Doctor Who (TV story)

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Doctor Who was a made-for-television motion picture that was first broadcast in 1996. Co-produced by the BBC in the UK, the Fox Network in America, and Universal Studios, it was an attempt at reviving the 1963-89 Doctor Who TV series, relaunching it in the UK while introducing it to a wide audience in America.

Synopsis

New Year's Eve 1999. Earth is about to run out of time... Returning home to Gallifrey with the remains of his arch-enemy, the Master, the TARDIS is forced off course, returning the Doctor into the middle of a street gang's gun battle in San Francisco's Chinatown district.

Critically wounded in the shootout, the Doctor has to regenerate to save his own life. And he's not the only one - the Master too has a new body with which to wreak havoc, and his ultimate goal is to take the Doctor's own existence.

As the clock counts down to the start of a new millennium, the Doctor has to stop the Master destroying all life on Earth. But at what cost...?

Plot

The Master has apparently been executed on Skaro, and the Seventh Doctor is bringing his remains back to Gallifrey. However, the Master is not really dead, but transformed into a snake-like morphant creature. He causes a timing malfunction in the TARDIS, and the Doctor is forced to make an emergency landing on Earth: specifically, in San Francisco on 30th December 1999. As soon as the Doctor leaves the TARDIS, he is caught in the cross-fire between two Chinese-American gangs. One of the gang members, Chang Lee, accompanies the wounded Doctor in an ambulance to Walker General Hospital. Unseen, the Master stows away in the ambulance.

At the hospital, a surgeon removes the bullets, but the Doctor's two hearts confuse the medical team. They assume he is fibrillating and that the X-rays showing two hearts must be a double exposure. A cardiologist, Dr. Grace Holloway, is summoned from a date at the opera and attempts to stabilize the Doctor's hearts. He attempts to stop the operation, but is anesthetised. The Doctor's anatomy confuses Grace, and he appears to die under anaesthesia.

The Doctor's body is placed in the morgue, where he regenerates. Around the same time, the morphant Master takes over the sleeping body of the ambulance driver Bruce. As Pete, the morgue attendant, watches the 1931 film version of Frankenstein, the newly-regenerated Doctor bursts out of the morgue, clad in only a shroud. This was mimicked by Frankenstein's awakening on the film at the same time. Pete takes affright, The Doctor stumbles into a deserted wing of the hospital where he sees himself in a broken mirror and cries out, "Who am I?"

The next morning, the Doctor finds a Wild Bill Hickok costume intended for the hospital's fancy dress New Year's Eve party, and dresses in it; meanwhile, Chang Lee goes through the Doctor's possessions (which he had pilfered from Grace at the hospital). Meanwhile, the Master realizes that his occupation of Bruce's body will not last; he needs the Doctor's body. He kills Bruce's wife. At the hospital, the Doctor recognises Grace (who has quit her hospital job after an argument with the hospital administrator over the surgery), and follows her to the parking lot. In her car, he removes the surgical probe which Grace had left in him the previous night, a sight which convinces her that this strange man is in fact her supposedly dead patient.

"Bruce" goes to the hospital, where he learns that the Doctor died during surgery and that his body is missing. Grace takes the Doctor to her house, where she discovers that her boyfriend has left her and taken some of her furniture to boot. She listens to the Doctor's hearts and takes a sample of his blood, while the Doctor's spotty memory begins to return with anecdotes about Puccini and Leonardo da Vinci. Chang Lee uses the TARDIS key to enter the TARDIS. There he encounters the Master, who lies to him and convinces him that he has been wronged by the Doctor. The Master and Chang Lee go to the TARDIS's Cloister Room, where the Master uses Chang Lee's human eyes to open the Eye of Harmony, the TARDIS's power source. As the eye opens, the Doctor's memories come flooding back. In a fit of enthusiasm, the Doctor announces, "I am the Doctor!" and kisses Grace. In the Cloister Room, the Master sees a series of images: the old Doctor, the new Doctor, and a human retina. The last causes him to assert, "The Doctor is half-human." Just as the Master sees an image of Grace, the Doctor becomes aware of the Master's actions, and shuts his own eyes, blocking the images in the Eye of Harmony.

The Doctor explains the Master's plan: he hopes to force the Doctor to look into the Eye of Harmony, which will allow him to take over the Doctor's body. However, if the Eye is not closed by midnight the entire planet will be sucked into it. The Doctor will need a beryllium atomic clock to fix the TARDIS before then. Grace finds all this quite improbable, and calls an ambulance for the Doctor (who she now suspects to be insane). A television news report informs the Doctor of strange weather phenomena, and of a beryllium atomic clock about to be inaugurated at the Institute for Technological Advancement and Research (ITAR).

When the ambulance arrives, the EMT is the Master, and the unseen driver is Chang Lee. The Doctor asks to be taken to ITAR. Grace is still skeptical, but indicates for the driver to play along. However, a sudden stop at a traffic jam reveals the Master's inhuman eyes, and the Doctor recognizes him. His identity revealed, the Master spits a burning viscous substance on Grace's arm, but the Doctor temporarily blinds him with a fire extinguisher. He and Grace escape into the stopped traffic, and the Doctor bluffs a policeman into giving him his motorcycle. On the motorcycle, Grace realizes that the Doctor's improbable story is true. Chang Lee and the Master pursue the Doctor and Grace, but Chang Lee takes a shortcut and arrives at ITAR before the Doctor does.

Grace, a board member of ITAR, introduces the Doctor to Professor Wagg, creator of the clock. As the Doctor tells Professor Wagg "a secret" ("I'm half-human on my mother's side"), he surreptitiously removes Wagg's security pass. Grace and the Doctor steal a small component from the clock. They spot the Master and Chang Lee in the crowd, but escape by lowering themselves from a fire hose. They flee on the motorcycle, and arrive at the TARDIS, where the Doctor remembers that he keeps a spare key in the cubbyhole above the letter "P" in "Police box". They enter the TARDIS, where the cloister bell is ringing. The Doctor is able to close the Eye of Harmony; however, a quick temporal scan confirms that the Eye has been open too long, and the Earth is still in danger. The only solution is to take the TARDIS back to a time before the Eye was opened — but since the Eye was open so long, the TARDIS now has no power. The Doctor attempts to jump-start the TARDIS by drawing energy directly from the eye. Suddenly Grace's eyes turn black, and she knocks the Doctor out with the neutron ram.

Grace has been taken over by the Master's will, infected when he spat on her in the ambulance. The Doctor awakens to find himself strapped to a gurney in the Cloister Room. The possessed Grace and Chang Lee chain the Doctor to a balcony, under the supervision of the Master. Taunting the Doctor, the Master inadvertently contradicts his earlier lies to Chang Lee, who attempts to help the Doctor. The Master breaks Chang Lee's neck. He then removes his control over Grace so that her human eyes will be able to open the Eye; this he does quickly, while Grace is disoriented. As the Master begins to absorb the Doctor's life-energy, the Doctor asks Grace to return to the console room and jump-start the TARDIS.

As the Earth celebrates the approaching new year, Grace manages to start the TARDIS one second before midnight. The TARDIS enters a temporal orbit. She returns to the cloister room and frees the Doctor, but the Master attacks them both. He throws her off the balcony, and she appears to die. The Doctor and the Master struggle over the open Eye, and the Master falls in; the Doctor attempts to save him, but the Master rejects his hand and is sucked into the Eye.

The TARDIS slips back in time from midnight. Energy travels from the Eye to the bodies of Grace and Chang Lee, reviving them, and the Eye closes. The Doctor takes Grace and Chang Lee back to San Francisco on New Year's Eve. The Doctor gives Chang Lee a bag of gold dust, and tells him not to be in San Francisco next Christmas. The Doctor asks Grace to come with him, and she asks him to stay with her. They kiss and say their farewells. The Doctor leaves in the TARDIS, off to a new adventure.

Cast

Crew

References

Food and Beverages

Gallifrey

  • "Rassilon Era" appears on the TARDIS' console and screen.
  • The Seal of Rassilon is featured extensively throughout the TARDIS.
  • The Master uses the Eye of Harmony to spy on the Doctor and to transfer his lives.
  • Both The Doctor (in his narration) and The Master reaffirm that Time Lords can regenerate 12 times, a fact previously established in The Deadly Assassin and Mawdryn Undead, among other serials.

Individuals

  • The Master, The Doctor and Grace name-drop throughout this story by referring to Marie Curie ("does she kiss as good as me?"), Sigmund Freud, and Genghis Khan. (The Master also corrects Grace's grammar to "as well as you")
  • The Daleks put the Master on trial "for crimes he committed". Possibly for deserting them at the end of "Frontier In Space". Or it could be a continuance of the CD-ROM game "Destiny of the Doctors which would make more sense. The "Old Master" who appears at the start of the film, played by Gordon Tipple, resembles the Tremas incarnation played by Anthony Ainley up until 1989 (and again in Destiny of the Doctors), but it is not indicated definitively on screen whether this is the same incarnation or a different one. The Master does, however, in both the pre-credits sequence and again after taking over Bruce, sport "cat's eyes", a possible reference to his condition on Cheetah World in Survival.

Technology

The Doctor's TARDIS

  • The telefilm features a redesigned console room with a library and gothic architecture. Much later, in Time Crash, it would be established that the console room design can be changed like a desktop theme, although the Tom Baker era also established that the TARDIS has more than one console room.
  • The cloister room, last seen in the early Peter Davison era, appears again. A major change, however, is the placement of the Eye of Harmony within the room, which the Master says is where the TARDIS gets its power. He also describes the Eye as the "heart of the structure", although this being the Master, it's unknown how much if any of this is the truth.
  • The odd-shaped TARDIS key, glimpsed in previous serials, appears, and it is revealed that the Yale lock opening seen on the door is in fact a false front for the real keyhole underneath. Later, however, the TARDIS key would become a more standard Yale lock-style key (DW: Blink, et al).
  • Chang Lee gets the honor of doing the "TARDIS runaround" (character goes inside, sees how big it is, comes back out and walks around the TARDIS, disbelievingly, before going back inside). Although rarely seen in the original series, this occurs several times in the revived series with Rose Tyler (DW: Rose) and Donna Noble (DW: Turn Left) doing it, among others.

Story Notes

  • The TV Movie was broadcast on Fox Television in America on 14 May, 1996, and on BBC1 on 27 May, 1996.
  • During production and during its airing, it was referred to only as "Doctor Who". Philip Segal later told a convention audience that if fans wanted a distinct title for the TV Movie, they could call it "Enemy Within", but this name was never used in any official capacity. A wholly unofficial subtitle, Out of the Ashes, was given to the film by some fan groups; it subsequently was used in this capacity by the A Brief History of Time (Travel) website[1] and by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in an online documentary promoting the 2005 series revival.
  • British-born television producer Philip Segal had a longtime ambition to create Doctor Who. While working at various American production companies, including Steven Spielberg's Amblin, he attempted to develop a Doctor Who series or film. Eventually he was able to arrange a coproduction between Universal Pictures and the BBC. The script went through several different forms, including some which would have started Doctor Who continuity over again.
File:TVM opening caption.png
  • The eventual script by Matthew Jacobs continued from the BBC series, including a substantial role for Sylvester McCoy, the last occupant of the role of the Doctor.
  • Doctor Who: Regeneration details the development of this story (and many of the previous attempts).
  • For the 'international release' (ie everywhere outside of the UK) the opening sequence within the TARDIS has the caption "Based on the series originally broadcast on the BBC".
  • Ron Grainer, the late composer of the Doctor Who Theme, is not given screen credit for his work. Only John Debney, commissioned to arrange the theme and compose new incidental music, is given credit; this led to the mistaken impression that Debney also composed the Doctor Who Theme. (It was reported that Debney wanted to create a new theme, but was overridden by Segal). Similarly, the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and Delia Derbyshire are uncredited for their creation of the TARDIS sound effect.
  • At the time of broadcast/release there was significant reaction to the Doctor kissing Grace as this was the first overtly romantic scene involving the Doctor. (The later revival series, however, would incorporate more of these elements.)
  • Promotional advertisements for the telefilm shown on the Fox network incorporated footage from the opening sequence of the first episode of The Trial of a Time Lord - specifically the TARDIS being drawn into the giant space station - even though this footage does not appear anywhere in the telefilm. The arrangement of the Doctor Who theme heard during these ads doesn't correspond with the Debney arrangement heard in the film, either.
  • Neither Paul McGann nor Sylvester McCoy are actually credited on screen next to any character name. However the press kit for the film gives the official credits as being as "The Doctor" and "The Old Doctor", respectively. Although not used on screen, this is the last time the lead character is credited as "The Doctor" until the 2006 season, as the 2005 revival reverts to the old "Doctor Who" credit line.
  • The version of 1931's Frankenstein excerpted here is not the current restored version, but the earlier censored print that was commonly circulated on TV prior to the 1980s; this is evident from the fact Dr. Frankenstein's dialogue "Now I know what it feels like to be God" is blanked out in the scene shown during the regeneration sequence.
  • Sylvester McCoy has in recent years been critical of aspects of this film, telling the premiere episode of Doctor Who Confidential that the film should not have featured him, but should have started with Paul McGann's Doctor and saved the story of how the regeneration occurred for an episode of the resulting series, if one had been commissioned.

Ratings

  • 9.08 million viewers

Myths

  • Many fan rumours surrounded the production, including one which suggested that a futuristically-redesigned version of the Daleks may appear. Ultimately, the Daleks are only heard, not seen in the pre-credits opening sequence and are name-dropped by the Doctor later in the film.
  • Michael Crawford, Tim Curry, Eric Idle, Billy Connolly, Trevor Eve, Michael Palin, Robert Lindsay and Jonathan Pryce were all considered for the role of the Eighth Doctor. Steve Martin badly wanted the part.
  • This movie had the working title The Enemy Within. (Executive producer Philip Segal suggested to fans that if they wanted a title for the movie other than just Doctor Who, they could refer to it as Enemy Within. However neither Enemy Within nor The Enemy Within was ever used as a working title during production; later, Fox televised an Alien Nation telefilm with this same title, which is also the title of an early episode of the original Star Trek.)
  • Some of the controversies surrounding statements made within the film -- the Doctor claiming to be half-human being the big one -- coupled with the conclusion of the BBC webcast Death Comes to Time providing a completely different fate for the Seventh Doctor, have led some factions of Who fandom to consider the telefilm non-canonical (with some going beyond this to, in turn, rule the revived series from 2005 non-canonical). Officially, however, the BBC considers this film to be part of the continuity, and an image of the Eighth Doctor appears in the 2007 episode Human Nature, plus BBC7 Radio would also start airing a parallel series of made-for-radio adventures featuring McGann's Doctor in 2007.

Filming Locations

Discontinuity, Plot Holes, Errors

  • How is Grace supposed to know what a Neutron Ram is? (She is on the board of The Institute and thus is acquainted with advance technologies. Whatever a Neutron Ram is may exist, in one form or another, in late twentieth century Earth.)
  • How could the Doctor possibly have got any Jelly Babies? (He found a bag whilst rooting through the lockers for clothes.)
  • Why does the police motorcycle drive at full speed into the TARDIS? Surely it would slow down as it was coming up to the wall. (Evidently, the motorcycle is experiencing malfunctioning brakes. The policeman CAN be heard alluding to his brakes.)
  • The Master is executed on Skaro but, Skaro had been destroyed by the Hand of Omega in Remembrance of the Daleks. The execution may have happened before the planet was destroyed. It has also been suggested in EDA: War of the Daleks that another planet, not Skaro, had been destroyed.
  • The idea of the Doctor being half-human on his mother's side is not supported by any other televised episodes. There have been attempts to reconcile this in various novels, plus some have also suggested the Chameleon Arch may have played a role. The Big Finish audio drama The Apocalypse Element suggests that the human retinal pattern the Master sees in the TARDIS' Eye of Harmony may actually be that of Sixth Doctor companion Evelyn Smythe. It has also been stated by the producers of the revival series that the Doctor (and the Master) were lying. Another theory is that a human blood transfusion the Doctor recieved on the operating table may have interfered with his regeneration. The fact that in Journey's End the part-human, part-Time Lord Doctor has only one heart and cannot regenerate also contradicts the proposition that the proper Doctor is actually half human.
  • The interior of the TARDIS is wildly different than that previously seen. (This discrepancy is accounted for in NA: Lungbarrow, as well as in the CIN episode Time Crash).
  • As the Doctor regenerates, an orderly watches Frankenstein on TV. The film jumps ahead about 20 minutes -- from the unwrapping of The Monster to his later menacing of Elizabeth -- in the space of only a few moments. Perhaps it took that long for the Doctor to recover enough from the regeneration to get off the gurney and start pounding the door. Or perhaps the orderly is watching a drastically edited down version of the film.
  • The Doctor displays superhuman strength after his regeneration as he's able to pound down a thick steel door. He's never been shown displaying such physical strength before or since. Perhaps, like his ability to regrow a severed limb in The Christmas Invasion, the Doctor has augmented physical abilities in the minutes immediately after his regeneration.
  • Why would The Master speak with an American accent? Aside from the fact he initially impersonates Bruce and needs to keep his voice contsnt, his previous takeover of a person's body - Tremas - resulted in him speaking with the man's voice, so it may be a side-effect of the take over.
  • The Doctor died in his seventh incarnation in the BBC webcast Death Comes to Time. How can he be around to transport the Master's remains? Death Comes to Time is generally considered non-canonical for this reason, although the events of the story are referenced in a couple of novels nonetheless. It's possible DCTT references an alternate timeline, a concept brought into play in a major way during the 2008 season of the revived series.
  • A popular mistake often pointed out is that the Seventh Doctor holds the sonic screwdriver the wrong way round. However this could be a reason for the Master managing to escape the casket.

Continuity

  • NA: Lungbarrow sets up events for this story (including why the TARDIS interior looks the way it does, why the Doctor now has a sonic screwdriver and why the Doctor was rescuing the Master).
  • Several aspects of this story appear to be at variance with established Doctor Who continuity, most notably the assertion that the Doctor is half-human. Several BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures deal with this issue, notably EDA: Unnatural History, which also deals with the consequences of this adventure. Journey's End later strongly indicates that the Doctor has never been half-human (or if he has, he is either denying it or has forgotten about it).
  • BFA: The Apocalypse Element attempts to explain why the Eye of Harmony, Gallifreyan technology, could be opened only by a human eye.
  • In other episodes companions have been possesed eg. Rose and the Doctor by Cassandra in New Earth (TV story) and Peri in Trial Of a Time Lord.

DVD, Video, and Other Releases

DVD Releases

File:8a-dvd.jpg

Released to DVD in the UK as Doctor Who: The Movie, this release was the fourth release of 2001.

Released:

PAL - BBC DVD BBCDVD1043

Contents:

  • Philip Segal - Talks about the making of the telemovie.
  • Electronic Press Kit - Cast & crew interviews/behind the scenes footage/tour of the TARDIS set.
  • Alternate/Extended Scenes
  • Music Feature - Songs from the story.
  • Music-only Option
  • Trailers
  • Photo Gallery
  • Production Subtitles
  • Easter Egg (The dedication to Jon Pertwee that preceeded the UK broadcast.)
  • Commentary: Geoffrey Sax

Rear Credits:

Notes: The 'Based on the BBC Television series' caption used for the US broadcast has been removed from the DVD.

Video Releases

8a-video.jpg

Released as Doctor Who.

Released:

PAL - BBC Video BBCV5882

Notes: Released in an edited form with the operating scene and gang gun battle trimmed.

North American release

Due to complicated licensing and ownership of the telefilm, no North American (a.k.a. Region 1) home video release has occurred in either VHS or DVD formats as of 2008, and no such release is pending. Ironically, several of the featurettes on the UK DVD were produced specifically for US audiences.

Soundtrack

see: Doctor Who - Original Soundtrack Recording

Novelisation

TVM noveloffilm cover.jpg
Main article: Doctor Who - The Novel of the Film

BBC Books published a novelisation of the telefilm ,written by Gary Russell. According to the introduction, it was written from the script without seeing the final production. The cover title is Doctor Who, but the spine title is Doctor Who - The Novel of the Film. Its publication marked the start of BBC Books' involvement with publishing Doctor Who fiction and the beginning of the end for Virgin Publishing's association with the franchise. It is also the first non-Virgin/Target publication of a story novelisation and the last such adaptation until the publication of Scream of the Shalka in 2004.

Press kit

TVMPressKit.jpg

To promote the film among North American media, Fox issued a small, coil-bound press booklet detailing the film and also explaining a bit of the history of Doctor Who.

Contents

  • Introduction, a brief explanation of the film and the concept.
  • Main credits: This is the only place where Paul McGann and Sylvester McCoy are actually credited as The Doctor and The Old Doctor, respectively, or Eric Roberts as The Master, Daphne Ashbrook as Grace Holloway, and Yee Jee Tso as Chang Lee, as they are not credited with their character names in the televised film. As in the film, John Debney receives sole music credit.
  • Production Notes: A primer on the concept of Doctor Who, including explanations of what regeneration is all about, what Time Lords are, The Master, etc., and includes actor comments on their characters.
  • About the Production: More on the making of the film, plus a discussion of the new TARDIS design, including a reference to the interior being covered by "round bells" (!).
  • History: Brief primer on the history of the series back to 1963.
  • Facts: Fast facts about the Doctor and the series. Interestingly, it makes reference to the Guinness Book of Records naming it the world's longest running SF series, even though official recognition of this would not occur until 2007. According to this section, the TV movie is the 695th installment of the television series.
  • Biographies: cast and crew biographies for the main actors.

External Links

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According to one account, the Master had the appearance of Roger Delgado while on Gallifrey. According to another, he had Anthony Ainley's likeness. According to another one, the one with James Dreyfus's appearance was the incarnation who ran away from Gallifrey.

Divided Loyalties, A Brief History of Time Lords and The Legions of Death feature, or otherwise acknowledge, the War Chief, but in the process contradicted the notion put forward by other stories that he was an incarnation of the Master.

One account suggests that the incarnation portrayed by Roger Delgado may be the same as the one portrayed by Peter Pratt while some others distinguish them.

According to one account, the incarnation portrayed by Gordon Tipple is the one portrayed by Anthony Ainley, while some others state that the Ainley one was already lost by then.

While fighting to extend his life at the end of his regeneration cycle, many bodies were possessed by the Beevers incarnation, but all kept somehow reverting to his real being until he finally regenerated into the MacQueen one. Hence, these sections cannot be strictly chronological
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