Brazil
BRAZIL is the largest country of the South American continent. It shares a border with Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay and Argentina.
Profile
| Country Number (N/K) | 1979? | SECOND WAVE? |
| Region | South America | |
| Television commenced | 1950 | |
| Colour System | 1978 | PAL |
| Language/s | Portuguese |
Television Stations / Channels
Brazil began its television service in 1950.
Brazil's two main television networks are based in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. But due to its vast size, Brazil is also served by a number of privately-owned stations, with very limited areas of coverage.
By 1976, for instance, there were 70 TV stations operating, all of them were leased out on 10-yearly franchises to private enterprise by the government. Fewer than 50 of them were independents, and the rest were controlled by big corporations.
The government ran educational channels in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. The three main networks, TV Globo, Rede Tupi and Rede de Emissoras Independentes (REI) were regulated by the government agency, Brazilian Association of Radio and Television Emitters ABERT).
DOCTOR WHO IN BRAZIL (DOUTOR WHO)
Although some BBC Records indicate that Doctor Who / Doutor Who (as it would have been in Portuguese) was at least cleared for screening on TV in Brazil, there is no clear evidence that the series was ever broadcast.
But as noted in the various sub-sections below (placed in chronological order), Doctor Who was mostly an unknown entity in Brazil...
Newspaper Clippings
From an historical perspective, one of the first references to Doctor Who in Brazil was in the 14 November 1965 edition of Folha de Sao Paulo, which carried a short piece about "Dr Who" on its front page. The article and photo (provided by the UK's Daily Mirror), introduced the bald "Teknix" from The Daleks' Master Plan, which was being recorded at the time.
The caption to the photo translates as:
- These six young people were happy to appear bald on television. When they are seen in the video series entitled "Dr Who" and broadcast on BBC London, they do not seem so amused. The six will be the new allies of the enemies of the famous "Dr Who", the Daleks. They are the Teknix, a race of bald super brains living in the year 4000. Their objective to destroy the world. From top to bottom, in the picture [names of the actors].
But as noted in the various sub-sections below, Doctor Who was mostly an unknown entity in Brazil...
DALEK MOVIES
PETER CUSHING Movies
It's not known whether the first Dalek movie was seen in theatres in Brazil, but the second film was shown there under the title "Ano 2150 A Invasão da Terra".
The two Dalek movies may have also aired on Brazilian TV a number of times during the 1970s.
We do have confirmation that the first movie -- named "A Guerra Dos Daleks" (War of the Daleks) -- aired on Canal 7 in Sao Paulo on 15 December 1981, at 6.00pm.
It aired again on a channel called Rede Manchete (launched in June 1983) on 13 November 1988, at 3pm, on 1 April 1990, at 4.30pm, and again on 15 July 1990.
Both films were released together in a DVD box set by Dark Side, also under those same translated titles. While both had Portuguese subtitles, the second film was also dubbed.
Doctor Who on TV?
BBC Records
In DWM, Brazil is identified in 20 story Archives, all of them Tom Baker stories from his first four seasons: Robot to The Invasion of Time, with the exception of three - 4C, 4L, 4S - which is probably due to the original BBC documentation being incomplete rather than an indication that these three didn't air (the same three Archives also omit Guatemala). The year of sale recorded in the BBC document that was the source of this information -- mainly clearances issued for Dudley Simpson's incidental music -- is given as March 1979.
Brazil appears therefore to have bought and screened the standard package of Tom Baker stories that was offered to the United States, Central Amercia and South America.
In fact, the US distributor, Time-Life Films / Television, was itself instrumental in the establishment of Brazil's largest broadcaster, Rede Globo (aka TV Globo) (Canal 4), a partnership which ended in 1968. Although Time-Life was the main distributor to Spanish South America, it's not clear whether they still had any influence within Brazil in the late 1970s; the package of tapes that Time-Life had on offer were in NTSC and dubbed into Spanish, but in Brazil, television broadcasts are in the PAL colour format, and dubbed into Portuguese.
TV listings
A number of Brazilian newspapers (paper as well as online) have been accessed, from 1978 to the 1990s, but no regular listings for Doctor Who (or Doutor Who) as an on-going series have been found.
If the series did play, it would be expected to have aired in the two largest cities, Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, and yet no listings can be found in the newspapers published in either city.
Of course, as previously stated, given the dozens of small independent stations broadcasting throughout the country, not all stations had listings coverage in the major newspapers, so we have yet to identify whether, when and where the series may have aired.
There is also the possibility that the series was given a different title, and it wasn't known as Doctor Who or Doutor Who or Senhor do Tempo. But even if that were the case, OCR searches for terms such as "Tom Baker", "Dalek", "Elisabeth Sladen" failed to return any matches.
- See also THE MYSTERY OF THE MISSING MISTERIOS
Forums
According to the following Brazilian forums and websites, the posters are at least certain that the series never aired in Brazil prior to 2005. (But as we've noted above, the series may have aired on one of the minor private channels, and therefore completely escaped everyone's attention...)
DOCTOR WHO - ICONE SCI-FI BRITÂNICO, says:
- "O seriado se tornou bastante popular no Reino Unido e alguns outros países como Japão e Coreia. Nos States, tem uma base de fãs pequena. No Brasil, só foi exibido no canal a cabo: PEOPLE+ARTS, com as novas temporadas de 2005 para cá. O seriado clássico nunca passou aqui...infelizmente somos acostumados a enlatados americanos."
and which translates as:
- "The show became very popular in the UK and some other countries like Japan and Korea. In the States, it has a small fan base. In Brazil, it only aired on cable channel: PEOPLE + ARTS, but that was the new seasons from 2005 to now. The classic series never happened here ... unfortunately we are accustomed to canned Americans."
and:
- "Com o sucesso da série, foram feitos dois filmes longas metragens com o Doutor: "'Doctor Who e os Daleks" (1965) e "Daleks - Invasão da Terra 2150 AD" (1966). Esses dois filmes são raros hoje em dia mas, ao contrário da série, chegaram a ser exibidos na TV brasileira, em algum ponto obscuro entre os anos 1960 e a primeira metade dos anos 1970. Além disso Doctor Who provavelmente era “inglês demais” para fazer sucesso fora da Inglaterra, embora tenha tido êxito em alguns países como o Japão, por exemplo.
which translates as:
- With the success of the series, they made two films feature films with the Doctor: "Dr Who and the Daleks" (1965) and "Daleks - Invasion Earth 2150AD" (1966). These two movies are rare these days but, unlike the series, came to be broadcast on Brazilian TV at some obscure point between 1960 and the first half of the 1970s. Also Doctor Who was probably "too English" to have any success out of England but has been successful in some countries like Japan, for example.
and then:
NOVA TEMPORADA DE DR. WHO CHEGA ESSE MÊS!
- "Se colocarmos numa escala real de tempo quantos anos ficamos sem o prazer de ver Dr. Who & a série criada em 1963 por Sydney Newman para a BBC e um dos grandes clássicos da ficção científica na TV &, as aventuras do Lorde do Tempo demoraram mais de 50 anos para serem transmitidas para a TV no Brasil, especialmente se levarmos em consideração que o personagem chegou em vídeo somente em 1988, no episódio duplo Robôs da Destruição, lançado no raro VHS pela VTI."
which says:
- "If we put into a scale of real time how many years we were without the pleasure of seeing the Dr. Who series, created by Sydney Newman in 1963 for the BBC and one of the great classics of science fiction on TV, the Time Lord's adventures took more than 50 years to be transmitted on TV in Brazil, especially if we consider that the character came to video only in 1988 in the double episode Robots of Destruction, launched on rare VHS by VTI."
And if these people who live in Brazil claim that Doctor Who never screened there, who are we to disagree with them? So, while some obscure BBC records may record that Doctor Who was at least offered to Brazil, that's not the same as confirming that a sale and broadcast ever went ahead. Other extant BBC records do record when sales to other countries were subsequently "CANCELLED". This could very well be the case with Brazil.
TV Movie
PAUL McGANN
The Paul McGann TV Movie -- titled Doutor Who – O Senhor do Tempo (the same as the earlier VHS tape (see below)) -- aired on television (dubbed), in Sao Paulo on Rede Globo on 27 July 2000 at 1:50am (!), then on Sistema Brasilero de Televisao (SBT) in 2002 (apparently at 2am), and again on Rede Globo a few years later, also in a very early morning timeslot.
The full dubbed movie is available to view here:
Merchandise
Novelisations
Even if the TV series didn't reach Brazilian TV screens during the 1970s, the series was at least known to those who read the one-off Target adaptation by Terrance Dicks that was translated into Portuguese and published in mid-1975 by Global Editoria:
- Doutor Who e a Mudança da História (... and an Attack on History) (Day of the Daleks)
(The 20 June 1975 edition of the newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo published a review of the novelisation: "VIAGEM NO TIEMPO" translates as "Travel in Time").
- Another set of novelisations translated into Portuguese was published in Portugal in 1982-83; some of these may have also been available in Brazil.
In the 2010s, two novelisations based on Douglas Adams scripts were published by Suma:
- SHADA
- CIDADE DA MORTE (City of Death)
And Fantastica published the short story collection 12 Doutores 12 Histórias (12 Doctors, 12 Stories).
Also published in Brazil have been translations of various Titan comic collections, and original novels based on the New Series.
Videos / DVDs
At least two video tapes were available in Brazil:
- OS ROBÔS DA MORTE – Video Network – 1988
- This was the Tom Baker serial, The Robots of Death. The story was in English with Portuguese subtitles.
- O SENHOR DO TEMPO - MCA/Universal/CIC Video - 1996
- The title translates as The Lord of Time, and is a subtitled tape of the Paul McGann TV Movie, which was available in Brazil four years before it aired on TV (see above).
- The tape was released by MCA/Universal/CIC Video in late 1996, possibly as a Rental Only tape. The cover tagline said "ELE VOLTOU… E JA ESTAVA NA HORA!" (He's back… and on Time!)
- Video: O SENHOR DO TEMPO
|
Clip from Os Robôs da Morte (subtitled) |
Other Classic serials were later released in Brazil on DVD in 2016. These were the six Monster Collection boxsets (A Coleção dos Montros), which paired one classic serial with one New Series story by theme. The six box sets (subtitled) were:
- Os Daleks - with Os Daleks (The Daleks)
- Os Cybermen - with A Tumba dos Cybermen (The Tomb of the Cybermen)
- Os Silurians - with Os Silurians (Doctor Who and the Silurians)
- Master - with Terror dos Autons (Terror of the Autons)
- Os Sontarans - with Guerreiro do Tempo (The Time Warrior)
- Davros - with A Origem dos Daleks (Genesis of the Daleks)
And as noted above the two Peter Cushing / Dalek films were also released in a DVD box set.
Brazil in Doctor Who
- The Doctor identifies a snake from Brazil on The Ark.
- At the conclusion of The Green Death, Jo Grant and Cliff Jones were planning to explore the upper reaches of the Amazon.
- In The Talons of Weng-Chiang, the Doctor tells Professor Litefoot that Leela had been found as a child floating down the Amazon in a hatbox!
- Cessair of Diplos posed as Senhora Camara from Brazil (The Stones of Blood).
- Brazil is "where the nuts come from"; George Cranleigh found the rare black orchid while on an expedition along the Orinoco River (Black Orchid).
- The Doctor mentions the Amazon in Ghost Light.
