User Reviews

The Doctor, Ian, Barbara and Susan land on a planet that appears to be dead, but just as they're about to set off, Ian spots a fascinating city, an exploration would change the world forever.

First of all, why the release, and the cynic in me seems to think it's to keep on with the commercial releases, we've had the DVDs, box sets, vinyls and blu rays, this means a few more guaranteed releases over the next few years.

So, The Daleks is a favourite of mine, easily my most watched Hartnell, so the idea of tampering with is was just not right.

Let's applaud it for bringing it to a new audience, one that simply cannot watch black and white.

The visuals were decent, I liked the colourisation, what I didn't like was the music, it jarred with the episode quite badly.

The scene I thought worked incredibly well was Barbara's first encounter with The Dalek, the music worked there, and that scene was given a whole new, threatening vibe, I really liked it.

The updated dialogue and special effects, I can't really say I thought they were necessary, some worked better than others let's say.

I get why people dislike it, I can also see it appealing to a new audience, so overall, it's a slow moving thumbs up from me, maybe my score is a little kind, anniversary celebrations and all that.

7/10.

Certainly a fascinating experiment - The Daleks serial re-colourised for the anniversary events in late 2023 and it although it looks compelling the drastic editing of the original story is ludicrous. Especially as the Tales of the TARDIS (which appeared at the same time) features the full serials with only the titles and end credits edited out, this felt like a leap too far. Excising whole chunks of the story and mashing up scenes to make it seem more pacey and more modern just makes it look silly. It feels like an experiment gone too far - a set of choices that didn't need to be made. Give me black and white and creaky 60s pacing any day.

The rating here is mainly for the colour. The colourisation was well-done. While it doesn't look like it was shot in colour originally, it's a good substitute.

However, the edit here was not good. 175 minutes have been cut down to 75, and that is simply not enough time. The story feels incredibly rushed, with entire scenes cut down to only a montage of a few seconds in places, it genuinely gets hard to follow what's happening at times. There's no opportunity for tension to build up, everything is over before it has a chance to really begin.

And the music just ruins it. They've tried to make it seem like a modern blockbuster, but that's simply not what the footage was shot for. The music is overbearing, dominating every single scene it's in.

If you want to watch The Daleks, watch the original. Watch it in multiple sittings if you must, as it's 3 hours long. And if you want a shorter, more colourful version, watch the 1965 movie adaptation, "Dr Who and the Daleks". I see no reason at all to bother with this version.

The original Daleks serial is SO much better than this. Sure, it's long, and yeah it's definitely a product of its time, but it's marvelous use of tension was nothing short of miraculous.

First, the main article: the brand-new colorization. Terrible, lol. Bright and shiny, it made everything look inauthentic, and plastic-y. Something that initially felt cold and dreadful now feels like unimportant CBBC nonsense.

And this was not helped by the awful music. Loud and computerized and blatantly ugly, it destroyed everything about Tristram Cary's beautiful and haunting score.

And the worst part: the editing. Almost 3 hours of content is wittled down to a little over an hour. A whole episode of tension is chopped up into a cringey heist sequence. The cave journey is played on fast-forward. The original and delightfully delirious run through the jungle is completely deleted?!

They took what was brilliant and mutilated it into something it wasn't. If you want to watch this serial, watch the original I BEG OF YOU!! If you want a colorful, cinematic adaptation, watch the Peter Cushing movies. This new edit is unnecessary, obnoxious and unneeded.

On viewing this so called film, it was at the beginning just rushed and ruined, it is far more superior in the TV series, The music soundtrack was a mess with too much dominating every scene you watch, on this it seems that let's put some music here and hope for the best, but most of all the editing from 175 minutes down to 75 minutes was not enough time, it even worked at the normal 95 minutes, but it in common sense would still have. Been rubbish, the people who produced this need to be sacked Modern blockbuster of which they tried to make made it even more of a shambles.

The colourisation of the TV show was not bad, In all the BBC have failed at this project, please stick to the original TV Doctor Who: The dead Planet.