Tag: Special Edition

It’s time to confess. I haven’t seen The Evil of the Daleks.

But can you blame me? After all, very few people alive today have seen The Evil of the Daleks. According to legend, on May 20th, 1967, Part One of Evil of the Daleks aired on BBC One, and the story concluded with its seventh part on July 1st, 1967. But after that, it was never seen again. The Evil of the Daleks is just one of many Doctor Who episodes that are, for all intents and purposes, lost forever. Aside from a few scraps of visuals, the audio track in its original form and a handful of pictures, most classic Doctor Who episodes that are lost are truly lost.

It’s a real shame too – The Evil of the Daleks sees not only the debut of a great companion in Victoria, but also sees the first appearance of the Dalek Emperor, as well as the first in what would become a long list of Dalek Civil Wars. We see the true Evil of the Daleks as they attempt to infect the human population with the Dalek factor, a plot that was essentially recycled by Russel T. Davies in Series 3 of NuWho. That seems to be a recurring theme with lost episodes as a matter of fact – often their plots or plot elements will be reused in newer episodes. Think about it. The Evil of the Daleks and Evolution of the Daleks seem quite similar, don’t they?

But The Evil of the Daleks is comparatively lucky. It’s audio track is in fairly good condition, and it even has one of the seven episodes fully intact (for the most part) – episode 2, the first appearance of soon-to-be companion Victoria Waterfield, survives and can be viewed to this day. But there are some episodes that are not so lucky – one of them is 1966’s The Power of the Daleks which, despite being Patrick Troughton’s debut as the Second Doctor, as well as being the first post-regeneration story ever and being many fan’s top pick for best Dalek episode ever, is officially lost with all hands. All six episodes were wiped with only scattered fragments, pictures and of course the audio track giving us an idea of what the episode was like.

Sadly, like Evil, Power has also fallen victim to a posthumous plot autopsy by NuWho writers – but this time Mark Gatiss is the culprit. Fans have noticed a striking similarity between Power and the infamous Series 5 Dalek episode Victory of the Daleks, with the “I am your servant”/”I am your soldier” parallel being the most overt. With both Power and Evil wiped, two of Troughton’s strongest stories are lost with with them dies the impact and the menace that Terry Nation’s creations had in their early years. In a sense, it is not just simply The Evil of the Daleks and The Power of the Daleks that are lost – an essential chapter in the history of the Daleks is lost, and the Daleks themselves are less as a result.

However, there is hope. Thanks to the BBC’s amazing dedication to preserving the long history of Doctor Who, The Power of the Daleks has now been restored to its former glory thanks to a full-blown remake of the episode, using the original audio coupled with new professional animation. The concept of animating old lost Doctor Who episodes is not a new one – but The Power of the Daleks is the first time that a full story has been animated in this way – traditionally this technique has only been used to fill ‘gaps’ in mostly surviving stories – The Tenth Planet springs immediately to mind, since in the official release of that story episode 4 had to be completely animated by Planet 55 since the original is missing.

BBC studios has done a fantastic job with Power, and although it is possible to nitpick this reconstruction for several issues that it does have (most notably the style of animation itself, which works for the Daleks but makes the human characters look like jittery puppets) it would be downright blasphemous to attempt to write this project off as a failure, or even as a disappointment – it proved enormously popular and gives Classic fans, particularly Troughton fans, hope for the future – it could be that one day, we get to see the likes of The Evil of the Daleks, The Daleks Master Plan and The Moonbase fully animated (or with animated versions of the episodes that are lost) to finally fill those decades-old gaps on the shelves of Doctor Who DVD collectors, as well as resurrecting some beloved pieces of television history.

I first watched Day of the Daleks when I was about 14, although I don’t remember that it actually was Day of the Daleks at the time, since I’d been told that Day of the Daleks was a story about time travel, political intrigue, manipulation, betrayal, sacrifice and explosive battles. The short action sequence from Day of the Daleks that I saw as a child depicted no more than three Daleks wobbling along over a grassy field being halfheartedly flanked by reject stock from Planet of the Apes. What a young fool I was.

It is a simple fact of life that the special effects in Classic Doctor Who have, for the most part, not aged well at all. Oddly enough, this isn’t a continuous process – it isn’t as simple as ‘the further back you go, the worse the effects are’ – that is an ignorant standpoint. If you watch The Daleks from 1963, you will see that the effects are good. If you watch Remembrance of the Daleks from 1988, you will see that the effects are good. If you watch Terror of the Autons from 1971, another episode that involves large gunfight-style action sequences made a whole year before Day, you will see that the effects are good. So why, I hear you ask, does Day of the Daleks and episodes like it have such bad effects?

One of the simplest answers is money. Doctor Who has been consistently made on a low budget typical of shows from the BBC. But there must be more to it than that – allocation of funding can explain why some episodes of Doctor Who look better than others, but this is a Dalek episode – the first Dalek episode in five years, no less. Surely the BBC could have funneled more money into this?

The short answer is no. Day of the Daleks has an Achilles heel, and that is that there were only three Dalek props available for the filming of this story, and no amount of BBC budget was going to create new, functional Dalek props in the time between the final decision to go ahead with the episode and the filming date it was scheduled for. As such, the BBC were forced to round up all their surviving Dalek props, dust them off, paint them up and do the best that they could with what they had.

This leaves us with a Dalek episode that has a fantastic plot, great acting, superlative pacing and yet the one thing that everyone notices now when watching Classic Doctor Who is the ‘wobbly sets’ and the terrible effects. So maybe it’s time to change that.

Day of the Daleks: Special Edition replaces all the technical effects with new, updated CGI lasers and sounds, Nicholas Briggs replaces the original Dalek voices with his instantly recognisable NuWho-style Dalek performance, and the team even went so far as to shoot entirely new scenes with the same cameras that would have been used to film back in the early 1970s, adding in new death scenes for soldiers and, thankfully, swelling the Dalek army from a miserable three to a much more respectable 10, at least.

Now, thanks to the Special Edition, Day of the Daleks takes on a whole new lease of life, with added CGI shots of the future Dalek city to point out to viewers when a time-shift has taken place, more engaging action sequences that better demonstrate the high stakes of this episode, and a fantastic and visually stunning new effect for the blaster weapons that are used regularly throughout the episode. Watching Day of the Daleks now makes it seem less like an episode made in 1972 and more like a modern episode written, produced and filmed in the style of a 1970s-serial, and that is definitely a good thing.

For Dalek fans, Pertwee fans and 70’s fans alike, the Day of the Daleks Special Edition is a welcome addition to the ever growing Doctor Who DVD collection, and represents a beacon of hope for the future of classic stories and how they can stay relevant in the 21st century.