<span class="SFPTagline"> From SCIFIPEDIA </span>

The long run of the classic Doctor Who series came to a close with Season 26. The season continued the pattern of fourteen 24-minute episodes, and featured final classic series bows by long-time ally Brigadier Alastair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart and archenemy the Master. The season began airing on September 6, 1989.

A third year of taking a beating against ratings powerhouse Coronation Street would finally prove the show's undoing. The program's ratings plummeted to levels never before seen in its long history. The show would once again be put on "hiatus," this time for an unspecified length of time.

Since its debut in 1963, the show had become a British instution and cultural icon. Even among those who had never watched the program, it had become impossible for a Brit to see the TARDIS or a Dalek and not instantly know what they were. Although Doctor Who would never again be produced by the BBC drama department (the new show is a product of BBC Wales), it appears that noone at the BBC could bear to actually cancel it. It stayed offically on hiatus for 16 years. At the time of the debut of the new program in 2005, the original program was quietly cancelled to make way for the new.

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