FANS WHO: Dr Who Meets the Scorpion

Mandy Rose and Phillip Roy in Dr Who Meets the Scorpion

Dr Who Meets the Scorpion - what a fun title. The sort of title that’s both lurid and mysterious. A new fanfilm from PREP-B Productions, this is a full ninety-minute movie now streaming on YouTube. It’s a love letter to classic Doctor Who - sixties, seventies and eighties. The title is styled like that of the first Dalek movie, Dr Who and the Daleks, with various nods to that film and its sequel, with many of the sound effects taken from it. The theme tune used for the striking title sequence is the beloved seventies version of the classic Grainer-Derbyshire theme, while the visuals mostly call back to the mid-70s to early 80s, with the Doctor himself looking like he stepped out of The Sweeney or Gangsters. 

The Doctor is played by Phillip Roy, who also writes, produces, co-directs, and co-edits. A bit of a vanity project, then, creating the entire film and casting himself in the title role? To be honest, with the opportunity to create my own version of Doctor Who, I’d do the same. Fortunately, Roy makes a decent Doctor. There’s something of David Collings to him, a softly-spoken charisma that makes him very engaging. He comes across as quite a sentimental incarnation, very reassuring, while occasionally ruthless, with a sharp sense of humour. I like him.

The film begins at the tail end of an adventure, with the Doctor finishing another plot by the Daleks (in glorious technicolor Cushing-style). The Daleks’ varied accents pulled me out of it a little, but it’s a solidly produced scene that gives a good flavour of the kind of Doctor we’re going to be watching. Then it’s back to Earth for a holiday… or rather, another adventure and a brush with death. Naturally.

While he’s travelling alone to begin with, it isn’t long before the Doctor finds himself thrown together with a new companion. Jennie, played by the beautiful Mandy Rose, is a resourceful and courageous young woman on a mission of her own, which brings her, the Doctor, and his kipper tie face-to-face with the story’s initial villain. However, this time the Doctor is facing that most callous of enemies - corporate business - and there’s a ladder of villains, each answering to someone higher up the chain. The immediate threat, the smug, yet almost likeable Mr Taylor (Brian Smith) answers to the more alien, and more arch head of the company, the Scorpion himself (Lucas Edwards, under some decent make-up effects). As for who the Scorpion answers to… that’s a mystery left open.

The story jumps from setting to setting as the Doctor and Jennie trace the villains’ base of operations, visiting alien worlds that look like they’ve stepped straight into 70s Doctor Who (and I do mean that as a compliment). There’s a flashback to an old-fashioned night club cabaret night which has some interesting moments but slows things down a bit too much, but on the whole, this is a pacy, entertaining adventure.

The only thing that lets it down, for me, is the reliance on callbacks in the script. Naturally, this is a film by fans, for fans, and we all love some little kisses to the past. Some of them work very well, particularly when they actually influence the plot (including a very unexpected voice role for a star of 80s Doctor Who), but a lot of them are simply throwaway lines, and after a while they wear a bit thin. It’s a shame, because when the dialogue is original, it works well, being frequently touching, other times very funny.

Still, Dr Who Meets the Scorpion is one of the best fanfilms I’ve seen; certainly one of the most professional. I hope when the sequel arrives, Roy is confident enough to let his Doctor stand on his own, and rely less on well-remembered lines from his predecessors (how far ahead he is isn’t clear, but he’s clearly a future incarnation from beyond the Ncuti Gatwa series). I can definitely recommend this as an entertaining diversion for fans of classic, twentieth century Doctor Who.

You can watch Dr Who Meets the Scorpion here. 

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