Sleep still hasn’t claimed me yet, despite the Nyquil (and no, I haven’t been fighting the sleep either – I think I need another swig of that icky green stuff.)
I was recently re-reading a bit of the outstanding, essential-to-any-Doctor-Who-fan’s-bookshelf volume Regeneration, by Philip Segal and Gary Russell, which is basically the book on the making of the 1996 movie. Love it or hate it, the ’96 movie is such an important part of the mythology, and sometimes I think the reason it gets such a bum rap is because it’s only available on the other side of the Atlantic on DVD. (I kid you not when I say that this movie, and the promise circa 2001 of imminent Blake’s 7 DVD sets, were why I purchased a multi-region DVD player.) I know folks who are all about the new series and think the movie was crap, which I just can’t fathom – the ’96 movie dictated so much of the pace and style of the new series that you’d think they were made nine months apart rather than nine years.
To read Russell and Segal’s book is to get a better understanding for how far off-format the project that eventually became the Paul McGann movie could’ve strayed. Excerpts from abandoned scripts and series bibles are plentiful, and the mind boggles are how close the whole thing came to being a reboot of the entire mythology with no room for the 26 years of the original series (though there would’ve been plenty of reasons why that wouldn’t have been a bad move when trying to launch a series in the States). Every time I read this book, I find something new that I hadn’t noticed before, one of which I’ve included a scan of here because it’s just deliciously ironic. (Obviously, it’s from a stage of the proceedings before Paul McGann was decided on as the eighth Doctor.) One wonders if Mr. Eccleston would’ve been more amenable, at a younger age, to the concept of the Doctor as being somewhat foppish. Or what kind of Doctor that Hugh Laurie would’ve been (wait, let me rephrase that… 😆 ).
I’ve recently rewatched some of Eccleston’s episodes and gained a better liking for him; I think by ingesting the last half of his season as the Doctor, I burned out a bit on his portrayal, but now that we’ve had Tennant in place for a year, I think the intention was always that Eccleston would only be there for a year, and that the character would be necessarily lightened up after another actor took over. Like everyone before him, Eccleston was the right actor, with the right take on the character, at the right time, with almost more of a straight through-line from the seventh Doctor to the ninth.
If you haven’t read this book, I strongly, strongly recommend it – it really is right up there with the Howe/Stammers/Walker books on the making of the series, and at no point do either of its authors wind up as apologists for the ’96 movie. (Despite the fact that it’s Segal’s baby, he’s actually surprisingly harsh on it, and on himself, in places.) You can check it out here, and if you’ve got a region-free DVD player, might as well get the DVD here, because God only knows if it’ll ever see the light of day on DVD on this continent unless you import it. You don’t need to see it to understand the new series, if you’re new to the whole mythology, and yet it’s so interesting to see how a whole different team in a different decade tried to re-introduce the audience to the show.
Apologies for the Doctor Who ramblings and sales pitch; I just thought that excerpt was worth sharing. More green stuff for me now. Night night.
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I think the main problem with the Doctor Who movie is that it fell in-between the two possible target audiences. Unlike the new series, it failed to appeal to either the old fans or the newcomers — bridging it with the old series is fine, except that for a newcomer, seeing McCoy might have been more than a little confusing; as for fans of the old series, their expectations for the movie was anything but what it turned out to be (then again, there are still quite a few of those same fans who also can’t stand the current series for some reason). And, of course, since it was a one-shot movie, McGann’s Doctor isn’t fully developed as a character. He became a much more interesting Doctor once the Big Finish stories kicked in (and what a voice he has — it’s like honey to my ears and I admit that McGann can read to me any time).
So, it’s a good thing that the Big Finish stories exist, because it gave the Eighth Doctor the legitimacy that it probably would have never gained has there been no further exploration of the character past the Fox movie.
To be frank, I dunno how I would have reacted had I seen the movie back when it first aired in 96, so soon after I had gotten into the series (a mere 2 years earlier). Maybe I would have hated it, maybe I wouldn’t have cared much for it… I really dunno.
BTW, could you picture Eccleston dressed as the Eighth Doctor? Would that have even worked? I don’t see him with a long curly haired wig… Then again, imagine McGann playing the Doctor sans wig… a shaved-head Doctor — maybe they could have swapped places after all. 😛
Oh, and you mentioned Hugh Laurie… Despite all his success on House, I still can’t shake off the Prince Regent image of him from Black Adder. Am I the only one to think like that? 😛
The first time I saw the movie I thought it sucked. Bad. But then again I didn’t see the first half-hour of the movie and I figured I might have missed some important stuf. So I reserved my judgement until I could see it a second time.
The second time I saw the movie I saw the whole thing. although I didn’t think it sucked as bad as the first time I saw it, I felt that were some elements missing. Primarily I didn’t get a good feel for the Doctors current personality. It’s good to know the character was better developed in the Big Finish audio. It’s a shame they didn’t spend more time developing his character in the movie and less time on the action but that’s what Hollywood does.
I’d like to see the movie a third time before passing final judgement on it. The first two times I saw it was before the new series came out. Maybe the Sci-Fi channel will broadcast it again in the near future.
Oh, there’s a whole portion of the book given over to Segal’s battle with the BBC, who apparently wanted Tom Baker to turn into Paul McGann. Geez, talk about screwing with the timeline. Even though he got them to concede to using Sylvester McCoy instead, he then apparently asked about Ace, and the reply from Auntie Beeb was along the lines of “we’re just going to pretend we didn’t hear you ask that.” Ace apparently wasn’t liked very much by the higher-ups at the BBC, and even if the 1990 season had gone forward, she would’ve been written out during season 27.
All things considered, it’s astonishing that the movie stuck as close to the continuity as it did without really breaking anything. Heck, I didn’t even mind the half-human thing too much, though I can’t help but notice that it’s been left by the side of the road in the new series. Guess we’re gonna pretend we didn’t hear that one either…
I don’t know why Sci-Fi hasn’t run the ’96 movie more, especially now with the success of the series, though I suppose it’s just possible that the BBC has asked them not to. Since the movie didn’t get picked up as a series, it seems to be perceived as a failure, and “conllective wisdom” has swung around in the intervening years and declared it to be crap, so it’s probably been swept under the rug. Never mind that it featured The Best TARDIS Console Room Ever.