The Daleks in Colour

The editing on this was, frankly, awful. I'd never seen the original version and I couldn't make heads or tails of a lot of the story. The fast-edit, overlapping dialogue style is what does it in, I think.

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.

In many ways this is yet another approach to get people, mainly used to new who into classic who (similar to the Tales of the Tardis Episodes) and well did it worked?

Obviously I can't answer that, I may have properly started with new who (I watched Season 24 first, as well as the TVM and later started the first 5 Series of the revival, before I returned years later to properly watch all of televised Who). I will say personally, as a huge classic Fan, this doesn't work.

But before I get into my negatives, I will say I have massive respect for anybody involved. I can only praise the great colorization work we got here, while I may not agree with every choice they went with, it would be very nitpicky of me to use that as an actual criticism point. I will also say there are some fun moments and clever choice to edit, but that's where my praise stops.

The Daleks in Colour in many ways brought me near to the Original Serial, one which I wasn't huge about (and still not am), yet it showed me that despite my issue and criticism its runtime, while still a bit too long, in my books, shouldn't have been brought down so much. As I said before this very much feels like an approach to get newer viewers into the classic series and that's fine of course, but really when I watched it, I scratched my head at some choices of this cut down-version. The biggest issue that plagues this Version of the classic Story really comes down to the massive parts of context missing. Some rather charming scenes or even more important Scenes are missing here to achieve a shorter runtime that doesn't pass the longest revival episode (Power of the Doctor) for example. And that I find is a big shame. I'd argue at points it can feel rather confusing, especially for viewers who haven't seen the Original, making me question who this was made for?

I, of course, cant speak on behalf of anybody other than me. But I really doubt most classic fans would prefer this Version over the Original. Similarly, I feel like fans mainly of the revival could possibly still be put off by this, especially when it comes to the Parts with the Thals, before that the Story flows pretty nicely.

At the end, I can recognize that this wasn't made for me, which is totally valid! But I'd wonder who this was for? As I put in my reasoning, I'd struggle to see the benefits for any side and I am sure some loved it or even prefer this, which I am happy about of course! But I really do hope when we get more of those colorizations in the Future, that they maybe chose to cut less out, I am not against cutting stuff out, but I think when it comes to a 7-Parter or some bigger ones, more is a bit better. (I do understand that this process takes time but I happily wait a bit more if it means that the end result feels more cohesive. Again no dig at the team, they did a good job with what they were given, I just hope we improved onwards with those new Versions of old classics!)

Very frenetic pacing and somewhat jarring scoring - it feels like the whole story's been turned into one unbroken action sequence. Fun enough as a peculiar alternate version, but it's no replacement for the original.

I'll not repeat my thoughts on the initial story in detail - but in short I think the Daleks is a great story (rated 4 stars); hurt by some bad pacing issues. That made me incredibly interested in this story - how does this modern remastering impact the story. I think there are two main positives that help to make this story a slight improvement; but also some negatives.

The colourisation is the main appeal of this and is a total success - a lot of colourisations don't look nice but this looked entirely natural as a piece of early colour TV. Flesh tones looked natural (often a sign of substandard colourisations); the choices of colours for the set and costumes were often accurate to existing photos; and where they didn't exist (or slightly adapted) it was in a way that feels natural for late 60s/early 70s colour television. If they were minded to do more like this I would not object seeing this - in particular this makes me interested in seeing what something with more on location scenes like Dalek Invasion of Earth would look like.

The editing also worked to improve the pacing. I wasn't a big fan of the flashback focuses but I understand why they were used - to cover up edits - and the plot points that were removed were noticeable for those of us who've seen the original but I don't think that obvious outside. I think the one point that might be questionable would be the Doctor/Susan/Alydon going to the city but they needed to show why the Doctor and Susan ended up captured.

The sound design is more mixed in my eyes. The way that they re-recorded a number of the Dalek scenes to speed up the edit or make some slight edits to the show (replacing the 'can't build a neutron bomb in time so need to cause the reactor to vent' story with just a neutron bomb one is an example) I thought worked very well; and bringing back David Graham (at 98 years old!) to record some of these new lines alongside Nicholas Briggs worked very well - you could tell a slight difference between the older and newer lines of Graham but it matched well; and really it was Briggs' well developed voice that stood out here. Where I felt the sound design didn't work quite as well was the new soundtrack - areas of it worked very well (and Mark Ayres always does a good job) but elements seemed slightly over the top and it also covered up voices at points which I suspect was as much because they needed to cover edits/the old soundtrack. I think they needed to do something for this show; but the limitations of what they were working from shows up.

Overall very much worth a watch - and I think a slight improvement on the original version. I see reasons to watch either of them but I think today I'd pick the colourised version as my favourite.

The 60th anniversary of Doctor Who starting with a new edition of a First Doctor story isn't a bad concept, but the editing decisions and strange production choices on display in The Daleks In Colour take an otherwise decent idea and throw it out of the window almost immediately.

For a start, I'd like to preface what I'm about to say by stating upfront that while I love The Daleks/The Dead Planet/The Survivors/Whatever It's Called This Week to bits, I recognise that it's not exactly the best jumping-on point for new fans of Classic-era Who. It's a cracking good story, don't get me wrong, but it is also quite long and a daunting prospect for people unfamiliar with the way Classic Who utilises the serial format - so a condensed version makes absolute sense to me.

Hiring fan colourists who specialise in making 60s Who look like it was shot on colour videotape to match the 70s and 80s output is a stroke of genius. The cherry on top of the cake of good decisions was getting David Graham back after some nearly 50 odd years to record new Dalek lines - it's little decisions like that that just feel right to me, y'know?

That, unfortunately, is where the positives dry up.

The first major red flag is the runtime: condensing a nearly 2-hour story into 75 minutes is not a good idea. Unless you are a master editor and know where to trim the fat, there is no way you can make this work without massive gaps in the story, and... yeah, that certainly occurred.

The pace is all over the place too: you can't just take a story that moves cautiously and slowly to build tension and cut chunks out of it - if you do, the result is very stop-start-stop-start. Unfortunately, this edit does exactly that, meaning I was left going, “where are we now? What's this? Why are we at this part, aren't we still on episode 3?” etc.

Things happen without context and new dialogue from the Daleks take away key moments from the story: for instance, Susan writing the note to the Thals, unaware that it's a trap, is one of my favourite moments from the serial. It ain't in here, folks.

The music, while expertly crafted, is very offputting. It's loud, overbearing and - the biggest sin - is played on top of the original score. You can literally hear the soundscape music cues underneath this new, overdramatic soundtrack, and it just hurts to hear to the dissonance.

Adding Dalek gun sounds from Destiny Of The Daleks and one instance of a New Series Dalek gun blast was a weird choice. What era are we trying to emulate here? What's the point of that?

Trying to re-edit this story in a New Who way wasn't worth attempting: the story wasn't built for this kind of presentation, and it shows. Oh boy, does it show. Look, I don't want to rag on this for too long, because we all have lives to live, but I feel like this was an idea best left on the cutting room floor. If you want a condensed, colour version of The Dead Planet, you're in luck.

It's called Dr. Who And The Daleks, was released in 1965, and is edited in a coherent fashion, you might have heard of it.

Doctor Who: 60th Anniversary Specials n.X 

They did a good job with the colourisation, and fixed a few pacing issues of the original serial, although the new soundtrack was a bit too loud.

I will start by saying that to my untrained eye the colourisation of this story is fine, there are choices in it I don’t like, particularly in the city itself but overall it seems competently done.

That said, if someone is looking for a faster paced version of the Daleks that’s also in colour, the Peter Cushing movie is a much better choice. This version takes a story that’s strongest element is its atmosphere, recuts it so it's faster paced especially towards the end, and adds vibrant colours to scenes that were much better served when the sets felt eerie and clinical. The recut is definitely the worst of the two changes, the colourisation only really felt off in the Dalek city, and out in the forest it actually led me to notice new things like the large holes in the Thals costumes, meanwhile the pacing issues caused by the recut really worsened the whole story.

In addition to the recutting and the colourisation, this version also adds new music, and it does not fit at all. Background music is not normally something I notice, it usually just washes over me, but here it is pervasive and distracting. This is a comparatively minor complaint but if I didn’t make it this review would be lacking

As an experiment into whether or not a colourisation of black and white stories is possible I suppose it worked, the montage of clips from other stories was perhaps the most enjoyable part, but the Daleks was not the right choice of story to do this for, but this treatment might work or stories where the atmosphere is less important or with sets props and costumes that it makes sense to have in all manner of crazy colours, but that doesn’t change the fact that this is a worse version of not one but two stories.