Feb. 1 was a bad day for U.S. fans of British television series Doctor Who, particularly those who watched the show online: the series left both Netflix and Hulu, leaving U.S. fans without a single Doctor Who episode streaming anywhere in the country.
However, Monday brought an announcement from Amazon that piqued Whovian interest: Amazon Video tweeted that Doctor Who was one of a few series set to stream on Amazon Prime starting on March 1.
Fans rejoiced and news articles popped up everywhere with that tweet, but then something odd happened: Amazon Video deleted the tweet, also deleting any evidence that such an announcement was ever made.
Of course, the video linked to from the original tweet remained on the Internet, and it clearly lists Doctor Who as coming to Amazon Prime as of March.
So what happened? Although Amazon released its list of shows and movies coming to the service in March last week, Doctor Who was notably absent from that original list. So it's likely that Amazon jumped the gun in tweeting about Doctor Who, either wishing to save it for a later announcement (considering it would have an exclusive streaming license for the series) or details for acquiring the show from the BBC for streaming are not yet finalized.
Whatever the case, though, the company went to the trouble of creating a video featuring it, so it's likely that it will still happen: fans can probably expect an official announcement about Doctor Who on Prime soon. However, there's still no word on if Amazon Prime will also get any of the classic Who episodes on its service.
In the meantime, there's still no word from the BBC about launching its own paid streaming service in the U.S., although the company confirmed it was working on such a service last year. Many assumed that the BBC pulled Doctor Who, its most popular show in the U.S., from Netflix and Hulu to have exclusive rights to it for its own service, but now it seems that this isn't the case.
Fortunately, for U.K. Whovians, there was a reprieve earlier this month: the series remained on Netflix there. U.S. fans still await word from Amazon, though, to get their Who fix, particularly now that there isn't a new season to look forward to in 2016.
