Dr. Who & The Daleks - The Official Story Of The Films

Documenting Doctor

Dr. Who & The Daleks -
The Official Story Of The Films
by John Walsh
Titan Books
ISBN: 9781803360188

I was excited when I found out that a book was being released on the making of the Doctor Who films because, although I’d already read a tome which covered these a little bit, I just assumed this one would be more in depth and have a lot more pictures from the production... well, as it turned out, that second assumption was a double edged sword. I was, therefore, grinning like a cheshire cat when I found a copy in Forbidden Planet as a signed edition, no less. Alas, I did find I had a lot of problems with the book and so, fair warning, if you want to read a positive review of Dr. Who & The Daleks - The Official Story Of The Films... this isn’t it.

My first big problem with it was when I read one of the captions for an early photograph in the book telling me who did the colourisation of the photo. Wait, what? I then read, as part of a lengthy introduction section, that many black and white photos were originally in colour but haven’t survived in that state over the decades and so a ‘faithful’ colourisation was performed by an individual. I was horrified. If a shot has to be recolourised, how do you know that every single hue and shade of any specific colour is exactly as seen on the original photo? It’s just an impression at best and light years away at worst. In other words, it’s a fake and I really should not be put in a position where my eyeballs should ever have to contemplate such a terror. So, yeah, to say I was a little bit miffed by this perversion of film history would be putting it mildly.

The other thing which really got my back up from the beginning was when the writer is discussing the old argument of whether the version of The Doctor played in the films is in any way canon with the TV show. Frankly I don’t care one way or another... they’re big, bright, fast paced and colourful adventures which look absolutely amazing in whichever home viewing format they get restored to. What I did care very much about, however, is when the author writes, as a kind of un-needed defence of the movies... “Hartnell’s Doctor never had clearly established his origins: especially that he was not even an Earthling at all.” How the heck anybody who has claimed to have watched any of the show’s serials from the first two years (prior to the release of the big movie adaptations) can think they can get away with this statement/conclusion is beyond me. The entire first episode, for example, hinges entirely on the idea that there’s something very odd about both The Doctor and his grand daughter Susan and it’s more than heavily implied by Susan that they are from another world. A subtext which is re-enforced a fair few times over the next year or two, from what I remember.

So, yeah, faulty photos and a completely false statement. What else?

Well, the book looks okay but, if anything, the abundance of photographic shots... monochrome, colour, faked up or otherwise... means there’s a lot less text than I was expecting... or rather, hoping for. They certainly pad the book but you can read the whole thing in not much more than an hour and I have to say that, after seeing a couple of featurettes and such like on various home media releases of the films over the years, there really wasn’t much of anything that new to me in the book. It goes into all the stories you would expect such as Roberta Tovey’s ‘one take Tovey’ anecdote and the story about the stuntman hurting his leg in that fall, seen on screen, in the second feature Daleks’ Invasion Earth 2150AD (reviewed here).

Pretty much my only factual takeaway of any interest is that I learned why Roy Castle and Jennie Linden were not in the sequel and... yeah... not much more, I’m afraid.

There are a few pages devoted to the musical scores or the films but they really don’t say much (and, yeah, like I said, lots of pictures pad the text) but the two short galleries of posters for the two films from around the world was definitely a welcome addition. All in all, though, it’s an interesting enough read but still pretty light reading and I felt the two films... which are quite spectacular... could have done with a lot more analysis and insight than what was given here.

If you are a Doctor Who fan then you’re probably going to love this anyway, it’s definitely a project which has its own, built in audience but, for my part, I found Dr. Who & The Daleks - The Official Story Of The Films to be something less than enthralling and I wouldn’t recommend it to, say, my cousin.... who has been watching the show and enjoying the films for almost (but not quite) as long as I have. Not the best Doctor Who book I’ve read by a long chalk... and I mean, a really long chalk, to be sure.