Brazil
BRAZIL is the largest country of the South American continent.
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 serviced 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. Less 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)
Despite some evidence to the contrary, we do have reasonable doubt that a regular series of Doctor Who / Doutor Who (as it would have been in Portuguese) ever screened in Brazil (at least before the new series did in 2005).
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].
As noted below, the two Peter Cushing Dalek movies aired on Brazilian television some time by the mid-1970s. But other than this newspaper article, the two movies, a single novelisation, the 1996 Paul McGann TV Movie, and two video releases, Doctor Who might actually have been mostly an unknown entity in Brazil...
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 is given as 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.
Transmission
Despite the cited BBC Records indicating it did, there is no clear evidence that any broadcasts ever took place.
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...)
FORUM / BLOGGERS:
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 listings
A number of Brazilian newspapers have been accessed, from 1978 to 1981, but no listings for Doctor Who (or Doutor Who) have been found. 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.
- See also THE MYSTERY OF THE MISSING MISTERIOS
Novelisation
Even if the TV series didn't reach Brazilian TV screens during the late 1970s / early 1980s, 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 1975 by Global Editoria:
- Doutor Who e a Mudança da História (... and an Attack on History) (Day of the Daleks)
- Another set of novelisations translated into Portuguese was published in Portugal in 1982-83; some of these may have also been available in Brazil.
Videos
And (at least) two video tapes were available in Brazil:
- Robôs da Destruição - VTI VIDEO – 1988
- The title translates as Robots of Destruction. This was apparently a Peter Davison story, however, in all likelihood it would have been the Tom Baker serial, Revenge of the Cybermen or The Robots of Death, both of which had been released by 1988.
- O Senhor do Tempo - CIC VIDEO - 1996
- The title translates as The Lord of Time, and is a subtitled tape of the Paul McGann TV Movie.
- Video: O SENHOR DO TEMPO
Stories broadcast
PAUL McGANN
The Paul McGann TV movie aired on television, on Rede Globo in July 2000, then on Sistema Brasilero de Televisao (SBT) in 2002 (apparently at 2am!), and again on Rede Globo a few years later, in a very early morning timeslot.
Brazil in Doctor Who
- 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.
