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The Year in Pictures

Do You Have a Licence to Save This Planet?

The time travelling Foot Doctor discovers that the Cyberons and Autons are ineffectually trying to invade the Earth yet again. Can he and a helpful salesman save the day or will his arch enemy The Licensor defeat him for good?

Do You Have a Licence to Save This Planet? (2001)

An obscure and amusing tale of The Foot Doctor, addressing the licensing issues of making spinoffs of the cancelled Doctor Who.

This was actually a rather amusing tale from the group that has kept many Doctor Who actors and actresses working since the cancellation of the series many years ago. Entertaining and even hilarious sometimes, it&#39;s a must for any Doctor Who fan.

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BBV (short for Bill Baggs Video) was an independent production company that in the 1990s and early 2000s produced a large number of low-on-budget but high-on-energy films based loosely around Doctor Who. Some of their projects featured characters that were pastiches of characters from the TV series, while other BBV productions actually obtained the rights to certain creatures and characters from the TV series (but never the Doctor himself). It&#39;s this fact that lies behind the big joke of Do You Have a Licence to Save This Planet? To mark BBV&#39;s 10th anniversary, Bill Baggs himself produced and directed this tale of &quot;The Foot Doctor&quot; a &quot;Chrono-Duke&quot; who is called into service by Lord Rassilon when a certain LICENCED Time Lord is unavailable. His mission -- to stop an invasion of Cyberons (BBV&#39;s unlicensed version of the Cybermen) while also ducking out of the way of several Sontarans and Autons (actual Doctor Who series monsters licensed from their creators). Sylvester McCoy, who played the Seventh Doctor on TV (and if you don&#39;t know what I mean by Seventh Doctor, then odds are this film will go over your head unless you take a Doctor Who primer) endearingly pokes fun at his TV persona as &quot;The Foot Doctor&quot;, while bulky Mark Donovan plays his erstwhile companion. The jokes are hit-and-miss -- often more miss -- but there&#39;s enough here to give some good giggles to fans &quot;in the know&quot;. There&#39;s no pathos, no high drama, a minimum of &quot;action&quot; - just fun. And even if you find the going a bit tedious, be sure to stick around to near the end for a great joke directed at the other Doctor Who actors! Donovan gets some of the best lines though as he pokes fun at the Doctor Who companion stereotype. As an earlier reviewer said, this is a must-see for Doctor Who fans. It&#39;s no classic, but it&#39;s got its charm, and like most of BBV&#39;s productions it provides an interesting look into the &quot;dark days&quot; before the return of the real Doctor Who to our TV screens.

In order to watch and enjoy this film, you need to be a fan of Doctor Who, and have some background knowledge of the show&#39;s cancellation and how BBV came to be. That being said, it was an amusing way for BBV to address to the fans the many issues with making all of these &quot;almost Who&quot; (as said by Nick Briggs), by making the Licensing Manager the main villain. The Foot Doctor (mocking how the many series such as The Stranger, The Professor, The Wanderer, etc was practically The Doctor, but the didn&#39;t have the rights to the character) is summoned by Rassilon, where he finds some of the villains that BBV is able to use, all attempting world (or front lawn) domination, with the Cyberons as the main issue. Mockery of the creatures they were forced to work with without rights was quite evident, with one Cyberon wanting to be a Cyber Leader wearing black headphones, and mentions of the differing ears, and the Sontarans licking their lips as an attempt to frighten women. The Foot Doctor encounters The Salesman, who has all the tricks of the trade, and with him goes against the Licensing Manager to continue their non canon world. Overall, the film does a good job of explaining the process of using characters from the show, and only using Doctor-like characters in order to keep bringing fans Doctor Who despite cancellation.

User reviews

Do You Have a Licence to Save This Planet?

Not The Worst "Who"-Related Project

Fun for fans

An obscure and amusing tale of The Foot Doctor, addressing the licensing issues of making spinoffs of the cancelled Doctor Who.

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