How would you fix the TV movie?

No appearance by the seventh Doctor, no regeneration. The Eighth Doctor arrives, fully formed, ready to be introduced to a new audience.

Change the prologue so that it isn't quite as baffling to a new audience or infuriating to fans: maybe have 7 sitting in a small cafe drinking some tea with the Master's urn also on the table, chatting to the waiter/ress about how he's taking the ashes of an old friend back home, then have him walk back to the TARDIS and get shot on the way. The urn falls, smashes and the ashes mixes with some of the Doctor's blood and we get Bruce "infected" by accidentally touching it: the reveal that it's the Master should be more of a surprise for the viewer, I feel. I'd lose the comedy hospital workers and the "half-human" line. I'd change the ending so that it doesn't involve a reset button: maybe have the Master's regenerative energy bounce back into Grace and Chang's bodies and revive them instead rather than what we got. I don't mind the rest of it.

Hmm, maybe a magnetic videotape erasing device?

Nahh, there's really only a very few words I could have lived without in it.

Other than making the actual finale a little clearer ('think alarm clock!'), I wouldn't presume to 'fix' the TV Movie at all. The cast are great, McGann is instantly 'the Doctor' and Grace is a great companion for him. I really enjoyed it. The only reason I feel sad watching it is because it never lead to a series (well, not for ten years).

No romance between The Doctor and Grace and have it be strictly platonic. Hold back on Grace's backstory and have their dynamic be more modern day Doctor/Sarah Jane and focus on the sadness in Grace's life, rather then how she can't keep a man because she has to do her job and trauma (BRIAN WAS NOT A LOSS). As Asian fans have often pointed, give Chang Lee a name other then Chang Lee! 


No Master, no Time Lord reveal, nothing. For budget sake, have the monsters-of-the-week eventually be revealed to be a scouting party for an alien invasion. A journey into the inexplicable and the unknown. No 'Doomsday clock' or easy time reset. No Hollywood TARDIS.

Yar, that was a good'un.

Keep: McGann, that console room, Amazing Grace, “please give me the keys before I shoot myself”.
Ditch: The Master, thr TARDIS destroying the world, the regeneration.
Add: a quiet invasion (Autons perhaps).

We open with a strangely dressed, unconscious “vagrant” being taken into hospital for examination by a police officer. Grace has just had a blazing row with her superiors and gets saddled with examining the “vagrant”, who has strange blood, two hearts and an allergic reaction to penicillin. He wakes, his mind addled and tells Grace a fractured story, she runs to get the police but the Doctor has disappeared.
Cut to the scene at her place with the letterbox. The Doctor has settled and Grace cautiously listens.
They’re attacked by whoever is hunting the Doctor, cue stealing a police bike etc etc.
Now we reach the TARDIS.
Grace now believes him.
The Doctor says he’s tracked the centre of the Auton invasion, but needs something to disable them - the Atomic Clock. They go to the gala, steal the badge etc. but thr gala is attacked by the Autons. Another car case, lots of stuff blowing up and Autons attack the TARDIS. It’s indestructible so they’re safe BUT they need to leave that safety to save the world.

Retain: Sylvester, backstory, the Regeneration, The Master, Grace, Chang Lee
Discard: Dying in something so vulgarly pedestrian as a senseless alleyway shooting, half-human, stitches, snogging, Eric Roberts (der SchwarzenMaster?), the TARDIS threatening the world (some debut - saving us all from himself)
Unsure: Eye of Harmony

Only thing I would change is the half-human bit.