Review of The Daleks in Colour by larwood
14 June 2024
A Sledgehammer to Crack a Nut.
Okay well let's start with the positives, the colours, although unlikely to be accurate, they look gorgeous, i am such a sucker for bold vibrant colour palettes, definitely after watching Channel 4's 'Utopia', so the actual colourisation itself gets top marks from me. The Daleks look so bold and clean, the 1960s Skaro Dalek design has always been my favourite, and as i said, perhaps the colours aren't faithful to how the set looked or was even envisioned, i can't find it in me to criticise how wonderfully psychedelic it looks.
But.
Everything else just completely lost me, most of my criticisms have been aired by various others so i'll try not to repeat what we have already agreed on, but my main issue with this colourisation is just how unnecessary it is. The Daleks is an amazing serial and it's no exaggeration to say that it's the reason the show exists, without the Daleks, who knows if the show would've even made it to 1966, so...if it ain't broke, why fix it? It's a perfect introduction to Doctor Who as a science fiction series, it's the first example of Doctor Who being an inherently political series, and it has absolutely buckets of world-building, and with a threat such as the Daleks, it is integral that you show the audience how much of a threat they are, the original serial creeps along, laying a lot of groundwork in order for you to know what the Daleks are, and as mentioned, how much of a threat they are.
My worry is that this will become the norm, and that the masterworks of 1960s Doctor Who will be castrated into incomprehensible technicolour rollercoasters that don't allow any breathing room, obviously they don't serve to replace the original serials, but it reeks of a strong lack of faith in Doctor Who's past. It never survived on optics and how flashy it was, Doctor Who's greatest strength will always be the quality of the concepts that are explored, story to story, the classic series, and the 1960s in particular are the purest example of that, stories could last up to 10, 12 parts long because there was so much to explore and so much to show, i know some people would call it meandering and padding, and of course that is true in some cases, but, and as i'm sure you've heard, there are rumours that the next colourisation will be of The War Games, the 10-part epic finale to 1960s Who, and i'm sorry but you just can't edit that down, you shouldn't, don't get me wrong i've never watched the War Games all in one sitting but i certainly wouldn't want to watch a 4 Hour story cut down to 75 minutes, it would just ruin the story. Colourise it, please do, The War Games in colour would be AMAZING, but Classic Who was made the way it was made for a reason, and we should respect that.