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 | 1972 | PAL |
| Language/s | Brazilian 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).
TV Globo was the first to introduce PAL colour. Limited broadcasts began in 1972. It wasn't until 1978 that colour transmissions on that station were full-time.
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
No listings for the first Dalek movie could be found; it was therefore not seen in theatres in Brazil. The second film was however released, and was shown under the title "Ano 2150 A Invasão da Terra". This was subtitled with Brazilian Portuguese.
The earliest showing of this film that we could find for Rio de Janeiro was on 23 September 1970. It was played at various cinemas through until mid-October 1970, several times per day -- see clipping. It was shown again in regional theatres from October to November 1974.
The film debuted in Sao Paulo on 28 December 1970 (the Folha de Sao Paulo for 27 December had a print ad (see below) announcing the film's commencement "AMANHA" (Tomorrow) and the following day a similar ad appeared declaring the film started "HOJE" (Today).
The film played at the Art Palacio and other local cinemas through until early 1971. It made an appearance in smaller regional theatres towards the end of the year, then again in 1973, 1974, 1976, and in April 1978.
It was seen in cinemas in Brasilia in April 1971.
The first film debuted on Brazilian TV, and was shown a number of times during the 1980s and 90s. Like all television, this was now dubbed into Brazilian Portuguese.
Named "A Guerra dos Daleks" (War of the Daleks), it aired on Canal 7 on 15 December 1981, at 6.00pm.
It aired on TVS Canal 11 on Sunday, 16 May 1982, at 10pm, and again on 29 October 1982, at midnight.
It was shown on Brasilia's channel 6 on 28 May 1982 (at 10.15pm) and again on 9 January 1983 (at 9.10pm).
It also appeared on Rede Manchete (Canal 6) (launched in June 1983) on 13 November 1988, at 3pm. It aired on that channel several more times, such as on 14 January 1990 at 5pm; 1 April 1990, at 4.30pm, and again on 15 July 1990 at 2.30pm. Rede Manchete's other station Canal 9 also aired the film - on 1 January 1989 at 4pm.
We could find no billings for the second film, so it looks like it was never shown on TV in Brazil.
Both films - this time subtitled rather than dubbed - were released together in a DVD box set by Dark Side. The first film was given the slightly expanded title of "Dr Who e a Guerra dos Daleks" on the box cover.
Doctor Who on TV?
BBC Records
In a BBC memo dated 8 December 1965, the sales section of BBC Enterprises reported that "[we] do have audition prints in Brazil but have not, as yet, a concrete offer for the series". At that time, Brazil had many TV stations operating, so it's unknown to which this (ultimately unsuccessful) offer had been made.
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.
From this, Brazil appears 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 Brazilian Portuguese.
TV listings
However, a number of Brazilian newspapers from 1978 to the 1990s (in print as well as online) have been accessed, but no 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 the capital Brasilia, and yet no listings could be found in the newspapers published in those cities.
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", "Elisabeth Sladen", "Dalek", "BBC TV" 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 [sic], 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 [sic], launched on rare VHS by VTI."
(Note: the title of the VHS tape was actually Os Robôs Da Morte - see below)
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 title as the earlier subtitled VHS tape (see below)) -- aired on television in São Paulo on Rede Globo (Canal 4) on 27 July 2000 at 1:50am (!).
The movie was dubbed into Brazilian Portuguese by Dublavídeo, and distributed by Look Filmes Distribuidora Ltda, two companies based in São Paulo. The actors providing the voices were:
- Ézio Ramos (Sylvester McCoy)
- Armando Tiraboschi (Paul McGann)
- Cecília Lemes (Daphne Ashbrook)
- Luiz Antônio Lobue (Eric Roberts)
For the Brazilian-Portuguese dub, the TARDIS becomes "O TEDRINE" (a masculine noun), which stands for "Tempo E Dimensões Relativas No Espaço".
It also appeared on Sistema Brasilero de Televisao (SBT) (Canal 11) on 30 November 2001 at 1am, and again on 16 September 2002, at 2.10am.
It apparently played 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 Brazilian Portuguese by Márcio Pugliesi and Norberto de Paula Lima, and published in mid-1975 by Global Editoria. The cover art is signed by "Darlon":
- Doutor Who e a Mudança da História (... and a Change to History / …and the Change of 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").
A footnote on page 21 of this says that "Doctor Who and the Doomsday Weapon" was "a sair brevemente nesta série" ("coming out soon in this series"), however it would appear that no further translations from Global were ever published.
Another set of novelisations translated into Portuguese was released in Portugal in 1982 and 1983. These may have also been available in Brazil; the publisher had worldwide rights to publish books in all Portuguese-speaking territories (although there are significant differences between the Brazilian and European versions of the language).
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.
- A review of the tape appeared in the 22 January 1989 edition of the Brasilia newspaper Correio Braziliense. The review of the "British comedy" (!!) stated that the TV series was not known to Brazilian audiences. (This review is ten years after the date of the recorded "sale".) But is this firm proof that the TV series was not shown in Brazil? Or is it merely an indication that it wasn't aired in Brasilia - or just that the author himself had not seen it?
- 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 was dubbed and 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!)
|
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); Asylum of the Daleks
- Os Cybermen - with A Tumba dos Cybermen (The Tomb of the Cybermen); Rise of the Cybermen / The Age of Steel
- Os Silurians - with Doctor Who e Os Silurians (Doctor Who and the Silurians); The Hungry Earth / Cold Blood
- Master - with O Terror dos Autons (Terror of the Autons); The End of Time
- Os Sontarans - with Guerreiro do Tempo (The Time Warrior); The Sontaran Stratagem / The Poison Sky
- Davros - with A Origem dos Daleks (Genesis of the Daleks); The Stolen Earth / Journey's End
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.
- A photo of the Palácio do Planalto in Brasilia (the offices of the President of Brazil) is used as the headquarters of the President of Earth in Frontier in Space.
- 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; he was attacked by the Kojabe Indians, and brought home to England by Ditar Latoni.
- The Doctor mentions the Amazon in Ghost Light.
