#daleks in colour

[marvelousmop]

Thoughts on "Daleks in Colour"

Before I start, I'd just like to say that I have no problem with this as a concept. The original serials still exist, they're still on iPlayer, and no previous omnibus edit has entirely replaced a serial so far. Now, the animated reconstructions have, but also those are of mostly lost episodes, and the original surviving clips are still available to watch. I won't treat this as though it's replacing history until it actually does so and until then, I don't think "This shouldn't exist" is a particularly engaging criticism.

To start off with some positives, I think the colourisation is mostly very impressive. Some of it doesn't work too well (I feel like the forest should've been a bit duller, though I understand why they may not want that as the opening image of their colourisation project), but it's undeniably impressive in my opinion. Similarly, the soundtrack is a bit mixed: I feel like some of the intense orchestral stuff shouldn't have been in there, but I did like the added synths, and some of the other colourful orchestrations grew on me a bit (shoutout to the sort of Oceans 11-esque music they scored the Doctor's escape from the Dalek city with). Separate from the visuals, they're really good orchestrations, they just don't match too well (nor do they match the more ambient score of the original serial that we hear at some points).

Now for just pure negatives GOOD GOD, THE EDITING! Taking a 3-hour serial and trimming it down to 75 minutes was bound to cause some problems (and honestly the fact that they ended up with something still mostly coherent is impressive) but there's a right way to do it - the Peter Cushing adaptation only runs for 10 minutes longer, and that one also had to include the prerequisite TARDIS setup - but this just isn't it.

In general, it feels like the people behind the editing read too many articles about declining attention spans, and the result is just endless overwhelming noise and montages. It feels like they were told to cut out anything where the characters weren't saying anything exciting or running around (sort of the opposite of the Garth Marenghi quote "Everything without dialogue was considered for slow-motion.").

And the flashbacks.

Interspersed through bits of dialogue are cuts to things we've already seen: Are the characters talking about the city? Let's cut to it three times. Are the characters talking about Ian getting shot? Let's cut back to that again, the audience probably forgot. Are they talking about picking up the drugs? Show that clip, and do it again five minutes later when they're talking about that with different characters - GOOD GOD JUST TRUST THE AUDIENCE TO REMEMBER ANYTHING!

That's my main issue really. It feels like it doesn't trust the audience to keep up with the story, and it annoys me. Sure whatever, studies say attention spans are falling, bla bla bla, but do you know what else? If someone wants to watch something, they will do it. They will pay attention as much as they need to, you just need to trust them. Believe in your audience.

[baltharino]

Doctor Who | 2x13 ↳ Doomsday

[felicitykings]

BARBARA WRIGHT & IAN CHESTERTON

DOCTOR WHO ↳ The Daleks (1963)

[type40capsule]

Doctor Who: The Daleks in Colour

[burntlikethesun]

These black leather flesh-window pants.... the Thals should be at the club.

[intuitive-revelations]

In light of @rassilon-imprimatur's discovery, here's every iteration of Terry Nation's Dalography map to date:

The Dalek Book (30 Jun 1964)

The Dalek Pocketbook and Space-Traveller's Guide (7 Oct 1965)

Terry Nation's Dalek Annual 1979 (Sep 1978)

ダレク族の逆襲! / The Dalek Race's Counter Attack! [ie. Day of the Daleks] (15 Aug 1980)

Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe (26 Oct 2017)

Some map elements also appear from another perspective in "The Strata of Skaro" from The Dalek Outer-Space Book (8 Sep 1966)

Interestingly, looking at these it becomes obvious that the map in The Dalek Race's Counter Attack! is actually based on the 1979 Dalek Annual, released almost 2 years earlier, rather than one of the original Dalekmania tie-in books. Coastlines match up far better between them and both use a West-East orientation for the map. They both also expand a bit more from the original map margins, revealing areas like the top of Southern Dalazar in the bottom right of the image.

By comparion, Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe clearly seems to have gone back to the original design, though we do see some changes. For example, for some reason the Island of Gushing Gold has now become a peninsula off of Darren. There also does seem to be a bit of the same easterly curving of Southern Dalazar, though this may or may not be a coincidence.

[daughter-of-time]

[davros42]

Rewatching Classic Doctor Who, some episodes I haven't seen in years, some of the animated reconstructions I haven't seen at all.

And some episodes I haven't seen since last week.

The Daleks (now in glorious Dalekolour™)

I'll warn you up front, I'm generally not a fan of colorizations/special editions/re-edits so expect a bit of a grumpy post. But I'll try to be fair, I promise.

The episode starts with some extremely dodgy animation instead of the original linking material. It also starts with the intro in color, switches to black and white (apart from the credits which are in color) and then fades in the color and... why? An unnecessary and distracting flourish. The Wizard of Oz did this better nearly 90 years ago.

The colorization itself is quite good, I assume they were working off production documents (the Daleks are in their original colors, of course) but regardless the whole palette is a good match for SciFi film and TV of the era, as opposed to something more muted, moody, or modern. Compare and contrast with Forbidden Planet (1956), Queen of Outer Space (1958), or Star Trek (1966). The upconversion to HD video (and 50FPS?) went as well as it could, some parts of the episode are soft focus with lots of film grain but so was the original.

The music and sound design however is terribly distracting. Not an improvement on the original in any way, it's wildly out of place both stylistically and technically, at points directly in competition with the dialogue. Also, the Daleks received extensive re-writes and in some cases were re-voiced by Nick Briggs which is.. odd. I do have to admit enjoying the inclusion of the cloister bell in the initial fluid link sabotage scene, however, even if was a retcon.

Some of the re-editing was ok, some was intrusive. Constant cutaways to b-roll as if you were likely to forget something that happened 5 to 10 minutes earlier (or just might get bored watching a take longer than a minute) were a major distraction. Some of the digital additions, for instance adding footage to the Daleks' screens, worked well. Others, like William Hartnell "dodging" a Dalek beam that hadn't been there 60 years ago were forced. The digitally animated TARDIS dematerialization is actually worse than the original analog video mix effect. The pace is extremely quick now, much of the tension and suspense of the original story is lost along with the "Dals" origin of the Daleks, for better or for worse. But all in all, it's all right I suppose. I wonder if I would have been easier on it if I hadn't just watched the original.

The "And then the story continues.. for 60 years" teaser was nicely done. A great mix of moments from the First Doctor's stories including some tidbits from missing or rarely seen stories. Hat's off to whoever got the clip of the Beatles from The Chase in there.

Next up: The Sensorites, for real this time.

[a-writhing-mass]

Trying to get the vibe of a knackered Sec, telepathically "leaning" on Martha isn't isn't the easiest thing to try and convey visually...

Anyway it's a sort-of scene from the fic I just finished posting on Ao3.

[rowanthestrange]

While I do think Sue-Susan-Ruby is the triad we’re going for, make no mistake, I do believe that Susan of Daleks Invasion Earth 2150AD (different to The Dalek Invasion Of Earth set in 2164 don’t get confused) is also canon, don’t worry, but she didn’t need to be involved in this because she doesn’t have abandonment issues, Dr Who was a good grampy to her.

[takeawaythefool]

look at them. look at them.

[cool-stuffandthings]

[devoursjohnlock]

@rowanthestrange re. your tags, I think it's meant to be the outer casing of the Dalek, with the lines of bobbles and a single "eye". There's a sound effect for each toy to match the original character type, and this one is "Exterminate!", so there's little doubt it's a Dalek. I'm guessing the doglike one is Lupari because the fur colour/pattern is similar to Karvanista's, but the sound effect is an unhelpful whine, so I could be wrong.

[radiofreeskaro]

Radio Free Skaro #950 - The Seven-Per-Cent Solution

Radio Free Skaro #950 - The Seven-Per-Cent Solution - The War Between the Land and the Sea starting production? - New directors for Season 2 - The King's Demons commentary!

http://traffic.libsyn.com/freyburg/rfs950.mp3 Download MP3 On this most important Magna Carta Day (yes, we know it’s actually June 15), the Three Who Rule are digging deep on morsels of news including the BFI screening of the Celestial Toymaker along with some Hot Takes on the current state of AI, the Sea Devils spinoff supposedly starting shooting on March 4, new casting, “The Daleks in…

[fridge-04]

DALEK!!!!

[intuitive-revelations]

Ay, they got Paul to narrate! ☺️