Newsgroups: rec.arts.drwho
Subject: WHO PRESS CONF.: FULL DETAILS!
Date: 19 Jan 1996 01:34:29 -0500

The following information is direct from the Doctor Who press conference held today (4:00pm Pacific Time) at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Pasadena, California. In attendance were Philip Segal, Executive Producer, and Jo Wright, Producer for the BBC. There were also three fans able to attend the conference -- Shaun Lyon (myself, from the Time Meddlers of Los Angeles and Gallifrey Conventions), Rhonda Krafchin of the Prydonians of Prynceton, and Lou Anders of Sci-Fi Universe and DW Monthly.

As previously reported, Paul McGann stars as the eighth Doctor, who begins his tenure eight minutes into the new film on an operating table in a San Francisco hospital. His companion for the movie is Dr. Grace Holloway , played by Daphne Ashbrook, a heart surgeon (who's of course surprised that the Doctor has *two* hearts). The Doctor has come to Earth at the beginning of the film in an emergency, but his emergency landing goes awry and he ends up in the hospital. A combination of the drugs he's given makes him regenerate. From there, the Doctor will go on with Grace to fight the Master, played by former Oscar nominee (for "Runaway Train"), Eric Roberts.

The script is written by Matthew Jacobs, and the film is directed by Geoffrey Sax.

The plan is to air the film in May on FOX Television. It will air either simultaneously or within a few days thereafter on BBC Television. If the film does well, both Mr. Segal and Trevor Walton (who I believe is a representative of either FOX or Universal) said that there are possibilities for either a number of films or, indeed, a television series. Segal said that a series could be done "immediately" and answered in the affirmative when a reporter asked him if a series could be done for the fall season. Currently, however, both the characters of the Master and Grace are one-shots.

Sylvester McCoy reprises his role of the Seventh Doctor and will be in the first eight minutes of the movie.

The budget is slated for approximately $5 million, far above normal amounts spent on regular TV films. There will be a combination of digital and optical effects as well as state-of-the-art prosthetics. The music will be the same Ron Grainer theme but rescored to achieve a slightly different effect but very much a companion to the original. The McGann Doctor is said to be very much like the Tom Baker Doctor. McGann, it was noted, is represented by former Doctor Who star Janet Fielding, his manager in the UK.

I'll have more as I go through my audio tape of the press conference, but that's the long and short of it. There was a lot of anticipation visible at the press conference, and I think things are in great hands.

Both Philip Segal and Sylvester McCoy will be appearing next month at the Gallifrey '96 convention in Los Angeles, California (February 16-19, 1996, at the Airtel Plaza Hotel in Van Nuys, CA, along with Sophie Aldred & John Levene) where Segal will be showing a full set of production photos from the shoot in Vancouver, B.C., which begins next week and is targeted to end on February 16.

Shaun Lyon
Gallifrey Conventions & The Time Meddlers of Los Angeles