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Let’s take a look back at the 1996 Doctor Who TV movie. It’s the failed revival, the black sheep of the TV canon. The show had been taken off the air on the BBC in 1989 and this was the first sign of life after a 9-year drought. Let’s get this out of the way: it wasn’t very good. But in hindsight, many of its elements were taken up by Russell T. Davies for the 2005 revival and improved.
The plot is actually a generic Doctor Who 101 plot: a newly-regenerated Doctor has to stop the resurrected Master from destroying the Earth as he tries to steal the Doctor’s regenerations so he can live on. How the story is written, however, is a mess. It does all the things a standalone story should not do. Any TV show or movie that opens with a long narration that tells the viewer a major story point and turns it into a backstory has already failed. The Seventh Doctor (Sylvester McCoy) going to Skaro after the Daleks’ execution of the Master and collecting his remains should be the opening scene that sets up the stakes and the Doctor and Master’s relationship as hero and archenemy. When it’s just a speech, the viewer doesn’t care or know why this should be important. The rest of the story is cheesy in writing and direction, walking the tightrope between campy comedy and campy SciFi that gives SciFi shows their bad reputation.
So yeah. It Was Bad
Most of the movie is mediocre-to-outright bad. The show was a direct continuation of the old BBC show but was buried in exposition and continuity details that it was often hard for a new viewer to understand or care about. McCoy’s Seventh Doctor was unceremoniously shot and killed off before there was any reason for a new viewer to know or care about him. And stereotypical and racially dubious Triad gangsters as a plot device: the lazy assumption that they carry guns when in real life they rarely do. Several pointless gags that made no sense to the story. Much of the plot had to be explained away in exposition, which was and still is a common problem for the show. The best part is Paul McGann as the Eighth Doctor. He had that air of Byronic romanticism and child-like exuberance that made his Doctor immediately likable and unique. He could have carried a series if they made one. The other thing that’s good is Eric Roberts chewing up the scenery as The Master. Daphne Ashbrook made a fun companion as Grace and Yee Jee Tso had to work with playing a character who has to be dumb in order for the plot to happen. And it was still recognizably Doctor Who, thanks to its writer and co-producer Matthew Jacobs, only somewhat Americanised. Jacobs might have been too much of a fan and preoccupied with keeping the show canon instead of a fresh reboot and ended up writing a story that satisfied neither fans nor newcomers.
Lessons Learned for the 2005 Doctor Who Revival
The TV movie was a hit when it was broadcast in the UK, which showed there was still a hunger for the show there. However, its ratings in the US were low, which kept it from getting picked up as a regular show, which has turned out to be a blessing in many ways. For starters, it would have been a US show, even if it would have starred McGann as the Doctor. It would have been cheesy and camp in the way 90s US SciFi shows were. In hindsight, a lot of the elements carried over in Davies’ 2005 revival: the lavish, expensive, and extravagantly designed TARDIS set, romance & kisses even if fans at the time freaked out that the Doctor would kiss a lady, more cinematic production values and camerawork. Doctor Who: The Movie is the missing link between the old show and the new one. Davies also learned from the TV movie how not to be mired in continuity while keeping the show canon. He made the 2005 revival a soft reboot that was also in continuity, making it feel new, introducing the show to an entire generation of viewers who grew up without Doctor Who on TV. Doctor Who: The Movie had to fail in order for the current show to exist and succeed. In that context, history has been kind to the TV movie.
Doctor Who: The Movie is only available on DVD in the US and a UK Blu-Ray.
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