Netflix buys Doctor Who franchise.

Netflix is to buy the Doctor Who franchise from the BBC in 2018. The amount of money set to exchange hands is not being announced, but is said to dwarf the huge amount Disney paid for George Lucas’s Star Wars franchise ($4 billion).

Given the huge amount being invested, Netflix will sadly, going forward, not be able to commission any new series which do not feature Doctor Who or its associated spin-offs … Torchwood, Sarah Jane Adventures, To Dalek or Not to Dalek, etc.

Across the rest of 2018, all non-Doctor Who content will be phased out, until, in time to commemorate the show’s 55th anniversary, only Doctor Who will be shown on Netflix. This specialist programming stream will remain in place until 2056, when the cost of the commercial deal should have been paid off by subscribers.

Netflix’s new Head of Programming, Ms. April Scemo, told SFcrowsnest, “We’re really moving time and space to satisfy the needs of the world’s Doctor Who fandom. This is a major innovation and the obvious way forward to combat a more crowded media landscape. We analysed the deep data from Netflix and combined this with statistical models from social media and realised that everyone in the world is a serious Doctor Who fan.”

Scemo went on to say that some existing popular Netflix originals, such as House of Cards, will be re-imagined inside the Doctor Who franchise. Actor Robin Wright will be playing the President of Gallifrey in House of Chrono-Cards.

Non-science fiction fans reacted angrily to the news.

David Letterman said about the move, “So, what, now I’m expected just to interview Sylvester McCoy and Steven %$%^^ing Moffat? And they want me to do that inside a Cyberman costume? I’m going to find it really hot and unpleasant sitting inside that suit for hours”

Some critics of Netflix’s bold move suggested that hackers operating in the pay of ‘foreign governments’ might have altered the data models used by Netflix in an attempt to destabilise the West by turning all citizens of the free world into science fiction fans. If this is true, it would be a self-defeating move, as surveys have indicated that SF fans are notably more intelligent and sexually attractive than, say, Jocks or Eastern European supermodels.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Jeff Bezos, already worried about Disney’s plans for a new rival streaming service leveraging its Marvel/Disney/Star Wars franchises, is now considering buying Blake’s 7 for Amazon Prime and making Amazon’s Prime a dedicated Blake’s 7-only service.

Many Whovians criticised the BBC for “this awful short-sighted sell-off of its crown jewels.”

Tony Hall, the current Director General of the BBC dismissed fans’ concerns, saying, “Don’t worry. We’ve still got Star Cops.”