Doctor Who: Evil of the Daleks // Review
Few science-fiction properties have had the long-lasting appeal and longevity of the BBC’s Doctor Who. Starting in 1963, the franchise has had over 13 actors in the starring role of the Doctor, and more traveling companions to the Doctor than you can shake a low-budget monster at. The problem is, thanks to early television standards for preserving media… a lot of the early episodes of Doctor Who have gone missing. Specifically, 97 episodes from the 1960s.
The early days of television were wild. Home media was non-existent, and no one believed people would care about a show even a few weeks down the line, much less years from their first air date. Old tapes were either re-recorded over, or they would be burned to save studio space for more shows to be kept in storage. However, through coincidence and weird chance, many episodes have survived - and all the lost episodes still have their original audio preserved by some die-hard superfans. In the days before VHS tapes, some real fanatics would put their large reel-to-reel recording equipment in front of the television and demand absolute silence to record an entire episode to audio for later enjoyment.
But then the question arose: what do we do with the scraps left, and how do we best present it?
Luckily for fans, the BBC has a solid answer: animating the lost content!
Just in time for the 53rd anniversary of the original airing, The Evil of the Daleks is the latest animated reconstruction of lost Doctor Who episodes. The BBC has spared no expense for what the fans of the franchise have declared to be one of the best Doctor Who adventures of all time. In a three disc collection, fans can see the new animation in accurate black and white, a more modern presentation in color, and even the only reconstruction available until now: audio on top of promotional pictures and surviving scraps of film.
The Evil of the Daleks focuses on the second incarnation of the Doctor (played by Patrick Troughton) and his constant traveling companion James McCrimmon (played by Frazier Hines) in 1960s London. When the TARDIS is stolen, the two scramble to find the thieves and fall square into a devious plot by the Doctor’s deadliest foes: the Daleks. Also introduced is Victoria Waterfield (played by Deborah Watling), who would become a traveling companion through the end of the Second Doctor’s era. Can the Doctor save the Earth from the Daleks once more?
I mean, probably.
As an overall adventure, the serial is awesome. Patrick Troughton is an amazing actor, and his antics as the Doctor are often a joy to watch. The Daleks are also always an entertaining enemy, and this was even planned to be their final outing at the time. As such, the serial keeps trying to top itself with the Dalek scenes, and the scenes of Jamie McCrimmon (a Highlander from the 1700s) getting used to the weird and wild world of 1966 England are genuinely entertaining. It’s easy to see why the fans considered The Evil of the Daleks one of the best.
The animation is fairly spectacular. Great pains have been taken to recreate the original actors' likenesses in CGI, and using their models to re-create what the actors likely did in each episode. The scripts and subsequent novelizations of these episodes were used to flesh out how scenes play out, and that has been funneled into the actual animation. While it’s nowhere near the same as watching the original episodes from 1967, the whole experience feels about as accurate as you can get these days. Especially if you choose the black and white experience, though both versions are going to be in the modern 16:9 aspect ratio, rather than 4:3 like the original television show.
Each disc has their own bonus features as well. The original episode 2 has been restored from the surviving tapes, and can be seen on its own or as a part of the still image reconstruction. There is also an interview with the set designer for the adventure, as well as surviving behind the scenes footage from the creation of the big Dalek battle from the final episode. And, of course, there is a fantastic behind the scenes documentary that has interviews with the surviving cast and crew to flesh out what happened while the episode was being made.
This collection, while extensive, isn’t perfect. The sound has been cleaned up as much as possible, but fans may still need subtitles on due to the lower quality of audio from 1967 TV being saved onto reels of audio tape. Finally, while those fans in the UK can purchase a blu ray edition with crisp visuals… we over in the US have instead received a DVD copy only. It upscales well, but the lines used around the animation genuinely look off without the extra resolution that blu ray can provide.
However, for $19.99 MSRP, it’s still hard to say no to over three hours of adventures with the Doctor.
