archives here Talk:List of Doctor Who episodes (2005–present) you will find several discussions explaining things including the fact that documentation of the use of the term seasons goes back to the earliest days of the show. There was an FAQ about it at one point but it seems to have disappeared when the article was split a few years ago. Another oddity of the split is that most of the archives on that talk page are actually discussions that go with the Talk:List of Doctor Who episodes (1963–1989) but I'm guessing that fixing that would be a real pain. MarnetteD|Talk 02:03, 24 February 2022 (UTC)