In 1987, he won the coveted part of the Doctor, or as he’s been known to call it, the best role on British television. But in 1990, just after the broadcast of his third season of time travels, Sylvester McCoy found himself out of work when the BBC quietly declined to renew Doctor Who. Six years later, he was reprising the role in a big-budget, British-American coproduction launching a new actor in the part, and now McCoy – who had been “the last Doctor” for the better part of a decade – was due to hand off the keys to the TARDIS on a filming location in Vancouver. In this video journal, shot and narrated largely by McCoy himself, the actor explores Vancouver, pays a visit to former Doctor Who regular Anneke Wills, ruminates on the official closure of his era as the Doctor, hangs around the set, and even has an informal chat with Paul McGann himself.
directed by Bill Baggs
Featuring: Sylvester McCoy, Paul McGann, Daphne Ashbrook, Anneke Wills, Geoffrey Sax
Review: Bidding Adieu is a fascinating barometer of how far fan productions had come in the history of Doctor Who by the time of the 1996 TV movie. In 1987, Wartime was made on a shoestring budget with actors who weren’t necessarily still involved with the show. And just nine years later, we now had Sylvester McCoy touring the TV movie sets with camcorder in hand, on behalf of the fans. In the interim, fan productions had provided him with work, fan writers kept the seventh Doctor’s journeys in motion, and somehow, despite the show being cancelled, fandom grew.
It’s a pity, then, that the reward for that involvement was a production that turned out about twice as long as it should’ve been. Nothing against Sylvester McCoy or producer Bill Baggs, but there’s something missing in Bidding Adieu, and that something is pacing. At times it just seems so deadly dull, even for a documentary-style program. It took me two nights to rewatch it for this review, as I was literally in danger of falling asleep the first night, right in the middle of the show – and this is coming from someone who’s keenly interested in the subject matter.
Not that it’s uninteresting, though: this is one of Paul McGann’s only on-screen interviews about his association with Doctor Who, and some of McCoy’s own introspective moments about parting with the role of the Time Lord are interesting – and throughout, McCoy is always “on,” always entertaining. It could be that Bidding Adieu keeled over and died in the edit bay – it probably could’ve been avoided by doing something as simple as splitting it into two “episodes,” and given the nature of what the show’s about, it wouldn’t have been too hard to swallow.
Technically, the quality is very rough – the “video diary” subtitle is no misnomer, because it’s basically McCoy or someone else behind a camcorder, with all of the video quality, color and light level issues that a low-tech approach implies (and these limitations are even apparent from viewing it on VHS). Still, in the absence of any official behind-the-scenes documentary produced by the BBC itself, this is the only such production we’re likely to see. (It would probably stand a much better chance of being seen alongside the movie it chronicles, except that producer Bill Baggs has a particularly fractious history with the BBC, which has reportedly taken a dim view of Baggs in light of his playing fast and loose with elements of the Doctor Who intellectual property during the “wilderness years” that immediately followed the series’ cancellation; the BBC isn’t likely to pony up to include one of Baggs’ productions on an official Doctor Who video release.)