Doctor Who Am I

1963 was born below zero,

but it's the blessing of our temperature--

...to the assassination of President Kennedy--

Have you ever thought what it's like to be wanderers?

I'm the Doctor.

The definite article, you might say.

I'm half-human on my mother's side.

Who are you?

I'm not running away from things,

I'm running to them.

But there is a sidekick, proper. Fifty of them.

Millions of people have watched it in 75 countries.

- How's it feel? - 94, I was told.

- Oh, 94. - Hello, Albert Hall!

Stand back.

This is my film school graduation film.

45 minutes of crap.

More scripts. Oh!

The very first draft

of The Emperor's New Groove,

when it was called Children of the Sun.

Oh, my God! Floppies.

- Do you want this? - Jesus.

It's like I was on the run.

I got the lid, 'cause I have the pot.

Okay.

Finding this in the query pile?

This would be just like the meetings that we have,

but with George Lucas.

Oh, United States.

No. Denial.

Oh, somebody gave me that.

Do you want it?

Not yet.

-This is relevant. -It's like Christmas.

Doctor Who: Regeneration.

This is all about my-- my Doctor.

And, um, it's written by Phil Segal,

and he says some deeply personal stuff about me in here,

which is totally inaccurate.

I was just a hired hand, I was a writer,

who came up with a good idea,

which was, "Let's have the Doctor lose his memory,

and then have to try and work out who he is,

and that will introduce him

to the American public."

Yeah, really bad special effects.

That light's meant to be coming from his eyes,

instead of him sitting up

and peering into my storage unit.

Doctor Who was conceived as a children's show

in 1963,

about a Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey,

who travels through time and space saving people.

And his spaceship is called the TARDIS,

T-A-R-D-I-S, Time and Relative Dimension In Space.

It's bigger on the inside.

He's an alien, he looks like a human,

but he has two hearts.

You also can't kill him.

He regenerates and comes back to life

as a different Doctor, but the same Doctor.

He's had about 12 or 13 lives so far,

maybe 50, who knows?

Depends when you're watching this.

I wrote the Eighth Doctor,

played by Paul McGann.

Since the BBC abandoned the show,

nearly a decade before,

my job was to write a TV movie pilot

with the hope that it would spawn

a new American Doctor Who series.

So we had Paul McGann as the Eighth Doctor,

we had Daphne Ashbrook as his companion,

we had Eric Roberts as the Master.

We were sure this could be a long-running show.

But our big mistake

was to make the Doctor half-human.

The Doctor is half-human!

No wonder.

And we had him kiss.

-What? -What?

What?

What?

Two fatal errors.

And it wasn't picked up as a series.

I'd always assumed

that maybe the reason he wasn't doing conventions

was perhaps he, um,

was feeling defensive

about fans asking questions about the movie.

Bad Doctor Who is better than no Doctor Who.

Are you saying, then, you liked the movie?

'Cause if you didn't, that's fine, too.

No, no, I di-- well, I'm aware

that the writer's within earshot, um...

It was recognizable as Doctor Who.

I didn't go to conventions

for a very good reason.

I thought the fans would kill me.

But my longtime collaborator and friend, Vanessa Yuille,

encouraged me to accept invitations,

and indeed, make a film about my journey

back into that world.

Now, opportunity had arisen, and I needed the money.

People are gonna pay me 20 bucks for my signature.

And now I'm beginning to wonder

why I've never done this before.

But also, this is the budget.

So, over the next year,

Vanessa dragged me to conventions in Los Angeles,

in New York, and in and out of fans' homes.

Be nice.

It sounds like I'm the only one at the table here

who actually saw your movie

the night it was broadcast on Fox.

Well, I'm one of people in America

that did watch it, you know?

We were hoping this was the birth,

the pilot to a series,

that this was going to launch us,

that Doctor Who was going to be back.

I knew that Doctor Who had been off the air,

they'd stopped showing it on PBS,

and then this thing was coming out

and it was new, and people were excited.

There was a lot of enthusiasm

around the movie coming back in 1996, um,

and people were really putting all their hopes

into it leading to a new TV series,

and I think a lot of people were very devastated by the fact

that it didn't lead to a series at that point.

It's 2005, and the Doctor is finally back!

Christopher Eccleston stars as the Ninth Doctor,

and he's ready to save the world.

Since they brought the series back in 2005,

it's just taken off.

Nobody really expected Doctor Who to come back anytime

at-- at any point in the near future.

And then when it did, I think it was just--

it was literally the second wind in a life.

- Hi, how're you doing, sir? - Good, you?

Good.

It's a bit posey, isn't it?

I don't look like a dork.

- There you go. - There you go.

- Yeah. - All right.

Good compromise.

Put your hand down.

The movie bridges the gap

from the old series to the new series.

And it's-- it's very much a forerunner

of what Doctor Who has become now.

This isn't Comic-Con.

This is a very particular kind of fair.

These guys are fanatics,

but they exist within a special corner

of American fandom.

-Hi! Hi! -How are you?

-Good, how are you? -Good.

This is the thing, this is like--

I'm not a celebrity, I don't have fans,

but somehow, in this world?

I'm suddenly a guest.

- No. - Here all on me own?

Well, then you come back there.

Right.

I mean, it may seem like I'm a dickhead,

going around, being followed by a camera,

but-- but really, um... I'm--

I'm hoping to deflect it and find out about the fans.

This is the best place to drown your sorrows.

You know?

They're 3000 Whovians, and lots and lots of booze.

Ah, the American fans.

They are the diehards.

Balls-to-the-wall kind of attitude.

All through medical school,

I was still kind of the-- the closet Whovian.

But, no, yeah, we're just a normal couple.

We just got married two years ago.

I'm special.

Please don't hurt me because I am so special.

This convention, Gallifrey One,

has been a part of my life, my entire adult lives.

I was 19 when we started this, and I'm 46 now.

I'm a-- I work at a restaurant, I'm a food server,

and I also am a teacher part-time, so, yeah.

Ooh.

Hello. And Piper's a baby.

There's a whole community of people that do this.

That knit specifically Tom Baker scarves.

And we sit there and talk to each other and stuff,

and that I found because this is what I did.

I found myself working in toys, I worked in industrial design,

and then I ended up in chocolate.

So Anna and I are sign language interpreters

for an elementary and a high school

from where we're from.

It's like, I will do anything for anybody,