Doctor Who @ UEA, lesson the second
I went to the UEA and I successfully navigated the bus and the paths at the university and I did not get lost and the car was waiting for me to go home.

Now I has headache of stabby doom. I feel very much like there's a large piece of metal been inserted sideways just behind and above my eyes. Ouch.
... not that that's ever happened to me so technically I don't know what that would feel like.
ANYway
Achy, feel sick, did talking so am now in the rebound of did I in fact make sense, but that was interesting studying.

Also my laptop was useful for showing clips from The Daleks, which wouldn't work in the official type projector. I don't know how much the rest of the class could see but we did show it.

So, anyway, my class notes. They aren't tidied up, typo checked or anything. I'm going to find a dark room and pull covers over my head.

No, wait, I'm going to find a painkiller and attempt to eat something. That would likely help more.


2008 04 30 Dr Who


On the screen I think it’s the Forsythe thing cause they mentioned the name. Black and white and boring.

I got two books from the library – the second volume of About Time, and the Gary Russell book about the 2005 series. Which is out of sequence, but shiny.

HANDOUTS –
Doctor Who: 1960s Production Methods – from the Howe/Stammers/Walker Sixties book the library doesn’t have.
The Creation of the Daleks – H/S/W The Television Companion.
Doctor Who Serial B “The Daleks” By Terry Nation
Doctor Who Serial K “The Dalek Invasion of Earth”
Adapting Telefantasy, The Doctor Who and the Daleks films, John R Cook – I Q Hunter (Ed) British Science Fiction Cinema (That’s in the CCN library)


NH has not seen The Ice Warriors.
Me either.

I has seen The Dalek Invasion of Earth. But not The Daleks. The DVD arrived on Monday, but I had sleep instead.


On screen – Forsythe Saga, crowning glory of 60s BBC. 10 video box set. Huge.
(I read about it in the UK to USA television thing.)

NH tried to watch it. Huge cast, can actually follow it. Very good. Great character actors.
Story of a family from the 1870s, 1920s. Soames and his disastrous marriage.
Co production with MGM TV as well.
Part of the joy is watching actors before they became famous.
Hugely influential. Kicked off a whole cycle of long winded period dramas on the BBC. Probably also led to Upstairs Downstairs too. Usually on ITV3 on Sunday mornings now!
Other interesting – period piece, just at the time Doctor Who stopped doing historicals. Early years, alternated between SF and Historicals, but dropped the historicals just as the Forsythe Saga came on.
Ramifications of what happened to Forsythe we’ll get to in three weeks time.

Register interesting – will ask a question.
Daleks or Cybermen. I said Daleks but other weeks it’s Cybermen.

Saturday’s episode.
UNIT dating. 70s or 80s.

(Random discussing of random episodes)
(and if Freema Agyeman can act.)

(Didn’t like the Helen Raynor Daleks thing because the newspaper trick etc)


Handouts – there isn’t the episode guide. He’s up to page 50 now. All the info he wants in it.
Included is stuff about how DW was made during the 1960s then a whole load of Dalek stuff. Background. Article about Terry Nation, creator of Daleks – wrote, did not design.
Following that, stuff from ‘The Dalek World’ annual 1975. Lots of useful hints if you come across a Dalek. Best thing to do is dress in red because ‘did you know/cannot perceive red’.
*facepalm*

Idea of some of the stuff they put out about the Daleks.
Doesn’t tie in to the series.
There are bits if you read it they’ll tie in, but what they don’t mention is Doctor Who, cause it’s a Dalek annual, they didn’t have the rights. Just as the DW annuals couldn’t have Daleks.
Terry Nation had the Daleks.

Dalek Movies – there’s a red Dalek. (Stealth!)

More handouts – fanzine produced things from the 80s. Doctor Who adventures in time and space, way of cataloguing the series and how the series was made. Finally finished about 5 years ago doing the entire series right from the start. They’re interesting just to give an idea of how fandom read the program and the critical tools they used. At the time it was English Lit, that was the criteria they were using, if you read the reviews. But there is some background detail included as well. Just as an idea.
Is going to hand out a lot of early fanzine stuff, because a lot of critical writing came from fanzines.

Then academics like Cook cribs it. Quite good for an academic article, reasonably accessible.
On the back, reviews of the two Dalek movies.

That’s tonights handouts.

Ep guide, next week.


New issue of DW mag is out tomorrow.


Last week:
Brief flashback.
1st of all looked at television in 1963 and context in which DW first appeared. Looked at stuff like Steptoe and Jukebox. Then watched 1st ep. Unearthly Child. Refers to other shows in opening shot. Episode then goes on to set up a whole series of enigmas – what is a police box doing in a junk yard, enigma of susan, bigger enigma of The Doctor. Plays the tension between the familiar and unfamiliar. Copper on beat, police box – junkyard. Police box – bigger on the inside. The normal and the unreal. Does that a lot, takes the familiar and puts a twist on it.
The Heroes of the program are the teachers, who teach science and history, which adds to the educational remit of the program, it being the BBC.
In the slot before Doctor Who, usually children’s adaptations of Dickens, the Sunday classic serial. A bit unhip. Wanted something to fit in the slot. Did lose viewers (before)
Age range aimed at 8-14 year olds. From the 1st ep, very intelligent 8-14 year olds.
There was the hint there may be something dodgy going on in Susan’s home life.

Moors murderers? Caught in 1965 but first abduction in July 1963, basically the same time the script was written. Probably didn’t have any influence. Didn’t have the publicity at the time that it would have today.

It was 8-14 and the entire family as well that watched it. Intellectual so older people could watch it. Breakdown in the early days he don’t know but by the 70s more adults watching than children.
Was a children’s program but some of the stories at the time, some of the historicals you watch and there’s quite a lot of adult stuff going on that will go over the heads of children. Parts of it written in iambic pentameter, The Crusade, very erudite for a children’s program.
NH will check for next week.

Was there a story arc? In the first two seasons there was a sort of one – the Doctor trying to return Ian and Barbara back to contemporary London. It wasn’t like ‘oh no not L again’. Because of that though it is difficult to find contemporary refs in the first two seasons. The one place they can’t go is modern day Earth. They do in Planet of the Giants but they’re about an inch high; in a way they don’t make much of the irony of they’re back but an inch tall.
Hartnell trying to get them back to Earth ends up on Earth in a different time – early days mostly alternate between SF and Hist. One week they’re on Marinus, next they’d be with Aztecs, next Sensorites on spaceships, then French Revolution.
The historical stories are part of the educational remit.
It did change, for various reasons, partly what we’re going into tonight.

We saw the first episode last week. Question is what happened next.
This gives you an idea… (songvid with all the Doctors in it. I’ve seen this before? Dance mix of theme tune.)(scary what proportion I can identify in less than 3 seconds)
2003 40th anniversary
“Then something happens” (promo for 9th Doctor. Ooh, cool.)
(and the this-season promo)

45 years worth condensed into 5 minutes.

Various different styles, techniques of making, the way it’s made today is very different to the way made in 60s.
Clear from that is the auntie BBC entertain and educate went a bit out the window. When you’ve got someone like Nicholas Parsons in DW the education remit has gone way out the window.
Educational – female anatomy – gratuitous Peri in her bikini.

Kick off looking at production methods.
Way it was made was pretty much same as most TV at the time. No diffs to Dixon, only diff to Steptoe was no audience. Many shows going out live at the time.
Doctor Who was on… the idea was it was going to be on 52 weeks of the year. 1st season wasn’t, 45 eps. Was made on weekly basis. And… they get the scripts in first, idea of what story they were going to do, director would get departments in, work out what space they had, what sets they had, what they could afford to do, work from there. Design department and costume department in. New series still, have a ‘tone meeting’ beforehand, work out what the episode is going to be like. Get in designers and FX guys. At the tone meeting they pick a word to describe the ep. Saturday’s was ‘military’.
Then at the beginning of the week once they’d got it all rolling a normal week of DW production would begin – Monday, script read through, cast, director, script editor who was called story editor (no diff in job), writer of story, poss producers – then script readthrough, timed to see if it made about 25 minutes. Still do that now, timed readthrough. Difference is today it’s the only time that they hear the entire episode. They have an idea what the entire episode is like. These days they rehearse a scene then shoot it.
Back in the 60s as soon as they’d done the readthrough – normally at ‘the acton hilton’ – ask anyone worked at BBC 60s-80s, it was the BBC rehearsal space.
From Monday through Thursday they’d rehearse the episode. Hall with tape on the floor, sets marked out, rehearse it. Iron out dialogue problems. If they say characters wouldn’t say that iron that out.
Was possibility on the Mon or Tue they’d do some location filming. Early days, very very little. 1st season only 1 location shot, Hartnell walking through a tree lined lane, but it wasn’t actually HArtnell cause he couldn’t get out the rehearsal. Troughton times they did more location filming; moved recording day to Saturdays so they could do more location. Timing for loc film includes TRAVEl there.
Friday is studio day. During the night sets erected, props laid out. Fri morning big technical run through. Rehearse with cameras.
And then after a break, in the evning, between 2030 and 2145 they’d record the episode. Record a 25 minute episode in under 1h15m.
It was recorded in story order, as if they were doing a live transmission. Start at the beginning and work all the way through. Tried to not have breaks. Partly for time reasons – at the time the BBC… it wasn’t as bad in the 60s, but by th e70s the unions pretty much ruled the BBC. If you were recording and you hit 10pm they’d switch the lights on. Shall come back to union problems in the 70s. It’s unbelievable. Every year at the BBC in 70s there was a union dispute over a prop in a children’s program. More on that later.
Couldn’t do editing. Editing was a problem because it was recorded on video tape. The only way to edit tape was to physically cut it and put it back together. Editing is very difficult to do on video tape. So that was the other reason they did it in story order. Makes editing a lot easier. If you’ve got it in story order normally by the time they’ve finished they do the editing in one day. If there’s just the one tape there’s easier bring the story together.
There will be breaks if you have to move from one part of studio to the other. Unearthly Child, there is one recording break, going from the junkyard into the TARDIS. J on one side of studio, T on other. Physically as well there was no way to go in to the TARDIS then into the TARDIS set. There was a recording break there.
60s eps as well often about half way through there’s a fade out – to put in an ad break for foreign sales. 25 minutes plus 5 ad break.

Multi camera setup as well. 4, 5 possibly 6 cameras working in the studio. Director in the gallery looking at the monitors, not on the floor.
Supersonic? Program in 70s, him at his desk saying ‘and cue the Bay City Rollers’ – that’s how the director worked, edited, go between cameras. Editing was done in camera.

As a way of demonstrating the multi camera setup there was an extra on one of the DVDs – the Dalek Invasion of Earth.
What it is… (detour via Daleks-as-food)
What this does, it shows where the cameras positions in the studio for a recording of DW in 1964.
(I can rewatch this extra at home)
There’s a camera script says which camera is working.
Cut to another part of the studio with more cameras.
Control panel for the TARDIS was bang in the middle of the studio. Chances are the modern day TARDIS interior wouldn’t fit in the studio, studio wouldn’t be big enough.

Daleks trundling straight past the Doctor and not noticing him.

Camera three moves to a different part of the studio… lots of running between parts of the studio.
(this is cool, useful.)

/extra @ 06:03. There’s 4 more minutes.

Hence week of rehearsal, racing between parts.
It’s intensive, to make a program like that. You’ve got to know where to be, the director has to know where to be. The cameramen won’t have seen the script, just listened to the director. They’d have found out what to do when they did the camera rehearsals.
Stops working if someone is ill.
(story of someone dying in the middle)
Mistakes – just carry on. Hartnell mistakes… fluffs left in.
Limited number of sets, locations severely limited by shooting.
Studio was tiny.
Unearthly Child – three sets and the planet at the end.
Programs recorded from the live days, finish a scene and a long telecine sequence of stuff recorded before the program while the actors got on to another set.
Hancock’s the Blood Donor, bit where he cut himself, then a long sequence of ambulance, and that was so he could get from one set to the next.
Like the live version of Quatermass a few years back.

Unearthly Child – TARDIS interior, Junkyard, classroom, corridor, maybe another corridor.
Early days the TARDIS set took up a lot of space so the other sets were quite small.
Writer has to bear in mind, got to keep to five sets. Story not going to be as far ranging as it could be. Would scrub a story with 16 different locations.
Got to be conscious of the fact actors have to get from one set to another.
Method of making TV… fine for some shows, but Doctor Who? Makes a lot of the 60s stuff a lot more impressive. Especially the Hartnell days. Incredibly ambitious for the budget they’ve got and the amount of space they can use.
Marco Polo – Himalayas to Peking – ambitious!
In a very primitive studio, probably the worst the BBC had on offer.

Actor’s background theatre.

If they’d started acting earlier they’d be used to weekly rep, which this is almost like.
Most of them had the background and moved into TV.

Hartnell moved into films then TV but started on stage. Russell played Ian had stage then TV as Lancelot. They had… and a lot of directors had previously worked in theatre as well. It is like doing live theatre but without an audience there and you’ve got to move the cameras around to make sure you’re looking at the right thing at the right time.
Some of the performances can be a bit theatrical. Hartnell was good because he kept his movements small cause he knew he was on Tv. No big gestures – your hand would go off screen.

Fair to show a clip from one of the historical stories. So much of early DW was set in historical times. Not going to show any of the cavemen story that follows Unearthly Child. No one who worked on the program thought it was a good idea but they had no other scripts available so they ended up with 3 weeks with cavemen.
Earliest historical (we have?) is The Aztecs.
Which is equally remarkably good.
A lot of the surviving early historicals hold up a lot better than some of the science fiction ones, partly because nothing dates faster than SF, the future conceived in 63 is different than the future conceived now. The historicals don’t date quite so much. Some of the acting a bit odd.
The Aztecs – broadcast 1964, landed in 1430 Mexico, and Barbara has been mistaken for one of the Aztec gods. Recreating the time in a small studio.
‘pass the remainder of their lives’ in the garden. Cameca.
… walking in a very small garden with backdrops of buildings and some very still extras. Staring at them a bit. Then sit on a bench and turn so they’re both facing the camera.
I’ve seen the ep for the story, so I note the how.
(this video is noticeably messier)
Ian in the bird outfit. Hartnell fluff made people laugh.
Susan trying on the hat.
Two camera angles with the girls, close shots on face, then more distant with both in.
Sends Susan away, then a conversation – Barbara says no more sacrifice.
Doctor says you can’t change history? Yup. “You can’t rewrite history. Not one line.” “What you are trying to do is utterly impossible. I know. Believe me. I know.” Slow push in on his face. Yeah, there’s acting going on there. And Barbara being Yataxa.
There’s quite a lot of Aztecs and moving around, considering.
Then cutting between different rooms.
/film

Quite a classy little production. Problems trying to recreate 15th century Mexico in a small studio. Obvious painted backdrops. Hence you do get so many closeups, often to disguise the inadequacy of what’s going on in the background.
As a piece of drama it holds up remarkably well.
Quality of the writing.

Watchign the 1st series you do get the feeling a lot of time has been lavished on the scripts, far more on the historicals than the SF ones. Part of the educational remit.
In the Marco Polo one the narrative stops for a lecture on how assassins came about. Children of 1963 were taught assassins came from hashish.
She stops the sacrifice and all hell breaks loose. It’s problematical because the guy who acts like Richard III no longer believes she’s a god and wants to expose her. She has to keep the pretence up.
The interesting thing about that is the fact she wants to change history and by the rules of DW you can’t. Something that still holds true today. Pompeii episode, redoes Aztecs again.
Difference being these days you couldn’t have a purely historical DW. Has to be some element of monster or alien. In this no aliens whatsoever.
When they wrote the recent Pompeii story they were clearly referring back to this one. Some things must happen.

Has changed… the DW historical now… Fires of Pompeii is the first one that’s not a celebrity historical. In the new series the Doctor meets someone famous in the historicals.

The thing is after the 1st series of DW the historicals lasted no longer than 4 episodes. Marco Polo lasted 7 eps. The one at the end of the season set during the French Revolution was 6 eps. But after 1st season no historical lasted more than 4 eps.
There’s a lot of myths about historicals, saying the ratings dropped, which isn’t true. The audience ratings are in the ep guide he’s doing. The early days, alternation between SF and hist, there’s not that much difference.
There’s also one fallacy around for years – there’s one, The Gunfighters, towards the end of Hartnell’s reign where he ended up at the OK Corrall, that one had the rumour it got really bad ratings and led to the end of historicals being made. Not true. Got average figures for the time. There’s another thing, the appreciation index, wehre various viewers give marks out of 100. It got okay viewing figures but the audience didn’t appreciate it much. Plus a new producer came in who was far more interested in the SF stuff. By this time DW was known as a SF show.
When we think DW now we don’t think historical context. There’s one major reason which led to this. What caused the perception of DW from a quasi education program with history and a bit of SF to be known as a SF show. There’s one thing which changed everyone’s perception.

Daleks.

After The Unearthly Child finished mucking around with Cavemen, you have the opening episode then three eps of Cavemen, then after that there’s a story called The Dead Planet, then two eps into that along come The Daleks. It’s one of those fabulous moments of everything is there at the right time.

Daleks (in my computer)
Daleks introduced – gun down our hero!

Why were Daleks so successful?
Cold War.
Remnants of war.
Ruthless aspect towards the aggressor.
Kids really took them to heart.
The design of it – didn’t even change for the new series, so iconic.
The design of it is… it’s immediate. It doesn’t look like a man in a costume, it’s not a rubber suit, so it gets away from… and there’s been plenty of men in rubber suits over the years, some successful, some not. The Daleks are the ones that are the most popular.
They glide. They’re totally alien. There’s nothing recogniseably human about them, except… they’re non humanoids, they’re alien, and … nothing had been seen like them before on TV. Certainly not aliens. Everyone’s used to men in suits. This is not men in suits.
They’re easy to… RTD has this theory that the most popular monsters are the ones children can draw easily. Dalek – all you have to do is (sketches it) and it’s pretty much recogniseable in its basics. Marshmallow and walnut – the shape, instantly, is a Dalek. Easy to draw.
The other great thing is children can imitate them. The catchphrase Exterminate – in the first story they say Extermination but they don’t use Exterminate like a mantra. A bit like One Foot in the Grave he never says I don’t believe it. Second story they start chanting Exterminate.
Mixture of familiar and unfamiliar – there’s one aspect so familiar but in an unfamiliar context.
Police box – a police box now is a TARDIS, not a waystation for police men. A sink plunger? Almost no longer a sink plunger. It is a Dalek appendage.
Budget constraints – there were supposed to be gripping hands but they couldn’t afford them. Looked for the first thing – plunger.
TARDIS should change shape but they didn’t have the budget.

The other fact is kids at the time could suss that… the amount of kids that could go up to Tom Baker and tell him to run up stairs to get away from Daleks. So that was the mainstay for lazy comedians for along while. The other thing as well… the one thing that contributes to the Dalek success… believe it or not was ITV.
When DW started they’d had a serial running at the same time, a thing called Emerald Soup about radioactive seaweed. It was networked so it went across all the ITV regions. It finished 2 eps into the Dalek story. And at that point what ITV replaced it with was regional. They were bunging on things from the 50s, repeated twice already. Or some old quiz show. So all of a sudden a program finished, people’s viewing habits had changed, kids in the playground had probably heard from other kids about the Daleks, and viewing figures for DW shoot up.

That’s one of the reasons why the Daleks … they said they shot the figures up, they did to an extent but it was also ITV bad scheduling.

The first Dalek serial finished in January. There were 4 Daleks made, the BBC give away 2 of them to a Barnardos home. Kids write in, when are there going to be more Daleks.
Early DW at its most ambitious – lets do a story where the wrold’s been conquered by Daleks. On a DW budget. “The Dalek Invasion of Earth” The one that really embedded DW in the public consciousness. And also the Daleks in national consciousness.

 DVD
Talk about the familiar and the unfamiliar… We have the first episode, where we kick off with…
(fiddles, forwards to the end)
Dalek emerging from the Thames.

Episode ends with the Dalek coming out of the Thames, iconic image.
For the first 3 eps we basically have the Daleks going around London.
One sequence in particular…
Day of Reckoning…

Studio set, bricks and Daleks… we are fleeing from the Daleks. And hiding behind a twig. Which will of course work.

Next sequence, along with the Dalek coming out of the Thames, is really important.

Look at this from a technical pov as well.

Wheelchair and bridge sequence. The one where him having to get up stairs is a source of tension. They’ve got to get to the other side of the river.
Daleks going along (that bridge with the trefoils).
So him in the wheelchair is getting out of it and going up stairs… to avoid the Daleks?
The Dalek is rolling along in front of the houses of parliament. Looking at the stairs through that circle which is Dalek vision.
Then them running and pushing a wheelchair.
That big column place. Rolling past monuments with Dalek graffiti, the column and the lions and the 4 Daleks underneath it being weird and shiny.
Rolling out past the statue plinths.
Wheelchair again.
Lots of cutting between rolling shots, and closup of wheelchair wheels and feet running, and long shots of famous locations. With Daleks. 4 of them at once sometimes.
Daleks at the top of the stairs with their plungers out. Low angle shot so they look menacing.
Wheelchair and architecture again. More running and pushing.

And back to the studio.
/DVD

That was the first major location footage ever used in Doctor Who. Anything notable about it?
Covered a lot of London and nobody around. Very early on a Sunday morning.
Sunday being a free day and a guerilla shoot as well – they didn’t get the proper permits. Probably just… imagine a Sunday morning, doesn’t know how bad it was in 63, but, drunks waking up that morning, looking up – Dalek!
It was the only way they could film it and make the city look deserted.
Probably closed it down a bit or let the police know to a degree. It would take some time to get the props up onto the memorial.

Technically notable about that sequence – no dialogue.
No sound whatsoever. Just music.

Almost like a guerilla shoot, they clearly havne’t set up mics and done dialogue on location.
First tentative steps to location filming.

That sequence clearly shot on film. Film so much easier to edit. Far pacier sequence.

If you go back to the caveman sequence there’s a fight sequence between two cavemen – that was shot on film, and quite pacy; inserted into the program.
Fight on video in the studio, it’s nowhere near as good, cause you haven’t got the pace and the cutting.

Early Avengers with Honor Blackman. Fight sequences on video tape, not as good as the Diana Rigg fights done on film.

They could transmit film. They could have shot with a film camera, instead of video tape. But… the thing with film is it’s just the one camera. You’re doing one shot then break and then… there’s no way you could do an entire episode in an hour and a quarter using film. That’s why they had the multicamera setup, cause it was quicker.

Tehre is one DW story, next week, shot entirely on film, due to industrial problems. Industrial problems loom a lot over the next few weeks.

Film is more expensive, slightly. Videotape just goes on tape; film has to be developed and edited etc. Film takes longer.
Film kept for something special.

What noteable thing about Daleks at Albert memorial? Nazi salutes.

This is 1964.
This is the one that really does put the Daleks in with the Nazis.
Cause it’s less than 20 years since the war finished and… normally with monsters they’re a metaphor for something in DW in the early days they’re Nazis.

Let the scene run on => DVD

If we take away the SF trappings, what have we got?
Resistance fighter talking about how to bomb?
Resistance film.

The actual plot of this story is, the Daleks want to mine out the core of the Earth, put a propulsion unit in it, and fly the Earth around the universe. As far as SF goes, technically it’s not very feasible. You can’t really do it.

It’s a resistance movie. Basically what this movie does is show what England would have been like if it had fallen in 1940, except with the Daleks in control. Plucky British heroes.
It is a war film.

The first Daleks story is basically HGWells the Time Machine. This one takes its cue from The War of the Worlds, the second half where the aliens have taken over.
This story is an anomaly in DW – an invasion story where the invasion has happened. N ormally when its an invasion its preventing the invasion.

Daleks as metaphors for Nazis.

Doesn’t think kids actually get that. Daleks go around and exterminate people and that’s cool, that’s all they know.

1960s phenomenon of Dalekmania, this kicked it off. Kids wanted Dalek toys.
It became a merchandising boom. Probably the first BBC tie in merchandising. BBC didn’t make that much money out of it, Terry Nation made more out of it.

With a thing, a fad… a craze. Had to have Dalek toys. Every xmas there’s always the hot toy. Furbies.
But it was Dalek books, toys, and inevitably when it comes to something like this, there is the cash in novelty record.
Now every kid in 1964 was saying they want to spend xmas with a Dalek “I want to spend my xmas with a Dalek”, by the GoGos. 1964

Now we get to listen to it.

(oh dear)

“It’s not that long thankfully”
… it’s more than a minute long. This is a minute too long.
Stopped it at 01:45

Hit or miss?

Never charted.

It’s… it’s one of the things rediscovered a few years later. Honor Blackman and McNee Kinky Boots – this one hasn’t fallen into the same category because it’s crap.
The interesting thing though is if you take Daleks outside of the context of Doctor Who they become domesticated. They become either that or figures of fun.
The Daleks outside of Doctor Who… can you name examples of DW?

(I look up KitKat ad on YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XznuoDdv-IM )

Daleks big at the time – lot of people saying they were rivaling the Beatles.
There were 2 films made.


Same intro of Daleks scene from the film.
Lots of running through sets that look a bit orange. And there’s a kid. Who isn’t their creepy imagination brain. That’s Susan? Er, bit small.
Dr hears a noise… follows noise… blinky noises and lights.

(hmmm, videos work better for class cause they leave them in exactly the right place, but DVDs work better if you’ve got multi clips)

They’re up to the mercury bit. Um, there was better acting on the TV.
… and then it’s the Drs turn to not notice there’s Daleks until the camera pulls back and can see them.
Dalek with a pincher.
And now Dalek gas that doesn’t actually paralyse the guy.
Pincher hand picks Drs pocket.
… the film is worse than the TV. Even with color and money.
/film

So similar, yet so different.
What are the major differences.
Color, big selling point of the film.
Firstly, the Doctor… and Susan.
Susan is no longer a teenage girl, she’s a very smart young… it’s turned very children friendly.
There’s the moment the Dr confesses to Ian about the fluid link. The reaction is… Ian in the TV series just flies off the handle at him, here is just *shrugs*.

The film… made clearly for a family audience, considered a holiday movie, to have as wide appeal as possible.
There’s an interesting phrase in the article about these Dalek movies where it says in TV you’ve got intimate terror; it’s more scary watching it on TV than in the film.
A 90 minute film can’t have all the little nuances of a 7 part serial. There’s nothing missing from the serial in this. Follows slavishly in less than half the time.
Program finished at start of 64, film came out July 65. Fair turn around to snatch the writing and put the film on (maybe, mumble)

There’s the other point made by in that article is that SF in Britain has always been niche marketed for children, though there’s a lot of adult stuff going on in the Dalek episodes on TV it’s not there in the films. Ian is Roy Castle. We’re not expecting depth of character from Roy Castle. He’s there for comic relief.
Doctor has become his cuddly grandfather, which in a way is what Hartnell eventually became.
Barbara in this movie, Jenny Linden, she’s the glamour basically. Which is interesting because at the time of the series the notion of the sexy attractive DW assistant didn’t exist.
With the sequel movie the girl is played by Jill Curzon, plenty of publicity photos of her in a bikini. There aren’t any of the original Barbara in a bikini.

Films for a long time looked down on by fan community. Second one better.
In the second movie…
They were doing a tie in competition with sugar puffs to win a Dalek, so in every scene there’s a poster of sugar puffs in 2150. Good drinking game.

Can show trailer to second film
… the truck that smashes the Daleks is *tiny* in this version. Is not so convincing.

/trailer

… same plot, somehow looks worse.

NH has seen that film more than any other.

Interesting thing – who isn’t mentioned in that trailer? Doctor Who. DW isn’t the selling point, it’s the Daleks.
Just from that trailer the whole blitz/war thing does come out.

Ray Brooks – ‘the young man with the knack’ – intertextuality, he’d just made the film The Knack.

That’s the thing with the TV thing, they can’t say it’s 1964 cause everyone would just say the Daleks hadn’t invaded. So if it’s 2150 AD then it looks remarkably like 1964.
Ignore the date, just go with the story.

Daleks are the most recurring alien in the series.

They have changed.

When we get to Tom Baker and look at Genesis of the Daleks the nazi parallels are really obvious there.
But when they returned at the end of Eccleston’s season they became religious fundamentalists. Fascinating. Nazism doesn’t hold that threat, but fundamentalists are the big fear.

/lesson.

Closing clip – not the Spike Milligan
Recent but with a twist.

Dalek ep, not in English.
Sounds bad.



Will probably show the regeneration in French.

Great thing is it does follow the script. Doctor refers to Daleks as a rubbish bin.

Next week – regeneration; monster; set on Earth, Doctor’s ambiguous relation to those in power.


PS on way out discovered tutor does not like canon Jack/Ianto. Says it doesn't add anything.

ha!

... I add the funny abbreviation for cultural studies to my tags specifically to answer this complaint.