Review: Doctor Who Classic/Film: Doctor Who The Movie

When American broadcasters try to recreate a British show, the results are almost always bad. Life On Mars USA, for example, completely missed the point of the show and gave an awful twist ending.
     1996. American Broadcasters rabble with the BBC about rights issues. They want to create a new series of Doctor Who, for broadcast in the US. To do this, they first commission a pilot - The Movie.
     And here we have it. Sylvester McCoy (Doctor7) regenerates into Paul McGann (Doctor8). And it's a complete and total bastardisation of the series. It's negative effects on canon have spiralled through time and now only the very basics have been accepted.
     So, Doctor7 is taking the remains of The Master (who was trialled and excecuted by The Daleks on Scaro... despite the fact that Scaro has already been destroyed...) to Gallifrey. However, the remains (which move about like spludge, something completely unknown to Time Lords before and after this movie) get into the TARDIS, forcing it to crash land in San Franciso, on 30th December, 1999.  When he walks out from the TARDIS, he is shot by gangsters. One ganster gets him to a hospital but duting operations they can't navigate his alien biology, and so inadvertantly kill him and postpone his regenerative process. Meanwhile, The Master possesses the body of an ambulance driver named Bruce.
     And so, in the Morgue, The Doctor regenerates (with some good special effects) and wakes up; his wanderings around the hospital lead him to entail the help of the cardiologist that killed him, Dr. Grace Halliwell. As he explains that The Master is trying to destroy the Universe, (which he is) they run about looking for various items which end up having very little relevance to the end-plot, in which The Master is thrown into the Tardis' Eye of Harmony.
    The only thing done well in this movie is The Doctor himself, Paul McGann, who gives an excellent performance despite having been left with many ridiculous lines. The rest is convaluted and camp, less a tribute to the show and more of a violation.
    Despite this, this film did have a few good concequences. Not only did it bomb in the US, meaning that we wouldn't have to watch any more of this crap, it really, really succeeded in Britain, where one Russell T Davies then considered reviving the series...

Thanks.