UKC

I see tonight's listings include a film length colourised version of the last black and white episode of Dr Who, with Patrick Troughton. At it again, adding colour where there shouldn't be any, yet more wokery from the Beeb.

I think it's important to celebrate the ethnic diversity of the Daleks

Ah more re-writing of history! To be fair the full episodes are still there in iPlayer and the the colour one is a "condensed" version for the shorter attention spans of modern audiences. Quite possibly the first mention of the Time Lords too

I’ll have to clear the space behind the couch then

I can still remember with awful clarity the absolute visceral base terror of being very young and being alone in the room (mam was in the kitchen) when Destiny of the Daleks was on TV.  A character was trapped somewhere, the sound of the Daleks voice as it was coming for him - not visible but around a corner (or behind a partition wall somewhere maybe) but knowing it was coming for him.

Absolutely paralysed with fear as the voice got louder and more urgent, and then it appeared.  Really did sear itself into my brain.  Those knobbly bits on the bottom half of it's shell still give me the fear.

At some point I did jump over the settee to hide, and put my hands over my ears.

Wiki says it aired on Sept 1979.  I would have been about 5 and a half.  A golden childhood memory

Tom Baker Christmas Message:
youtube.com/watch?v=L4b9QoEXHDg&

SPOILER ALERT
It's ok no Daleks are present.

Haha.  The voice doesn't change at all does it.

I was never really a Dr Who fan in any way, but Tom Baker will always by "the" Doctor in my head.  I'm pretty sure that's true for whatever Dr was on the screen at the time you happened to be watching it through.

I'm with you on the disapproval of colourised versions of films or TV programmes. For me it contributes to the loss of some of the charm and allure of the b&w originals.

As far as Dr. Who is concerned,  I gave up on it quite some time ago - probably around the mid 80's, followed by a short, rekindled interest in the David Tenant era.

condensed from 250 minutes down to 90.  Do I detect the Hand of Wretched T Davros in this?

I don't really disapprove  or even really consider it a "woke" issue. It was a feeble attempt at irony, obviously gone wrong. In fact  I actually like to see old black and white photos enhanced by a bit of colour , though I haven't seen much film treated the same way apart from  some old war footage.  After all, real life didn't take place in b&w so why not add a bit of colour to records of it? But though I've always been a bit suspicious of modern film/ cinema being done in Black and white, feeling there was something pretentious about taking that route, what has done a lot to change my mind was the brilliant TV series " Ripley", which was a masterpiece of film photography and  would  not have  been half as effective ( or beautiful) if done in colour.

As I was reading this my first thought was "Ripley worked well in black and white" before I got to the end of the paragraph. 

I don't have the language to describe why it worked well, it just did (I thought).  It gave it a really good 'look'.

Not wokery in my opinion, but I agree it is totally unnecessary - just because it can be done doesn't mean it should be.

I feel the same when someone decides to remake a classic film.

Dave

I've never let my brother, who is two years older than me, forget he was terrified of the Daleks. On Great Yarmouth sea front there was a funhouse called The Ark. It had a Dalek who's head rotated. I used to have to stand in front of it and tell him when its head was pointed away.

He's 64 this January - I think I'll remind him again

EXTERMINATE!!!!!!!!!!

Hehehe.  I think the Daleks tapped into some sort of universal human primitive fear.   There's a game I had on the Commodore 64 where you had to fight a bunch of robots on an abandoned spaceship - they info screen for each robot gave it's description and a picture of it.  This one always made me laugh

https://www.radiotimes.com/technology/gaming/the-14-sneakiest-doctor-who-vi...

Doctor Who and the Sea Devils

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sea_Devils

Repeated in omnibus format on the afternoon of 27th December 1972 when I was 7. I was so scared, despite having watched most of it not from behind the sofa but from the hallway through the crack in the door created by the hinges, that I couldn't sleep that night. Nor could my 10 year old brother. We both ended up sitting on the stairs calling softly until a parent came out to comfort us. My brother was sent back to bed straight away, but I was allowed to sit up with mum and dad in secure brightness because I was having a minor operation the next day under a general anaesthetic so it didn't matter whether I slept that night or not!

My brother died earlier this year, but our shared terror at this episode was a lifelong bond between us x

There is a kind of squatness about the original Daleks that reminds me of German WW2 helmets from behind.

Also the way the eye and head rotate as it comes forward is like the turret of a light tank or armoured car moving as it advances, and the gun moving round with it. I definitely think there is something of the panzer there and not without reason did the Kaled technological elite dress like the SS.  Those daleks were panzergrau too

Interestingly at the time when I was watching the first stories in 1963 as a seven year old I was much taken by the look of the German troopers in those grey dalek like helmets in some drama series about the French resistance I used to watch (avidly and quite gripped) as well.  I suspect it might have been "Moonstrike".

In them days the content was drama and it was science fiction, rather than the modern fantasy burlesque

A school friend and I went to Wimbledon theatre in the late 80s to see Jon Pertwee as Dr Who in a rather nice stage musical.  The real Daleks and cybermen were in the show.   You could have heard a pin being released from fingers before dropping just before the gasp from the adult, and not particularly young, audience while those shapes rolled on to the stage in the shadows before the lights revealed original daleks

I got the Cyber Leader's autograph in the foyer afterwards.

I'd love to see a return to the original production values with Richard E Grant as the Doctor.

I have clear memories of having to hide when Dr Who wasnon, when I was small. Who remembers the giant spiders episode?

I take it you mean the Jon Pertwee one not the Jodie Whittaker one

Must do as she remembered it

There's a Dr Who nostalgia that could do with dying. When Russell T. Davies revived it, with Eccleston it was great. The David Tennent stuff was also great. After that it went downhill and should've been binned  

Much as I liked Eccleston, I thought Matt Smith was better, and in fact one of the best ever  - so I for one am pleased they continued regenerating. I quite like what I've seen of Ncuti Gatwa so far - and the scripts generally seem better than some of those Whittaker was lumbered with. I thought the Bridgerton parody was a classic.

Dearie me yes - the recent ones are nowhere near as scary. Actually I thinknit was Tom Baker.

They are real? 😳

The blue crystal …

Can’t beat good old hydrated copper sulphate

they have come true in the millennium.  lots of people wearing cyber headgear now in public

Mobiles were forecast in the sixties in Star Trek. I wish they'd hurry up with the transporters. Driving is a pain.

ah, but the transporter disintegrates you.  No comfort to know that as you die on the transporter pad something else is created  at the far end that has your thoughts and memories  ....

Flying carpets now, there's a thing.

 hate to bring up a Tudor achievement from the other side of the Pennines but Mother Shipton foresaw it all “Around the world thoughts shall fly in the twinkling of an eye”.  My grandmother told us this many times when I was a kid.

Your grandmother was very prescient. My Nan told us not to play with the paraffin heater many times perhaps foretelling runaway climate change?