Doctor Who: The Movie 4K 1996 Ultra HD 2160p

A wonderful time-travel comedy in which the protagonists find themselves on Earth on the eve of the year 2000. There are two main characters: one is the villain, known as the Master, and the other is the hero, Doctor Who. Each has 13 lives, and the villain has already used up his, but on Earth he has managed to possess Eric Roberts and is planning to suck our planet into oblivion. Doctor Who, naturally, wants to stop him. The film is based on a BBC television series and is packed with such hilarious, witty jokes and gags that Mel Brooks himself, if he watched it, would surely have turned green with envy.

User Review

Half-comedy and a whole drama?

Well, the half-comedy part was passable. But there’s almost no drama here, which is extremely strange to me, as someone watching the film with the benefit of knowing the new Doctor.

And everything about this movie is strange. It sort of falls out of the general flow of the story, as if its timeline is out of sync with ours by just half a second. Or at least that’s how the Doctor himself would explain why this “movie” doesn’t fit into any category.

Because by 1996, the classic Doctors had already passed away, and the new one hadn’t been born yet. Because they’d already learned how to do special effects in movies, but coming up with good, well-developed plots to go with them—not always. Because Britain pulls in one direction, and America in another. That’s why it all turns into such a mess.

After we’re shown the Seventh Doctor reading a little book on his ship, you wait long and desperately for him to finally reappear—the real Doctor, running around, talking nonstop so that no one understands; the Doctor with a younger face, but still the same one who always has a plan and an ace up his sleeve. Then Paul McGann appears on screen, and you start desperately waiting for him to remember who he really is and start talking about time loops and breaks in his personal timeline... or about his past lives, or why the Master is so evil, or at least why he, the Doctor, has such a sad face.

Oh, what a Doctor he could have been if the writers had done a decent job! How much more he could have accomplished if he’d had just a little more screen time than this hour and a half. The Doctor returns with a joyful cry that his boots fit perfectly, along with memories of Gallifrey...

But at the same time, he’s completely passive in this film. At first, he just clings to Daphne Ashbrook’s character in the hope of remembering his true identity. And then he just runs around aimlessly, giving orders, though, as always, he throws around incomprehensible terms and little glimpses of future knowledge left and right.

I had hoped that getting to know the Eighth Doctor would bring me closer to those Classic Doctors, and that I would suddenly grasp the difference between what began over forty years ago and what has been created in the 21st century. But somehow, this film didn’t tell me anything. It showed yet another pseudo-scientific fantasy about a couple who met, saved the world, shared a goodbye kiss—and went their separate ways (even with the new Doctors, relationships with their companions seem to develop in a somewhat… more complicated way, perhaps). In fact, the most sensible character here turned out to be Grace; we learned the most about her—not about the Doctor, after whom the entire film is named, and certainly not about the Master, played by the demonic Eric Roberts, whose behavior, for some reason, is terribly reminiscent of the Terminator. And in essence, only Sylvester McCoy, the TARDIS, and the music in the credits tie the old, the new, and the intertemporal cinema into a single thread.

To an outside viewer, the film is completely empty, about nothing, leading nowhere. But my subjectivity still gets the better of me. This film is one of the chapters in the Doctor’s journey, and I cannot turn a blind eye to it.

“You never forget your first Doctor”—so goes the English proverb. The first Doctor I ever saw was Christopher Eccleston. At the end of the film, the record on the turntable gets stuck again—a highly symbolic moment for the unfortunate Paul McGann. I sincerely hope he managed to run around a bit more before regenerating into the Ninth. After all, many, many more adventures awaited him...

Info Video

Codec: HEVC / H.265 (55.1 Mb/s)
Resolution: Native 4K (2160p)
HDR: HDR10
Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.33:1

Info Audio

#English: FLAC 2.0
#English: Dolby TrueHD with Dolby Atmos 7.1
#English: Dolby Digital 5.1

Info Subtitles