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10 fun facts about the Doctor Who TV movie

December 31, 2024 by Alex Skerratt Leave a Comment

The Doctor Who TV movie is quite different from anything else in the Whoniverse, being the only Doctor Who episode to be made by an American production company. Here are 10 interesting facts that you might not know about the Eighth Doctor’s debut story…

1) Not everyone wanted Sylvester McCoy to appear

doctor who tv movie
(C) BBC

The originator of the Doctor Who TV movie, Philip Segal, was adamant that the story should start with a regeneration. He thought it would dishonour the Seventh Doctor Sylvester McCoy if he wasn’t given the opportunity to hand over the TARDIS keys, although not everyone was in favour of this idea. By this point, the Doctor Who TV movie had already acquired a number of stakeholders, all of whom had their own visions of how the finished show should look. In the end, it was the BBC’s Jo Wright who managed to convince everyone that it would be fine as long as McCoy only appeared briefly, and didn’t say anything!

2) They almost dropped the iconic theme tune

Believe it or not, the BBC doesn’t own all of the rights to the iconic Doctor Who theme tune – at least, not when the Doctor Who TV movie was made. And when it was discovered that the producers would have to pay a sizeable fee for its inclusion, not everyone was keen. But it was the producer Philip Segal who ultimately managed to convince them that it would be a wise investment.

3) The decaying Master

doctor who tv movie
(C) BBC

The Doctor Who TV movie is all about the Master trying to find a replacement for his dying body, and the original plan was for his Bruce form to slowly decay over the course of the adventure, realised by prosthetics. However, the actor Eric Roberts found these prosthetics too restrictive, and in the end the decision was made to simply give him dark glasses.

4) Leonard Nimoy was originally going to direct

Yes, the actor Leonard Nimoy of Star Trek fame was originally going to direct the Doctor Who TV movie, albeit a completely different version. Long before Fox acquired the rights, Doctor Who had been stuck in something of a bidding war which had lasted years, and one of these alternative projects was to be overseen by Nimoy. The team was on the cusp of entering production when Philip Segal put a stop to their project, and essentially talked Nimoy out of getting involved.

5) Peter Capaldi was invited to audition

Peter Capaldi, otherwise known as the Twelfth Doctor, was invited to audition for the eponymous Time Lord in the Doctor Who TV movie, but he declined. He was one of many other actors who were considered for the part, including Rowan Atkinson, who later played the Doctor in the Comic Relief special ‘The Curse of Fatal Death,’ and Derek Jacobi, who later played the Master in ‘Scream of the Shalka‘ and ‘Utopia.’

6) The movie was shaped by fans

The producer Philip Segal was a huge fan of Doctor Who himself, and was something of the Russell T Davies of his time. But he also called upon the services of other fans in an unofficial capacity when it came to shaping the Doctor Who TV movie, enlisting Doctor Who historians Jean-Marc Lofficier and his wife Randy as consultants, and later Shaun Lyon of the now defunct Outpost Gallifrey website (now Gallifrey Base.) Indeed, it was Lyon who noticed an error in the movie’s rough cut, when the Doctor erroneously states that he has 12 lives, rather than 13. He obviously hadn’t seen ‘The Timeless Children‘!

7) The Doctor originally had a family

tardis eighth doctor
(C) BBC

The Doctor Who TV movie went through many iterations in its formative stages. One of these was a story which centred around the Doctor’s father – a famous time travelling adventurer called Ulysses. In this alternative timeline, the Master was the Doctor’s half brother, and the Time Lord Borusa was their grandfather, whose spirit had been transferred to the heart of the TARDIS as a sort of guiding presence. But in the end, all of these ideas were abandoned, largely because of the withdrawal of Amblin from the production. Its owner, a little-known director called Steven Spielberg, felt that the concept was too close to the Indiana Jones franchise.

8) The Daleks were originally meant to appear

doctor who tv movie daleks
(C) BBC

Granted, the Daleks do (sort of) feature in the Doctor Who TV movie, although the original plan had been to give them a much bigger role, redesigned in a robotic spider form, if you can imagine that. And even though their voices can still be heard in the movie’s opening sequence, this was something of a rush-job as, according to the director Geoffrey Sax, he didn’t have any reference material for the Daleks’ voices, and had to make his best guess.

9) Geoffrey Sax played the chicken

Speaking of Geoffrey Sax, one voice that he didn’t need any reference material for was that of the chicken during the traffic jam scene. In the Doctor Who TV movie, there’s a sequence where the Doctor is rushing to the beryllium clock only to be delayed a crashed truck, loaded with poultry. When an emergency chicken sound effect was needed for this scene, Sax gladly offered his services. History could have been very different, though, as in earlier drafts of the script the road was blocked by rampaging circus animals!

10) The ‘original’ version has never been released

doctor who tv movie
(C) BBC

The Doctor Who TV movie has a complicated release history on home media, and it didn’t come out in the States until 2011. Even then, it was running at a speed 2% quicker than it should have been, due to its having been converted to PAL for the UK release. This PAL re-scan was also used as the source for the Blu-ray re-release some years later, meaning that the only people who ever saw the Doctor Who TV movie in its purest form were those who saw it on transmission in America in May 1996.

Can you name any other fun facts about the Doctor Who TV movie? Let us know in the comments below.


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