Have You Been Watching...? Doctor Who: The Daleks In Colour (2023)

 

Doctor Who, that familiar TV series with the time-travelling Police box TARDIS and its quirky alien pilot The Doctor, turned 60 years old in 2023. To celebrate, the BBC broadcast a re-edited and re-jigged version of its seminal 1963 adventure The Daleks. The Daleks themselves, alien mutants in miniature individual “battle-tanks", were to become an iconic adversary to the Doctor and it made sense for this adventure to be the first to undergo such a transformation. Plodding along at 7x25 minute black & white weekly episodes, the story is now condensed to a mere 75 minutes, and now it’s in colour for the very first time.

Until now, the only way to see this story in colour was via the 1965 heavily adapted movie version starring Peter Cushing, as the genial grandfather Dr Who, which runs for only 5 minutes more than our new TV edit. This one features the original TARDIS crew of William Hartnell as The Doctor, Guinness World Record holder William Russell as Ian Chesterton, Jaqueline Hill as Barbara Wright and Carole Ann Ford as Susan.

If you are completely new to the concept of Dr Who, then this may not be the best jumping on point as literally nothing is explained about our lead characters. In context, the series was heavily serialised in the sixties, with every episode leading on to the next so there would be no need to explain at this point, which would have been episodes 5-11 of the original run.

This new special edition opens with a new version of the classic theme tune, which sounds slightly faster and with new additional sound effects and a technicolour hue. The story then begins in true Wizard of Oz style with a short black and white scene before developing into colour. The story itself is basic enough, The Doctor and the crew come across a technologically advanced city on an alien world, occupied by the Daleks who are at war with the peaceful Thal race. The war ended hundreds of years previously following the detonation of a neutron bomb. In the intervening years, the Daleks have mutated and reside in their metal casings, while the blonde Thals have become peaceful farmers. On the verge of starvation due to their crops failing, the Thals are trying to get help from the Daleks, hoping they too have evolved into peaceful beings. Spoilers - They haven’t (hey, it’s been out there for 60 years – it’s not really a spoiler).

The Doctor we see in this adventure, is not the same as the one we have grown to know. He doesn’t want the teachers around and is sneaky and manipulative. The circumstances he creates to get to view the city is the whole driving point of our plot, and people die because of the decisions he has made. The two teachers have no choice in their situation. It all leads to very strange and somewhat uncomfortable situation. It will be a while before The Doctor mellows to his new companions.

The work on this project is fascinating, and there are pros and cons to this experiment. The source material is 60 years old. It wasn’t the best material from the outset, but the cleaning and colouring has worked very well. It’s not sharp and glaring or in high-definition, but it does have an almost “dream-like” sheen on the image. The colour choices are bright and bold, and it’s clear why this story was the one given the colourisation treatment. The crew behind the scenes have gone for a very sixties style suitable to the time it was made. Long term fans can moan that the Tardis console is, in fact, green in real life and the floor wasn’t blue, but that takes away from the sheer joy of this project. The episodes have been given a very modern “editing” style, with fast shots and flashbacks. Sometimes, these don’t quite work as well as they’d hope and it only feels like minutes ago since we saw the clip that’s being “flashed back” to. The musical score and sounds have been re-done, seemingly with modern TV sensibilities, resulting in it being quite overbearing at times, and drowning out the actual speech. Some effects have been updated, so now the original Daleks do indeed fire laser beams.

It's a very strange experience, especially if you are already well familiar with the original version. Apparently, the whole idea was to re-cut the episodes as a “modern” episode would do it. In this respect, then the experiment is a success! The lengthy script from Terry Nation (Blake's 7, Survivors) has been chopped right back and pretty much all of the padding removed making it rattle along at a lightning pace, very reminiscent of modern episodes. 

There are hints that this may be the first of many re-versions of old Dr Who Black and White episodes. Hopefully, this one can be seen as a starting-off point, learning what works and what didn’t and lessons can be learned, but overall, this is a wonderful new addition to Doctor Who productions and an extra-special treat for the anniversary.

Year: 2023

Availability: BBCiplayer from 23^rd November 2023

Rating: 7/10