I can’t seem to escape Eric Roberts lately. I saw him recently
in Sharktopus, playing an evil bad guy. And now,
when I sat down to watch the Doctor Who TV movie, there he is again,
playing--what else?--the bad guy. Eric actually plays a mellow sort of paramedic here, who gets taken over by the evil CGI lizard that contains the essence of the Master, the old enemy of Doctor Who. Who was transporting the remains of this recently executed fiend (which was the last request of the Master) after he was found guilty of all the horrendous crimes that he’s committed across time and space (damn, this is all sounding very heady, isn’t it? But that’s Doctor Who for you!). However, like most good evil villains, you can never really kill the Master--oh no, he just finds another way to come back and screw up the good doctor’s day.
The Master’s undead shenanigans cause Doctor Who to crash land his Tardis--the quaintly British police box that’s really a space/time machine--in San Francisco, on the eve of the year 2000. No sooner does the good Doctor step out of his Tardis than he gets gunned down in a gangland gunfight. He gets sent to the hospital, where a good-looking heart surgeon named Grace (Daphne Ashbrook) saves his life…or so she thinks. Not realizing the Doctor has two hearts, Grace inadvertently winds up killing him. But that’s ok, because Doctor Who simply regenerates into Paul McGann, who goes on to try and stop the nefarious Master from destroying the world. One of the really cool things about this stand-alone movie was that Sylvester McCoy, the last actor to play the Doctor on the original BBC series at this point, returned to portray him right up to his regeneration.
The movie was supposed to have been an American take on the distinctly British
Doctor Who, taking place right here on American soil (it was actually shot in
Vancouver, Canada), and while it’s a great deal of fun, there are moments where
it drags, especially with the countless scenes of nonstop exposition. McGann is
actually quite superb as the Doctor, and Ashbrook would have made for a great, vital companion. It would have been nice to have seen a Doctor Who series with these two--yet despite the fact that this movie was meant to be a pilot for a series, thanks to the low ratings it received, this remains McGann and Ashbrook’s only Doctor Who outing. Meanwhile, Eric Roberts looks like he’s in a completely different movie; it’s like he doesn’t really believe in the situation he’s portraying, because he doesn’t have me convinced that he’s the Master.
Thankfully, while McGann and Ashbrook’s sojourn may just be reduced to being a
blip on the radar for most Who fans, the good Doctor was revived in a major way
back in 2005 by the BBC in a new series of programs that are still running
strong to this day (and in one episode of the Who revival,
Human Nature, the producers even acknowledge this TV movie by giving McGann a brief visual reference as being the eight Doctor). In addition to the film, Doctor Who: The Movie also has a superb documentary that takes a look at the behind the scenes deal-making that brought this film to life, and it’s just as equally fascinating to watch as the actual movie. This TV movie is really more of a curiosity for the more die-hard Who fans, who will most likely buy the DVD/Blu-Ray just to keep their collection complete. But, for me, this movie will always be a fun--and wistful--romp of what could have been.
--SF
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