Watched what’s going to be the last Doctor Who for a while tonight. In a word: weird. It looks like the end for the Daleks–again (until the writers really, really need a Dalek fix). The episode played up some of the show’s plot quirks: the mortals around him sacrifice their lives and happiness, while the immortal Doctor “never looks back,” and the irony that he’s a loner with so many friends. The latter became my favorite TV irony when it reached its illogical extreme in Burn Notice: If you were dumped in sunny Miami with as many friends as Michael Westen has there (not just Sam, Fiona, and his mom, but a contact for every occasion), wouldn’t you just hit the beach and chill?

Bought a Blu-ray yet? No? You’re not alone, according to a study by ABI Research. As the company says, more than “half of the 1000 respondents, citing ‘other priorities,’ say they have no plans to purchase one; a further 23% are likely to buy, but not until sometime in 2009.”

“Most are very satisfied with the performance of their current DVD players,” the firm’s main analyst Steve Wilson said in a press release. The cost and the requirement for an HDTV to go with it were also cited as reasons why people haven’t bought yet.

Makes you wonder: If we’d had economic downturns at the wrong times in our gadget evolution, would we still be watching VHS movies and listening to eight-track and vinyl?

You can read more about it here.

… if you’re not on the cable.

THIS TV is MGM’s new digital channel, designed to be broadcast as part of free digital packages put together by local stations. Partner Weigel Broadcasting is bringing it out first in Chicago, Milwaukee, and South Bend. THIS will feature MGM movies and TV shows, although MGM’s press release doesn’t go into specifics.

I’m not sold on digital TV, but if we’re going to have it, it’s time to start coming up with some of that improved content that the broadcasters promised. This sounds like a decent start.

To read more, check out MGM’s release.

To look at Britain’s Freeview, which has been a bit more ambitious in a digital conversion, check here.

I’ll have the full review for you later over on DVD Verdict, but I’ve just seen the first two episodes of Wild China, the BBC documentary on the land which will host the 2008 Olympics, and they are beautiful. I was hooked about 5 minutes in, as the sheer human accomplishment behind the rice paddy terraces of Yuanyang County sank in.

I’m blogging now because The Travel Channel will be running Wild China in two big Sunday three-hour blocks on July 27 and August 3, starting at 8 p.m. each night. Since the shows run 59 minutes on the DVD, there will likely be cuts to fit the hour time slots. The documentary also has a rare graceful flow that could be lost amid commercials and those ubiquitous promos. Still, it is something to behold, and you ought to catch it.

Yeah, you’ve heard that before about documentaries, and yeah, I realize there are a lot of times when you just aren’t interested in the subject. From what I’ve seen so far, though, you could be hooked even if you think you’re uninterested.

I don’t think I’ll believe it till I see it, but AMC has plans for a new six-hour version of Patrick McGoohan’s The Prisoner, a 1984-influenced psychedelic rumination on the individual vs. the state disguised as a spy drama. Jim Caviezel (The Passion of the Christ) is taking over McGoohan’s role as imprisoned spy Number Six, with Ian McKellen (The Da Vinci Code) as village boss Number Two, played most notably by Leo McKern. It’s a co-production with Britain’s ITV and Granada International, and it’s due in 2009. No mention of its potential psychedelic properties on the AMC site, but it says the new version will tackle “21st Century concerns and anxieties, such as liberty, security, and surveillance, yet also showcase the same key elements of paranoia, tense action and socio-political comemmentary seen in McGoohan’s enigmatic original.” Makes sense to me.

Find out more at AMC.

I’ve noticed that Samantha Brown’s shows on the Travel Channel seem to be downscaling with the economy. When people could afford overseas trips, she did Passport to Europe. When that got pricey, she switched to Passport to Latin America. Now, as gas prices top $4, she’s doing Passport to Great Weekends, a show that looks like it’ll be recommending getaways closer to home. Now that’s an indicator of a recession. When Samantha Brown does Passport to Sitting In Front of the TV Wistfully Watching Travel Shows, we’ll know it’s an outright depression.

I was visiting someone who has one of those new digital-ready TVs and an antenna the other day. I couldn’t help checking out the DT channels, and I made a discovery: There’s no fuzz, but the picture keeps blacking out; it’s just for a few seconds, but it keeps going. I went back to the old analog version of the channel, and I saw no interference with its signal at all. Since I can watch fuzz, but can’t watch nothing, I wasn’t impressed.

A year or two ago, I heard on NPR’s Fresh Air about a Canadian show called Little Mosque on the Prairie, about Muslims in the small-town Canadian Midwest, that was building an audience on the CBC. Intriguing, especially with Carlo Rota (Morris O’Brien from 24) as one of the stars. Now I read that Fox plans to produce a remake. A remake of a Canadian show? Ridiculous, especially when Fox would go up to Canada in a flash to save a few fins and the show already boasts a familiar Fox face.

Just caught the second season premiere of Ice Road Truckers on History. They’re entering “a whole new world of ice road trucking,” driving over the Arctic Ocean. This time, tides could create deadly cracks in the ice. The season gets off to a promising start by showing more of the lives the truckers left behind. There’s also a nifty visual of truckers embarking on the Arctic journey with a ship in the background. If that’s not enough, I’m already feeling bad for Drew Sherwood, who’s stuck in the repair shop yet again. It’s definitely worth checking out.

The premiere also included a strange commercial/product placement, an extended Budweiser spot showing the show’s crew building an igloo ice bar for a party.

And if Ice Road Truckers isn’t enough of a tough day on the job for you, I saw ads for Ax Men (loggers) and Black Gold (oil drillers). Could a spinoff about Ice Road Mechanics be far behind?

Doctor Who’s latest episode just ended with a Time Lady (Georgia Moffett, daughter of former Doctor Who star Peter Davison) cloned from The Doctor’s DNA running around out in the universe somewhere. Judging from what I’ve seen of the BBC’s cloning techniques (Torchwood and Sarah Jane Adventures already have sprung from the show’s DNA), this smells like another spinoff just waiting to land.