A significant improvement on The Daleks in Colour. The story is mostly intelligible, albeit with the occasional bit left hanging (e.g., how did Lt. Carstairs come into it?). The colourization itself is also much improved; whereas The Daleks had the look of '60s colour TV like Bewitched or I Dream of Jeannie, with the colours rather pastel, The War Games is still somewhat muted but looks more realistic, similar to the 3rd Doctor era.

On the downside, the continued attempts to modernize the look of the story with CGI inserts and fast edits, particularly cutting away from dialogue to make a voiceover, end up detracting from the experience by making it obvious that it's a re-edit. The flashbacks to The Highlanders and The Wheel in Space are particularly gratuitous. (But at least they didn't do any dizzingly fast, flashy edits like in The Daleks.)

As for the story itself, I enjoyed it and look forward to watching the original.

Nitpick: Using exclusively Nu Doctors as the Doctor's possible regenerations undermined the attempt to connect Classic and Nu. Should have been the War Doctor (too old), Ten (too thin), Five (too young), and Four (won't do at all).

EDIT: I've now watched the original, and the unexplained things I assumed were cut in the colourization... aren't there either. In fact, I preferred the colour version. So I'm bumping my rating up a half-star.

the war chief is not the master. he was created before the master existed and timewyrm exodus (written by dicks!!) tells his whole backstory and origins on gallifrey, which crashes with the idea that hes the master. its not anybodys place other than the original writers to make this decision, and especially not in this weird way where it's implied but not confirmed. that bit rlly pisses me off. other than that, its great! the colourisation is perfect, all the colours pop but in a way that you forget it was b&w in the first place, and for a ~250 min story cut down to ab 90 mins, the editing was well done, the pacing felt good. some amazing model work is there as well, with the exterior of the war dome, the tardos and sidrat models, and cool cgi. the only problem might be the sound mixing, the new soundtrack is wonderful but its too loud and so the dialogue is hard to hear. not perfect by any means but i do love these colourisations and would like to see more in the future. tomb of the cybermen pleaase!!

(This review was written in Christmas 2024)

This is how you ruin a classic masterpiece.

Oh dear, where to begin?

Well, the colourization looks absolutely wonderful, and the first 20 minutes or so are pretty good!

And then, it all comes crashing down.

The War Games is my favourite Doctor Who story of all time, a colossal 10-parter which is also a regeneration AND companion departure story of the highest calibre. An absolute masterpiece from start to finish, and one that deserves its lengthy runtime.

But this butchered edit was a mess. A disgraceful mess.

Thr pacing is awful, too fast and with no time to breathe. The editing is not good at all and makes everything rather awkward.

The music is... there, I hate how loud they made it be.

The fact that this is now the go-to version makes me feel bitter and annoyed as hell, but the fact that they used the modern Doctors as a replacement to the Time Lords' regeneration sketches makes me feel even worse.

This is not The War Games, this is just an expensive-looking butchering of said masterpiece.

One of my favorites, and most depressing arcs of the classic series in colour! It was perfect, of course it had to cut out some moments, but they've managed to get it right and you would be able to perfectly understand the full story just by watching this version, the only thing that I think they should've kept was the whole sequence of the Doctor trying to escape the time Lords, such a strong and emotional sequence in the original version!

everything has probably been said about this already. not gonna talk about the war chief/master controversy. I do get that they had to cut it down to 90 minutes but it feels like most of the war games was cut out, and we didn't see much of jamie/zoe. I am happy we got lots of jennifer/carstairds (beloved two/jamie parallels) but I wish we saw less of the HQ - inside and out.. - and more of the resistance group, because that feels the most parallel to two's crew, as well as the best way to show jamie/zoe development and growth from their introductions, which would make their departure hit a lot harder, especially for new viewers who haven't seen the original. The colors were beautiful but I don't count this as my personal view of canon lol, i don't think anyone does.