N.B. there might (or might not) be spoilers in this article!
Twenty-five years ago today I would’ve been popping in the VHS tape of Doctor Who: The Movie and watching what would’ve been my first proper full-length Doctor Who story since becoming a “fan”.
And twenty-five years on much of “The TV Movie” still makes little sense. Why would the Master be on trial on Skaro (other than to shoe-horn the Daleks in)?
Why precisely midnight for everything to go wrong?
It also has the wafty-hand kind of explanation for things such as a temporal orbit. And why can Chang Lee “open” the Eye of Harmony because he’s human and the Doctor’s only half?
Then of course, there’s the biggie!
No wonder what, Master? No wonder what!?!
To be fair, Eric Roberts is gearing up for full-on pantomime mode by this point. Before that, Roberts has about three lines in which to convince us Bruce is a nice guy, but still gives a good fist of it with that ‘Sign or we can’t do nothing’ in the ambulance.
Daphne Ashbrook as Grace is good too, even if she does have to contend with rum dialogue such as ‘Oh great. I finally meet the right guy and he’s from another planet.’ It’s not quite ‘Flash, Flash, I love you but we only have fourteen hours to save the Earth.’ but it’s getting there.
Although we’ll never know if the Doctor would’ve come back to San Francisco to visit, I’ve alway rather liked the fact that she stays behind to carry on with her career saving people’s lives.
“I love humans. Always seeing patterns in things that aren’t there.”
The Doctor, Doctor Who
Like all inconvenient bits of Doctor Who continuity, the half-human revelation seems to have been forgotten in the years since. It always seemed a bit Star Trek to me, so it’s probably a good thing. (I always preferred Spock’s resistance to humanity to Data’s attempts at humanity anyway.)
Elsewhere, the TV movie does have its moments. It’s pacey, well-directed: Grace running through the hospital in her opera gown is a particularly fabulous image. And it’s nice to see Sylvester McCoy getting a proper send-off, even if he does end it all by gurning on a gurney. Some of the dialogue is great, especially the Doctor’s line about humans seeing patterns where there are none.
Last but not least, Paul McGann, as has often been said, is wonderful in this. Perhaps the biggest shame of there not being a series to follow this was that it would be another 17 years before we would see him again. (Hearing him, of course, would be an easier matter to attend, thanks to Big Finish.)
One other thing I remember about my initial (or possibly second) viewing of the TV movie: a friend of mine simply couldn’t believe the Doctor would store a spare key above the door. Happy to accept he travelled around the universe in a space / time machine bigger on the inside disguised a police box — but key above the door? — that was where his willing suspension of disbelief was broken.
After this false dawn, Doctor Who would head back into the wilderness. There’d still be new novels and short stories — the publishing licence would revert back to the BBC and the aforementioned Big Finish audios would start up, of course. There’d be more themed nights, documentaries, animated webcasts and another charity special to keep Doctor Who in the public eye, but in terms of proper actual full-on televised adventures, the TV movie was the last we’d see of the good Doctor for another nine years.
And by then, there’d be somebody else in the role …
