Review: Doctor Who Classic: The Movie (Revisited)

See here for my previous look at this film, which covers the plot and background.

Eight relaxes, reading better sci-fi than this movie.

Doctor Who - The Movie (Revisited)

The main issue that I have with The Movie is not that it's badly made, not that it's badly casted, and not because it was badly performed by the majority of the main cast. No, the issue is that this film tries. It tries to be good, it tries to harken back to the Original Series. But it fails so badly not only due to the things I've already mentioned, but because its corporate background moulded and misshaped it to the point where any inital good intent has vanished.
      Paul McGann is good, though. Eight is rare in that he doesn't seem very alien at all; he's your stylised, charming British man. I suppose this more recogniseable characterisation mixes in with the whole half-human thing (oh boy, will I get to that later) but what this really translates into is a Doctor that is easier than ever to cheer for - just the like heroes of American television shows. If I was to have any problems with the incarnation, I'd have to just note that there isn't really anything alien about him at all, something that made The Doctor who he was and made him into the archetypal figure at the show's heart. Even Davison, who was down to earth and civilised, wore a sprig of celery on his lapel to remind you of his eccentricity.
      The Master is... not done well. Some would argue that the last good Master was his first incarnation, Roger Delgado, but I like some of Anthony Ainley's portrayl as well. In what would appear to be the "previous" story, Survival, Ainley's Master finally broke free from the camp writing that plagued his appearances in the Saward era and became brilliantly scary. Eric Roberts' Master obviously didn't get the memo, and the character-actor plays it totally camp. The character also seemed to gain brand new powers never mentioned before, like the ability to turn into and produce a goo-like substance that can help him to control minds. The Master is usually best when he can be, you know, taken seriously?

What most fans thought when seeing the film.

       And oh, the Canon. The Movie makes a few nods towards Who Canon, but it just violates so many others in ways guranteed to make a fan like me scream at the screen. Not only are the Daleks of all things overseeing The Master's trial, the criminal also gets his Last Will and Testament carried out by his arch-nemesis, who has obviously never seen The Master return to life before. And the Doctor is half-human, two words that caused such a quake of anger in fandom that I dared not speak them until now. And yes, if you noticed that I wrote them in an earlier paragraph, you're more clever than this movie. It's not just the fact that the Doctor has always been the full, bona fide Timelord that irritates me about Half-Human, but it's that they take this fundamentally game-changing idea that is in direct contradition to every word of the Original Series, and use it as a plot point! That'd be like re-booting Star Trek and making it so that the only way Kirk can defeat Khan is by admitting that Spock is his cousin. It raises more questions than it answers, and more importantly, it disrupts the show's dynamic.
     Perhaps the thing that feels the most off is just the general tone. Doctor Who really wasn't ready for the advances in film that had occurred since the show was cancelled, and the dark streets of San Francisco feel like no place for our cosily British Doctor to be having his adventures. The setting just doesn't make sense; Vancouver is masquerading as San Francisco for some reason, and the producers decided to stoke the flames of Y2K by setting it then.

Eight and Grace don't shine together.

      The Movie tried to hit the mark but missed by a considerable distance. It prided itself on making nods to the original series when presenting concepts that, while tuned for a 90s American audience, so disagree with the series' main ideas that there's little point. And when you combine this warped view of Doctor Who with a villain that is better suited to pantomime, then you know that The Movie has problems that not even time can fix.

Thanks.

NEXT WEEK: Back to Pertwee with Doctor Who and The Silurians.
P.S. That Tardis Interior is damn awesome! By far the best, ever!

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.