#classic who review

[glorbysblog]

My Top Five Favorite 2nd Doctor Stories

1. The War Games - Genuinely the most innovative concept in the entire B&W era imo as well as providing a great conclusion to the era and introduction to the greater Timelord culture.

2. The Mind Robber - There’s some behind-the-scenes lore about the haunted house section of The 1st Doctor Story “The Chase” that the belief that that setting occurred within the imagination would be disastrous to the concept of Doctor Who as a whole. This story proves that notion completely wrong.

3. The Macra Terror -

THERE ARE NO MACRA! also Jamie does a little dance. I watched the animation and this was definitely my favorite animation of the era.

4. The Web of Fear - This story is a lot more important than I thought it would be. The first proper follow-up to a previous non-Dalek story with The Abominable Snowmen, the intro for The Brig, and this might be Victoria’s strongest story outside of her intro.

5. The Power of The Daleks - I was a bit conflicted on whether to put this one or The Evil of The Daleks for the unique setting and Victoria’s introduction, but I think this one wins out for me. Not just for Troughton’s introduction, what actually sells this story is the reactions of Ben & Polly to The 2nd Doctor as we see Polly quickly adapt and act jolly with the new Doctor and Ben be absolutely FURIOUS and these reactions really help to sell how groundbreaking it was even then.

I think my takes on the 2nd Doctor era fall within what most people think of as the best in contrast to some of my favorites of 1’s, but I hope you enjoyed all the same. Thanks for the support of my silly liveblogging in the past 24 hours : )

[esonetwork]

Doctor Who: The Krotons Review | Earth Station Who

New Post has been published on https://esonetwork.com/doctor-who-the-krotons-review-earth-station-who/

Doctor Who: The Krotons Review | Earth Station Who

In this Earth Station Who Podcast episode, we dive into the classic Doctor Who story ‘The Krotons,’ featuring the Second Doctor, played by Patrick Troughton. Join the crew as Mike Gordon rejoins us as we review this fan-favorite serial from the 1968-1969 season, exploring its unique storyline, memorable moments, and the introduction of the mysterious Krotons. We’ll discuss the plot, character dynamics, and the historical significance of this iconic episode in the Doctor Who universe. Whether you’re a Whovian or a sci-fi enthusiast, our in-depth analysis of ‘The Krotons’ offers fresh insights into one of the more underrated adventures of the Second Doctor’s era.

Subscribe now to Earth Station Who for more Doctor Who episode reviews, news, and discussions, and join the conversation with fellow fans!

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If you would like to leave feedback or comment feel free to email us at feedback@earthstationwho.com

DoctorWho #2ndDoctor #TheKrotons #EarthStationWho #doctorwhoreview

[whoreviewswho]

Your Evil is My Good - Pyramids of Mars, 1975

There are some things, though not many, that the Doctor Who fandom seems to universally agree on. Everybody seems to agree that the Weeping Angels are a great, iconic monster. Everybody seems onboard with the notion that The Caves of Androzani is one of the best stories of all time. Everybody seems to agree that the Hinchcliffe era is one of the most consistently good runs in the whole show. You can probably see where I am going with this. Pyramids of Mars has been forever lauded as one of the all-time great Doctor Who stories, a shining example of a show that appealed to all ages at the peak of its powers. 

Like all consensus opinions, there is obviously a clear logic to this. Pyramids of Mars is incredibly memorable and influential. It was, after all, the third serial to be released on the VHS line and it topped the DWM poll for most anticipated DVD release in 2003. Even if it were not so formative and prominent in fan's minds (the amount of times it has been selected for re-release and repeat is remarkable) it would still be one of the most influential and groundbreaking stories of its time. It is hard to challenge the claim that Pyramids of Mars is the single most important story of the Hinchcliffe era. Not the best (there are at least four prior to this that could more readily stake that claim) but, in an aesthetic sense, the pilot episode for the Hinchcliffe era or, at least, the one where everything finally falls into place.

Prior to Pyramids of Mars, Doctor Who had functioned primarily based on the approach pioneered by Verity Lambert and David Whittaker back in the early 1960s. Their vision of Doctor Who was as a programme defined by juxtaposing aesthetics and the storytelling had developed to facilitate that by colliding genres and styles of storytelling. What debuts in Pyramids of Mars is, in hindsight, the inevitable next step which is positioning the established aesthetics and logic of Doctor Who alongside specific pulp genre stories. The difference is the distinction between the Doctor walking amongst a space opera or a western and disrupting their logics and aesthetics and the Doctor walking around within 1971’s Blood of the Mummy’s Tomb and being beholden to its logic and aesthetic. 

In the 1990s, Steven Moffat infamously derided the Hinchcliffe era for comprising too largely of derivative pastiches and, while I ultimately agree with him, he is made to look a bit of a fool because of how much the approach does actually work. I like Pyramids of Mars. Of course I do. I'm a Doctor Who fan. This story is a blast to watch and it is the first in a really strong run of pulpy, gothic horror-pastiches that define the Hinchcliffe era in everybody's minds (I stress this is not the beginning of a run in terms of quality, just the start of an aesthetic period that also happens to be very good). This is a messy story but it is a very promising first showing. Pyramids of Mars proves that this model of Doctor Who can work and it lays the groundwork for better stories later down the track. after it to take this aesthetic and run into incredibly interesting places. So, as you have obviously concluded by now, this is not even close to my favourite of the Hinchcliffe era, let alone of all time. 

Yes, the production of Pyramids of Mars is spectacular. Probably the single strongest aspect of the Hinchcliffe era is just how good the show was at working within its limitations. None of the stories under his watch look especially naff and Pyramids of Mars is especially luscious. The serial is dripping in tone and atmosphere and I could not begrudge anybody frequenting it for just the mood it puts you in. The sets for the house are great and effortlessly evoke that classic, hammer horror tone of an old, creepy house with creepy old dudes doing creepy *cult* (we can replace that word with *casually stereotypically racist*) stuff. The visual effects are also excellent with particular kudos to that chilling bit where Marcus gets shot. I could watch that one sequence forever. 

This is not a script with a wealth of great material for the actors but there is no question that they are all exceptional. Paddy Russell even claimed as much herself, insisting upon finding strong actors to bolster material that she thought was lacking. Michael Sheard brings a lot to Laurence Scarman, the best part in the whole story from an acting perspective, but it is hard to look past Garbriel Woolf as Sutekh for the best guest performance in the serial. What a captivating voice and commanding presence. Tom Baker's performance is often praised for the seriousness and dread he brings to proceedings. He even has some particularly dark and alien moments such as his total detachment from the various deaths around him. In my opinion, however, I find his performance to be distant and disinterested, likely thanks to his frosty relationship with Russell. Luckily, it does serve this material well and offer an alienness to the role but he seems incredibly bored and pissed off every time he is onscreen.

As with this whole season though, Elisabeth Sladen is at the height of her powers and effortlessly wrings buckets of charm out of scripts that, again, serve her terribly. Following season eleven, it feels like nobody working on the show has any interest or even a take on the Sarah Jane that we were introduced to. Everybody who has ever seen this serial praises the scene where the Doctor leaves the events of the story for 1980 at Sarah's request and rightly so because it is a phenomenal sequence and possibly the most effective way to demonstrate how awesomely powerful the villain is in the whole show’s history. It's so good, of course, that Russell T. Davies had the good sense to nick it wholesale for The Devil's Chord. Everything aesthetically about Pyramids of Mars works. This is a great story to just watch and let wash over you. 

However, I think that this script is deeply flawed and definitely needed another pass before it could attain true GOAT status in my books. Perhaps that will seem unfair to those who will cry out in defence with the reminder that  this story was another late rewrite from Robert Holmes when the original scripts, from one time writer Lewis Griefer, were deemed unworkable. It is somewhat miraculous that this story even got made at all. It’s difficult to say now how much of the finished serial can truly be credited to whom. Greifer, was approached by Holmes, a former colleague, while headhunting new talent. Knowing he had a keen interest in Egyptian mythology, Holmes allegedly pitched the combination of science-fiction and a mummy horror film to him. Greifer’s scripts would have been radically different including the proposed final appearance of UNIT and the Brigadier, a scheme to solve world hunger with plantations on the moon year culminated in the Doctor uniting with Horus and Iris to take on the crocodile looking Seth and stop his plan to replace the grain and destroy the moon. It is from here that the development of the serial becomes very collaborative. Holmes met with Greifer and suggested a number of scaled-back alterations that were more in-line with what Doctor Who was suited to in 1976 as well as taking on suggestions from outgoing producer Barry Letts. 

Greifer revised his scripts further to what would be the basic plot of the television version, moving the detecting to Earth with an imprisoned Seth and his rocket-based plans, with the added addition of a fortune hunter seeking the world-saving rice in an ancient Egyptian tomb. Holmes remained unhappy with the scripts and, to make matters worse, Greifer fell ill after delivering a full script for the first episode only. Following his recovery, Greifer then promptly left the UK to take on a job her previously committed to leaving Holmes to do a page one rewrite with the consultation of director Paddy Russell based on what had already been put in motion. With all of this fraught pre-production in mind, I still think this story is an undercooked mess. The first episode is fantastic and I really love the third but there is so much padding in episodes two and four that really drag the whole thing down for me. The entire second episode is just spent cutting between Sutekh killing people and the Doctor setting up a plan to stop him that fails immediately: The foundations of this serial are really strong and it has some great dialogue, characters and moments but the whole thing fails to hold together for me especially in regards to pacing and the real lack of any interesting subtext to sink your teeth into. There is not much to love here that is not aesthetic.

But let's try and dig a little deeper anyway. Broadly speaking, mortality seems to be the theme that connects the various elements of the story. We are first introduced to the Doctor in what is probably my single favourite shot of him in the whole seven years he was in the show. We meet him alone, in silence and brooding in the TARDIS control room. Sarah enters in what will be a coincidentally appropriate Edwardian dress, our first indicator that this story is really all about aesthetics and flavour more than anything else, and we discover that the Doctor is in somewhat of a mid-life crisis, grappling with the uncomfortable realisation that his life is marching on and that he has no real purpose. This is a really well written and performed scene, one of the best the Doctor and Sarah ever had, and probably my favourite of the serial. While the original show on the whole is not know for deftness of characterisation and development, Pyramids of Mars proposes a potentially interesting starting place for the Doctor’s character which is simply to put him in a somewhat depressed mood and unhappy with the prospect of spending his remaining days at U.N.I.T.‘s beck and call. This a Doctor who has lost his sense of purpose and ambition. It is a great idea that could reveal a lot about the Doctor and challenge his character, as we later saw under Moffat's creative direction, but it never goes anywhere here. Pyramids of Mars is a serial about a villain who does have a defined purpose and ambition – to bring death to all of reality. Yet the person best poised to stop him is in a crisis himself about the prospect of that very thing arriving for him. The character-driven story of a wandering hero in a mid-life crisis versus the Lord of Death should simply write itself.

But it doesn't. The Doctor does not walk away from the end of this adventure with a renewed sense of self or really any semblance of change in the morose feelings he expresses in episode one. It would have been perfectly forgivable if his mid-life crisis was something that the production team set-up here and went on to develop over the season but that never happens either. The Doctor is more than happy to assist U.N.I.T. in the very next serial and yet once more before the season wraps up. The elements are all here to ie the themes and character beats together but it never really happens. For example, I would love to confidently read something deeper into the final visual of the house burning down. It is, after all, the Doctor’s defeat of Sutekh that starts the fire and we know from episode one that, later down the track, the manor is going to be rebuilt and repurposed as the U.N.I.T. headquarters.

The thematic implications of this are really nice. Sutekh wants to end everything, leaving "nothing but dust and darkness", but we all know that the manor's destruction is an ultimately necessary consequence to allow for something good to rise up from its ashes. Life always prevails and begins anew. This is a simple enough thematic beat that could have been teased out and made a lot stronger and it could even have been a clear indicator of some character resolution. With the Doctor inadvertently facilitating the conception of U.N.I.T., this whole image could represent his coming to terms with his place in the universe after combatting Sutekh and passionately redefining himself and coming to terms with a now mythic role as a defender of all life in the universe, a champion of change and renewal. It is something almost there in the script but not quite.

The use of Egyptian iconography in this story is very clever. We know that death was an incredibly important aspect of their culture. People's corpses were mummified to preserve them for the afterlife since death was very much believed not to be the end. There is some cool world-building in this story and I really like the idea that Egyptian culture is all founded upon the wars of the Osirans (Osiris being the Egyptian god of the dead and of fertility). Sutekh is directly mentioned as being the inspiration for Set, realised as well as one could expect in his final beastly form, and the whole premise of the story is hinging upon his previous eternal imprisonment at the hands of brother Horus. I love that the bringer of death is punished by having an eternally unlived life. I think that this context is intended to be paralleled with Marcus and Lawrence. The pair are brothers and, for most of the story, the former literally is Sutekh.

Or, in another sense, it might be helpful to take the Doctor’s advice and consider Marcus as already dead. That plays nicely into the broader subtext we are reaching for here of exploring different relationships with death. Lawrence is in denial of his brother’s death since he sees him walking, talking and breathing. The Doctor thinks otherwise, confidently claiming Marcus to be dead already and no longer Lawrence’s brother now that his mind has been overtaken. We should note the Doctor and Sarah’s later scene too where she expresses a lot of sorrow over Lawrence’s death while the Doctor more or less just shrugs, if anything he comes off mildly annoyed, and refuses to deviate from the bigger priority of stopping Sutekh. It is a very memorable and somewhat disturbing scene, the likes of which the modern characterisation of the character never lends itself to. Even the Twelfth Doctor at his most callous was condemned by everybody around him and served his greater character growth. In the case of this moment, it is Sarah who is framed to be in the wrong for imparting human values upon the Doctor which is a potentially interesting notion but not a thread Holmes ever seems interested on pulling on again.

But I’ve digressed. There is potentially something very cool in the parallel between the four brothers but, again, the story is in dire need of another draft to really pull it to the fore. Lawrence is ultimately killed by his brother in quite a genuinely tragic moment since he is such a well performed and written character but the actual implications and significance of the scene beyond just the sheer shock value are ultimately lost on me. Marcus ends up never even knowing he did this, presumably, since he is killed the second he is freed from Sutekh. If Lawrence could be read as a parallel with Horus, or perhaps more closely of Osiris if we are considered the actual Osiris myth, what is this actually supposed to communicate? To depict for us that Sutekh would kill his own brother given the chance, as we know he did? That there is no humanity to appeal to with this villain? I am not sure of the intention but the scene, like this whole story, is almost fantastic.

And then there is the final episode. Every critic of this story before me has already torn this episode to pieces but I will just take it on briefly and note that the whole story just kind of falls apart at this point. The opening scenes with the Doctor and Sutekh are awesome but as soon as we actually get to the titular location, Holmes starts playing for time really hard. The first three episodes are already padded out to the max with extended woodland chases, an awkwardly large number of scenes where the Doctor and Sarah are simply walking to the poacher's shed and the entire character of the poacher himself in episode two who interacts with none of the main cast (save Marcus) and is just killed anyway. None of this blatant stretching of the script bends to breaking point thanks to how strong the production is at capturing the horror tone and aesthetic but the fourth episode is not so lucky. What we have here, for most of the episode, is an extended sequence of the Doctor and Sarah attempting an Egyptian themed escape room. This could have been compelling and some of the puzzles are kind of cool but the presentation is actually quite awful and the whole logic of this situation kind of escapes me. I suppose that Horus set these up to stop Sutekh’s followers from getting into the pyramid but does he just have the same voice as Sutekh? Is that what is going on?

It also does not help the story that this section is all shot on CSO and, aside from some great model work, looks incredibly cheap and bad. The serial takes a really shoddy nosedive but the biggest insult of this whole affair is simply that the whole episode is a colossal waste of time. The Doctor and Sarah accomplish nothing in going to the pyramid and just turn around to go back to the house to save the day with a totally different plan by the end anyway. Neither the characters nor the audience gain anything at all from the whole sequence. 

Thus, this is the great conflict I have with Pyramids of Mars because I love watching it. I love the flavour of the story and the clear effort that everybody put in to make it the memorable, entertaining experience. For the most part, I am really sucked in by it. But it is not a masterpiece. In the end, there really isn't very much to say about it at all. This is a serial that feels like watching the tracks being laid when the train's already moving. It makes for a fun journey but the final destination is really shaky. Pyramids of Mars is exceptional in theory just leaves that little bit to be desired. 

It is still a cracking story though. After all, this is mid-70s Who we’re talking about.

[classic-who-review]

Black Orchid 1982

8/10

I'm extremely fond of this one. It's one of my favorites. Just a fun little two part murder mystery type episode. Getting to see everyone in fancy dress and Peter Davison play a nice round of cricket is very fun.

[an-american-whovian]

• An American Whovian Reviews: 'The Legend of Ruby Sunday' — by Russell T Davies.

Nobody, and I mean absolutely NOBODY, writes a season finale quite like RTS. Sure, this is only part one — but what a fucking set up to the culmination of this story arc.

Totally called it that it would be Sutekh, by the way. However, who is Mrs. Flood!?

This season came and went — but what a blast has it been. Fingers crossed that it sticks the landing . . .

⭐⭐⭐⭐ outta four.

Ps. My prediction fer next week: Ruby's actual mom is Susan Foreman — thus making her the Doctor's great granddaughter.

[girderednerve]

sorry for my persistent belief that economists can't write. i am not wrong but it's definitely meanspirited of me. anyway you can immediately tell if a paper is written by a historian of economics vs. an economist with historical interests, on account of: the prose is So bad

[the-all-seeing-salmon]

The War Games Colourised Review

The War Games Colourised is, granted, much better than The Daleks Colourised. The editing and pacing is much improved, but still not perfect (though trying to get 10 episodes into a 90 minute special is quite a task).

The additional effects for the mental processing machine are really nice, and the added establishing shot of the central war base is interesting, the CGI designed to make it look like a miniature model, though it's a bit too shiny compared to the episode footage. I also love the colourful SIDRAT controls.

One thing I don't like is they keep playing the Master's theme from Series 3 for the War Chief, furthering the insinuation that they are the same character rather than independent rogue timelords. They even added a regeneration sound effect after he's executed. It's not that I mind the insinuation, it's that they really put their foot down and appear to have made it canon.

The Doctor's regeneration is interesting, I actually like that they showed future incarnations of the Doctor when he's choosing his new face, it's funny. I thought I'd hate that they showed him regenerate into 3, and I have to say I don't really like the full CG scene much. My main complaint would be that it makes it harder to have series 6B and the Fugitive incarnation in the gap between, but as always with this show anything can be squeezed in with enough time shenanigans. However I did laugh out loud at the 1970/1980 UNIT dating controversy gag.

I still prefer the original, despite how long it is. I even found myself flagging a little during this 90 minute special. It's a lot of content even when compressed and, like with The Daleks, could have done with being a two-parter. I can see why some might want to watch this version instead though as it is less of a time commitment.

Overall, whereas The Daleks Colourised got a 1 star review from me, The War Games Colourised gets a 3 star.

[gardenof-eda]

I found another rabbit hole, shocker.

I started looking into the oldest scary clown movie. Admittedly I am either a true horror fan or a masochist as I have a pretty longstanding hatred of the scary clowns trope. So much, that I find some non scary clowns terrifying depending on their stance or face makeup. And yet, I have found myself in many a scenario almost in tears watching something clown related. Both IT interpretations, American Horror Story ( actually don’t know if Dandy or Twisty is worse), the Terrifier (only the first, as it’s name truly served its purpose), Killer Clowns from outer space etc.

My search led to a discussion on the oldest clown movie being somewhere between Lon chaney’s character in Laugh, Clown, Laugh or the Man Who Laughs. I’ve always seen pictures and been interested in the latter anyway, the movie cover chosen is pretty striking and has always made me curious.

So, here I am, watching the Man Who Laughs.

It’s described as a horror and listed as such but right at the beginning there is such an air of tragedy. The way the story allows us to see the layers of cruelty and sadness Gwynplaine experienced feels so ahead of its time. The images of a tortured boy being left behind by a ship to die as an outcast. The image of the boy itself is so hard to see. To be asked to imagine a child who’s survived having his face carved so heinously is in itself only one of the emotional hurdles of the movie. A quick fast forward we see the effects of the world’s beatings on Gwynplaine. He is shy, a seemingly unworthy contender in this human race who’s accepted the crumbs of a life as a freak. His value is even briefly compared to a 5 legged cow and like so many other with physical differences in the past. His only path led to the circus where his face laughs for money but his heart breaks for more than simple change and the fleeting acceptance of a crowd seeking out entertainment and not empathy for the man they see before them.

So many cinema themes are rampant, the most obvious being “Sock and Buskin”. The masks symbolize both the joy and sadness experienced in the theater as well as in life. Gwynplain has no choice but to wear the face of joy and laughter while his life has been a series of unspeakable tragedies. There’s a moving but quick moment where he’s staring at himself in the mirror, he’s hoping to see something different perhaps but as usual, nothing changes. He closes the mirror doors and there on the knobs, sit the two masks in question. Another instance comes later when Ursus claims the show must go on! We have this shot of the words “The Man Who Laughs” on the stage, as the performance is being introduced by a man who can’t help but to sob as he introduces the Dea’s stage appearance to a crowd of eager and unaware onlookers.

The theme of beauty being in the eye of the beholder is also something I think is important to in this movie. Dea is the only blind character and yet is gifted with the most sight and perspective. In her own words, she beautifully tells Gwynplaine that god has made her who she is so that she could be with, and see him for who he truly is. Nonetheless, he loves from afar as he feels anything closer is a union she doesn’t deserve. He doesn’t see the man she sees, just the clown. It’s unfortunate as she doesn’t appear to be the only one that loves him. Ursus clearly loves him the way he would his own son. He allows him to not only live with him but he roots for Gwynplaine and Dea’s happiness, as well as grieves at the loss of him, and the possibility of Gwynplaine’s fulfilling his need as heir in the form of husband for the beautiful but cruel Josiana. Finally, but certainly not least he is loved by Homo. The canine companion and protector of their little family. Homo feels like a commentary on the unconditional love that overflows in animals, and stops short in humans. Despite each members lowly place in this wretched society, Homo’s love for them is ever present. He goes through remarkable hurdles to bring his family back together, his most triumphant being his attack so that Gwynplaine could escape, and finally his swim to the ship so that he could go back to the life he so desperately fought to have back.

A lot of the film has Gwynplaine covering his mouth when it is not needed for performance or when he is around those judging eyes.He uses his hands and a cloth mask to cover his ever present gruesome expression. Despite this we lose no depth of emotion from this character. The weight of the entire performance mouth covered or not is on Conrad’s emotive eyebrows, the wrinkles tattooed on his forehead from years of torment, and his eyes that are always just brimming with sadness and tears. There’s this brief moment when before he finds his courage to address the court where he uses the cloth that normally covers his smile to cover his eyes. Like the way a boy closes his eyes to jump into the deep end. It summarizes in once glance that this although he physically grew up, a scared little boy has always been standing behind a mutilated mask. It’s so quick, but so poetic and only made more grand by the image of him standing there. His face voluntarily uncovered by himself being the only smile in a room full of frowning.

Maybe my own perceptions of government have leeched into this last thought but here we go. I think my favorite concept in this movie is the image of a clown. What is it? A person in hair and makeup, entertaining the masses? Is that then not the role of monarchs and their peanut gallery courts? Are they not painted, powdered and wigged figures that put on a show for the people around them? A show of power to those that fear them, and a show of their divine right to those that wish to be like them. Not only do they put on things like these carnivals and freak shows in the first place to keep the poor complacent and distracted; but on a more contrived note, is the pomp and circumstance of monarch’s and not just all show anyway? The stale image of a stuffy gallery full of people with nothing better to do than to sit in yards of frill and lace draped across their historically unhygienic bodies while a bored quartet plays as their background theme. I haven’t even begun to describe the performances of the women.

Or is a clown a strategic use of body language and facial expressions to earn a positive reaction out of people? One could argue that Duchess Josiana is then one of the best. I love seeing liberality in women, especially in something so far back as a German expressionist film. However the brazen display of her feminine wiles is very “put on” in front of men. She performs when they enter her space albeit clown, courtesan, or the peasants and drunkards at the fair. She darkens her light features with eye paint and lines her painfully sharp cupids bow with red lip paint to complete her character as a classless calibre of woman. A performance the queen has seen more than once and refuses to applaud. She couldn’t be more delighted to cage her restless bird in a marriage she would deem a punishment. Jokes on her, you’d be hard pressed to find a man for a husband like Gwynplaine.

A round of applause for Olga Baclanova whose deliberate take on malicious femme fatales never cease to make me loathe her. I’m always floored by the likeness between her and Madonna in her heyday. In you need to see more of her you’ll find an equally impressive and loathsome performance of hers in the movie Freaks, another movie ahead of its years.

This movie feels like a gateway to joker origin stories, call backs to the displays of love of the Hunchback of Notredame, Cicero, and maybe even Pinocchio. I was left with commentary on casting stones at glass houses dripping in cleverly disguised writing. I’m always surprised by how German expressionism or I guess just a good movie in general whips me into a verbal frenzy. Despite a beautiful display of acting on each actors part, the obvious star was always Conrad Veidt. His portrayal of an innocent man tortured by his permanent grin draws out the real clowns of society. Making Gwynplaine a clown that can’t be feared, but a man that is deserving of all the love in the world.

[marvelmaniac715]

I made my mother watch tv shows I like, here were her thoughts:

Doctor Who - we watched all of Modern Who, a season and a half of the First Doctor, the Second Doctor’s final serial and have moved on to the Third Doctor (I just couldn’t sit through anymore black and white tv 😅) safe to say she enjoyed it

Good Omens - this one was dicey since she’s Christian and I wasn’t sure what she’d think of the themes, but she liked it for the most part, vastly preferring Season One to Season Two (it was actually the first time I watched Good Omens but I knew about the twist at the end of Season Two… it was very hard to fake shock but my mum and sister weren’t at all interested in the heartbreak)

Percy Jackson and the Olympians - we watched the entirety of the show in a very short amount of time and are now two hours into the Lightning Thief audiobook, she loves it

Wandavision - this, along with Hawkeye, was the only Marvel show that I could convince my mum and sister to watch, and although she’s sat through a few Marvel movies with me I can sense that it is very much not her thing

The Goes Wrong Show - my entire family enjoys Mischief Theatre so she did enjoy it but won’t do repeated viewings because she thinks it’s less funny if you know what’ll happen (I very much disagree and have watched every episode many times)

Bluey - this show is what inspired me to make this post, she caught me playing a Bluey game on my phone (don’t judge me it’s a comforting show) and I convinced her to watch some episodes with me, we watched the first four episodes (up to Shadowlands) and she laughed approximately five times in total, it reminds her too much of Peppa Pig (my favourite show when I was little) and she winced whenever Bluey or Bingo laughed (she’s got a thing about kids making noise when playing outside) but I think she’ll watch more episodes with me

EDIT: For some reason I put the word ‘three’ in the title, no clue why, ignore me, I’m super tired 😭

[glorbysblog]

My Top Five Third Doctor Stories

1. The Dæmons - I think this serial is the most definitive Third Doctor story. It has Jo, The Brig, Benton, Yates, and The Master, and this story feels like the last time that they’ll all properly be together. Outside of that aspect, this story is also just a whole lot of fun for its very 70’s view of the occult (The Master throws up devil horns and I thought it was a joke at first) and it’s unique location of a small village they have to protect.

2. The Time Warrior - As far as entertaining the entire whole way through, I think this story wins out amongst all the episodes that have come before for being consistently funny and important. The Sontarans from the beginning have a strong comedic charm which is matched by Sarah Jane’s comedic strengths.

3. The Green Death - Really beautiful and bittersweet farewell to Jo Grant, this is at the time the most thought-out and well planned companion exit of the show’s entire tenure so far.

4. The Three Doctors - The very first multi-doctor story. For 3, a lot of the story is business as usual though they do get some interesting scenes with Omega, but a lot of the story shines through 2’s interactions with the UNIT family new and old.

5. Invasion of The Dinosaurs - This one is definitely a personal pick as a huge fan of the 60s-70s Godzilla flicks and this is the closest analogue I’ve found to them, but even outside of that, I think this is the strongest down-to-earth UNIT story of the whole era, and the betrayal at UNIT allows some good moments from Benton and The Brig.

So that’s the Third Doctor era, thank you all for the support once again and I hope you’ll follow me into this next era. This era of the show was a whole lot of fun and I was lucky to share some of my first thoughts on it with you through this blog.

[garlicbread-cowboy]

I'm doing a slow watch trough of classic who and so far I've watched i think half of the third doctor's seasons

absolutely obsessed with the unit crew, like i love them all, although Liz, Jo and Benton are probably my favourites and the Brigadier being constantly so Done™ with the Doctor's antics is very funny

some of the side characters in like three episodes are also genuinely delightful

i definitely see why people love classic who so much I am quickly becoming one of those people, highly recommend

[paperbaacks]

review:

“I was forced to acknowledge too late, much too late, that I too had loved, that I was capable of suffering, and that I was human after all.”

i think this is one of those books that only specific people would like—an acquired taste. even then i didn't hate it, it was just... so bleak.

i understand the necessity of the bleakness and the disquieting emptiness, but sometimes a story needs to be a short story and not a full length novel/novella. i who have never known men felt like one of those books.

even then i fully understand why so many people love it and gave it five stars—the story is so unique, the narrator is a mystery in and of itself. she is as much a character as she is a literary device. there are moments in the book that are harrowing, and hopeless, and sad. the story itself and engaging too.

ultimately, i think it frustrated me so much to not solve the mystery. we know just as much as the narrator, until the very end. it's completely a personal preference, but for the most part, this one didn't work that well for me :/

[whoreviewswho]

Only One Race Can Survive! - The Daleks, 1963

Part I - The Mutants

Sydney Newman, 1986: "Being a real aficionado of science fiction, I hated stories which used bug-eyed monsters, otherwise known as BEM’s. I wrote in my memo that there would be no bug-eyed monsters in Doctor Who. And after a few episodes, Verity turned up with the Daleks! I bawled her out for it, but she said ‘Honest, Sydney, they’re not bug-eyed monsters – they’re human beings who are so advanced that their bodies have atrophied and they need these casings to manipulate and do the things they want!’. Of course, the Daleks took off and captured everybody’s imagination. Some of the best thing I have ever done are the thing I never wanted to do. It’s true! It’s worked out that way". 

Like most periods of the show's history, Doctor Who's inception was a tumultuous time behind the scenes. Script editor David Whitaker, in what would quickly become a desperate hunt for reliable writers and workable scripts, approached writer Terry Nation having seen some potential in his script for ABC TV's science-fiction anthology Out of this World. Despite having, by his now admission, no faith in the programme, Nation soon found himself out of work and committed to a six-episode serial that would air fourth in the season's run. 

Initially entitled The Survivors, Nation's original pitch to Whitaker was quite different to the story that eventually made it to screen but kept a lot of the same themes and allegory intact. Nation's serial originally featured three races; the Daleks, the Thals and a third species whose ancestors were responsible for the neutron bomb that devastated Skaro and had returned to the planet to make amends. The set-pieces were more extravagant in initial drafts and the Daleks less definitively villainous but producer Verity Lambert was impressed with Nation's work, offering him a seventh episode to allow greater expansion of his ideas. 

David Whitaker, 1979: "Terry Nation didn’t want to write for us, considering it rather demeaning that he’d even been asked."  Terry Nation, 1987: "I had no faith in the show. It was the old writer’s axiom, ‘Take the money and fly like a thief’."

As Nation continued to work, the programme's production elsewhere became more fraught. The two serials commissioned for writer Anthony Coburn required increasing rewrites, the initial first story that would become Planet of Giants was deemed unworkable and budgetary concerns had ensured John Lucarotti's epic Marco Polo would not fill the intended third slot. Much to the dismay of Donald Wilson and Sydney Newman, two of Doctor Who's three founding fathers, Nation's The Mutants suddenly became the strongest contender for the second serial. 

Verity Lambert, 1980s: “The crisis came when Donald Wilson saw the scripts for the first Dalek serial. Having spent so much time defending ‘Doctor Who’, he saw the Daleks as just bug-eyed monsters, which went against what he felt should be the theme of the science-fiction stories. There was a strong disagreement between us, in fact it went as far as Donald Wilson telling us not to do the show. What saved it in the end was purely that fact that we had nothing to replace it in the time allotted. It was the Daleks or nothing."

David Whitaker, 1979: "Actually, that Dalek story was educational in a subtle way – it showed the dangers of war, pacifism and racial hatred. It contained many admirable and idealistic truths in it, and it was also a jolly good adventure story."

To this day, Terry Nation is somewhat of a divisive figure in the Doctor Who fandom. On the one hand, we have the man who penned what is arguably Doctor Who's most important, formative and defining serial. He is the creator of, not just an iconic monster but, iconic worlds and the core spirit and characterisation of Doctor Who itself and its leading ensemble. Yet, on the other hand, we have a writer who made no bones about his disinterest in the scripts he was writing. It has not become controversial among fans to condemn Terry Nation as a lazy, even hack, writer. One of these things is probably true; Terry Nation was a very lazy writer. But to call him a hack? Not in my opinion. Terry Nation is a very simple writer, certainly. The man's approach to structure was very traditionally rooted in the sci-fi serial format, his style of dialogue would not seem out of place in then contemporary comic books and his plots could never be described as complex or involved stories. 

But why should any of these things be flaws? So, the man could write in the mould of classic sci-fi serials? Doctor Who was in the mould of a classic sci-fi serial and what Nation understood so well was that week-to-week structure that so many of his successors, and a good deal of his contemporaries, failed to get a hold of. Sure, Terry Nation serials are awkward stories to binge but they were never designed that way. Ever tried reading Oliver Twist more than one chapter at a time? It is horrible. Every individual chapter is truly an episode unto itself with great moments of character and action that effectively recap the story and move the grander plot forward. This is why, despite the unusual length of seven episodes, The Daleks still holds my attention for the whole runtime. Possibly more than any other writer's work on the original programme, Nation's episodes are consistently great to jump into just as single episodes. This also goes hand in hand with the very direct and simple dialogue really works as well. It is never subtle but it is always efficient and perfectly compliments the flavour of adventure serial that Nation consistently captured. Terry Nation is a good writer. Obviously. He is so good that even when he could not care less, and most of the time he did not, he could always deliver fun and beyond competent scripts.

Terry Nation, 1978: "It was quite a good eerie beginning and, at the end of it – the last frame of the picture – we saw a bit of a Dalek. We didn’t see a whole Dalek. And the phones started to ring. People saying, “Christ, what is that thing? A week later, the Dalek appeared."

The Daleks is a masterful blend of serialised action/adventure, thought provoking science fiction ideas and positively chilling horror that is well beyond the brief that Nation was given. From the moment it begins, this serial is unsettling. There is, of course, a brilliant dramatic irony baked into the premise that operates as both a clue to what is really going on and a genuinely compelling danger for our heroes. There is a school of thought that has concluded that The Daleks is too long but, again, I feel that this is a very contemporary mindset that somewhat misses what this story is going for. Say what you will about Destiny of the Daleks, for a not-at-all random example, but the first episode of this story, titled The Dead Planet, is not an exercise in killing time until the Dalek shows up to menace Barbara at the end. Despite what we know now, The Dead Planet does not have a reveal at the end. There is no frame of reference for the audience to project onto what is happening at all. Instead, the episode is a slowly rising crescendo of intrigue and tension that spans from the sparseness of a silent, dead forest to the gradually more claustrophobic and unfamiliar terrain of the city until Barbara gets cornered in an unknown corridor by an unknown terror. It is beautifully constructed adventure fiction that plays on the natural marriage of primal horrors, being the least creatures alive on the planet, and the imagery of contemporary nuclear warfare.

An Unearthly Child is a story defined by juxtaposition and survivalism which are both ideas that Nation picks up on beautifully in his story but he also brings themes of morality, identity and action. The Daleks is an almost biblical parable. With An Unearthly Child and The Daleks, the two core identities of the show appear to emerge. The former is a cynical and unrelenting programme that believes in unstoppable forces of nature that, no matter how hard we try to escape them or destroy them, will always be there at the core of our beings. With the latter, it is something more optimistic. A programme that is insistent, no matter how devastating the situation, that we can affect our destinies and help those around us to strive for better lives where we learn from our mistakes, can change and move forward. It is this version of Doctor Who, unsurprisingly, that the majority of the franchise believes in.

One thing Wilson did insist upon this serial was an experienced director whom he could trust to steer the ship and Christopher Barry was called in to take the job. Barry, however, was in the midst of other commitments leading to the unique situation where he only directed part of the story – episodes one, two, four and five. Richard Martin made his directorial debut with episode three and went on to direct episodes six and seven as well as the following serial and the Daleks' immediate next two appearances. Barry would also return to the series directing serials infrequently until 1979. As excellent as Martin's work in this serial is, and he realises some pretty spectacular imagery and visual effects for a little programme and with no experience, I could sing the praises of Christopher Barry all day. His choice of camera shots are incredibly dynamic throughout the episodes he helms with some particularly creative uses of angles and composition that really get the best out of these tiny sets. So many classic Doctor Who stories are hampered or even ruined by flat and uninspired direction (and eventually Barry will be the culprit of such a thing) but The Daleks, for my money, stands proud as one of the most cinematic serials of its era. 

The cast are all excellent with great moments to shine. William Russell is always on good form and one of my favourite moments of the serial is when he smashes Susan's flower. It's a brilliant and revealing character beat for him. Jacqueline Hill is great and has some epic girl bossing toward the end ("Do you always do what Ian tells you?" "No."). Carole Ann Ford sells the desperation of Susan's mini-quest very well but let ustake some time to single out for praise is William Hartnell who turns in possibly the defining performance of at least his first year in the leading role and steals every single scene that he’s in. Considering the overly aggressive and immoral characterisation of An Unearthly Child, it was not necessarily a given that Doctor Who would be a likeable character any way moving forward but this is the story that first truly defines him. He is still arrogant, selfish and perhaps a little morally ambiguous but he is also shown to be deeply passionate, delightfully witty and shows more than a handful of moments of genuine charm. I love how character driven the plot ultimately is with little more than the Doctor's selfish, stubbornness to please himself that puts the whole crew in danger. It is worth mentioning too how the fluid link saga things on the TARDIS' identity as a machine, in the literal human understanding of the word. Very rarely beyond this serial would the TARDIS actually be treated in this way by the narrative, as opposed to simply being a magical element that carries us from A to B. The Doctor's actions are cruel and self-interested but by the time he is encamped among the Thals and one can see his delight in getting to know their people and their science, he suddenly becomes such a fully realised person in ways that he was not before. The Doctor is a scientist and an explorer, not some vindictive wizard with indefinable motives. 

While the presentation, and perhaps core value itself, is a little dated, I also appreciate the Doctor's, and the rest of the main cast's, push for the Thals to be proactive as a peoples. It is a little clunky on the whole and comes off as a pretty pure endorsement against pacifism (though Ian's line "Pacifism only works when everybody feels the same" is a difficult claim to refute) but the nature of the message, insisting that standing up to oppressive forces and taking control of one's own life, is one worth conveying and an essential step in the development of the Doctor's morality. We are not entirely there yet, this is not a heroic character (indeed, he actively causes the Daleks to die), but this is the biggest leap we will get until the Daleks' next appearance.

Speaking of, let's get into the Daleks themselves. It is remarkable how close they are to being fully formed in their debut story. It disappoints me no end that this version of the Daleks, the calculating Nazi scientists allegory, is so ill-frequently represented in subsequent media appearances. The Daleks barely kill anybody at all in this script, largely seen just deliberating and experimenting in the labs of their cities, making the few uses of their weaponry a genuinely awesome shock for the audience. It is also a lot of fun seeing the original educational edict play out, for the only time with the Daleks; they cannot leave the floor of their city for they are powered by static electricity. 

The true unsung hero of this production continues to be Ray Cusick, the BBC designer who somewhat infamously took over from a young Ridley Scott who was too busy to take on the job. Before even getting to the main event, we should note that the production design all around is stunning on this story. All of the sets and costumes that are dripping in glorious futuristic aestheticism that would make Star Trek jealous. The Daleks look incredible and, again, it is too easy to take for granted how truly iconic they are. The most radical redesign in the entire barely strays at all from their original realisation here. Even watching them today, it is unbelievable watching them in action. Just how smoothly and freakishly the creatures glide around their home world. They are just so thoroughly alien and it was one of the best choices of the production that their true nature is never actually revealed. How is it possible for the Daleks to be so far from anything resembling humanity? It is left purely for the imagination and to great effect. While Nation was very keen on the image of a gliding creature, allegedly inspired by the the Georgian State Ballet, Cusick was the one who really created the visual identity of the Dalek creature.

Terry Nation, 1987: “Raymond Cusick made a tremendous contribution and I would love to be glib enough to put it into percentage terms, but you can’t do that. You start with something that’s a writer’s dream, that he’s put down in words, and amended, and added to in conversations. Something starts there... I think they may have given him a hundred pound bonus, but he was a salaried employee... The copyrights resided with the BBC and myself... he made a tremendous contribution. Whatever the Daleks are or were, his contribution was vast."

Ray Cusick, 1992: "Everyone was rushing around corridors saying ‘Oh, there’ll be Dalek films, Dalek soap, Dalek tea towels’, they thought there’d be lots of money. I was very friendly with Terry Nation and we appeared on a very famous show called ‘Late Night Line-Up’, and I remember asking him after the show ‘What about the films, Terry?’. And I never saw him again!"

As well we know, Terry Nation is not a subtle writer. In a lot of ways, Terry Nation's scripts seem to defy analysis. Funnily enough, this is something that he has very much in common with, a remarkably different Doctor Who writer, Russell T Davies – neither of them are particularly keen on subtext. As noted above and well documented at this point, there are parallels to be drawn between the Daleks and Nazi scientists. These cold and calculating survivors of a long and brutal war who skulk about in their underground bunkers, preparing to exterminate an entire race that poses no threat to them. As Ian describes them; "They're afraid of you because you're different from them" These are parallels that Nation was very intentionally drawing in his work (and would draw even more intently come Genesis of the Daleks)but there is a particular quote from Nation about his creations that I find deeply tantalising;

Terry Nation, 1978: “I can’t isolate one character [that the Daleks are based upon]. But I suppose you could say the Nazis. The one recurring dream I have – once or twice a year it comes to me – is that I’m driving a car very quickly and the windscreen is a bit murky. The sun comes onto it and it becomes totally opaque. I’m still hurtling forwards at incredible speed and there’s nothing I can see or do and I can’t stop the car. That’s my recurring nightmare and it’s very simply solved by psychologists who say you’re heading for your future. You don’t know what your future is. However much you plead with somebody to save you from this situation, everybody you turn to turns out to be one of ‘Them’. And there’s nobody left – You are the lone guy. The Daleks are all of ‘Them’ and they represent for so many people so many different things, but they all see them as government, as officialdom, as that unhearing, unthinking, blanked-out face of authority that will destroy you because it wants to destroy you. I believe in that now – I’ve directed them more that way over the years."

This is a deeply interesting and revealing excerpt, in my opinion. Nation was a child during the Second World War, a fact that he often mentioned in interviews and something that continued to permeate his work. It would be hard to describe him as anything other than a man with liberal political values, many of which are on display in The Daleks. That being said, it is incredibly easy to read The Daleks as a condemnation of Nazi fascism, totalitarianism and racial hatred. Perhaps not is too easy. Let us take moment to consider the politics of The Daleks as a condemnation of, not the Second World War but, the post-war climate and even more directly on the UK itself. After all, it is not without note that the Thals are of typically Aryan physicality and even had German names in earlier drafts of the story. In real-world history, we all know that it was not the Nazis who dropped the first atomic bomb – it was the Allies and, while the plight of the Thals has a great deal in common with the Jewish in World War II, it is not especially difficult to shift the lens of the Dalek allegory onto the 'good guys' watching the programme. When considering this with the above quote, there becomes something almost anarchistic about The Daleks. Nation's story is a survivalist thriller in many respects (with a lot of the natural horrors, of course, being directly resultant of man-made atrocities) but his self-confessed anxiety for the future perhaps fuels the story's optimistic insistence that when everything is torn down and destroyed, life will prevail and we can begin again, better than before. 

The Daleks presents strong ideals of community which makes perfect sense given the quote above. Nation's self-proclaimed fears seem keenly tied to isolation and that paranoia runs rampant in the terror of The Daleks. Take the sequence in The Survivors where Susan is racing back to the TARDIS on her own. The journey is horrifying and tense as she has no support or reassurance on her side. She is a young woman who is already dying and anything could be out to get her.The person who does find her, of course, is Alydon, a man from a kind, supportive and united community. The kind of community that could take on the Daleks. There are a lot of problems with this too though. The Thals are presented as, in Susan's words, perfect. They are peak physical performance, they look like humans and the villains, the irredeemable monsters, are physically inhuman.

Terry Nation, 1978: "[Survival] is a theme that’s actually gone through my work enormously...  I’m in that aeroplane and I’m waiting for the moment when they say, 'Can anybody fly this aeroplane?' – And I can’t, but I know that finally I’m going to be the one that has to do it."

On Saturday the twenty-first of December 1963, the fifth episode of the BBC's new science-fiction adventure serial, Doctor Who, aired in front of an audience of 6.9 million viewers. The episode was penned an up and coming Welsh comedy writer named Terry Nation and it was the first of seven chapters in a saga entitled The Mutants. Following a thrilling cliffhanger and the unexpected reveal of the serial's bizarre antagonists, something unexpected happened – Doctor Who suddenly became incredibly popular. Between episodes two and three, 2.5 million more viewers tuned in for the adventure with another 1.5 million accumulated by the serial's end. Doctor Who might have debuted four weeks earlier with An Unearthly Child but The Daleks, as it came to be known, is where the programme that has lasted sixty years actually premieres.

David Whitaker, 1979: "When it was shown, not very long after being recorded, we were, and I don’t mean this to sound smug, proved quite right."

Peter Cushing, 1970s: "I thought it was very good. Very well made."

David Whitaker, 1979: "The Daleks were a smashing invention, and I took to them at once. I would say they’re worthy of Jules Verne."

Verity Lambert, 1980s: "What was very nice, though, was Donald Wilson coming up to me after the Daleks had taken off and saying ‘You obviously understand this programme better than I do. I’ll leave it to you’."

Part II - Dr. Who and the Daleks

Terry Nation, 1987: "After the Daleks, I was for a short time the most famous writer on television. The press interviewed me, there was mail arriving in great van loads. There was stuff coming to my house that said ‘Dalek Man – London’, and I was getting lots of them. Almost all the kids wanted a Dalek, and nobody was quick enough... My God, was that to change! Within the year, there were Dalek everythings." 

As we all know, the Daleks were incredibly popular with the British public. In a manner cheekily compared to the Beatles, the Daleks dominated pop culture with all assortments of merchandise and spin-off material quickly emerging on the market. Between Nation and Whitaker's The Dalek Book, TV Century 21's comic strips (also credited to Nation), Whitaker's novel adaptation Doctor Who in an Exciting Adventure with the Daleks and any number of toys, costumes and promotional tie-ins, the impact and legacy of the Dalek serial was immediately felt. Nation was swiftly commissioned for a second serial, the decidedly less culturally penetrating The Keys of Marinus, and eventually asked for a sequel Dalek story but what could have been the most high-profile exposure for his creations that one could ask, strangely enough, came without much involvement from Nation at all. 

In late 1964, American film producer Milton Subotsky approached Nation and the BBC about purchasing the film rights to The Daleks. For a fee of £500, Subotsky secured the rights and set about producing Dr. Who and the Daleks. As well as co-producing with Max J. Rosenberg, Subotsky was also credited for the screenplay with not insubstantial uncredited contributions from David Whitaker. The film was one of ten theatrical efforts by prolific television director Gordon Flemyng and marks the first of only two times (to date) that Doctor Who has been adapted exclusively for the silver screen. 

Tom Baker, 1975: "There have been two Doctor Who films in the past, both rather poor."

I find Dr. Who and the Daleks to be a deeply fascinating cultural oddity but that fascination surrounding its existence ultimately fails to translate to the screen itself. Even if it was just rolled into production as a quick attempt to capitalise on the enormous success of the Daleks in yet another form of media, it is admittedly impressive how much of the picture really works. Bill Constable’s art direction is quite breathtaking at times, working beautifully with the luscious technicolor presentation. This is a gorgeous film just to look at and it really effortlessly realises the fullscreen, explosive world of the Daleks that previously only truly existed in the aforementioned comic books and annuals. I particularly love the latter sequences as our heroes scale Skaro's landscape amongst some gorgeous matte painting work. That being said, there is still something that speaks to me more about the 4:3 black and white glimpses offered in the TV version. The feeling of peering through your TV screen into these small corners of what feels like a larger, more dangerous world behind and beyond the camera is much more captivating for me than these much grander sets presented without ambition or flair.

Since I neglected them in my main review, let me quickly sing the praises of Peter Hawkins and David Graham as the voices of the Daleks. With the assistance of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop's Brian Hodgson, the pair created the unique electronic tones of the creature's voices using a ring modulator. Their voices are immediately recognisable and they put in great performances though it is clear, in hindsight, that the sound of the Daleks still had some work to do. Hawkins and Graham's initial Daleks are much more monotone than they would later become with the pair only later landing upon the rising pitch and angry tones that would truly define them. They are excellent in the film as well but, it has to be said, the story is not served by how many scenes they have of dialogue amongst themselves. Obviously it makes sense to showcase the full-colour, enormous Dalek props at every possible opportunity in your big screen Dalek film but there is just no way around the reality that Daleks rolling about and talking amongst themselves as slowly as it seems possible they could is not compelling cinema.

Worse than just looking at Daleks are the flaws of Terry Nation’s incredibly serialised storytelling being put on full display here. While the screenplay effectively trims the fat, save for the Dalek scenes, the general structure of this story does not work well as a single feature film. It is a similar problem that a lot of novel adaptations have where the filmmakers just cannot get the chapters to effectively translate to scenes and sequences. Dr. Who and the Daleks also has a bit of a bland core cast. Barrie Ingham is a good Alydon and Peter Cushing works magic with his dottery version of the Doctor but Roy Castle's doofus take on Ian leaves much to be desired and Jennie Linden's Barbara feels so surplus to requirements that she just gets folded into Susan's character and then a generic love interest. The film is entertaining but a bit of a lacklustre watch on the whole. It is not a poor or even unnecessary addition to the Doctor Who canon. This is as good a 90 minute adaptation of The Daleks that could possibly exist. It is just also true that the best version of that story is, regrettably, not this.

Roy Castle, 1990: "[I]t was quite unusual. Very unlike anything I’ve ever done... [The Daleks] were brilliant. I think if you’d said to the producer, you must get rid of the humans or the Daleks, he’d have got rid of us humans in a flash."

Peter Cushing, 1990s: "Those films are among my favourites because they brought me popularity with younger children. They’d say their parents didn’t want to meet me in a dark alley but ‘Doctor Who’ changed that. After all, he is one of the most heroic and successful parts an actor can play. That’s one of the main reasons the series had such a long run on TV. I am very grateful for having been part of such a success story.”

In 2024, the prevalence of Dr. Who and the Daleks in the greater story of the programme has dwindled but it is worth remembering just how significant an event it was. While not a critical darling, the film was a box officer smash in the UK and was often repeated on television over the following decades. For so many fans, Dr. Who and the Daleks was more readily viewed than great swathes of the television show itself. Even though The Daleks is the story that happened on television, it is not unfair to say that Dr. Who and the Daleks is the story many of us remember happening.

Part III - The Daleks in Colour

Russell T Davies, 2023: "I've got to be blunt, I've watched this, as a fan, a hundred times as a black and white show andI've never enjoyed it so much as in colour."

And so, we fast forward, to 2023 and the sixtieth anniversary of Doctor Who. Showrunner Russell T. Davies has made the entire back-catalogue available for streaming in the UK, three new specials are about to air and the boldest, most publicised attempt to bring the original series to the general audience since 2005 is taking place. Thanks to the work of fans such as Rich Tipple and Benjamin Cook, RTD spearheaded an all-new colorisation and re-edit of The Daleks down to a seventy-five minute length to offer an alternative "blockbuster" version for potential new fans. How many of the uninitiated took any notice of its appearance on iPlayer and sprucing on breakfast television remains to be seen but, nevertheless, Doctor Who: The Daleks in Colour arrived in our screens on the 23rd of November, 2023. 

The film in question is an interesting but flawed experiment. Certainly, the possibility of colourising the ancient history of Doctor Who has been a tantalising one for decades now and something many fans, myself included, have been eager to see. In and of itself, this is a fine thing to strive for and, in this respect, The Daleks in Colour is incredibly successful at it. The colourisation is breathtaking. Not only is the colourising itself incredible but the choice to eschew real world reference points for the sets, costume and lighting in favour of the most vibrant, almost psychedelic options that they could possibly think of is the correct choice. The entire production has a sense of 1960s pop and visual style that slots in seamlessly with then contemporary productions to the extent where it looks like this could always have been the plan.

What feels very much not like it was planned, however, is the runtime. On paper, chopping up the serial makes a good deal of sense. Seven episodes is a big commitment to somebody uncertain of the original show and with 1963 pacing being what it was, the decision to pare things down matches well with the mission statement. Alas, the editing in this film does not work but not because the idea is bad. Dr. Who and the Daleks has proven that paring down the script can lead to a generally well-received and, for many, preferential product. Yes, Dr. Who and the Daleks is, in many ways the elephant in the room. While the decision to choose the debut of the Daleks as a story to hook in new fans makes a lot of sense on paper, the fact that the Subotsky adaptation exists at all makes it a little difficult to justify.

The direct comparison is ultimately unfavourable and not just because of how many of the colour choices seem direct inspired by it. The Subotsky film's existence awkwardly lampshades the fact that what one is watching here is not an eighty-two minute feature designed to watched in one sitting. This is an almost three hour one awkwardly cobbled together with jarring new musical cues. Many of the technical choices employed such as speeding up the film, tightening up gaps in the dialogue and recording new Dalek dialogue to disguise swathes of cut material all amount to a very obviously cobbled together experience. 

Still, this experiment was necessary and this is a great little curio of the franchise but the awkwardness of the production and its core appeal as an alternative proves it unlikely, in my opinion, to ever actually attain its goal – enticing new viewers to watch the Hartnell era. What The Daleks in Colour is is an alternative to the original and a glimpse into an alternate history for a captive fanbase. It could have been an amazing leap forward but remains, instead, a noteworthy first step into uncharted territory.

But what of that original serial then? Well, in my opinion, The Daleks still holds up today as one of the best stories in the history of Doctor Who and a landmark moment in science fiction storytelling. But this is not for everyone. BBC television of the 1960s is certainly not for everyone; I watched this with my partner and we both did feel the length when watching the episodes in close proximity. Even so, I do strongly implore checking out the first two episodes in the serial for some of the most intriguing and moody sci-fi adventure storytelling you might ever see in Doctor Who. In December 1963, Terry Nation and the Doctor Who team created some wonderful episodes of television. And that was not the end of the story.

Terry Nation, 1987: "I don’t know to this day what the enormous appeal of the Daleks was. I’ve heard all sorts of ideas about it, but they were slightly magical, because you didn’t know what the elements were that made them work."

Sydney Newman, 1986: “Someone once told me that there was a question in Trivial Pursuit, ‘Who created Doctor Who?’. You turn the card over and it says the answer is Terry Nation! I wrote a rather stinging letter, demanding the destruction of all the Trivial Pursuits that had that mistake in them, hinting at some fabulous compensation that they should give me for demeaning my contribution to (laughs) world culture! I got lawyers and everything, but I didn’t get anywhere. They just said they would withdraw the card. I even wrote to Terry Nation for his support, and he sent me a very nice letter back.”

*This title would be adopted by fans despite not appearing on any documentation at the time. It became officially endorsed with the 2001 VHS release

[classic-who-review]

The Two Doctors 1985

8/10

This one is so fun! I always love seeing the old Doctors return. Especially Patrick Troughton! And Frazer Hines as Jamie of course. It's such a blast of an episode!

[an-american-whovian]

Spearhead from Space | FULL EPISODES | Season 7 | Doctor Who

• An American Whovian Reviews: 'Spearhead from Space' — by Robert Holmes.

The third iteration of the eponymous time wizard premiered 55 years ago on this day. Not only that — it was, also, the series' first foray into color.

Which is convenient: as this fucker is flamboyant as fuck.

[Watched on YouTube.]

[leeper4real]

Album: those who throw objects at the crocodiles will be asked to retrieve them

Bruno Pernadas is based out of Portugal and is a master of jazz. He does a great job combing jazz and mixed meter with a bit of an alternative twist at times.

Album rating: 8.7/10

A lot of stellar arrangements on here that will keep you on your toes, and by the end of it begging for more!

Key Tracks: Galaxy, Ya Ya Breathe, Lachrymose