Wow, this is a REALLY bad movie!

Really Surprised!

Crappy film

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

It is now twenty years since the US/UK co-production of Doctor Who: The Movie was broadcast. Shown seven years after the cancellation of the television series and nine years before the relaunched series with Christopher Eccleston, it was the only new Who in the 1990s.It also brings a lot of ingredients that was used in the relaunched series as Russell T Davies studied what it did right and what it did wrong.Sylvester McCoy returns as the seventh Doctor who having been shot and receiving botched hospital treatment regenerates into Paul McGann's eighth doctor.The Tardis lands in San Francisco in 1999, the Master escapes in a snakelike form from the Tardis and plans to take control of the Eye of Harmony once he has occupied the body of a paramedic (Eric Roberts). The Doctor must find a beryllium atomic clock and stop the Master with the help of Dr Grace Holloway.British director Geoffrey Sax made use of the higher budget with good use of special effects even though he was hampered with a reduced number of shooting days. The Tardis is much bigger but I guess the HG Wells like interior setting does not make it look like a Gallifreyan time machine. The visuals were grand and obviously some of the morphing techniques were inspired by films such as Terminator 2.The casting of Paul McGann was the master stroke, with the 60 minutes screen time he had, you really felt that he was the Doctor, a Byronesque romantic (he even got to have a kiss) and man of action, it was a shame we have seen so little of McGann's time lord apart from the mini adventure, The Night of the Doctor; although there is plenty of Eighth Doctor audio adventures.I also liked the malevolent interpretation of the Master by Eric Roberts who really pushes up the dial of campiness when he puts on the time lord regalia. He shifted the emphasis of the Master from the moustache twirling villain of Anthony Ainley and it has been carried on by the subsequent Master's since then, male or female.The story was not that great, you felt it needed a bit more reworking and it had rather a lot of continuity which was fine for fans of the shows but what about new viewers? A point not lost in the 2005 re-continuation which started afresh and only added continuity in small measures over subsequent seasons.Some of the elements of the television film might had introduced a few groans. The cloaking device to describe the Tardis chameleon circuit and the Doctor being half human. However it was a lot less Americanised than people feared and had lots of links to the preceding series.There were a segment of fans who were disappointed after this was shown in 1996, yet the movie received very good viewing figures in the UK and two decades on it was worth revisiting McGann's outing.

With the franchise as big as Doctor Who there was no doubt that there should be a Doctor Who movie to try and repopularise the franchise and bring it back from it's time off TV. Unfortunately with a small budget and a lacking cast this film is not the easiest Doctor Who to watch. Eric Roberts performance in this film was terrible to say the least with nothing but over acting every time he was on screen it felt hard to watch. One of the only saving graces that came from this film was Paul McGann's portrayal of the Doctor. Although not a brilliant story line or even special effects this is still a must see for all Doctor Who fans who like to see all regenerations.

This movie is not as awful as some negative reviews state. Paul McGann does a good job as the Doctor, some glimpses in his performance from the Baker/Davison era, with hints of the darker Doctors of late. Daphne
Ashbrook is a decent companion and there is a good amount of chemistry between the two.Eric Roberts' Master is a bit problematic, a slimy '90s film noir character lacking either Roger Delgado's savage charm or

Anthony Ainley's smug self-assurance. And the whole worm- thing does NOT work.But the big problem is with the writing, it's as if they were trying to fit as many Hollywood cliché's into the movie as possible. From a corrupt, evidence-destroying hospital administrator, to a confused plot-line about New Years Day 2000 (maybe the writer really thought the world was going to end and nobody would be around to see the stupidity in his script.) It is these standard clichés that give Hollywood such a bad name, and wreck this effort.I've never completely bought into the whole "Curse of the Time Lords", business, (it always seemed something could be going on between the Jon Pertwee Doctor and Jo Grant) so found the kisses between the Doctor and companion trite, but not devastatingly so. Ah, but I remember Jon Pertwee and Katy Manning, as well as Hartnell, Troughton, T Baker, Davison, C Baker, and McCoy. I have to wonder if any of the writers or producers here gave past episodes any more than a cursory glance.Fox seems to have been very cynical about this whole project. The acting is good, and the special effects good. but it lacks the heart and soul of the original (or the current) series, leaving an altogether mediocre movie.

I'm watching this movie now and I'm so bored I'm writing the review before it's over.Dr. Who doesn't work when it takes itself seriously, when it limits itself to the realistic expectations of mainstream cinematic storytelling (whatever the genre). This is why the first season of the BBC reboot with Christopher Eccleston didn't work in my opinion. The actor always look annoyed that he wasn't in a Guy Ritchie shoot 'em up flick and the show's producers took their storytelling way too seriously. Eccleston may have been praised for his lock, stock, and two smoking barrels as the Doctor, but clearly the re-creators of the show realized that the Doctor's longevity was due to his and the show's free-ranging eccentricity, which is why subsequent seasons featured doctors with odd, but charming personalities in the tradition of Baker, Noughton, and that Sylvester guy, and plots like the one with David Tennant where he's stranded aboard an orbiting spaceship with the shape and name of the Titanic on Christmas eve--right before it runs into...what? why, the earth, of course! So this movie tries to take its plot seriously even though it doesn't really have a plot and leaves me so bored it was much more fun to write about the show than this movie, which has pretty much been well dissected by all the previous reviews. But, hey, lighten up about the kiss, folks.