Yoo, Who

Doctor Who and the Daleks

by Matthew Clark, www.cinemonkey.com

ust released on DVD from Anchor Bay, comes the 1965 SciFi movie Doctor Who and the Daleks. It was the first of two movies produced in the mid-'60s by Amicus Productions based on the popular BBC television science fantasy adventure series, Doctor Who. It's mostly overlooked today, due to the long, long run of the TV series, and in fact outside of the plot, there is little from the TV show in the movie.

Instead of TV's erasable and mysterious Doctor, first played back in 1964 - 66 by William Hartnell (most remembered for his role as the old trainer in Lindsey Anderson's This Sporting Life), the movie features a dotty old absentminded professor, named Doctor Who, played by, a made-up-to-look-older Peter Cushing, in a much more passive role than his appearances in the Dracula and Frankenstein movies he made for Hammer films, where he would throw himself into the action. Cushing's Doctor Who actually does very little, compared to the other characters in the movie, outside of getting the others captured by the Daleks to begin with.

On its own, this film is a minor classic of children's adventure movies. It's mot as serious as the TV series, but is well played with interesting sets and a solid plot, placing it somewhere below the likes of Chitty, Chitty, Bang, Bang, but well above Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. Even if you are not a fan of the TV series, this film can be enjoyed by anyone interested in off beat, weirdo films from the '60s.

The top feature of this disc is the great Technicolor transfer, which shows off the great sets that must have been a real treat to see in a theater, especially after following the tiny monochrome original on television. A collection of stills, and posters are also included, along with a biography of Peter Cushing, and a history of the Doctor Who series that explains what the TV show is all about, how the movie came to be made, and how it differs from the series.

Also, there is a fine commentary track by Jennie Linden, and Roberta Tovey, the two actresses who appeared in the movie. The track is a little chatty, but has a lot of information and observations about the production. And it's obvious that they enjoyed working on this movie with their costars, and are proud of the work they did, even though they both went on to act in other movies and on the stage. Roberta Tovey, for example, who plays the youngest granddaughter, also appeared in A High Wind in Jamaica. But this is their most remembered performance, and they still get fan mail for it.

The menus have great visuals, and everything is easy to get to. The only problem I had with the disc was that it kept stopping after a few pages in the Doctor Who History. Maybe it was just the machine I was using. But I had to keep restarting the disc and could never get to the end of the history section. Otherwise, everything was fine. And the biography of Cushing was interesting as it described his time in Hollywood before World War II, meeting his wife, and his work with Laurence Olivier, among so much else. If you only know Cushing from his work in horror films and Star Wars, this is very informative. And the stills section includes some publicity photos of the cast fooling around outside the set, as well as the great posters. A very nicely packaged disc.

he film follows the original television script, written by Terry Nation, pretty closely, though the characters and how they set off on the adventure have been changed from the series. In the commentary, the actresses say that the producers changed the characters because they were aiming to attract American kids who had not seen Doctor Who on television. Actually, they could only purchase the rights to the Terry Nation script about the Daleks, and not the elements of the BBC television series. Doctor Who had been developed by another man, Sidney Newman, who also created The Avengers for a different network the year before. Amicus was a rather low budget production company, and probably didn't impress the BBC enough to release the complete rights to their hit series.

To contrast the differences I'd like to run though the series a little. The original follows two teachers, Ian Chesterton, played William Russell, and Barbara Wright, played by Jacqueline Hill (who, after leaving the series, would appear together in numerous stage plays, continuing the chemistry they established between each other on the show). Ian teaches science and phys. ed., while Barbara teaches history. In the first episode, The Doctor, played by Hartnell, and his granddaughter Susan Forman, played by Carol Ann Ford (who had a small part in Day of the Triffids), abducts the two teachers. Susan is a new student at their school and had been acting "strangely." They followed her one day after school because they suspected she was being victimized at home. Instead, they find Susan and her Grandfather living inside an amazing machine that travels in time and space. And to blend into where every they land, it has the ability to change its outward appearance. As the show starts, it looks like one of those commonplace British police call boxes, and is called the TARDIS, which stands for Time And Relative Dimensions In Space.

Susan Forman and her grandfather are human appearing aliens, fugitives from an unmentioned alien civilization, and they say that they can never go home. Which explains her behavior at school, why the TARDIS is bigger on the inside that it appears from the outside, and can do what it does. After this settles in, the two teachers have the following exchange. "His name's not Doctor Forman." Asks Barbara,"Who is he?" Answers Ian,"Doctor who?", thus setting off the show's oldest running joke.

At first, the two teachers still refuse to believe all this seeming nonsense, thinking it is just some strange game the old man is using as a hold over the young girl. To convince the two, and to keep them from revealing their secret, the Doctor starts the machine, and they all find themselves back in the prehistoric past, where, in the following week's episode, a tribe of cave dwellers captures them. Two episodes later, the travelers escape back to the TARDIS and hurriedly take off, again without setting any destination coordinates.

In the next episode, they find themselves on "The Dead Planet", where they meet the Daleks. Insane survivors of a long past nuclear war,who reside in a large metal city, located next to a long dead petrified jungle, and a swamp teeming with mutated monstrosities, the Daleks themselves have been so badly mutated that they now live inside mobile fighting machines which look like giant pepper shakers. The teachers now realize that they are truly cut off from earth, and their own time. And the Doctor discovers that the TARDIS is not fully functional. It no longer changes its shape, and is still a police box. And the Doctor begrudgingly admits that he can not steer it, thus they never know where or when they will end up. Or if they will ever get back to earth, let alone London in 1964. That is, if they can first escape the Daleks.

his is the setup for the series, which was to be an educational adventure show containing what was thought to be the right mix of characters for the young viewers to identify with and who could provide explanations of what's going on, and to handle the physical action, and taking viewers to different planets, and different times, every couple of weeks, to teach lessons in history and science.

The viewers and the characters would never know where the cast would turn up next. A planet with acid seas one week, or with Richard the Lionhearted at the Crusades in the next cycle of stories, with the characters caught up in the court intrigues as the villains try to stop King Richard from marrying off his sister to the Ottoman Sultan, Suleiman. The "Dead Planet" story, with its mutant villains, was about the horrors of nuclear war, and it aired just a couple of months after the Cuban Missile Crisis. Each weekly instalment was 22-minutes long., with stories ranging from four to sometimes six, eight, or even 12 chapters, with the series airing late Saturday afternoons, as a sort of enticement to get kids home for supper before it got dark.

In the beginning, everyone associated with the show thought they'd be lucky if it would last six months. But this seven part Dalek adventure made the show a phenomenal hit. And, for a few more seasons, they would still make shows with purely historic settings and no monsters, just straight historic dramas, utilizing leftover sets and costumes on hand at the BBC. Eventually Doctor Who would change from the educational adventure show it started out to be, with a cast of three or four regulars, to a monster show, with the heroic Doctor and his young, usually female companion saving the universe, or just themselves, and stories set in Earth's past would now have a fantastical premise, such as escaped, alien criminals crash landing in the English countryside at the time of the English Civil War (the villains plan to reintroduce the Black Plague so as to clear off the human population and make room for their own kind,. The only way the Doctor can save history is to set London on fire).

unning for 28 seasons, the show has changed casts, producers, formats, and most notably the lead actor playing the Doctor. This was first done about two years after the release of this movie, because William Hartnell just got too old to work anymore. Realizing that the character wasn't human to begin with, the producers decided to use a younger man, and say that the race the Doctor comes from just regenerates into a different person when they get too old. Patrick Troughton, who would later play the priest who gets impaled in The Omen, was cast as the new Doctor. It worked, and a few years later, another actor would take over the role. Like most of the elements that would make up the show, it wasn't planned, but was born of necessity. Besides the Doctor there were changes of producers, who, along with the new Doctor, would put their own slant on the show, eventually making it a little more adult. This way, they figured, nine-year-olds would still watch the show when they were over 16.

And, to keep viewers, the new Doctor would usually go up against his old enemies, the Daleks, often soon after the hand over to the new actor. In this way, the show continued for almost three decades., becoming a Saturday afternoon tradition with parents watching it along with their children. And eventually a whole generation would grow up and then watch it with their children.

Some seasons were gritty, neo realistic science fiction adventures, very much the forerunners of The X Files, with killer store mannequins stocking the early morning streets of London shooting down commuters as they're queuing up for the bus. Or a scientist says he has a machine that can extract the evil from the minds of criminals, but the doctor discovers that it really contains an alien creature that feeds on evil. Other seasons have been played for laughs, with the late Douglas Adams providing some of the scripts.

The acting has always been top notch, with many fine performers happy to appear in something they know their kids will be watching. Other times, whole stories appear rushed and under budgeted, with everyone just running around the same corridors, trying to avoid a stunt man in a ridiculous rubber suit. But many times, everything would come together, and you'd think that you were watching the greatest TV show ever made.

Many of the original TV shows are available for sale or rent on VHS, with a few just beginning to come out on DVD. It currently outsells the BBC's other favorites, Monty Python and Black Adder. Other good episodes, in chronological order, include "The Unearthly Child," "The Daleks (the Dead Planet)", "The Keys of Marinus," "The Dalek Invasion of Earth," "The Crusades," "Spearhead From Space," "The Mind of Evil," "City of Death," and "The Visitation." A few other favorites include "The Mind Robber," "Inferno," "The Robots of Death," "The Caves of Androzani," "The Two Doctors," and "Remembrance of the Daleks" (this last is on a double box set, with a white cover, called simply The Daleks, not the same as the disc under review above.

he show's first popularity really started with the introduction of the Daleks. Airing just a few months after The Cuban Missile Crisis, its post apocalyptic setting connected with young viewers, who had been facing this real possibility just weeks before. And six months later the show was still on the air and the Daleks came back, by popular demand, for the second of many return appearances. This time they had conquered earth in the 22nd century. This popularity brought it to the attention of Amicus Productions, a sort of poor version of Hammer Studios, and they decided to produce a movie version. So they got the rights to Terry Nation's Dalek story, and went from there.

Not too long after this, Nation adapted his script into a novel aimed at young readers, called Doctor Who and The Daleks, published by Target Books. He kept the characters of Ian and Barbara as teachers, but instead of following their student Susan to see where see lived and then discovering the TARDIS, they are involved in an auto accident out in the countryside, and go to phone for help in what they think is a police box. But once inside they find it's not a police box. Instead they find The Doctor and Susan, stumbling in just as the two human looking aliens are about to set off in their time machine. From there they arrive at "The Dead Planet."

In the decade after the show started, many fans who never saw the original broadcasts would believe this is how the series started, without the stop off with the cavemen. (For many, this would be the first book they ever bought, and a few those young readers would grow up to publish their own novels based on Doctor Who) I, for one, feel it would have been better if the movie had started off like this. But the movie didn't hire Nation to do the script, just optioned the rights, and wrote their own version.

he movie version has a dotty, absent-minded old professor named Doctor Who, and his two granddaughters, 11 year old Susan, played by Roberta Tovey, and 18 year old Barbara, played by Jennie Linden. Barbara's boyfriend Ian (Roy Castle), has come to take her out, and while she changes, the professor shows him his latest invention, a time machine called Tardis, for no reason except that's what it was called on the TV show. No mention is made of any kind of alien science behind this amazing invention. The old professor just whipped it up with the help of his genius grand daughters. And instead of the futuristic control room inside, as on the original, it appears that old Doctor Who has been using his new invention as a garage to store all sorts of junk.

In their commentary, the actresses mention how disappointed they were with this set. Having watched the TV show, they expected something a little grander. The producers explanation is rather hazy as to why a better set wasn't built. Besides not having the rights to the BBC owned design, they probably didn't have enough money to extend to build a proper set, considering the rest of the movie, which has some really elaborate sets, and which the actresses say were really hard to climb over, though they do give the movie an epic look.

Barbara soon joins everyone inside the Tardis. And as Ian goes to kiss her, the clumsy youth accidentally trips over a big metal plunger, attached to the floor. This starts the machine before Doctor Who could set the destination, and they end up on "The Dead Planet." From here, the series, the novelizatiion, and the movie pretty much follow the same course.

They find a vast metal city. Doctor Who and Susan want to explore it. But Ian and Barbara think it is an unnecessary danger and that they all should get back into Tardis and return to earth. The doctor pretends to go along with this, but once back inside Tardis, he discovers a failure in the ship's "fluid links,",which keeps them from taking off, and the only way to fix it is to look in the city for some spare mercury.

The next day, inside the city, the Daleks capture them. And, once locked up the Doctor reveals that he faked the malfunction so that they would have to explore the city. Soon they escape the evil pepper pots, and fall in with the other inhabitants of the planet. The Thals are the other descendants of that long ago nuclear war. Unlike the Daleks, they have mutated into beautiful blond humans, who believe in peaceful existence through the excessive use of eye shadow. The Daleks always call then ugly, and want to destroy them.

Not wanting to get caught up in the middle of this, Doctor Who and the others get into Tardis and prepare to leave, only to realize that the Daleks have taken the fluid link from them. And now they have to convince the Thals to go against their nonviolent nature and help them invade the Dalek city to get it back. Meanwhile, the Daleks are planning the destruction of all life on the planet, and….well, you get the idea.

his is a cool film once you get past the beginning. With the Daleks rolling around in their massive city, screaming "Exterminate!", the clever sets, and good performances. Also unlike the TV show, the movie is played lighter. As you can see in the performance of Roy Castle, as Ian. Not like the heroic portrayal of the character by William Russell on TV. Instead, Castle plays "the boy next door" with just the right touch of comedy. Always hitting his head when going through a door. And stuff like that. Which he does very well. And helps the film stand on its own. His character is not a take charge man, but one who may show that he is afraid, but he doesn't back down when needed. An Everyman caught up in fantastic events.

Again, the audio commentary on the Anchor Bay disc is one of the best. The two actresses stay on the subject of the movie. Which has turned out to be the high point of their careers. They explain some interesting details, and make keen observations. Like how good the costumes were. Compared to other films of the '60s, whose costumes date their film. This movie has a real timeless charm to it. Mainly due to how the characters were dressed. Or, that Peter Cushing always tries to wear something blue around his neck. Which he believed would be reflected in his eyes, making them bluer.

Peter Cushing and Roy Castle sound to have been great to work with. Professional, and easy to get along with. Both actors always keeping busy between takes. With Cushing working on his detailed models, and Castle either practicing dance steps, or playing his trumpet. They "never sat around working on crossword puzzles," says Jennie Linden on the commentary track. And were always gracious to meet in the years afterwards.

From the commentary track you begin to appreciate the thought that went into the art production. The sets are clever as well as colorful. With sections that rotate, and others slide open. Which keeps the film fresh. Also, when things are going to be blown up, the actresses point out that they had one take. Which shows how poor the production was. They couldn't afford to rebuild the set, if something went wrong with the take. The actresses proudly state they always got it in one take.

octor Who and The Daleks was a top grossing film, in Britain, for that year.Starting off a craze for Dalek toys, games, and comics. Much like the movie tie-ins today. That lasted through the summer and into the holiday season. And it prompted the making of a second film, Daleks : Invasion Earth 2150 AD. Also adapted from another Terry Nation script. There was talk of a third film. Without Daleks. But the second film, which was even better than the first one, didn't do good enough business and there weren't any more follow-ups.

Unlike Britain, there wasn't a waiting audience for Doctor Who and the Daleks here in the states. And it did poor business here. The commentary speculates, that, Amicus just wasn't connected enough to get the film proper distribution. But, I think the changes made by the producers to the characters limited the film's potential.

The whole business with the dotty old professor, and his grand daughters, just whipping up this time and space machine in their back yard is a little lame. Compared to the concept of the mysterious aliens on the run, as in the TV show, and the novelization.

Which, back in 1966, would have appealed to those of us who have been reading science fiction, buying comic books, and watching TV shows like Outer Limits, Man into Space, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, and that new one Star Trek. And, ten years later, when Doctor Who started appearing on American television, we did like it. But, the producers thought that their changes to the show's characters would appeal to young American viewers who hadn't seen the original series. Which was aimed at preteens.

Remember, Amicus had to compete with other imported fantasy films released at that time. Especially Japan's Toho Studios. With their higher production values in films like Atragon, Frankenstein Conquers the World, and their long running Godzilla series. Which were popular with teenage audiences. Distributors, like American International Pictures, who mostly supplied these productions to Drive-in Theaters, may have perceived the Doctor Who movies as more of a kiddy film. Because of the way the movie producers changed the characters. Which targeted the film to a preteen audience, who were taken to the Drive-in, and didn't have that much say as to what movie was to be seen. And not appealing to teenaged audiences who would go to the Drive-in on their own.

aybe BBC Television should have gotten behind this production? Releasing the television cast, or at least Hartnell as the Doctor to appear in the film. Making it a proper big screen color version, closer to the original. But who knew at the time that this little Saturday afternoon serial would become as successful as it did? ( In 1999, it won a viewers poll as the All Time Favorite Show on BBC television's 50th anniversary awards show).

In the end, Amicus had a decent hit. Which promoted the BBC television show. For the day, it was as successful as anyone could expect. And afterwards, everyone just got on with their business. As far as anyone could guess, the Doctor Who TV show would just run another year or so, and some other show would come along. It's only in hindsight that we wish they had done things differently. Like the TV show, they did the best job they could, and it still holds up.

Finally, another aspect to this movie is its place in the development of the British filmmaking industry. Most of the largest sets built for films in the last thirty years have been done in Britain. Starting with the sound stage built for the James Bond film You Only Live Twice, which was made just a few years after the Doctor Who movie. Which in its own modest way is a little like the Bond films. The large headquarters of the Daleks would be done bigger in the 007 movies. And this movie did have some elaborate fight scenes using a lot of extras, and some explosions. One can assume that technicians who worked on the Doctor Who movie went on to work in other, bigger productions? And the modest success of this very low budget production, with its wise use of limited resources, could have influenced potential backers to support the construction of the giant sound stages?

Looking at Doctor Who and the Daleks now, I would have loved to have seen it at the old Fox theater in Downtown Portland on a Saturday afternoon double bill with, say, Ghidrah, the Three Headed Monster, or Around the World Under the Sea. And even if it is not exactly like the greatest TV show ever made, it is still a fun movie. That is very viewable today.

nchor Bay has released a fine disc. With its great looking visuals, and strong extras. Hopefully the follow up movie Daleks ñ Invasion Earth 2150 AD will be handled as well this one. As a fan of the TV show I will probably take out my VHS copy of the original black and white program more offend then this disc. But I will be viewing this disc, a couple times a year. And enjoying it every time.

1/02

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