Melbourbe Australia, 21th September 2011 – On Sunday I was lucky enough to be one of the few, the proud, the waiting at an advanced cinema screening of the Classic Doctor Who story Day of the Daleks.
Day of the Daleks more than any other classic Doctor who episode I can think of deals with the ramifications of time travel. In the year 2200C.E. a desperate Guerrilla force wants the change the past of the human race. Having been beaten down by hundreds of years of war the those predictable humans have been enslaved by the Daleks. The Guerrillas discover that the wars all track back to one man a Sir Reginald Styles who was in charge of a peace accord way back in….well…whenever the Pertwee years are set. They steal Dalek time travel technology and try to kill Styles and that’s where the Doctor gets involved.
This story originally came out in 1972 and has claimed “Classic” status but there were a few complaints. In the original story there was suppose to be a pitch battle with UNIT and the Daleks but the BBC would only spring for 3 Daleks, a deficiency that is painfully obvious when you have wide shots of the battle, and not helped at all by deciding to paint one of them gold. Also the budget didn’t really stretch to making the year of 2200C.E. seem much more than an abandoned railway line. But this has all changed. The print that we were shown today (on the big screen, did I mention that?) has had a few tweaks. Not content with a few CG changes 2Entertain have actually gone back to the original locations and filmed new footage with more Daleks and more Daleks can be nothing but good.
So did they reverse the polarity of the neutron flow?
Well there is both good and bad, the CG inserts of the future Dalek inhabited Earth were a very cool idea and I love the idea of having a Dalek symbol and “Obey” stenciled on everything. But in practice the CG itself isn’t that great and it clashes with some of the other scenes set in the future. The new effects for the Vortex Manipulators are good and a big step up from someone appearing in a puff of smoke (although nicely, they left the smoke in) the really big and noticeable difference is with the Guerrilla weapons. A LOT of people get shot in this serial. It used to be that they just disappeared now we get the full effect of the Sonic Disruptor (or Ray Gun as Jo calls it) in all it’s glory. There is flash and then the victim explodes in a shower of “bits” with a sickening wet raining sound in all its disturbing glory in a cinema. The first time it happened I wasn’t sure if it was hilarious or horrifying and my brain locked up.
On balance however the effects do make the story better and more watchable although I’m not sure about the Dalek voices. Professional Doctor Who fan and current voice of the Daleks Nick Briggs has been bought in to make the Dalek voices more uniform, and whilst this change isn’t terrible and Nick does a really good job going back and watching the original I don’t mind the Daleks having different voices; it’s not like they sound as bad as the Cybermen in Earthshock and no-one changed that.
Still this is the most complete attempt at making a Who story more current and I think it can be commended although no doubt there will be detractors who will rail; “Leave it alone”, “don’t change the originals” and such but the good thing about 2Entertain is that unlike George Lucas if they change something they either give you the option to watch the original or as in this case provide the entire original version in the box set. Speaking of Lucas we do now have our very own “Han shot first” controversy. In the original the Doctor shoots an Orgon who was doing nothing so much as lumbering as they are want to do. It seemed very out of character at the time and many people were shocked…ok a few people were shocked…alright Terrance Dicks was shocked. The restoration team have fixed it however and now the Ogron shoots first! Ok, Who fans I’ve pointed it out, it’s now up to you to make a big deal about it.
Then we got to do some Q&A with Classic Doctor Who Commissioning Editor, Dan Hall…well questions were asked by the other guy with the microphone, fortunately I think that the questions that he asked were cogent and relevant and more importantly, what I wanted to know about.
Yes there will be more releases with animation replacing lost episodes.
Yes they will deal with Shada…although exactly what remains to be seen.
Yes the release schedule of classic Doctor Who is deliberate and not picked as I suspected by a specially trained BBC chimp.
They want to hold back some great releases so that the line goes out with a bang.
The current BBC schedule is due to finish in 2013.
Ambassadors of Death and Mind of Evil are in the process of being restored.
Then we saw a specially cut down show reel from the newly restored and colorized Episode 1 of “Invasion” or to those that read the target Novelizations “Invasion of the Dinosaurs”. It looked pretty good for something that had no existing color prints to draw from, and the dinosaurs when they appeared produced the requisite giggles from the audience, although it’s important to note that all renderings of dinosaurs are drawn from conjecture and there’s no evidence that they didn’t really look like giant immovable hand puppets.
All in all a geekfest to be proud of and I congratulate 2Entertain on their efforts.
Chris Tyler