Ive previously written about
why an American remake of Doctor Who would be terrible but what a lot of Whovians may not realise is how close one actually came to existing in the early 1990s. A few years before the TV Movie starring Paul McGann was released, the wheels were in a motion for a complete reboot made by Steven Spielbergs company Amblin Entertainment to potentially be broadcast on CBS. Thankfully the entire thing was scrapped very early into its production process and as part four of my monthly countdown to Doctor Whos Fiftieth Anniversary, heres why it would have been absolutely terrible...
4. The Backstory
Any Doctor Who fan worth their salt knows the basic background of Doctor Who. Eccentric time travelling alien travels the universe, usually running into some kind of trouble and having to fight monsters and save peoples lives. Simple but vague enough to write a lot of different stories about. The American version... not so much. The entire premise of this American Doctor Who would have been the half-human Doctor searching time and space for his father, the legendary Time Lord explorer Ulysses, in Ulysses' old Tardis. There are three things wrong with this premise:
1. It prevents this remake from having a lot of the free-wheeling adventure spirit that's at the core of the original programme.
2. We know pretty much everything about the Doctor because of it.
3. It has no thematic connection to the original programme. Giving the Doctor a clearly defined mission statement is completely alien to the entire concept of who the character is. Hes supposed to be directionless and just meandering through space and time on a whim. There are story arcs where hes working towards a goal but at its heart, there shouldn't be a solid thing for him to be questing after. Because then the story has a finite end and, after a while, the audience would start thinking that he should have accomplished what he set out to do. Oh, and giving a Time Lord a popular American name from the 1800s is completely idiotic. Why not just go and call the Master Jebediah while youre at it.