The Doctor Who Movie Box Set
Containing both the original Doctor Who And The Daleks movie and its sequel, Daleks: Invasion Earth 2150 A.D., as well as a bonus DVD with the interesting Kevin Davies documentary Dalekmania, Anchor Bay’s Doctor Who DVD box set is a nice little budget-friendly way to get the whole Peter Cushing-as-Doctor Who experience in one place. My comments on the DVD of the original movie have been recorded elsewhere, so I’ll focus on the other two discs here.
Daleks: Invasion Earth 2150 A.D., a remake of the William Hartnell-era six-parter The Dalek Invasion Of Earth, was meant to be a bit darker than its predecessor. And as it happens, it succeeds there - the characters of Ian and Barbara are gone, with Ian replaced by bumbling policeman Tom and Doctor Who’s niece Louise standing in for Barbara. This time around, Tom stumbles dazedly into the TARDIS after failing to stop a robbery in progress and accidentally sends the time machine on a course for Earth’s future - a future overrun by the Daleks. What follows for the remainder of the movie is more or less episodes 2 through 6 of the TV story - on speed. Spurred on, alarmingly and amusingly enough, by letters from British children that the Daleks didn’t do enough exterminating in their first big-screen appearance, the Daleks really do get with the killing this time around. The movie looks and sounds great, and it’s a nice little time capsule of the height of Dalek fever. Still photos, a carbon-copy of Doctor Who And The Daleks‘ history essay, and the nicely-restored widescreen trailer are included, but Daleks: Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. has no commentaries.
The job of chronicling the second film’s making is left to the intriguing Kevin Davies documentary Dalekmania, originally released on VHS as one of the many Doctor Who-related fan productions. Davies seldom misfires with his well-written, cleverly-edited documentaries, and Dalekmania is no exception, right down to its loving recreation of two schoolchildren’s visit to a creepy, Dalek-infested theater to see their favorite heroes (and villains) in action. Lots of facts about Daleks: Invasion Earth are to be found here, including the truly cringe-inducing retelling of a stunt gone horribly wrong by a man who broke his leg and went on doing stunt work for the movie when he returned from the hospital in a plaster cast. If you don’t grind your teeth watching the slo-mo replay of the scene in 
question, where he points out exactly where the stunt went painfully wrong, you are a Dalek. Ouch!
Though a lot of the fan-produced Doctor Who spinoff and documentary productions are languishing on VHS while the actual shows they document are being converted to the DVD format, Davies’ Dalekmania was a canny choice to round out this box set. When viewed with the movies, it encompasses the whole experience of Doctor Who on the big screen. I give this box set my highest recommendations - and without the Kevin Davies documentary on top of the movies, I’m not sure I would have given it more than two or three stars.