Ah, the
TV movie. Not one to do anything by
degrees, this chapter of the Who saga
is almost equal parts terrible and wonderful.
There’s some extreme cheapness
and cheesiness, not to mention one plot twist so ludicrous that a lot of fans
have been denouncing the whole film for the past 20 years, but there’s also an
absolutely phenomenal Doctor and a shifting sensibility that helped pave the
way for the Doctor-companion dynamic of the new series (a few spoilers.)
The
Seventh Doctor has been tasked with bringing the remains of his old friend/nemesis
the Master back home to Gallifrey. Never
one for letting a little death stop him, however, the Master has other
plans. Soon, the Master is loose in San
Francisco on New Year’s Eve, 1999, and it’s up to the (freshly-regenerated)
Doctor to stop him. The brand-new
Doctor, struggling with some post-regeneration issues, enlists the help of
intrepid but skeptical surgeon Grace to thwart the Master’s plan and prevent –
what else? – the destruction of life as we know it.
Let’s get
this out of the way first: the Master is
cheesy as all freakin’ get-out in
this movie. Eric Roberts makes John
Simm’s Master look, at his most over-the-top, a paragon of subtlety. I realize the snake eyes, ridiculous Time
Lord robes, and literal corrosive
hypnotic drool don’t help in the slightest, but there’s no universe in
which this version of the Master can be taken seriously. This puts the first major dent in the film’s
quality. Unfortunately, a key plot point
hinges on one of the most despised Who
twists of all time: the reveal that the
Doctor is “half-human.” It’s weird, it’s
trite, and it feels like FOX’s desperate attempt (did I mention that FOX made the TV movie?) to make the
Doctor more “relatable” to its presumably-human audience. The production values are a further detractor
– while classic Who is lovably
shoestring and new Who is pretty
great-looking, the TV movie’s look and effects fall into a dead zone somewhere
between the two. Not cheap enough to be
endearing, but not good enough to avoid looking shoddy.
But as
bad as all of these elements are, the Eighth Doctor is so delightful that I can
forgive most of them. Eight is the
reason that I’ll never begrudge the TV movie for its existence. I love everything about him – his boundless
enthusiasm, the romantic air about him (not necessarily in a “romance” way,
just his general outlook,) the way he can go from exhilarated to grave, from
madcap to perfectly still, on a dime.
This movie wasn’t a good introduction to Doctor Who for uninitiated American viewers, but it was a brilliant
introduction to the Doctor himself, what makes him such a wonderful,
dazzlingly-unique protagonist. I’m think
I’m physically incapable of watching the Doctor’s utter glee at how well his
shoes fit without grinning from ear to ear.
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