Doctor Who (The TV Movie) - 4K restoration

Chapter the 348th, 30 years on, he's still back and it's still about time.

Plot:

The Daleks exterminate the Master (nobody knows why); his dying wish is that the Doctor should escort his remains to Gallifrey, and the Daleks agree to this (nobody knows why). It's a trick though, as the Master has survived as a globular snake-form (nobody knows how). The snake-form attacks the TARDIS, forcing a materialisation in San Fran Vancouver on 31st December 1999 (which used to be the future). On leaving the TARDIS, the Doctor is hit during a street gang shoot-out. A gang member Chang Lee accompanies him to the hospital in an ambulance with paramedic Bruce, but the snake-form Master has also hitched a ride. Because of the Doctor's binary vascular system, the surgeon on call Grace is confused and kills him. In the morgue afterwards, a delayed regeneration kicks in, and a new Doctor emerges. The snake-form meanwhile takes over Bruce's body. The Doctor wanders around a disused wing of the hospital suffering from amnesia, changes his clothes, and then finds Grace. She's quit her job at the hospital because the management are covering up that they treated an alien. The Master meets up with Chang Lee and persuades the boy to help him steal the Doctor's life force. The TARDIS power source, the Eye of Harmony, will help with this plan; when the Master opens it, the Doctor regains his memory. Its power becomes a threat to the world, which will be destroyed at exactly midnight. That's midnight Pacific Daylight Time, presumably. Anyway, there's then a chase, a MacGuffin (the Doctor needs to get a chip from an atomic clock to fix the TARDIS) and a big confrontation. The Doctor saves the world, leaves Grace and Chang Lee, and goes back to adventuring in the TARDIS. To be continued... actually, no, not to be continued, alas.

Context:

This may seem like cheating, as I have already blogged about this one, but I ran out of Doctor Who stories to blog last year and at the time of writing I'm still living through a long gap before they show any more. As a 'wilderness years' style break from creating and posting chronological indexes of my random musings for each Doctor - like the Paul McGann starring feature-length story, this blog post is positioned in between the classic and the new series Doctors - I decided to revisit the Doctor Who TV movie. Its 4K restoration, which I was lucky enough to get a ticket to see at its BFI screening in May 2026, anyway makes it seem like something new. In fact, as we in the audience were told at that screening, it was something new, even something unique - the BFI version was specially made so it could be shown at 24 frames per second (as is standard for movies) rather than the 23.98 frames per second standard of Blu-ray. So - in the nerdiest way possible - we were very privileged that day. Insert joke here about how lucky we were to see a TV movie that was over slightly more quickly.

First Time Round:

See my first blog post on the TV movie from early on in the blog's life for my memories of this story from 1996. Casting my mind back again to those days, I see further evidence of a theme that I'll come back to in the Reaction section below: the TV movie could not possibly be wholly successful because it was trying to please too many different groups. Why, for example, was the sell-through VHS of the movie available in the UK before it was broadcast on television? This was simply because BBC Worldwide had put money into the production's budget, and they wanted to maximise sales before a mass audience got to see the story for free. If one were to set out to make a straight-to-video Doctor Who special, though, one would almost certainly go about it differently to how one would make a special aimed at a BBC1 primetime TV audience (a one-off TV movie aimed at a US audience would be approached differently still, and a pilot for a US TV series differently from that). The upshot for me was having to make a decision about how to experience the story first as a fan. In the 1980s, I had been an excited viewer of new Doctor Who as it aired, and I was eager to be one again (even if for one night only). In the 1990s, though, I had become a collector of Doctor Who as it came out on VHS, and the urge to continue this, with something excitingly new rather than an archive release, was strong. I squared the circle by purchasing the VHS as soon as it became available, but not watching it until after the broadcast. As a small commemoration of this (so small that it would go unnoticed if I didn't point it out); I published my blog post indexing Paul McGann's brief tenure on the 13th May 2026, exactly 30 years to the day after the VHS was originally scheduled to go on sale. And this post celebrating the TV movie's sprucing up has been published on the 27th May 2026, the 30th anniversary of the BBC TV screening.

Reaction:

There's not much I can say about the magnificent restoration that's been done to the TV movie: when viewed in the NFT1 auditorium at the BFI, it looked and sounded amazing. The TV movie always looked and sounded pretty good, though. The restoration can't do anything to fix the script. If the look of the piece is stunning, the narrative just leaves one feeling stunned. Writer Matthew Jacobs for years thought Doctor Who fandom disliked his contribution, but anyone in the know would not blame him: the root cause - as I touched on in the Context section above - is that Jacobs was servant to too many masters. It was too much of a challenge creating something that would appeal to both US and UK audiences (and the executives that represented them) with differing levels of knowledge about Doctor Who and its concepts. The TV movie is the transatlantic equivalent of a 'euro-pudding' movie; this is a term used to describe large-scale European co-productions, where concessions made to the multiple funding sources from different territories result in a homogenised mess. US productions don't suffer in this way as much, because pockets tend to be deeper, but money still needs to come from multiple sources and there still can be the curse of multiple and contradictory exec notes pulling the writer in too many directions. The budget for the production came from four places: Fox, Universal, BBC Worldwide and BBC Television. Much as a UK-based fan viewer might have bristled at too much of a US focus, only Fox had the power to greenlight a series. Producer Philip Segal should have concentrated on pleasing them, and cut - or at least not highlighted - links to the past history of the show. Anything might have happened in terms of the movie's ratings that would have meant there was no future funding from Fox, but at least the pilot would have been coherent.

Some of the truly damaging decisions can't even be blamed on distant execs, but were made by Segal trying to legitimise his story as part of the overall continuity of Doctor Who, pandering to his inner fan. This is not hindsight bias either; even at the time, I was far from alone in thinking that featuring Sylvester McCoy and a regeneration rather than starting with Paul McGann was a terrible idea. This wasn't something insisted on by the BBC (who believed McCoy's years on the original series were a failure), it was all Segal. Focussing on the Doctor's rebirth not only delays the introduction of the star and the main plot, but it also skews the story's focus toward the more esoteric elements of Who lore (regeneration, finite numbers of lives, eye of harmony energy, etc.) instead of something more immediate and accessible like an alien invasion. I was the epitome of devoted Doctor Who fan in 1996, and I didn't care about that stuff, so I'm struggling to think of anyone who would have. Rather than be annoyed at little errors (McCoy holding the sonic screwdriver facing the wrong way, McGann saying the wrong total number of lives a Time Lord has), I was annoyed at anyone thinking they mattered enough to apply clumsy fixes (a blur is applied to the screwdriver, McGann redubs the line). When it's not tying itself up in these knots, Jacobs's screenplay creates some good set pieces, nice lines and good jokes. The casting is perfect, the direction is dynamic. But nothing makes any sense from one moment to the next, and every time I watch, the mounting number of questions this creates in my mind overpowers my viewing pleasure. I've seen the TV movie dozens of times over the years, but the questions keep coming. It's not just questions about Doctor Who continuity either. It can't be midnight everywhere in the world at the same time, can it?! That's just common sense.

Beyond issues with fictional continuity and real world logic, there are character issues. The kiss between Grace and the Doctor is one example. The controversy about the Doctor having a snog has been wildly overstated over the years; I don't remember it seeming too much out of place, even at the time. But Grace's reaction to it - asking the Doctor to kiss her again - doesn't sit well with her attitude before or after the kiss sequence, where she thinks the Doctor is a dangerously unstable individual. The inconsistency in her behaviour throughout regarding how much she believes the Doctor, and how much evidence she's given that he's telling her the truth (a plate glass window goes all wibbly in front of her, that should be a clincher) undermines the moment where she finally picks a side and joins up with the Doctor. This is the sequence with the traffic cop ("Now, would you stand aside before I shoot myself"), which I think is the one truly magic moment of the story. Jacobs captures the essence of Doctor Who in that one scene, and it's magnificent to watch (as long as one forgets anything that came before and after). Every scene probably works better if viewed as a standalone that doesn't relate to any other; even then, though, a lot of the material is very derivative of other sources. It's like a 1990s greatest hits: the paramedic and hospital scenes are very ER, the cover up of alien activity is very X-Files (the skeptical Grace acts as the Scully of the TV movie), the look of the Master is very Terminator 2, the cloister room is straight out of a Batman movie (it definitely has more bats than it does cloisters - it's more of a belfry room). Collectively it becomes a little too much, but it probably made sense to help the uninitiated in the audience orient themselves towards Doctor Who as similar genre fare.

It reads like I'm criticising Jacobs too much, but to reiterate: I think he did the best possible job with the contradictory mission statement he was given, and the same goes for director Geoffrey Sax and the cast. Segal is the one to blame, but it's hard to blame him too much either: the Herculean effort he put in over many years to get this one movie created, and for it to have even the slimmest hope of leading to a series, was almost as much as holding back death and turning back time and all that jazz. It's 30 years in the past now, and Doctor returned to TV as a going concern just under a decade later, so the only tiny trace of blame that can be left is for making something that looks good but doesn't hang together as a narrative. And that's something that's not exactly rare in US television nor in Doctor Who. 

Connectivity:

Like The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot, the TV movie 4K restoration features multiple actors playing the Doctor, one of whom is Sylvester McCoy. Both stories kind-of sort-of feature the Daleks: the comedy short directed by Peter Davison technically features only Dalek operators and props not fictional Daleks from Skaro; the TV Movie just has a voiceover for the offscreen metal meanies, provided seemingly by someone who's never heard a Dalek before.

Deeper Thoughts:

Walker General Hospital patient record for John Smith: the TV Movie at the BFI, 17th May 2026. Fan friends David and Scott, mentioned many times before on the blog, met me early on the Sunday morning of the screening. We took our seats in NFT1, the biggest screen at BFI Southbank. The programme was more packed than usual, and the event was even more like a mini-convention than ever, with a display of props in the building to view after the screening, as well as the usual signing stalls and Quiz of Rassilon event. The quality of the giveaways for the opening quiz was higher than usual, including some exclusive artwork and signed action figure sets. Regular hosts Justin Johnson and Dick Fiddy asked a number of people up to the stage to briefly explain what they'd provided: Al Dewar from toymaking company Character Options, Jonathan Wilkins from Titan Comics, and John McLay, the curator of a Doctor Who art exhibition. The quality of the prizes entailed the questions being somewhat more challenging than usual; does anyone out there know the address of the Institute where the Doctor gets the atomic clock chip (nobody did in the audience at the BFI)? Eventually, they dispensed with questions altogether and gave a prize to someone occupying a random seat number, K10 (as K9 would have been too obvious). A couple of prizes were given to those who'd travelled furthest to be at the screening; these were two American gentlemen, one from Boston, one from Virginia ("Don't give them the Blu-rays" said Johnson to Fiddy, who as usual was on duty delivering the winnings to people in the auditorium,"They might not work").

(L to R) Johnson, Fiddy, Pontiff

Next was the traditional round-up of social media posts about the event. One of which was someone asking whether - if they high-fived everyone in the front row - they would get a prize? "Let's see, " said Johnson, after which the tweeter fulfilled his part of the bargain, and Johnson added "The answer's No". Dear reader, this was just joshing and the game fellow did indeed get a prize. All this took longer than usual, leaving not much time to talk to Reecy Pontiff, author of a book called Leap of Eighth, which sounds like a fascinating guide to Paul McGann's Doctor's extended universe appearances. After her brief interview on stage, there was a sweet video statement from Matthew Jacobs shown. In this, he described the TV movie as "a stepping stone through the wilderness years". Then the main feature played out. There wasn't much in terms of surprising audience reaction, though McCoy's scream during the Operating Room scene elicited a few titters (it ended up cut for the first UK transmission, because of concerns about being too scary rather than too risible). There was also a warm round of applause elicited by the final caption with the dedication to Jon Pertwee, who died a week before the movie was shown on UK TV screens in 1996. Before the first panel, there was time for one more single interviewee to come up for a brief chat. This was Doctor Who props enthusiast James Sutton, who showed off the TARDIS toolkit, sonic screwdriver, and an Eye of Harmony staff from the movie. He also wanted to make a statement about something that had bothered him for years: because the 70s prop replicated for the movie was never used consistently by Jon Pertwee or Tom Baker, Sylvester McCoy has been unfairly maligned for decades. There's no way he can be said to be holding the sonic screwdriver the wrong way round. "A huge relief to hear that," said Johnson archly.

Sutton with original sonic and toolkit bag props

The first panel featured four people who had worked on the restoration - David Palfreyman, who scanned the film reels (twice), colourist Darren Mostyn, Mark Ayres, responsible for sound remastering and mixing, and supervising producer and picture restorer Paul Vanezis. They briefly outlined the negotiations with Universal that lead to 219 film reels being delivered to the UK in October 2025. This was in the nick of time, as much of the celluloid is suffering from vinegar syndrome, and might not have been playable had it been left any longer. There then followed round-the-clock work for the small restoration team, or most of them at least. After a detailed description of the overtime put in by David and Paul, Mostyn said "I feel guilty now only doing 9 to 5!". Vanezis was asked about whether there was any new material found, but he explained that it was a fairly lean production, so there aren't any significant deleted or alternate scenes that haven't been seen before. Everything will be on the Blu-ray, anyway. One thing that will be slightly different is a moment where the broadcast had a flaw because of a scratched negative. This has now been fixed, because it "Takes half an hour to do, unlike in 1996". It was a panel that was heavy on the technical detail, and therefore a little dry, but it ended with an impassioned speech from Ayres about the quality of the production, and Geoffrey Sax's work in particular. To anyone who thought that the TV movie was not real Doctor Who his message was "It bloody well is". The panel was followed by what Johnson referred to only as the last piece of footage to be shown as part of the screening. I assumed it would be a compilation of extras from the Blu-ray as is usual, but instead it was The Night of the Doctor in full, and it was wonderful to see it on the big screen.

(L to R) Johnson, Fiddy, Palfreyman, Mostyn, Ayres, Vanezis

The final panel featured Geoffrey Sax and Paul McGann. Sax began by saying of the restored version he'd just watched that "It scrubs up very well." McGann hadn't sat through the whole thing, and was asked whether he watches himself onscreen, as some actors don't - "I'd rather not". He explained that it has got easier as the years go by. Because of the strong memories of doing the work, he finds watching things he's in more like watching "A film of a holiday rather than following the story". Both Sax and McGann talked about how they believed while working on the movie that they would later be coming back to Doctor Who as a series: "There was an atmosphere of 'we'll reconvene in six months'", "You know the odds, realistically, but you can't work in that spirit". Sax outlined the differences between working on a pilot compared to standalone or episodic pieces. He also talked about Jacobs's script saying that most of it worked, but there was a challenge to create the final Doctor Master confrontation as the script just stated "They fight in a cool and interesting way". McGann added that sex scenes are written like that. This led to a discussion of the kissing in the TV movie. "The K word!" It was pretty chaste, thought McGann, "No tongues or anything". It was pointed out that Eric Roberts's Master also kisses Grace, and that's a lot more full-on. "That's Eric, though, isn't it?!" said McGann. McGann was also surprised that even to this day no Doctor has given a companion a 'frenchie': "Not even Tennant, like?"

McGann comes to the stage to join Sax

Both gentlemen answered in an unequivocal affirmative when asked if they'd have accepted the same job on a production that was just funded by the BBC without US involvement. Though later McGann did speak about some hesitancy agreeing to sign up for Doctor Who back in the 1990s. Had it gone to series, it would have taken at least six years of his life, and would have meant a move to live in Canada for filming: "The Stakes were high... my kids would have been Canadians". In the end, his agent helped him to be comfortable enough to accept the role. This agent was Janet Fielding (who had played companion Tegan in Doctor Who in the 1980s). McGann hadn't even known she'd previously been an actor prior to the Doctor Who offer as it wasn't something she talked about, but she was able to tell him from experience that (as he quoted her) "It ain't going to be like other jobs ... you'll still be talking about it in 30 years' time". Indeed he was. This may be an exclusive, I can't remember hearing McGann talk about it before, or it may have been a joke, but McGann said he is convinced that Philip Segal could not tell him and his brother Mark apart, and that's why both of them were invited to audition for the Doctor role. Sax discussed the practicalities of filming in Vancouver in the cold of January and February 1996. The final goodbye scene of the movie was shot in heavy rain, which gave Grace actor Daphne Ashbrook's hair "a life of its own". Yee Jee Tso, playing Chang Lee, fell into the fountain during that shoot. McGann described Tso as having a Tigger-like energy. Despite its comparatively large budget compared to BBC-produced Doctor Who, the TV movie was still made with speed and economy, with a maximum of two takes for any shot, according to McGann. He acted out a typical exchange: "Could we go for another take? Was it in focus? Yes. No you can't."

(L to R) Johnson, Fiddy, Sax, McGann 

What for me was the biggest exclusive of the day was Sax confirming that the Dalek voices heard at the beginning could have been worse. The post-production dubbing was done by a Canadian firm, The Loop Group, and none of them had ever heard a Dalek. So, what was originally recorded were some very polite Canadian voices chanting "Exterminate, Exterminate". Sax ended up having to voice the Daleks himself: "Some people like it, some people think it's absolutely terrible", "It's my Hitchcock moment... I'm also the chicken squawk". McGann talked a little about the making of The Night of the Doctor: it was shot in a day with writer Steven Moffat furiously rewriting as it was being made, handing McGann pieces of paper with new dialogue. He just had to lie to people (including the other Doctor actors when filming The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot) if asked whether he was returning for the 50th anniversary. It eventually did leak, so the release of the short was brought forward. It was supposed to be a red button extra on the anniversary day 23rd November 2013, but ended up released on McGann's birthday 14th November. Moffat texted McGann "Happy Birthday" when letting him know. McGann thought this worked out okay as instead of being lost in the anniversary hubbub, "It had a week to itself". The final question was Sax being asked whether he was ever asked to work on Doctor Who after its return in 2005. He had worked with people involved in post-2005 Who production before, and was indeed asked to direct a couple of times, but he had clashes on the dates involved. After that, he wasn't asked again. "They thought you were playing hard to get" said McGann. 

In Summary:

A transatlanti-pudding. But a very good-looking one.

Index: Paul McGann

Paul McGann's Eighth Doctor Stories ...

1996 special:

Doctor Who (The TV Movie) and the 4K restoration thereof

Return Appearances:

The Night of the Doctor

The Power of the Doctor

Spin-offs, crossovers, and such:

Shada (Webcast version)

In Summary:

The George Lazenby one.

Search Out Space

Chapter the 335th, is - if one's honest - not that ultimate a challenge (it's barely 20 minutes long).

Plot:

The Doctor presents the Ultimate Challenge, an intergalactic game show (presumably beamed out to millions of viewers picking up the signal on their Time-Space Visualisers). The challengers on the show are Ace, K9 and an alien called Cedric (from the planet Quirk according to the ever-reliable internet, but the subtitles on my DVD - erm, I mean Time Space Visualiser, of course - say it's the planet Glurk). Various questions are posed about planetary motion and other aspects of astronomy. Occasionally, the programme is interrupted by commercial breaks. At one point K9 can't answer a question and ends up transported into deep space, where the Doctor rescues him. The final question from the Doctor challenges people to find the key to the universe in 30 seconds. K9 tells him this can't be done, and that's the correct answer. The Doctor has an ice cream, and the programme concludes.

Context:

As you can see in the Milestone Watch below, there are very few Doctor Who stories left for me to cover. I'm also running short on curios like Search Out Space to intersperse with those stories, but there are still a few left that meet my set criteria for spin-off inclusion. To whit... Does it star the Doctor? In the case of this story, that's a definite yes. Was it released as an official Doctor Who or spin-off story (i.e. its not an unofficial fan-made proposition)? Yes. Is there a dramatic context to the story (i.e. it's not just a skit)? It's not just a skit and there is a small element of jeopardy (ish). Was it released with the intention of being the main attraction for audience engagement (i.e. it's not just an extra on a DVD or Blu-ray)? Yes. Like the recently blogged Shada webcast, Search Out Space did end up as an extra on a DVD eventually, but when it first came out, it was the main attraction. Have I already covered it in passing with another connected story? No. That was good enough for me, so I watched it - from the Survival DVD disc upon which it eventually ended up - on my own one evening in late July 2025.

Milestone watch: I've been blogging new and classic Doctor Who stories in random order since 2015, and I'm now approaching the point where I catch up: aside from sideways trips into spin-offs like this, the tally stands at 11 Doctors' televisual eras completed (Doctors 1-4, 7-9 and 11-14), and 37 out of the 41 seasons completed to date (classic seasons 1-18, 20, 21, 23-26, and new series 1, 2, and 4-14). Of the 892 episodes of Doctor Who from An Unearthly Child up to The Reality War, 14 now remain.

First Time Round:

Search Out Space was shown on UK TV channel BBC2 on 21st November 1990, almost a year after the last Doctor Who story proper was shown on BBC1. Circumstances when the 1989 season came to an end were similar to the time of writing this in 2025: without a commission for a future run, there was uncertainty about the programme's future. To get a tiny little bit of new in-character material from Sylvester McCoy's Doctor and Sophie Aldred as Ace (not to mention an appearance from K9) was an early Christmas gift for fans, even though it was just an edition of an educational programme called Search Out Science. For some reason, though, I didn't watch it. I must have known it was going to be on (I was regularly buying and reading Doctor Who Magazine in late 1990). Perhaps, as a serious 18-year old, I thought watching a kids' programme (as opposed to the proper, hard-hitting drama that was Doctor Who) was beneath me. The first time I saw it would therefore have been when the aforementioned Survival DVD came out in April 2007.

Reaction:

Of all the Doctor Who curios I've covered on the blog, this might be the most curious. Search Out Space is very odd for an educational programme: all the questions posed in the course of the narrative, such as it is, aren't answered. What shape is the Earth? What makes day and night? What causes the seasons of the year? They aren't necessarily hard to answer, but the programme was aimed at a primary school audience, so you'd expect there to be some confirmation of hard facts included. Instead, the characters drop hints and give clues, but leave it up to the audience to decide. Perhaps the intention was that it would prompt discussion after viewing with a parent or a teacher. There are meta questions without an answer too. For example: if one wants to engage a young audience, why use characters from a TV show that had been cancelled a year earlier? Twelve months is a long time in a primary school playground. Did any of the kids watching remember as Sylv did his 'standing on a wobbly platform' acting against a green-screen (which he does fantastically well, of course) that he was once a hero who battled monsters? Aside from the very beginning credits (Search Out Science was a strand that presumably searched out lots of different topics in other episodes less memorable to Doctor Who fans), it's all Doctor Who; the Who theme is played immediately after those credits and also accompanies the end credits, and there's no explanation or introduction to explain that these are characters from another series. It's an odd approach to give over an episode on one show wholly to another, and would be odd even if the incoming show was a raging success rather than yesterday's news.

Another meta question without an answer: why get actors in to play specific characters only for those characters to present a fictional in-universe programme? Why not cut out a step and just have Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred present a quiz about space? Instead, nobody breaks character, even though they're not doing things those characters normally do (adventures, monster defeating), but are doing things that the actors who play them have done often (presenting children's television). It saves the programme makers having to write and make a Doctor Who style of story, of course, but it's something of a wasted opportunity: an exciting adventure narrative, even with the low budget that the programme had, would probably have been more engaging than disconnected scenes such as K9 whizzing around London trying to decipher what parts of a star's life cycle various coloured sweets represent, while the others cheer him on in a chaotic and noisy fashion. That bit ends with K9 transported into outer space, so at least the Doctor gets to be Doctorish when he goes to rescue him. Though they don't leave any unanswered questions, apart from maybe 'Uh?', the commercial breaks in between the action - actually a succession of comedic sketches - are uninspired. The programme then ends with another question with no answer. The final challenge is about the "key to the universe". I assumed this was some kind of metaphor, and the answer was going to be 'We don't know the key to the universe, but we keep searching and learning new things' or something similar. Instead, K9 just says that it is "hopeless" and the Doctor grins and agrees. It's a bit of a bum note to end an educational programme with a comment about the hopelessness of trying to discover difficult truths.

This wasn't the very last gasp of the classic era (there was still the extended Children in Need skit Dimensions in Time and the Paul McGann TV movie to follow later in the 1990s) but it's close to the end. Despite Search Out Space's oddness, it is fitting that Doctor Who had come full circle, regaining the educational remit it had when the show started in 1963. Just as Sydney Newman wanted, it is again highlighting scientific concepts to young viewers. 

 

Connectivity:

Both Search Out Space and The Robot Revolution feature at least one robot, and see the Doctor rescuing someone who's been transported off Earth. In both, the TARDIS hovers in space at one point. 

Deeper Thoughts:

Past Masters, Ranis, Sontarans, Yeti, Autons, etc. Search Out Space, as mentioned above, was an extra with season 26 story Survival on its DVD release (Survival being the most recently broadcast Doctor Who story before Search Out Space was shown). Intriguingly, though, it wasn't included on the Blu-ray box set of the season that included Survival, nor either of the other two Sylvester McCoy seasons. (An aside: isn't it nice that Sylv is the first 20th century Doctor to have his entire oeuvre released in an HD format? He was so often associated with being the last of something; it's good that he gets to be first in that particular race.) What could be going on with this missing extra? It might be something prosaic like a lack of space on discs, or an issue with rights. Fandom has a different theory, though. The Blu-rays (with umbrella title Doctor Who: The Collection) are season by season releases that started in 2018; the intention is to create the definitive library of Doctor Who TV stories from the classic era. As well as stories, the collection aims to be definitive in accompanying documentaries and featurettes too: one thing that the makers of the discs have been sticking to is ensuring pretty much everything that was included on the DVDs in the way of extras carries over to their HD disc versions, along with even more value added material. At the time of writing this in summer 2025, they're well past half way done. There are 26 seasons of classic Who, and - as with this blog - the collection has been releasing season box sets in random order. There are nine unreleased seasons (five out of the six black and white runs, a Pertwee season, two Tom Baker seasons and a mainly Peter Davison season that includes one Colin Baker story at the end).

One of the remaining Tom Baker seasons (season 13) was announced in July 2025 to be coming out later in the year; so, there will be a maximum of eight sets left going in to 2026. Or will there? Sylvester McCoy may be associated with Doctor Who endings, but he wasn't the last Doctor of the 20th century; that was Paul McGann in the TV movie mentioned in the Reaction section above. In addition, as well as Search Out Space, there was Dimensions in Time, and the Shada webcast (all also mentioned above). Plus, there were three other webcasts made between 1990 and 2004, the years where Doctor Who wasn't being made as an ongoing series (sometimes referred to as the wilderness years). None of these have been included on any Collection Blu-ray set. The fan rumour is that all these and more are being held back for a 27th Doctor Who Collection set, to cover The Wilderness Years. Could it be true? There's been no official word, but most fans online seem to believe it. There are many mock-ups of box set art and proposed contents lists out there, should you care to look for them. I can understand the desire on behalf of fandom to will such a thing into existence. Looking at an analogous collecting space - the official recorded tracks of The Beatles - one sees a precedent for this 'cleaning up the offcuts' idea. The Wilderness Years box set, should it happen, will be the equivalent of the Beatles Past Masters albums.

The Beatles were in many ways a collector's dream with regards to neatness. Depending on how you judge it, they only had 12 or 13 studio albums. A side of material was paired with the songs from an EP to make Magical Mystery Tour, and another side of material was paired with some orchestral music by George Martin for the soundtrack of a movie on Yellow Submarine. Beyond that, though, there were only enough non-album singles and B-sides, and other odds and sods, to make two volumes of Past Masters collecting up the stuff that wasn't on any other album. These two volumes were first released under that title in the late 1980s (just before Sylvester McCoy bowed out of Who as an ongoing series). Later, to satiate a hungry market, there were a few collections of studio outtakes, alternates and experiments, but the Beatles output when they were a going concern is limited to a maximum of 15 discs. Doctor Who, though, has a tendency to sprawl by comparison. The Beatles as a recording group were limited to four people. Doctor Who, on the other hand, belongs to everyone. If William Hartnell isn't involved, it still counts. It's far from an ordered democracy too, more like a billion spores from many many dandelions being blown into the wind. It was only after about a year from the start of Doctor Who in 1963 that comic strip adventures and books featuring the good Doctor started, and they haven't stopped since. There's then been audios and spin-offs and fan made videos and more besides. So, it's very likely that there could be a 27th box set of Doctor Who: The Collection, there's certainly enough material for it; just don't expect it to be definitive, complete, final or neat. Doctor Who can't be contained like that.

In Summary:

Raises questions that it`doesn't answer, the biggest being Why? (Unless the answer is "To give a tiny little extra something to Who-starved fans".)

More than 30 Years in the TARDIS

Chapter the 315th, which celebrates more than 30 years of More than 30 Years in the TARDIS.

Plot:

A young boy playing on the streets of London sees shop window dummies come to life, a web-strewn newspaper seller, and a post box that turns into a Dalek. Or maybe it's just in his imagination as he watches Doctor Who from behind the sofa. The Doctor (or Jon Pertwee) rides in the Whomobile again and is surrounded by dinosaurs that then disappear back in time. Susan (or Carole Ann Ford) is chased by Daleks in Westminster; she leaves some behind by climbing up some steps, but a Dalek hover scout pursues, so she escapes in the TARDIS. Cybermen patrol around St. Paul's Cathedral, following the Doctor and Peri (or Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant). Our heroes give the metal meanies the slip, but then a Cybermat attacks them. The Doctor and Ace (or Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred) are chased by Haemovores who turn out just to be actors in costumes. Sarah Jane (or Lis Sladen) is observed by a Sontaran entering a house. She watches TV alongside the young boy. Robomen and Daleks as they looked in the 1960s movies are observed by the movie Susan (or Roberta Tovey). The Brigadier (or Nicholas Courtney) visits the National Army Museum, but is attacked by Autons. He escapes in his chauffeured car, but the driver is also an Auton. The boy walks into the TARDIS and sees Susan, but then a Dalek appears in the control room. The boy, now back on the sofa with Sarah Jane, is grabbed by her when she is taken over by the Sontaran, with her eyes glowing green. Jamie and Victoria (or Frazer Hines and Deborah Watling) find themselves on Skaro surrounded by the Emperor Dalek and dozens of his underlings. In between all this, people are interviewed about the history and making of Doctor Who's first thirty years, and lots of clips are shown from Who and other shows.

Context:

This seemed like an apt one to watch for Doctor Who's anniversary on Saturday 23rd November 2024, which was not that far from the 30th anniversary of this cut of the documentary's release on VHS. But how would it stand up to a grilling from the standard canon questions I ask about my occasional off-piste viewings? Does it star the Doctor? Yes, I think there are moments where Jon Pertwee is appearing as the Doctor rather than himself, and there are sequences with Autons and Daleks, etc. Does it have visuals? Absolutely. Was it released as an official Doctor Who or official spin-off story (i.e. its not an unofficial fan-made proposition)? Yes. Is there a dramatic context to the story (i.e. it's not just a skit)? Hmm... the dramatic sequences aren't played for laughs, so I wouldn't say it's a skit, but obviously the main point is documentary rather than drama - I'm giving it a free pass. Was it released with the intention of being the main attraction for audience engagement (i.e. it's not just an extra on a DVD or Blu-ray)? Yes. Have I already covered it in passing with another connected story? No. The assessment being successfully done, I watched from the DVD, on my own - it was a bit too niche a prospect to try to interest the family in - musing a little as I did why it has not been made available on the BBC iplayer. It is probably prohibitive rights issues for all the many non-Who clips featured.

Milestone watch: I've been blogging new and classic Doctor Who stories in random order since 2015, and I'm now closing in on the point where I finish everything and catch up with the current stories being broadcast serially. Aside from the occasional sideways step into spin-offs or oddities like More than 30 Years in the TARDIS, I have completed five Doctors' eras and 30 out of the total of 40 seasons to date (at the time of writing): classic seasons 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10-18, 20, 21, 23-26, and new series 2, 4, 5-7, 9-11, and 13).

First Time Round:

I watched the original version of the documentary live as it went out on BBC1 in the UK on Monday the 29th November 1993. The celebrations for Doctor Who's 30th anniversary were many that year. The documentary was shown halfway through a weekly repeat of Planet of the Daleks: interrupted the previous Friday by Children in Need, it would resume four days after the documentary was shown. The Children in Need telethon featured the first part of Doctor Who skit Dimensions in Time, with the second part shown the following evening on Noel's House Party, a shiny-floored primetime entertainment show of the time. I was in my third year student house in Durham for all of these; we had a Radio Rentals big screen TV (my housemates and I all chipped in at the start of the year for the hire costs) connected to someone's toploader VCR brought from home on which I recorded the documentary onto a VHS tape. I don't still have the tape; this is a shame, as - unless I'm missing it - I can't find the original version as transmitted that Monday anywhere on any online video sharing sites. I am much more familiar with the extended version that is the subject of this blog post - it was released on VHS almost a year later, and that's when the 'More than' was prepended to the title. I bought and watched it, at home in Worthing by that time as I'd graduated, on or soon after its release date on 7th November 1994. I can't remember all of the differences between the two. I don't think the TV version had the section interviewing Roberta Tovey on her own about the 1960s Doctor Who films, nor the sequence where Frazer Hines and Deborah Watling stumbled across the Emperor Dalek. The TV version had a scientist explaining how time travel might be possible which was excised for the VHS. I'm sure there were many other differences too, as it was over a half hour longer than on TV.

Reaction:

When Doctor Who videos started coming out regularly in the early 1990s, they weren't the only tapes the BBC were releasing. For a good few years it was boom time, with lots of different television science fiction and fantasy titles coming out. The 1981 TV adaptation of The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy was one of those titles, released on two tapes in 1992. Before the episodes on them played, each tape had a brief message asking the purchaser to register their interest (maybe by writing to a PO box, or possibly phoning a number, I don't have the tapes any longer to check) in the purchase of a potential behind the scenes making-of documentary that might be made available. Enough people must have responded, and that indirectly led to the creation of this Doctor Who documentary. Kevin Jon Davies directed The Making of the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy and it was released on its own VHS early in 1993. Having done this, Davies was perfectly placed to make a similar documentary for Doctor Who later in the year. The Hitch Hiker doco used a framing device which featured Simon Jones playing both himself and Arthur Dent in newly staged scenes within the fictional universe of the show; More than 30 Years in the TARDIS did the same with multiple cast members. Interview material from the same session with Douglas Adams appears in both pieces (Adams was a script editor on Who, as well as creator of Hitch Hiker, of course). I have looked around online and can't find any absolute confirmation whether the original 30 Years documentary was initially commissioned for BBC TV, or for BBC Video as his previous effort was. Whether it was as an extension of the original remit, or the culmination of the original aim, or indeed a bit of both, a re-cut documentary expanded with additional material not shown on TV was released on VHS towards the end of 1994.

There's a lot more of Doctor Who than The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, so Davies has more of a challenge to give every area of Who sufficient coverage in a coherent fashion. He finds a good structure to achieve this. The documentary is in three sections: the Doctor and the Daleks, Monsters and Companions, and Laughter and Tears Behind the Scenes. Sections end with a cliffhanger resolved in the next section, and in between sections are Who-related adverts for Walls Sky Ray ice lollies and Prime Computers. The interviewees are a pretty comprehensive selection; there's nobody from behind the scenes of Patrick Troughton's time, but there were few of those people still living in 1993. Peter Davison is conspicuous by his absence; probably he was too busy rather than wanting to distance himself from the role. Tom Baker is only represented by archive material. All the expected topics are covered: the genesis of the show, Daleks and other monsters, the companions and sexism, special and visual effects, the right level of frightening for kids, the use of humour, the show's eventual cancellation and its afterlife in novels, comics and videos. Davies also manages to explore some of the less well-known nooks and crannies of Who history. The 1960s Dalek movies are given generous coverage (Davies would create another VHS documentary dedicated to these two movies soon after More Than 30 Years). In the fake credits bits in between the sections, he sneaks in test footage for the series' different title sequences. There's un-transmitted sequences from stories included, a couple of Doctor Who novelty songs accompanying clip montages, and lots of Doctor Who being covered on other shows (Blue Peter, Crackerjack, Nationwide, Pebble Mill, and more).

There are loads of clips from Doctor Who, of course, but I think many fans including myself were getting a bit blasé about such glimpses of old Who by then. The aforementioned boom time of VHS had convinced us that all of Doctor Who would be available to own before too long, but - as will be discussed in the Deeper Thoughts section below - behind the scenes documentaries were more rare. Therefore, curios like the adverts and the excerpts of studio footage were more enticing. The newly staged scenes and recreations (Daleks on Westminster Bridge, Draconians and Ogrons on the South Bank, Cybermen at St Paul's) were as close to new Doctor Who as fans were going to get at the time, and so were received with enthusiasm. It was also gratifying, though this might seem strange to someone who wasn't around at the time, that commentators were on screen being interviewed as self-proclaimed Doctor Who fans. Such was fandom's perceived lack of wider affection for their favourite show, that getting Mike Gatting, Toyah Wilcox, Lowri Turner and Ken Livingstone involved seemed like a boon. I have never thought of Cybermen or Jon Pertwee in the same way since hearing Wilcox and Turner rhapsody about how sexy both were. Some of my favourite moments from the documentary: seeing William Hartnell's family photographs courtesy of his granddaughter Jessica Carney; a great live telly moment where a Doctor Who competition on Good Morning with Anne and Nick goes a bit wrong; discussions on a new younger generation of fans featuring Gerry Anderson with his son Jamie, and Lis Sladen with her daughter Sadie Miller. The parents are sadly no longer with us, but both the youngsters now grown up have ongoing roles in the world of Doctor Who audio.

There are loads more goodies. The effects sequence where a character opens the police box doors and enters the TARDIS control room in one shot is marvellous, and was the first time this had ever been done. Mary Whitehouse, an activist who lobbied for her own self-defined standards to be applied to television, is - in my opinion, of course - patronising and wrong about violence in Doctor Who in her interview, but Davies mischievously cuts from her to John Nathan-Turner saying he was happy whenever Whitehouse complained about the show as it added 2 million to the viewing figures. Douglas Adams comes over as the cleverest person involved in the documentary when talking about how humour and drama should best work together. This is unsurprising for two reasons; first, Davies was a long-time collaborator with Adams and so he was bound to show him in a good light; second and more importantly, Douglas Adams was the cleverest person involved in the documentary. There's a wonderful moment towards the end where Alan Yentob, who at the time was Controller of BBC1, is asked about ongoing discussions about Doctor Who's future (that would lead to the Paul McGann TV movie three years later) and quotes Michael Dobbs' Francis Urquhart "You might think that, but I couldn't possibly comment". This came at the very end of the documentary in its initial form as broadcast on TV, and my only criticism of More Than 30 Years in the TARDIS is that in the recut it is followed by two scenes; I would have kept the initial ending and moved those other bits up. All in all, though, watching this documentary was a great way to celebrate Doctor Who's 61st anniversary.

Connectivity:

If I counted up correctly, there are three clips of The Seeds of Doom in the documentary; so, both the Tom Baker story and More Than 30 Years in the TARDIS clips feature the Krynoid.

Deeper Thoughts:

The Doctor's Documentaries. I have collected all the DVD releases of Doctor Who stories and all the Blu-ray releases so far. Each disc of this collection is replete with myriad extras including many a documentary, and I've diligently watched them all. As such, it's hard now for me to cast my mind back and realise that for many years of my fandom a Doctor Who documentary was a rare and precious thing. And before that it was an impossibility. For the whole of the 1980s up to the end of the original run (I started watching in 1981 and continued all the way through the classic series in that decade), I never saw a single one as there wasn't really one to see. There had been only one significant documentary made for the UK by that point. This was Whose Doctor Who, a Melvyn Bragg presented 60-minute long episode of the BBC's Lively Arts strand from 1977 (a few sequences from it were reused in More than 30 Years in the TARDIS). I hadn't been a Doctor Who fan in 1977; even if I had, as I was but four years of age I probably would not have been interested in something about Doctor Who that wasn't Doctor Who itself. Shows like that didn't get archive repeat showings on TV, and in the 1980s the Doctor Who VHS range was only just releasing Doctor Who episodes, with no indication that it would ever release documentaries too. The first time I got to see Whose Doctor Who was when it was released as an extra on The Talons of Weng-Chiang DVD in 2003. I didn't feel I was missing out too much, because there was a Doctor Who magazine every month covering the making of the show in some detail, and occasionally there was a brief feature on a kid's TV show (Mat Irvine talking about effects on Saturday morning TV, or a behind the scenes view on a BBC programme like Take Two, as a couple of examples). There was definitely a gap in the market, though, for something more long form.

Whose Doctor Who Title Card

So, who had the nous to spot that gap, and make the first Doctor Who documentary I ever saw? It pains me a little to say it, because the blog has been a bit critical at times of his work creating them, but it was John Nathan-Turner and it was the Years tapes. Nathan-Turner was producer of Doctor Who throughout the 1980s, and after that had become a consultant for BBC Who product ranges. By 1991, VHS tapes ere being released more regularly than in the 1980s, and there was room to do something different. As a way to package up orphaned 1960s episodes where the rest of the story was not present in the archives, Nathan-Turner successfully pitched the idea of Years tapes: documentaries framing the included episodes and clips. In June of that year, the first two (The Hartnell Years and The Troughton Years) were released. This was ahead of its time thinking from the former producer; while working on the range, as well as creating new documentaries, he made expanded versions of stories incorporating material cut for time, and audio versions of missing stories with narration. In The Tom Baker Years, needing a new idea as Baker's era existed in full with no orphaned episodes, Nathan-Turner created the in-vision commentary, many years before DVD existed, with Tom Baker talking through and reacting to various clips from his stories. All these ideas would become standard much later, after his pioneering but embryonic attempts. A key problem was that there was minimal budget to realise any of these, and that tended to show. I wasn't as wowed as I should have been on watching my first ever long form Who documentary, because it just involved one actor (Sylvester McCoy in the case of The Hartnell Years) speaking brief links to camera. I also would have preferred to watch a full story (and there were loads still to be released) rather than odd episodes, so the main draw between the links wasn't engaging me either.

McCoy doing a link for The Hartnell Years

In January 1992, I saw my first documentary not created by John Nathan-Turner, Resistance is Useless, a 30 minute clip show with a framing device even cheaper than Nathan-Turner's (just an actor's voiceover accompanying a static prop giving us what was captioned as the 'Thoughts of an Anorak'). It was shown to herald the start of a BBC2 season of archive repeats that started immediately afterwards. Though it was great to see the clips, and interesting to learn some facts about the show, this still wasn't a full, proper documentary. That came the following year, also courtesy of the VHS range. As an extra on the tape of Silver Nemesis, a documentary The Making of Doctor Who made by a New Jersey public broadcast network on the making of the story was included. This was the full package, including interviews with cast and crew and behind the scenes footage of rehearsal and production of the 25th anniversary story. One could argue that the BBC shouldn't have needed programme makers from the US to show it how to make a Making Of, but I was very excited by this addition no matter who made it (more than I was by Silver Nemesis, if I'm honest). The documentary remained unreleased on shiny disc for many years, but finally was included on the season 25 Blu-ray box set released in October 2024 (I've got the set, and the US doco is every bit as comprehensive and fun as I remembered). Later in 1993, 30 Years in the TARDIS became the definitive retrospective documentary (particularly in the extended VHS version). The 1996 TV movie had Electronic Press Kit (EPK) material shot during its making, as was becoming more and more common.

The Silver Nemesis VHS came with The Making of Doctor Who

A few years on and DVD arrived, its additional capacity allowing for - and making consumers demand - more content accompanying the main feature. There was an explosion of Doctor Who documentaries as a result. By the time new Doctor Who launched on screens - and shiny discs - in 2005, it would have seemed more odd for its production to go unrecorded than not, and duly a sister show Doctor Who Confidential (later called Doctor Who Unleashed, but essentially the same show) was created. It would have an episode for each story, covering the behind the scenes process of its making. Some of this material would also make it on to the home video box set releases. In 2022, an authored documentary was created called Doctor Who Am I, showcasing Matthew Jacobs - writer of the aforementioned 1996 TV movie - and his engagement with mass fandom. This achieved the rare feat of a brief theatrical run in UK cinemas. Documentaries about the Doctor have come a long way since those early forays, and any child starting to watch Doctor Who now will likely have a much better first documentary experience than I did. Nonetheless, a debt is owed to those that pioneered such work, including JNT.

In Summary:

Docu-tastic!

The Curse of Fatal Death

Chapter the 308th, which may be taking the mickey a little bit.

Plot:

An alternative ninth Doctor and his companion Emma run into the Master. Leaving his speaker on when talking TARDIS to TARDIS, the Master gives away his plans to nobble his fellow Time Lord, but the Doctor isn't interested anyway. He invites the Master to join him in a castle on the planet Tersurus where he announces he's giving up his do-gooding to get married to Emma. The Master tries various attempts to capture the Doctor using many traps he has travelled back in time and bribed an architect to install in the castle. The Doctor, though, has also gone back and bribed the architect to undo the stuff that the Master insisted on. The Master keeps falling through a trap door into the Tersuran sewers, then taking hundreds of years to climb back out. Each time, he pops back to the right moment in his TARDIS having aged more and more. Fed up with this, the Master teams up with the Daleks who rejuvenate him with Dalek technology. The baddies plan to use a Zektronic energy beam to conquer the universe. The Doctor and Emma escape, but the Doctor is wounded and regenerates into a quite handsome Doctor. Fixing the out-of-control Zektronic beam causes the Doctor to regenerate into a shy Doctor and then a very handsome Doctor. He is then zapped again. With his powers of regeneration halted by the energy of the blast, it looks as if he's died after an emotional farewell to Emma. The Daleks and the Master vow to turn to good in memory of the Doctor. Then, miraculously another regeneration starts, and the Doctor becomes a woman. Emma is no longer attracted to the Doctor, but the Master is. As they walk off together, the new Doctor asks the Master how he got his nickname, and he says he'll explain later.

Context:

So, is this taking the mickey? As per the milestone watch below, I am running out of stories to cover on the blog, so am on the look out for spin-offs and non-canonical Doctor Who to keep things going a little longer (otherwise this blog will just be writing up Ncuti Gatwa's new stories one by one in order, spoiling the intended random approach). There's got to be limits, though: in a recent post I set out the questions that I would have to ask myself about any story included for the blog. Does it star the Doctor? This is answered by an emphatic 'Yes' in the case of The Curse of Fatal Death - it starts five of them. Does it have visuals? Yes. Was it released as an official Doctor Who or official spin-off story (i.e. its not an unofficial fan-made proposition)? Yes. Was it released with the intention of being the main attraction for audience engagement (i.e. it's not just an extra on a DVD or Blu-ray)? Yes (after its broadcast as part of a telethon, it received a VHS release as part of the Doctor Who range). Have I already covered it in passing with another connected story? No. Finally, though, there was this question: is there a dramatic context to the story (i.e. it's not just a skit)? I think that The Curse of Fatal Death goes beyond just being a skit. It's a BBC-commissioned live action version of Who, the only such between the Paul McGann TV movie and the 2005 relaunch; it's a love letter to the show, and has a structured narrative with beginning, middle and end as well as cliffhangers and surprises. Rowan Atkinson is playing it pretty straight too. I watched on Youtube one evening on my own (an extended Doctor Who sketch from 25 years ago would have been a hard sell to any of the family, so I didn't try).

Milestone watch: I've been blogging new and classic Doctor Who stories in random order since 2015, and I'm now closing in on the point where I finish everything and catch up with the current stories being broadcast serially. Apart from a few extra bits and bobs like The Curse of Fatal Death that I throw in occasionally, I have completed 27 out of the total of 40 seasons to date (at the time of writing): classic seasons 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10-12, 14-18, 20, 21, 23-25, and new series 2, 4, 6, 7, 9-11, and 13).

First Time Round:

I had a strong memory of this, and it was completely wrong. I can remember very well having a discussion with mates about going to a St. Patrick's day night at a pub, but they were staying in to watch Comic Relief. I was astonished that anyone, even a Doctor Who fan anticipating some new televisual material, would choose to stay in and watch the - forgive me, I know it's for a good cause and all - protracted bore-fest that is Comic Relief when they could be drinking Guinness and singing an off key version of Dirty Old Town with complete strangers. But I got no takers. I went to the pub on my own, and did indeed drink Guinness and sing an off key version of Dirty Old Town with complete strangers. I thought this was 1999, when Doctor Who was forming part of Comic Relief's offerings, but looking at the date of the broadcast that year it was on the 12th March, too far away from St. Patrick's Day for any pub to have a tie-in. I'm guessing that I'm remembering events from two years later in 2001 when patron saint and charity telethon more closely aligned. I then remembered that I have access to my 1999 diary, so checked out the entry. I was instead at a leaving do for someone at my day job of the time. So, I did indeed skip the live broadcast, taping and watching back The Curse of Fatal Death at a later date (I must have had to use an entire E180 on LP mode to capture everything from the evening, fast forwarding to the Doctor Who bits). There's nothing in the diary entries of the next few days about the skit (I was 26, it's not the sort of thing I was writing about at the time) but I estimate I wouldn't have waited much after the 13th March to watch it.

Reaction:

Imagine a parallel universe where this was the last ever Doctor Who broadcast on television by the BBC. As I've mentioned in blog posts before, the period encompassing the end of the 1990s and start of the 2000s was a low point for my favourite show. The excitement of the 30th anniversary in 1993 and an American co-production TV movie in 1996 had faded; Doctor Who appeared to be dead, and there was nothing, not even the slightest hint, to suggest it was going to lurch back into life again. If the 2005 relaunch had not happened, and there's all sorts of reasons why it might have stalled, The Curse of Fatal Death wouldn't be the worst send-off one could imagine. It's full of love for the programme, has a couple of really rather good jokes, and some fun cameos of stars as the Doctor giving us a glimpse into how they'd play the role. At least a couple of those, Jim Broadbent and Hugh Grant, were - and I think still are - too big to take the role on properly; they were flippin' movie stars, we were briefly very blessed. Of all of the cameos, Hugh Grant plays it straightest, even more than Atkinson, and his death scene is almost emotional. He's still playing it a bit 'Edwardian' compared to the more modern and slightly more down-to-earth approach that became the norm from 2005 onwards; Doctor Who had not yet dumped that baggage. Who could still hold its own as an entertaining segment on primetime TV, though, which was a good sign for the future. Another sign of the future was its writer, Steven Moffat, someone who subsequently has written by far the most Doctor Who episodes to entertain audiences of primetime TV of anyone (as contributing writer and/or showrunner from 2005 to date); so, it's good that he started practising early.

Moffat's key aim is to generate jokes, and there's three types of these on show in increasing levels of specific geekiness. First, there's general humour: there's a lot of fart jokes, for example, emerging from the premise that the people of the planet Tersurus communicate by controlled release of methane. A lot of these jokes were - in my opinion, natch, humour is subjective - rubbish; but the line about how the Tersurans died out ("They discovered fire") is a 24-carat killer line. It still falls a bit flat, though - what the programme needs is an audience laugh track to lift it. I don't remember whether it did have as part of the telethon, but none of the versions I've found online do. The second type of humour is the generic, i.e. jokes about general science fiction tropes like Jonathan Pryce's cackling and monologuing as the Master. A long sequence that is gleefully ripping off Bill and Ted falls into this category, where the Doctor journeys back in time to undo the mischief that the Master has done, then the Master travels back to undo that undoing, and the Doctor travels back to undo that, and so on. Finally, there's the third category, humour specifically about Doctor Who: jokes about Daleks not having noses or chairs, for example, or jokes about the ubiquity of quarries. The running gag of waving away the need to clarify the action with an "I'll explain later" was presumably directed at Who too, though I don't think the programme does this as much as is made out. Just when Moffat looks to be overusing the phrase, he saves it by turning it into the Doctor's faltering final words as he is dying, then puts a cherry on it at the end by turning it into a bedroom double entendre about why the Master is so called.

Moffat is clever enough not to do any jokes about Doctor Who's sets wobbling. Firstly because he knows that was never really true anyway, but also because he was probably aware that - being for charity - his story would need to be done on the cheap. The sets, props and effects are as good as can be expected in those circumstances. The score uses many recycled cues from the Who archive, so even if one wasn't enjoying the comedy one could play a game of name that tune (and name the episode it comes from) as one watches. The overall result of all this is a little cheesy, but inoffensive and at times almost magical. It also gives Moffat a chance to road test some things he would return to in his future stories: the Doctor falling in love and getting married, a gender swap regeneration, a Time Lord aged by a thousand plus years, the Doctor miraculously regaining the power to regenerate when it was thought that he could do so no more, the Daleks having a chair for no apparent reason, a character quoting Terrance Dicks in saying that the Doctor was "never cruel or cowardly", having a character say a line something like "Look after the universe for me - I've put a lot or work into it". It's not just Moffat getting the benefit, though. At the time it seemed like Doctor Who needed Comic Relief, but looking back now I think that it was more likely that Comic Relief needed Doctor Who. There's something special about the programme that started in 1963 that makes it able to endlessly generate concepts and visuals and jokes (see Deeper Thoughts section below for more of this topic), which is exactly what the charity that started in 1985 consumes rapaciously to power good works.

Connectivity:

Both The Curse of Fatal Death and Rogue feature the Doctor attracted to someone, with hints about his getting hitched (wedding plans with Emma, a proposal on one knee from Rogue); they also both feature a fleeting appearance by Richard E Grant playing the Doctor.

Deeper Thoughts:

Sketchy History. The history of Doctor Who take-off skits and sketches is almost as long as the history of Doctor Who itself. This is literally true: Michael Bentine comedy show It's a Square World featured a sketch with Clive Dunn as a parody of the Doctor (in a William Hartnell style costume) that was broadcast on the last day of 1963 when only one complete Doctor Who story had yet been shown. Writing and production were even earlier than that, with pre-filming done on 9th December 1963 (when only three episodes of Doctor Who had aired) and studio shooting on 20th December 1963 (when only four episodes of Doctor Who had aired). The concepts and visuals of the show clearly had an instant impact such than any comedian or satirist could be sure that the audience would know what was being parodied; this was, of course, even before the Daleks had reared their ugly domes. Once Skaro's finest had glided into the public consciousness, the chances for making fun were multiplied. Through the 1960s and 70s, many comedy and variety shows would use the show's iconography, with and sometimes without Daleks: Bernie Winters, Wayne and Shuster, The Black and White Minstrels, Crackerjack, Basil Brush, Rod Hull and Emu, Spike Milligan, and many more - all did sketches, and some even resisted basing their material on the old canard that Daleks can't go upstairs. These were affectionate (towards Doctor Who, I mean, the Minstrels and Milligan's sketches were likely to offend in other ways), which represented how the show was thought of in wider society in those times. By the 1980s, it felt to me like something changed and the humour tended to be slightly more at the programme's expense, but it was a big programme by then and could take it.

Clive Dunn and Michael Bentine

A trio of late 1980s sketches from BBC TV programmes were included on the VHS release of The Curse of Fatal Death as extras, and so became most well known to fandom: a sketch from The Lenny Henry Show, a very short sketch from Victoria Wood As Seen On TV, and an unused sketch from French and Saunders (which was shot on the set of The Trial of a Time Lord). All these took some pot shots at the complicated continuity of the show, or its lack of good material for women, or its silly design, or its silly names. Some of the barbs were unfair, but it's hard to argue with most of that. Henry's portrayal of the Doctor, and a little anti-Thatcher political humour (a few years before the series did something similar itself in The Happiness Patrol), make his sketch one of the most worth watching. Once the show was off the air, there was still the odd skit being made occasionally. Doctor Who fans on the writing and performing sides of the Dead Ringers crew meant that show - on radio or TV - featured Doctor Who-related gags frequently, and this continued when their sketches were riffing on Doctor Who made after 2005. Though some talented people have made Doctor Who sketches in the 2010s and 20s (not least Harry Hill and Rhys Thomas) and Who-related material has featured again in Comic Relief nights over the years, there's been little to my mind that made as much impact as The Curse of Fatal Death, even the very funny and reasonably well budgeted The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot made by Peter Davison for the 50th anniversary. But there was one sketch that did draw a lot of attention, albeit partially for the wrong reasons, which aired only a few months after Steven Moffat's Comic Relief opus.

Lenny Henry

On BBC2 in November 1999, there was a Doctor Who Night, a few hours where the channel was given over to themed programming about the series. During the night, there were three sketches made by and starring Mark Gatiss and David Walliams, both Doctor Who fans and comedians who subsequently became much more famous than they were then (and both appeared in Doctor Who subsequently too, with Gatiss also writing multiple episodes). Moffat was magnanimous enough to say that the sketches were much funnier than The Curse of Fatal Death, and I felt the same (it was the difference between broad mainstream jokes on BBC1 and edgier humour on BBC2). Two of the sketches were innocuous enough, even though one did feature a couple of fans kidnapping Peter Davison ("Do you think it would be alright to kiss Peter Davison?" "Yes"). But then there was The Pitch of Fear. It was a clever sketch that involved Walliams pitching the whole of the 26 years of the classic series to the BBC as if it were fully planned in advance - a sample gag is that Jon Pertwee's agent had been approached and he's becoming free in 1970, but they have to release him in 1974 because he's "got Worzel Gummidge". Again, harmless stuff, but there was also another line in there about casting that caused more of a stir. "I don't want to do this show," says the pitcher, "Unless we get the most charismatic, talented actors to play the Doctor." "For the whole 26 years?" asks the Exec. "Nah, towards the end, just any old f**ker with an equity card." It's a very funny line, but - unlike the Doctor, according to Terrance Dicks's famous description - it was a bit cruel, and maybe also a bit cowardly.

Mark Gatiss in The Pitch of Fear

The writer-performers of the sketch were probably referring more to public perception of Doctor Who performances in the 1980s than their own views of their quality. A lot of people felt and still feel that Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy - and less but some think this of Peter Davison too - weren't as good hires as the earlier Doctors. It was also likely (given that pot shots had been taken earlier in the sketch about his costuming decisions) that it was John Nathan-Turner, the producer in those later years, that was the real target of any criticism. A celebratory night about Doctor Who, however irreverent, probably wasn't the place to suggest anyone who'd worked on the show in a prominent role was not charismatic or talented, though. Gatiss had worked with Davison, Baker and McCoy on fan projects when he was less well known, which made it personal for some involved. Gatiss expressed regret and the sketch was re-edited, shorn of its funniest line for its official release (as an extra on a DVD release a few years later). With new episodes regularly being made, turning in a short scene for Comic Relief or for Children in Need now is an easy ask, but obviously will be less special than in 1999 when any tiny fragment - even if played for laughs - would be all that fans had seen for years, and might be the last they ever saw. So, unless anyone is prepared to be outrageously rude about people who star in or make Doctor Who again, I can't see any future sketch having the impact of those broadcast in 1999. But maybe that's a good thing.

In Summary:

A bit naff, but it was for charity.