Doctor Who - The Movie

Harmony Padme Hum

Doctor Who - The Movie
UK/USA Directed by Geoffrey Sax
UK Airdate: 27th May 1996
BBC 1 - Region B Blu Ray

Doctor Who was dead... and had been for several years. 

The Seventh Doctor as personified by Sylvester McCoy was the current Doctor when the show was cancelled (for pretty much no good reason by people in power at the BBC who never liked it to begin with... from what I remember). However, this attempt was made, in 1996, to start up the series again as an American/British co-production, shot in Canada. So, yeah, entitled Doctor Who - The Movie, this was a pilot film which, although it did well in the UK, bombed in the US and so was never commissioned as a series. And looking at it now, it’s still easy to see why.

Now, the last time I watched this, before revisiting it on this current Blu Ray incarnation, was on the broadcast date mentioned above. However, this was not the first time I had seen this and this is how I know that both the TV broadcast and this Blu Ray are heavily cut... or rather, missing some footage. I think I first saw this on a bootleg VHS tape somewhere around 3 or more months before the episode... sorry, movie... was broadcast and, to be honest, most people I personally know had already seen this in the same way before it hit our airwaves. Doctor Who, despite the stupid fate of the classic run of the TV show, was always a much loved British phenomenon and so the Brits were desperate to see this one as soon as they could. So, yeah, it was almost impossible not to run into someone at a jumble sale or in your office who had access to a copy.

And that’s how I know this was cut. Admittedly, it had even more excised from it on British TV but in this current version, after the Seventh Doctor, played once again by McCoy for the first ten minutes or so, lands on Earth... he stumbles into a gangland conflict and is shot. Now, on the broadcast version and in this one, he only takes one bullet, despite a later piece of dialogue revealing that he was hit three times. In the print which was doing the rounds on VHS bootlegs, that scene went on a little longer and he takes many more bullet hits. And that’s just one of the cuts I remember and it’s very frustrating now because, the bootlegs were obviously struck from an earlier, pre-cut print of the episode and so, some of the scenes just never existed in any broadcast or home video version to this day. Which is such a shame because I would love to see it again.

Looking at the show now... it really hasn’t held up well over the years but there’s still lots to like about it, as much as there is to hate. For instance, McCoy is excellent in his scenes, as is the new incarnation of The Doctor played by Paul McGann, who quickly manages to make the part his own, playing the role with exactly the kind of flourish and personality quirks that many previous actors had built into the role. He really shines in this and it’s a shame the pilot episode never took off. And another good thing about the pilot is the companions... both Yee Jee Tso to an extent, as a gang member with his heart in the right place but, especially Daphne Ashbrook as Dr. Grace Holloway, who is so good in this she almost steals the show from McGann... but not quite. The chemistry is good, though and they do make a lovely pair... quite literally as they share a kiss on more than one occasion, hinting at romantic entanglements if the show was to continue to run.

And the whole of the first half an hour or so... set in our near future on December 31st 1999 and dealing with the death of the seventh incarnation on the operating table as Puccini plays on the stereo (as Grace manages to kill him with a defibrillation machine because she doesn’t realise he has two hearts), his resurrection in the morgue intercut with and echoing footage from Universal’s 1931 movie Frankenstein, the escape of The Master as a kind of slime mould who invades an ambulance driver and takes him as a host body and The Doctor’s attempts to convince Grace of who he is and just what is going on... is really great. And then it all goes completely pear shaped when The Master somehow gets on board the TARDIS without a key, gets the gang member to open the Eye Of Harmony which powers the TARDIS and then uses it to threaten the existence of the Earth so he can steal The Doctor’s remaining lives for himself. It’s truly dreadful and makes not a lick of sense, with physics bending scenes such as The Doctor walking through a solid glass window because physics is compromised... but only when it’s convenient to service the next dramatic point of the story.

In fact the writing in this is pretty bad, for the most part... again, once the Eye of Harmony is open. It tries hard to appeal to an American audience and has scenes like a motorbike ambulance chase and even a fist fight in the TARDIS between The Doctor and The Master. It’s just not very well done. Eric Roberts plays The Master and he does his best but he just comes off as a cheap villain for the most part, rather than having the gravitas of the versions which came before him (something McGann seems to get right with his version of The Doctor). I don’t believe it’s Roberts’ fault, to be honest... it just wasn’t written any differently in the script. And the dead giveaway here that this was half financed with American money is that there are a fair few references to Tom Baker’s incarnation of The Doctor (the one best known Who actor to American fans of the show at the time, on the cable networks which showed it in the US) via little ‘object cameos’ such as a long, colourful scarf, his yoyo and a bag of Jelly Babies.

And alas, all that hard work to get it to appeal to a multi-national audience... those Fourth Doctor moments, the pop culture references and the nice, steam-punk look of the new Doctor’s costume... really didn’t matter because the second half of the movie is just, yeah, it’s mostly terrible with the producers seeming to want to turn it into an action packed US cop show or some such. It just doesn’t work and it becomes ‘bad Doctor Who’ pretty quickly. Which is a shame because, McGann and Ashbrook would have made a good crew for the TARDIS in any future adventures.

As it is, the ratings dive bombed in the US and this was never followed up. Paul McGann would eventually play The Doctor again in a series of Big Finish produced audio adventures and, most notably, in the short internet streamed prelude to the 50th Anniversary show The Day Of The Doctor, fittingly called The Night Of The Doctor (and included as an extra on both the 50th Anniversary special Blu Ray and on this Blu Ray too). That prelude showed how McGann’s Doctor regenerated into the retrofitted incarnation The War Doctor, created for The Day Of The Doctor, after Christopher Eccleston refused to return to the show and John Hurt was called in to fill the role instead.

And that’s me done on Doctor Who - The Movie... it’s kinda nice seeing it again (albeit in the official cut as opposed to the pre-release version) but it wears it’s mis-steps very firmly on its sleeve and, despite its warm reception in the UK at the time, it really isn’t a good version of the show, to be fair. I would certainly not recommend this one as a jumping on point for anyone interested in the modern show’s past but, you know, it’s currently available if you want it.