Doctor Who (film)

Producer Philip Segal had been trying for some years to launch a new American-produced series of Doctor Who, but the Fox Network — the only American network that showed any interest — was only prepared to commit to a single telemovie. It was hoped that, should the telemovie be successful, Fox might be persuaded to reconsider a series; however, the telemovie's ratings performance in America was not strong enough to hold Fox's interest.

The production budget for the movie (as revealed in the book Doctor Who: Regeneration) was US$5 million, with the Fox Network spending $2.5 million, BBC Television contributing $300,000, and the remaining $2.2 million split between BBC Worldwide and Universal Television.

Daphne Ashbrook on set of Doctor Who in 1996

Casting sessions took place in March 1994; actors who actually auditioned for the role include Liam Cunningham, Mark McGann, Robert Lindsay, Tim McInnerny, Nathaniel Parker, Peter Woodward, John Sessions, Anthony Head, and Tony Slattery. Paul McGann was first considered around the time of these auditions, but did not formally audition for the part until later.[1]

Among the actors who were invited to audition for the role of the Doctor but declined the opportunity were Christopher Eccleston[6] and Peter Capaldi.[7] Eccleston and Capaldi later played the Ninth and Twelfth incarnations of the Doctor, respectively, in the revived series of Doctor Who which began in 2005. Eccleston turned down the offer to audition for the TV Movie because, at the time, he felt he did not want to be associated with a "brand name" so early in his career.[6] Capaldi declined because he felt it was unlikely that he would be given the part.[7]

Of those actors who originally auditioned for the role of the Doctor, a number guest-starred in the series when it returned from 2005:

• Anthony Head guest-starred in the Series 2 episode "School Reunion" as Mr. Finch.
• Tim McInnerny guest-starred in the Series 4 episode "Planet of the Ood" as Klineman Halpen.
• Liam Cunningham guest-starred in the Series 7 episode "Cold War" as Captain Zhukov.
• John Sessions guest-starred in the Series 8 episode "Mummy on the Orient Express" as the voice of the homicidal computer GUS.

The movie was filmed on 35mm film in Vancouver, British Columbia, the first time any Doctor Who story had been filmed in North America.

In the 2005 Doctor Who Confidential episode "Weird Science", and on the DVD commentary, Sylvester McCoy reveals that during the sequence where he locks the casket with his sonic screwdriver, he held the tool pointing the wrong way around (although in the original series, it is seen being used both ways). The sonic screwdriver was blurred in post-production to conceal the error.

The opening pre-credits sequence went through a number of modifications, with several different voice-overs recorded. At one stage the voice-over was to be made by the old Master, played by Gordon Tipple; in the end this was not used. Tipple is still credited as "The Old Master", though in the final edit his appearance is very brief, stationary, and mute. Had the original pre-titles voice-over been used, it would have been unclear what incarnation of the Doctor Sylvester McCoy portrays in the movie (as he is simply credited as "The Old Doctor"). Only the rewritten narration (as read by Paul McGann) makes his number of regenerations clear. The sequence of the TARDIS flying through the time vortex was briefly reused in the opening of Doctor Who and the Curse of Fatal Death, as the Master observes Rowan Atkinson's Doctor.

Instead of designing a new Doctor Who logo for this film, it was decided instead to use a modified version of the logo that was used for the Jon Pertwee era of the original series (with the exception of the final season). This logo, being the last logo used on an "official" Doctor Who broadcast before the 2005 revival, was, until 2018, used by the BBC for most Doctor Who merchandise relating to the first eight Doctors. In 2018, efforts were made to make the show's merchandise more uniform, and so most items of merchandise began to use the logo designed for Jodie Whittaker's time as the Doctor, abandoning the "Movie" logo for the first time in 22 years.

John Debney was commissioned to write the score for this film, and intended to replace Ron Grainer's original theme with a new composition. Ultimately Debney did in fact use an arrangement of Grainer's music for the theme, although Grainer goes uncredited.

Both DVD releases are labelled Doctor Who: The Movie. The VHS release contains both the name Doctor Who and the phrase The Sensational Feature Length Film (plausibly read as a subtitle). The novelisation was labelled simply The Novel of the Film. The 2021 Target Collection reissue of the novelisation is titled The TV Movie. The most common fan usage appears to refer to it as "The TV Movie" or "TVM", or variations thereof.

Upon translation into French, this film was renamed Le Seigneur du Temps (literal translation: "The Lord of Time").

"TVM" is the production code used in the BBC's online episode guide.[8] The actual code used during production is 50/LDX071Y/01X.[1] Doctor Who Magazine's "Complete Eighth Doctor Special" gives the production code as #83705.[9] Big Finish Productions uses the code 8A, and numbers its subsequent Eighth Doctor stories correspondingly.

Doctor Who: The Television Movie won the 1996 Saturn Award for Best Television Presentation.

A Laserdisc release of the movie was released exclusively in Hong Kong by Universal in 1997.[13]

The unedited version was released on DVD in the UK in 2001 titled as Doctor Who: The Movie, and was re-released in 2007 as a limited edition with an alternative cover sleeve (but with no change in content) as part of a series of classic series re-releases aimed at attracting fans of the revived series to the older shows.

Both the edited and unedited versions have also been released in countries such as Australia and New Zealand.

The 2010 DVD box set Revisitations contains the movie with new, updated Special Edition DVD features.[14] It included a new commentary with Paul McGann and Sylvester McCoy, an hour-long documentary on the time in between the film and the series' cancellation in 1989, a documentary on the 7 years it took to get the film made, a documentary on the 8th Doctor's comic strip adventures, a documentary on the media reaction to the 8th Doctor, a documentary on the ties between Blue Peter and Doctor Who as well as all of the original features, including the original commentary with Geoffrey Sax.

Due to complex licensing issues, no VHS release of the film occurred in North America, and for more than a decade no DVD release occurred, either. Finally, on 25 August 2010, Dan Hall of 2entertain confirmed that the 2010 updated version would be released in North America sometime in the next twelve months following extensive negotiations with Universal Studios.[15] Two months afterward, a North American DVD release date for the 2-disc Doctor Who: The Movie – Special Edition was announced to be 8 February 2011.[16]

In 2013 it was released on DVD again as part of the "Doctor Who: The Doctors Revisited 5–8" box set, alongside the classic serials Earthshock, Vengeance on Varos, and Remembrance of the Daleks. Alongside a documentary on the Eighth Doctor, it also features an introduction from then current show runner Steven Moffat. This was also released in North America.

The movie was released as a 2-disc Blu-ray set in Region 2 on 19 September 2016.[17] The footage was not re-scanned from the original film negatives. Instead it is a 1080/50i upscale which suffered from the same PAL speedup issue as previous home media releases.[18]

All releases are for DVD unless otherwise indicated

Music from the movie was on a promotional-only soundtrack album published by the composer, John Debney. Additional music was contributed by John Sponsler and Louis Febre.[26][27] Although the composer of the Doctor Who Theme, Ron Grainer, did not receive screen credit for his composition in the TV movie broadcast, the CD finally attributes the proper credit on its cover. The entire score was re-released with previously unreleased cues as the eighth disc of the eleven disc Doctor Who: The 50th Anniversary Collection on 29 September 2014.

• Music Score produced by John Debney
• Executive album producers: John J. Alcantar III and Thomas C. Stewart
• Music Editor: Laurie Slomka
• CD Edited and mastered by James Nelson at Digital Outland
• CD Art direction: Mark Banning
• Front Cover concept: David Hirsch
• Special Thanks to Ryan K. Johnson

The television movie was novelised by Gary Russell and published by BBC Books 15 May 1996. It was the first novelisation of a televised Doctor Who story to not be published by Target Books (or related companies) since Doctor Who and the Crusaders in 1966.

Basing the adaptation on an early draft of the script, Russell adjusted some details to make it more consistent with the original series, and the novelisation also contains elements that were cut from the shooting script for timing reasons.

• The novel begins with the Seventh Doctor receiving a telepathic summons from the Master (similar to The Deadly Assassin) to collect his remains from Skaro and a short prologue detailing how the Doctor escapes from the planet with the casket. This was originally intended to be a pre-credits sequence in the movie, and was subsequently contradicted by the ending of the novel Lungbarrow, where Romana gives the Seventh Doctor the assignment to retrieve the Master's remains.
• More detail is given to Chang Lee and Grace's backstory, including his recruitment into the Triads and his seeking a father figure as well as flashbacks to Grace's childhood.
• The Eighth Doctor finds the Seventh Doctor's clothing in the hospital rather than the Fourth Doctor's scarf. Also, the sequence where Chang Lee and the Master see the Seventh Doctor in the Eye of Harmony features all the previous Doctors as originally drafted.
• The scene where the Doctor and Grace meet the motorcycle police officer is relocated to a traffic jam on the Golden Gate Bridge (impossible to film in the movie since it was shot on location in Vancouver).
• When the Doctor first kisses Grace, he immediately pulls back, grins apologetically and murmurs, "I'm sorry, don't know what came over me there." This makes the romantic nature of the kiss more ambiguous. Instead of the second kiss at the end, he gives her the Seventh Doctor's straw hat as a memento.
• The Doctor is still referred to as half-human, to which the Master comments, "The Doctor once claimed to be more than just a Time Lord — He should really have said less than a Time Lord!" This was a reference to a line cut from Remembrance of the Daleks.
• Instead of dying and being brought back to life, Grace and Lee are merely rendered unconscious, though aware of what is happening around them. Russell also spends some time showing the Doctor and them discussing what a "temporal orbit" is.

The novelisation was the first Doctor Who novel published by BBC Books. The book was actually published prior to the conclusion of Virgin Books' contract for publishing original Doctor Who fiction, so the next release by BBC Books did not occur for about a year when the Eighth Doctor Adventures series began with The Eight Doctors. The novelisation was released as a standalone work and is not considered part of this series. The Eighth Doctor Adventures series ran until 2005 when it was discontinued.

The novel was also released as an audio book on 2 June 1997, read by Paul McGann. This reading was later included on the 2004 MP3 CD Tales from the TARDIS Volume Two. A revised[28] Target Books edition titled The TV Movie was published in paperback and as an audiobook 11 March 2021.[29]

• Smith, Paul (2014). The Classic Doctor Who DVD Compendium. United Kingdom: Wonderful Books. ISBN 978-0-9576062-2-7.

• The Whoniverse's review on Doctor Who: The Enemy Within DVD

• Doctor Who title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database