Doctor Who: The Movie 4K 1996

Another significant milestone in the franchise’s history. This film wasn’t particularly successful, yet it’s still considered part of the core canon, so I think it’s worth mentioning.

So, this film was the first unsuccessful attempt to revive the franchise, undertaken in the mid-1990s through a joint effort by the British and Americans. Although, if you don’t know this, the film might not make much of an impression. The film itself looks like a typical B-movie sci-fi flick shot in the U.S. in the 1980s and has little in common with the grandeur seen in older or modern TV series. The Americans rewrote a lot of it to suit their own tastes. Here, the Doctor turns out to be half-human (presumably to “legitimize” his romance with the Earth woman Grace Holloway) and wanders around a lot, screaming, “Who am I?!” (presumably so that no one would ever ask, “Why is he called ‘Doctor Who’?”). The main antagonist—the Master—is played by Eric Roberts, but for the most part, his villainy boils down to either snarling or smirking, reminding many, for some reason, of a failed copy of the T-800.

All in all, the film is a pretty amusing farce. Those who enjoyed the TV series might want to watch it “for general knowledge.” Everyone else should feel free to skip it.