Monday, 23 December 2024

The War Games (In Colour) - A Review


The War Games becomes the second of the Sixties B&W stories to be colourised and re-edited into a more condensed running time. 
Depending upon which side of the fence you lie, this is either:
(a) a process of dumbing-down - making the stories more attractive to younger people who cannot cope with monochrome imagery and having to concentrate attention on something for more than 30 seconds at a time, or...
(b) it is simply a way to make the stories more accessible to modern tastes and so gain new fans to these classic episodes.
Personally, I am inclined towards the former but accept that some parents did claim that their kids enjoyed the last of these things - "The Daleks in Colour".

This story is the final adventure for Patrick Troughton's Second Doctor, as well as for companions Jamie (Frazer Hines) and Zoe (Wendy Padbury) barring later guest turns. It is also notable for introducing the Time Lords and so giving us some background as to the Doctor's origins. Added to that, it brings the B&W era of the programme to a close, ending the Doctor's seemingly random wanderings in the TARDIS - preparing the ground for a new Earth-bound format and the Third Doctor. 
The other thing to say about The War Games is that it was the second longest ever story for many years, running to ten episodes and, despite what its fans say, there is quite a bit of capture / escape padding, especially in the 1917 Zone. Even its co-writer (Terrance Dicks) and director (David Maloney) agreed that it was padded, so ignore anyone who says otherwise.
It's not quite as bad as "waiting for nine episodes until the Time Lords turn up" though - it is much better than that.

This reimagining of the story has a run-time of 90 minutes, so it was always going to be interesting to see how the edit was made. The trailer also showed that there would be a few CGI sequences thrown in, and then we heard that there would be a regeneration. It was also announced that a tiny alternative take was to be included - so a clip that no-one has ever seen before.
Going into it, the CGI was my first concern as to how well it integrated with the archive material. That added to The Daleks was a little pointless, and stuck out.
Concern no.2 was always going to be the music for me. I really hated the way they stuck anachronistic radiophonic music onto The Daleks, and the least said about what was played over the whole lift escape sequence the better.
Third is obviously the edit. Will it flow? Will it make sense in light of the large amount cut out? And will they resort to overlaying dialogue designed to remind viewers of things they saw or heard less than 20 minutes before?
As for the actual colourisation, I don't really have any problem with that at all, so long as they steer clear of the shocking pink they used for Barbara's blouse last time out...

The above was written before I watched the programme, so how was it for me?
No issues with the colourisation. The episodes are in better condition than those of the earlier serial - much sharper - which certainly helped when it came to adding the colour.
Concern no.1 was the CGI. The Alien base kept popping up too frequently, as if they didn't believe we'd know from the pop-art sets that that's where we were. The little planes and tanks rolling out the doors were poorly done. 
(The Capitol on Gallifrey was shown too many times as well. Once is enough).
The TARDIS fleeing the Time Lords did look very much like a police box bubble bath container dangling on a bit of string.
Luckily not much CGI, so not enough to go terribly wrong.
Concern no.2 was the music. Nowhere near as bad as in The Daleks though I did think there was far too much of it. It was slapped over every scene, where some could have played well without it. Again we had a mix of 1969 music, courtesy of Dudley Simpson, alongside much more recent stuff. The thing everyone is sure to comment on is the use of music inextricably linked with the Master every time the War Chief did anything sinister. Terrance Dicks excluded him from being an earlier incarnation of the Master, though some spin-off material has run with the idea. I was half expecting them to cut to a regeneration from Edward Brayshaw to Roger Delgado.
Talking 'bout regeneration... I was all set to cringe at the end, but I thought they actually worked it quite well. I'm still a Season 6b fan, but if you must link directly into Spearhead From Space then this was perfectly acceptable.
Lastly, the edit. Here we definitely had problems. The first couple of episodes worked OK in condensed form, and we had a sizeable chunk of the ending, but in the middle... Significant characters just popped up out of nowhere. Von Weich hardly featured at all. Some sections were composed entirely of jump cuts. How many times were people still talking when the picture had moved onto the next scene? 
I was watching this with the background of having watched all 10 episodes multiple times, so know the intricacies of the plotting very well. I'll be interested to hear what new viewers thought of the middle section of the story, coming at it without that knowledge.

Overall, better than expected. As an alternative version, to watch when you might not have the time or inclination to work through the complete story, it's welcome. These efforts are never intended to take the place of the originals - just another way of watching them, and I sincerely hope this wins new fans for Troughton's Doctor. One thing the edit managed was to retain some of his best lines / scenes. He's always a joy to watch.

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