TV Movie

Story Code: TV Movie / Season -	UK Airdate: 27 May 1996	Doctor: Paul McGann
First airings by location	UK Repeats / Foreign Cable and Satellite	Previous Story / Next Story

This story aired in the following known countries. They are listed in chronological order according to known airdate. If no month is noted, the actual airdate is not confirmed, and is a close approximate. (Refer also to Selling Doctor Who for expanded airdates.)

Fox TV Movie poster ad, May 1996

Presskit for the TV Movie

Screen grab of French title caption

Canada	12 May 96
United States	14 May 96
United Kingdom	27 May 96
Australia	7 Jul 96
New Zealand	30 Oct 96
Greece	1996 or 97
France	18 Mar 97	Le Seigneur du Temps / Docteur Who: Le Film (dubbed)
Argentina?	1997
Japan	1997
Poland	1997 and Mar 1999	Doktor Who
Finland	13 Feb 99
HBO OLE Cable	From 16 Feb 99
Luxembourg	27 Feb 99	Le Seigneur du Temps (dubbed)
Lithuania	25 Apr 99	Doktor Who
Netherlands	5 Aug 99
Croatia	18 Sep 99	Doktor Who
Italy	1999	(dubbed?)
Ireland	1 May 00
Brazil	27 Jul 00	Doutor Who - O Senhor do Tempo (dubbed)
Czech Republic	9 Sep 00	Doktor Kdo (dubbed)
Norway	2005
Germany	17 Nov 21	Doctor Who Der Film (dubbed)

• The Movie was shown on Fox and over 150 affiliate stations in the United States. The 89-minute Film was given a 2 hour timeslot to accommodate commercials.
  • List of Fox stations in 1996
• The Movie was originally scheduled to be released in the UK on VHS tape on 15 May (with a "15" classification rating), but censorship issues (see below) forced a delay by a week.
• The tape was officially released in the UK on 22 May 1996 (edited and now with a "12" rating), five days ahead of its broadcast on BBC1 (with some stores staying open late on 21 May to sell the tape from midnight).
• The film aired on BBC1 on 27 May 1996. A special caption "In Memory of Jon Pertwee" appeared at the end as a tribute to the late actor who had died on 20 May.
  • The tape and the TV version were edited to remove scenes of repeated gun-fire (in the wake of the recent mass shooting at a school in Dunblane, Scotland) as well as other graphic content -- full list of cuts here.
• The Movie was shown via off-air video-tape recording on the Falkland Islands' BFBS station on 22 June 1996.
• The Film was marketed by BBC Worldwide and Universal Television as a "Movie for Television" and therefore it had a far wider international sales distribution; the Film was screened in a number of countries that had never seen the series.
• In most non-English-speaking countries, the Film was shown with subtitles, but a small number aired a dubbed version (noted above). (The subsequent VHS tape was also subtitled or dubbed - see list below.)
• The French dub of the Film (which was the exact same re-edit as the UK) was given the new title Le Seigneur du Temps; this screened in France, Luxembourg, and on the Canadian station Ztélé. (France is the only foreign country to create its own opening title graphics and translate the closing credits roll; all other foreign dubs (which used the full uncut version) retained the English titles and credits; in case of the Brazilian dub, the alternative title was spoken by a narrator.)
• The Film was available on the In-flight TV Systems of Singapore Airlines, and was shown 99 times between July and September 1996 by British Airways. It was also available on Merchant Navy vessels (although of which countries is not known - see list of possibilities HERE).
• The Movie was also distributed on VHS tape by Universal's home entertainment division, MCA/Universal/CIC Video, to many other countries around the world; these commercial releases (either subtitled or dubbed) were mainly for the rental market, and for a handful of those countries, the series had never been shown on TV, and the video tape was the only form in which Doctor Who was known - See the list below.
• It was shown in Poland a number of times on different satellite stations such as Polsat and Canal+.
• The Movie aired on UK Gold for the first time on 7 February 1998 (it would play nine more times; the tenth and final screening was on 29 October 2006); BBC Choice on 22 November 1998; by BBC Prime on 2 and 7 May 1999, with a third showing on 30 December 1999 - the actual date on which the story is set!
• Australia's satellite channel BBC UKTV apparently edited the Movie into a 3-parter to show it in three half-hour slots over 12-14 August 1998 - although it's far more likely the 30 minute timeslots were incorrect and it played in full on those three dates.
• Between February 1999 and December 1999, the Movie was available to several Central and South American countries via the HBO Olé cable links.
• On 13 November 1999, the uncut US version (with the "Based on the original series broadcast on the BBC" caption intact; it was removed for the 1996 screening) was shown during BBC2's Doctor Who Night special event.
• The US Sci-Fi Channel screened the Movie for the first time on 15 July 2001. The station held the exclusive US cable rights to the Film, screening it multiple times until mid-2004...
• Sci-Fi Channel's UK/Europe station aired the Film for the first time on Saturday, 2 November 2002, and then several more times during the next ten months. It aired again on 25 August 2008 - twice!
• The Film also played several times during 2002 and 2003 on the Sci-Fi Channel in South Africa.
• According to IMDb, the Film also aired on TV in Austria, Iraq, Lithuania (a repeat?) and India, but there is no traceable evidence that any of these screenings (between 2001 and 2004) did in fact occur.
• In 2004, the US Sci-Fi Channel's exclusive rights to the Movie expired; these were quickly picked up by Starz, which aired the Film (apparently also with a European Spanish dub) numerous times on its various channel streams through until late 2005.
• The Film has also aired on various other US terrestrial, cable and satellite stations, too many to try to catalogue all here.
• There were several additional screenings in France during 2005, each on a different channel; the last known French screening was in 2010.
• The Movie had its tenth and final showing on UK Gold on 29 October 2006.
• As part of the series' 50th anniversary celebrations, the Movie was shown on the New Zealand satellite channel BBC UKTV on 13 August 2013 and again on 24 November 2013.
• On 31 August 2013, BBC America screened the Movie as part of The Doctors Revisited series.
• Since then it has been officially available on online platforms in only the UK: from 9 September 2014, it has been streaming on Netflix UK (here) (from 14 April 2015 it was also on Netflix Australia (here)). The only other UK site known to provide it is BritBox UK.

TV Movie on VHS

Between 1996 and 1999, the Movie was released in several countries (mainly as a rental tape) by MCA/Universal/CIC Video, sometimes through a local distributor and/or manufacturer. The few tapes sold as retail editions are easy to identify because they have a barcode on the back of the sleeve.

For home media, the Film was either (S)ubtitled or (D)ubbed. In most cases, the title was simply "Doctor Who" (using variations of the Movie's logo on the box cover), but some countries gave the Film an alternative cover title which is noted here (see the merchandise sections in the relevant country profiles for cover slicks and further details).

Australian and NZ VHS cover

Tape released before shown on TV:

• United Kingdom (also Woolworths, WH Smith, John Menzies exclusives, and an edition with Closed-Captioning)
• Brazil (as O Senhor do Tempo) (S)
• Czech Republic (as Boj S Časem) (D)
• Finland (as 1999 Maailman Tuho) (S)
• Italy (D)
• Japan (as Doctor Who ドクター・フー) (S)
• Netherlands (S)

Tape released after shown on TV:

• Australia / New Zealand (same tape was released in both countries; the latter with remaindered stock from the former)
• Poland (as Doktor WHO) (Narration over UK audio)

Not shown on TV; released on tape only:

• Argentina (as El Doctor Who) (S)
• Chile (as El Doctor del Tiempo) (S)
• Denmark (as Doktor Who) (S)
• Egypt (as Doctor Who الغامض الرجل) (S)
• Germany (two editions - one Rental, one Retail) (D)
• Hong Kong (on laser-disc only as 時空謀殺案) (S)
• Hungary (D)
• Mexico (S)
• Portugal (as O Doutor) (S)
• Saudi Arabia (S)
• Slovenia (as Doctor Who (front) and Doktor Who (spine)) (S)
• Spain (D)
• Sweden (S)
• Venezuela (S)

A bootleg tape from Bulgaria is known to exist.

Intriguingly, in the German, Spanish, Hungarian and Czech tape dubs there are no Dalek voices in the pre-credits scene! Is this because there were rights restrictions regarding use of the Daleks on commercial releases so they had to be omitted from foreign editions? (Terry Nation died on 9 March 1997, so presumably the overseas rights had all been settled prior to his death.) Dalek voices (or at least some sort of modulated 'mechanical' equivalent) are present in all the known TV dubs of the Movie; the same foreign rights restrictions therefore did not apply to broadcast versions of the Film.

Of note, the Movie could not be sold on tape in the United States or Canada due to a conflict over the distribution rights: the worldwide VHS rights to the Film were held by Universal while the North American VHS rights to Doctor Who the TV series were owned by CBS/Fox Video; Universal therefore couldn't distribute tapes to a territory that it didn't have the exclusive rights to.

The rights issues were eventually resolved, and the Film was released on DVD on 8 February 2011 - see below.

• List of VHS releases

TV Movie on DVD / Blu-ray

In the early 2000s, after the rights had reverted back to the BBC, the Film - under the title "Doctor Who The Movie" - was issued on DVD and later Blu-ray but only in a few territories. The Film was also issued a number of times as 'Special Editions' that were included in box sets alongside other Doctor Who stories.

• United Kingdom: released as a one-disc DVD; later re-issued alongside seven other DVDs with a slip-on cardboard outer sleeve with alternative cover design; it was later issued in new packaging as a "free gift" for subscribers to the "Doctor Who DVD Files" partwork; a new 2-disc Special Edition DVD came in the "Revisitations 1" box set; a 2-disc Blu-ray + DVD set was upscaled to High Def; a single-disc version was included in the Limited Edition six-disc "Regeneration" mega box set
• Australia: first released as a 2-disc Special Edition DVD in the "Revisitations 1" box set; the same 2-discs were later issued as a standalone release; a single disc DVD version in a widescreen aspect with no extras came in The Doctors Revisited Volume 2; a single-disc version was included in the Limited Edition six-disc "Regeneration" mega box set; the UK Blu-ray + DVD set was available as an import (UK and Australia have the same Blu-ray Region coding)
• Canada: same as the US DVD - see below
• Germany: (as Doctor Who Der Film) (D); a 2-disc Mediabook Collectors edition Blu-ray + DVD set, and later as a 2-disc Special Edition DVD set
• Ireland: the "Regeneration" box set and 2-disc UK Blu-ray + DVD (above) were also released in Ireland
• New Zealand: imports of the same Australian editions above
• South Africa: this appears to be an import of the first one-disc UK release (above)
• United States: released as a 2-disc Special Edition DVD; a single disc DVD edition in a widescreen aspect with no extras was in The Doctors Revisited Volume 2. These US DVDs are also available in Canada. To date there has not been a North American Blu-ray release

A planned DVD and Blu-ray edition for Italy (as Doctor Who The Movie) was cancelled. There is a bootleg DVD from China (with Japanese subtitles) under the title Doctor Who The Motion Picture.

"This is an ambulance!" - Various TV and VHS dubs - English, German, French, Italian, European Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Czech (VHS), Czech (TV), Hungarian

"Who am I?!" - Various TV and VHS Dubs - English, German, French, European Spanish, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese

"I always drezzzzz for the occasion..." - Various TV and VHS Dubs - English, German, French, Italian, European Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Czech (VHS), Hungarian

Media

BBC intro

Fox US trailer

Canadian CHCH Channel 11 intro

Fox intro

Fox promo

Fox promo

BBC1 trailer

Fox promos

• Fox promos from Doctor Whoarder

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