The Doctor Who movie...still not quite getting the criticisms.

[Aldo]

A while back when I was first getting into Doctor Who (I believe I had just watched the first three series of nuWho and picked up a few classic Who serials) I came across the movie online. Wanting to watch anything Doctor Who I could I gave it a go, knowing full well the kind of reviews it had gotten among fans and critics alike.

Well, despite all that I loved it, and recently I got it for my birthday and just watched it tonight. Well I still love it. Sure it's not perfect but for an American take on Doctor Who it gets a lot right.

I do have one major niggle though. The Doctor supposedly being half human, it bugs the hell out of me and I can only reconcile it by surmising that it was a defect of his elongated regeneration.

Also I think the movie takes way to long to give the Doctor his memory back. Sure it's cute at first but I think it takes too much away from him as a character, which takes me to my next bit...

The big draw of this movie for me at least, is Paul McGann. It's a real shame he never got to do anymore televised Doctor Who stories because I think he makes a helleva Doctor and would have followed him on many adventures.

 

[zarkon]

Thought you were talking about one of the Cushing movies(which I loved).

The McGann movie was fairly fun. Absolutley loved its take on the Tardis, my favourite by far.

 

[Jax]

The movie had story issues the half Doctor the biggest of them but I felt Paul McGann was great as the Doctor and its a real shame we never got to see him again.

 

[Iamnotspock]

I think it's a lot more enjoyable than its reputation suggests, but that reputation is not entirely undeserved. I do think it gets vilified for things that certain RTD stories get away with (a great emphasis on character but little in the plot department, a great set-up but a poor resolution). There are some great lines and character moments in it, the direction is magnificent, Paul McGann is fantastic, Sylvester McCoy gives a great performance with what little he has to do and I think Eric Roberts is no more camp than Anthony Ainley (I think a lot of the vitriol toward his portrayal stems from the simple fact that he's American, to be honest - to some, an American Master is as wrong as an American Doctor).

However, I think a great deal of the criticisms stem from the half-human thing - the less said about it, the better. Just... why? It does explain a great many things, but again, it's not necessary. Sylvester McCoy himself has since opined that, although he was happy to do the movie and give his successor a smoother introduction to the role than he himself had (which he had always promised to do), it was probably a mistake to have him in it, at least at the start. Paul McGann gets little screen time as it is, and to have McCoy start off the movie diminishes that further. If they'd begun with McGann in the role and explained the regeneration later in flashback, that might have worked better.

On a similar note, the film doesn't make much concession to the uninitiated, but rather it presupposed knowledge of the series. If you're introducing the show to a new audience, especially in America where Doctor Who isn't even part of the Zeitgeist (I was 10 when the movie first went out and had never watched the show beyond channel-flicking through a couple of reruns, but I'd picked up enough about it through cultural osmosis to not be too lost), then you have to do what the original first episode did in '63, or what the '05 revival did; start in the familiar everyday world with recognisable characters and gradually draw the audience into the Doctor's world. The movie didn't do that. Imagine you don't know anything about Doctor Who; the film begins with a baffling voice-over over a shot of Skaro, that name checks Skaro, the Master and the Time Lords within the first 30 seconds, then after the titles cuts to this strange blue phone box thing spinning through some sort of... time tunnel, before cutting to a new location that can't possibly be inside the blue box because it's too big.

If they'd started on Earth with the street battle and the mysterious man being brought into ER with gunshot wounds, dying and then coming back to life in a new body, and then explained the back-story in bite size flashbacks, that might have worked. As it was, it probably lost mainstream viewers right away before the opening titles were over.

Doctor Who is a show that was made up on the hoof. In the beginning it was about a mysterious stranger from another world who travelled through time and space righting wrongs. That's all it needs to be. The mythology grew later, and as great and inventive as it all is - the Time Lords, Rassilon, Omega, the Eye of Harmony etc. - it's far from necessary. RTD in 2005 wisely stripped the show down to its basics, and at first reintroduced the only necessary elements of the mythology gradually. The '96 production team, bizarrely, dived in at the deep end, clearly feeling the need to steep themselves in the mythology of the show and pay lip service to the Daleks, Skaro, the Master, the Eye of Harmony regeneration and the 13 lives rule etc. In short, they crammed it all into one film, unnecessarily. Those things aren't important, guys! To compound that, a lot of the references aren't entirely accurate anyway.

Some fans have a problem with the way the seventh Doctor met his end - rather than die a heroic death saving the universe, the powerful manipulative master planner, always one step ahead of the game, arrives in the wrong place at the wrong time, gets cut down in a hail of bullets (I guess the TARDIS scanner had been knocked out) and dies on the operating table. I don't dislike it, personally; I think it works in an ironic sort of way, but a lot of McCoy fans don't like it.

The plot, such as it is, doesn't stand up to much scrutiny. Why the totally arbitrary deadline of midnight before the world comes to an end? How and why did the Master become a CGI snake? How did he get into the TARDIS? Why doesn't Chang Lee figure out earlier that the Master is evil when he's going around killing everyone they come across? Why the hell does the Eye of Harmony - a Gallifreyan construct - require a human retinal print to open it?! What's it doing in the TARDIS?

The resolution flies in the face of Who's established structure by having the TARDIS return in time to before the Eye was open, which seems to have the effect of undoing everything. No! It doesn't work like that. If the Doctor could do that, you wouldn't have a show! He'd just be able to go back and thwart all his enemies' schemes before they even get off the drawing board, hence the thing of him not being able to cross his own timeline or he'd become part of events... or something. What the hell is a "temporal orbit"?! It's none of the viewer's damn business, apparently. How is Grace able to hotwire the TARDIS? How does being any good at setting alarm clocks help?

The whole story is geared toward Grace becoming a companion. She quits her job, loses her boyfriend, then meets "the right guy" and helps him to save the world. Then she doesn't go with him?! "I know who I am, and that's enough." Are you insane, woman?!

I could go on but I'll let someone else have a go.

 

[captcalhoun]

i enjoyed it, but, yeah... spock-o above me hits most of the main salient points: it tries to do too much to make itself part of the old show, it doesn't have enough Doctor, Chang Lee is dumb as a box of spanners and the whole Master-snake-possession business is lamer than a crippled horse and the half-human business is REALLY stupid.

what grinds my gears more is that several books portray Eight as having recurrent amnesia. jesus, people, that's NOT a character-trait!

 

[Sindatur]

Ah, but, they did it well enough, that McGann was accepted as the 8th Doctor in Canon, and brought us so many Audios. If they would've gotten a little less wrong and gone to series, we really be stuck with some stuff we don't like. Much easier to ignore the wrong stuff with a single movie

 

[Mr Light]

I recently saw it again and the worst thing about it was that it was boring. It was slow. Not much happened. And it felt like I was watching some cheap 90s Fox Sci-Fi series like Sliders.

 

[DWF]

I thought the movie was for the most part pretty well done and hardly cheap nor was it written on the fly. Paul McGann made an excellent Doctor better than Matt Smith in my mind and the TARDIS console room set was fantastic.

 

[FalTorPan]

The biggest problem with the TV movie is that it's confusing to non-fans. As for the Doctor being half-human, this never bothered me. It's "unnecessary," but so are most details of his background.

 

[Iamnotspock]

I recently saw it again and the worst thing about it was that it was boring. It was slow. Not much happened. And it felt like I was watching some cheap 90s Fox Sci-Fi series like Sliders.

Probably because both were made by Fox, with Vancouver doubling for San Francisco, and both used a lot of the same locations and establishing shots of San Fran, not to mention bit part actors like Will Sasso. I keep expecting Quinn Mallory and co. to Slide into the action while the Doctor battles the Master!

 

[23skidoo]

I do have one major niggle though. The Doctor supposedly being half human, it bugs the hell out of me and I can only reconcile it by surmising that it was a defect of his elongated regeneration.

The expanded universe (which, thanks to the BBC never actually putting out a Paramount/Star Trek-style edict can be considered canon in many respects) covered off several possible explanations.

But I think you probably hit on the main reason why aspects of DW fandom hate the film. It doesn't take much to turn a sci-fi audience against you - witness the many Trekkies who disowned Enterprise based upon its theme song alone. And for some, the half-human thing was a dealbreaker. Remember that when the film aired it was a pilot for a potential new series, so this was the way they were planning to move forward.

There were a few other minor things that turned people off. Like Enterprise, there were those who hated the version of the theme. Others disliked on principle the idea of Doctor Who being produced in North America (we're seeing some of that grumbling now with Miracle Day). And casting an American as The Master? Sacrilege.

Personally, I like the movie. I can see its major flaw - as Sylvester McCoy has said, they shouldn't have had the regeneration because it alienated American viewers unfamiliar with the concept of the show - but I thought it was an honorable attempt. And it kept the show alive, launched a new merchandising effort on the part of the BBC that resulted in dozens of original novels being published from 1997 onwards, and Paul McGann has since performed the Doctor dozens of times for Big Finish.

I'm actually in the camp with those who believe the 2005 revival likely wouldn't have happened without the 1996 TV movie. Or, if it had happened, it would have been as a "start from scratch, brand new continuity" reimagining, rather than as a continuation of the original.

Alex

 

[Aldo]

I recently saw it again and the worst thing about it was that it was boring. It was slow. Not much happened. And it felt like I was watching some cheap 90s Fox Sci-Fi series like Sliders.

Ironic considering Fox passed on Doctor Who in favor of sticking with Sliders. From what I read Fox wasn't interested in a show they couldn't have complete control over.

The biggest problem with the TV movie is that it's confusing to non-fans. As for the Doctor being half-human, this never bothered me. It's "unnecessary," but so are most details of his background.

Well as I said up thread, I watched the movie after I had already made my way through all the (at the time) episodes of nuWho and had seen a few classic Who stories, thus making the movie not really confusing for me.

But I never did think about that, that the movie came out at a time when Doctor Who was not well known to American audiences. Looking at the movie as someone who's never seen the show, I could see how it can be confusing to the unitiated. Especially as was pointed out above by Iamnotspock.

 

[Stevil2001]

I love Eric Roberts as the Master.

"Did she kiss as good as me?"
"As well as you."

"The Assssian child."
"Bruce, you're sick."
"Thank you."

"THIS IS AN AMBULANCE!"

 

[Starkers]

^ Plus

"I always like to dress for the occasion..."

I actually love Roberts as the Master.

For me the problem is too many cooks and competing ideas about what they were trying to do. The film is too referential of Who history for first time viewers, and too dismissive of Who history for the fans! There's just too much shoehorned in there, and having McGann not show up for about 20 minutes doesn't help, even though he is very good.

Say what you like about the guy, RTD got it right when he brought the show back; no regeneration, just drop the Doctor right in front of you, don't get too tied up with canon or anything complicated and just focus on a strange fellow with a box that's bigger on the inside, then, as time passes, you drip feed more and more of the history in there, to the point where the show is obviously a continuation, no matter what anyone might think.

Of course the question is whether RTD merely learned the lessons of the TVM?

My other problem with it is that it feels (and I know it wasn't) cheap. Something about the way it's filmed just feels wrong somehow, as someone says like a movie of the week. Oh yeah, and Milleniell(sp) stories dated really quickly.

It isn't terrible, and the Tardis interior (whist not alien enough for me) is impressive. I like McGann, Roberts, and I actually thought Chang made for a more fun companion than Grace, but pound for pound give me NuWho over a series that might have followed on from this any day.

 

[Cyke101]

Say what you like about the guy, RTD got it right when he brought the show back; no regeneration, just drop the Doctor right in front of you, don't get too tied up with canon or anything complicated and just focus on a strange fellow with a box that's bigger on the inside, then, as time passes, you drip feed more and more of the history in there, to the point where the show is obviously a continuation, no matter what anyone might think.

Of course the question is whether RTD merely learned the lessons of the TVM?

I recall several episodes of DW Confidential where RTD specifically mentions McGann's movie and credits it with a good chunk of inspiration. Radically changing the TARDIS interior and playing around with a Doctor/Companion romance are obvious, but RTD's bombastic, action driven style, focusing on the companion, and an intentional goal of expanding the mythos seem connected to the movie.

 

[Stevil2001]

There's a neat essay in the book Time And Relative Dissertations In Space that compares Doctor Who's two "pilots": "An Unearthly Child" and the TV movie. (It was written in 2005 and published in 2006, so there are small references to "Rose.") It is striking how many things "An Unearthly Child" does right that the TVM does wrong... and how many of the things that "An Unearthly Child" does right that "Rose" does right too.

 

[MacLeod]

Well from memeory when it aired in the UK, it got in the region of 10m viewers, which is about the same "Rose" got almost 10 years later, so from an audiance point of view figures held up well.

Like any episode of a show it has it's flaws. But on the plus side I did like the Control room.

 

[arch101]

Having started to watch the show in the mid-70s, I was just glad to have something new to watch. I thoroughly enjoyed it, but I watched with an open mind. To fans of the classic show, the changes were probably somewhat jarring. In retrospect, it was a perfect transition piece between the old show and the new. I've often observed that younger fans who have only seen the new show seem to enjoy it more than classic show fans.
Eric Roberts WAS a great Master. He was channeling the Anthony Ainley "over-the-top" thing really well. Loved McGann. Loved looking at Daphne Ashbrook. Wish they had made a few more TV movies. I'd have watched.

 

[Servo]

You have to love the delicious irony of people claiming that the Doctor Who movie that followed the original series looked "cheap".

 

[Cutter John]

Even the biggest critics of the movie at least have nice things to say about McGann.

And at least we got a regeneration.