Okay, so the TARDIS interiors were a bit of a disappointment, and the DOCTOR seemed to be an eccentric old Englishman, but the first DOCTOR WHO & THE DALEKS movie was fairly entertaining. I remember seeing this film on TV back in the 1970s and being enthralled by the music. Anyone got any memories of it they'd care to share?
8 comments:
Believe it or not I just saw this for the first time a few weeks ago. I kept hearing about it though so it's somewhat of a white whale for me. Apart from the fact that they changed the doctor from a time lord to a human I thought it was great! Who doesn't love Peter Cushing?
It seems to come in for a bit of stick from some people, Phil, but it was a movie aimed primarily at kids and I thought it was entertaining. Just a shame that the film makers didn't realize that the Daleks' lights only flash when they talk and had various Daleks flashing their lights in a random manner. They tried to correct it at the editing stage, which is why the Daleks' speech is even more stilted than usual, but they couldn't disguise the mistake completely.
To this day, I've never seen the two Peter Cushing movies. I did read about them in Famous Monsters of Filmland. AFAIK, the TV series never aired in the US until the late 1970's, starting with the Tom Baker episodes.
Steve Does Comics mentioned a few weeks ago that the movie portrayed the Doctor as an "eccentric old Englishman" simply because that was how the character was being portrayed on the TV show at the time. If I understand correctly, it was a few years later when he was revealed as an alien Time Lord.
William Hartnell, in the very first episode, refers to him and Susan as being exiles, so perhaps the BBC had the 'Time Lord' scenario (or something similar) in mind from the beginning, but it was never explicitly spelled out. Consequently, most viewers in the early days of the show probably saw the Doctor as a mere human until his 'other-worldly' characteristics started to be introduced. As for the two Peter Cushing 'Dalek' films ('cos that's really what they are), they're entertaining hokum and worth seeing, TC, but try and pretend you're 12 years old when you finally watch them.
Fond memories of these even though I first saw them in my late teens, a bit older that the target audience, but hey, you have no say in growing old but you can decide not to 'grow up'! Really liked the production design and bright colours - like something out of the pages of Eagle or TV21. The bigger chunkier Daleks looked great too. And they chose two of the best Dalek stories to adapt for the big screen. Were there plans for a third film? I vaguely recall reading that somewhere. Might watch the second one again this weekend now that your post has brought it to mind.
Yup, there were plans for a third film, PC, but I forget why it never happened. Maybe something to do with the second film not doing as well as expected to take the risk with another. If I remember correctly, Peter Cushing is the only Doctor ever to appear on the front cover of TV21 - maybe even the only Doctor to appear in TV21 altogether.
Pure nostalgia for me here, Kid. A group of us (Dalek-mad) kids from our village excitedly travellled on the bus to the nearest town to watch this at the flicks on release. As kids we didn't even notice the flaws. When I saw a red Dalek, I thought it was Zeg at first!
I do would have loved the colour stills from outside the flicks, but I didn't know who to ask for them!
There would have been cries of "EXTERMINATE!" all the way home on that bus! All the passengers will have known where we'd just been!!
:-)
The closest I ever got to the films until seeing them on TV years later, JP, was seeing photos from them on the covers of TV21. The DVD boxed set of both movies is good, 'cos it's got some interesting extras.
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