This movie was an attempt at a Dr. Who movie that would rekindle excitement for the old series and spawn a new Dr. Who series. Considering that the series was only just brought back to TV last year and this movie was made in 1996, you can see that this try was a total failure. Considering that the original show was on TV for 26 years and the fans are insanely devoted to it, it's a testament to just how bad this movie was that the show failed at a revival!! Unlike the old show, this one had better production values and was set in America (REALLY America, not some English actors pretending to speak like an average Americans). While I am an American and proud of it, Dr. Who does NOT belong in the good old USA! As a nation, we've plastered our culture worldwide--I say let the Brits KEEP Dr. Who! It was theirs to begin with anyways and it was far better than this bilge!! The Doctor in San Francisco?! What's up with that?! As for the story itself, it was incredibly dull and looked as if it was written by some who who either never saw the original show or didn't like it very much! And Eric Roberts played "The Master"?! Gimme a break! Where is the goatee and the evil Bela Lugosi-type hair?!

A blight on my childhood and a travesty compared to the original, classic DOCTOR WHO TV series. I remember - fondly - watching the Sylvester McCoy stories when I was a kid, and I was 15 when this TV movie premiered on television. I expected a lot; what I got was the worst kind of nonsense, a film as offensive as it was bland.

Where to begin with the problems? McCoy himself is given short shrift early on, to be replaced by the uninteresting Paul McGann who never makes the role his own; sometimes he appears to think he's in a pantomime, so lazy is his performance. Then there's the narrative, which adopts some kind of nonsensical action-movie template instead of the usual intricate plotting of a proper Dr Who story.

The blame for all this can be laid at the door of the producers, who decided to appeal to the American audience in an attempt to break the American market. So this was filmed in Canada with a mostly American cast, and it completely misses the boat in terms of the feel of a Dr Who adventure. Instead, we get blatant rip-offs and homages to tons of American cultural icons: dodgy liquid metal CGI effects copied from TERMINATOR 2, Eric Roberts playing the Master and dressing as Arnie from THE TERMINATOR, plus pointless comparisons to Universal's FRANKENSTEIN.

And that's the gutting thing. If this had just been a typical cheesy US B-movie, I wouldn't have minded as much; I've seen plenty of bad 'uns, after all. The fact that it's masquerading as WHO is what makes me seethe, and yes, I still hate it just the same all these years later. It's a horrible travesty, and something I still couldn't get off my TV screen quickly enough.

It is now twenty years since the US/UK co-production of Doctor Who: The Movie was broadcast. Shown seven years after the cancellation of the television series and nine years before the relaunched series with Christopher Eccleston, it was the only new Who in the 1990s.

It also brings a lot of ingredients that was used in the relaunched series as Russell T Davies studied what it did right and what it did wrong.

Sylvester McCoy returns as the seventh Doctor, he gets shot and after receiving botched hospital treatment, regenerates into Paul McGann's eighth doctor.

The Tardis lands in San Francisco in 1999, the Master escapes in a snakelike form from the Tardis and plans to take control of the Eye of Harmony once he has occupied the body of a paramedic (Eric Roberts).

The Doctor must find a beryllium atomic clock and stop the Master with the help of Dr Grace Holloway.

British director Geoffrey Sax made use of the higher budget with good use of special effects even though he was hampered with a reduced number of shooting days.

The Tardis is much bigger but I guess the HG Wells like interior setting does not make it look like a Gallifreyan time machine.

The visuals were grand and obviously some of the morphing techniques were inspired by films such as Terminator 2.

The casting of Paul McGann was the master stroke, with the 60 minutes screen time he had, you really felt that he was the Doctor, a Byronesque romantic (he even got to have a kiss) and man of action.

It was a shame we have seen so little of McGann's time lord apart from the mini adventure, The Night of the Doctor; although there are plenty of Eighth Doctor audio adventures.

I also liked the malevolent interpretation of the Master by Eric Roberts who really pushes up the dial with his campiness when he puts on the time lord regalia. He shifted the emphasis of the Master from the moustache twirling villain of Anthony Ainley and it has been carried on by the subsequent Master's since then, male or female.

The story was not that great, you felt it needed a bit more reworking and it had rather a lot of continuity which was fine for fans of the shows, but what about new viewers?

A point not lost in the 2005 re-continuation which started afresh and only added continuity in small measures over subsequent seasons.

Some of the elements of the television film might have introduced a few groans. The cloaking device to describe the Tardis chameleon circuit and the Doctor being half human. However it was a lot less Americanised than people feared and had it lots of links to the television series.

There were a segment of fans who were disappointed after this was shown in 1996, yet the movie received very good viewing figures in the UK and two decades on it was worth revisiting McGann's outing.