Doctor Who: The Movie was broadcast in 1996 in an attempt to revamp the long running classic sci-fi series. Made as a feature length effort rather than as a series of episodes as the show had become known for, the movie is set in 1999 and begins when what's left of the seventh Doctor Who (Sylvester McCoy) is brought to San Francisco. Here the Doctor regenerates into his eighth incarnation (Paul McGann) after he's promptly injured in a gunfight and he befriends a pretty heart surgeon named Grace Holloway (Daphne Ashbrook). Of course, Doctor Who soon learns that The Master (Eric Roberts) is once again wreaking havoc with things and is this time bent on destroying the entire planet, so it's into the TARDIS they go to save us all from certain doom.

A lot of people didn't appreciate the efforts of writer Matthew Jacobs screenplay, as it's consistently criticized in certain fan circles for its rather large plot-holes and its tendency to jump from scene to scene out of convenience rather than narrative flow or logic. Revisiting the movie after not having seen it in some time, yeah, these complaints are still pretty valid ones. Much of the criticism stems from the fact that Jacobs was gearing his script towards an American audience (and intended as a pilot for a U.S TV series), and as many of us are well aware, American TV audiences and British TV audiences can and often do expect certain things. This resulted in an entirely different tone for this new Doctor Who, as the script concentrates quite a bit too much on the romance between the Doctor and, well, the other doctor, the lovely heart surgeon Holloway. Not a franchise known for love stories, this all feels rather forced and while McGann and Ashbrook are both fine actors and not at all bad in their parts here, their chemistry seems born of convenience and necessity rather than natural attraction.

As far as the requisite special effects are concerned, CGI was not used as well in the mid-nineties as it is these days and while James Cameron proved that it could be cinematically viable when working on a massive Hollywood budget, Doctor Who: The Movie wasn't doing that and so the computer generated effects here have not aged well. At all. In fact, they're generally pretty dire and will probably make fans yearn for the old school cheap effects that were seen on British TV for all those years. The whole thing is just bizarrely put together, pulling from successful nineties television series like The X-Files more than the classic and not so classic Doctor Who material churned out over the years, even going so far as to completely reinvent the TARDIS into something unrecognizable to established fans of the series.

What makes this work, however, is a really great performance from Paul McGann. Yes he does play up the bizarre romantic side of the character more than some of us probably want him to but he's got charm, he's got charisma, and if nothing else, you can see why Holloway's character would be attracted to him. He brings a good bit of fun to the role, and you can see why the powers that be cast him in this part expecting it to turn into something more - he has that screen presence. Eric Roberts is also pretty good as The Master. He's got the right sense of menace and nastiness to him and seems to be really putting himself into the part with all he's got. Often quite good at playing eccentric types, Roberts infuses a bit of effective humor into his part as well, and unlike the romantic aspect of the storyline, it fits naturally. The performances save this one, really. Even the supporting cast is quite good here, and as such, the movie is a lot more fun to watch than it would be otherwise. If you can get past the fact that this is an altered version of the Who that people love and accept it for the oddball entry into the series that it is, you can accept it as the goofy slice of pop entertainment that it is and have fun with it.

Video:

The movie looks okay in this 1.33.1 fullframe presentation that features nice color reproduction and a fair bit of detail in the foreground and the background of the image at all times. Presented in its original aspect ratio, there's a bit of murkiness and at times in some of the darker scenes and just a little bit more noise than you might expect to see but there aren't any problems with mpeg compression artifacts or heavy edge enhancement. Skin tones look lifelike and natural and overall the image is pretty decent on this DVD.