Dr. Who and the Daleks
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| Dr. Who and the Daleks | |
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| Directed by | Gordon Flemyng |
| Produced by | Max J. Rosenberg Milton Subotsky |
| Written by | Terry Nation Max Rosenberg (uncredited) Milton Subotsky David Whitaker (uncredited) |
| Starring | Peter Cushing Roy Castle Jennie Linden Roberta Tovey Barrie Ingham |
| Music by | Barry Gray Malcolm Lockyer |
| Cinematography | John Wilcox |
| Editing by | Oswald Hafenrichter |
| Release date(s) | 25 June 1965 |
| Running time | 82 min. |
| Language | English |
| IMDb profile | |
Dr. Who and the Daleks (1965) was the first of two Doctor Who films made in the 1960s, and was followed by Daleks - Invasion Earth 2150 AD.
The film features Peter Cushing as Dr. Who, Roberta Tovey as Susan, Jennie Linden as Barbara, and noted Carry On star Roy Castle as Ian.
It is based on The Daleks, the second Doctor Who serial (and the first to feature the Daleks). Filmed in Technicolor, it is the first Doctor Who story to be made in colour. The television series continued to be made in black-and-white until 1969.
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[edit] Plot
Dr. Who and his granddaughters, Susan and Barbara, show Barbara's new boyfriend Ian his invention, a time machine called Tardis. Ian accidentally activates the machine, which takes them to the planet Skaro, home to the peaceful Thals and the deadly Daleks.
The group get radiation sickness from the planet's surface. Whlist exploring an apparently abandoned city, they are captured by the Daleks who live there. They escape and are cured by the Thals, by anti-radition drugs they have invented. The Daleks, wanting to leave their city to wipe out the Thals, trick the Thals into trading the drugs for food (due to a famine in the Thals' settlement), but the Daleks kill all the Thals who go to collect the food.
Dr. Who then convinces the Thals to attack the Dalek city, which they do, killing all of the Daleks inside, and stopping the nuclear bomb the Daleks were preparing to dentonate to kill the Thals. Dr. Who, Susan, Ian and Barbara leave in Tardis, but end up not back in London, but an unknown destination.
[edit] Changes from the series
Several changes were made to the main characters. Cushing's Dr. Who is an Earth-born scientist and inventor who built Tardis (not the TARDIS as in the television show), his time travelling ship. Cushing plays the Doctor as an amiable and absent-minded inventor, in contrast to William Hartnell's more prickly and mysterious persona. Barbara and Susan are now both his granddaughters (with their surname presumably being Who, not Foreman or Wright). Ian Chesterton is now Barbara's bumbling boyfriend, and the entire subplot of them being Susan's teachers is dropped. Ian is the comic relief in the film, rather than the heroic version seen in The Daleks.
Because of this departure from the established continuity of the television series, this film is generally not considered canon, although attempts have been made in various spin-off media to fit it in.
[edit] Notes
- Originally, the Daleks were going to have flamethrowers; but these were vetoed (for fear of being too frightening, and also health and safety reasons) and replaced with smoke-projectors.
- The Daleks were slightly redesigned from their appearance in the television series. The new design ended becoming the standard version, and several of the Dalek models were purchased by the BBC and used in the serial The Chase. As the film was not released until after The Chase, this film actually marks the new Daleks' second appearance.
- David Whitaker novelised the original television serial in 1964 as Doctor Who in an Exciting Adventure with the Daleks (later retitled Doctor Who and the Daleks). Although not strictly a novelisation of the film, there are some similiaries in that the book has Ian joining the TARDIS crew for the first time as he does here (even though he actually joined the Doctor in a previous serial in the television version).
[edit] Trivia
- In the film Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, a marquee is briefly seen advertising "Dr. Hoe and the Garlics", a reference to this film.
- The 2004 Doctor Who conventions, Dr. Who and the Daleks and Dr. Who and the Daleks II were named after this film, despite focussing upon the television series.
