Feature by JONATHAN MORRIS
Rowan Atkinson as the Doctor in The Curse of Fatal Death (1999).
Twenty years ago, Doctor Who returned to television. Not as a new series, unfortunately, but in a no less triumphant incarnation – as a miniadventure during the BBC’s Comic Relief night, with the Doctor, played by Rowan Atkinson among others, accompanied by his companion and fiancée Emma (Julia Sawalha) and facing the deadly vengeance of the Master (Jonathan Pryce). It helped raise millions of pounds, reached an audience of 9.8 million viewers and, who knows, it may have even helped pave the way for the series’ full-scale return in 2005.