Doc📖tor Who Am I is a new documentary exploring the production of the Eighth Doctor&rsqu☂o;s 1996 TV movie, and how it found a community of fans after years of being the underdog.
A hail mary chucked into the void, the 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Doctor Who movie was meant to be the life jacket to keep a dying franchise afloat after its slow death and cancellation seven years earlier. Its later years were marred by controversy, including accusations of too much violence, weak scripts, and the in💝famous mistreatment of Sixth Doctor actor Colin Baker to the point that he refused to return for his own regeneration. Yet looking back, this movie is less an attempt to grab at what came before, and more a sign of things yet to come, and I don’t think the fans were ready for it. Maybe they are now.
168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Effortlessly played by Paul McGann, the Eighth Doctor was a cheesy romantic who fell for his companion, swaggering and monologuing to his villains in a grand diplomatic fashion. He was all about being theatrical, disarming his enemies with his charm and wit before cutting them down. In many ways, Eigh๊t was the proto-Ten, with McGann being the David Tennant before Tennant. Except, at the time, that’s not what the Doctor was, nor what its 𒆙fans expected. They wanted a scientific and bizarre alien who was intellectual but unusual, disconnected from humans and treating them more like friends and assistants than equals. The idea of the Doctor forming romantic attachments or being flirty felt at odds with the kind of show it was.
The movie started by reintroducing us to Sylvester McCoy’s colder, more manipulative Seventh Doctor, before a rogue gang gunfight forced him to regenerate not only into a new actor but a whole new era of handsome, young Doctors running about and flirting. That might’ve been scary at the ti🔥me, marking a monumental shift for what Doctor Who is and could be, but it was a kick in the ass the sho🧸w needed. It was perhaps even the biggest shakeup it had seen since the Third Doctor’s Earthbound adventures with UNIT.
And yet, while today the idea of a younger, sexier Doctor has been firmly sold to fans with Tennant and Smith’s portrayals, in 1996, people weren’t ready for it. Complaints were levied that the Doctor wouldn’t dare fraternise with humans and that it was taking his relationships with Earth and human beings a step too far. but it finally gave the show that much-needed em🌃otional spark that paved the way for Nu-Who just nine years later. Without it, things would be so diff൩erent.
168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Russell T. Davies’ 2005 revival took that a step further by focusing on characters first and foremost, whereas the classic serials often placed the story front and centre. While we often associate this more emotive look at the Whoniverse with Eccleston’s Ninth Doctor and Billie Piper’s Rose Tyler, it was Paul McGann’s movie debut that set the stage. Sure, the Master was a hammy American that drummed up the camp (something Nu-Who wasn’t afraid to play up to, either), but he wasn’t the main draw. The Doctor uncovering who he was an💖d why he had such a tight-knit bond with Earth was – it was about the Doctor&🥀rsquo;s heart and his motivations, reconciling with who he had become and who he could be. In many ways, the movie was a retrospective of the show’s history, pushing past its history to forge something new. That’s exactly what RTD did in 2005, although more brazenly by setting Gallifrey alight in the Time War and freeing him from the shackles of 40 years of classic lore.
The whole culture around Doctor Who’s fandom has c෴hanged dramatically since the ‘90s. Peter Capaldi’s casting (the oldest person to play The Doctor to date) was unfairly criticised at the time, with plenty of fans ditching the show when his run had barely begun, purely because he wasn’t Matt Smith. The idea of an older Doctor, who was more disconnecte☂d and alien, put people off.
It’s funny to see that reaction now because that older, more alien Time Lord is exactly what people wanted from the movie, whereas there’s so much demand for another Tennant-like Doctor now that current showrunner Chris Chibnall has spent the better part of his tenure trying to recapture RTD and Tennant's magic, while RTD is 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:literally bringing Tennant back for his first story as returning showrunner. We’ve flipped from hating that young, swaggering romantic to wanting n💎othing but that in place of anything else. It’s not much better, but it proves one thing - Doctor Who and its fandom is a temperamental beast. That constant change in taste is what’s kept it alive for 60 years, but it’s also why there’s so much in-fighting any༺time a new Doctor that isn’t Tennant or Tom Baker pops up.
McGann was great (with his Big Finish audio dramas and comics being some of the best stories in Doctor Who in any medium, ever), and his movie wasn’t half-bad. Looking back at it now, it reminded fans of something they’ve known to be true since the day William Hartnell became Patrick Troughton: that Doctor Who is all about change. The actor isn’t the only thing that regenerates, and that’s brilliant. The First Doctor’s run is un🌸recognisable compared to the Third, and the Third’s looks nothing like the Seventh’s. Over 60 years, this show has changed time and time again and only kept its fundamentals intact, but McGann was just a leap too far for people at the time.
Maybe he’ll get another chance come the 60t꧋⛎h anniversary, but it’s nice to know that there’s a little fandom bubbling for that forgotten movie, one that is undeservedly infamous.