Culturess’ Official Ranking of Doctors in Doctor Who
By Ani Bundel
Image via FOX
11. Eighth Doctor: Paul McGann
Speaking of Doctors who never got the chance on screen to show their greatness, that brings us to Paul McGann. All hints suggest that he would have made a lovely job of the Time Lord, despite the odd costume he was put in by the US production department at FOX. But that was the problem. His only shot on screen was an American production. If you ever wondered what an “American Version of Doctor Who,” would be like, check out McGann’s Doctor Who: The Movie. It is, in a world, terribad.
For the longest time I thought if they brought Doctor Who back, they would restart with a new Eighth Doctor and pretend this never happened. What I did not take into consideration is that between the release of this movie in 1996 and the reboot in 2005, there were nine years of comic books and radio plays that featured McGann as the Eighth Doctor. In a way, it was good of Davies to honor this Doctor’s existence when he brought back the series. It led to the Whoniverse’s golden rule that –due to the vagaries and wibbly wobbly timeywimieness of time travel–EVERYTHING is canon. And it led to McGann getting one more crack at the role to show us what we missed in the web short “Night of the Doctor.” Oh for what could have been.