Directed by: Geoffrey Sax
Written by: Matthew Jacobs
Starring: Paul McGann, Daphne Ashbrook, Eric Roberts
Music by: John Debney
Release date: 12th May, 1996
We're quickly introduced to the Doctor courtesy of every lazy screenwriter's BFF: voiceover, and told that The Master - the Doctor's childhood frenemy - has a dying wish: for the Doctor to take his remains back to their home planet, Gallifrey, after being put on trial and executed for his crimes by the Daleks and the horrible helium voices that they seem to have here in their fleeting cameo. ...Aaaaaand then it's never brought up ever again. The Master's essence escapes (somehow, as it's never actually explained) from the Doctor's TARDIS, which (again, somehow) causes it to crashland in San Francisco on the 30th of December, 1999. As soon as the Doctor steps out of the TARDIS he is shot by an Asian gang member and taken to hospital by the imaginatively-named Chang Lee, and Sylvester McCoy's Doctor dies and regenerates into Paul McGann's, with the help of some face-morphing CGI that's actually a bit more believable and creative that many of the attempts in the classic series. After overcoming a pointless bout of amnesia, the Doctor befriends the surgeon who tried to save his previous incarnation's life, Grace Holloway, and they eventually find themselves having to stop the Master from destroying the planet. There's some other stuff involving the Eye of Harmony, the Master wanting to steal the Doctor's regenerations and an atomic clock or something, but the plot is wafer-thin and incoherent. And while having a send-off for Sylvester McCoy's Doctor is nice for the fans and continues the tradition of showing every Doctor's regeneration process, literally transforming your main character into someone else about fifteen minutes into the movie may prove to be bewildering for newcomers.
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There are some great production values, with the TARDIS console being a particular highlight. |
Unfortunately the rest of the cast isn't anywhere near as strong. Eric Roberts seems to be having fun in the role, but his Master's occasional moments of menace are hampered by this incarnation of the character's apparent love for the camp and overly-theatrical. Chang Lee (Yee Jee Tso) is a weak and completely useless character who's omission probably would've improved the movie, and Daphne Ashbrook's Grace Holloway is as dull as her surname suggests. Not only does she have very little interesting qualities, but we know almost nothing about her, and her romantic relationship with the Doctor is incredibly forced, as he literally grabs her out of the blue for a snog when there wasn't even a hint of romance between the two beforehand. It assumes that the relationship between the two needs to be romantic because they're two members of the opposite sex, and comes off as lazy, especially when the character of the Doctor has remained largely asexual up until now. There's no point in reinventing the character every few years if you aren't going to take a risk or two, but if they had to take it down this route it could have at least been done in a more believable way. Apart from the contrived romance, it's also stuffed with other clichés such as a generic end-of-the-world-by-midnight plot, car chases and cartoony dialogue.
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Slyvester McCoy's Doctor moments before his demise. |
It tries to appeal to audiences both new and old, and somehow manages to fail at both. All of this comes complete with an Americanisation of the Doctor Who universe that makes it barely feel like Doctor Who at all, and it slaps you in the face with its symbolism: the aforementioned regeneration scene of Sylvester McCoy to Paul McGann is intercut with clips of the creation of life scene in Frankenstein, the song playing on the Doctor's record player in the TARDIS repeatedly becomes stuck on the word "time" (God knows why because it serves no purpose or relevance to the movie other than the fact that the Doctor frequently travels through time), all topped off with some overt visual references to the Doctor as Jesus Christ.
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The Doctor, Grace, and the T-800. |