Doctor Who (TV story)

Broadcast in 1996, and with no title aside from Doctor Who, this was a made-for-TV movie. It was an attempt to relaunch and continue the Doctor Who television franchise in the UK and abroad. Home video releases of the film from BBC Video are marketed under the title Doctor Who: The Movie.

The film was co-produced by the BBC and Fox networks. Filmed in Canada, the telemovie introduced Paul McGann as the Eighth Doctor and was his only on-screen performance in the role. The telemovie won a in 1996 for best television presentation.

The film was broadcast on Fox in America on 14 May 1996 and on BBC1 on 27 May 1996.

Synopsis
The Seventh Doctor is charged with transporting the remains of his fellow Time Lord, the Master, back to their home planet. But he is surprised to discover that his old enemy is not quite dead. The arrival of not only costs the Doctor a life, but it spells near disaster for the Earth. Only the new Doctor can stop the Master and save the planet.

Plot
The Master has been exterminated by the Daleks on Skaro for his terrible deeds. As part a "final, and somewhat unusual, request", the Master asked that the Doctor escort his ashes back to Gallifrey for proper burial. Doing a voice-over of the opening scene, the Doctor explains that Time Lords have thirteen lives, but the Master used all his. As rules never mattered much to his old foe, the Doctor knows that even in death, he cannot trust the Master; he locks the container of the Master's ashes inside another box. Continuing on, the Doctor says that he grew to learn, especially near the end of his seventh life, that he could not help but be too careful. After returning to the main control room, the Doctor sets the TARDIS coordinates for Gallifrey He then gets a cup of tea to read a book, H.G. Wells's The Time Machine, while eating a bowl of jelly babies. At the same time, the Doctor has "In a Dream" playing on his gramophone.

Meanwhile, the casket containing the Master's ashes shakes violently. A symbolic warning occurs as the record begins skipping on the word "time"; the Doctor simply fixes it and continues to remain unaware of the situation. The shaking grows worse until the casket breaks open; the Doctor's tea crashes to the ground as the record skips to a stop. Immediately suspicious of these omens, the Doctor begins wondering why they occurred. A snake housing the Master's consciousness slithers out of the box and, unseen by the Doctor, slithers into the TARDIS console. The resulting effect is the console malfunctioning as sparks fly out. The Doctor finally gets up from his chair and rushes to fix it, but is unsuccessful, seeing he cannot undo the damage or stay on the same coordinates; he is forced to make an emergency landing because of the timing malfunction. Concerned that the Master may have had a hand in this, the Doctor quickly returns to where he left the ashes, to see the box cracked open. The Doctor looks on with a shocked and worried expression, wondering what his old foe could be up to this time.

Meanwhile on Earth, San Francisco, December 30th, 1999, two local Chinese-American gangs are having a shoot-out, reducing one to just Chang Lee. When the other gangsters prepares to fire on him, the TARDIS materialisation wind picks up and it appears in front of Lee. The gang fruitlessly fires at the TARDIS, emptying their guns. While they reload, the Doctor exits the TARDIS to find his bearings only to be shot by the gangsters, who quickly flee. Lee runs to the Doctor's side. The Doctor tries to warn Lee about the Master, who has slipped through the TARDIS keyhole. However, Lee doesn't turn around in time to see him. The Doctor falls unconscious and Lee quickly runs to get an ambulance and accompanies the Doctor to Walker General Hospital. Unseen, the Master stows away in the ambulance.

At the hospital, a surgeon removes the bullets, but the Doctor's two hearts cause confusion for the medical team. They assume he is fibrillating and that the X-rays showing his two hearts is a double exposure. A cardiologist, Dr. Grace Holloway, is summoned from her visit to the opera, and attempts to stabilise the Doctor's heartbeat. Regaining consciousness just as she is about to begin the operation, the Doctor tries to prevent the operation by explaining his non-terrestrial origins and tells Grace that he needs a beryllium atomic clock, but he is quickly put under anaesthetic. The Doctor's anatomy confuses Grace, who accidentally damages his circulatory system with a probe, killing him; the medical team fail to revive the Doctor and they pronounce him dead.

When Grace tries to comfort Lee with the death of the Doctor, she realises he doesn't know him. Lee runs off with the Doctor's possessions. Around the same time, the Master has hitched a ride to the home of one of the ambulance workers, Bruce, by hiding in his jacket.

The Doctor is put in the morgue after the attendants make spa jokes to his dead body. Elsewhere, the Master has entered Bruce's body, killing him and taking it for himself. Later that night, as Pete, a morgue attendant, watches the 1931 film version of Frankenstein, the Doctor starts breathing again, snaps awake and, at last, regenerates. His old face twists and warps into the features of a brand new, younger man, followed by a release of dense, foggy breath from his mouth. Surprised and slightly disoriented, he springs up from the gurney and begins banging on the door, attracting Pete's attention. When Pete arrives to see what is the source of the sound, the new Doctor knocks the metal door off its hinges. He is clad in just a shroud, a sight mirrored by the image in the movie. Pete faints in shock while the Doctor stumbles into a deserted wing of the hospital where he sees himself in broken pieces of mirror and cries out, "Who am I?"

The next morning, the Doctor, after going through numerous hospital lockers, steals the Wild Bill Hickok costume that Pete's co-worker, Ted, intended to wear to the hospital's New Year's Eve costume party. Meanwhile, Chang Lee goes through the Doctor's possessions, finding his sonic screwdriver, pocket watch, jelly babies, a yo-yo, and TARDIS key. Elsewhere, Bruce's wife Miranda awakes to find, unbeknownst to her, the Master staring out the window. As the Master talks to himself about Bruce's body not lasting long and his need to find the Doctor, she asks him to come back to bed. However, after her failed attempts to be seductive, she realises too late that the Master isn't Bruce when she sees the cat-like eyes the Master acquired in his time on Cheetah World; the Master breaks her neck.

At the hospital, the Doctor recognises Grace (who has quit her hospital job after an argument with the hospital administrator over covering up the surgery), and follows her to her car, asking for help as he believes she knows who he is. He removes the surgical probe which Grace had left in him the previous night, a sight which convinces her that this strange man is in fact her supposedly dead patient. She then drives off with the Doctor, at his request, to prevent the hospital staff from killing him again.

"Bruce" goes to the hospital, where he learns that the Doctor died during surgery and that his body is missing and Lee has taken his possessions. Grace takes the Doctor to her house, where she discovers that her boyfriend has left her and taken some of her furniture to boot. She listens to the Doctor's hearts, and takes a sample of his blood, while the Doctor's spotty memory begins to return with anecdotes about Puccini and Leonardo da Vinci. He also explains that his has thirteen lives, going on to say Grace became a doctor because of her childish dream to hold back death; according to the Doctor, she'll do great things.

Elsewhere, Chang Lee uses the TARDIS key to enter the TARDIS. There he encounters the Master, who (through some unknown method) entered before him. The Master hypnotises Lee into giving him the Doctor's possessions by staring with his inhuman eyes. Searching through the bag, the Master demands to know where the Doctor is. Lee says that the items he stole are his now, and that the Doctor is dead. With a snarl, the Master informs Lee that the Doctor is not dead and that he will die unless he finds him. Wondering what he'll get out of assisting the Master, Lee is told he'll get to live. Elsewhere, Grace has given the Doctor a pair of shoes left behind by her boyfriend, letting him keep them; her attempts to examine the Doctor's blood fail. They decide to take a walk, during which the Doctor remembers seeing a meteor storm on Gallifrey with his father during his initial incarnation.

Rummaging through some of the drawers, the Master withdraws some red pouches, going on to say the TARDIS and the Doctor's body were stolen from him. Lee once more says the Doctor died. The Master explains it's half true; that body died, but the Doctor regenerated into a new one. He goes on to lie that the Doctor used seven of his lives to commit terrible deeds as well-known villains in Earth history. He then gives Lee the pouches, which contains $5,000,000 in gold dust, as payment for his help, promising a full billion once he gets "his" body back. The Master takes Lee to the Cloister Room, where he uses Lee's human eyes to open the Eye of Harmony, the TARDIS' power source. In the meantime, the Doctor regains his memories. In a fit of enthusiasm, the Doctor announces, "I am the Doctor!" and kisses Grace, who asks him to kiss her again. In the Cloister Room, the Master sees a series of images: the old Doctor, the new Doctor, and a human retina. The last causes him to assert, "The Doctor is half-human."

The Doctor becomes aware that the Master has opened the Eye of Harmony as he holds Grace; at the same time, the Master and Lee see her through the Doctor's vision. However, the Doctor shuts his eyes, preventing nothing more than audio to come through the Eye's projection. The Doctor explains the Master's plan: he hopes to force the Doctor to look into the Eye of Harmony, which will destroy his soul and allow the Master to take over his body. The Master says the Doctor is lying again; however, Lee is worried Grace might believe him. At the same time, the Doctor asks Grace to help him find a beryllium atomic clock. However, Grace runs back to her house; the Doctor opens his again, but the visual doesn't return to the Eye. The Doctor tries talking to Grace, but she calls him insane and phones for an ambulance to take the Doctor to a mental institution.

To prove that the Eye is open and changing the physical structure of the planet, the Doctor presses against one of the windows, making it bend; he walks through it and into Grace's house. The Doctor explains that at midnight, the entire Earth will be sucked through it unless he can close it in time. Collapsing in shock, Grace asks for two ambulances over the phone. Hearing this, the Master decides to use the identity of his stolen body to commandeer an ambulance, with Lee. The Doctor weighs himself on scale as Grace's television reports strange weather occurring around the world, which has been caused by the Eye's opening. The Doctor is even more shocked to see he has lost twenty pounds in just the same amount of minutes. Watching a news report, the Doctor hears that a beryllium atomic clock is being unveiled at ITAR. When the ambulance arrives, the EMT is the Master, and the unseen driver is Chang Lee; the Doctor doesn't see Lee or know it's the Master. The Doctor asks to be taken to ITAR. Grace is still sceptical, but indicates for the driver to play along.

As they are being driven, the Doctor questions Grace as to why she didn't tell him she had access to an atomic clock. Still playing along, Grace says she was more worried about what would happen to the Earth if the Eye isn't shut. Their conversation changes subject, in which the Doctor explains he met Sigmund Freud and Madame Curie. However, Lee slams on the brakes at a traffic jam, making the ambulance shake, causing the sunglasses the Master had been using to hide his inhuman eyes to fall off; the Doctor recognises him. Putting his glasses back on, the Master has them pulled back off by the Doctor, who gets out of the way of a burning viscous substance spat by his foe; it lands on Grace's wrist. The Doctor temporarily blinds him with a fire extinguisher, while they flee. They flee into the blocked traffic as Lee cleans the foam off the Master.

A policeman tells them to go back to their vehicles, but the Doctor instead offers him a Jelly baby; sceptical about the sweet, the officer eats it. Grace explains that the Doctor is British to explain his odd habits just as he takes the officer's gun and points it at himself; he demands the officer hand over his motorcycle. The Doctor turns his attention to Grace, who he tells that he cannot make her dream to hold back death last forever, but he can make it come true tonight. Believing the Doctor, Grace takes the gun and shoots the radio, preventing the officer from calling for backup. They take the keys and drive off, leaving the gun behind. At the same time, the Master reminds Lee that they are in an ambulance, which can go past traffic jams if the sirens are on; Lee complies and takes a shortcut to ITAR. The Doctor and Grace arrive shortly after, finding the empty ambulance; the Master and Lee are already inside, waiting for them.

Grace, a board member of ITAR, gets herself and the Doctor inside the party; while looking around for a way to reach the clock, the Doctor explains that time travel is possible and that Time Lords who run out of regenerations, like the Master, are desperate in the fight for survival. She also gives him the alias "Dr Bowman" while introducing him to Professor Wagg, creator of the clock. As the Doctor tells Professor Wagg "a secret" ("I'm half-human, on my mother's side"), he surreptitiously removes Wagg's security pass. Grace and the Doctor steal a small component from the clock, which he needs to repair the TARDIS. They spot the Master and Chang Lee in the crowd, which prompts them to head for the exit. They then find guards that the Master subdued by using the same substance; they are frozen in place, covered in goo. The Doctor activates the fire alarm to "liven things up" as he and Grace make their escape by lowering themselves from the roof with a fire hose.

They flee on the motorcycle, and arrive at the TARDIS, where the Doctor remembers that he keeps a spare key in the cubbyhole above the letter "P" in "Police box." They enter the TARDIS, where the Cloister Bell is ringing. The Doctor is able to close the Eye of Harmony; however, a quick temporal scan confirms that the Eye has been open too long, and the Earth is still in danger. The only solution is to take the TARDIS back to a time before the Eye was opened — but since the Eye was open so long, the TARDIS now has no power. The Doctor attempts to jump-start the TARDIS by drawing energy directly from the Eye. While working under the console, the Doctor wonders why Grace is not helping as he instructed her to, looking up to see her eyes have turned black; Grace has been taken over by the Master's will. Grace knocks the Doctor out just as the Master and Lee enter the TARDIS.

The Doctor awakens to find himself strapped to a gurney in the Cloister Room. Chang Lee and the possessed Grace chain the Doctor to a balcony, under the supervision of the Master (who has decided to "dress for the occasion" in Gallifreyan robes). Lee explains he'll be rich once once the Master gets his body back. However, the Doctor tells him the Master neglected to mention Earth would be destroyed, making his payment pointless. Per the Doctor's slight manipulation, the Master inadvertently contradicts his earlier lies to Lee by claiming to have used all his lives. Lee now believes the Doctor and refuses to help the Master. Rather than waste more time by hypnotising Lee again, the Master snaps his neck. The Doctor comments that only Grace is left to open the Eye, but her eyes are not human. The Master taunts the Doctor and removes his influence on Grace as he kisses her, then forces her to look into the Eye. As the Master begins to absorb the Doctor's life energy, the Doctor implores Grace to return to the console room and jump-start the TARDIS.

Several disasters happen all around the Earth as lightning and heavy winds surround the TARDIS; Grace enters the control room as sparks fly out of the console. In the Cloister Room, the Master begins hearing the Doctor's memories and feeling his life force come into him, even briefly taking on his form several times. As the Earth celebrates the approaching new year, Grace manages to start the TARDIS one second before midnight, having remembered the Doctor told her piloting a TARDIS is like setting an alarm clock. The TARDIS enters a temporal orbit, something she needs the Doctor to explain. She returns to the Cloister Room and frees the Doctor, but the Master attacks them both. He throws her off the balcony, killing her. The Doctor and the Master struggle over the open Eye, and the Master falls in; the Doctor attempts to save him, but the Master rejects his hand and is sucked into the Eye.

The TARDIS slips back in time before midnight. Energy travels from the Eye to the bodies of Grace and Chang Lee, reviving them, and the Eye closes. Amused by how sentimental his TARDIS is, the Doctor asks Grace how it felt to hold back death. He then congratulates them, as they've been somewhere he's never been (yet). Grace tells him there's nothing to be afraid of, but wonders if they've gone back far enough. The Doctor tells her that they have or he's talking to a bunch of ghosts, and he doesn't believe in them.

They return to the console room where, through a high-tech dome, the Doctor shows them alien galaxies and his home planet. Lee questions where the Master is just as a grumbling is heard from the TARDIS; "indigestion", the Doctor remarks. Deciding where to leave them, the Doctor asks if they wish to be deposited back on the 29th. While Grace would rather not live through the day again, Lee knows he won't survive it; instead, the Doctor takes them to exactly the first minute of 2000 in a city park.

The Doctor allows Lee to keep the bags of gold dust the Master originally bribed him with, and tells him not to be in San Francisco next Christmas; in exchange, Lee gives back the bag with the belongings of the Seventh Doctor in them. The Doctor asks Grace to travel with him, but she refuses and asks if the Doctor will stay with her. However, both know he won't and they kiss. Grace thanks the Doctor, but he retorts "No, thank you, doctor."

The Doctor leaves in the TARDIS, off to a new adventure. Conducting maintenance on the new part inside the console with his newly recovered sonic screwdriver, the Doctor asks his beloved time machine where it will be they're going this time. He settles back in his armchair in the TARDIS control room to continue reading H G Wells' novel: The Time Machine. The gramophone record that he is listening to suddenly starts skipping (again). As the TARDIS continues on its flight, all the Doctor says is, "Oh no, not again."

Cast

 * The Doctor - Paul McGann
 * ‘The Old Doctor’ - Sylvester McCoy
 * Bruce/ - Eric Roberts
 * Grace Holloway - Daphne Ashbrook
 * Chang Lee - Yee Jee Tso
 * Salinger - John Novak
 * Dr. Swift - Michael David Simms
 * Wheeler - Catherine Lough
 * Curtis - Dolores Drake
 * Pete - Will Sasso
 * Gareth - Jeremy Radick
 * Miranda - Eliza Roberts
 * Motorcycle policeman - Bill Croft
 * Professor Wagg - Dave Hurtubise
 * Ted - Joel Wirkunnen
 * Security Guard - Dee Jay Jackson
 * The Old Master - Gordon Tipple
 * News Anchor - Mi-Jung Lee
 * News Anchor - Joanna Piros

Earliest form
After the show had first aired in the United States, American companies had worked hard to purchase the rights for an American version. In the early '80s, when The Walt Disney Company were on their spending sprees, they attempted to buy the rights to the show, meaning the entire franchise would belong to Disney, not just an American version of the show.

was their only choice to run the office. Spielberg was more than willing to do it, as he felt that Disney was the only American studio who could do such an amazing British show justice. He lost interest when he was told that the show would be released under their Touchstone Television banner; he felt that such an imaginative show needs to be released under their Disney banner.

British expatriate Philip Segal had been working since 1989 to forge a co-production deal between an American company and the BBC to make a new Doctor Who series even before the programme's twenty-sixth and final season, broadcast that year. At that time, Segal was working with Columbia Pictures, but little had come of his efforts by the time he left for a two-year stint at ABC. Subsequently, Segal went to work for Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment. Shortly thereafter he resumed his efforts to acquire the rights to Doctor Who.

By June 1992, he was joined by Peter Wagg, producer of the eclectic science-fiction series Max Headroom. There were several parties involved in the Doctor Who discussions: Amblin and the BBC, of course, but also Amblin's parent company, Universal Pictures, and the BBC's commercial arm, BBC Enterprises, which would shortly become BBC Worldwide. With each organisation trying to safeguard its own interests, negotiations stretched into 1993, and then 1994.

Despite the many difficulties the complex situation presented, on 13 January 1994, an agreement was reached. Philip Segal was, for all intents and purposes, Doctor Who's newest producer. The race was on to get a series ready to be pitched to the American networks in time for the Fall 1994 season, essentially giving Segal and Wagg less than two months.

One of Segal's first instructions from his superiors at Universal was to use a studio writer for the project, specifically John Leekley. Segal was hesitant, preferring to go outside Universal; former Doctor Who script editor Terrance Dicks was amongst the candidates he considered. However, aware that any fight with Universal would waste precious development time, Segal agreed to bring Leekley aboard.

As a TV series
With designer Richard Lewis, Segal and Leekley prepared an expensive and extensive series bible, The Chronicles Of Doctor Who?, to introduce Doctor Who in general, and the proposed new series in particular. Segal had envisioned this version as largely divorced from the original BBC series -- although the basic concepts of Doctor Who were adhered to, the programme's mythos would be completely rewritten. The bible was written from the perspective of Cardinal Barusa (a misspelling of Borusa, a character who had first appeared in Season Fourteen's The Deadly Assassin).

It introduced the Doctor and the Master, half-brothers and sons of the lost Time Lord explorer Ulysses, Borusa's son. When the evil Master becomes President of the Time Lords upon Borusa's death, the Doctor flees Gallifrey in a rickety old TARDIS to find Ulysses. Borusa's spirit becomes enmeshed in the TARDIS, enabling Borusa to advise his grandson. The Doctor takes the TARDIS to "the Blue Planet" to search for Ulysses, the native world of the Doctor's mother.

They soon searched for the man to play the Doctor. Many people were considered and auditioned, including Rowan Atkinson, Derek Jacobi, and Jim Carrey.

It was under this script that Paul McGann later would audition. His brother Mark would as well.

A third producer joined the Doctor Who team in March, much to the surprise and, at the time, the dismay of Segal. This was Jo Wright, assigned by the BBC to represent their interests. Around the end of March, Doctor Who was offered to the four American networks. NBC and ABC were completely uninterested. CBS president Peter Tortorici tentatively offered Segal a two-hour pilot and six one-hour episodes (presumably to serve as mid-season replacement series), but this was retracted by network head Howard Stringer in mid-May.

That left Fox, the youngest American network. Led by head of series Robert Greenblatt, Fox was interested in Doctor Who, but was only willing to commit to a two-hour movie with the possibility of a second. It appeared Segal's dreams of producing a new Doctor Who series were fast disappearing. Despite this, he agreed to an offer made by Doctor Who historian Jean-Marc Lofficier and his wife Randy to become unofficial consultants on the project.

The Lofficiers would advise the production team on continuity and act as liaisons with the fan community. On 28 June, Fox indicated they were interested in having the initial movie serve as a "backdoor pilot"; if ratings were good, the property might shift from their Movie of the Week department to the series department.

At the suggestion of Trevor Walton, Fox's vice president in charge of movies, Segal and Wagg met with Matthew Jacobs, who had written for The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. (Jacobs was the son of Anthony Jacobs, who had played Doc Holliday in The Gunfighters, and had been present on the set.) The selection was approved by the other interested parties and Jacobs set to work on 5th May. Unlike the DeLaurentis iteration, it was decided to essentially discard all the work done to date, with Jacobs starting afresh on an entirely new script. Only the idea of the Doctor having a human mother would be retained.

By 19th May, Jacobs had composed a storyline; unlike the earlier Leekley and DeLaurentis versions, this continued from the end of the original series, starting by introducing Sylvester McCoy's Seventh Doctor. The Doctor arrives on modern-day Earth in either San Francisco or New Orleans.

However, the dying Master has transmogrified himself into a shape-shifting slick of DNA, and attacks the Doctor, mortally wounding him. The Doctor's body is found by a street kid named Jack. Jack brings the Doctor to the hospital, where he is operated on unsuccessfully by Dr Kelly Grace (an obvious play on the name of actress Grace Kelly). In the morgue, the Doctor regenerates; meanwhile, the Master acquires a temporary human host body. Jack has gained access to the TARDIS using gloves he has pilfered from the Doctor's body. The Master raises Jack's father from the dead and through him uses Jack to take over the TARDIS.

As Halloween approaches, the Master uses the TARDIS to unleash an army of the dead. With Kelly's help, the Doctor returns to the TARDIS and draws himself, the Master, Kelly, Jack and the dead into another dimension. He defeats the Master, returns Jack to Earth and leaves with Kelly.

Various changes were made by the time of the next draft, on June 27th. The date was shifted to the days leading up to New Year's Eve instead of Halloween, and San Francisco was specified as the location. After regenerating, the Doctor sees a vision of his mother. Jack uses the TARDIS key instead of a pair of gloves to enter the time machine. In addition to Jack's father, Kelly is also confronted by someone from her past, and an earlier suggestion made by Jacobs that Jack be killed only to be brought back to life via the power of the TARDIS was included. Kelly also reluctantly remained behind at the end of this version.

A movie is formed
Through mid-September, Leekley's script made the rounds of all the various organisations which had to approve it (Amblin, BBC Television, BBC Enterprises, the Fox network and Universal). Ironically, the death knell was sounded by Segal's own boss, Steven Spielberg. Spielberg was concerned that Leekley's script veered too closely to his own