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Dr Who and the Product Life Cycle

Sunday, July 1st, 2007
1 Comment

I’ve been messing around with several projects today but have nothing remotely exciting to show. I was going through my blog today and found I’d written this back after the end of David Tennant’s first series as The Doctor but forgot to post it.

What if the Doctor was an operating system…

  • Hartnell – Doctor Version I
  • Peter Cushing – Doctor Version 1.1
  • Troughton – Doctor Version II
  • Pertwee – Doctor Version III
  • Baker – Doctor Version 4.0 (Codenamed 70s Bohemian Wanderer)
  • Gibbs – Special Limited Edition Version 4.1 "Watcher"
  • Davison – Doctor Version 5.0 (Codenamed Cricket Leek)
  • Baker – Doctor 6.0 (Codename 80s Garish Shoulder-Pad Warbler)
  • McCoy – Doctor Version 7.0 (Codenamed Vision On Darkside-of-the-Who)
  • McGann – This version 8.0 (Codenamed Spielburg Curates Egg) withdrawn from market due to faulty manufacturing
  • Christopher Eccleston – Doctor XP (Codenamed Serious Actor Snit)
  • David Tennant – Doctor Vista (Codenamed Bouncy Puppy Cocker-Factor-Winner)

There is a serious point to this.
The Doctor’s and The Masters regeneration ability has an interesting boon from the brand point of view. Very few shows can replace the lead character with a different character in the same way and reposition themselves in the product life cycle. In some ways its quite close to the way software companies can reposition their products through new version releases.

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One Response to Dr Who and the Product Life Cycle

Steve Pugh Saturday, July 7th, 2007

After 8.0 was withdrawn the development code was forked and the first brabch to reach alpha status went through a number iterations (Atkinson, Grant 1.0, Broadbent, Grant 2.0, Lumley) in a very rapid release cycle.

A more considered product came from a second branch and whilst it shared an interface design with Grant 1.0 it was of sufficient quality to be considered a release candidate until the shock announcement of what became the final Doctor XP.

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