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)



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