Movie Memories

This month marks the 30^th anniversary of the one and only bona fide new episode of Doctor Who to have been broadcast during the 1990s – the 1996 TV movie, starring Paul McGann, made in Canada for the US Fox Network as a collaboration between Universal Television, the BBC, and BBC Worldwide, as-was.

 
That anniversary is being marked in many and various ways across the Doctor Who world. One of these celebratory efforts is a Doctor Who magazine special edition, for which I was asked to write a piece. I was pleased to do so, as I am very fond of ‘the TV Movie’, as fans call it, for all sorts of reasons. While it certainly has its faults, and it was disappointing that it didn’t lead to anything further at the time, one of the reasons for my fondness is a nostalgia for the great excitement at the time that there was actually going to be some new Doctor Who.
 
I was 12 years old when the TV Movie came out, and by this stage very self-consciously a ‘Doctor Who Fan’. I’d been aware of and watched the series ever since I could remember, but when it finally slipped out of the schedules at the end of 1989 I was too young, really, to have had any proper awareness of it having come to an end.
 
Besides which, it was still part of my life, and of the TV landscape. I would see it on video from time to time, via tapes my older brother borrowed from his friend Damien. There would be reasonably regular repeats on BBC2 through the early-to-mid-90s, through which I saw several Doctor Who stories for the very first time. And by the mid-nineties I was also able to start buying my own copies of stories on video, with paper round money.
 
All of which may make it seem a little strange, looking at it from the outside, that I found the prospect of the TV Movie so thrilling. Pretty much every Doctor Who story I bought on video at that point was ‘new’ to me. But even so, I knew it wasn’t quite the same. As much as I enjoyed them, it wasn’t like having ongoing, Doctor Who around. The only ‘new’ Doctor Who there’d been since I’d become aware it wasn’t being made any more was the Children in Need special Dimensions in Time in 1993, which to a nine-year-old had been a crushing disappointment, just a few minutes of nonsense running around the Albert Square set.
 
I was a Doctor Who magazine reader from the end of 1994, so I knew there were all sorts of rumours, speculation, possibilities of something happening in America… And I have a memory of actually dismissing it when my mother told me one day in January 1996 that she’d read that Paul McGann had been cast as the Doctor. “Just another rumour”, I told her, or words to that effect, with the very smug, superior, know-it-all attitude of a fan who wouldn’t even be 12 until the following month.

 
At which point, of course, the latest issue of Doctor Who Magazine turned up with the papers one morning. “With Paul McGann on the front,” as mum told me quite pointedly. Hah!
 
Poor old mum is a bit of a hero of this story, actually. Such was the fractured nature of the TV Movie’s production and its path to the screen that when its 30^th anniversary falls varies depending on how and where you saw it. It premiered in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada on May 12^th 1996; on the Fox Network in the US on the 14^th, and not on BBC1 until the late May Bank Holiday, Monday the 27^th.
 
Prior to that, BBC Worldwide had been hoping to cash in with a UK video release in advance of the UK showing. This was due to happen on May the 15^th, but was delayed due to issues with what edit exactly would be released and the certificate it would gain from the BBFC.

 

Although the internet was certainly ‘a thing’ by the spring of 1996 and I was aware of its existence and what it was, I was still a few years away from being online at home, and thus not at all plugged into the likes of the rec.arts.drwho newsgroup or other fan communities. Indeed, at that stage I wasn’t even a member of any ‘real world’ fan communities, and it did sometimes feel a bit like I was the only Doctor Who fan left in the world. Despite there being regular book and video releases, and a monthly magazine, and now a whole new TV Movie, etc.
 
Anyway, not having any idea the video release had been delayed, I had been able to persuade mum to drive us into Worthing after I got home from school, to head to Volume One on Montague Street, which was the place where I usually bought my Doctor Who books and videos. Only to be told that the video release had been delayed, which as you can imagine for a boy expecting to see a brand new episode of Doctor Who which he’d been looking forward to for weeks, months, since its announcement, and all day at school, was a bit of a blow.
 
Bless him, the bloke behind the counter in Volume One did give me one of their posters for the video release, which was nice of him. I have a vague memory we may have tried Smith’s as well, and if we did that we almost certainly would have tried Woolies too, ‘just in case’, but of course there was no joy. No new Doctor Who, at least not until the following week.
 
This time, I didn’t take any chances – after getting home from school I actually looked up Volume One’s number in the phone book and called to see whether they had the video in. This may not sound like much, but I used to be quite oddly nervous of using the phone. Not answering it, that didn’t bother me at all, but somehow I had this paranoid idea that calling someone, even a commercial business which advertised its number, was somehow intrusive and might, absurdly, make them angry or get me into trouble in some way. I realise that sounds ridiculous, but human beings are odd creatures.
 
Anyway, I plucked up the courage and was delighted to hear they did indeed have it. “Can you reserve one for me, please!?” I asked, desperately. “We’ve got loads,” the person on the other end assured me. “Yes, but can you reserve one for me!?”
 
It was a wet Wednesday afternoon, and mum never liked driving in the rain – she’d only passed her test about eighteen months or so before this – so she really wasn’t keen on heading into Worthing. “Do we have to?” she asked, although I suspect of course she knew the answer.
 
Yes. Yes, we do!

 

So into town we went, and Volume One did indeed have my copy safely reserved for me behind the counter. There probably were still loads out on the shelves, I don’t remember checking. I had my copy, and that was all that mattered!
 
I did genuinely enjoy the film, too, when we finally got home to watch it. I suspect I watched it quite a few times in the following few days, although some of the joy did begin to fade when of course it became obvious that this was to be a lone island in an ocean of no new Doctor Who. With no prospect of further adventures on the horizon anytime soon.
 
But it’s a time I can look back on now with great fondness, so I was happy to be asked to write a piece about the excitement among fandom in the build-up to the movie’s arrival. There are plenty of other reminds of those days in the new special too, of course, so if that’s something that appeals to you then do please give it a read.