Doctor Who - The Evil Of The Daleks

Victoria Spun

Doctor Who
The Evil Of The Daleks
UK Air date: 20 May - 1 July 1967
Seven Episodes.
BBC Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Exterminating spoilers.

The Evil Of The Daleks was ‘the last in the present series’ of its particular season of Doctor Who back in 1967. After famous actress Pauline Collins turned down the BBCs offer to continue her character from the previous story as a new, regular Doctor Who companion, the script was rewritten to introduce a new addition to the TARDIS crew, Deborah Watling as Victoria Waterfield. She would join The Doctor (as played by Patrick Troughton) and Jamie (as played by Frazer Hines) after the death of her fictional father towards the end of the seventh and final episode. The next series would start off with the much loved Cyberman story, The Tomb Of The Cybermen.

And, well this is a first time watch for me but, unfortunately, due to the much hated policy of the BBC wiping all their master tapes to reuse sometime after broadcast, this serial suffers largely from the ‘missing presumed wiped’ status in that only the second episode, rediscovered on a copy tape at a car boot sale, has survived... which is a lot better off than most of the Doctor Who serials from before 1971, although I am still optimistic that versions of these will turn up in places like Australia or South Africa, pried from the clutches of the black market private collectors who I believe still have many of them, at some point in the future.

However, unlike the visuals, the BBC retained most (perhaps even all?) of the audio tracks to the stories so, this three disc set gives three viewing options. A third disc is extras (which I haven’t watched yet at time of writing and the second disc is the seven episodes with an animated cartoon in colour to accompany the original audio (goodness knows why anybody would want to see a black & white Doctor Who story in colour but I guess there are some strange people out there). The first disc in the set is the same 7 episodes in glorious monochrome with, if you desire, the option of watching the original surviving episode as part of that mix (for some reason relegated to the extras section). So, obviously, I watched the first black & white animated episode for this review, followed by the surviving episode, followed by the monochrome versions of 3-7. And I’m glad it shows up this way because, in comparison to the actual footage, it really shows up just how bad and limited the animations are, it has to be said.

I’ll declare that, as regular readers may remember, the Patrick Troughton version of The Doctor was my favourite incarnation of the character and this story, had I seen all the original live action versions of the episodes, may well have been one of my favourites. Alas, it has to be said, the combination of the original recordings with less well researched animation really takes all the enjoyment out of things.

The story is simple... the TARDIS is kidnapped from Gatwick Airport and The Doctor and Jamie track it down to an antique shop selling ‘brand new’ Victorian antiques. It turns out that the proprietor is using his own time machine to bring them to the present day (1967) for reasons not totally made clear but with the aim of bringing The Doctor and Jamie back in time to the Victorian era, for the Daleks to use for certain aspects of their plan to instil their race with the human factor (although that’s not the complete version of their plan). He does this because the Daleks have his daughter, Victoria and, of course, once The Doctor and Jamie arrive, the former pretends to work with the Daleks in order to defeat them while Jamie tries to rescue Victoria, unwittingly giving the Dalek’s the ‘human factor’ which is ultimately part of their plan.

And it’s probably nice stuff but it’s hard to tell by only having episode 2 to go on, as far as the visuals go. What I can say... and I know a lot of people like it, including my cousin in Australia... is that the animation is really not very good for a number of reasons. It’s a little flat and lifeless, to be honest. It’s like watching an old 1970s Filmation cartoon where you are on tenterhooks to find out if the animators are going to remember to make one of the characters blink every now and again (if you want to have a good shot at surviving the Weeping Angels then manifest yourself as a 1970s TV cartoon is my best advice). Yes, I know these are brand new state-of-the-art animations and there is obviously a fair amount of artistic expression going on but... well, even that is playing fast and loose with the brief in my opinion. Because, in addition to the lack of emotion on the actors faces which you can’t get just from sound itself (The Doctor comes across as particularly ruthless at some points during the middle section of the serial... you can’t see the worry which was presumably etched into his face in the live action version), the animated sections don’t even seem to be trying to match what originally might have been there.

Now that last statement could easily have been relegated to the ‘sheer conjecture’ department if it were not for the fact that we have the surviving middle episode as a comparison piece... with the top and tail of the cliffhanger in that episode seen as something which should surely be matched in the new animated footage. Alas, it’s clear when you see those moments in comparison that there have been huge liberties with what has been animated as opposed to whatever was originally seen. The angles are completely different and, in the animated version, show details like a person’s face which was clearly not visible on the real version. Also, little details like a Dalek’s arm pointing up instead of, in the original version of the scene, pointing down are also in evidence. 

Not to mention the fact that famous actors in roles, like Windsor Davis, look absolutely nothing like the actors in question... not to mention the bizarre way that the animated version of Victoria looks somehow permanently surprised. And was their really a coat of arms on the wall in the original labelled Whitaker, presumably in homage to the writer of this one being David Whitaker... or was it an in-joke added in only for this new version? And don’t get me started on why the scenes originally broadcast with The Beatles song Paperback Writer playing at the bar have been tracked in with a different song... good grief BBC, this is history, pay the money for the license!

So, as a facsimile stand-in for the original... which is what I would hope the brief here would be, I’m not interested in visual reinterpretation, just accuracy... then the cartoons here are absolute codswallop, it has to be said. And so I’ve not got too much more to add about this Blu Ray release, to be honest. For me, the newly animated cover version of The Evil Of The Daleks gets filed under the heading of ‘interesting’ rather than ‘good’ or ‘entertaining’ it’s sad to say. If you are a fan of Troughton’s Doctor then, obviously its a no-brainer to take a look at this but, yeah, don’t expect a faithful reconstruction of the original story because, as you’ll notice, it’s fairly clear the animators had absolutely no idea as to what was going on in some of the scenes and, yeah, they aren’t the best at improvising, it would seem.