Canada (Ztélé)

ZTÉLÉ (2006-2009)

Station logo in 2006

ZTÉLÉ is a Canadian French-language Cable and Satellite station operating from Montreal, Quebec (but available in other Provinces); it specialises in Science Fiction and Fantasy programming.

It was launched on 31 January 2000 under the name Canal Z, but was also known simply as Z. It was rebranded as Ztélé in 2005 (also written as Z-Télé and ZTélé). It became a sister station to SPACE in 2013, and reverted back to Z in 2014.

Both Classic and New Series Doctor Who debuted on the station when it was known as Ztélé.

Transmission

PAUL McGANN

The 1996 TV Movie had been dubbed into French and was screened in France on 18 March 1997, and in Luxembourg on 27 February 1999.

This dubbed film - with the alternative title Le Seigneur du Temps - was acquired by and aired several times on Ztélé.

The first season of the New Series starring Christopher Eccleston dubbed into French had debuted on the channel on 3 January 2006. Ztélé commenced another daily repeat run of his episodes from Tuesday, 30 May.

The TV Movie was shown for the first time four days later - on Saturday, 3 June 2006 at 10pm (a further repeat of Rose had aired at 8am that morning). The Movie was then repeated on Sunday 4 June at 2.00pm.

Summary and grid listing (on bottom row) for first showing of the movie on 3 June 2006

The film played several more times in 2006, 2008 and 2009, usually scheduled at 10.00pm on a Saturday night, and sometimes with an afternoon repeat at 2.00pm the following day. (It's possible there were additional screenings in 2007, but no listings could be found.)

The known transmission dates and times are:

Summary in Voila magazine

• Saturday, 3 June 2006 (10.00pm)
• Sunday, 4 June 2006 (2.00pm)
• Saturday, 23 September 2006 (2.00pm)
• Friday, 15 December 2006 (Midnight)
• Saturday, 16 December 2006 (8.00pm)
• Saturday, 23 December 2006 (2.00pm)
• Sunday, 24 December 2006 (10.00pm)
• Sunday, 6 April 2008 (10.00pm)
• Saturday, 12 April 2008 (2.00pm)
• Saturday, 14 March 2009 (10.00pm)

Generic grid listing from Voila; the (5) rating means 'average'

It's highly likely there were other screenings but not all the published TV inserts (see below) were available to access.

New Series episodes (sometimes in a 4:3 ratio) continued to air through until November 2014.

TV listings

The above airdates are from the available issues of the weekly TV listings magazine Voila!, the full colour pull-out supplement in the Saturday edition of the French language newspaper, Le Presse. These are available online HERE. There may have been more screenings of the film (such as in 2007) but not all issues of Voila! are archived.

Each day's listings were printed in a coloured grid format: the film was always billed as "DOCTOR WHO: LE SEIGNEUR DU TEMPS".

The "(5)" in brackets in the listings is Voila! 's rating classification: on their scale of 1 (Very Good) to 7 (Poor), a "5" is an "average / medium" ranking. And despite this low rating, they still screened it multiple times!

All movies had a brief summary in the 'movies on this week' section; the same one (see clipping above) appeared each time; this translates as:

"San Francisco becomes the theatre of conflict between a space-time traveller and a master of Evil".

Links

• Z website 1
• Z website 2
• This Week in Doctor Who listings (although not all showings of the movie are recorded)