Wilderness Years: 1990-1996
After the official cancellation of Doctor Who came down the pike in late August of 1990, there were a few glimmers of hope, quickly squashed by the BBC, that the show would ever return. This was only the beginning of the show's "wilderness years," as Paul McGann so aptly summed them up years later. It literally felt to most people (including the fans) that Doctor Who, despite its popularity in the 60s and 70s, had outlived its usefulness to the BBC and was no longer considered profitable. (Of course, the drama backstage didn't help matters, and may indeed have been the cause of all the trouble in the first place.)
Still, this didn't stop a few people (notably Philip Segal) from trying to revive the series whenever they could...
Fits and Starts
1993 saw a quiet flurry of Doctor Who activity, since the 30th anniversary of the show was coming up in November of that year. Writers and producers toyed with an ultimately ill-fated production called "The Dark Dimension" in the summer of '93, and finally in September, the eventual 30th anniversary show Dimensions in Time was recorded, to be broadcast on BBC1 in late November. It was mildly successful, but still there were no real plans to revive the show again.
Meanwhile, Philip Segal was busily pulling together all the resources he could from both sides of the pond to bring back the Doctor. Beginning in January 1994, Segal engineered a deal between the BBC, BBC Enterprises, Amblin Entertainment (Steven Spielberg's company), and Universal Television to co-produce a new Doctor Who series--he already had a writer in place (John Leekley), and together they created a series bible called "The Chronicles of Doctor Who." As late as April, CBS was on board with the idea, ordering up a two-hour pilot and 6 hour-long episodes...and then, suddenly, in May, the deal fell through with CBS.
Undeterred, Segal took the ideas to the FOX network, and they quickly ordered up a two-hour Doctor Who movie (which could also serve as a "backdoor pilot" for a new series of Doctor Who). Casting began--in fact, the future Eighth Doctor Paul McGann actually auditioned for the starring role in September of 1994--but things were still very tentative. The head writer for the film would change twice (from John Leekley to Robert DeLaurentis and finally to Matthew Jacobs), and the film's very content would fluctuate quite a bit over the next few months.
Buildup to a Heartbreak
Finally, in late 1995, the BBC, BBC Worldwide, Universal Television, and FOX all agree to make what would become known as the Doctor Who TV Movie. Segal also had a pretty good idea who he would choose to become the Eighth Doctor--one of the four McGann brothers, whom he had seen in the 1995 TV series The Hanging Gale. Segal actually wasn't sure at first which brother was which, so he called two of them (Paul and Mark) back for another audition (LOL!), but it didn't take long to sort it out...and in late December, Paul McGann officially accepted the role.
Everyone pretty much hit the ground running in the early months of 1996--the six-week filming schedule for the TV Movie took place from mid-January to late February, and all filming was done in either Vancouver or Burnaby in British Columbia (making it the first and only Doctor Who piece filmed outside Britain). Once production wrapped, within a few months the TV Movie was ready to be broadcast; during the month of May, it debuted in Canada, America, and finally the UK. But even before its debut on its home turf, the FOX network had already released its Fall 1996 schedule...which didn't include Doctor Who, because it had not gotten enough ratings to win the network's interest.