[Warning: This post contains references to Doctor Who, which many people may find boring, or excessively nerdsome.]

"Doctor Who" is one of the great bastions of British television. We don’t want to get bogged down in the details here, but the classic series ran for something like 26 years, and its latest incarnation has been running for four. Not bad.

I myself have been a "Doctor Who" fan for a number of years now, in spite of the fact that I’ve never even set foot outside of the United States, never spent my Saturday afternoons eating beans on toast, waiting for Match of the Day to wrap up, and never saw a complete episode of Blue Peter or Basil Brush.

Now, a rumor (as well as some irrational panic in the face of baseless speculation) has sprung up over the possibility that the BBC might (possibly) be considering an attempt to produce "a domestic version [of "Doctor Who"] tailored to American audiences."

Of course, no such thing is likely, and we’d like to go on record, here and now, and say that it’s not going to happen. Not now, not ever. And if I’m wrong, why, I’ll eat a sandwich.

But, please, don’t expect us to hide behind that old "quintessential Britishness" argument (… at least, not until a couple of paragraphs from now…): given the special effects, explosions, violence, and vigorous make-out moments, I think an American production team could find a lot of familiar material to make hay out of.

No, what bothers us is this: any attempt to produce an American version of Doctor Who could only be seen as an attempt to take a viable, middle-of-the-road media property (which is what the show is, in America, at this point) and try to make a boisterous ratings smash out of it. And that just seems wrong to us.

Because it couldn’t possibly work.

Sure, we’ve stolen several shows from other countries that later went on to become hits: "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire," "The Office," and "Steptoe & Son (renamed "Sanford & Son"), just to name a few — but that’s no guarantee: Let us not forget the lessons of "Men Behaving Badly," and "Coupling". An American "Doctor Who" would probably struggle to find an audience and, let’s face it, U.S. networks have a poor track record when it comes to being patient with shows that need time to build viewership.

So, while we might agree with Christian Cawley’s assertion that the best hope for making "Doctor Who" a hit in the U.S. is to better position the British version on American television, we would also suggest that such a thing would be a hell of a long-shot.

In spite of the penetration of cable television in the U.S. market, it’s not total. Smash hits are certainly possible on cable, but network shows still do remarkably well, relatively. And there’s hardly any chance that a major network would pick up "Doctor Who" because, well, when’s the last time you saw a British show on American network television?

Actually, when’s the last time you saw a British program on any American channel, cable, network, or otherwise? Yes, there’s been a few — "Absolutely Fabulous" on Comedy Central, "Doctor Who" on SciFi — and there’s always BBC America, right?  A lager question, in my mind, is why there have been so few British shows re-broadcast in the States? What is it about Americans that we can’t seem to get on board with an un-retooled foreign TV show?

Well, that’s not entirely true, which is a cause for some hope. An informal survey of my own TV viewing leads me to believe that the king of British television in America is PBS, home to "Masterpiece Theater", "Mystery", and countless "Brit-coms". In fact, PBS was home to "Classic Who" before the term was even coined. Which makes it a good candidate to host any hypothetical "Doctor Who" block-buster-based campaign.

Except… well, I know this isn’t fair, but there’s one important aspect of British television in America that we’ve yet to address. It is, or at least has been, widely seen as a defining interest of American nerds. And what’s the nerdiest British show of them all? Well, it’s "Monty Python’s Flying Circus," actually — but "Doctor Who" is a close second. (This fact was confirmed by no less authority than "The Simpsons", in an episode where the morbidly obese Comic Book Guy is spotted pushing a wheelbarrow full of tacos down the sidewalk, proclaiming, "Yes, this should provide adequate sustenance for the Doctor Who marathon.")

(We should probably admit at this point, in the interest of full disclosure, that we do watch a hell of a lot of British TV, that we really like stuff like "Blake’s 7", Gerry Anderson, and whatnot. We are sad, frankly.)

This is the disconnect that will hinder any attempt to turn "Doctor Who" into huge hit, and this is the schism that will infect any hypothetical adaptation. "Doctor Who" is a good program — but in the U.K., it’s an institution. Here, it’s a cult show for open-minded people and oddballs. Someday, the barrier may be broken. I certainly hope so, at least. And it would be nice if "Doctor Who" was the show that did it.

But I really, really doubt that it will.