The Daleks in Colour - a review

I'm not so much of a purist that I disagree with any and all reimagining of old Doctor Who - provided it remains optional. I usually watch DVDs with the enhanced CGI, and sometimes prefer the omnibus versions of some stories if not feeling like sitting through the whole thing.

Tonight's The Daleks in Colour is apparently the first of four monochrome stories which have been colourised and edited to omnibus length. (If a new video from the BBC today is anything to go by, two of these may be The Dalek Invasion of Earth and Tomb of the Cybermen. The War Games is also rumoured - good luck cutting that to 74 minutes...).

As well as the colour, we have CGI inserts, new music, and a re-ordering of some scenes. Apparently this is to make this early material more palatable for da kids 'n' da yoof.

When it's released on DVD / Blu-ray next year, the original seven B&W episodes will be included - so no-one's being forced to accept this anniversary experiment.

And experiment it is - and only a partly successful one, I'm afraid.

It gets off to a bad start with a dodgy arrangement of the theme music. Overall, I thought the music terrible throughout. Some of it was far too loud and / or slapped over scenes where it just wasn't needed. It was really intrusive - like the scene where Temmosus and the Thals first appear. And as for that lift escape scene... Oh dear.

What was wrong with Tristram Cary's classic score (so good they used it several times afterwards)? I thought Mark Ayres was supposed to be some sort of guardian of the Radiophonic Workshop / classic soundtrack legacy. Dereliction of duty, I think. What made him think he could better any of it?

Personally, I think he was trying to match the Aaru movie at times. If that's the case, he failed, and I can watch the movie itself (where it's handled far better) if I really wanted that style.

The colour looks unnatural. I think they thought that if it's going to be colourised then best go the whole hog, but some constraint might have been nice. Some scenes were excruciatingly gaudy. If only they hadn't given Barbara that horrible acid-pink blouse, some of the scenes in the TARDIS and in the cell would have been fine. It stood out like a sore thumb in the cave sequences.

The CGI looked just like CGI. Not using the Shawcraft model, designed by Ray Cusick, in the opening scene I thought disrespectful to the series' pioneers.

The re-arrangement of scenes I could just about cope with - it was being condensed to 74 minutes after all, and is aimed at people who haven't seen the story loads of times, like me. Having a cut to the flashing radiation meter when the crew first start to feel unwell did smack of treating the audience like idiots though, unable to work things out for themselves or wait for the explanation in the monitoring laboratory scene.

Hartnell's fluff about "radiation gloves" was corrected - which takes half the fun out of these old episodes.

David Graham was brought back to add some new Dalek voices. Nice to use him, but you could clearly hear how his voice has aged. Other times you could hear Briggs, when whole swathes of Dalek dialogue had to be contracted. 

The Daleks say "Exterminate!" a lot, which they never did until later in the '60's. I suppose the newbies expect it.

As far as the actual narrative goes, it did its job reasonably well, bearing in mind that target audience. There were no big crucial scenes skipped. The action concentrates more on the first four episodes of the original. I suspected that the lengthy trek might be curtailed. A lot was padding anyway, when Nation was asked to extend the story by an episode. I was surprised at how much of the crevasse leap sequence was retained.

Did love the montage of clips at the end.

I'm glad I watched it - though mainly so I don't have to again, I'm afraid. Not unless I turn the volume and colour down on the telly... so I might as well just watch the story as Verity Lambert, Terry Nation, Chris Barry, Richard Martin, David Whitaker and Ray Cusick intended it to be seen - seven episodes long and in B&W.