Bringing a beloved show across the ocean to a new culture can be . . . tricky.
Such is the lesson learned from Doctor Who The Movie.
Doctor Who the Movie is a TV movie from 1996, a coproduction between the American network Fox and the BBC. It came about as an attempt to revive the Doctor Who series which had ended in 1989. At the time, there was a general distaste for the franchise, which was starting to feel old-fashioned compared to new science fiction shows that were coming out like Star Trek: The Next Generation. The project was a passion project of producer Phillip Segal, who had watched Doctor Who when growing up in England before his family moved to the United States. His intention was to create a new series, but Fox only committed to one TV movie. So, Segal developed the film with the intention of it being a backdoor pilot.
That's right, folks. We have another failed pilot.
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| Promotional image for Doctor Who the Movie |
The movie opens with the Seventh Doctor trying to return the remains of his archenemy the Master after his execution by his other archenemies, the Daleks. However, the box containing the Master's remains breaks in flight and what's left of the Master in the form of a slithering ooze gets out and sabotages the TARDIS. This causes the Doctor to have to make an emergency landing in San Francisco on December, 30 1999. After leaving the TARDIS, the Doctor accidentally stumbles into the crossfire of a gang trying to chase down a young man named Chang Lee. Lee calls for an ambulance for the Doctor (stealing his personal effects in the process). The Master/ooze also hitches a ride aboard the ambulance. At the hospitalthe doctor is put under the care of cardiologist Dr. Grace Holloway, but seemingly dies on the operating table. Meanwhile, the Master takes over the body of the paramedic. That night, the Doctor regenerates from his seventh form (played by Sylvester McCoy) and into his eighth form (played by Paul McGann). The one big wrinkle is that now the Doctor has amnesia and must figure out who he is.
And that's more or less the set-up for what's ultimately a story of the Master trying to steal the Doctor's regenerations so that he can live again, plus some stuff about his machinations endangering the Earth. There's some other details. The Doctor pairs up with Dr. Holloway. The Master dupes Chang Lee into helping him. There's also some plot thread about getting some circuit from an atomic clock on New Years Eve 1999.
This movie is weird. And it's weird from two different angles.
From the perspective of a longtime fan of Doctor Who, it includes so many things that feel a bit incongruous with the existing series. The Doctor can suddenly read people's futures just by looking at them. The Doctor also seems to have some degree of advanced strength right after regenerating (he basically beats down a door). In-jokes and references are dropped in weird ways. For example, the Doctor's oft-used alias of “John Smith” is given as his name to the paramedics by Chang Lee, even though he wouldn't have known that. And possibly the most perplexing of all, the Doctor goes around saying that he's half-human on his mother's side. Something that, if it were true, feels like it should have been revealed in a much more dramatic way.
On the other side, we have the view of a new person just coming to the franchise. So much of this movie feels like it's right in the middle of things. Instead of the Master ast his peak (or at least A peak), the movie gives us this back-from-the-dead, transformed, last-ditch-effort version of the Master. The Daleks are talked about as if they're important but never shown. And rather than getting to know the Doctor and then getting nto some of the odder aspects of the lore like his constantly changing face, we get a regeneration practically right off the bat. Now, I know that Doctor Who was a long-running series and it wasn't uncommon for a new series of it to start with lots of history behind it. But most seasons of the show after it was revived did a better job of introducing viewers and getting them up-to-speed. Usually by staying focused on the point-of-view of one of the companion characters. If anything, this movie should have stayed focused on the pov of Grace Holloway.
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| The Eighth Doctor and Grace Holloway |
Overall, the movie feels like it got stuck halfway between being a revival and a reboot.
Anyway, the movie aired on Fox in 1996. It did very well in the UK, but didn't perform well in the US. Part of that might have been lack of familiarity with the property, but a lot probably also had to do with it airing opposite the final episode of Roseanne.
But it wasn't a complete failure. It turned out that people really liked Paul McGann as the Doctor. That got him officially enshrined as the Eighth Doctor, which led to that version showing up in novels and audio dramas, complete with Paul McGann as the voice actor. The other thing it did is introduce the idea of the Doctor as a more contemporary action hero type. While many previous versions of the Doctor were more apt to rely strictly on brains (with the exception of the Third Doctor and his “Venusian aikido”), the Eighth Doctor was a lot more apt to run and fight and engage in motorbike chases as well as wage cerebral warfare. This was something that was incorporated into the character when the show was eventually revived in 2005.
All this, plus the uniquely embracing nature of Doctor Who fans (they may have versions of the Doctor they don't like, but they'd never exclude a Doctor), results in Doctor Who the Movie becoming possibly the most beloved failed pilot of all time. To the point where the movie has been newly remastered for blu-ray and 4k releases.
Go figure.
