Doctor Who (1996)

Too much of everything

Funny, strange, confrontational and subversive, this is one of the most interesting experiences you'll have at the cinema this year.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

The only thing good about this movie was Paul McGann... I can almost see him as the doctor. He has the charm to be the doctor, but other than that, bad. I mean, the Doctor was shot, then he was romantically involved with his companion who for a real doctor wasn't that good, he as a doctor was complete fool almost whole movie... Disaster! The doctor, the "real" doctor has that charisma around him that made you believe in him, he is brilliant, always 10 steps ahead over everybody else even when he's regenerating. Doctor is not just good looking, the way he does things is what makes him so great. He doesn't like guns. And most of all he is not half-human. Very bad try.

I have just started watching Doctor Who over the past few months and to give you an idea of what I think, the 2 best Doctors are Tom Baker and David Tenant. I have no bias to any of the Doctors (except Pertwee probably because he's stuck on Earth for most of his run and to me that's not Doctor Who) But this movie was probably as hit and miss as you can get.Okay so after Sylvester McCoy's Doctor gets The Master's Ashes after being trialled on Skaro! (If you're not a Doctor Who fan it's the home-world of the Daleks, the most recognizable villains on the show most known for their use of the word "EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!") and after he is found guilty The Doctor finds his ashes... Somehow! and takes them to Gaiifrey. But The Master turns into a Water Snake and steers the TARDIS off course down to Earth where upon re-entry The Doctor is killed, only to be revived. The Master possesses Eric Roberts who somehow is an even MORE obvious bad guy then the black caped, goatee wearing twirling mustache guy(s) from the original show. So it's up to The new Doctor and a surgeon who failed to revive him when he was Sylvester McCoy and rushed to Hospital trying to stop The Master from opening the Eye Of Harmony (did they make that up just for this? No that is a serious question) to basically undo the molecular structure of the entire planet and wipe out all life.Probably the only thing about this movie that is legitimately and succeeded in legitimately entertaining me is Paul McGann as The Doctor, I mean if this was done in such a way that didn't make me question it at almost every turn I would have full faith the show would actually be revived successfully as opposed to waiting for 9 more years. The other thing I enjoyed was Eric Roberts' as The Master but I don't think it was in the way anyone in the process of making this movie thought it would. The way he does it SCREAMS "Villain!" and... Snake eyes with the black clothing and having his hair slicked back looks ridiculous when he's trying to blend in.Okay this movie makes very little sense if at all, How was The Doctor able to break out of a steel door with nothing but his bare hands? Why does that Chang Lee kid trust The Master? Why does The Hospital destroy all records of The Doctor being there saying "Nobody will come looking for him, we've only had him for one night"? Why is The Eye Of Harmony rail roaded into the plot of this movie and why is it never mentioned before or since in ANY other Doctor Who Lore? Why does The Eye Of Harmony resurrect people when it wants to? How did The Master get into The TARDIS? This and many more basically hurt the movie and made it very clear why the whole revival idea didn't work. Oh and what makes it worse is The Doctor and the surgeon do this pesky love relationship, it doesn't fit in because I don't think we are given a single reason why.All I do have to say is that Doctor Who is a British show and the British know how to handle him for the most part. This movie, made with the help of the Americans, it's made clear why it didn't take off because it stuck to conventions of American TV at the time... Which for the most part when dealing with shows like this sucked, I'm sure that people might point out a couple of exceptions to that but it is made clear that the people who made this didn't have a good idea for where to take the character, or at least if they did it wasn't executed well.

A blight on my childhood and a travesty compared to the original, classic DOCTOR WHO TV series. I remember - fondly - watching the Sylvester McCoy stories when I was a kid, and I was 15 when this TV movie premiered on television. I expected a lot; what I got was the worst kind of nonsense, a film as offensive as it was bland.Where to begin with the problems? McCoy himself is given short shrift early on, to be replaced by the uninteresting Paul McGann who never makes the role his own; sometimes he appears to think he's in a pantomime, so lazy is his performance. Then there's the narrative, which adopts some kind of nonsensical action-movie template instead of the usual intricate plotting of a proper Dr Who story.The blame for all this can be laid at the door of the producers, who decided to appeal to the American audience in an attempt to break the American market. So this was filmed in Canada with a mostly American cast, and it completely misses the boat in terms of the feel of a Dr Who adventure. Instead, we get blatant rip-offs and homages to tons of American cultural icons: dodgy liquid metal CGI effects copied from TERMINATOR 2, Eric Roberts playing the Master and dressing as Arnie from THE TERMINATOR, plus pointless comparisons to Universal's FRANKENSTEIN.And that's the gutting thing. If this had just been a typical cheesy US B-movie, I wouldn't have minded as much; I've seen plenty of bad 'uns, after all. The fact that it's masquerading as WHO is what makes me seethe, and yes, I still hate it just the same all these years later. It's a horrible travesty, and something I still couldn't get off my TV screen quickly enough.

Had less money been spent on CGI and special effects and invested instead into the plot and research into the TV series this movie would've shined. Unfortunately it doesn't. As typical of all Hollywood movies the point has been missed by a long shot for the sake of special effects, cliffhangers, and a romance scene. What's more they've rewritten the Doctor as being half-human. You can't do that to a series that has been going on for decades! And what is the Eye of Harmony doing in the tardis?Overall attempts at trying to hype up a British series and Americanize it have failed. The TV series aims at having enough suspense to have you on the edge of your seat but then some ridiculously good way of saving the day that you either fall back into your chair laughing, cheering, crying, or panicking and eager to know what's going to happen next. This movie does not reflect the TV series and attempts at being too serious that it doesn't strike the viewer in the same manner. If anything the Saw movies share more in common with Doctor Who as they contain jaw-dropping plot twists which this movie is missing out on.