Doctor Who (1996)

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.

As far as companions go, Grace isn’t my favorite, but she’s all right.  Part of the problem is that she spends a good chunk of the movie squarely in the “skeptic” role, much more ready to buy the Doctor as an escaped psych patient than an alien racing to stop the end of the world.  While this is obviously a 100% reasonable view to take, she persists despite a lot of evidence to the contrary.  And since we of course know that the Doctor is the real deal, it makes Grace look stubborn for dragging her heels, and we don’t get to spend as much time getting to know her.  That said, she’s smart and tough, and once she does start to accept the incredible tale the Doctor is telling her, she rolls pretty well with the punches.  Though she’s not the best by a long shot, she makes a decent showing here.