How we made the Doctor Who TV movie: “It really was a magical experience”

By Sabastian Astley

Published: Thursday, 27 October 2022 at 12:00 am

As soon as Doctor Who disappeared from our screens in 1989, rumours of its return spread like wildfire. Despite the BBC’s claims of dwindling popularity, the show’s fanbase was quickly growing in the United States, so while the UK was seemingly finished with the Doctor, America was just getting started. By way of the passion of a devoted fanboy producer, the star of a British cult classic and a leading US network, Doctor Who was given one more chance in the form of a TV movie.

For writer Matthew Jacobs, the future of Doctor Who would be non-existent had it not been for the vision of one individual. “To me, Philip Segal is the quintessential Doctor Who fan – I don’t think Doctor Who would be here today without him, because he was determined to keep it alive,” he explains. At the time, Segal was Vice President of Amblin Television, working on projects like The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles – but Doctor Who was always near and dear to his heart.

“I was a little boy when my grandfather sat me on his knee, and we watched An Unearthly Child. Now I’ve seen all 760 episodes, even some missing episodes,” Segal says. Though some may have dismissed it as a simple cash-grab, it’s clear from how Philip outlines his love for the series that the TV Movie was anything but that. “What mattered to me was that I felt that this character had so much more to give. For the US, it was not this tired franchise, but completely uncharted territory.”

Relaunching the show was a bold endeavour for anyone to undertake, let alone a brand-new American re-envisioning – but Segal thought he knew how to honour what had come before. “At the time, to me it was really about trying to break new ground and create something fresh – but we always needed that opening regeneration. I needed to show the audience that hadn’t seen Doctor Who something as fundamentally show-altering as that.”

Having your lead regenerate into both an entirely new actor and personality is a quirk unique to Doctor Who to this day and was clearly effective in enticing even the most evergreen newcomers like Daphne Ashbrook, who played Grace Holloway: “The whole regeneration thing got me hook, line and sinker – I thought that was the coolest thing.” Above all else, Segal knew the one thing that was needed if Doctor Who was going to survive in the modern era: “We had to figure out how to take this somewhat two-dimensional character and make him three dimensional.”

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Paul McGann – photographed by Marc Bryan-Brown for Radio Times

Enter Paul McGann. “We were looking for unique actors who had that glint in their eye – that was Paul.” McGann was already a well-known and appreciated actor by the mid-90s, having starred in the cult classic Withnail and I, Spielberg’s Empire of the Sun and David Fincher’s Alien 3. He’d heard the rumours of who the creative team behind the Doctor Who movie supposedly wanted to cast, making him all the more confused when he was invited to audition. “I never expected it to be me – I kept hearing rumours it was going to be Eric Idle or Rowan Atkinson. I thought, ‘I’m not a comedian – why are they asking me anything?”.”

McGann’s potential involvement in the project turned heads, especially Ashbrook’s: “I’m a huge Withnail and I fan, so I couldn’t believe I was going to get the opportunity to potentially work with him.” However, McGann was hesitant to take the role, given the possible long-term commitment and how he perceived the Doctor as a character, based on his knowledge of Sylvester McCoy’s initially more comedic take. “It took Phil months to convince me that it was a good idea – he really came up against some serious pushback, but he was determined to make it happen,” McGann recalls.

Once McGann was on board, the search for a companion quickly followed, and for Daphne Ashbrook it was initially just “just another audition”.

“But Grace was a challenge, which interested me. Their relationship reminded me of Rosalind Russell and Cary Grant movies,” she explains. Ashbrook’s comparison of the Doctor and her character Dr. Grace Holloway to Russell and Grant is certainly apt – the pair’s chemistry is palpable on screen, with Grace able to keep up and at times even outwit the Doctor when it comes to wordplay and linguistic repartee. Off-screen, McGann and Ashbrook evidently have an incredible level of respect for one another, taking every opportunity to sing the other’s praises.”I watched it again recently, and it struck me that it’s Daphne’s film. She steals every scene she’s in – without her performance, none of it works.” For Ashbrook, she feels just having McGann opposite her was a gift: “I always felt that Paul made me a better actor – it was a very elevating experience to play opposite him.”

With Doctor and companion in place, all that remained was to find someone with the confidence to fill Roger Delgado and Anthony Ainley’s shoes as iconic villain The Master – that someone was Eric Roberts. “Well, they just called and offered it to me,” he recalls. Similar to McGann, Roberts’ hesitance came as he had no desire to play a goofy, theatrical embodiment of the Master – he wanted to make people hide behind the sofa. “And I said, ‘Well, the only way I play this part is if you let him play it real where I can scare the kids.’ And they said, “Sure, you can do that.’”

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Eric Roberts as The Master in the Doctor Who TV movie

There remained, however, a touch of the flamboyant about Roberts’ Master, particularly in a climactic sequence which saw him dressed in elaborate Gallifreyan robes. “That’s my favourite costume I’ve ever been dressed in, and it weighed 40 pounds,” he remembers. “You would kind of have to be physically placed inside it.”

Like McGann, Roberts also rejoices in Ashbrook’s stellar casting, noting her elevation of Grace Holloway as a character as integral to the humanity of the TV Movie. “She’s fantastic and plays that role that could have been totally thankless, totally silly, totally nondescript – but Daphne makes it real.”

With the cast in place, Segal attempted to pitch the idea of the series around to different networks, but to no avail. “The reason why we ended up at FOX as a TV Movie is because I couldn’t sell it anywhere else as a television show – FOX loved it, but they wanted it as a TV Movie.” Segal eventually struck a deal with Bob Greenblatt, who oversaw the network at the time: the TV Movie would serve as a backdoor pilot, with the option for six additional episodes if it proved fruitful.

While many fans have since discovered the “John Leekley Bible”, an outline for the series ostensibly penned by writer Leekley, Segal now insists this was mostly his own creation, with Writers’ Guild rules requiring Leekley’s name be attached to it. “John Leekley was a talented writer, but sci-fi was not his genre. I originally developed the series bible with Richard Lewis and Peter Wagg, from Max Headroom.”

Production on the film finally got underway in Vancouver, British Colombia after 5 years of development. For McGann, it seemed like the future of the show rested on their shoulders. “Even when we went over to shoot it, it felt like touching gold. It felt like Doctor Who’s last shot – if this didn’t work, it was finished.”