The Daleks in Colour: Revisited

The arrival of "The Daleks in Colour" on DVD and Blu-ray has afforded me the opportunity to take another look at it. I have only watched it once, on broadcast, and wrote my review on first impressions.

Last night, I watched it again, to see if my opinion had changed in any way...

First things first, the cover: 

There are websites which highlight terrible examples of Photoshop, and this could comfortably be added. It's poor. We simply have a couple of Daleks superimposed onto an image of the Doctor and companions surrounding the TARDIS console. The Daleks have their backs to us, and there seems to be a half-hearted attempt at perspective which doesn't work. 

No artistic merit whatsoever.

The colourisation:

Much has already been mentioned about Barbara's acid pink blouse. At no point do you ever lose sight of the fact that this wasn't made in colour, but has been artificially colourised.

At times I think they've gone overboard and used too much colour - especially with the Dalek city. This has led to an obvious lapse of logic. They've added a couple of POV shots (using the blue-tinted, calibrated Dalek-eye view of the new series). If the Daleks can't see colour, why on Skaro would their city be full of purples and golds? Colour for the sake of colour, with little or no subtilty.

There are colour photos from 1963/4 available, taken by Ray Cusick. He was making a programme to be broadcast in B&W, and had a much better colour-sense.

Other than this, the colour is fine. I love the forest and the views of the city.

CGI:

Which brings me to the CGI effects, which are mercifully few. I've no idea why they used a computerised city when it looks just like the excellent Shawcraft model. The TARDIS shots are poor. The dematerialisation at the end stands out badly, as we see that there are supposed to be Thals standing right next to it.

The edit:

A real contentious issue for many. Seven episodes condensed down to 75 minutes. Even the Peter Cushing movie lasted longer. This edit was designed to make the story fast paced and exciting, as the plan was to attract viewers who might not normally watch archive monochrome material - so we need to keep this in mind.

Sadly, this means that the new viewers are losing lots of lovely character moments, such as the TARDIS food machine sequence. It is irrelevant to the plot, so you can see why it went, but I feel sorry for the intended audience. You are missing so much.

A particular irritation is the need to repeat action every time someone refers back to it. 

When the captured time-travellers talk about the drugs they found outside the ship, we are shown this scene again. Likewise, when the death of Temmosus is talked about, we see it again. And when mention is made of Ian being shot, we see it again...

The implication is that the viewer has the attention span of a goldfish and can't remember what they saw 15 minutes ago. It's treating the viewer like an idiot.

Some of the intercutting is clumsy.

As originally broadcast, the Daleks could manage only a couple of still images of the Thal camp, which they can't even interpret very well, thinking an injured Thal might be Ian until they see him in the next picture. Here, the Daleks can see right into the Thal camp and get sound and moving pictures.

Which begs the question: if they can see and hear what's going on, why don't they know all about the plan of attack against them? The re-edit has created another logic lapse.

The new voices stand out, and not in a good way. David Graham's voice sounds its venerable age, and Briggs is far too recognisable.

The music:

My big bugbear. I've hear it again, and I still loath it. As I said in my original review, for someone who is supposed to be the guardian of the programme's audio legacy, Ayres has a cheek to even consider overwriting the work of Tristram Cary and Brian Hodgson. Style and tone are all over the place, dialogue is drowned out, and the music simply doesn't match the action a lot of the time.

The music accompanying the escape to the lift is stand-out excruciatingly awful. He's certainly no Murray Gold, that's for sure.

I've looked him up on-line, and he has no significant credits outside of Doctor Who projects. No films, no dramas, no sitcoms, no documentaries. I think we know why, and I'll leave it at that.

Value(less) Added Material:

There's a "Making of..." for the colourised version. To be honest, I can't be bothered seeing how they did what they did, so gave this a miss. It was covered in DWM anyway.

The second disc contains the original seven part story - and this actually makes me really rather angry.

I knew from the initial announcement that the original version was not going to be upscaled for Blu-ray, but I didn't think they'd simply use the old DVD version. And it is the old DVD version. It even has the old logo, branding and menu - including the "The Beginning" box-set intro. 

They've quite literally just taken the DVD and slapped a new picture on the disc.

A wee bit of a clean-up and new menu / branding - even just the "Whoniverse" - would have been nice. 

It's not as if we're likely to see The Collection - Season One box-set any time soon.

"The Daleks in Colour" has its pros and cons. As someone used to the Aaru movie, I have no issue with an alternative take on the story. It's "as well as" and not "instead of" the original B&W version, and that's the way to look at it. 

From comments I read back in November, parents reported their children really enjoying it - kids who might just want to view some more (just a pity it's a one-off - at least for now - so there's nothing else to show them to capitalise on this interest). If it helps create a next generation, all well and good.

My favourite part of the release? The colourised clips of other Hartnell episodes at the end - accompanied by decent music...