Doctor Who classic season 1 review

jedidia

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Being as obsessed with old scifi as I am, I decided to watch old Who, from its very beginnings. My wife objected after a few episodes (although she sat quite bravely through all of Star Trek: TOS), so we switched to new Who instead, with me watching a few episode of the classic series every now and then when she isn't around. Since she's currently in the hospital, and I spend most of the day visiting her and the kids there and am usually too tired in the evening to do anything useful, I actually managed to complete the first season.

As I saw a distinct lack of reviews of classic who on the web, I decided to post a small review myself. Not an episode by episode recap, mind you, but just a general overview and critique, in case anyone else is interested in watching classic Who but can't get himself to sit through it.

General Critique:

Doctor Who is slightly older than Star Trek: TOS (3 years to be precise), and many people wishing to watch them nowadays for whatever crazy reason are unprepared that it is still black and white. It stayed black and white until the seventies, although color telly was invented a lot before that. The reason here are budget constraints. Having a color television is one thing, having all the equipment to record television in color quite another. In general, classic Who is as low-budget as it gets. The show suffers a couple of related and unrelated problems, most of which being a product of their time.

1. Stage Acting: This is a general problem of the time. The fact that screen acting and stage acting are two distinct things obviously hasn't quite sunken in yet. This is not to discredit the art of stage acting, it just looks incredibly silly on a TV screen, especially when watched nowadays. Stage Acting cannot portray subtle facial expressions or small movements, due to the distance the audience is separated from the actual play. Everything has to be played up and overemphasized in order for the audience to know what is going on. Many actions have to be slowed down, which is especially obvious in action scenes, that just seem to move on at a glacial pace (this actually has stayed a problem even in modern cinema when it comes to melee fights. Hollywood still hasn't found a way to capture the frenetic, hyper-fast and complex action that is actual swordplay in a way to do it justice, because any viewer not interested in the martial arts simply wouldn't have a clue of what's going on).

When seen on the screen close-up, stage acting looks utterly unreal. It is clear that everyone is actually acting, which is somewhat ridiculous to watch for us nowadays. Especially the close-ups of screaming women drove my wife crazy.

2. Music score: The Music score is quite ok in general, there's just this utterly hilarious dramatic over-emphasis many of us know and hate from really old movies. "...then we will kill them!" - BA-DAAAAAAA! It has me laughing every single time, especially if combined with a "dramatic" close-up of the speakers face.

3. Science: Yes, doctor Who is labeled as science fiction. However, don't expect any science. Not even hoky-poky high concept 60's "science" a la TOS. (Well, some ideas could be labeled high concept, but they never get into the center of the plot). If TOS is classic science fiction, Doctor Who is hack-sf, comic book style, with one Bat Durston after another.

4. Slips of tongue: Editing scenes wasn't quite as easy in the past as it is today, and neither was resetting everything to re-shoot a scene. This means that when one of the actors blunder their line delivery, usually they just repeat it, which sometimes breaks the flow and feels generally awkward. It doesn't happen too often though.

5. The Tardis: Well, this isn't really so much critique as a bit of admiration. The Tardis is a magical machine indeed. Not only can it travel through time and space, it is also the ultimate budget saver. It can travel from one place to the other without actually moving? Great, no spaceship shots, no planet shots, and certainly no spaceship landing on planet shots (which were, by the way, why Star Trek had teleporters. The budget didn't allow for a "spaceship landing on planet" shot every other episode).

And to top it off, it's bigger on the inside than on the outside. Boom baby, we don't even need an elaborate model. We just rent a police box, dump it in the studio, and we're done. Because, SCIENCE! Somehow...
As mentioned in the first episode the Tardis would actually have the power to disguise itself to blend into its surroundigs. It turned into a police box when the doctor landed in 63 in London, after which that circuit stopped working. New Who once references this and the doctor says that he never fixed it because he liked the police box. Also, Who writers probably like their fans, who might start the third world war over a changed Tardis.

The Tardis however does produce some problems. Most notably, it has to be out of bounds for most of the time, to explain why not everyone just gets in and gets on with it when in mortal danger, similar to the Star Trek teleporter having to fail every other episode. Also, the Tardis is incredibly unreliable. You never know where it'll drop you, which is great storytelling wise, but frankly somewhat difficult to swallow.

The Doctor: The Doctor of the first season is a far cry from what he is to become. The only character trait he seems to carry through to later on is being obnoxious, although not always in such a charming way as later in the series. He hasn't got much compassion, and at times is a real Jerk.
It gets somewhat better towards the end of the first season, but the Doctor from the first half is an utterly unlikeable character. Anyways, on we go to the actual show. The show was split into twenty-five minutes episodes, several of which make up a plot-arch, which are not connected by anything else than the characters. This review will structure itself on focusing on these serials rather than individual episodes.


100'000 BC (4 episodes):
The show is of to a good start with the Episode "an unearthly child", doing a good job at introducing the characters: Barbara and Ian, two teachers that know each other for quite some time, Susan, their mystery pupil of 15 who seems to be a genius at some things (most notably history), but utterly incompetent or at least very strange in others. For example, she won't calculate the position of a point in 3-dimensional space, insisting on needing the data about the 4th and 5th dimension in order to properly do the calculation.
Susan is the Granddaughter of the Doctor, who is introduced later when Ian and Barbara blunder into the Tardis in order to find out what's up with Susan, getting a somewhat unfriendly welcome by the doctor (understandably). The two have the usual mental problems with coming to grasp with the nature of the Tardis, and Ian, the sceptic, can't accept what he sees, whereupon the doctor just abducts them on a trip to somewhen to prove he's not using cheap tricks. Somewhen happens to be 100'000 BC, the doctor leaves the tardis to take some measurments and smoke a pipe and gets promptly abducted by cavemen, which is where the whole thing just decends into mediocrity.
The rest of the serial isn't bad, but it isn't really good. It's extremely slow, centering around two cavemen who rival for leadership over the tribe, each somehow wanting to extort the doctor to make fire, as the leader of the tribe must know how to make fire or the tribe will die during the winter. The cavemen act very unlogical several times, but I guess that is because they are cavemen, but still... You could maybe make 40 minutes of interesting plot out of the material here, but not ninety!
The Doctor is interchangeably annoyed about having Ian and Barbara along, blaming them for what happened, and feeling sorry for them, blaming himself for the mess. It doesn't really help. After the whole party finally makes fire and escapes from the cavemen into the Tardis, they go on to one of the defining moments of the first season, if not for the whole series in general. They meet...

THE DALEKS (7 episodes): The Daleks are by far the most iconic Who villain, and they are about the one that gets extinct the most. Seriously, the Daleks go extinct in almost every episode they show up! No wonder they have myths about the Doctor and call him "the oncoming storm" (new Who season 1, "bad wolf"), whenever they meet the viewer thinks he saw the last of them. To be fair, though, this is the first time they show up, and criticising the show for killing all Daleks for the first time wouldn't be appropriate.

The episode starts somewhat atmospherically as a stalker-piece in a petrified wood. a convieniently malfunctioning Geiger Counter drives the plot, and the same Geiger Counter convieniently starts to work again as soon as the Tardis crew is done checking it, but the camera isn't, to drive the suspense for the viewer. So, the doctor and his companions, unaware of the danger, blunder forth onto a completely irradiated planet, are getting stalked by creatures they never get to see and they doubt they exist, and discover a large city beyond the jungle.

On returning to the Tardis they find footprints and a Box with some vials of which they don't know what they are, but it's clear that they're not alone. The Doctor wants to go explore the city, while the rest is opposed to it, so the Doctor sabotages his own ship by removing an important part, a "fluid link", demonstrates that the tardis doesn't work anymore, says he needs some mercury to repair the link and oh, he's certain they'll find some in that city. This leads to some nice suspense scenes while exploring the city, encountering the Daleks and getting captured by them.

In captivity they notice that they are suffering of radiation poisoning and convince the Daleks to let one of them go back to the Tardis to retrieve the vials they found, which contain an antidote, which is where the real plot kicks off, but which is also where the serial slows down considerably. Further development reveals the existence of a second race on the planet, the Tharls, which are a somewhat Norsk people judging by the looks of them. The Daleks want to use the doctor to destroy the Tharls, which they consider their enemies, by getting hold of the antidote which would enable them to return to the surface.

The party eventually escapes and gets back to the Tardis, but the Doctor lost his fluid link in the city, which means they have to return there if they want to get away. The Daleks, meanwhile, experiment with the captured antidote and notice that it kills them, concluding that they are indeed addicted to radiation, and that the radiation on the surface isn't too large, but too small (how they didn't notice that they had more radiation in their underground city than on the surface is completely beyond me). Their solution is to further irradiate the surface, which would kill the Tharls, leading to the doctor and the Tharls ganging up, infiltrating the city and shutting down the nuclear reactors, thereby killing all Daleks.

As stated before, these plot developments are somewhat slow, which is the biggest weakness of this otherwise quite interesting serial. Other interesting things are of course the Daleks, which are a far cry from the invincible battle machines new Who converted them to. At one point they even capture one by tying a jacket around its lens, jumping on its back, opening it and removing the Thing inside it, whereupon Ian even climbs inside the Dalek shell and disguises himself as one to facilitate their escape. Compared to the Galactic threat the Daleks would later become, this seems somewhat silly. One thing however stayed exactly the same: EX-TERMINATE! The Tardis crew eventually says their farewell to the Tharls and warps away, to find themselves...

ON THE EDGE OF DESTRUCTION (2 episodes):

This is one hell of a stinker. No, seriously, compared to this, ouch moments like ST voyagers Threshold seem like very well thoght through and written pieces of TV history.
The Tardis gets stuck somewhere in time and space and starts to behave very weird. The crew also starts to act very weird. Crowning moments include Susan trying to stab Barbara and Ian with scissors, Ian trying to strangle Barbara and the Doctor wanting to space Ian and Barbara. At any moment now, the savy viewer thinks, the mysterious mind-controlling force will reveal itself and be dealt with. It would have made a very mediocre but bearable episode, but the unthinkable happens: There is no mysterious mind controlling force behind the irrational actions of the crew, in fact no other explanation for their behavior is given than that they're all a bit stressed out and frightened.

I beg your pardon, but the ever smooth, knightly and galant Ian doesn't seem like the type that tries to strangle the woman for whom he obviously feels a little more than just friendship because he's a bit stressed out. The reason why and where they are stuck (somewhere at the beginning of the universe, it would seem) does eventually get explained, as does the weird behavior of the ship: The time switch was stuck in fast-reverse and wouldn't release, and the behavior of the Tardis was an attempt to tell the crew what was wrong, because obviously someone forgot to build in a control light for said switch, so the Tardis had to go through concocted procedures like opening and closing the doors, electrifying the instrument panel so everyone that came too close to anything but that switch got electrocuted into unconsciousness, stopping wrist watches, making objects appear out of nowhere and blinking with all error control lights it had (which unfortunately doesn't include the fast-reverse switch) in regular intervals.

The two-episode serial ends with the Doctor apologising to Barbara for wanting to space them and holding a lecture to Susan and the viewer on how a switch works. The serial contains some important character development between the Doctor and Barbara, but is utterly unbearable in its entirety. Seriously, skip this one, unless you want a lecture on bad screenwriting (and how a switch works).

THE KEYS OF MARINUS (6 episodes):

This serial is not included on the Doctor Who classic DVD release, and I'm not exactly sad about it.
After their misadventure at the beginning of the universe our time-and-space travelers find themselves on an Island surrounded by an acid sea and discover a temple currently being infiltrated by men in rubber suits. The conclusion of the first episode sets up the plot that follows:

Marinus was a once peaceful planet, its civilisation being mind-controlled from a central computer that doesn't let people think of violence. That computer was taken offline somewhen in the past for some much-needed server maintenance, but alas no one was around that would know how to fix it, so it's key elements (something resembling micro-chips) were removed and hidden in secret locations all over the planet to prevent the machine from being used by someone else, say, someone that would use it to control more than just thoughts of violence, like the men in rubber suits that are currently infiltrating the Temple.

The keys should be retrieved when someone would be savy enough to make the required adjustments and bring the machine online again, restoring peace to Marinus. Arbitan, the last keeper of the machine, was able to make the adjustments, but everyone he sent to get the keys didn't return, so he press-gangs the Doctor and company into retrieving the keys for him by blocking the Tardis with a force field (why he couldn't block the temple with a force field to prevent the men in rubber suits from entering is beyond me).
What ensues is a classic adventure tale in which the protagonists hop from location to location to retrieve the keys and get the computer online again. The location hopping they do by "travel dials", wrist-mountable mini teleporters provided to them by Arbitan and programmed with a sequence of the locations the keys are hidden at. At every location, our heroes face another problem to get at the keys, from mind-controling aliens over hungry jungles to being framed for robbery.

The frantic location hopping might sound interesting at first, but this is a low budget production we're talking about. A different set for every 20 minutes episode isn't cheap to come by, and it shows, which somewhat dulls the excitement of seeing new places. Add to that that the Doctor doesn't appear in most episodes (they split up, of course) and that the plot connecting the episodes isn't exactly very tense (get keys, switch machine back on), and it is no wonder that "The keys of marinus" came out rather boring. Make that capital Booooooring! with several o's.
It does further advance the characters, especially the doctor, but that's about all that is interesting during these 120 minutes. Once our heroes faced down the final vilainous man in a rubber suit, who killed Arbitan in the meantime, they get into the tardis, and after another completely random journey through space-time find themselves among

THE AZTECS (4 episodes):

The Aztecs is by many hailed as the best serial in the first season. I cannot quite share that opinion, but it certainly is a fairly good one. After a bit of a slow start it picks up pace and tries to make best use of a somewhat flat plot lending itself well to action and a bit of comic relief.

The Tardis materialises in the Tomb of an Aztec God that has only an exit... so that the re-incarnation of the God can leave the tomb, but noone can enter. Barbara finds herself a nice bracelet in the tomb and commits graverobbery without a second thought (a bit odd for a history teacher), leaves the tomb and finds herself worshiped as the reincarnation of Utaxl (or however that is spelled). The rest of the Crew scramble after her to save her from the perceived danger, and notice in the aftermath that they cannot get back into the tomb.

The developing plot has the Doctor searching for a way back into the tomb and accidentally getting engaged in the process, while Barbara tries to keep up impersonating an Aztec godess until they can make a getaway. This is somewhat hampered by her understandable opposition to human sacrifices, which she forbids, which of course doesn't earn her much favour with the local priest of sacrifice, as well as the quite willing sacrifices themselfes and the Aztec culture in general.

The interesting thing here is that the evil plotting vilain, the priest of sacrifice, isn't atually so evil. Sure, his methods are somewhat questionable and his clinging on to human sacrifices might let him seem evil enough by itself in our eyes, but his only aim is to prove that Barbara/Utaxl is a false goddess, a cause in which he is ultimately justified for the sake of it being actually true. Meanwhile, Barbara tries to play the Priest of knowledge against the priest of sacrifice to keep her position and their lives until they can get back to the Tardis, and by doing so eventually makes the priest of knowledge loose faith in pretty much everything because in the end she just isn't a Goddess.

Ian, on the other hand, gets himself into his own world of trouble with a rather uncalled for attempt to become high commander of the Aztec army (he was kind of tricked into it by the priest of sacrifice, but if the man wouldn't so stubbornly cling to his sixties ideal of masculinity it wouldn't have happened).
This serial for the first time sports some actual fighting coreography (the rest up until now seemed rather ad-hoc "and then you guys fight and you bring him down... somehow" - acts), but with a mixed result. Clearly the actors weren't trained for this kind of thing, which gets abundantly proven by the first "training-fight" between Ian and his rival for command with Aztec clubs.
It was quite nice to see the Aztec arms replicated with some fidelity, although clearly neither of the actors had any clue of how to fight with them. There is also a nice scene with Ian doing Spocks Neck-grip 3 years before Spock was around. What I really enjoyed was a wrestling match between Ian and his competitor to settle the question of command. as it was pure wrestling, it actually looked real. I recognised most of the techniques displayed, the only thing odd is that an english colledge teacher can best a trained Aztec warrior with such ease until the other refers to poison.

The final standoff between the two with clubs and shield was again a bit weird. Clearly the director wanted to avoid some of the awkwardness of the first fight by changing the perspective to first person several times, but that didn't really work either.

The whole crew eventually escapes with the help of (but not with) the Doctors fiance, with Barbara failing her aspired goal: Changing the Aztec culture to prevent their future destruction. The ending Dialog between the Doctor and Barbara is quite nice, as Barbara is realising that she never had a real chance. It was not the vilainous priest of sacrifice that was the odd man out that had to be overcome. He had the whole approval of Aztec culture backing him up. The odd man out was the priest of knowledge, whom she ultimately failed (although the doctor kind of manages to turn it around and make it seem as if she actually helped him, although I cannot quite see how his reasoning holds up).
This is also the first serial where the Doctor is genuinly likeable and relatable, which makes it a great watch all by itself.

THE SENSORITES (6 episodes):

The finale of the first season, and it's a good one. What do I say, a brilliant one. I don't understand why it wasn't included in the DVD release, in my opinion it is by far the strongest.
The Doctor finally comes into his own with still being obnoxious when appropriate, but he also becomes the initiative, resourceful and fearless problem-solver that will be his loved on-screen persona in the future. Also, we learn in this serial that the doctor and his granddaughter aren't exactly human.

There are some flaws. The serial features a pretty crazy meddling vilain that has more than a few passing parallels to the priest of sacrifice from "the Aztecs", and there's more slips of tongue than usual (maybe a reason why it wasn't on the DVD, but it's a pitty none the less).

Anyways, the whole thing starts aboard a human spaceship on which the Tardis materialises. I forgott what year it was, but it's the first long jump forward in human history in the series. The first few episodes play on the spaceship, which's interior is classic 60's science fiction design (I love it, but your mileage may vary). The Doctor and his companions try to figure out what is wrong with the spaceship and the crew. Before you know it, an alien enters the spaceship secretly and steals the lock of the Tardis to prevent our heroes from leaving.

Prevented from leaving is also the entire spaceship, and figuring out why is the better part of the first act of the serial. The circumstances are mysterious indeed: The aliens known as Sensorites prevent the ship from leaving with their telepathic abilities, terrorize the crew on occasion but otherwise keep them alive, even restock their supplies when they are about to run out. To top it off one of the crew went outright insane under the foreign mind-meddling, so the rest of the crew (including his fiance) locked him away and don't want to talk about it.

Susan and Barbara accidentaly get locked up with him, upon which they discover that John is indeed bat:censored: crazy, but not exactly a danger. At the same time they come under mind-attack by the Sensorites, which leads Susan to discover latent telepathic abilities in herself and fight back. After the crew discovers that the planet of the Sensorites is worth a fortune due to its high amount of molybdenium, the sensorites initiate first contact.

The first thing you see of a sensorite are his pajama feet, which had me groan. Thanks god they consequently omitted showing those feet again through the entire serial. The feet impression is more than made up by seeing a sensorites face for the first time. The sensorites are classical aliens with rubber heads, but they did a really good job with those heads. They can't blink and obviously had trouble getting the mouths to work, but all in all they look better than many a TOS alien (although not being in color probably helps with that).

After first contact it turns out that this is not the first contact between Sensorites and Humans, and the first encounter didn't exactly end happily. The last human ship exploded during launch, and a terrible disease is ravaging their planet ever since. The sensorites are also aware that the humans take financial interest in their planet and that it would lead to problems with humans getting away and making their position common knowledge. Otherwise being a very peaceful people, the sensorites decided not to kill the second human expedition and instead prevent them from leaving.
But for their mind-control to be effective, the subject must be in a heightened emotional state. For example, afraid. Which explains the frequent terrorising of the crew to keep them scared and therewith subjugated. It also explains later on why John went mad, as the excitement about the Molybdenum he found made him especially vulenerable.

Anyways, the good doctor strikes a bargain: The party comes down to the planet and he will develop a cure for the Sensorite disease, getting freedom for him and the trapped spaceship in return. and so they go down to the planet and meet the first elder, upon which the second act begins.

Enter the vilain, the city administrator, who is clearly racist. So racist that he considers only dead humans to be good humans, believes that all humans are only out to trick them, thinks that anyone talking to a human is a traitor to the "Sensorite nation", and doesn't even believe his own scientist when they tell him that the doctor has indeed found a cure. As I said earlier, it is a very two-dimensional vilain. On the other hand, he is so two-dimensional that he is good for a few surprises.

When the party arrives they get served food and water. The first elder is a little enraged that they get served the common water and instead orders his servants to bring them "crystal water", which is a privilege of the elders. We learn about the strict caste-system of the Sensorites and about their very uniform society, also that the disease doesn't spread among the elders.
Ian is thirsty and drinks of the water before he gets a helping of crystal water and gets sick immediately, which promptly leads the Doctor to conclude that the disease is in the water, and that it's more like poison than a disease. In the unfolding events he tracks the source of the poisoned water down to a particular aqueduct, one in which the sensorites convieniently believe is inhabited by monsters and won't go in, so the doctor takes it upon himself.

All the while, the city administrator does a good job at keeping suspense up with his endless plotting, scheming and attempts to thwart the doctor from achieving his goal, because he thinks the Doctor is out to distribute the real poison. Or that's what he tells his faithful associate.

A poison scheme, and a politician that tries to thwart any and all attempts at discovering or even solving it while the evidence that the doctor is right is steadily increasing, plus a "haunted" aqueduct. This all sounds like there's something more behind it, as if the city administrator does not want people to find out the truth, because he might have something to do with it in a plot within the plot to gain power.

That would have been a good plot line, pretty complex but none the less perfectly foreseeable. It also doesn't happen this way. As I said, the total two-dimensional nature of the city administrator manages to surprise with not plotting to overthrow his government for his own sake. Sure, he wants to grasp power and is quite ruthless and resourceful in doing so, but in a nice twist in the final episode it turns out not to be for just the sake of power.
The city administrator just plainly hates humans and adjusts his worldview accordingly. There's no more motivation to him other than that, and he isn't even that wrong, as the source of the poisoning turn out to be the human survivors from the last expedition who have gone totally bonkers.

In the end of course the doctor solves it all, but this serial for the first time delivered what I expected from the Doctor: First of all the Doctor himself in action at the front line, with all his wit about him and having fun in the face of danger. Secondly a plot that really managed to keep me on the edge with a nice pacing, shifts of tone and unpredictable developments.
It isn't perfect of course. There are some gapping plotholes, most prominently the apparent stupidity of the sensorites. They managed to develop casual orbital flight, but cannot isolate a poison in an aqueduct? They are extremely insensitive to light (i.e. when it gets a bit dark, they turn completely blind), and extremely sensitive to sound but haven't developed nightgoggles or earplugs? Not quite believable.
 

jedidia

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Yeah, I noticed after posting that all text formatting was gone. No idea what happened, but fixed.
 

PhantomCruiser

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Nice review! I've been a fan of the Doctor since the early 80's. The first episode I can remember seeing is when the second Dr. was forced to change into the third Doctor. So in a roundabout fashion John Pertwee was "my" Doctor. My daughter nearly lusted after David Tennant (which caused me a bit of distress since she was, like 15 or something...).
Anyway, I remember reading that one of the Doctors repaired, the chameleon circuit, but she (the TARDIS) remained a Police Box anyway. For the life of me though I can;t remember which book I read that in. I may still have it tucked away with all my other paperbacks (covered with still more paperbacks). If I can find it, I'll post the name/title.
I've got another one (closer to the top of the pile) that had to do with the schism that caused the Doctor to leave Gallifrey in the first place. He didn't exactly "steal" the TARDIS (well, yes he took it), but the TARDIS chose him to take.
The books are not exactly cannon, but then Dr. Who isn't really known for being cannon now is it? That is one thing I like about Whovians over Trekkers. Whovians generally don't take themselves too seriously.
 

Izack

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jedidia;bt4110 said:
Yeah, I noticed after posting that all text formatting was gone. No idea what happened, but fixed.
Thanks! Great review, by the way; wasn't intending on watching older Who but at least now I'm not completely ignorant of it. :p
 

PhantomCruiser

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The "new" Who is pretty good, the effects are far-and-away improved over the original. Chris Eccleston I thought was credible as a Doctor, a bit brooding, but then again he did just finish the Time Lord vs Dalek war. David Tennant was an excellent mix of originality, with a good dose of Doctors 4 and 5 thrown in the mix.
Matt Smith seems a bit too much like Tennant. Maybe a mix of Tennant and Eccleston? He really needs to stretch the character a bit and "own" it, but I think he's doing well with it [/opinion]. IIRC David Tennant did suggest the role to him.
I would have like to have seen Paul McGann have more opportunity than that horrible made-for-TV movie (really, the Doctor in San Francisco, what the heck?). But it did have a cool opening music theme.
 
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