The Daleks in Colour

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.