Now, Doctor Who has maintained a patchy presence in other regions since the Tom Baker era. During the 1970s, the Fourth Doctor was regularly shown on international screens, albeit usually on niche sci-fi channels, just enough for the bescarfed Doctor to seep into popular culture but not enough to spark mainstream interest in the show. Revived Who was broadcast to other corners of the globe, too, but often weeks or months after the UK broadcast and without anything near the hype and publicity it enjoyed at home. The BBC decided to use the ingress of Moffat and Series 5's soft reboot of the show as an opportunity to take Who worldwide. Moffat took pains to shorten the gap between original broadcast and international outings. The US now gets its helping of new Who within hours of its British airing and that's only really because of the time difference. Though most hardcore Whovians would stay up to watch new stories being simulcast (as The Day of the Doctor proved), it wouldn't help introduce new people to the show, which is exactly what Moffat's era has done. In the US, Matt Smith's debut story The Eleventh Hour was almost as instrumental for introducing a new audience to Doctor Who as Rose was in the UK back in 2005. The generation of Whovians unfairly dismissed as the "Tumblr fans" will usually cite it as the first episode they saw and deem Eleven to be "their Doctor". Since it's unlikely that such a global initiative would have been feasible under the weight of five years of Davies-era continuity, fans can thank Moffat (or at least the timeliness of his arrival) for growing the Whovian family in such a diverse way.
