...oh, you thought this was gonna be Hellraiser? Nah, I decided to bring you some real horror: The Doctor Who TV Movie from 1996.
So, how did this come about? Well, the original Doctor Who was cancelled by the BBC in 1989 with the final episode - "Survival, Part Four" airing on December 6, 1989. The Doctor and Ace disappeared in the TARDIS, but never disappeared from the hearts of the British public and thus attempts were made to bring back the show proper. This in combination with a bunch of other productions and fan productions and frankly things that I could literally spend ages covering that built up the Doctor Who Expanded Universe between 1989 and 2005.
Another reviewer, Diamanda Hagan (who I've referenced before) covers a lot of this on YouTube, if you're interested in it.
Focusing on this movie, however, the project eventually came into the hands of British-American producer Philip Segal who shopped it around to multiple production companies in America. Long story short, the end result of his search brought him to Fox. If you know anything about Fox in the 1990s... you know that science-fiction programs that weren't The X-Files were absolutely boned. Fox would not agree to commit to a full series, but instead agreed to a TV movie with the potential that - if the ratings were good - it would be the backdoor pilot to a series to follow.
Given that Paul McGann's Eighth Doctor never got a series on television, you can tell how well that went.
Unfortunately, we aren't here to talk about what could have been, but what was. So, let's get into Doctor Who: The Movie.
Our film begins with the Doctor (Sylvester McCoy) being charged to take the remains of his old enemy - the Master - back to Gallifrey from some Daleks that could be heard (sort of) but not seen due to licensing rights with the Terry Nation estate. However, the Master being the Master means that being disintegrated is just another Saturday. Thus, the Master escapes in the form of a CGI snake and causes the TARDIS to malfunction, forcing the Doctor to land in San Francisco in 1999, specifically, December of 1999. There, because he has a momentary lapse of judgment, the Doctor goes out without checking the scanners and gets riddled with bullets. This, however, isn't what kills him but the corrective surgery after to try and fix the bullet wounds. Doctor Grace Holloway (Daphne Ashbrook) unintentionally kills the Doctor.
The Master, meanwhile, possesses the body of a paramedic named Bruce (Eric Roberts) and begins some time as the Terminator while he seeks out the missing Doctor. The Doctor, meanwhile, regenerates into a new body (Paul McGann) for their eighth incarnation. Unfortunately, the Doctor has been stricken with amnesia, and so has to work through broken fragments of memory with the help of Grace - the last person he remembers - in order to recover what he has lost before the Master enacts his plans to defeat the Doctor, claim the TARDIS, and... profit? Actually, he wants to steal the Doctor's body in order to steal his remaining incarnations, which is where our Horror Month connection kicks in.
I'll go ahead and say it - structurally, this film isn't bad. The issues that it has come from two things - bad performances and lore breaks. There's one lore break in particular that's still a sore subject with a lot of old school fans, the revelation that the movie makes that the Doctor is half-human.
...they're not, by the way. At least so far as we've been able to figure it out... and ignoring the Timeless Child retcon that Chibnall tried to force on us that makes this even more hilarious.
I personally don't have an issue with the Doctor being half-human, but I understand why people would be up in arms about it. Making the Doctor in any way like us does really take away from what makes the Doctor special and unique in being an alien. Longtime writer Terrance Dicks once said that one should never be completely comfortable with the Doctor. After all, they are something entirely alien to us, although that has come through in some incarnation's portrayals more than others.
Paul McGann is a more human (for lack of a better term) Doctor... and he's a beloved actor to play the role for good reason, he's great. How do I know? He's been doing the role since this movie and has been doing the Big Finish audio plays literally to this day. I personally enjoy him, and he's one of the high points of this movie.
One of the low points, unfortunately, is Eric Roberts. EpicApathy (that handsome devil!) and I once came up with what I'm going to term "The Rule of Eric Roberts":
If you're watching Eric Roberts, and you aren't watching Best of the Best or Best of the Best 2, you're in for a bad time.
...you can deny it, but you'd be wrong.
As the Master, Eric Roberts spends the first half of the film acting like a bad rip-off of Arnold Schwarzenegger as the Terminator and the back half he spends being, charitably, hilariously campy. It's as if he flips a switch midway through and just cranks it up to eleven. I don't know how much of this is just the man's acting chops and how much is bad direction, so I'll split the difference and say both.
The special effects are okay for the mid 90s. I will say one particular effect where time starts screwing up in a big way and the Doctor walks through a bit of stilled time is really good for the time it was made.
Special accolades should be given to the production design team - particularly for the interior of the TARDIS, which is absolutely phenomenal. It's likely the largest the console room has been until the 2005 revival and it's clear a lot of attention was put into the fine details. I honestly can't do it justice, it just looks amazing and puts a few of the other console rooms to absolute shame.
In the end Doctor Who: The Movie is... not good. The effort was clearly made, but a lot of its problems stem from what I've said before as far as the film itself goes. Could it have been the start to a new series? Absolutely, but it unfortunately was brought out by Fox... who have the same relationship with science-fiction that isn't The X-Files that Casey Anthony has with her child. They put the movie up against a Sweeps week episode of Roseanne. If ever there was something that was hilariously doomed to complete and utter failure, there it is.
I am happy to say that Paul McGann did get and is still getting his due thanks to Big Finish, who have built up the Eighth Doctor hardcore and have even smoothed out some of the issues that the movie had in terms of continuity. Even Eric Roberts has gotten a fair shake by them, I'm told the plays that he has shown up in as the Master have been really good. The film, for all its bad points, did inspire later showrunner Russell T. Davies, and we all know where that led to for better and for worse.
There are worse things than this, and it's certainly not as controversial as it was in 1996... but you are never going to catch me calling this good. Don't get me wrong, not all of the Doctor's adventures are hits as we've seen many times on this blog, but this one you can chuck into the Eye of Harmony without too much worry.
Doctor Who: The Movie is brought to us by the BBC and Fox.
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