The Doctor and the Gentleman

Doctor Who: The Movie

Year of production: 1996

Broadcasted: BBC 1 on 27th of May 1996.

Year of release: DVD released by BBC Worldwide in 2001.

Directed by: Geoffrey Sax

Written by: Mathew Jacobs

Produced by: Philip Seagal

Production name: The Enemy Within


Summary on the DVD edition:

Returning home to Gallifrey with the remains of his arc enemy, the Master, the TARDIS is forced off course, plunging the Doctor into the middle of a street gang's gun battle in downtown San Francisco.
Critically wounded in the shoot out, 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...?


Introduction:

Where to start?

Hmm...Well first of all, Paul McGann...I must admit that before The TV Movie I've never even heard of him as an actor before. I might have seen him in a couple of movies but didn't know his name.

Anyway, I was sceptical about getting this DVD, since the opinion on the quality was questionable, considering the amount of people that criticized it. But I decided to take into equation the other more adaptable side, or those 9 million viewers who were captured by it for some reason.

The most frequent critique you'd hear people say about it would be 'it's too Americanized' or 'bloody Hollywood' but I don't think any one of them said anything against Paul McGann's performance as the Doctor. In fact the usual suspects were the writer Mathew Jacobs, director Geoffrey Sax and the producer Philip Seagal—a self-proclaimed Whovian who was apparently too obsessed with the whole 'I'm living my dream in directing Doctor Who'—to even realise that part of the movie was bordering on parody, while another was full of deliberate or non-deliberate homages to several features; from The Master dressing up as 'Arnie' (Terminator), according to which some people dubbed it as 'Terminator Who', to the Doctor's regeneration scene being compared to the Resurrection of the Christ—which to me sounds pretty ridiculous.

But I digress...If you ignore a couple of faults and plot holes in the script this 85 min. feature comes out as entertaining and even funny at times (but not ridiculously) and that's all thanks to the superb performance of Paul McGann..

The man simply shines on screen and oozes with charm, making him even convincing enough to be considered a real eccentric, if not an alien from another world—and that was meant as a compliment. At times he even comes off as the main character from H.G.Wells’ The Time Machine. If he was considered for the role in the 2002 remake of the 1960’s movie, I bet that it wouldn’t have flopped.
His good looks and his 'victorian' clothing, as well as his manners gained him a reputation of a gentleman. He certainly came off as a more enthusiastic Doctor but also more vulnerable than his previous incarnations and I say this in the most positive way.

Although the movie wasn’t much of a success, McGann was later offered to reprise his role in the Big Finish spin-off adventures of the 8th Doctor and after more than a dozen plays, he has become one of the most popular incarnations. So it didn’t really matter that he had only one appearance on screen, because he has found his medium for expression. And he does it successfully.

I don’t usually nitpick and I wouldn’t about this movie but here goes…

Pros:

1) Paul McGann
2) The TARDIS interior
3) Sylvester McCoy
4) ‘These shoes, they fit perfectly!’
5) The Kiss
6) Daphne Ashbrook
7) The cop’s quick visit to the TARDIS
8) ‘Jelly babies, officer?’


Cons:

1) Plot holes
2) The Master’s leather jacket
3) Paul’s fake hair
4) Grace’s blue ‘Barbie style’ dress and her operating in it
5) Bruce/The Master removing the dead fingernail (sp?)—that was disgusting and completely unnecessary
6) Too short appearance of the 7th Doctor
7) Too short appearance of the 8th Doctor
8) The movie was too short!
9) The visual effect blunders (check the extra’s to find out more)
10)Non-cannon facts



Verdict: 8/10 (I’d give it a 6 but Paul McGann does raise the stakes a bit)



Get it here

McGann or Baker?

Big Finish Productions

Doctor Who: Shada

Written by: Douglas Adams

Adapted for audio by: Gary Russell

Released: December 2003

Characters: Paul McGann as the Doctor with Lalla Ward as Romana II and John Leeson as K9

Timeline: This story takes place between the TV Movie and Big Finish Productions Storm Warning

Summary according to Doctor Who: Thrilling Adventures in Time And Space

The Doctor has a spot of unfinished business. Reunited with his old friends Romana and K9, he answers a summons from Professor Chronotis, a retired Time Lord now living the academic life in a Cambridge college.
But the Doctor isn’t the only visitor to Cambridge. Somewhere in the city is the sinister alien Skagra, who is intent on stealing an ancient and mysterious book brought to Earth by the Professor many years before.
What is Skagra’s diabolical masterplan? And who or what is the mysterious Shada? To discover the truth, the Doctor and his friends must embark on a perilous journey that will take them from the cloisters of Cambridge to the farthest reaches of deep space, risking deadly encounters with a sentient spaceship, the monstrous Krargs, and an ancient Time Lord criminal called Salyavin. As the Doctor soon discovers, the fate of the universe hangs in the balance…

Introduction: For those of you (meaning my compatriots) who have never had the opportunity to listen to any kind of dramas on radio in Croatian (not that there are any good ones), let alone the audio dramas produced by British companies, this review won’t mean anything. Or perhaps it could be some kind of a foray, or a mere introduction to the whole concept of audio drama. One thing I realized after getting my hands on a dozen of them, was that these dramas are not only entertaining but also very informative and educational.

I believe there is a small number of educated people who haven’t heard of a certain Mr Douglas Adams and his series of books, starting with the Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy but I think that not all of them know of Mr Adams’ involvement with the story of Doctor Who classic series, mainly the 17th season, featuring Tom Baker’s Fourth Doctor.

That aside he wrote this particular story back in 1979, intended to be a season finale in the Tom Baker’s era but the production in its originality was stopped by an industrial action (the cameramen went on strike) and it remained unmade until now.

In the early 1990 a VHS edition was released but it contained a half-made original that involved Tom Baker as a narrator whose job was to fill the scenes that were missing. There was an opinion that narrative wasn’t enough and that more should be made.

Considering Adams’ affinity for language and wordplay and the fact that the script was very dialogue heavy, it was decided that an audio medium would be more appropriate than a visual one. Since those annoying gaps at the end needed to be filled, another writer was commisioned and he adapted it for audio. After Tom Baker declined to be involved in the remake, Paul McGann, who appeared in the 1996 TV Movie (The Enemy Within) was offered to repeat his performance of the Doctor’s 8th incarnation and so he was written in by Gary Russell. Before the audio, the BBCi broadcasted the story in the form of a webcast on the BBC’s Doctor Who Classic page. It was a six-parter story and visually appeared as a CGI-made episode, featuring the animated Doctor, Romana II and K9.

After the succesful webcast, the actors were called again to do the audio and the rest is, of course history.

In my opinion Paul McGann was a perfect replacement for Baker and I think that he had a major contribution to its success.

All in all a thoroughly entertaining drama, with Adams’ recognisable signature in the form of witty dialogue and style.

I would recommend this for a first-time listener of the Doctor Who audio dramas, as well as those already familiar with the medium.

Verdict: 10/10

You can buy it here.

Start of something not-so-new

Ugh, it has been 12 months, 2 days and let's say...3 hours since my last foray into the world of blogging frenzy. The first time wasn't very succesful. No actually it was a joke.

I have based all of my other blogs on my obsessions, or obsession thy name was CSI.

And now 12 months, 2 days nad 3 hours later, I've chucked that obsession away and rediscovered another called Doctor Who.

So from now on, I'll be ranting about this not-so-new obsession. Yes you could call me a geek. Sort of. It's been a long time since I last saw anything related to the British cult series.
Last time I saw an episode was purelly by accident. As usual my local TV wasn't offering anything thought-provoking so I switched the channels and quickly found my long lost favorite Doctor. It was one of the episodes from the Peter Davison's Fifth Doctor era. Can't remember which one, since I missed the beginning but I remember enjoying it immensely.

And now almost ten years later the new 2005 series has captured my attention again and so tradition-sake I will use this page to rant about anything and everything and of course the good ol' Doctor.

So, hello Doctor, goodbye CSI!

Those were the days my friend

I recently watched Castrovalva for the first time, since I got captivated by the Fifth Doctor at the end of his first season or the 19th season, to be precise and didn't get to see the episodes before that...and was not suprised to find it a well-written and thoroughly entertaining ep. As it is, Five was and still is my favorite Doctor, so I always expected his beginning ep to be a classical perfection.

Everything was done superb; Davison's performance, was top-notch as always and Janet Fielding (Tegan), Sarah Sutton (Nyssa)and even Matthew Waterhouse (Adric) were at their best.

This story deserves a long-awaited DVD edition, hopefully with a full cast commentary, as was done with The Visitation and Earthshock.

More thorough review of this episode and others' mentioned coming soon.