Vital Statistics
(Note: throughout this review, I usually refer to the TV Movie as Doctor Who because, by golly, that's its title!)
Doctor Who is, in many respects, a poor pilot. Intended to grab a new, American audience, it performed well in its native UK but fell flat in the US. It's not because the original series is unknown in America; the old Who is a fondly remembered cult phenomenon here. It's because Matthew Jacobs' script makes little or no effort to engage casual viewers.
The pre-credits sequence is the primary offender in this regard. Though the imagery of Skaro and the Master's floating cat eyes is lovely, it's also confusing, and the Doctor's convoluted monologue doesn't help (one of his lines has no less than five commas in it!). Jacobs thinks he can enlighten new viewers by bombarding them with "fun facts" about the series, but he misses the point. The original show was not about the Doctor having thirteen lives, two hearts, or any of that other nonsense. It was about a nice guy combatting tyranny, a theme that is largely absent from the TV Movie.
Jacobs also makes the critical error of starting the episode from the Doctor's point-of-view. In his most popular incarnations (Hartnell, McCoy, Tom Baker during Hinchcliffe's run as producer), the Doctor is a mysterious, unreachable character. Hence the name of the series! His universe is a bizarre place, totally unrelated to everyday life on many levels. That's why the companions were created, to inject some everyday people into the show's formula so the audience had characters to relate to.
An Unearthly Child wisely began from Barbara and Ian's perspectives, and eased gradually into the stranger elements of the plot. Doctor Who is instantly bizarre, and I can just imagine millions of confused Americans changing the channel after five minutes. In place of An Unearthly Child's mystery and carefully plotted exposition, Doctor Who serves up tons of action and explosions, hoping that viewers will be enthralled enough by the spectacle to stick around, even if they have no bloody idea what the hell they're watching.
The central conflict of the episode is also baffling. The Doctor must steal an atomic clock to repair his time machine before Earth gets sucked into a black hole...right. But then again, The Dalek Invasion of Earth and The Talons of Weng-Chiang had stupid plots...so why were they so much better?
Characterization is the key. And so is death. Who cares what the hell the Daleks are doing to Earth's magnetic core? Invasion works because the Daleks are cold-blooded murderers, and therefore effective villains. Talons has the best supporting cast in TV history; Jago and Litefoot are very real, entirely charming characters. I don't care at all about Magnus Greel's stupid scheme to activate a Zigma Beam; I love Talons because I love watching Jago overcome his cowardice and Litefoot emerge from his coddled world into someplace rather scarier.
Unfortunately, Doctor Who's supporting cast is a wash. Chang Lee is 100% cardboard; we know nothing of his background, his ambitions, or how the Master can control him so easily. Compare this to Terror of the Autons. In that story, writer Robert Holmes establishes a full set of motivations for Mr. Farrell in just a few scenes. Farrell's plastics company is failing, and he wants to get out from under his father's thumb...along comes the Master with an easy set of solutions. Farrell immediately accepts the Master's help in order to save his business and assert his independence. Chang Lee, on the other hand, has no such character development, so I'll be damned if I can figure out why he flip-flops between the sides of good and evil eighteen times.
Doctor Who's other supporting characters are even worse, a gang of grotesque oddballs. Frankly, I wouldn't care if the Master snapped all their necks! And that's why Doctor Who isn't a great episode. Stripped of the menace of death, the series loses much of its dramatic impact. That's why the "miracle" resurrection at the end of the TV Movie seems so trite.
All right, time to put the machine gun away. Doctor Who has its good points. Paul McGann's Doctor is great; it's not the best performance given by an actor in the role, but it ranks high. Matthew Jacobs deserves most of the credit for making the Eighth Doctor so memorable (he did, after all, write all those charming lines that McGann spouts with such enthusiasm).
Grace has the makings of a good companion. Her childish dream "to hold back death" is good, if limited, character development. The Master is a nasty little twerp in this episode, overplayed (albeit in an entertaining fashion) by Eric Roberts. The Master was always, in my opinion, a poorly defined villain - why the hell is he so keen on conquering the Universe, anyway? - so I would have preferred to see more of the Daleks instead, even though they've been sucking a lot of helium since their last appearance.
(By the way, if you listen closely during the pre-credits sequence, the Daleks are chattering in the background the whole time. They very clearly say, "you have been found guilty of" at one point, but I can't make out what follows. I'd like to know what they found the Master guilty of, they're as evil as he is!)
Though I'm always blabbing about low budgets not mattering, it is nice to see Doctor Who with some serious cash behind it. The sets and soundtrack are cinema-caliber, though the TARDIS interior is a tad overdone. The CGI effects vary in quality (McCoy's TARDIS in flight looked better 9 years earlier!), but for the most part they impress.
Despite its cheapness, the original series did feature plenty of striking images, so the pressure was on for the TV Movie to serve up some equally enduring visuals. In this respect, the pilot succeeded; rearing energy snakes, rolling red planets, and men in cravats stepping through liquid windows have officially been added to my catalogue of unforgettable Doctor Who memories.
Director Geoffrey Sax employs some very fluid, imaginative camerawork. He loads up Doctor Who with enough visual symbolism to counteract the script's weaknesses (notice how, shortly after the Doctor is reborn, you can hear the faint sound of a crying infant in the distance...oh, yeah, and there's a plastic baby doll next to the cracked mirror he peers into). To be fair, Jacobs might be responsible for these nice symbolic touches; he certainly worked hard to turn the Doctor into a Christ figure in the closing scenes.
So what we have here, in blunt terms, is a mostly brain-dead aesthetic joy, with some good characters and some bad ones. Depending on my mood, it's either a 9 or a 3. I will say, with certainty, that if Doctor Who was filmed on a low BBC budget, it would be pretty rank.
We'll never know what the great William Hartnell would think of the TV Movie, but my vote is that he would switch it off after five minutes. I couldn't blame him, though I'd keep watching myself...
OVERALL RATING: B
Click here to download that rockin' TV Movie theme by John Debney
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