Enlightenment 77 - November/December 96 The Fox-TV Movie - reviewed by Aaron Prokop Thanks to the good graces of the fine representatives of the Utah Parole Board, I was able to see the Fox TV movie, and I felt compelled to record my views for posterity. Following a rather grandiose title sequence, we get right into the story, so quickly there is no time for any long-term background explanation, but Paul McGann fills us in on more recent events. He tells us that the tale begins on Skaro, presumably before it blew up, where the Master has been exterminated by the Daleks for his crimes, presumably, specifically, his crimes against them. The Daleks grant him a last request, which is certainly very much in character for them, so he asks that the Doctor transport his remains back to Gallifrey. Apparently the Doctor's beeper number is widely accessible, for he swiftly responds, neither suspecting a trap, nor asking himself why the Master would want to return to Gallifrey in death, and somehow gets away with the ashes without being exterminated himself. He no sooner sits down to read The Time Machine, which is probably the equivalent to you or I getting absorbed in an issure of Archie Comics, when the TARDIS dumps him in 1999 San Francisco. The Master turns into soom goo left over from Ghostbusters and escapes his little jewerly box (apparently the Keepership of Traken does endow one with remarkable powers). The Doctor wisely chooses this moment to step outside for a breath of fresh air and is promptly shot. A street kid has hims rushed to a hospital, to which Dr. Grace Holloway or whatever the hell her name is gets summoned. We get treated (subjected?) to some slow-motion jiggle photography of her running in a tight dress that evokes nostalgic memories of Nicola Bryant, and please, the comparison ends there. Her boyfriend is justly annoyed at her habit of always rushing down to the emergency ward to save people's lives. The Doctor is given the wrong drugs on the operating table and apparently dies, but he later regenerates and revives. Kudos to the masterly subtle comic performance by the guy playing the attendant who faints at the sight of him: I'm pretty sure he thought he was on an episode of Saved by the Bell or something. Meanwhile, the Master, a stylish ooze, turns into a snake and takes over the body of an ambulance attendant. For some reason, his eyes glow, he acquires super-strength and his body quickly begins to decay. The Doctor steals a Wild Bill Hickok costume (symbolizing the Americanization of the whole thing?) and pulls a wire out of his chest to convince Grace he is the man from the operating table. Back at her place, Grace finds her boyfriend has left to look for someone with a sense of priorities. The Doctor steps into his shoes (geddit?), regains his memory, and kisses Grace a couple of times. This, of course, is the bit that stirred up so much controversy, and it is, in fact, quite fleeting, which is, of course, both a relief and the very problem. I would not, strictly speaking, object to a Doctor-falls-in-love story, if it was brilliantly, insightfully, profoundly handled, but here, despite all the pre-publicity ballyhoo, it is just thrown away. At no time during the entire programme does he display any signs that it has even remotely occured to him how bizarre and unusual his behavious is. You would think he's some cruiser who's been laying pipe all his life based on the evidence here. Sure, in the Aztecs he was obviously affected by Cameica, and Susan could fall in love with an Earth man (not both these events took place when the infant series was still developing), but it still seems odd that after ages spent travelling with loads of young ladies, all of whom, with all their diverse looks and personalities, failed to ignite any romantic fires in him, suddenly he's eagerly smooching with his proverbial blonde he doesn't even know. The production team then have annoyed a lot of people without even a concrete or bold reason for doing so. That said, it speaks volumes about fandom that is more up in arms about the Doctor regenerating and kissing a woman than it was when he regenerated and tried to strangle one. Does some sort of mass repression have a hand in this? At this point, everything starts coming from left field. The kid who had the Doctor taken to hospital uses the TARDIS key to get inside, where he meets the Master. How he got in is never explained. Apparently he found the other key on the TARDIS roof and courteously replaced it later. The Master shows the kid "the Eye of Harmony" which I thought used to be the big power source on Gallifrey, but has now ended up as the power source in the TARDIS, unless there's more than one. The Eye can only be opened by a human eye looking at it, oddly enough, and the Master leaps to the rather surprising conclusion that the Doctor is half-human. While this would explain a lot (and again, they really have gone to town with such a revelation), it was obviously only written in as a half-hearted justification for the Doctor kissing people. The Eye, for some reason, displays hologrammes of the seventh and eighth Doctors and Grace. I was expecting images of past Doctors as well, but I forgot John Nathan-Turner wasn't producing this. The Doctor realizes the Eye has been open too long and that the world as we know it weill end on January 1st, 2000, as a result. By now, as with, say, The Two Doctors, they seem to be making this all up as they go along, though apparently somebody had ready Millennial Rites (and please, the comparison ends there). Happily, if he can find a special kind of clock, he can save the situation. Grace calls for an ambulance to take them to a big party where such a clock is being unveiled, only for it to turn out to be driven by the Master, who also happens to have gained the ability to spit burning venom onto people and enslave their minds that way. Equally strange, he freaks out completely when doused by a fire extinguisher, and registers no surprise, not so much as a raised eyebrow, to hear the Doctor is now kissing people. In the midst of all this confusion the Doctor and Grace escape and try to take a cop's motorcycle, distracting him with some jelly babies the Doctor has acquired out of nowhere, and commandeer this vehicle. There follows a chase through the streets less reminiscent of the pursuit in Bullit than it is of the climax of Love at First Bite. Our heroes arrive at the party. The Doctor is so concerned about the universe unravelling he fails to notice his character is doing the same thing. He is refused admittance by a security guard, and instead of berating him, hypnotizing him, using some nerve pinch on him or dazzling him with a magic trick, he just skulks away, deafeated. He spends a lot of time standing there in his kooky-wacky-zany clothes while people stare at him until Grace explains that he's "from London." What we're being told is either that British people are really looney or that Americans are so narrow-minded that they believe such rubbish. Either way, it's rather less than flattering to a lot of peoples' intelligence. Things continue to degenerate. The Master slimes some more guards and leaves them dead, if extremely wobbly, but the Doctor gets the clock ocmponents and makes it back to the TARDIS, unlocking it with a key sitting on the roof which apparently stays put even when the ship is in flight. Another motorcycle cop comes tearing up and drives full speed into the TARDIS, an interesting thing for him to do, given that he should fully expect to be killed roaring into a Police Box, and zooms back out again. The Doctor finds it all highly amusing, instead of being concered about the bike smashing into the console or anything, while Grace reacts with one of those double takes that seem to comprise one of the two pieces of acting technique Daphne Ashbrook appears to be capable of, the other being an impresonation of a stranded trout whenever she has to express shock, amazement, or outrage. The Doctor is bonked by Grace (on the head that is) when the Master takes her over and trussed up in a metal crown of thorns evoking images from A Clockwork Orange. Eric Roberts, who has been reasonably sinister all evening, abruptly decides to start playing a Batman villain, dresses in a flamboyant robe and proceeds to have the scenery for breakfast. An attempt is made here at some imaginative cinematography by having characters' haves only halfway on the screen, but it ends up looking like the cameras were just badly set up. The Master plans to use the Eye to hijack the Doctor's body (that thing can do anything) and snaps the kid's neck while he's at it. Grace, of all people, saves the day, the Master kills her, the Earth is saved, the Master gets sucked into the Eye, following a kickboxing match with the Doctor, the TARDIS rolls back time and revives Grace and the kid, the Doctor drops them off, thinks to himself "Screw non- interference with the course of time," gives the kid tips about his own future, asks Grace to join him, is slightly surprised when she says no (even though we've spent two hours watching her lose everything she has on Earth that matters to her) shrugs with little concern (like I said, just thrown away), takes off, and gets back to The Time Machine. I've said it before and I'll say it again, television is better than ever. Okay, some things did actually work out nicely. Paul McGann is, in himself, great. All he needs is a real script causual viewers could conceivably follow in a single viewing, and which doesn't leave him looking like a schtick-master imitating the Doctor on Hallowe'en. It was announced that exteensive research had been done to ensure the Doctor would seem genuine in his new incarnation. Apparently this meant somebody sat down, watched the odd episode, looked at photos of old Doctor, noted a couple of good bits he's done, decided that it would be great for the new one to beat them to death, and that it was about time he started acting like a real man. I've become convinced the kiss was included so that new viewers wouldn't look at him and instantly draw inaccurate conclusions about him. Thus, the new Doctor gets little chance to establish himself because he's too busy doing tired bits like name-dropping famous historical figures, given us the jelly-baby act and saying "I'm a Time Lord," about fifty times. Perhaps I'm being too harsh - to be sure, few new Doctors have been established as oncrete personalities in their first stories - but the makers of this seemed to display a complete misunderstanding of what the character is about, or so I really began to feel as he stood there cracking a joke about Time Lords' penis size. I wanted for him to take command of the situations, but somehow he never gets the chance to do so here. What I (desperately) hope is that much of the seemingly inappropriate stuff done in the film was done in an attempt to hook in loads of viewers, giving the new team a base from which to launch a new, more faithful, series, but the ratings don't seem to have vindicated such an approach. Alternately, they may simply have taken the concept and perverted it to appeal to a more "normal" audience. If no new series does materialize for them, they'll have nobody to blame but themselves. I know it's all too easy to be a critic, but was this film really all it could have been? More to the point, was this script really all it could have been? Was anyone watching the movie and thinking "It doesn't get any better than this?" Fortunately, they have everything else they need. They have a potentially fabulous Doctor, they have the production design going for them; the only important ingredient they still require is talented, imaginative, well-ordered writing, assuming it's not too late, in which case they will have much to answer for.