Feast and famine: the sole Doctor of the 1990s makes his one and only TV appearance...

The 1990s were Doctor Who's very own Decadus Horriblus (thanks to the Basil Brush Book of Latin for this). Up until 1990, Doctor Who had carved itself a niche in the BBC schedules, usually to worldwide applause, high ratings and positive critical feedback.

And then it all went horribly wrong.

By the mid-1980s, Doctor Who was starting to get out of its depth as a result of a misunderstood Doctor, over-complicated plots and a dash of violence. Cue an extended holiday; but on its return, its reputation was still in tatters. Despite a bold attempt to re-invent itself as a confident, clever show of mystery, the BBC bosses weren't impressed. And so the axe fell, leaving the faithful mob of Doctor Who fans to wait and wonder.

They'd wait a long time. By the 1990s, BBC controllers were not interested in producing Doctor Who, or come to that, science fiction or fantasy shows. There was Red Dwarf, which was and still is a fantastic cult sci-fi show that managed to cross over to a mainstream audience. But mainstream audiences apparently were no longer interested in Doctor Who, even though the show had been part of the quintessential Saturday night line-ups in the 1970s alongside The Generation Game, The Two Ronnies and Parkinson.

But don't forget – TV programming had radically changed in the 1990s in a number of ways. For one thing, there was an alarming rise in the number of both reality TV shows and what they called 'Docusoaps', in which a cameraman would follow around everyday schmoes in a particular job, whether it's in a hotel, in an airport or on the road as a driving instructor. No wonder Doctor Who was left out in the cold, since the BBC were hell-bent on patronising audiences with the everyman and woman as the hero of the day. Inexplicably, the likes of Maureen Rees - the shouty Gumby from Driving School, and Jeremy Spake - the poor man's Biggins from Airport were bizarrely offered up as TV icons, even though they mysteriously made up for a total lack of charisma with a big dollop of in-your-face annoyance.

"At the time, Doctor Who was largely regarded as a quaint cult show for geeks with budgets of about 10p per episode"

Which leads me to another factor for Doctor Who's no-show in the 1990s: TV output at that time was becoming more in-your-face, cynical and was constantly obsessed with being cool and “Mad for it”. So we had endless panel shows like Have I Got News For You in which Angus Deayton sat around looking smug for half an hour, or “large”, wacky fare like The Big Breakfast or anything with shouty git Chris Evans in. With that in mind, Doctor Who would have fitted into the hip 'n' trendy TV schedules like Prince Charles at a Rihanna gig – at the time, Doctor Who was largely regarded as a quaint cult show for geeks with budgets of about 10p per episode.

So for the first half of the 1990s, fans only had a few miserly repeats (half of which were available on video anyway) to console themselves with. There was talk of a big reunion show in 1993 called The Dark Dimension to celebrate the 30th anniversary – of course, this came to nothing. Instead of which, the final insult came with a half-arsed Children In Need skit called Dimensions In Time in which past Doctors, companions and the sodding Rani met up with various EastEnders characters. Needless to say, the end result was a piss-poor travesty, memorable only for two bizarre floating heads of the first two Doctors, Leela in a Hessian sack and Kate O'Mara taking overacting to dangerously extreme levels. Cheers for that, Beeb.

Nothing more was heard until 1995, when it was announced that since the BBC were too busy producing period dramas, Doctor Who would be resurrected in America. The plan was to film a pilot for an American-based Who, and on the strength or weakness of its ratings would either live to see another day or retreat with its tail between its legs.

Think about it though, this sounds quite promising, especially since the Americans were producing excellent examples of sci-fi and fantasy shows like The X-Files and Twin Peaks. Later in the decade, we'd get the long-running Buffy and Angel exports, which would prove to be hugely popular in Britain when transmitted. As a matter of fact, the 90-minute Who pilot was ultimately filmed in Canada with swanky new production values and a brand new Doctor, as played by Paul McGann.

Debates will rage until the end of time as to the title of this new meisterwork. It's either known as Doctor Who, The TV Movie or more obliquely, The Enemy Within. You half expect William Shatner to come limping into the set as The Master with a title like that. However, debates will also rage until the end of time as to whether the pilot's actually any good.

Hmmmm. Well, I don't like it much. Don't get me wrong, the production values, filming and direction are mightily impressive. But this is just superficial bling, in a vain bid to divert my attention away from the hokey plot, the superficial characterisation and a long list of other problems that detract from the drama rather than add to it.

One of the key problems is the treatment of The Doctor. Initially, we get a welcome final last bow from Sylvester McCoy, who had the good grace to come back and film a regeneration scene. McCoy's actually really good, portraying an older and wiser Doctor with less face pulling and more vulnerability than before. The Seventh Doctor gets quite a harrowing exit actually, initially shot down by a trigger-happy gang on the streets of Chinatown. However, he's actually killed by an eager surgeon called Grace Holloway, who understandably hasn't brushed up on her Time Lord physiology. Cue a fatal bit of operating work and one last scream from Doctor Number Seven. It may sound like a growl of rage, but there's something a bit disquieting about Seven's last “Raaarrrggghhh”. Most of the other Doctors go with a bit of stoic dignity, but this incarnation ends in discombobulated terror and agony.

In typical Seventh Doctor-style though, his regeneration scene contains so much gurning that you think that there should be a horse collar at his bedside. He regenerates into the George Lazenby of Doctor Who, Paul McGann. McGann is of course, one of the country's top actors, appearing in diverse TV dramas and films such as Withnail And I, Empire Of The Sun and The Monocled Mutineer. He's since returned to Doctor Who through countless audio dramas, and has earned a kudos among Doctor Who fans for his portrayal.

However, I'm just going by his lone TV appearance, which just seems a little – uncomfortable. He's not helped by his ridiculous outfit and frightwig, which makes him look a bit like the lead singer from The Damned. It also doesn't help that technically, he only gets about an hour's worth of screen time. On the one hand, it was a smart move to bring back McCoy's Doctor for continuity's sake. The downside of that is, however, the new Doctor's not really given enough opportunity to make a memorable first impression. His first few minutes are spent in regenerative confusion, staggering about shouting “WHO? AM? I?” like a Roger Daltrey tribute act who's had a bad bash on the head, prior to singing 'Who Are You?'. So effectively, we only get the real deal for less than an hour, and that's just not enough.

"While McGann does his level best with this cardboard cut-out, it's a shame that his lone TV appearance doesn't work as well as it should do"

When The Doctor fully recovers, he's not really given enough character to make him stand out in his own right. He's pretty much a watered-down Troughton/Big Tom hybrid, full of one-liners and eccentric character traits like shoe obsessions and a tendency to threaten to shoot himself when confronted by an angry cop. More of a problem is that he's written as a plummy British eccentric rather than an alien. Some films tend to portray the British as tea-swilling poshos, which may be fine in a larkabout comedy jape, but when you're trying to portray a Gallifreyan from the constellation of Kasterborous, that's a big problem. He even at one point agrees with Grace that he's British, which reduces him to the level of an ordinary fop. So while McGann does his level best with this cardboard cut-out, it's a shame that his lone TV appearance doesn't work as well as it should do. He's very good in the audio stories though, or so I'm told.

Going back to the concept of regeneration though, it's just one example of how the pilot demands that you be a Doctor Who aficionado. In that respect, it's losing potential new converts along the way, simply because they won't know what on Earth is going on. Who fans, in the meantime, can rub their hands with glee at the thought of... The Daleks! The Master! The Eye Of Harmony!

Or maybe not, since none of these returning elements work or make any sort of sense. We don't really get to see the Daleks, although we hear about how The Master's been tried and executed on Skaro. Eh? Since when have the Daleks become judges? Too bad that we never see Davros in a judge's wig, ranting and cackling at the thought of turning The Master into breadcrumbs. But more to the point, isn't Skaro supposed to be a whirling supernova, given that The Doctor blew the planet to high hell in Remembrance Of The Daleks? Oh well, timey wimey, shaddap you face etc.

Die-hard Who fans will probably be left shaking their heads at the return of the Eye Of Harmony, which had been seen in 1976's Deadly Assassin. Back then, it was an overgrown shower unit, but more to the point, it was on the planet of Gallifrey. However, now for some reason, it's in The Doctor's TARDIS. OK, so maybe you can let this one go, since it's feasible that there could be some link with the genuine article on The Doctor's home planet. Or maybe he's just gone and pinched it to show off to guests as an unusual centrepiece.

"Initially skulking about in black shades and togs like a one-man Steely Dan tribute band, The Master later starts trundling about in what looks like a novelty wigwam, while yodelling campy threats"

More contentious is the return of The Master, who oddly starts out as a snake-like ooze before taking over a hapless ambulance driver called Bruce. Before you know it, he's charting new levels of ham rarely seen in Doctor Who – put it this way, Anthony Ainley's performances are positively mournful when compared with Eric Roberts' cartoony portrayal of The Doctor's arch nemesis. Initially skulking about in black shades and togs like a one-man Steely Dan tribute band, he later starts trundling about in what looks like a novelty wigwam, while yodelling campy threats at the top of his voice. And as usual, his motivations are a load of old hat – taking The Doctor's remaining regenerations and destroying the Earth.

And there's the rub – for an all-important comeback, the pilot plot is curiously lacking in originality. And viewing it 10 years after the event, the whole Millennium thing is rather passé, a word that I promise to never use again. Fortunately, we never cut to scenes of HRH grimacing awkwardly in the Millennium Dome while linking hands with eerie meerkat Tony Blair and his rictus-grin wife at the stroke of midnight. Given that the whole millennium rubbish turned out to be a big, damp squib, the same goes for the TV movie. It's a formulaic, by-the-book action adventure, which offers little that's new, fresh or innovative. It's a dull runaround that ultimately proves to have a penchant for cheating by bringing back Chang Lee (The Master's second banana) and Grace back from BEYOND THE GRAVE.

Nowadays, this is par for the course, as the recent episodes have testified. I hate this trick, since it's an insult to the viewer's intelligence. OK, so it allows for a happy ending, but if you're going to kill someone off, let them stay dead. Otherwise it just ruins the story's credibility – much like the way in which time is reversed to the point before midnight and all's well. Again, a massive cop-out, and a denouement that suggests that writer Matthew Jacobs couldn't have thought of a satisfactory way to wrap up the plot. Mind you, recent show-runners have used this trick in stories like Last Of The Time Lords or The Big Bang, so the finale of the TV movie must have struck a chord with Davies and Moffat.

Davies must also have taken note of the way in which The Doctor and Grace lock lips. While die-hard fans were presumably grinding their teeth into tiny chips at the thought of such heresy, others were probably wondering why it had taken the good Doctor so long to get around to speaking zee language of lurve. In actual fact, it's all pretty chaste and harmless. Grace doesn't take it any further and elects to stay on Earth while The Doctor goes swanning off with a scratched record for company. Mind you, if he chooses to dig deep into his vast record collection, he could do a lot worse than fish out a copy of 'Ms Grace' by The Tymes. The minute he saw her face, he knew that he loved her – even though she'd killed his old self off. That's love for you.

I quite like Daphne Ashbrook's Grace – she's a good foil for The Doctor, and in typical '90s style, isn't your archetypal screaming damsel in distress. She's feisty and independent, a bit aloof and distant, but with a vulnerable core – basically she's hiding all her insecurities with a tough shell. Another good character is Chang Lee, who's also played well by Yee Jee Tso – he's very much a chancer, looking to side with whoever has the most power. Naturally, he's taken in by The Master's bad-mouthing of The Doctor – amazingly, he lives to fight another day, even if The Doctor warns him to keep away from San Francisco on New Year's Eve 2000.

"The TV movie is little more than a curiosity, a glimpse into a parallel world where Doctor Who never came back to life in 2005"

Also in the story's favour is the swanky direction from Geoffrey Sax. As a result, the pilot looks hugely impressive, and almost on a par with the big movie blockbusters of the time. Sax has a nice line in contrasts, for example the way in which he juxtaposes The Doctor's regeneration with a rerun of Frankenstein on TV. The effects are generally well done, and there's some great action sequences – The Doctor on a motorbike may not be the first image that springs to mind when tuning into the show, but the sequence is one example of Sax's good, well-filmed work.

Alas though, it wasn't enough to take the show further. The pilot performed well in the UK, but was a comparative flop in America. As it stands, the TV movie is little more than a curiosity, a glimpse into a parallel world where Doctor Who never came back to life in 2005. Way back in 1996, it was back to business as usual with even bleaker prospects for Doctor Who fans. A curtailed repeat run in 2000. And no new series of Doctor Who for the foreseeable future.

But all that was to change in the show's 40th anniversary year. It looked like Doctor Who could finally be about to rise from the ashes...

John Bensalhia limbered up for this mammoth task with a full four-series review of Blake's 7, and writes professionally and recreationally all over the web. Check out his portfolio of work at Wordprofectors.

Check out John's previous Doctor Who review, Survival

IF YOU ENJOYED THIS ARTICLE, PLEASE HELP SUPPORT OUR SITE, AT NO COST WITH ONE CLICK ON THE FACEBOOK 'LIKE' BUTTON BELOW: