Ok, the much ballyhooed “An Adventure in Space and Time” docu-drama about the early days of the creation of “Doctor Who” aired tonight. I thought it was amusing and enjoyable - but not particularly enlightening about either the behind the scenes “drama” or the early days of TV production.
A thought that did occur to me was the idea of recreating early missing DW stories. Yes, I know there are animated reconstructions of lost episodes that follow along to many of the original soundtrack tapes. But I find many of them to be jarring and too odd to watch. (“Power of the Daleks” looks like the Terry Gilliam animation bits from “Monty Python.”) Why not simply do new live-action versions of the missing (or partially missing) serials? Since there is apparently an abundance of archival information - scripts, full audio recordings of the cast, hundreds of stills of the serials - on which to base sets and costumes, couldn’t some of the lost serials be remade?
I know that by the time even the first Cafe Society denizens read this far into my OP, there are at least a few who are furiously typing a reply that “[Story] simply CANNOT be remade because it was a perfect gem the first time out, and the cast was simply irreplaceable. I simply WILL NOT accept anyone but [actor] in the role of [companion character]!!!” But the fact is that DW was a fun romp, and not high art. The SFX were notoriously cheap, the sets wobbly cardboard, and the actors involved were typically not the most stellar thespians of the last 50 years. I mean, can anyone really say that actress Adrienne Hill was such a shining star, that no one else could ever take over the role of Katarina? Added to that is the fact that so few of the DW fans today have ever seen the original episodes, how can anyone justify the idea that any recreation would be a pale imitation? How could anybody actually know?
Yes, William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton were excellent, memorable actors and each added a lot of depth to the character(s). But if actors can recreate the role of Superman, Batman, Sherlock Holmes and the entire cast of the original Star Trek series, then I think the right actor certainly could recreate a decent new version of a particular former Doctor as well.
To be clear, I wouldn’t want to see the old stories updated and modernized. i don’t want to see a ‘dark re-imagining’ of the series along the lines of Tim Burton’s “Planet of the Apes” movie. Perhaps a little tweaking around the edges, but I’d like to see them remade straight-faced and in the same outlandish style of the pop art 1960s. I think it might be fun to see them remade in all their low-tech FX glory - analog clocks on the TARDIS console, 1920s style death-rays and all. At least one point in favor of the idea is that it wouldn’t be too expensive to replicate the original serials - given how notoriously low-budget the productions were.
So why not remake a few of the serials that have been completely or mostly lost? I’d like to see “Evil of the Daleks” in one form or another.
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