Doctor Who (film)

Plot

The Doctor, currently in his seventh incarnation, transports the Master's remains, from Skaro, to Gallifrey via his TARDIS. The Master had been previously tried and executed at the hands of the Daleks. En route to their destination and while the Doctor reads, the locked box with the Master's remains breaks open. The Master, in the form of a snake-like ooze, leaks out and sabotages the TARDIS. The Doctor is forced to make an emergency materialisation in San Francisco's Chinatown on 30 December 1999.

After exiting the TARDIS, the Doctor is shot by a gang chasing down Chang Lee, a young Chinese-American man. Lee calls for an ambulance and escorts the unconscious Doctor to a hospital. The ooze also gets aboard the ambulance. At the hospital, after the bullets are removed, cardiologist Dr. Grace Holloway attempts surgery to stabilise his unusual heartbeat, but is confused by his strange double-heart anatomy. After the Doctor apparently dies in the operating table, his body is taken to the morgue, and Lee steals his possessions. That night, the Master takes over the body of Bruce, the paramedic.

Later, the Doctor regenerates. The new Doctor, suffering amnesia, recognises Holloway, who has resigned from the hospital after the failed operation. He follows her to her car and proves he is the same man she failed to save. Grace takes him home to recover. Now in Bruce's body, the Master convinces Lee that the Doctor had stolen his original body and persuades him into opening the TARDIS's Eye of Harmony, which requires a human retinal scan. When the Eye opens, the Doctor is flooded with memories and realises the Master is searching for him. He warns Grace that while the Eye is opened, the fabric of reality will weaken. Earth will be potentially destroyed by midnight on New Year's Eve if they cannot close it. To solve this conundrum, he needs an atomic clock, and there is one on display at the San Francisco Institute of Technological Advancement and Research.

Outside, the Doctor and Grace find the ambulance. Stepping from it, the Master and Lee offer them a ride. The Doctor does not immediately recognise the Master, but discovers his true identity en route, and escapes with Grace. The two continue to the Institute, obtain the clock and return to the TARDIS. The Doctor then installs the clock and closes the Eye. However, the damage is so great that he must revert time before the Eye was opened to prevent Earth's destruction. As he connects the proper TARDIS circuits to do this, the Master takes control of Grace's body and she strikes the Doctor unconscious.

The Doctor wakes to find himself chained above the Eye, the Master poised to take his remaining regenerations while Lee and Grace watch. The Doctor is able to prove to Lee that the Master lied to him after the Master accidentally reveals that the Doctor's body is not his and he refuses to open the Eye again. Enraged, the Master kills him, forces Grace to open the Eye and begins drawing the Doctor's lifeforce. After being released from the Master's control, Grace completes the final circuits to put the TARDIS into a time-holding pattern, preventing the destruction. She then goes to free the Doctor. The Master kills her, but this has given enough time for the Doctor to free himself. In the ensuing fight, the Doctor gains the upper hand and pushes the Master into the Eye. The Eye closes and time reverts a few minutes, undoing Lee and Grace's deaths.

With no further risk to Earth, the Doctor prepares to leave. Lee returns his possessions and the Doctor warns him not to be in San Francisco on the next New Year's Eve. The Doctor offers Grace the opportunity to travel with him, but she politely refuses and kisses him goodbye. The Doctor returns to the TARDIS and begins to continue his book from the start of the film, while the record player begins to skip once more.

Production

story 14 May 1996 (USA) 27 May 1996 (UK)

Upon translation into French, this film was renamed Le Seigneur du Temps (literal translation: "The Lord of Time").

"TVM" is the production code used in the BBC's online episode guide.{{cite web | access-date = 2007-07-26 | author-link = David J. Howe | author-link2 = Stephen James Walker | archive-date = 29 October 2015 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20151029152250/http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/classic/episodeguide/tvmovie/detail.shtml | url-status = live

Broadcast and reception

The movie premiered in Canada, on the Edmonton, Alberta CITV-TV station on 12 May 1996, two days prior to its Fox Network broadcast.

Commercials on the Fox network advertising the film used special effects footage from the 1986 story The Trial of a Time Lord, although this footage was not used in the movie. This marked the first time that footage from the original BBC series had been shown on a major American network. The advertisements also used a different arrangement of the Doctor Who theme music from that heard in the film.

The movie received disappointing US ratings. It received 5.6 million viewers, a total 9% share of the audience.

Maureen Paton in the Daily Express praised the movie "At last we have a grown-up hi-tech Doctor Who in Paul McGann...only a low-tech Luddite would miss the endearing amateurism of the old teatime serial format...the makers would be mad not to pursue the option of a series." Matthew Bond of The Times, by contrast stated "If the series is to return it will need stronger scripts than this simplistic offering, which struggled to fill eighty-five minutes and laboured somewhat in its search for wit". The letters pages of the Radio Times were divided between viewers who liked and disliked the TVM. Discussing the TVM, writer Gary Gillatt criticised it for having "too many unnecessary references" to the show's backstory. Gillatt added "although very entertaining, stylishly directed and perfectly played, the TV movie perhaps tried a little too hard to be what Doctor Who once was, rather than crusading to demonstrate what it could be in the future".

Awards

Doctor Who: The Television Movie won the 1996 Saturn Award for Best Television Presentation.

Commercial releases

Home media

A Laserdisc release of the movie was released exclusively in Hong Kong by Universal in 1997.

The unedited version was released on DVD in the UK in 2001 titled as Doctor Who: The Movie, and was re-released in 2007 as a limited edition with an alternative cover sleeve (but with no change in content) as part of a series of classic series re-releases aimed at attracting fans of the revived series to the older shows.

Both the edited and unedited versions have also been released in countries such as Australia and New Zealand.

The 2010 DVD box set Revisitations contains the movie with new, updated Special Edition DVD features. It included a new commentary with Paul McGann and Sylvester McCoy, an hour-long documentary on the time in between the film and the series' cancellation in 1989, a documentary on the 7 years it took to get the film made, a documentary on the 8th Doctor's comic strip adventures, a documentary on the media reaction to the 8th Doctor, a documentary on the ties between Blue Peter and Doctor Who as well as all of the original features, including the original commentary with Geoffrey Sax.

Due to complex licensing issues, no VHS release of the film occurred in North America, and for more than a decade no DVD release occurred, either. Finally, on 25 August 2010, Dan Hall of 2entertain confirmed that the 2010 updated version would be released in North America sometime in the next twelve months following extensive negotiations with Universal Studios. Two months afterward, a North American DVD release date for the 2-disc Doctor Who: The Movie – Special Edition was announced to be 8 February 2011.

In 2013 it was released on DVD again as part of the "Doctor Who: The Doctors Revisited 5–8" box set, alongside the classic serials Earthshock, Vengeance on Varos, and Remembrance of the Daleks. Alongside a documentary on the Eighth Doctor, it also features an introduction from then current show runner Steven Moffat. This was also released in North America.

The movie was released as a 2-disc Blu-ray set in Region 2 on 19 September 2016. The footage was not re-scanned from the original film negatives. Instead it is a 1080/50i upscale which suffered from the same PAL speedup issue as previous home media releases.

VHS releases

Laserdisc releases

DVD and Blu-ray releases

Soundtrack release

John Thaxton

Music from the movie was on a promotional-only soundtrack album published by the composer, John Debney. Additional music was contributed by John Sponsler and Louis Febre. Although the composer of the Doctor Who Theme, Ron Grainer, did not receive screen credit for his composition in the TV movie broadcast, the CD finally attributes the proper credit on its cover. The entire score was re-released with previously unreleased cues as the eighth disc of the eleven disc Doctor Who: The 50th Anniversary Collection on 29 September 2014.

Track listing

CD credits

• Music Score produced by John Debney
• Executive album producers: John J. Alcantar III and Thomas C. Stewart
• Music Editor: Laurie Slomka
• CD Edited and mastered by James Nelson at Digital Outland
• CD Art direction: Mark Banning
• Front Cover concept: David Hirsch
• Special Thanks to Ryan K. Johnson

In print

The television movie was novelised by Gary Russell and published by BBC Books 15 May 1996. It was the first novelisation of a televised Doctor Who story to not be published by Target Books (or related companies) since Doctor Who and the Crusaders in 1966.

Basing the adaptation on an early draft of the script, Russell adjusted some details to make it more consistent with the original series, and the novelisation also contains elements that were cut from the shooting script for timing reasons.

• The novel begins with the Seventh Doctor receiving a telepathic summons from the Master (similar to The Deadly Assassin) to collect his remains from Skaro and a short prologue detailing how the Doctor escapes from the planet with the casket. This was originally intended to be a pre-credits sequence in the movie, and was subsequently contradicted by the ending of the novel Lungbarrow, where Romana gives the Seventh Doctor the assignment to retrieve the Master's remains.
• More detail is given to Chang Lee and Grace's backstory, including his recruitment into the Triads and his seeking a father figure as well as flashbacks to Grace's childhood.
• The Eighth Doctor finds the Seventh Doctor's clothing in the hospital rather than the Fourth Doctor's scarf. Also, the sequence where Chang Lee and the Master see the Seventh Doctor in the Eye of Harmony features all the previous Doctors as originally drafted.
• The scene where the Doctor and Grace meet the motorcycle police officer is relocated to a traffic jam on the Golden Gate Bridge (impossible to film in the movie since it was shot on location in Vancouver).
• When the Doctor first kisses Grace, he immediately pulls back, grins apologetically and murmurs, "I'm sorry, don't know what came over me there." This makes the romantic nature of the kiss more ambiguous. Instead of the second kiss at the end, he gives her the Seventh Doctor's straw hat as a memento.
• The Doctor is still referred to as half-human, to which the Master comments, "The Doctor once claimed to be more than just a Time Lord — He should really have said less than a Time Lord!" This was a reference to a line cut from Remembrance of the Daleks.
• Instead of dying and being brought back to life, Grace and Lee are merely rendered unconscious, though aware of what is happening around them. Russell also spends some time showing the Doctor and them discussing what a "temporal orbit" is.

The novelisation was the first Doctor Who novel published by BBC Books. The book was actually published prior to the conclusion of Virgin Books' contract for publishing original Doctor Who fiction, so the next release by BBC Books did not occur for about a year when the Eighth Doctor Adventures series began with The Eight Doctors. The novelisation was released as a standalone work and is not considered part of this series. The Eighth Doctor Adventures series ran until 2005 when it was discontinued.

The novel was also released as an audio book on 2 June 1997, read by Paul McGann. This reading was later included on the 2004 MP3 CD Tales from the TARDIS Volume Two. A revised Target Books edition titled The TV Movie was published in paperback and as an audiobook 11 March 2021.

Continuations

• Paul McGann made a reappearance as the Eighth Doctor in the 2013 mini-episode "The Night of the Doctor" in which his regeneration was finally explored.
• Eric Roberts reprised the role of the Master in many Big Finish audio plays: Series 5 of "The Diary of River Song", Volume 4 of "Doctor Who: Ravenous", and reprised the role again in "Masterful", a special release celebrating 50 Years since the Master first appeared in "Terror of the Autons" back in 1971. Roberts reprised the role of his incarnation of the Master in Master! two months after the release of Masterful. The box set also starred Chase Masterson as Vienna Salvatorri. Roberts even recorded live-action material of himself playing the Master for the Big Finish YouTube channel.
• Yee Jee Tso returned in 2002 to play Major Jal Brant in the Seventh Doctor audio drama Excelis Decays and Doctor Reece Goddard in the Sixth Doctor webcast Real Time.
• Daphne Ashbrook returned in 2004, alongside Paul McGann, as Perfection in the audio drama The Next Life.
• Tso and Ashbrook returned to Big Finish together playing Captain Ruth Matheson and Warrant Officer Charlie Sato of UNIT in the audio dramas Tales From The Vault and Mastermind, both part of the Companions Chronicles series, in 2011 and 2013.

References

Works cited

References

1. (4 June 2001). "The Television Movie". The Doctor Who Restoration Team.
2. (8 February 2011). "Amazon.com: Doctor Who: The Movie (Special Edition): Paul McGann, Daphne Ashbrook, Eric Roberts, Glen MacPherson, Geoffrey Sax, Peter V Ware, Matthew Jacobs: Movies & TV". amazon.com.
3. "BBC – Doctor Who Classic Episode Guide – Doctor Who: The TV Movie – Index". bbc.co.uk.
4. (3 May 2017). "The TV Movie". [[Panini Comics]], [[Hachette Book Group.
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6. Hickman, Clayton. (26 May 2004). "Revolution #9". [[Panini UK]].
7. (1 August 2014). "Capaldi could've been the Eighth Doctor!".
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9. (2005). "The Handbook: The Unofficial and Unauthorised Guide To The Production of Doctor Who". Telos.
10. Gary Gillatt, ''Doctor Who: From A to Z''. London, BBC, 1998. {{ISBN. 9780563405894 (pp. 164–5).
11. Bailey, David. (April 2011). "Doctor Who". [[Panini Comics]].
12. "Doctor Who News: TV Movie re-released on DVD". Gallifreynewsbase.blogspot.com.
13. (2010-08-25). "Doctor Who News: TV Movie coming to North America". Gallifreynewsbase.blogspot.com.
14. Lambert, David. (2010-10-27). "Doctor Who – Announced for February DVD: 'The Movie: Special Edition' and 'Story #063: The Mutants'".
15. (4 August 2016). "Doctor Who Movie Set for Release on Blu-ray". Doctor Who Watch.
16. "The TV Movie: Blu-ray update / competition".
17. (1997). "Doctor Who – Original Soundtrack Recording". John Debney Productions.
18. "Millennium Effect".
19. (10 December 2019). "@Star_Chasm @franklyme9 I wouldnt say...".
20. Russell, Gary. "Doctor Who: The TV Movie (Target Collection)". www.penguin.co.uk.
21. (11 March 2014). "Paul McGann's eighth Doctor takes over the 11th Doctor's Tardis". Radio Times.
22. Fullerton, Huw. (2018-05-03). "Doctor Who: Michelle Gomez and Eric Roberts return as the Master to take on River Song". Radio Times.
23. Whitbrook, James. (28 March 2019). "Paul McGann's Latest Doctor Who Adventure Doesn't Have One Master, But Four". [[io9]].
24. Gooden, Tai. (13 December 2019). "DOCTOR WHO: MASTERFUL Brings Multiple Masters Together". [[Nerdist]].
25. Jeffrey, Morgan. (5 November 2020). "Eric Roberts plays Doctor Who villain The Master in live-action for first time in 24 years". [[Radio Times]].
26. "Doctor Who – Excelis Decays". [[Big Finish Productions.
27. "Doctor Who – Real Time". [[Big Finish Productions.
28. "Doctor Who – The Next Life". [[Big Finish Productions.
29. "6.01. Tales From the Vault – Doctor Who – The Companion Chronicles". Big Finish.
30. "8.01. Mastermind – Doctor Who – The Companion Chronicles". Big Finish.