Running Through Corridors: Rob and Toby's Marathon Watch of Doctor Who (Volume 1: The 60s) by Shearman Robert & Hadoke Toby

Author:Shearman, Robert & Hadoke, Toby [Shearman, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Doctor Who, BBC
Publisher: Mad Norwegian Press
Published: 2010-12-14T00:00:00+00:00

Daleks Invasion Earth: 2150 AD

R: Let’s be honest. On any reasonable level, this is a lot better than the TV version which inspired it. It obviously looks better for a start – the special effects, the explosions, the action sequences, they’re all top notch. Gordon Flemyng is directing this as an exciting feature film, and Richard Martin is nowhere in sight. The acting is far superior across the board. Ray Brooks turns David (appearing here without the surname he had in the TV story) into a moody freedom fighter who’s clearly survived so far because he’s bold and brutal; Andrew Keir actually gives resistance-man Wyler the sort of character journey clearly earmarked for Jenny in the original version, so he becomes a man who is humanised by his adventures with Susie; Philip Madoc is extraordinary in only a few minutes’ screen time, making his black marketeer someone very credible and very dangerous by downplaying every line he’s given. And the plot is better too – it’s lean and tight, it actually makes more sense, and in spite of the fact that it’s less than half the running time of the original, it still finds a way of elongating the story’s climax so that it feels more epic. (This results in lots of smashing scenes where Daleks are pulled magnetically through walls or down mine shafts. Great stuff.) There’s an attention to detail here that’s missing from The Dalek Invasion of Earth, and makes the ruined London seem much more believable: all those peeling advertisements for Sugar Puffs suggest a society which is dead, but which no-one has bothered to clean away yet.

And Bernard Cribbins is funny and heroic and likeable in a way that, bless his heart, Roy Castle simply couldn’t be in the first movie. He’s a bit of a bungler is Constable Tom Campbell, it’s true – but the comedy sequences he’s involved in portray him as an ordinary man struggling out of his depth, not as a klutz there as light relief for the little ‘uns. The food-machine scene is a development of the bit in Dr Who and the Daleks where Castle couldn’t make sense of the electronic doors – both show the male hero get into scrapes with future technology. The difference with Cribbins’ take on it is that it’s only funny accidentally – it’s Tom’s desperate attempts to imitate the Robomen, and in doing so save his life, which provide the laughs. The stakes are higher, so the comedy is less forced.

But I’m going to be unreasonable anyway. I can’t help it – I do rather prefer the original, clumsy and dated as it is. The Robomen on TV look crap compared to these ones, who marching along in perfect time in PVC, and blast away with their explosive ray guns – but it’s that very crapness which reminds us that these are just uncared-for corpses being used as an easy work force. It’s cheaper and rougher and dirtier in Hartnell’s Who, and that’s

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