| The Wilderness Years 1990 - 2005 Including The Paul McGann Film 1996 |
| Seven long years passed and the show disappeared into cult obscurity. Then, in 1996, for one night only, Doctor Who re-emerged as a TV Movie with Paul McGann as the Eighth Doctor, in an American co-production with the BBC. But just to rewind a little bit..... The show celebrated it's 30th anniversary in 1993 and, in a fit of generosity, the BBC proudly announced that they were going to produce an anniversary special to mark the occasion. Doctor Who fans punched the air with glee, as it dawned on them that, after it's longest absence ever, Doctor Who was finally coming back. Not only that but it was going to feature all the surviving Doctors in one glorious spectacular! (even the normally reluctant Tom Baker had agreed to take part, and the sacked Colin Baker was also willing to reprise the role). One week after this fantastic announcement, the BBC made another announcement. They'd now decided to cancel it. Wankers. Despite that, there was a sort of 'special' which appeared in the 30th Anniversary year and which did feature all the surviving Doctors. Ludicrously though, it was a 15-minute charity episode, broadcast as part of Children All Need, in which the TARDIS landed in Albert Square. Yes, it was Doctor Who Meets EastEnders. It was crap obviously, but it was enjoyable crap and was only intended to be a bit of fun for charity. As an bonus, it was filmed in 3-D, so we were treated to looking at Mark Fowler's Fruit and Veg stall in glorious 3-D. Those bananas looked fabulous. Interestingly, money-grabbing wanker Terry Nation refused to let the Daleks appear, as no fee was being offered to him and he didn't understand the concept of 'charity'. Anyway, in 1996, Doctor Who did finally make a proper return to our screens, albeit for just one night. For 16 years, the TV Movie would be the only new episode of Doctor Who to get made. It was meant to be the launchpad for a whole new series, but despite being quite popular in the UK, it flopped badly in America, and since that was where most of the money was coming from, no further episodes were made. Sylvester McCoy briefly returned to reprise his role one last time before regenerating into Paul McGann who was actually a pretty good Doctor Who even if he did just end up being the 'George Lazenby' of the Doctors. |
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| Monsters And Villains |
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The villain in the TV Movie was a new incarnation of The Master, hammed up to the high heavens by the useless Eric Roberts. He was appalling and ruined it. Dalek voices did make a brief appearance at the beginning of the film, but for some reason, they sounded more like The Smurfs. God, how hard is it to get these things right? Eh? |
| Dolly Birds Of The Wilderness |
| McGann Trivia |
Bizzarely, one of the parties involved in producing the TV Movie, requested that Tom Baker appear as the Doctor at the beginning of the film who would then go on to regenerate into McGann - despite Sylvester McCoy being the previous occupier of the TARDIS, and despite Tom Baker having already regenerated into Peter Davison some 15 years earlier. Even more bizzarely, this request came from the bloody BBC itself! Luckily, the producer ignored this daft request and went ahead and cast McCoy. Michael Crawford was the original choice to play the Eighth Doctor but he turned it down because he reckoned he was getting a bit too old for that sort of thing, and so he carried on with his gay West End plays instead, forever basking in his former glory days of Some Mothers Do 'Ave Em. He might have only appeared in this one film, but McGann did go on to contribute to other Doctor Who-related projects, including a webcast of Shada, the famous unfinished Tom Baker story written by Douglas Adams. He also regularly appears in audio adventures on CD but nobody really listens to them. |
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| McGann - The Good Things |
Paul McGann was excellent, and in many ways, it's a shame that he couldn't have carried on with the role. From the moment that McGann was cast, it was a great relief that, despite this being a co-production with America, they had still gone for a British actor. The names being touted around in the press at the time included such luminaries as David Hasselhoff. Imagine. It could have happened... The TARDIS interior looked magnificent. The cheap £2.50 set at the BBC was abandoned and they ploughed millions of pounds into making the most awesome TARDIS set ever. The idea was that it would be money well spent as it would obviously be re-used in all the future McGann episodes. Hmmm..... Don't forget, this whole thing could have been a total disaster. We could have ended up with Bill Crosby stepping out of a Coca-Cola machine TARDIS. Despite it's many flaws, the TV Movie was still recognisably Doctor Who and for that we should be grateful. |
| McGann - The Rubbish Things |
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Eric Roberts was an frankly dreadful Master. I would rather have dug up Roger Delgado's grave and seen what he could have done with the role, than given it to this idiot slack-jawed American. The whole film just felt a little bit too 'Americanised'. It occassionally felt like you were watching an episode of E.R rather than the return of Doctor Who. Oh, and the script was total bollocks. Almost forgot. |
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| It's The End, But.... |
| Ironically, after seven years of ignoring Doctor Who, the BBC were now keen to push on with further Paul McGann episodes. But they couldn't - their American partners dropped out of the deal after the film bombed in America and so that was pretty much that for another nine years. A couple of other things did happen in the interim. There was a brilliant four-part Comic Relief story which starred Rowan Atkinson as the Doctor and Jonathan Pryce as The Master. It might have been played for laughs but Pryce was an infinitely better Master than Eric Roberts had been. The Doctor even regenerated into Hugh Grant at the end, probably the biggest name ever to play the part, if only for a couple of minutes! Movie rumours were constantly flying about during this period, at one point it seemed that Sean Pertwee, son of the Third Doctor, had signed up to appear as The Doctor in a movie to be made by the director of Event Horizon. That came to nothing though, as did the other movie doing the rounds which was to be directed by Leonard Nimoy. Richard E Grant played an unofficial Ninth Doctor in a special animated Webcast which coincidentally, featured future Doctor Who David Tennant in a small role. This was supposed to be the first of many adventures for Richard E Grant's internet Doctor but that quickly came to a holt when it was announced that Doctor Who was coming back on television in 2005. A proper series. Made by the BBC. No Americans. Blimey. |
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| The Eighth Doctor's brief companion was Grace. She was ok but from some angles, she looked a bit like a man. So let's turn our attention instead to Caroline Munro, who during this wilderness period, had signed up to appear as a Companion in a Doctor Who Movie. She was supposedly to appear alongside Donald Sutherland who would be playing a boozy, womanising Doctor Who. Hmmm, that idea sounds like it came from America. Despite being signed up for five years, Munro never appeared in the Movie because it never got made, which was pretty much the story of Doctor Who's life for 16 years. Still, I think she might have been quite good. Never mind. |
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