1963-1970 Was kind of the ‘Wild West’ of ‘Doctor Who’ (The famous british science fiction TV programme about a mad alien with a shapeshifting time travelling box who rocks up on alien worlds, fights tyranny with intellect and romance over brute force and cynicism and then heads off to the next adventure)
See, the show was a little slow going in establishing its own lore, with the concept of regeneration (initially known as ‘renewal’) not existing until 1966, the Doctors race being named ‘The Time Lords’ not existing until 1969, and the doctors homeworld ‘Gallifrey’ not being named until 1972. You would think these would be more up front reveals. But the show was far to busy having fun and messing with the audience over the years to really bother with lore. ‘Lore is for big walleys’ as Terrence Dicks once famously quipped.
But in 1964/65 two things were certain, ‘Doctor Who’ as a show was a phenominon that captured the nations youth, and the biggest threat to the galaxy…were ‘The Daleks’.
The ancient pepperpots have been around now for well over 60 years, but their history (and more importantly, their copyright status) even to this day, is murky to say the least.
This is because the Daleks were created by Terry Nation, who ensured via negotiations with the BBC that the rights to the Daleks as creatures/designs and all of the stories that Nation would pen for the series between 1964 and 1975 were his to own and do what he pleased with.
So, when the opportunity to make a big screen outing for the timelord presented itself (via unscrupulous means I might add) Nations eyes turned into dollar signs, and the guy handed the reigns to the worlds first ‘Doctor who’ movie over to two chaps who, at best, had maybe half watched half an episode of one of the poorer William Hartnell era episodes.
Nation leased the rights out to adapt the Daleks first outing (Titled: ‘The Daleks’) to the big screen…But due to not wanting to step on the BBC’s toes in doing this deal, a number of things had to be changed/tweaked from the original show to make it work.
I realise im getting quite fact heavy in this review, but please do bear with me, its kind of important.
So ‘Doctor who’ the TV series, by this point in time had been running for around 2 and a bit years. William Hartnell played the first on screen incarnation of the Doctor alongside the doctors Grandaughter Susan (a 15 year old played by Carol Anne Ford). The story explains that while attending a human school in the 1960s, Susans teachers Ian and Barbara become concerned that shes acting a bit *too* odd for a teen girl of that time…So they follow her back to a junkyard, where its revealed the doctor has a time machine, he traps Ian and Barabara inside, and most of the first season is based around the doctor (half heartedly) trying to get ian and Barbara back to 1963, having many adventures along the way (Including ‘The Daleks’)
THIS adaptation of the story is set on earth in 1964/65 as we are introduced to the VERY much human ‘Dr. Who’ (Im not joking…his last name is ‘Who’ and he is a ‘Dr.’) a somewhat eccentric, but warm grandfather figure who is currently sharing a house with his two daughters ‘Barbara’ and ‘Suzie’.
While whiling away the hours reading advanced physics books (and comics) we’re then introduced to Barbaras boyfriend, Ian. whos basically just doing a half hearted dick van dyke impression for most fo the runtime.
While waiting for Barabara to get ready to go on a date, ‘Dr. Who’ decides to take Ian into the back garden to show him his greatest invention to date…’TARDIS’ (not THE Tardis…just…TARDIS…) a time/space travel machine that ‘Dr. Who’ himself has built out of bits of string and tiny pieces of eggshell seemingly…Naturally the entire gang wind up inside TARDIS, Ian falls on the ‘GO’ lever…and they wind up on a mysterious alien planet thats been largely petrified.
And what follows is a VERY truncated adaptation of the original BBC serial, which ran for 7 episodes between 1963 and 1964 totalling just shy of 3 hours of television. I mention this because the films FULL runtime is 76 minutes. with a good chunk of that going into opening titles and credits.
And thats kind of the crux of the issue this film has really…the original television serial (in my opinion) was ABSOLUTELY over long, flabby and EXTREMELY repetative…the core idea is decently solid, but its largely a runaround with a few good moments sprinkled throughout.
The film adaptation however? goes WAY too far in the other direction, oversimplifying the story into a MASSIVE hodge podge of bizarre and confusing key plot beats that have basically just been hot glue gunned together without ANY thought for continuity, pacing or storytelling.
There are multiple points in this film where the plot holes are significant enough (and glaring enough) to pull you clean out of the action, key scenes in the TV series are just wholesale lifted into this version, but without the adaptation required to make it make sense. The original televised serial was quite literally an alagory for the nazi movement, with the Thals playing the part of the persecuted minority and a (somewhat heavy handed) but fairly well balanced take on racism.
This movie dumbs that down to ‘Daleks = Bad, Thals = good’ and the entire racism/nazi comparison is airlocked pretty quickly. a key scene in which Ian tries to coax the thals into fighting back against their abusers, in the TV series, is a fairly blunt, but well executed shorthand for ‘stand for something or fall for anything’ in this movie, that same scene is played with NON of the context applied meaning a largely pacifistic race of people just suddenly turn into Sylvester Stallone in ‘Cliffhanger’.
The characters are streamlined down to the basest of elements. Ian, Barara and Susan in the TV series have depth, warmth, character. They can be complex, have feelings that go against the grain and we learn to warm to them as they express their humanity (or in susans case, wanting of humanity and belonging) over the various adventures we go on with them. Hell, even ‘The Doctor’ in the TV series starts as a grumpy and border sociopathic alien figure, but over time, softens into a still quite grumpy, but ultimately lovable figure.
Here? ‘Dr. Who’ is an abscent minded professor type who just basically says whatever comes to mind and bumbles around looking for solutions to random problems. Ian is prat falling all over the place and has ZERO character beyond playing a ‘dummy dumb dumb’, Suzie is a precocious child genius and nothing else, and Barbaras personality here is SO thin, I actually forgot she was even in the movie, as she only really has 2 scenes of relevence and note, and the rest of the time she just sits in the background.
The pacing is jagged and uneven, the tone is weird and offputting, it feels like ‘Home brand’ doctor who…and worse still, ‘Home brand’ doctor who that doesnt really understand why the show was successful.
The key selling point of the movie is of course the Daleks themselves, who get a very lavish redesign, but even with the full push of the Nation estate behind them, even they dont escape unscathed, their voices here, while easily identifyable, are slow and sluggish. making short scenes in the TV version PAINFULLY long in the movie redux. While I personally loved the redesign, they dont really get to do a whole lot here, and the decision to replace their ‘extermination’ gun ray effects with just a ploom of smoke I feel really knocks them down in terms of how menacing they can be.
What DOES save this film however is the direction and cine, which is rock solid, with previously ‘broom cupboard’ sized sets, being replaced with grand soundstages, lavish neuvo art deco set designs and a real sense of scale to proceedings. the knock on effect is that the actual props themselves look BEYOND cheap and poor quality. But for grandness, this one cant be faulted honestly.
Compositions are distinct, vibrant and decently experimental, particularly with the Dalek form. we have a pretty coherent production visually, even if the script fails to match it in quality.
The edit is a bit all over the place, not *quite* incoherent, but certainly heading that way. cuts are a bit scattershot and there are moments where shots are either WAY too brief or WAY too long before the cut mark. which is a real shame. it feels rushed, and very much in need of one more pass to tighten it up.
As for the performances? Peter Cushings ‘Dr. Who’ is unrecognizable. the man transforms into the role and it took me at least a couple of watches to realise that he actually was THE Peter Cushing and not just some random actor CALLED Peter Cushing. I feel like he nails the brief of what was asked of him, giving a very sincere, if not a tad doddery performance. The problem is, the brief that was provided to him was VERY much against how the character ACTUALLY should be. In short, he’s fine. Its the script thats wrong.
I actually feel sorry for the supporting cast in this, who’ve been transformed from meaty, somewhat interesting characters into NPC’s for most of the runtime. flat, dull, lifeless…they did nothing for me…The dalek operators certainly add a menace to proceeding. but that delivery is just SO jittery…it really quite put me off.
The score by contrast is fun, light and engaging…Though, it really doesnt say ‘Doctor Who’ to me…it says more ‘Generic early 60s sci fi movie’ like…its quality…but it feels ill fitting in these circumstances.
The first Doctor who movie is a bit of a minefield honestly, while I enjoyed seeing an alternate take on the TV series. the idea with reinventing a character is to try and take them off in an interesting and new direction…Something this production really quite fails to do.
Its a fine enough generic sci fi flick, something to happily kill 70+ minutes…But I feel like this had the potential to have been SO much better than what we ended up with. As it stands its very much ‘Nice video, shame about the song’ pretty…but lacking the spark that really makes me love it.
source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/dr-who-and-the-daleks/
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