Doctor Who: The Movie, Now With Added Catherine Zeta Jones

Let’s play a game of News Gets Worse. We’ll start - David Tennant is keen to make a Doctor Who movie in the next few years.

That’s not terrible news - David Tennant will get to be in a film, it’ll increase the international visibility of Doctor Who and it’d be a lovely gift for all the British fans who’ve stuck by Doctor Who through thick and thin. But now let’s play News Gets Worse: outgoing Doctor Who showrunner Russell T Davies wants Catherine Zeta Jones to play the Doctor’s assistant in the movie.

Actually, Catherine Zeta Jones in a Doctor Who movie isn’t as bad as it sounds. After all, she already has great chemistry with 900-year-old men… because she’s married to Michael Douglas! And she’d never be frightened of evil creepy wrinkly aliens like Davros… because she’s married to Michael Douglas! Honestly, we’ve got a million of these.

Doctor Who has been the making of David Tennant. Without Doctor Who to boost his publicity he’d have never played Hamlet, appeared on that Derrin Brown show or got to shag his own daughter. Honestly, David Tennant has a lot to thank Doctor Who for.

However, despite all this David Tennant is bored with Saturday teatime television. He wants to be a moviestar. He wants to be approached by lust-crazed supermodels, not acne-covered teenage boys asking him questions about the atmospheric conditions of Gallifrey. Trouble is, the BBC knows that if David Tennant leaves Doctor Who they’ll have to replace him with the bloke from the Yellow Pages adverts and it’ll be crap.

That’s why an uneasy compromise has been reached. According to reports, David Tennant will remain on Doctor Who for a fifth series so long as he gets to star in a Doctor Who movie.

Great. A Doctor Who movie. Just like rubbish Canadian one starring a McGann from 1996. Or, worse still, that confusing Titanicy thing with Kylie from Christmas. On paper, the Doctor Who movie isn’t going to be anything other than awful.

Or is it? Russell T Davies, the man credited with reviving Doctor Who, has come up with an ingenious idea to give the Doctor Who movie a drop of old-school glamour. He wants a big Hollywood star to play Doctor Who’s assistant. Perhaps the biggest Hollywood star, in fact - Catherine Zeta Jones.

Yes, Catherine Zeta Jones. From the 2007 chef-based romantic comedy No Reservations. She’s still famous, right? Digital Spy reports:

Davies, who was born in Swansea, said he would like the Welsh actress to star in a big screen adaptation of the cult BBC show. He said: “Being from Wales myself, I would love to have Catherine Zeta-Jones as a companion for The Doctor.”

OK, enough is enough. Unless casting Catherine Zeta Jones as The Doctor’s assistant is part of an ingenious ploy to make Catherine Tate look good in comparison, it’s never going to work. What’s she going to do, bring all the fizz to the role that she did in Blue Juice? Of course not. Let’s just do the decent thing and kick the idea of a Doctor Who movie in the head now before anyone gets too excited, OK?

Plus, if a Doctor Who movie gets made, it’s a grim inevitability that it’ll be followed up by a Torchwood movie. And, really, the cinema is the one place we go to shelter from the ridiculous ubiquity of John Barrowman. Please don’t take that away from us.