Hello everyone! 🙂
Welcome to ‘Bradley’s Basement’ blog and I’m Tim Bradley!
It’s been a while since I did one of these ‘cinema experiences’ blog posts, isn’t it? The last one was on ‘Elf’ back in December 2019. Whoa! 😀 Last Sunday, I checked out the two ‘Doctor Who’ movies ‘Dr. Who and the Daleks’ and ‘Daleks’ Invasion Earth 2150 A.D.’ starring Peter Cushing at the cinema.
I saw them at my local Showcase Cinema in Nantgarw. These films were re-released for a limited time to celebrate their remastered 4K editions, which is also now available on Blu-ray, I believe. I had a nice time revisiting these ‘Doctor Who’ films with Peter Cushing, since they’re fun films to watch.
Here’s my toy Dalek from ‘Dr. Who and the Daleks’.
It’s easy to forget that these two ‘Doctor Who’ films were made when William Hartnell was currently the Doctor in the early 1960s. Yes, the films don’t fit into the regular ‘Doctor Who’ continuity and they do exist in their own continuity, thanks to Steven Moffat and his novelization of ‘The Day of the Doctor’.
Whether you accept the two films’ existence or not, you can’t deny ‘Dr. Who and the Daleks’ and ‘Daleks’ Invasion Earth 2150 A.D.’ sort-of began ‘Doctor Who’s multiverse theory as well as the ‘unbound’ concept. I also think that Peter Cushing plays a very interesting interpretation of the main character.
I missed out on checking out ‘The Day of the Doctor’ and ‘Deep Breath’ when they shown on the big screen back in 2013 and 2014. So, it’s fitting I was able to check out the two ‘Doctor Who’ films with Peter Cushing as Dr. Who on the big screen. The two films are pretty well-suited for the big screen. 🙂
It was great to check out ‘Dr. Who and the Daleks’ again on the big screen. The first film with Peter Cushing as Dr. Who is my favourite out of the two he did. I’ve seen ‘Dr. Who and the Daleks’ more than ‘Daleks’ Invasion Earth 2150 A.D.’, so I knew what to expect once seeing the film at the cinema.
As well as Peter Cushing, there’s also Roy Castle as Ian, Jennie Linden as Barbara and Roberta Tovey as Susan. It was interesting to compare and contrast between ‘Dr. Who and the Daleks’ and the first ‘Daleks’ TV story it was based on. ‘Dr. Who and the Daleks’ is more light-hearted than the TV story. 🙂
Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But the original TV story is grimmer than the actual movie featuring Peter Cushing as Dr. Who, especially when one of the Thal characters dies in the TV story whereas the movie counterpart actually survived. Ian is also played for laughs in the film than on TV.
It’s also intriguing to see how Peter Cushing as Dr. Who is actually human and not a Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey as in the TV show. Obviously, the Doctor being a Time Lord hadn’t been introduced by then. Dr. Who invented the TARDIS and the TARDIS interior is way different in the movies than on TV.
Peter Cushing as Dr. Who also has a family of companions with Susan and Barbara being his granddaughters. Susan is also a lot younger than her TV counterpart. Ian is also Barbara’s boyfriend in the film. The Thals have different make-up in the colour films than in the black-and-white TV story.
That’s another thing that’s most significant about the ‘Doctor Who’ movies with Peter Cushing. The films were presented in colour (technicolour back in the 1960s). So it must have been amazing for the people who watched these two ‘Doctor Who’ films the 1960s to see the Daleks in colour for the first time. 🙂
When I saw the two ‘Doctor Who’ films with Peter Cushing at the cinema recently, I’m glad there was an intermission between the two films. I would’ve been disappointed if we weren’t given a break to go out of the screen room after seeing the first film before returning to see the second film.
The second ‘Doctor Who’ film with Peter Cushing called ‘Daleks’ Invasion Earth 2150 A.D.’ wasn’t as enjoyable as the first film. Don’t get me wrong, I still enjoyed it. But there were a number of deviations in the adaptation of ‘The Dalek Invasion of Earth’ on TV into the movie starring Peter Cushing. 😦
With that said, ‘Daleks’ Invasion Earth 2150 A.D.’ is still better than ‘The Dalek Invasion of Earth’. I found the original TV story lacklustre, whereas ‘Daleks’ Invasion Earth 2150 A.D.’ is pacier and more action-packed. The Robomen are far more impressive in the movie version than in the TV version. 😀
As well as Peter Cushing, Roberta Tovey is back as Susan. There’s also Bernard Cribbins (way before he played Wilfred Mott in the TV series with David Tennant) as police constable Tom Campbell, Jill Curzon as Louise (who is Dr. Who’s niece in the film), Ray Brooks as David and Andrew Kier as Wyler. 🙂
Another reason why I found ‘Daleks’ Invasion Earth 2150 A.D.’ less enjoyable than ‘Dr. Who and the Daleks’ is that it didn’t have the same emotional intensity the first film had. The first film had the Thals whom you could emphasise with whereas in the second film there was too much going on in it.
It was great to see Philip Madoc in the film and I found it funny when he had that smile, similar to the one he had in the ‘Dad’s Army’ episode ‘The Deadly Attachment’. The Dalek spaceship scenes are very impressive in the film, especially considering they utilised model work rather than CGI effects. 🙂
Overall, it was nice to revisit ‘Dr. Who and the Daleks’ and ‘Daleks’ Invasion Earth 2150 A.D.’ on the big screen. I wanted to see these films at a cinema in some form or other. It was great to do that in my local Showcase Cinema at Nantgarw. The comedic moments featured in these films are good too.
I recall a couple of people in the audience row behind me laughing away at the comedic moments featured in the two films whilst I was at the cinema. 😀 Incidentally, Eileen Way who plays the old woman in ‘Daleks’ Invasion Earth 2150 A.D.’ has also appeared in ‘An Unearthly Child’ and ‘The Creature From The Pit’.
Please feel free to check out my in-depth reviews on ‘Dr. Who and the Daleks’ and ‘Daleks’ Invasion Earth 2150 A.D.’ on my blog.
Thanks for reading!
Bye for now!
Tim 🙂
Bradley's Basement 