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TARDIS Guide

Review of Doctor Who (The TV Movie) by BSCTDrayden

27 March 2025

Transferring my review from the old bad rating site for the badge:

What an absolute mess of a movie! In many ways better than I remember it, and in many ways just as bad.

McGann shines. He is The Doctor from start to finish, and for the most part even most of his lines (though not all) honestly feel in character. He's so pretty! His energy is electric and fun. While not amazing, Ashbrook isn't too bad and does her best with the material she's given. The first 10-15 minutes until we get to the hospital has an incredible atmosphere, and honestly I love it. This may have both my favourite rendition of the theme AND my favourite TARDIS interior.

Unfortunately, the script is a little all over the place, as is the direction. The tone shifts constantly, and often the movie is too on the nose with little respect for the audience watching (wow, he's reading H.G. Wells' The Time Machine while listening to a song that loops on the word time!! His regeneration is like Frankenstein, but we have to juxtapose that with the actual film just so you know this!!!). The non Doctor comedy beats never land, and feel almost like I'm watching a kid's movie that's exclusively for kids, and not for everyone. And speaking of demographics, who is this even for? It's got too much continuity randomly name dropped and shown to ever be a good reboot, but it's got too much of what I just criticised (as well as what I'm about to discuss) to really be for die-hards.

I love Roberts in Big Finish, but here his direction just kinda sucks. He has a couple scenes where he feels like The Master, and he *is* a fun time when he hams it up, but when he hams it up and for most of the movie he's not The Master. He's just a weird comic book villain? And it's just a weird choice that doesn't work when the movie is trying to appeal to both die-hard fans and new ones. I'm also not a fan of Yee Jee Tso's performance; finding it very stiff.

And as fun as most of this is.... The final 20 minutes are just a lot of screaming and yelling, and it's just all too over the top and silly to take seriously as a climax. When I think about how I used to hate this movie and how it had the reputation it used to have, it's because of that final act.

But overall? I was more impressed than not! While I can see why this never took off the way they had planned it to, there are gems of things here that just needed polished a bit.


BSCTDrayden

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