Today is Red Nose Day in the UK, an annual charity telethon organized by Comic Relief. Part of Red Nose Day is always a number of sketches and shorts from various TV shows. One of the most famous also happens to be Steven Moffat’s very first filmed Doctor Who story: “The Curse of Fatal Death.”
This year, for Red Nose Day, the official Doctor Who YouTube channel has put Moffat’s short—which was originally broadcast as four shorts and then released on VHS in two parts—on its channel in its full 20-minute glory. You’ll spend basically all of it wondering why Jonathan Pryce never did get to play the Master.
One of the other truly fascinating things about 1999's “The Curse of Fatal Death” is how it previews a number of things from the show’s revival years later: the tried and weary Doctor, the Doctor and Master’s complicated one-upmanship, making the romantic love between the Master and Companion explicit, same for that between the Master and the Doctor (although, it’s the Doctor who is female in this, and not the Master), etc. I’m actually most disturbed by the idea of the Dalek-Time Lord hybridization, since it reminds me of the horrible Dalek plot in “Daleks in Manhattan/Evolution of the Daleks.”
The other thing that makes this short more relevant than before is the flurry of regenerations at the end. Both Moffat’s time as showrunner and Peter Capaldi’s time as the Doctor are coming to an end soon, and people really want a Doctor who isn’t a white man. For proof that it would work fine, check out Joanna Lumley at the end of this. She’s great!
Anyway, since “The Curse of Fatal Death” has yet to be released on DVD, Doctor Who’s YouTube channel—and Comic Relief’s—remain the only legal place to watch it. Unless you still have a functioning VHS player, you lucky sod.