Doctor Who Regeneration

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Site added: 29 December 2004 · Last updated: 12 July 2007

Doctor Who was voted in 1998 as the most popular drama series ever produced by the BBC, a result which shocked its critics and embarrassed the corporation which had cancelled the 35-year-old series nearly ten years before.

In its time it enjoyed enormous popularity and was sold to 87 different countries. Today it retains a hugely loyal cult following, even amongst children who are too young to remember Saturday teatimes before the age of the home video.

But in the wilderness years of the 1990s, there had been one glimmer of hope – the TV movie starring Paul McGann as the eighth Doctor which it had been hoped would spawn a new era for the programme. ‘Doctor Who: Regeneration’ chronicles the BBC’s seven-year struggle since cancelling the series in 1989 to develop it as a US co-production. It offers a fascinating glimpse in microcosm of the politics of television and the BBC in the 1990s, as well as the creative development hell of making what turned out to be only a one-off TV movie. The book contains some interesting concept sketches from a Dalek plot never pursued, of Davros and Spider Daleks.

Spider Dalek – a variant on the classic Dalek, developed for an early version of the TV movie, in which the Daleks invade Gallifrey.

This is a really excellent book, which provides a real insight into the development of the TV movie (in its many incarnations) and shows just how difficult it was to bring the movie to screen. For those who are not great fans of the TV movie (not us, we love it) this will help you feel a great deal more empathy for Philip Segal as he struggles against massive odds to realise a long-held dream.

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