“Doctor Who” Season 4 mid-series trailer hits the net.

And it’s looking pretty good. There’s a few spoilers in here so don’t watch it if you don’t want to know what’s coming next:

Found over at the Bad Astronomy Blog.

Though it might seem an obvious move to shoot the Doctor in HD, given that the Torchwood spinoff has had the treatment, there are plenty of technical considerations that have dissuaded the BBC from doing it.

The main issue, according to Julie Gardner, an executive producer for Doctor Who, is that, whereas Torchwood has maybe 10 or 20 special effects per episode, Doctor Who has a hundred or more.

“I think it would take more time for us to do our post-production, and I think it would be more costly. And I genuinely love the look that we’ve managed to achieve with our [directors of photography] and our grade on ‘Doctor Who’,” she told The Stage magazine.

Additionally Russel T. Davies has said in the past that DW would be offered in HD because it would make all the sets look too fake. Of course with him stepping down after the four 2009 specials things may change, but it’s going to be awhile before DW is in HD.

The BBC do film as much as they can in HD if they expect it to be exported. Obviously quiz shows and the such like they don’t bother, but the big costume dramas etc they do, basically to make sure there is a market- Some US stations are demanding only HD for such things I believe.

I can see something with a lot CGI and Models being difficult to do- you could end up with that Ray Harryhausen look, where the actors look fake and the monsters look real! (I always said the demons on my Runequest campaign looked like this when ever they came to our plane- sort of ‘more realer’)