Doctor Who fans it's been a few days since I made the promise of reviewing of the 1996 Doctor Who movie and well i'm a man of my word. As such I made sure that there was nothing that would stop me from getting this review to you and luckily everything went smoothly just so I could sit down and watch the movie and so guys and girls here it is at last my review of the 1996 Doctor Who movie "Doctor Who: The Movie" enjoy.
The plot of the film is a newly regenerated Doctor has only a few hours to save the world from The Masters latest plan and to stop The Master from stealing his own body and his remaining lives. I honestly found the plot to be rather enjoyable yes it is pretty straight forward but given that the film is just under ninety minuets that is honestly to be expected plus it does a good job of setting up what this new Doctor could have been if the show had been picked up because yes this is a pilot for an American produced continuation of the show.
Starring in the film is Sylvester McCoy as The Seventh Doctor , Paul McGann as The Eighth Doctor and Eric Roberts as The Master. Also starring in the film is Daphne Ashbrook as Dr. Grace Holloway , Yee Jee Tso as Chang Lee , John Novak as Salinger , Michael David Simms as Dr. Swift , Eliza Roberts as Miranda , Dave Hurtubise as Professor Wagg , Dolores Drake as Curtis , Catherine Lough as Wheeler , William Sasso as Pete , Joel Wirkkunen as Ted and Jeremy Radick as Gareth.
In all honesty the acting in the film isn't that bad since the actors do the best with what there given the issue is the acting isn't that good either because the script gives them very little to work with. Which is honestly a shame because there are some really good actors in this film and yet the script gives them nothing to work with and so there left struggling to get some sort of decent performance from a script that really should have been better.
Let us take a second to talk about the new TARDIS control room design because honestly I feel that it needs to be talked about. Which I honestly did like while the TV show has made some truly great looking control rooms in the past there was no way in hell that they could create something for a movie without it loosing something in the translation and so here they made a set that is a worthy control room at least in my opinion.
They also made the interior of the TARDIS seem more gothic or at least I think they did anyways which is honestly something that I never noticed before now. Which i'm not quite sure how I feel about it to be honest since while it does work for the time that this film was released which was big on gothic culture it also dates the film because of that fact and the fact that they somehow have a church like room in the TARDIS to me is taking things a step to far I can suspend my disbelief for alot of this film but considering that this is a continuation of the show and yet there only just now bringing up this church like room which houses the eye of harmony to me is not a good idea and is just pretty stupid.
Now I wouldn't normally talk about a companion until we got more episodes with that character but since this character only appears in this episode let's talk about Dr. Grace Holloway as played by Daphne Ashbrook. In my opinion if this film had gone on to become a series she could have been a solid companion however since she only appears in this film she feels kind of like a secondary character with her not getting alot of character development but she does show signs of being a great character if more screen time was given to her.
The same thing cannot be said for Chang Lee who as mentioned before is played by Yee Jee Tso and in this film is The Masters companion because yeah that's what we want to see The Master have a companion. To me this character really isn't written that well at all with him being written like an annoying nineties teenager which really doesn't make the character likeable at all and hell the film makers don't even give us a reason to care for the character at all so when he does die (this film came out in 1996 get over it) you feel nothing for the character.
This film does feature some CGI which was done by Northwest Imaging & FX and Lindala Schminken FX. Now I have to say that this is a TV movie and so of cause the budget for the effects isn't going to be bug but even so these effects look dated as all hell even taking into account when this film was made the effects still don't look that good im sure back in 1996 the effects looked good but ere they look like something you'd see in a late Playstation 1 game cutscene.
I will admit that this version of The Master is really fun to watch and alot of that does come from the fact that Eric Roberts really just doesn't give a damn and is just having the time of his life playing this part. I honestly would have loved to see him continue playing the part but with a much better script just to see what he would do with the part , not helping things tho is the fact that now for some reason time lords have the power to steal each others lives which is something that is never fully explained which considering this is a huge plot point this really should have been explained but for some reason the film makers chose not to explain this very crucial plot point.
Now then let's take the time to talk about The Eighth Doctor who is wonderfully played by Paul McGann. Like Grace there is a great character here trying to get out but due to the script and very short running time I honestly that if Paul had a better script for his debut adventure as well as a longer running time then his version of The Doctor and this adventure will be remembered alot more fondly then it actually is.
Overall as a pilot this isn't that bad since it does a fairly solid job of introducing the characters but at the same time it doesn't set up any future storylines. I really cannot tell if this was made for the fans or not simply because the film throws alot at you which would confuse none fans of the show but then again the film does away with alot of the established lore which would upset fans of the show as such this film gets a 6 out of 10 from me.
All images used in this review were gathered from Wikipedia , Google Images or the official Doctor Who fandom wiki page. I full on admit to not expecting any high definition images from any of these websites and yeah I got exactly what I expected as such I can't really recommend either website for high definition images but if you want to use any of the above websites then I say go for it and no matter what you think of the above DVD cover at least it's not as bad as the films actual poster which is the above image by the way.