"Dr. Who and the Daleks" - the Peter Cushing film

Cafe Society
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So I rented Dr. Who and the Daleks - the 1965 film adaptation starring Peter Cushing - last night. Well…it’s definitely a time-capsule from the go-go age of swinging London and mod culture (the Dalek lab is decorated with lava lamps! Yes - LAVA LAMPS!!!) Still, cheesy as it was, the flick wasn’t an out & out stinker. Parts of it were surprisingly good IMO. The groovy theme music and ambient lighting over the title credits were worth the rental alone.

The flick basically condenses the storyline for the original Dalek serial - that’s seven (or eight? I only saw it once, quite a long time ago) half-hour episodes condensed into a 90 minute film, and they manage to squeeze in quite a lot. The story therefore zips along without any of the padding that tends to occur in a lot of the films from this era. The Old Dead Forest is actually fairly convincing and genuinely creepy, even if the Dalek city is made out of wobbly cardboard (Did I mention that the Daleks have lava lamps in their futuristic labs? I mean, for chrissake, LAVA LAMPS!!!) The Black Dalek (essentially the Dalek general) addressing his ‘troops’ is a decent scene. The scene in which Ian, Barbara & some Thals scale a mountain-side to break into the city is…well obviously it’s a backdrop, but a cool looking one.

The most annoying aspect of the film (for me, anyway) was the blatant changes in the premise: Although Peter Cushing does well in the title role, he is referred to repeatedly as “Dr. Who” rather than “the Doctor.” He’s also apparently a normal (if brilliant) human being, living a rather humdrum life in the suburbs of London - no mention of his being from another world. The TARDIS set (referred to as just “TARDIS”, not the TARDIS) is an abysmal assortment of hi-fi stereo equipment, haphazard wiring and glow-sticks.

The original three companion characters are all adapted for the film - but only very, very, very loosely. All three are considerably younger than their small-screen selves (“incarnations”?) - the film Susan is an adolescent, while Barbara & Ian are 20-somethings. The film Barbara another grand-daughter of the Doctor, Ian is specifically mentioned as “Barbara’s boyfriend”. Barbara and Ian don’t have any specific employment descrips and are noticeably less resourceful & heroic than they appear on the small-screen. Ian is saddled with the unenviable task of providing weak “comic relief”. Barbara does little more than stand around and show off the most outrageous bouffant hairdo I’ve ever seen.

The Daleks are the Daleks. Some of them were outfitted with clawhands rather than suction-cups, and they shot weird apparently-acidic gas out of their gun turrets rather than negative image energy-beams. Evidently, the production team did not realize that the lights on top of their ‘heads’ were meant to indicate which Dalek was speaking when. The Daleks are initially blinking incessently when he first see them. Later on, their spoken lines are uttered in an awkward attempt to synch-up with said lights on the already-filmed shots of Daleks (which blink randomly). Oh, did I mention that their labs are decorated with LAVA LAMPS???

I would bet money that as a youth, Boy George went to see this film and LOVED it - because the Thals were apparently the model for his androgynous look. The same shag/bowl cut, the same androgynous eye makeup and false-eyelashes, the same body-covering greasepaint. It’s just too similar to be a coincidence IMO.

All in all, it was entertaining - only partly in the “Plan 9”/it’s-so-bad-it’s-good way. I imagine that if Mike Myers wants to find something new angle or new material to satirize in another “Austin Powers” flick, he could do worse than to check out this.

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I’m afraid this goes into the “movies I don’t acknowledge exist” pile, so I have no idea to what you could be referring. I also do not own a DVD copy of it and the sequel. Definitely not.

Not that, on its own, it would be quite so bad for its time, this mythical movie of which you speak. But compared to everything else Doctor Who, this movie really doesn’t stand up. Or it wouldn’t. If it existed. Which it doesn’t.

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That ‘film’ is what happens when one person (Terry Nation) has ownership of an extremely popular property (the Daleks) and an insatiable appetite for cold hard cash. He even tried to launch the Daleks in their own TV series in the US, not quite sure how that would have worked. The Nation estate almost put the mockers on having the Daleks in the new Dr Who simply because they wanted more money.

It’s rather like ‘Never Say Never Again’, in that it’s the same characters that you know and love but it’s just plain crap.

4

In response to some of your criticisms :

When the film was made it was still a relatively new TV show, it didn’t have the 40+ year tradition it does now. It had not yet been established that The Doctor was a renegade Timelord from Gallifrey. It wasn’t even certain whether he was a human from the future or an alien. Also, the TV show had many different stories to set up the mystery of “who is the Doctor” plus the ongoing theme of trying to get Ian and Barbera back home. The film, however, had to work as a standalone adventure, without backstory or ongoing mysteries. Therefore, making him a modern day human is forgiveable.

In early episodes of the TV show the Doctor travels in a ship with TARDIS being the name of the vessel. This was later tweaked to make TARDIS the type of vessel, but the film was consistent with the TV show at the time.

The film improves on the TV version in a number of ways: high production values, a tighter script with a lot of padding removed, gorgeous colour, the Dalek guns were a better special effect than the TV.

There is, however, no forgiving the Thals’ makeup, or Susan.