I just had occasion to the Doctor Who movie from 1996 since the “Special Edition” DVD arrived from Amazon today. I remember watching it when it first aired in 1996 and also on a region 2 DVD release. I remember thinking that it was cool that the movie was made at the time and I enjoyed watching it. But I also remember thinking “WTF” a couple of times. But watching it this time, I noticed a few things that, perhaps, save it.
The first thing I noticed is that there is at least one fairly large plot hole – how did the Master get into the Tardis without the key? Well, it occurred to me that it could be explained by a couple of possible means. One is that he might have sent some of his goo through the lock the same way he exited in the first place and then operated the door switch from within. The other is that he might have found the spare key right where the Doctor and Grace found it. As for why he wouldn’t have done that in the first place, well, he did need the Doctor anyway so why not collect him and have the Doctor let them into the Tardis.
The other is why Lee hung around the hospital. It’s possible he might have been curious, or he might have been using it as an excuse to lay low where the thugs from earlier were not likely to find him. After all, nobody would question why the bloke who brought in a dying man was hanging around, would they?
In other words, the obvious plot holes are not nearly so inexplicable as they could be. They can both be acceptably explained with some thought. And really, there are plot holes just as big in many of the original series episodes.
The major plot point of the movie with the Doctor being half human is not nearly so much at odds with anything as it would at first appear. With the events surrounding River Song later on, it becomes much less problematic for River is human by definition (her parents are human) but she also regenerates. Thus, having purely human parentage does not preclude proper Time Lord physiology.
There is also a precedent for humans being present on Gallifrey. After all, if the Doctor could leave Leela behind on Gallifrey, what’s to say another Time Lord didn’t do the same previously? What’s to say that human wasn’t the Doctor’s mother. Or father for that matter. But there is also the possibility that the Doctor’s proximity to humans during many of his regenerations to that point could have caused him to take on human traits, too and all that “half human on my mother’s side” stuff was just misdirection and throw-away humour. The Master’s assumption that the Doctor is half human is apparently due to the physiology of the Doctor’s eye, if you watch carefully. In other words, there is nothing particularly problematic there.
As far as the Tardis and the Eye of Harmony responding to humans, this could easily be due to the fondness the Doctor has for humans and thus he set things up that way. Or it could by that the Tardis knew something that we didn’t, a notion backed up by a Matt Smith episode.
The resurrection scene at the end may actually have had less to do with the time reversal and more to do with the Tardis and/or the Eye of Harmony. The time reversal could have been required to back the Tardis away from disturbances in the time vortex from the excitement and allow it to do the sparkly light thing. Eccleston’s final episode shows that such resurrection is possible using the power of the Tardis, though admittedly with potentially disastrous effects (witness Captain Jack Harkness).
Finally, the production itself is quite well done. In fact, as a bridge between Survival and Rose, it works quite well. The credit sequences and the theme arrangement still feel like Doctor Who, especially given that the 2005 episodes take on a similar style. All in all, the general production quality feels quite a lot like the episodes that followed. If anything, I think the movie can be credited for boosting the production quality when the series finally did come back.
To sum up, the movie generally has no more production errors, plot holes, or inconsistency with what went before than many of the classic episodes and many of those are actually explainable should one search for an explanation.
I do wish we could have had a series with McGann, Grace, and Lee. I think it would have been an excellent series. But I’m not sure it would have survived on mainstream American television. There would have been too much interference from the network and likely it would have rapidly veered off from feeling like Doctor Who. I think in the long run, we were best served by the BBC reviving the series itself in 2005. It somehow feels more right for the Brits to be making it.