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strange_complexI actually watched this months ago - some weekend in the late summer when I was feeling rather ill and it was on one of the cable TV channels, I think. So it is well out of sequence as far as my reviews are concerned. But better late than never.
I saw it when it first came out of course, on the broken sofa in the damp basement kitchen which I shared with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
hollyione and three others in Brookfield Road, Bristol. At that time, we were mainly bemused by how little resemblance it bore to anything that we had previously understood as Doctor Who. But this time, watching it retrospectively with a knowledge of New Who, I was struck by the place which it occupies on the cusp between the two.
In many ways, of course, it isn't like either. The emphasis on action heroics, rather than quirky cleverness, puts the movie in a place all of its own by comparison with the rest of the TV canon. But obviously it does owe a great debt to the Classic series, while on the other side many of the things that seemed odd and alien to us watching back in 1996 have actually since been picked up and built on by Russell T. Davies. These are the backward-looking and (with hindsight) forward-looking aspects that I noticed on this viewing:
Nods to Old Who
Paths laid down for New Who
All in all, there's a lot more resemblance to New Who than you might think, especially given that this film essentially turned out to be a failed experiment, which might well have just been left to stew in obscurity.
I'm not going to bother discussing the plot, because there isn't much of one, or the awful cartoonish travesty that is Eric Roberts as the Master. Dearie me! In spite of both, though, I actually found myself really enjoying the film overall.
Sylvester McCoy was just wonderful, and I absolutely love him for agreeing to be in this at all. I found his brutally, unnecessarily tragic fate quite moving, in fact, and felt that it had a lot more impact than dying at the hands of something alien and all-powerful would have done. Paul McGann sometimes came across as a sort of pastiche of all the major things the Doctor is supposed to be. You know - eccentric, Edwardian, wide-eyed, spouting technobabble, oblivious to how strange human beings think he is, etc. But then again, this was his equivalent of a first story, and on the whole I do like him even here. I think there was an emerging warmth and a deceptive boyishness in place which (as I've said elsewhere) he has gone on to build on successfully in the audio adventures. And even Yee Jee Tso as Chang Lee wasn't bad. His acting belonged fairly firmly to the goofy sidekick school, and I don't think the character was very realistic. But I guess I appreciated the effort to include a socially-deprived ethnic minority street kid as a character - and to show him towards the end spotting the contradictions in what the Master is saying to him for himself, helping to defeat him and coming over all honest and redeemed as a result of his experiences.
Best of all, though, I liked Grace! I liked that she was a fully-blown, properly-qualified surgeon, who was so dedicated to her job that she was prepared to race through hospital corridors in an opera gown in order to perform an urgent operation. That puts her well ahead of Martha in the grown-up and highly-qualified stakes, for all that Martha was introduced to us as the Doctor's equal ('Smith and Jones'). I liked how we were invited to frown upon the boyfriend whom she has at the beginning of the story for being unwilling to support her in pursuing her career. I liked that she was properly sceptical of the crazy guy who turned up at her house claiming to be an alien - but also entirely capable of accepting the extraordinary when given sufficient evidence for it. Heck, she even grasped straight away how the TARDIS must work - probably the first ever human companion (that I can think of) who has done this.
Unsurprisingly, given all this, she works well with the Doctor, too. While he's staggering about the place being naive and amnesiac, she takes control of the situation, grasps what's at stake, and sets out to help him save the world - even shooting a cop's radio and nicking his motorbike keys when she needs to. She helps to smooth over his theft of a security pass at the big Millennium party by initiating the necessary small-talk. And once she has been freed of the Master's influence, it is Grace who manages to resurrect the TARDIS and free the chained-up Doctor. Best of all, at the end of the film, far from dropping her entire life and running off with the Doctor when he asks her to, she turns the question round and asks why he doesn't come with her instead. Now that's a properly independent and well-balanced companion.
Finally, I suppose I'd better say something about the so-called 'controversy' of the Doctor being apparently half-human in this movie. Personally, it doesn't bother me. It rests on what may well be a joke spoken by the Doctor and a mistaken inference made by the Master. Besides, continuity is over-rated. But I do get how it must have seemed upsetting in 1996, when there was no regular series, and this film was the One Big Hope for Doctor Who's future. And all the more so since it constitutes a clear and easily-quotable departure from the programme's old traditions, which could be fixated on in a way that hazier issues such as the shape of the plot and the essential values in the script don't lend themselves to so easily. All the disquiet about the Americanisation of the franchise and the worry about whether this film was going to do what all fans hoped it would, and re-ignite the series, could be crystallised down into hatred for that one obvious betrayal of canon. So, yeah, I get why people have been exercised about it - and just because I have the comfortable cushion of a whole new series sitting between it and me, I shouldn't dismiss how it must have felt at the time. On the whole, though, my basic response to the issue is 'whatever', and - like the Eric Roberts Master - I'm certainly not going to let it stop me enjoying the bits of the film which I do like.
Click here if you would like view this entry in light text on a dark background.
I saw it when it first came out of course, on the broken sofa in the damp basement kitchen which I shared with
hollyione and three others in Brookfield Road, Bristol. At that time, we were mainly bemused by how little resemblance it bore to anything that we had previously understood as Doctor Who. But this time, watching it retrospectively with a knowledge of New Who, I was struck by the place which it occupies on the cusp between the two.In many ways, of course, it isn't like either. The emphasis on action heroics, rather than quirky cleverness, puts the movie in a place all of its own by comparison with the rest of the TV canon. But obviously it does owe a great debt to the Classic series, while on the other side many of the things that seemed odd and alien to us watching back in 1996 have actually since been picked up and built on by Russell T. Davies. These are the backward-looking and (with hindsight) forward-looking aspects that I noticed on this viewing:
Nods to Old Who
- Use of an updated version of the classic theme tune
- 900-year diary (an appropriate update of the Second Doctor's 500-year one)
- Stealing clothes from a hospital (Third Doctor - though of course also now the Eleventh)
- TARDIS key design (Third / Fourth Doctor)
- Offering people jelly babies (Fourth Doctor)
- Long multi-coloured scarf in the hospital locker (Fourth Doctor)
- TARDIS having a cloister room (Fourth Doctor)
- Seal of Rassilon in the TARDIS (Fourth Doctor onwards)
- The Doctor reading a copy of H.G Wells' The Time Machine (Sixth Doctor met him in Timelash)
- Obvious actual presence of the Seventh Doctor
Paths laid down for New Who
- The whole tradition of stories with a single, one-off companion - like several of the recent Christmas specials
- Use of time tunnels in the opening and closing credits
- The Master's ability to transcend his own body: here a snake, in Last of the Time Lords a ring
- The TARDIS redesign, complete with flying buttresses around the console
- Chang Lee walks all around the outside of the TARDIS after having seen how big it is on the inside, to check that it really is as small as it appears on the outside - like Rose in, um, Rose
- The Doctor as a Jesus-figure - e.g. when he wakes up in the morgue wearing nothing but a shroud, and when the Master puts a device which looks like a crown of thorns on him at the end. (Arguably, this is also a nod to Classic Who, though, and particularly The Invasion of Time)
- The Master hanging onto part of the TARDIS before he gets sucked into the Eye of Harmony - rather like Rose in Doomsday
- Magic glowy floaty shit which comes out of the TARDIS and brings Grace and Chang Lee back to life
- The general overblown hokey WTFery of the ending
- Doctor kisses his companion - just like every New Who companion so far
All in all, there's a lot more resemblance to New Who than you might think, especially given that this film essentially turned out to be a failed experiment, which might well have just been left to stew in obscurity.
I'm not going to bother discussing the plot, because there isn't much of one, or the awful cartoonish travesty that is Eric Roberts as the Master. Dearie me! In spite of both, though, I actually found myself really enjoying the film overall.
Sylvester McCoy was just wonderful, and I absolutely love him for agreeing to be in this at all. I found his brutally, unnecessarily tragic fate quite moving, in fact, and felt that it had a lot more impact than dying at the hands of something alien and all-powerful would have done. Paul McGann sometimes came across as a sort of pastiche of all the major things the Doctor is supposed to be. You know - eccentric, Edwardian, wide-eyed, spouting technobabble, oblivious to how strange human beings think he is, etc. But then again, this was his equivalent of a first story, and on the whole I do like him even here. I think there was an emerging warmth and a deceptive boyishness in place which (as I've said elsewhere) he has gone on to build on successfully in the audio adventures. And even Yee Jee Tso as Chang Lee wasn't bad. His acting belonged fairly firmly to the goofy sidekick school, and I don't think the character was very realistic. But I guess I appreciated the effort to include a socially-deprived ethnic minority street kid as a character - and to show him towards the end spotting the contradictions in what the Master is saying to him for himself, helping to defeat him and coming over all honest and redeemed as a result of his experiences.
Best of all, though, I liked Grace! I liked that she was a fully-blown, properly-qualified surgeon, who was so dedicated to her job that she was prepared to race through hospital corridors in an opera gown in order to perform an urgent operation. That puts her well ahead of Martha in the grown-up and highly-qualified stakes, for all that Martha was introduced to us as the Doctor's equal ('Smith and Jones'). I liked how we were invited to frown upon the boyfriend whom she has at the beginning of the story for being unwilling to support her in pursuing her career. I liked that she was properly sceptical of the crazy guy who turned up at her house claiming to be an alien - but also entirely capable of accepting the extraordinary when given sufficient evidence for it. Heck, she even grasped straight away how the TARDIS must work - probably the first ever human companion (that I can think of) who has done this.
Unsurprisingly, given all this, she works well with the Doctor, too. While he's staggering about the place being naive and amnesiac, she takes control of the situation, grasps what's at stake, and sets out to help him save the world - even shooting a cop's radio and nicking his motorbike keys when she needs to. She helps to smooth over his theft of a security pass at the big Millennium party by initiating the necessary small-talk. And once she has been freed of the Master's influence, it is Grace who manages to resurrect the TARDIS and free the chained-up Doctor. Best of all, at the end of the film, far from dropping her entire life and running off with the Doctor when he asks her to, she turns the question round and asks why he doesn't come with her instead. Now that's a properly independent and well-balanced companion.
Finally, I suppose I'd better say something about the so-called 'controversy' of the Doctor being apparently half-human in this movie. Personally, it doesn't bother me. It rests on what may well be a joke spoken by the Doctor and a mistaken inference made by the Master. Besides, continuity is over-rated. But I do get how it must have seemed upsetting in 1996, when there was no regular series, and this film was the One Big Hope for Doctor Who's future. And all the more so since it constitutes a clear and easily-quotable departure from the programme's old traditions, which could be fixated on in a way that hazier issues such as the shape of the plot and the essential values in the script don't lend themselves to so easily. All the disquiet about the Americanisation of the franchise and the worry about whether this film was going to do what all fans hoped it would, and re-ignite the series, could be crystallised down into hatred for that one obvious betrayal of canon. So, yeah, I get why people have been exercised about it - and just because I have the comfortable cushion of a whole new series sitting between it and me, I shouldn't dismiss how it must have felt at the time. On the whole, though, my basic response to the issue is 'whatever', and - like the Eric Roberts Master - I'm certainly not going to let it stop me enjoying the bits of the film which I do like.
Click here if you would like view this entry in light text on a dark background.
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no subject
Date: Wednesday, 15 December 2010 03:15 (UTC)Interesting. I can easily forgive the 1996 movie because I was so starved for anything Doctor Who at the time. But I still haven't forgiven JNT for being the cause of that famine.
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Date: Wednesday, 15 December 2010 18:27 (UTC)Also, when not blaming JNT a lot of people blame Colin Baker or Sylvester McCoy. But it's interesting to note that the ratings for Colin's first year were virtually the same as the two previous years. The sudden and catastrophic drop in ratings happened when the show was taken off for 18 months -- which was of course not JNT's doing -- and they then stayed low for the next 4 years.
(They'd also fallen when JNT took over, but recovered a year later. But in both cases the drop happened immediately -- less people were watching the show from the very first episode of the series -- rather than a gradual decline as would be expected if people were losing interest in what they were seeing.)
So really, I think the way the show was treated was to blame. Given BBC interest, a showrunner who wanted to be there (and who was allowed to leave once he'd had enough) and good publicity, it could have still worked. And what do you know -- it has! :-)