This colourised version of the very first Dalek story, here called 'The Daleks' but actually titled 'The Mutants' by the production team at the time of transmission, sounded interesting. There's been a 'thing' about colourising black and white productions for some time, with everything from old scifi films of the 50s to episodes of old Laurel and Hardy comedies getting the treatment. Fans have been posting coloured clips from Doctor Who on YouTube for years with varying results, of course some episodes of Doctor Who which were originally in colour but for which only black and white prints existed have been colourised via a variety of clever means, and more recently AI has been used to apply colour to clips, again with varying degrees of success.
Add to this people like Clayton Hickman who has been superbly colouring black and white photos, and you have a lot of talent out there who should be able to produce something passable - at least if the BBC is then going to show it to the public!
So a colourised version of 'The Daleks' seemed like a good idea! But then we heard that it was also an edited version ... cut from seven 25 minute episodes (175 minutes) down to around 75 minutes ... so losing 100 minutes of runtime! Moreover, it was to have new dialogue from both David Graham, one of the original Dalek voices, and now 98 years old, and Nicholas Briggs, who has provided the voices for the modern Daleks ever since 2005. But there's more ... Mark Ayres, custodian of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop's material and member of that amazing group of musicians, was to provide a new score ... Hmmm ... Now it starts to sound all a bit much.
So ... a new version of the iconic first appearance of the Daleks ... was it any good?
It's always really hard to review items where friends have been involved, but as I am a reviewer/commentator on Doctor Who, and as I believe in not whitewashing things, I have to say what I think ...
Overall: I enjoyed it. I think it manages to achieve what Davies wanted: to act as a new version of the story for new fans (or ones who just won't sit through 175 minutes of black and white television). But it is definitely a new take on the story. In the same way as the animated episodes take enormous liberties with the source material to present a totally different look and feel to the episodes (even though they have the same soundtrack), this version of 'The Daleks' takes the basic storyline and removes anything which is extra to that ... But it sort of works ... it's fast and furious and moves at pace.
The colourisation is okay ... but there was always going to be conflict as to what colour things should be. Should they be the colour they were in the studio, as evidenced by colour photographs taken at the time? Or should they be the colour which perhaps they might have been otherwise? The issue is that in the black and white days, the designers coloured things so that the shade of grey they would then appear on screen would work with all the other shades of grey in the production. This is why the TARDIS control console was actually coloured a pale green, so that it looked a silver white on screen ...
It seems that they've done a bit of a mixture ... the TARDIS console has been coloured a silvery white, so following the intention rather than the actuality ... but the TARDIS floor (and indeed the floor of the Dalek city are a blue - the colour of the actual set floors. The strangest colour decision comes with Barbara's top ... this is a bright pink ... and while the actual colour of the top she wears at the start of the story is unknown, the one she wears at the end was actually pale blue.
In the original story, after the Thals are killed in the Daleks' ambush, the TARDIS team return to the ship in episode 4, and Barbara then changes her outfit. The original top, which was a sort of button-up-the-back blouse, is replaced with a shirt at this point, but she still wears her skirt. In episode 5, when they are on their way to the mountains through the swamps, she has now changed her skirt for a pair of black Thal trousers. In the edited version, Barbara's outfit changes as before ... but her shirt remains a bright pink ... Ian's jumper is also the wrong shade of brown - it's too light and should be darker, as should his trousers.
Overall though the colour choices are not bad and help to enhance the story. There's some lovely elements of coloured skies and the control panels in the Dalek city are smashing. Some of the darker shots suffer from a lack of clarity and black 'artefacts' appear around the edges of the black areas - especially noticeable in the scene immediately before the travellers meet the Daleks for the first time. At least on my big television they do!
And the Daleks. Well they look amazing. Correct colour scheme, and as in studio too. I love the new extermination effect too. The main issue with them are the voices. Nicholas Briggs' modern more strident tones stand out a mile from the original, more subtle, voices. And it grates. Especially as the very first Dalek voice we now hear is new: 'Stay where you are!' rather than the original 'You will move ahead of us and follow my directions!' Whether this new voice is a new Graham or Briggs contribution, it really doesn't work.
And this brings the next element of the production to the fore: the music. The original had a brilliantly futuristic and distinctive score by Tristram Cary, but here several key cues have been changed and new music written ... in the case of the first appearance of the Daleks, instead of a sort of long whistle as the camera pulls back, now we have more modern music added in to make it 'dramatic'. The music overall is OK, though I frowned when I heard that the opening title music had been tinkered with, but in places it is jarring - like the addition of a sort of disco beat as the travellers escape in the lift: this reminded me a little of the music in the two Dalek cinema films. There were more cues from Cary's work used also: it sounded to me like his scores for some of the other Doctor Who stories he did had been plundered (but then I have a feeling that the future scores were mostly reuses of the cues for 'The Daleks' anyway).
Either way this doesn't really matter in my ear, as they're all from the same composer and match together. It's the more modern elements with drums and guitar sounds which seemed out of place in the story ... perhaps it's what the modern viewer needs: the music to 'tell' them what to feel at each point. If so it's a shame, and, for me, detracts from the drama that is unfolding. I often feel with music that less is more ... I dislike the 'wall to wall' music landscape of modern shows, much preferring the ambient and subtle approach to scoring a film or a show. There's an adage that if you notice it, then it hasn't worked. And here I noticed it big-time.
And this brings the next element of the production to the fore: the music. The original had a brilliantly futuristic and distinctive score by Tristram Cary, but here several key cues have been changed and new music written ... in the case of the first appearance of the Daleks, instead of a sort of long whistle as the camera pulls back, now we have more modern music added in to make it 'dramatic'. The music overall is OK, though I frowned when I heard that the opening title music had been tinkered with, but in places it is jarring - like the addition of a sort of disco beat as the travellers escape in the lift: this reminded me a little of the music in the two Dalek cinema films. There were more cues from Cary's work used also: it sounded to me like his scores for some of the other Doctor Who stories he did had been plundered (but then I have a feeling that the future scores were mostly reuses of the cues for 'The Daleks' anyway).
Either way this doesn't really matter in my ear, as they're all from the same composer and match together. It's the more modern elements with drums and guitar sounds which seemed out of place in the story ... perhaps it's what the modern viewer needs: the music to 'tell' them what to feel at each point. If so it's a shame, and, for me, detracts from the drama that is unfolding. I often feel with music that less is more ... I dislike the 'wall to wall' music landscape of modern shows, much preferring the ambient and subtle approach to scoring a film or a show. There's an adage that if you notice it, then it hasn't worked. And here I noticed it big-time.
Back to the edit, and it's inevitable that there would be some sacrifices. I understand the need for shortcutting some of the storytelling, and using the Daleks watching on their rangerscopes was a nice way to speed the plot along. It is a shame that we lost the appearance of the first ever alien monster to appear on Doctor Who: the poor Magnadon. And the food machine sequence too. I guess you can't have everything. It was also an odd, but perhaps predictable decision to show the TARDIS arriving on Skaro, scenes never in the original story (the first time we saw the TARDIS materialise was in 'The Keys of Marinus'), and the new scene here looks very strange. I suspect it was achieved through CGI, and unfortunately it looks like it. Likewise they have replaced the shot of the TARDIS dematerialising at the end with a modern equivalent ... and again it jars. Why do they have the TARDIS sort of vanishing then reappearing, then vanishing, then reappearing in time with the sound effect? At the start of 'The Keys of Marinus', the TARDIS just silently and smoothly fades into view. It also silently and smoothly vanishes at the end of 'The Keys of Marinus', and smoothly appears at the start of 'The French Revolution'. In the original shot at the end of 'The Daleks' it also smoothly vanished ... so why this up/down visual approach? It's a strange decision to have made.
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| A Magnadon. Yesterday. |
Other anachronistic elements include the tolling of the Cloister Bell as the TARDIS has it's little hiccup at the start: this sound was not introduced until 'Logopolis' in 1980.
Overall then, a story from Doctor Who's very beginning has been given a new life through a 2023 'makeover', with almost all elements of the production re-edited, scored, coloured and jigged to create a modern take on a certified classic. It's not perfect, but then I wonder if anything like this really could please everyone. Maybe a straight colourisation would be better ... but then you have an arguably stodgy sixties pace to try and deal with ... and there's still the question as to which colours to use - especially when some stories have little or no original colour material to work from.
Like the animations, or indeed the two Dalek cinema films, this is best viewed as an alternative take on the story, with a tweaked plot, new music, and colours occasionally so bright they make your eyes bleed ... I think there is room in the world for both/all versions. It'll be interesting to see which one(s) are attempted next!
THE DALEKS IN COLOUR can be seen on iPlayer in the UK: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001snnz/doctor-who-19631996-season-1-the-daleks-in-colour
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