The Dalek
Invasion of
Earth
21ST NOVEMBER 1964 - 26TH
DECEMBER 1964
(6 EPISODES)
1. WORLD'S END
2. THE DALEKS 3. DAY OF RECKONING
4. THE
END OF TOMORROW 5. THE
WAKING ALLY
6. FLASHPOINT
The Dalek Invasion of Earth
is one of the best Doctor Who DVDs released thus
far. The
amount of painstaking work that the Restoration Team must have put into a
project such as this is immense. The six-part 1964 serial is not only
presented remastered with extraordinary sound and picture quality, but it
even has an option allowing the viewer to watch with certain effects shots
replaced by state of the art - but affectionately apposite - CGI.
Although I’ve
long been biased against this story thanks to its camp Peter Cushing movie
adaptation, Daleks: Invasion Earth 2150 AD, watching the six
original episodes again on DVD I was hugely impressed by both the
magnitude of the story and the tear away from the claustrophobia of the
studio. I mean, Daleks in London! To see them trundling around the
capital’s landmarks is just as eerie today as it must have been forty
years ago. This serial’s reputation as a cult classic, not just within the
world of Doctor Who, but in the broader terms of television, is
certainly one that’s well deserved.
The
first disc of the release contains all six episodes of the serial,
complete with a commentary, some production subtitles and even two 1964
trailers for the serial. I like the nice little touch of including a
“Dalek Invasion of Earth” caption screen before the first episode, not
just because it gets the serial’s title on screen, but also because it is
done (as is most of the DVD) in wonderfully redolent ‘Dalekmania’ style.
The contemporaneous trailers are fun to watch too, if for no other reason
than their ability to make this seminal serial look terribly corny,
bombarding the viewer with apparently random clips and disjointed music,
not to mention placing the story somewhat cheesily in the year 2000 (it is
in fact set in or around 2164).
The commentary is something of a mixed bag as William Russell (Ian),
Carole Ann Ford (Susan), producer Verity Lambert and director Richard
Martin each comment on different parts of the story. Whilst what they each
have to say is interesting, the commentary doesn’t feel as fluent as those
on most DVD releases, where you usually have two or more people sat
together reminiscing for the whole serial.
The
second disc contains the lion’s share of the bonus material. I
particularly enjoyed the ten-minute Talking Daleks featurette,
which documents how early Dalek voices were achieved, and the in-depth
documentary Future Memories. That said, I did feel that the latter
should have at least featured Russell and Ford – it struck me as odd that
it didn’t, especially as they both contributed to the serial’s commentary.
The rest of the special features are nothing extraordinary, but it’s nice
to have them there all the same. Future Visions looks at the design
of the story, Script to Screen examines how a camera script worked
in those days, Now and Then looks at how the serial’s locations
have changed over the years and there are also some silent rehearsal films
and Blue Peter clips included. The remainder of the disc is filled
up with the audio drama Whatever Happened to… Susan Foreman? which
originally aired back in 1994.
The
Dalek Invasion of Earth itself was an amazingly ambitious story which
proved to be the foundation of the series’ success and the true birth of
‘Dalekmania’. It contains legendary scenes that were way ahead of their
time – who can forget the Dalek emerging from the Thames at the climax of
“World’s End”, or Barbara running down a small squadron of Daleks in
that old dustcart? The plot is also innovative, probing still raw war
wounds without breaking their scabs. Nazis marching around London,
presiding over labour camps – ouch. Metal monsters doing the same as they
intend to hollow out the Earth’s core and fly it about like a giant
spaceship – much more toothsome. And then on top of all these delectable
layers you have the bittersweet icing; the Doctor’s granddaughter growing
up and moving on. The Doctor’s closing speech brings a tear to the eye as
he bids farewell to Susan. “One day I will come back…”
The Restoration Team have certainly done this landmark serial justice with
this luxuriant DVD release, and I look forward to seeing more stories from
this era released in the future.
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When the
Doctor Who production team
promised to bring the Daleks back, they didn’t
even pretend that it was going to be anything but spectacular. What
a shame then that The Dalek Invasion of Earth
lacks the oomph that the finest Doctor Who stories have,
constituting six episodes of tedium with the occasional moment of triumph.
This serial is sold on its location
work, and it’s only on location that we are treated to scenes that truly
live up to their potential. The locations chosen really drive home the
idea of an alien menace stalking you in familiar surroundings. London is
beautiful city full of character and history, and although it might have
been somewhat overused in the revived series, this was not the case in
1964. The gorgeous sun-kissed shots of Daleks gliding across Westminster
Bridge still have the same hallucinatory menace that they did when the
show first aired back in 1964. Similarly, that first shot of Ian and the
Doctor walking up the stairs to the warehouse - and particularly that
creepy establishing shot of the chain swinging suddenly – marks an
astounding improvement on previous serials’ flat backdrops and cardboard
worlds. Those scenes of Barbara running for her life across the wasteland
in World’s End are amongst my favourite of the year.
“ATTENTION! ATTENTION!
SURVIVORS OF LONDON…”
Through
atmosphere alone, with no words to spoil the effect, the alien menace is suddenly very, very scary. Richard Martin had already proven himself a competent director in The Daleks, but in his location work for The Dalek Invasion of Earth
he is clearly in his element. My favourite
sequence in the whole serial is the frantic chase across London with Babs,
Jenny and Dortmun. It’s lavishly filmed and worthy of a big budget movie,
and better still it completely sells the gorgeous Blake’s 7ish idea
of our heroes as guerrillas on the run in a post-apocalyptic nightmare
world. When this serial is on location, the danger really comes alive.
However, whilst the Daleks may be a
revelation on location, they are little more than mobile dustbins in the
studio. There’s no way of getting around it - the studio scenes of The
Dalek invasion of Earth are very poorly shot, particularly when
compared to the surviving episodes of The Daleks’ Master Plan,
which Douglas Camfield shot far more dynamically on an even smaller
budget! Here the Daleks pathetically bash into each other, sloping around
the sets sounding camper than they ever have. “We are the Masters of
Earth, ducky!” they claim, in an unmodulated voice that makes you wonder
if they’ve irradiated Graham Norton and stuck him inside a mark three
travel machine! The Daleks of this serial sport their silly little
satellite dishes like handbags, bumbling their way through their action
scenes as though they were a bit embarrassed to be there. What I
find truly astonishing though is that Terry Nation and Richard Martin
could never get it quite right: here the Daleks are written as badass
killers, but they bump about like comedy robots, and yet they are written
as such in The Chase, but they look, sound and act with so much
more menace!
Indeed, in my view Richard Martin is
the man responsible for Season 2’s greatest letdowns as he took on all
three of the run’s blockbusters and botched every single one of them.
The Chase I can forgive anything, because I can’t think of six
episodes of any television series that have given me such pleasure
over the years, but his studio work here and on The Web Planet is
preposterously uneven. The attack on the saucer is possibly the slowest
action scene ever seen in Doctor Who, with the camera locked in
stationary positions for ages (sometimes above the action), whilst the
actors try and improvise a few poor moves. Martin exposes every fault that
the Daleks have, and often indulges a strange tendency to shoot on
nauseating tilts which add nothing to the story artistically. The script
may have been written with a lot of oomph, but the direction sabotages
most of Nation’s good work. There is no pace; Martin’s direction just
seems to plod, plod and plod to its conclusion. After seeing the horrid flying saucer models (a
harsh contrast to the fabuloso saucers seen in the Aaru movie adaptation)
he should have scrapped the lot of them; they quickly reduce the serial to the level of a 1950s B movie.
Indeed, The Dalek Invasion of Earth is one of the few Who
stories from the 1960s that looks absurdly dated today.
Furthermore, the acting too is
variable. Peter Fraser (David) could have been replaced with a lump of oak
without too many people noticing. As a love interest for Susan he’s pretty
cute, but he doesn’t deliver his lines with any great conviction and in
their concluding scenes he takes her hand but can’t even bear to look at
her. And Ann Davies is an odd one as Jenny – she’s written as a woman with
a grudge against the world, and whilst it’s nice to not have a character
who’s fluffy she can be a little unlikeable at times. William Russell and
Jacqueline Hill are as good as ever as Ian and Barbara, thankfully, but
even they spend most of their time on the sidelines as Nation pushes the
Doctor / Susan / David storyline.
Some say that I’m too harsh with Susan,
particularly when I compare her to much with later, spunkier companions.
Not so. All I have to do is compare her with the only other woman in the
TARDIS during her tenure, and the results are exactly the same. Susan was
a failed experiment; an attempt to bring a touch of swinging 1960s, sexy
otherworldliness to the show that soon evolved into a sulky, overbearing
and mostly shrill teenager who doesn’t want to clean her room thank you very
much, and hates being bossed around by her grumpy old Grandpa! Okay, so I
might exaggerate ever so slightly, but the point stands. Carole Ann Ford
could see that the role she had been promised hadn’t been delivered. In
the hands of the right writers, Susan could have been the most exotic
companion of the lot. The shot of her dancing in so mystifyingly in An
Unearthly Child is the sort of sexy peculiarity that they should have
capitalised on; unknowable and creepy. I don’t think there were many
stories where she wasn’t treated like ‘the kid’, which is a real shame
because some throwaway moments in Marco Polo and The Sensorites
show that she could have been much more.
Yet a lot of the work done with Susan
in The Dalek Invasion of Earth is actually rather good. If they
were going to have her play the role of the angst-ridden teenager, then it
follows that they should have progressed that role to its natural
conclusion by having her fall in love and take her first tentative steps
into an adult world. It’s great to see a genuinely passionate kiss in
Doctor Who (even if a horrid slippery fish is involved), and the
romance between Susan and David, whilst hardly worthy of Casablanca,
is still nicely understated and wholly credible. The idea of Susan being
trapped between her devotion to her Grandfather and her love for David is
touchingly portrayed, and Terry Nation does a wonderful job of showing us
exactly why Susan is so torn: David is an attractive guy who can offer her
a stable future, the Doctor is an old man who can’t.
“One day, I will come back.
Yes, I will come back…”
The last few moments of the story break
my heart in a way that classic Who rarely does. The relationship
between Susan and the Doctor is portrayed surprisingly gently, William
Hartnell managing to tuck away that bluster and play a quietly hurt old
with heartbreaking results. He may fluff one line too many for my tastes
in this serial, but his heartfelt speech to Susan more than makes up for
this. His touching monologue underlines the affecting notion that he is
forcing Susan to leave him for her own good. We won’t see the
repercussions of the Doctor’s actions until the next story, but for five
minutes at the end of this serial the Doctor is more of a hero than he’s ever been because he
loved Susan enough to let her go. Excuse me, I need a tissue…
On a final note, I have a little
confession that will probably make you want to hunt down every copy of the
Terrance Dicks novelisation and batter me to death with them: I much
prefer the Peter Cushing movie to this serial. Whilst this version has
more of a sense of mood (mostly because it is so weary) this is a story
that needs big scary Daleks, a convincing backdrop, fast-paced action,
solid effects and a lot of spunk. Okay, Daleks: Invasion Earth 2150AD
has that often-lambasted jazz score (which actually I rather like…) but it
moves at such a terrific pace and it looks and is acted with far more
conviction. Susan’s romance is deftly edited out, and Roberta Tovey is
somehow the Susan we should have had on the telly. And as we all know from
recent experiences that anything with Bernard Cribbins in it is worth its
salt. My mum used to put the movie on all the time when I was bored, and
watching those huge towering Daleks blasting down humans in jets of steam
never failed to grip me. When I finally got around to watching the
televised version, I couldn’t help but be shocked by how amateurish it
looked in comparison.
The Dalek Invasion of Earth I
can’t watch too often. Considering its exciting premise, it is pretty
damned boring. Flat direction sinks a potentially fantastic story, and the
writing resorts to comic strip antics far too often to be even vaguely
credible. Oh, and it also features those silly gay Daleks.
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