bird accessory and a face modelled after Sean Connery." The show was also to feature female companions from Earth, and space battles which the BBC would not have been able to afford for the live action series. The series would have been Nelvana's biggest show to date, however, according to Bastien, "it was pulled out from under us" after a British animation studio told the BBC that it could do what Nelvana intended for a much lower price. The project did not proceed further and no pilot was produced. Later years 1996 television movie National awareness of Doctor Who temporarily increased when the Fox network broadcast a new television movie on 14 May 1996. The movie, a co-production between the BBC and Universal Pictures, received a moderate amount of publicity in U.S. media, including a prominent story in TV Guide. The producers of the movie had hoped that it might serve as a "backdoor pilot" for a new series of Doctor Who, but sub-par ratings in the U.S. prevented this hope from being realised. Many reasons are given for the ratings failure of the TV movie, most of which focus on strong, "sweeps" competition from programs on other channels, including a pivotal episode of the popular sitcom Roseanne. However, it failed not just against its competition on the night, but against other movies broadcast in the same time slot in other weeks. It netted about a 5.5 rating, or about a 9-share. Fox's Tuesday Night Movie slot was generally garnering an 11-share during this period. At the same time, Fox was also broadcasting the dimension-hopping science fiction series Sliders which was facing its own struggles for renewal following average to middling ratings. Coincidentally, Sliders was owned by Universal Pictures, but when it came to supporting one series or another, the studio predictably backed the one that it wholly owned rather than the one for which it was merely a co-production partner. As a result, when the new Fall schedule was announced, Doctor Who was not on the list. Universal did try to find Doctor Who a home on another broadcast or cable network, but were unsuccessful by the time their relationship expired with the BBC on 31 December 1997. The TV movie was the first time a Doctor Who adventure was broadcast across the United States at the same time. The movie was filmed in Vancouver, British Columbia, though it