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Doctor Who
The Movie
27TH MAY 1996
(80-MINUTE UNTITLED TV MOVIE)
When it was first
aired I raved about the TV Movie, before doing it to death with
countless VHS viewings. Six years later, it became one of the first
DVDs that I owned. With little to no restoration work needed and a whole
host of special features ready made, it was an obvious choice for an early
release on the millennium’s new medium. Nine years on, and the movie is
“remastered, repackaged and reappraised with exclusive new special
features” which take a retrospective look at the movie and its
significance.
Unlike The Talons of Weng-Chiang
and The Caves of Androzani
(which have been released alongside it
as part of the Revisitations
1 box set), the TV Movie DVD
has been deconstructed and then built
up again from scratch. Instead of a
boasting just a new cover and an
extra disc, this two-set sees the bonus
material from 2001 fused with
that of today and evenly spaced across
the discs. On the first disc,
the main feature is now complemented by
a commentary featuring
Doctors Sylvester McCoy and Paul
McGann, moderated by the voice
of the Daleks and Big Finish Executive
Producer Nicholas Briggs.
Whilst this doesn’t contain any
shockers the like of that found within
Geoffrey Sax’s lone
commentary - for instance that he did the Dalek
voices last-minute,
and no-one in the production team “…knew what
they sounded like”,
hence their voices sounding so strange - it is far
more entertaining
than the director’s 2001 effort, possessing the feel
of an informal
podcast rather than a technical overview of the production.
Sax’s commentary is
still included on the re-release, however, together with all the special
features from 2001. The isolated score is still present and correct (and
buoyed by four new bonus tracks, albeit quite bizarre
ones) as are the two alternate takes, the BBC1 Trailers and all the
multifarious publicity material that showed up over here on either the BBC
or the Sci-Fi Channel back in 1996. The latter is presented a little
differently in this
release, all
the contemporaneous
bonus
material having
been moved
onto the second
disc and sub- divided into ‘pre-production’
and ‘production’
sub-menus,
making navigation
easier. The
original
interviews, TARDIS tours and ‘electronic press kits’ are then married up
with VFX
tests from both
June 1994 and March 1996, allowing viewers a telling glimpse of what might
have been had
Amblin’s infamous Spider Daleks seen the screen, as well as VFX build-ups
from the actual movie.
Nevertheless, the unarguable highlight
of the release is
Ed Handling’s hour-long Seven Year Hitch documentary, which
candidly charts Philip Segal’s quest to resurrect Doctor Who; the
making of the movie; and its reception. This incredibly thorough piece
scrutinises everything from Segal’s pre-cancellation courting of the Beeb
to Coast-to-Coast’s
Spock gambit and
Segal’s desperate deployment of the Steven Spielberg card. Even though I
thought I knew it all, this documentary delves into previously unexplored
territory, looking at Segal’s role in the abandoning of Adrian Rigelsford’s
mooted 30th anniversary special, The Dark Dimension, which would
have been a
Five Doctors-style carnival of companions and monsters led by a fourth
Doctor who’d never regenerated - effectively the antithesis of what Segal
proposed to do, looking back instead of forwards.
Above: Former BBC1 Controller Alan Yentob discusses the series’
“Seven Year Hitch”
As well as politics, The Seven Year
Hitch also looks at the writing of the TV Movie, which
is as frightening as it is interesting.
Some early drafts saw the Doctor travelling the universe with Cardinal
Borusa, searching for the Doctor’s lost father, Ulysses! Fortunately
Spielberg dismissed that particular script out of hand, and English writer
Matthew Jacobs was brought in to write his
“Doctor Who am I?” interpretation, which ultimately become the story
of rebirth that we would eventually see on screen. Even then though,
matters were not straightforward, as each interested party insisted on
having their say, and
Segal’s idea to have incumbent Doctor Sylvester McCoy reprise his role at
the start of the movie was met with resistance from all quarters, almost
leading to the stunt casting of a celebrity
‘old
Doctor’
at one point. The casting of the principal Doctor was no less contentious,
with actors as eclectic as Liam Cunningham, Michael Crawford and even
Michael Palin all in the frame before producer Jo Wright forced Segal to
watch
Withnail and I. The rest, as they say, is history.
The Wilderness Years came as
something of disappointment though. Though it does what
it says on the tin and looks at how
Doctor Who was kept alive during the hiatus, at just under twenty-five
minutes everything is skirted over too quickly. Much of the running time
is wasted talking about Doctor Who Magazine
and its comic strip, which is explored in much greater depth in the
second disc’s Stripped for Action featurette, and the productions
of Reeltime, BBV and even the
30 Years in the TARDIS
documentary are given more screen time than the Virgin New Adventures,
BBC Books and Big Finish. Whereas Big Finish are perfectly capable of
producing their own in-house documentaries, at some point I would love to
see an in-depth documentary focusing on the Doctor Who novels as
for me, they were what ‘the Wilderness Years’ were all about.
Above: Former Virgin Editor Peter Darvill-Evans discusses the New
Adventures in The Wilderness Years
Conversely, The Doctor’s Strange
Love featurette was far more enjoyable than I expected. This
eleven-minute feature sees writers Joe Lidster and Simon Guerrier and
comedienne Josie Long critique the TV Movie in a refreshingly good-natured
manner, hence the Kubrick homage subtitle: How I Learned to Stop
Worrying and Love the TV Movie. Lidster draws some intriguing
parallels with Rose and the revived series generally, whilst
Guerrier makes some interesting structural comments that left me thinking
how much better the film would have been had he been the script editor!
Oddly though, it’s the layman who makes the most piercing observations. As
fans of the series, Lidster and Guerrier’s views are largely as one would
expect, whereas Long is continually pulling things out of leftfield. Her
wry comments about Chang-Lee’s Stockholm Syndrome are especially amusing,
for instance.
The second disc also features the
second instalment of the Who Peter documentary, A New
Regeneration, which looks at the support given to the series by
Blue Peter during the hiatus and following the series’ return. There
is a lot of ground covered here, both before and after the resurrection,
and though it’s not something that I’m terribly interested in, I suspect
that this feature will be a big hit with many.
Furthermore, as the eighth Doctor’s
only DVD release - unless we are ever treated to the animated Shada
- by necessity this set had to include his instalments of both
Stripped for Action and Tomorrow’s Times. The former is the
apotheosis of the comic strip commentary series; it’s quite clear from
watching it that the DVD producers have been desperate to talk about these
strips ever since they came up with the idea for Stripped for Action,
and rightly so, I understand. Whilst I’ve yet to delve into the eighth
Doctor’s graphic adventures, armed as they are with gay companions,
Masters, Cybermen, and even nearly-regenerations, the general consensus
seems to be that they represent a golden age for the DWM strip. The
Radio Times adventures aren’t neglected either - fans of Stacy and Ssard will be pleased
to see Transformers legend Lee Sullivan
appearing to discuss his work. Tomorrow’s Times is altogether more
painful, mind - Nicholas Courtney may make for a great anchorman, but
as
for the news he’s reading... oh boy.
Above: “In the battle for
eternity, there can only be one Master...”
Turning to the TV Movie itself, I’ve
always been a keen advocate of it.
As a one-off Tuesday Night film, the story packages the
Doctor Who concept in a fast-paced and action-packed narrative and
its production values are up there with major motion pictures. This film
should have blown away audiences stateside as well as at back home in Blighty - ‘should’ being the operative word.
Indeed, whilst the Doctor’s ‘Britishness’ may have been retained, the
whole show has USA stamped all over it and through it. In particular,
there is a very definite comic book feel - we have the origin story (the
regeneration) and, of course, the arch nemesis (the Master). Even the way
parallel scenes are often intercut is redolent of many graphic novels.
With hindsight,
I would’ve had reservations about Doctor Who being produced this
way in the long-term, but as a one-off it’s very refreshing to see the
Doctor step out of the TARDIS into gangland San Francisco – I don’t recall
the Doctor ever visiting contemporary USA in the television series.
“Who am I?”
The
look and feel of the film is also
very striking – images of the Doctor
in the shroud on his knees whilst it
storms outside and the spectacular
TARDIS interior are unforgettable, and I’m probably one of the few people
in the whole world who actually likes John Debney’s pompous title music
and score.
Paul
McGann’s portrayal of the Doctor is hard to gauge
on such a short
performance. Here he comes across as
being a very
energetic Doctor; more an amalgamation
of all of his
previous selves than a distinctive new incar-nation. I suppose that in
just under an hour on television he didn’t really have much of a chance,
but thankfully he has had ample opportunity to showcase his character in
the many Doctor Who audio dramas that he’s starred in since.
Of course, one thing that did stand out
about his Doctor
on screen was his humanity; a concept
made explicit by
the reveal of his apparent pedigree.
The Doctor’s mixed
race may go a long
way to explaining his obsession with
his “favourite
planet”, Earth, but it is irrelevant so far as
the plot goes,
simply rendering him a “knock-off Spock”
as Kim Newman so
succintly put it. Less contentious is
the Doctor’s
evident clairvoyance, which again smacks
of a page one
rewrite, but at least does so in a charming fashion.
“I
never liked this planet, Doctor.”
Eric Roberts’
Master is certainly imposing, and very well played, but he is much darker
than the Master that we know and love from the television series. The
Master that we see here is an evil reflection of the Doctor – whilst camp and
playful, he is a selfish, hateful creature who thinks only inwardly. By
turns Arnold Schwarzenegger and Anthony Ainley, Roberts’ Master dominates
almost every scene that he’s in. To say that he was cast as a result of
his repute and nationality as opposed to his suitability for the part,
Roberts certainly does a sterling job of capturing both sides of the
Doctor’s tortured rival.
Grace and Chang-Lee
were two interesting characters too. I was particularly impressed with
Chang-Lee – he struck me as having the same potential that Ace had; his
dark scenes with the Master were some of the best in the movie in my view.
Grace was more of a traditional ‘brainy’ companion in the mould of Liz
Shaw or Zoe Herriot – well, apart from that kiss, that is! Looking back at
those two brief snogs from today’s perspective, one wonders what the fuss
was about, though in fairness even at the time I wasn’t up in arms. It
didn’t anger me in the way that it did some, but then again it didn’t
really seem all that important to the story; it’s just a sensational bit
of gratuity.
All told,
whilst this movie may not
be everybody’s perfect idea of
Doctor Who, for an eighty-minute slice it’s pretty damn good.
Abounding as it is with colourful characters and thrilling set pieces, even
today it still stands up as being a brilliant movie, and this
comprehensive
Revisitation release finally does it justice.
On a finale note, I’m glad that McGann has
since gone on to prove what an
effective Doctor he can be through Big Finish’s series of audio dramas, as
if his journey would have ended here, I think we’d
all have felt massively short-changed; none more so than McGann, who so
nearly became the
“George Lazenby of Time Lords.”
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