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The Doctor Who CollectionRating:
Release Date: 20 November, 2001 Retail Price: $39.98 OUR Price: $35.99 You SAVE: $3.99! Cast: |
The Doctor Who Collection Reviews
Buy the 2 movies alone
This is one of those instances where the Boxed set falls short of expectaions. While the set comes with a 3rd disc of bonus material "Dalekmania"'s interviews are nice additions - the documentary lacks the feeling and excitement of the interviews included along with the various Television eppisodes. The additional trailers included are entertaining but only as examples of the formulaic trailers of sci fi in the mid 60's.
The movies themselves are really quite good. Vibrant colored Daleks and prety good acting. While the original stories were adapted from 1st Doctor William Hartnell's The Mutants (the Daleks) and Dalek invasion of Earth they are seen on a much grander scale.
Peter Cushing's Doctor Who (as he is referred to in the movies) is a much warmer friendly protrayal. but the compainion characters lack the depth that was created within the series. Like the Sylvester McCoy eppisodes it seems budget used for effects outwieghs character development. The second film Dalek invasion of Earth 2150 ad is very well made and has some great comedic play to it. the Scenes of Tom the cop as a roboman are truly hysterical.
Not essential Who viewing.
The difficulty I had with these films is they seem only to exist in order to capitalise on the Dalek legend. Peter Cushing was never an actual, "Dr Who" in the many TV series incarnations he had, that fact makes these film suffer instantly. Most Who fans have recollections of one of the Dr's incarnations as a favourite, My own favourite was the whackily sublime Tom Baker who series also featured the robot assistant dog, K9.
One has to have some memory or notion of each Dr Who's foibles to make his incarnation believable, Cushing only played him in these 2 films and lives in many people's memories as a long time actor in the Hammer Horror genre. There isn't much else to help you recognise the series here either, the assistants are different and there is just a little too much obvious comedy on offer. You may have giggled at silly monsters and wobbly sets but Dr Who was also a serious business!
The main thing that gave Dr Who his enduring appeal was Sci Fi with a dry and whacky flirtation with British dottiness.
These films spell that dottiness out too much and loose an essential component of what makes Dr Who appeling as a result, Cushing is most like Hartnell but is too enrgetic and frivalous to carry it off, he's more like a witch finder general as he was in "Twins of Evil"; Dr Who needs some refinement and Cushing doesn't give him much.
The assistants are whacky "Scooby Doo" style detective kids - wrong again! I think the films tried to "Americanise" the Dr for more mass appeal, failing to realise in so doing that American fans like him the way he was on TV.
On the plus side the Daleks do not dissapoint in their menace, quite how an electric kitchen bin with a sink plunger snout can be so scarry I don't know, but they are!
Die hard fans should peel their eyes soon, The BBC is riviving the good Dr, a new series is set air in the UK on the 26th March 2005; the first for 16 years! This time played by Christopher Eccleston who you may remember as Nicole Kidman's husband in "The Others".
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