Doctor Who: Scratchman by Tom Baker (and James Goss)

I first heard of Doctor Who Meets Scratchman in 2008 - when the revival of the BBC TV series was truly at the peak of its trendiness and David Tennant was a few months away from passing the key to the Tardis over to Matt Smith. The show was so popular that there was talk of doing a spin-off movie, though whether it would star Tennant, Smith or a stunt-casted Robert Downey Jr or Johnny Depp was up in the air...well, that's what interested the people at Doctor Who Magazine, because they knew attempts at a film featuring the cast of the TV series had been tried before..

In the 1960's, there were 2 Doctor Who movies starring Peter Cushing as "Dr. Who", but he was playing a different version of the First Doctor, played by William Hartnell on television. In the 1970's, Tom Baker had become the 4th actor to play the Doctor on television and fancied starring in a spin-off film that would've starred himself and TV co-stars Elisabeth Sladen & Ian Marter, who played Sarah Jane Smith & Harry Sullivan, respectively.

This is what the lineup looked like:

    They liked working together. 

Baker collaborated with Marter on a film script that would've been in the style of the stories told at the time, which resembled pastiches of British gothic horror movies, usually the ones featuring Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing, but also Roger Corman movies featuring Vincent Price, Basil Rathbone & Peter Lorre. I personally prefer the era where Baker is hanging out with Mary Tamm or his future ex-wife Lalla Ward offering gummy bears to megalomaniacs while tinkering with upgrades for his robot dog/valet, K9.

K9, meet K9...Now THAT'S a crossover!

 That being said, there are a lot of great moments featuring this team and the banter between them sparkles in ways that make other Tardis teams look like an assembly of actors.

The film's plot was the 4th Doctor vs The Devil, possibly the biggest representative of evil the character could've faced. Longtime foes the Cybermen and the Daleks would've served as guest-villains. The Devil, going under the name "Scratchman" stages elaborate scenarios to get the Doctor's attention, including an army of scarecrows terrorizing a village...

           Cool, but not quite what we got...

   Uh..kinda yes and no..happens later, but this is going to be a spoiler-free review, because it's good enough to recommend.   

That's more like it! 

Those scarecrows are the main original monsters in this adventure. Scratchman would've been played by Vincent Price:

Artist's conception. Of course 

The final showdown between Scratchman, the Doctor, after many twists and turns, would've taken place inside a giant pinball machine in place of a labyrinth:

Certainly larger than that, but you get the idea.

Having outwitted Scratchman, the Doctor and his friends return to the Tardis and party down to the tune of "Yes, We Have No Bananas."

I'm reminded of Marvin Suggs & His All-Food Glee Club rendition of that old chestnut..

And that was all that was known of the film, according to the only surviving copy of the 1st draft of the screenplay, found among papers belonging to departed 1980's Doctor Who producer John Nathan-Turner. Proper financing for the film couldn't be found, plus the effort seemed awfully humble in the wake of Star Wars and Star Trek movies either in-development or already released. It was condemned to "development hell" and talk of even adapting the script into a novelization at least began when the scripts authored by Douglas Adams for "Shada", "The Pirate Planet" and "Doctor Who And The Krikkitmen" were being novelised. Up until then, fans had to settle for a vaguely detailed synopsis with a speculative mock-up of a movie "poster" published the TV series official tie-in magazine to indulge our imagination...

Baker collaborated with writer James Goss on a reimagined version of this story, with the end result being a novel written & published in 2019, so it will have a cameo by Doctors 10, 11, 12 & 13, plus a feeling of a "last hurrah" proper for Tom Baker in his own words, particularly as he approaches his ninth decade. Goss cleans up the narrative to feel less cinematic and more like an extra-long adventure from the original series, so it's familiarity may make it seem more cozy than groundbreaking; but that's usually the highest compliment a tie-in novel can recieve. Considering how there aren't too many novels featuring the 4th Doctor because writers found him tricky to convincingly transition to plain prose, the fact that his portrayer on television succeeds while the seasoned journeymen didn't makes this adventure worth your time.

One thing that bothered me: it appears they couldn't get permission to use the Daleks as they appeared in the screenplay, so they were substituted with giant Chess pieces...it's okay, but they're no Daleks.

Not quite as it appears in the book, yet it has the right ring to it..I actually think Goss & Baker should've realized the Chess pieces this way, rather than as golf carts. Spoilers.