Doctor Who And The Daleks
What a long, weird road these movies have had. Originally released in Britain in 1965, Doctor Who And The Daleks is a lightweight retelling of the first appearance of the dreaded Daleks in the BBC’s most famous SF series. The movie, since it revamps the show’s mythology a little bit (making the Doctor not a Time Lord but an absent-minded human scientist, though it’s important to remind ourselves that even by BBC-TV standards, the Doctor wasn’t a Time Lord until 1969, and wasn’t noticeably non-human until 1966). And out of necessity, it also rehashes some of the ground covered in the first episode as well. Cushing is about as different from William Hartnell’s Doctor as any of Hartnell’s TV successors were, but Cushing - most often identified with Hammer horror flicks and Grand Moff Tarkin - brings his own unique charm to the role.
For a long time, due to the popular fan opinion that these films violated the much larger, grander continuity of the TV series, Cushing’s two theatrical outings as the Doctor have been left out in the rain. But it’s important to reverse that perception - I’ve always liked the Cushing films as an interesting alternative to the sometimes convoluted plotline of the TV series, and there’s nothing better for introducing neophytes to Doctor Who. Considering that the stretch from the show’s first-ever episode through the end of the first Dalek story on TV encompassed 11 half-hour episodes, some of them frightfully dull, it’s much easier to swallow 89 or so minutes of full-color that vastly increases the humor quotient and scoots the story pacing along drastically.
The first half-hour episode of Doctor Who is visionary television, but I’ll sit through Doctor Who And The Daleks anyday rather than trudging through the cure for insomnia that is the bulk of parts 2 through 4 of An Unearthly Child.
Fortunately, as Doctor Who left television and fandom become crazed for anything to satiate their nostalgia fix, the Doctor Who films starring Peter Cushing came back into vogue. And other people remembered them too - Mike Myers and director Jay Roach actually cited Doctor Who And The Daleks as an example of how colorful they wanted the first Austin Powers movie to be. I’m not sure fandom has ever really fully acknowledged how vital the movies were to cementing the success of the television series, or indeed of the Daleks themselves. A third film was proposed, which would have diverged completely from Doctor Who continuity and thrust a new set of heroes into battle against the Daleks, as part of Dalek creator Terry Nation’s bid to launch them as an independent entity in America.
In any event, Cushing’s two outings as the Doctor have finally come in from the rain on DVD, and the first of those movies has gotten star treatment. Boasting colorful menus (befitting the sometimes eye-searing palette of the movie itself), a nice gallery of posters, handbills, publicity photos and newspaper ads, and an audio commentary with the film’s two leading ladies, Doctor Who And The Daleks doesn’t pale in comparison to the early DVD releases from the TV series.
That commentary is unusually revealing - so much about these movies has dwelt in the realm of legend and rumor, and so seldom have the participants been asked due to the “not official Who” status bestowed upon them for so long by the fans, almost everything in the commentary is an unearthed gem. Particuarly entertaining is when both Roberta Tovey (who played little Susan) and Jennie Linden (who played Susan’s older sister Barbara) take the moderator - apparently a pop culture scholar - to task for perpetuating the rumor that Cushing had to lessen his involvement due to illness. (Au contraire - he was on set even to feed the actresses their cue lines for reverse angle shots.) Cushing and Roy Castle both come in for high praise from the two ladies, and between that and the extensive bio of Cushing featured on the disc, one comes away with a better understanding, appreciation, and sympathy for the man. If all you’ve seen him in is Star Wars, you’re missing out.
All in all, Doctor Who And The Daleks was given far better treatment on DVD than I ever would have expected, and I’m delighted with the results. Maybe you too can help haul this movie out of obscurity by giving it a try.