9a.1: The Curse of Fatal Death

In which we watch a dumb show for the era yet to come.

Broadcast: March 1999

Watched: May 2021

“Maybe even the universe can’t bear to be without the Doctor.”

Actually very entertaining, this. Partly that’s because you can play “spot the old Who reference” (the reworked opening titles, a lot of the music is from the archives, entire shots as well as music lifted from Logopolis etc). Partly that’s because it’s fun in itself: Rowan Atkinson plays it surprisingly straight as the Doctor, he’s far less quirky than most, like a less bitchy Blackadder, but still weirdly compelling. Jonathan Pryce is having a great time chewing the scenery as the Master. All the cameo Doctors are brilliant – Richard E. Grant doing a very Doctor-ish arrogance like the nastier side of Tennant, Broadbent lovably awkward, Hugh Grant being ‘90s Hugh Grant, and then Joanna Lumley being absolute filth. Julia Sawalha as generic companion Emma is fine but Doctor Who has often done worse than that.

But the most fun thing about it now is that it’s Moffat’s first TV Who work and his fingerprints are all over it.  He basically nicked the Master/Daleks/sewer structure for The Witch’s Familiar. The bit with the trapdoor is The Husbands of River Song. The Doctor gets married, and there are a lot of jokes based on him setting stuff up later, which is drawn from the NA/McCoy Doctor but is also the Moffat one. He even reuses some of the actual dialogue (“I’ve put a lot of work into it!”). 

Oh, and the Dalek version of the repeated “I’ll explain later” joke is basically RTD’s “YES WE KNOW WHO YOU ARE”. 

So, er, for a silly sketch it’s extremely influential, isn’t it?

Three other things. Firstly, Atkinson is explicitly the 9th Doctor – which means this story accurately predicts it’ll take until the 13th until the Doctor is a woman.

Secondly, the marriage is cancelled when the Doctor flips genders. This Doctor Who is much straighter than the one that follows.

Lastly, serious question – is there really any reason this couldn’t count as proper Doctor Who? Parallel universe Doctors blah blah blah. Okay, the Master is ridiculous and there are a lot of jokes about farting and tits, but... is that that much smaller than bits of the real show?

One of the most influential Doctor Who stories of the 1990s.