Dr. Who and the Daleks (1965)

“You are different from them and they are afraid of anything different. And what people are afraid of, they try to destroy.”

As with most things Doctor Who, this all leads back to Quatermass.

In 1955, Hammer Films enjoyed a surprise box office hit with The Quatermass Xperiment, a cinematic adaptation of Nigel Kneale's BBC sci-fi serials. The film's success breathed new life into the struggling company and marked its shift towards horror, which would dominate Hammer's output for the next two decades. In the early 60s, Amicus Productions was formed with the aim of being a rival to Hammer. It went about this by basically copying everything Hammer had done such as making cheap yet stylish horror films, repeatedly hiring Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, and adapting popular BBC sci-fi series for the silver screen.

The Peter Cushing movies have a rather peculiar place in Doctor Who history. They were made to cash-in on the Dalekmania craze of the early 60s, but weren't part of the show's official canon and weren't very successful on initial release. However, in the years since they have aired regularly on TV, more often than the stories they were based on, and very likely more people have seen them than the originals. As such, there's a good chance that these were the introduction for many to the world of Doctor Who.

Except this isn't exactly the world of Doctor Who.

The core essentials are all there to easily fool the casual viewer. There's a guy called the Doctor, who travels in time and space with a group of human companions in a ship shaped like a British police box that's bigger on the inside, and battles trigger happy alien pepper pots called Daleks. But rather than being a stranger from another world, Cushing's Doctor is a human scientist literally named Dr. Who. Instead of being something he stole, the TARDIS (which is only ever called TARDIS, not the TARDIS) is his own invention. Why it looks like Police Box is unknown. And Susan (Roberta Tovey) and Barbara (Jennie Linden) are both the Doctor's granddaughters, and Ian (Roy Castle) is Barbara's boyfriend (okay, so they got that one thing right).

Apart from the main characters being tweaked, the movie is fairly faithful to the plot of the TV serial it was based on, but cut down from nearly 3 hours long to just 82 mins so it is more streamlined and straightforward. Even with much of the Terry Nation padding removed it still shares many of the original's weaknesses along with some new ones, mainly how Ian and Barbara are handled. The biggest problem was the climatic battle where it was blindingly obvious that the director had no idea how to stage a fight between numbskull pacifists with no weapons and mutants in personal tanks. In order to give the Thals an edge, the Daleks leave the doors wide open and tell all the guards to take the day off, allowing their enemy to swam in at the crucial moment. This renders Ian and Barbara's whole mission to sneak in from the back completely pointless since it achieves nothing. Things would've been no different if they'd just stayed with the main group.

The biggest difference this and the TV series is that this has what could reasonable be described as an actual budget. This was the first chance many got to see things like the TARDIS and Daleks in widescreen and in technicolor (love me some multi-coloured Daleks) and on proper big sets, which the set designer decided to fill with lava lamps for some reason. Dated as they are, they still look great, the exception being that really flimsy TARDIS interior. Feels like they slapped that together with whatever junk they could find scattered around after the money ran dry.

Cushing's Doctor is a more cuddly figure than William Hartnell's, a typical absentminded professor. The film treats him lying about the fluid links more like a kid who got caught stealing sweets. The closest thing he does to something even slightly dodgy is provoking the Thals into fighting a war they don't want to fight by pretending to hand over one of their women to the Daleks, an act of manipulation so obvious the Thals looking even stupider for falling for it. Susan is much younger and more of a snarky smarty pants. I actually prefer her to the original. Ian and Barbara have undergone the most changes, and neither of them for the better. Both are younger and no longer school teachers. Ian is a bumbling comedic character, prone to slapstick antics and making a complete fool of himself. Barbara is, sadly, just sort of there, not getting a lot to besides come up with how to blind the Dalek. She doesn't even get the iconic moment of being menaced by a sink plunger.

Notes and Quotes

--First time I saw this I only knew Roy Castle as the host of the long running children's series Record Breakers and was surprised to learn he used to be an actor. He sadly died of lung cancer in 1994 at the age of 62. 

--They could've easily escaped here. These Daleks can't go beyond the limits of their city and their weapons have limited range. Fly, you fools. 

--Yes, by all means let's leave that one guy on his own to collect water in the swamp with deadly mutations that already killed some of our people. Surely nothing bad will happen to him.

--Brilliant security by the Daleks. There's a hole in the floor allowing anyone to sneak into their city. They put up some bars to block access, but leave a button on them so anyone can open them from the other side and get in.

--How unstable was that cave tunnel that one person being knocked down could cause it to collapse?

--Most of the Daleks have claws instead of plungers

--The options to make this film and two sequels were bought from Nation and the BBC for the bargain price of just £500 (£14,901 in today's money).

--Took our heroes way too long to figure out the moving eye stalk on the wall of their cell was being used to monitor them.

--I do love the introduction of the girls reading science books while the Doctor reads Eagle, a popular comic series during the 50s and 60s (which enjoyed a brief revival in the 80s) which is best remembered for featuring the adventures of Dan Dare, Pilot of the Future, later immortalized in song by Elton John.

--Nice little detail that Susan, a young girl wandering around a strange new world with three companions, seems to be wearing ruby slippers.

--Barrie Ingham and Geoffrey Toone both later appeared in the TV series. Ingham played Paris in 'The Myth Makers' and Toone played Hepesh in 'The Curse of Peladon'.

Dr. Who: How interesting! This is most interesting!

Ian: “But, its so big in here and yet its so small from outside. How come?”
Susan: “In electro-connective theory, space expands to accommodate the time necessary to incorporate its dimensions.”

A colourful, mostly faithful, adaptation of a so-so story, very typical of the sci-fi adventure films of the 1960s, that probably plays better on a rainy Sunday afternoon when you're ten. ⭐⭐

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Mark Greig has been writing for Doux Reviews since 2011 More Mark Greig