Nobody could have predicated the huge ratings success of the new series of Doctor Who. Even Russell T. Davies, the show's executive producer and writer, admitted that the huge audience who tuned into the opening episode (10.6 million) were unexpected but most welcome. A popular mainstream hit sixteen years after the last series was transmitted it has been impossible to escape, with publicity hitting the front pages and discussion everywhere, from Newsnight to school playgrounds. The Chairman of the BBC, Michael Grade, who famously postponed the show in the mid-eighties, conceded that the 2005 revamp had been their most successful show in years. More importantly, it has beaten all the rival shows that ITV has seen fit to broadcast - Ant and Dec, Star Wars and Celebrity Wrestling (which performed so poorly that it was relegated to a graveyard Sunday morning slot) - and reaffirmed the importance of family drama.
 While the viewing figures understandably dropped off slightly as the shows run extended into the heat of summer, a steady average of 7.5 million people has prompted the BBC to commission a second and third series as well as two Christmas specials. 28 episodes of a show that was axed in the late 1980s after being buried in a time slot where it was regularly slaughtered by ITV's consistent ratings winner Coronation Street.
At Cannes this year rumours were rife about a feature film version of the show. While this is not the first time a Doctor Who film has been touted, the programmes new lease of popularity (both with critics and the public) has lead to the feeling that this time it could happen. If the original Star Trek series could be translated into a blockbusting movie franchise which in turn spawned a series of television spin offs, why not Doctor Who?
The earliest interest in making a Doctor Who film was sparked by the fourth story to be made which was broadcast in early 1964. Marco Polo saw the Doctor and his assistants joining the Venetian explorer on his famous expedition. After Kublai Khan takes a shine to the Doctor's time machine, the Time Lord has to think of ingenious ways to win it back and escape. Executives at Disney were keen to produced a lavish version of what was originally a rather studio bound tale. The project sadly never came to fruition, especially given that the original version no longer exists in the BBC archives. It was to be the first of many failed attempts to launch Doctor Who as a film property.
 Two Doctor Who films in the 1960's were produced by Aaru in conjunction with Amicus Films (who's horror output was briefly seen as a possible rival of Hammer) from television scripts written by Dalek creator Terry Nation. Peter Cushing took the role of Doctor Who (unlike the television version, who was known as 'The Doctor', he was addressed as if 'Who' was his surname) and redefined the part as a kindly human scientist which was a long way from William Hartnell's occasionally icy alien portrayal on television. The director of both films was Gordon Flemying, whose son Jason would later become a successful actor.
The first Dalek film was a huge success with audiences flocking to see the 90 minute movie that had, as a seven part weekly drama, lasted just under 3 hours! The big selling point was that it was the first chance to see what Doctor Who (and more importantly the Daleks themselves) looked like in colour. The TV series would not be broadcast in colour for another four years and even then many people had yet to update their sets to colour. The poster displayed an army of multicoloured Daleks maximising the differences between this and it's low budget counterpart.
 Even though the film was made on a tiny budget of £180,000 its huge success meant that it quickly made a huge profit and was one of the top grossing films of the year. Happily the Daleks success on the television meant that the monsters had made repeat appearances and the filmmakers were able to utilise the second of Terry Nation's scripts, the audience pleasing 'The Daleks Invasion of Earth.'
Daleks Invasion Earth: 2150AD offered the novelty of seeing London conquered and destroyed by a hostile alien invasion. It's gripping adventure storyline had more in common with wartime stories set during the blitz than a future adventure narrative. As an allegory for what London would have experienced had the Nazi's been successful, the film perfectly cements Nation's idea of the Daleks as the ultimate fascists.
Co-financed by Sugar Puffs (which lead to one of the earliest examples of product placement) the film's promotional budget was an astronomical £50,000. Despite this and perhaps because of the sidelining of both the Daleks and Cushing's Doctor Who on the posters (the original release poster inexplicably favours the Daleks brutal henchmen, the Robomen) it performed poorly at the box office. Plans for a third film were shelved leaving the two films as (to date) the only examples of Doctor Who at the cinema. The producer, Milton Subotsky, had planned for the Daleks to feature in a new film every year and even as late as 1982 was trying to get a third film, entitled 'Doctor Who's Greatest Adventure' off the ground.
In the mid-seventies the then current Doctor, Tom Baker, worked consistently on a script with his former assistant and writer Ian Marter called 'Doctor Who Meets Scratchman' which would have pitted the Time Lord against the devil incarnate played by Vincent Price and his army of killer scarecrows. Even at the pinnacle of the shows success, with ratings peaking at 17 million and the involvement of arguably the most popular Doctor, the film never got beyond script stage. When Baker left the series in 1981, so did that particular attempt to expand on the Time Lord's adventures.
 Throughout the 1980s an independent company Coast to Coast (later ironically changed to Green Light Pictures) attempted to produce an ambitious feature film version of the Doctor's travels. In 1985 the producers touted an impressive cast and crew list which included Denholm Eliot, Steven Berkoff, Caroline Munro, Tim Curry and Laurence Olivier. Mike Oldfield was to update the classic Doctor Who theme music and Douglas Adams (who had worked on the show in the late seventies) was to be have served as script consultant. Respected Doctor Who scribe Robert Holmes, who had authored many of the classic stories, was to have written the script with Richard Lester in line to direct. Sun Alliance were to have provided much of the backing for the film which was deemed to be a fitting response to the recent sci-fi boom heralded by Star Wars.
The BBC were suspicious of the producers boasts and retained the rights until mid-1987 when Coast to Coast were sold the rights for a substantial sum. With a script by former Doctor Who writer Johnny Byrne and a proposed start date of Summer 1988 the production floundered with the rights eventually reverting back to the BBC. Many of the backers (which included the rock star Bryan Ferry) felt aggrieved by the BBC's attitude towards their production and a legal action was mounted. This failed, leaving the BBC once again in the position of ownership of one of their most well known properties.
The closest Doctor Who got to a being a film in recent times was the 1996 TV Movie which starred Paul McGann in the title role. A co-production between Fox and BBC, it featured a large budget and secured 8 million viewers when transmitted in the UK . In America it performed poorly, struggling against a key episode of Roseanne and a much watched drama about the Royal Family. As a result the show did not go to a series and was left in the domain of the fans, with novels and audio plays keeping the Doctors adventures alive. This partially could well be why Doctor Who has returned to our screens after all these years. After all, there is clearly a huge demand for a character who has featured in more novels than any other fictional creation.
 Bizarre rumours as to who would play the lead role (David Hasselhoff, Donald Sutherland, Dudley Moore or John Cleese) and who would direct (Ridley Scott, Terry Gilliam, Leonard Nimoy or Steven Spielberg) have always chased Doctor Who's seemingly endless journey to the multiplex. Perhaps the oddest was the report that Sean Bean was to play the Time Lord in a £200 million pound movie, which would have been the most expensive film ever made and funded the original 26 year run many times over!
With the new found appeal of the show, and its new audience it seems like the story of Doctor Who's epic struggle to reach the screen is far from over. The planned merchandising blitz that looks set to envelope shops over Christmas (remote control Daleks being a must) might not quite equal George Lucas's all out assault on the consumer, but given a big budget film, it could only be a matter of time for the worlds favourite Time Lord. There are many books detailing the long and at times tortuous history of Doctor Who. Perhaps the most helpful in piecing together a coherent history of the history of Doctor Who at the cinema are:
The Nth Doctor , Jean-Marc L'Officer, Virgin Publishing, 1997
Doctor Who: The Eighties , David Howe, Mark Stammers, Stephen James Walker, Virgin Publishing, 1996
Doctor Who: Regeneration , Philip Segal, Gary Russell, Harper Collins, 2000
The DWB Compendium , Gary Leigh (Ed), Dreamwatch Publishing, 1993 Jonathan Wilkins
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