Welcome to your summer vacation through space and time, all from the comfort of your couch and TV. We’re spending our COVID-19 summer winding our way through Doctor Who history, focusing on one episode from each Doctor’s tenure through to the Capaldi era. (Want to know what we’re watching? Here’s the schedule!)
It is a truth universally acknowledged that if there is a good British television program, America will try their own adaptation. Some of these have come out very very good (The Office) and some of these have come out very very bad (Coupling). Doctor Who is not immune to the stars and stripes touch, and a TV movie aired on the Fox TV network on May 14, 1996, in the hopes that it would lead to a new series.
Currently, this movie is not available on any streaming platform, so your only way to watch it is on DVD (I ordered my copy here). And in honor of Eighth Doctor Paul McGann, we’ve got eight thoughts to share with you on this piece of Whovian history.
Finally, you know the warning: Spoilers!
1. My Ears! My Ears!
There’s no such thing as Doctor Who without that electronic opening theme by Delia Derbyshire. So of course the first thing we Americans have to do is change it up to this swelling orchestral interpretation that sounds straight out of some broadcast television miniseries from the 80s or 90s. The basic melody is there, but all the strings and piano and horns? I don’t like it.
There’s also a lot of voice-over narration in these opening moments. Now I recognize that the audience watching this movie may be novices to the series, but there’s a lot of “tell, don’t show.” Give your audience some credit. Let them find the joy of putting things together.
2. The Doctor and the Master
So here’s one thing this movie did right: stick with a tried and true foe. The Doctor and The Master is a conflict older than time, perfect for longtime fans of the show, but also something relatable for people just looking for a good TV movie to pass their evening.
We open on the Doctor transporting the (presumed) dead Master back to Gallifrey for his final rest. But notice I said “presumed.” Someone’s not dead, and someone’s itching to cause some trouble. And that trouble is knocking the TARDIS off course to Earth…
3. Tonight We Gonna Party Like it’s 1999
The Doctor crash lands in 1999 San Francisco, right before the turn of the millennium. I’m not surprised by this choice of time. It’s close enough to current time to still seem modern, but being on the cusp of millennia (when Y2K is just starting to make its way into the collective consciousness) makes it still seem mysterious, cosmic, with no one having any idea what to expect.
And no one in this moment knows what to expect. A street youth named Chang Lee gets the Doctor to the hospital after he finds himself right in the middle of a gang shootout. And the staff, including cardiologist Grace Holloway, do not know what to make of him. He ends up in agitation and distress, babbling something about a beryllium clock, as the very human surgical team try to operate on him, eventually dying on the operating table.
I should add that the Doctor at this point, is still the face and voice of Sylvester McCoy. No regeneration yet, so we don’t have much time (this movie runs a total of 89 minutes) to get to know this new Doctor.
4. New Year, New Me
And there we have it, nearly 30 minutes into the film and we can see Paul McGann’s face. The regeneration itself is almost a non-event. A lightning bolt here, a few flashes there, and there we have it: new Doctor. All this plays out while one of the morgue techs watches Frankenstein on TV. The regeneration itself is similar to when Frankenstein’s monster receives the electrical impulses that bring him to life, along with his first impressions of the world. It’s a weird and cliched parallel that suggests the Doctor is a monster, which is certainly not an impression you want to give to audiences discovering Doctor Who for the first time, no matter how easy it would be to understand.
Continued belowThe Master is also making himself at home in a new body, that of Bruce a local EMT. There’s a nice Easter egg in this moment as Master-as-Bruce shows off his glowing cat-like eyes: a souvenir of time on Cheetah World, the site of the final classic Doctor Who adventure, “Survival.”
5. The Story of Grace
As a medical doctor, Grace seeks order in her life. So when her natural order of her life is interrupted with the loss of her job, her boyfriend, and the appearance of this man that her education and training cannot seem to explain, she’s at a loss for herself.
But she’s certainly not grieving the loss of these things too long or too deeply, since she has the Doctor kiss her not once, but twice. (And then one more time before the Doctor finally takes his leave of Earth.) Although romantic entanglements with the Doctor are standard in our modern era, at this moment it’s still very much taboo.
We really don’t get to know her too much outside of the 90s career woman persona. There’s a hint of why she chose her profession – – a desire to “hold back death” – – but that doesn’t end up explored any further.
6. Plot Plot Plot Plot Plot
All this Doctor trying to figure out who he is (it’s explained that the anesthesia interfered with the standard and proper regeneration process) has us forgetting that there’s another danger afoot: that of the Master, who befriends Chang Lee and gets him to open the Eye of Harmony. The Eye of Harmony is the TARDIS power source, and if the Doctor stares into the Eye of Harmony, the Master can take over the Doctor’s body. And it can suck the Earth into it, hence why he needs an atomic clock to reset it.
We know this because all sorts of dialogue tells us this, hitting you over the head with it over and over. I understand that this movie is working to appeal to everyone, but as I said earlier: give the viewer some credit and let them figure out some of these mysteries, instead of handing it to us on a platter.
Also, this conflict finally gets revealed halfway through the film, which doesn’t give much time for resolution. There’s way too much time spent on exposition. Again, I get why this has to be done, but it comes at the sacrifice for a compelling plot that could have led into a TV series.
7. This Charming Man
It’s a shame Paul McGann had this script to work with. He’s a perfectly charming, romantic adventurer. He’s a Doctor that enjoys humans: willing to kiss Grace several times, helping out the humans he meets with advice, and even claiming he was half-human. You can see some of those playful aspects of his character when you watch David Tennant’s Ten, Matt Smith’s Eleven, and Jodie Whittaker’s Thirteen.
McGann’s Eighth Doctor had a healthy life in audio dramas and other spin-offs from the series. But from the glimpses we saw in this movie, he would add a curiosity and bohemian flair to the series like Tom Baker’s Doctor, the Doctor that helped the series really take off in America.
8. England and America
If I had to put this movie on the UK-to-America scale, with The Office being the best of the best, and Coupling being the worst of the worst, it definitely leans more towards Coupling. The script is too simple. A story that would have worked in the series’s early years didn’t work in the more sophisticated 1990s. Too much exposition weighed down the script. And it tried way too hard to please everyone, struggling to find humor while clinging too much to that nostalgia. Paul McGann is the movie’s bright spot, which makes me glad his Doctor was able to find life in other mediums.
Fox was on its way to becoming a larger player in American television (it just acquired the rights to the NFL two years before this film) and a revived Doctor Who would have been an interesting pairing with The X-Files, which was also finding its groove. Ultimately, this TV movie was all Fox would commit to, and when the ratings didn’t meet their expectations, Fox was done with it.
Continued belowIt would be another nine years after this before Doctor Who returned to TV in the U.K., and a whole decade before it came back to the U.S.
TARDIS Trivia (our Afterthoughts section)
- Paul McGann and Sylvester McCoy don’t have any character names in the credits, though the press kit lists them as “The Doctor,” and “The Old Doctor,” respectively.
- Among the actors considered for the Eighth Doctor: Michael Crawford, Tim Curry, Eric Idle, Billy Connolly, Trevor Eve, Michael Palin, Robert Lindsay and Jonathan Pryce. Christopher Eccleston and Peter Capaldi, who later became Doctors in their own right, also were offered the chance to audition, but declined.
- Third Doctor Jon Pertwee passed away six days after this movie aired in the United States. The UK broadcast (which aired on May 27th) included a tribute.
Next week, we’re off to the current era of the series, with a look at the Ninth Doctor serial, “Father’s Day.”
Classic Doctor Who episodes (First through the Seventh Doctors) are available on the streaming subscription service Britbox (available in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. at the time of this writing). If you’re in the U.S., Latin America, Puerto Rico, and Europe, you can also get your classic Who fix via the free streaming service Pluto TV, which has its own Doctor Who channel!
Revival episodes (Ninth through Twelfth Doctors) are available worldwide on Amazon Prime, and in the United States on HBO Max.
