Colour Version of "The Daleks" coming 23rd November

Rich Watson

Fleet Captain
Fleet Captain
And not just to iPlayer it will be on BBC4 too.

However (and it's a big however) it has been cut down (somehow) to a 75 minute movie version, which is less than half of the length of the original. It will also have new sound and a full musical score.

And this part of the news story announcing it seems to have been written specially for Stef Coburn: "It’s been my absolute pleasure to spend these past 12 months working with such a talented team to breathe new life into this classic adventure - a story that is literally the foundation stone of all that Doctor Who has become."

https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/sci-fi/doctor-who-daleks-colourised-newsupdate/
 
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OUCH!!!, 75 mins.......well once again my physical restoration dvds come to the rescue. Lol
What other classic shows are headung for the BBC cutting department, Blake 3 1/2, The Bipeds, 1982, Quaterfew, The day of the daisies. Lol
 
Can't help but be excited - recutting a classic serial into a Nu Who style "special" with updated sound, vision, score etc.

Let's hope it's successful enough to warrant similar treatment for other classic stories.L

I understand some won't be happy, but it's not as if the wonderful work on the complete season boxsets is stopping. This is a bonus !
 
Meh. Zero interest in this. Even if wasn't heavily recut.

And this part of the news story announcing it seems to have been written specially for Stef Coburn
Who? And why should I care what he thinks?

Also, for those who didn't read the article, that quote comes from Phil Collinson.
 
I'm curious on how well the new superimposed color choices will look.

Will it be in stereo as well, with new soundtrack because the electronic original may induce ASMR sleep for some? (I think it's very eerie and well done, worthy of an October watch in full.)

I wonder what scenes will be excised to save on coloring budget. A lot of the second half could easily go and nobody would blink, but I'm pretty sure they'll remove as much of the "grumpy Doctor" material as well. How to flanderize a character before their time is the funnest question of all, of course.

Since the original was something like 165 minutes sans credits, more than 90 minutes is going toodles in this new omnibus cut. I remember the good old days when people griped about the whittled down omnibus cuts of Morbius and other stories, and how others were completely destroyed because somebody thought nobody would watch it... because they were made in black and white. And this was in the 1980s, where the mindset of "not in color? Pass!" was put out by some as well.

But do I say that, tangents and all, in a bad way? Nope. Unlike other franchises, all the original material exists and is still as accessible as this story is the middle part of a larger three-story. If this drives up interest, then the investment to colorize will have paid off even more.

Oh, Stef has less to do with this than some might be thinking. For decades, everyone said or misattributed the Daleks as being the first story. To the point people, especially Americans, thought Terry Nation created the show!! The Cushing movie was the first to do the Daleks as the first adventure. The first story did get viewers, but nobody expected Dalekmania and that's what gets mentioned.


On edit: On re-read of OP, yes there is a new score... That reminds me of all the scores cobbled up for "Shada"... this will be a fun lab experiment, indeed.
 
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OUCH!!!, 75 mins.......well once again my physical restoration dvds come to the rescue. Lol
What other classic shows are headung for the BBC cutting department, Blake 3 1/2, The Bipeds, 1982, Quaterfew, The day of the daisies. Lol

LOL, nice! Especially the riffs on The Tripods, Quatermass, Day of the Triffids...

IMHO, parts 5-7 of "The Daleks" do drag to adult-me and could be trimmed up a tad. To kid-me on first viewing, my attention was largely kept... But those parts do start to drag on re-viewings. Not fumble as that implies plotting consistency and/or character issues, but drag due to lack of it. Modern day shows often go rabidly fast, but when tv was new it was the opposite. In part due to being "televised theater' as far as perception goes, and theater has historically been slower. In part due to stretching the allocated budget. etc.


Going back to the audio rescore, they got the right person. I'd much rather hear his take on "Remembrance of the Daleks" and "Silver Nemesis", assuming they do new scores for season 25's material. But modern-day media, never mind the late-80s when the concept started to take off, overdoes it so much with this bizarre need for backing music, when it's the acting and plotting that should always take... center stage. The spectacle of souped-up sound and visuals mean zilch if there's no core story being able to sell it, and if the script content can't induce emotion, than resting lazily on the soundtrack is an insult to the audience.
 
OUCH!!!, 75 mins.......well once again my physical restoration dvds come to the rescue. Lol
What other classic shows are headung for the BBC cutting department, Blake 3 1/2, The Bipeds, 1982, Quaterfew, The day of the daisies. Lol

Oh my god. Tell me you didn't think this is replacing the original episodes?
 
I'm not sure about colourizing, though the process has to be better than the early days of trying to turn classic black and white movies like Casablanca into colour movies. But I'll give it a shot. If I don't like it, the original version will still exist, as will the full colour Cushing version of the story.

(Is there anyone who likes classic Who but hasn't bothered with the two Cushing movies? If so, you're missing out, they're fun.)
 
I'm not sure about colourizing, though the process has to be better than the early days of trying to turn classic black and white movies like Casablanca into colour movies.

You can find colorised clips from other B&W episodes on YouTube and they're pretty good.

Here's one that's fitting for the week of 'Tales of the TARDIS'.
 
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^^^^^I wondered if anyone would get them. lol

"1982" still throws me for a loop, though, LOL... 3964?

Will this edit make the Doctor less of the antagonist? :) (First episode at least.)

He wasn't technically an antagonist. The humans did intrude and saw the reality that space/time travel and transdimensionalism were possible advances and would alter the course of history. While emotive, his goal was the biggest-possible picture and it didn't help he had a bunch of bad experiences before arriving on Earth. "The Edge of Destruction" fills in a lot of narrative blanks and confirms the theme of "'savage' humans teach advanced alien a new trick". For 1963, that arc was phenomenally big...

Also remember, in "The War Games", how the time lords erased Jamie and Zoe's memories and then sent them home. Especially for Jamie, that knowledge would do him a disservice as he'd not be believed and hung as a witch. I'm amazed the time lords didn't wipe all his companions' memories up to that point... They wanted to preserve Jamie as much as the Doctor wanted to preserve a greater chunk of causality. Only in different means.



You can find colorised clips from other B&W episodes on YouTube and they're pretty good.

Here's one that's fitting for the week of 'Tales of the TARDIS'.

A lot exist and some almost look photorealistic. That one is above average, but still looks like it was painted on. Especially with the telecine capture of 405-line videotape, having the computer farm render around the interlace lines doesn't help - they probably deinterlace first... now I want to pause a season 2 blu-ray release and see if they did do interlacing...

I'm not sure about colourizing, though the process has to be better than the early days of trying to turn classic black and white movies like Casablanca into colour movies. But I'll give it a shot. If I don't like it, the original version will still exist, as will the full colour Cushing version of the story.

(Is there anyone who likes classic Who but hasn't bothered with the two Cushing movies? If so, you're missing out, they're fun.)


Or, worse, "Gilligan's Island" and its colorizing. It's not bad, but it was from the early days.

Colorizing will always exist and methods improved, and even I will admit that adding color could make an already great presentation just a little bit better. But am glad the originals will still be around. They didn't always like being stuck with B&W, but they sure did make the most with it. And, yep, the blue balls on the Daleks are for the benefit of translating to the b&w taping process, not to be "sixties trippy"...

But chopping up the story to speed pacing is a tricky thing. It arguably failed for Davison's stories (Enlightenment, Planet of Fire), and the early Hartnell era has a more exploratory feel to it. But we'll know later this month...

The Cushing versions are a mixed bag. They do Susan much justice but feel like a direct influence and predecessor of the RTD era far more than McCoy's era ever alleged to have done. The Invasion story, complete with cereal ad, isn't without its strengths, but I found the original story as shown on TV to feel more expansive. The movie feels like a lesser script was given a larger budget and it's never done too much for me with any viewing and I saw it last with the 4k release (which is of supreme quality and is, in fact, most worth purchasing...) But "Invasion of Earth 2150" definitely holds up better. At least for me... there's a thread waiting in the wings to make, on how people feel of the Cusihing entries...
 
They are but ironically they're so good they show the sets and props a bit too clearly making them look really cheap at points.

IMHO, that's part of the fun of 4k. The increased color palette, clarity, and sharpness, especially on a smaller screen (< 60") also makes it easier to perceive all of the optical and other effects used, unless additional post-production is used. It adds a tangentially new way to see the stories.

Besides, the pink shower curtains draping the corridors never looked like anything else - regardless of resolution. :D
 
The original The Daleks was just too long. Dragged. That alone prevents me from rewatching it much. Hopefully, the new edit gives it a bit more zip. And I'm not bothered by colorization. I'm sure I'll check it out.

And it'll be nice to have a version of the first Dalek's story that will be (presumably) at least somewhat more palatable to modern audiences. Young folk (i.e., not me) now have a version of the story they might watch.
 
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