The 8th Doctor

[Christopher]

I don't think I've ever seen it on home video until a couple of weeks ago, but I'm pretty sure I've seen it at least once between '96 and now. Probably it was rerun on (then) SciFi at some point and I saw it then. Still, I haven't seen it very often, maybe just three times.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

So how many times has everybody seen the TV Movie?

If I had to guess, probably about five times, and I've seen the Workprint (it has different narration by someone other than McGann) once.

 

[Christopher]

^From what I've heard/read, the original opening narration was by the Master pre-execution, who was played by Gordon Tipple.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

^From what I've heard/read, the original opening narration was by the Master pre-execution, who was played by Gordon Tipple.

This isn't the real thing, but this YouTube video gives an idea of what the Workprint opening was like, overlaying Tipple's narration over the finished FX of the film, though the uploader edited in two Daleks.

 

[The Wormhole]

^^And replaced the Dalek voices.

 

[CaptainMatt]

Yes, it is true Gordon Tipple played the Master for the duration of the opening narrarration, but this was changed for whatever reason to Paul Mcgann, which kind of ruins the suspense of will the Doctor survive this adventure.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

Yes, it is true Gordon Tipple played the Master for the duration of the opening narrarration, but this was changed for whatever reason to Paul McGann, which kind of ruins the suspense of will the Doctor survive this adventure.

There's an obvious reason why the narration was changed to McGann -- he's an actor the audience will have a connection with when the story's done, while Tipple is an actor with whom the audience will have no connection.

With the exception of "The Deadly Assassin," outside narration has never really worked in Doctor Who. (I think it could have worked in "The End of Time" had the second part followed through with the implications of the narration of the first part, but that was dropped entirely in the second half.)

The narration is functional here, but it's also awkward. It serves a purpose -- it explains the backstory -- but there should have been another way that's more organic to the story than this throwaway. "Enemy Within" is a case where the strictly linear structure that film and television often adhere to works against it. The pre-credits teaser may have worked better as a flashback sequence later in the film.

 

[Christopher]

I think the film might've worked better if it had started with the Chinatown sequence. We begin in a familiar, Earthly context with characters from our own world, then this mysterious blue box appears and a strange man steps out, and weird things start to happen around him, and the audience discovers what it's all about along with the human viewpoint characters. That's how both the 1963 and 2005 series premieres handled it, by giving us contemporary viewpoint characters who learned about the Doctor as they went. This movie was heavily frontloaded with exposition about the Doctor and his old enemies and his home planet and his two hearts and his regenerations and all that stuff. Not only was it a bit much for new viewers to take in all at once, but it robbed it of the air of mystery that the series originally had and that the revival series recaptured. Russell T. Davies was smart to start off with just the basics and hold off on revealing the deeper stuff about the Doctor's origins and his regeneration and so forth.

As it is, the film works better as a continuation of something already well-known to the audience, and a nostalgic overview of a lot of its familiar, established elements, than it does as an introduction for a new audience. Perhaps that's part of why its ratings were much stronger in the UK than the US.

 

[DWF]

As it is, the film works better as a continuation of something already well-known to the audience, and a nostalgic overview of a lot of its familiar, established elements, than it does as an introduction for a new audience. Perhaps that's part of why its ratings were much stronger in the UK than the US.

It only works that way because the movie is a curiosity for new fans of the show. Fox bare promoted the movie, they put it against two of the histest rated sitcoms of that era and failed to repeat the movie.

 

[CaptainMatt]

It is a myth that no one in the US knew what Doctor Who was at that point in time. The series lasted about a decade and a half on PBS throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s, and they even based part of their annual fundraising Festivals around the series, what with fans manning the phones dressing up as their favorite characters and what not.

 

[Sindatur]

It is a myth that no one in the US knew what Doctor Who was at that point in time. The series lasted about a decade and a half on PBS throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s, and they even based part of their annual fundraising Festivals around the series, what with fans manning the phones dressing up as their favorite characters and what not.

Yea, it wasn't mainstream, but, it also wasn't a once in a lifetime event to meet another Doctor Who Fan, and actually quite common to meet someone who at least knew of Doctor Who and some of the basics.

 

[DWF]

It is a myth that no one in the US knew what Doctor Who was at that point in time. The series lasted about a decade and a half on PBS throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s, and they even based part of their annual fundraising Festivals around the series, what with fans manning the phones dressing up as their favorite characters and what not.

And as it was pointed though, it wasn't mainstream show here and all you're talking about is the fans that knew about the show. Not only that but the old series had and still has the stigma of being a low budget BBC show, the movie was the first to try and change that.

 

[Christopher]

It is a myth that no one in the US knew what Doctor Who was at that point in time. The series lasted about a decade and a half on PBS throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s, and they even based part of their annual fundraising Festivals around the series, what with fans manning the phones dressing up as their favorite characters and what not.

Well, obviously. I was a fan of Doctor Who since the '80s, I had friends in high school who were as well, and I even went to a couple of conventions hosted by my local PBS station, which was one of the most committed broadcasters of the series in the country, continuing to air it long after most others had stopped.

So of course I wasn't claiming that nobody was familiar with the show. But America is a very big country. There are plenty of fictional works/franchises that have devoted cult audiences yet are still unfamiliar to the majority of the public. And Doctor Who was certainly one of them. It had a loyal cult following in the States, mainly among PBS viewers, but was nowhere near being the kind of household name it was in the UK. So naturally the '96 movie had to be made accessible for new viewers.

I mean, heck, Russell Davies did the same thing, even more so. The '96 movie was theoretically made as an introduction for new viewers, but worked better as a revisitation of something familiar. But the 2005 series worked very well as a fresh beginning from scratch, an introduction for a new generation of British viewers for whom the original show was something from history.

Heck, every reboot or remake is made to be an introduction for new viewers. No show or movie can succeed by appealing exclusively to the small core of loyal fans of the original; the key to success is to create a new fanbase. So saying that a revival/reboot needs to be accessible to new viewers is not saying that nobody's ever heard of the original.

 

[Captaindemotion]

Yes, it is true Gordon Tipple played the Master for the duration of the opening narrarration, but this was changed for whatever reason to Paul Mcgann, which kind of ruins the suspense of will the Doctor survive this adventure.

Was it ever in doubt?!

 

[The Wormhole]

It is a myth that no one in the US knew what Doctor Who was at that point in time. The series lasted about a decade and a half on PBS throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s, and they even based part of their annual fundraising Festivals around the series, what with fans manning the phones dressing up as their favorite characters and what not.

Yea, it wasn't mainstream, but, it also wasn't a once in a lifetime event to meet another Doctor Who Fan, and actually quite common to meet someone who at least knew of Doctor Who and some of the basics.

In fact, I remember Simpsons did two Doctor Who jokes in the mid 1990s. Mind you, they were pretty obscure, but they're there.

-Comic Book Guy while pushing a wheel-barrel of tacos from a restaurant promoting "100 tacos for $100.00" comments "this should provide enough sustenance for the Doctor Who marathon."
-Tom Baker is seen attending a conference of televisions most influential people.

 

[Anwar]

Yeah, people knew about Doctor Who but they didn't know his whole story. Plenty of folks back then assumed that Tom Baker was the only Doctor and it was about this tall crazy dude with a funky scarf.

Canadian YTV used to show old Pertwee Who episodes at night and I saw some but I never knew what the heck it was supposed to be about.

 

[Iamnotspock]

Yes, it is true Gordon Tipple played the Master for the duration of the opening narrarration, but this was changed for whatever reason to Paul Mcgann, which kind of ruins the suspense of will the Doctor survive this adventure.

Do I take it you mean, will the seventh Doctor survive this adventure? I don't think that whether the Doctor would survive the adventure was ever in doubt.

Russell T. Davies was smart to start off with just the basics and hold off on revealing the deeper stuff about the Doctor's origins and his regeneration and so forth.

It's common sense, really. I think it's more that the TVM producers were incredibly silly not to do that!

 

[Allyn Gibson]

Russell T. Davies was smart to start off with just the basics and hold off on revealing the deeper stuff about the Doctor's origins and his regeneration and so forth.

It's common sense, really. I think it's more that the TVM producers were incredibly silly not to do that!

I don't fault Philip Segal for the approach that he took, because, in Hollywood terms, it makes perfect sense. Look at the pilots for most every genre series you see today. They start with the first story -- the first mission, the first encounter, the first something -- and they establish all sorts of stuff that maybe, hopefully, possibly might get picked up on later. I don't know if it's that audiences like to feel that they're starting from the beginning or if it's that writers like to feel that starting from the beginning makes their work more significant, but either way, it's the way Hollywood works its stories -- you start at the beginning, not in media res.

 

[Iamnotspock]

I don't fault Philip Segal for the approach that he took, because, in Hollywood terms, it makes perfect sense. Look at the pilots for most every genre series you see today. They start with the first story -- the first mission, the first encounter, the first something -- and they establish all sorts of stuff that maybe, hopefully, possibly might get picked up on later. I don't know if it's that audiences like to feel that they're starting from the beginning or if it's that writers like to feel that starting from the beginning makes their work more significant, but either way, it's the way Hollywood works its stories -- you start at the beginning, not in media res.

I'm sorry?

Surely that's the exact opposite approach that Segal took? In a way, he did start in media res, in terms of not introducing the mythology in a way that was palatable to non-fans.

Starting at the beginning would be starting where An Unearthly Child and Rose started. Instead it opens with a shot of the planet Skaro and the following voice-over;

It was on the planet Skaro that my old enemy, thr Master, was finally put on trial. They say he listened calmly, as his list of evil crimes was read, and sentence passed. Then he made his last, and, I thought, somewhat curious, request. He demanded that I, the Doctor, a rival Time Lord, should take his remains back to our home planet, Gallifrey.

It was a request they should never have granted...

Then, after the opening titles, it cuts to a strange blue box that looks like a portable toilet flying through some sort of Star Wars-style space tunnel, before cutting to the interior with no explanation that this place is inside the box. Many probably switched over to Roseanne at that point.

If they'd started with the Chinatown scene and then filled in the rest in flashback, it might have been a lot less confusing.

 

[Christopher]

^Right. Segal was trying to make it an introduction for new viewers, but he also made it a recap of familiar continuity tropes for established fans. It was trying to be two things at once, and it was better at the latter than the former.

It occurred to me the other day that the '96 movie's narrative problems are similar to those of last year's Green Lantern feature film. That was also an attempt to introduce the series to new audiences that suffered from trying too hard to cater to the existing fanbase, cluttered with continuity porn to an extent that made the story less accessible to the uninitiated. Both movies were frontloaded with heavy mythology stuff and took a while before giving novice viewers a setting or viewpoint character they could relate to, and both were too impatient to cram decades of mythology into a couple of hours rather than starting with the basics and saving the more involved stuff for sequels.