Doctor Who - The Daleks in Colour

[MifuneFan]

BBC will be releasing a new collection titled Doctor Who: The Daleks in Colour early next year. No artwork yet. There will also be a Steelbook in the UK.

Doctor Who: The Daleks in Colour Blu-ray

Originally transmitted from December 1963 to February 1964, The Daleks introduced one of the Doctor’s most formidable and enduring foes. The story follows the very first crew of the TARDIS as they land in a petrified forest on an alien planet. Determined to explore, the Doctor (William Hartnell) leads his companions into the metal city, where they discover danger at every corner and what will become his deadliest enemy, the mutant Daleks.

The seven original 25 minute episodes have now been colourised and weaved together into a 75 minute blockbuster. With brand new sound and a new score - created by Mark Ayres - The Daleks has been gloriously updated, whilst ensuring the original classic story remains as thrilling as it was when it was first seen back in 1963. This release also includes the original seven episodes on DVD in black & white, as they were first broadcast plus a 15 minute exclusive featurette and all special features from the previous release. Credits: Starring William Hartnell, Carole Ann Ford, Jacqueline Hill and William Russell. Written by Terry Nation. Directed by Christopher Barry and Richard Martin.

[milo bloom]

Huh.
I'll probably pick it up.

[Chie Satonaka]

Cool to see this hitting disc. Are the 60th anniversary specials with Tennant also coming to disc stateside? I know they are being released December or January in the uk.

[mar3o]

I posted my thoughts about this in the classic Doctor Who thread, but since there's a new thread for this release I'll share them here.

All 7 episodes have been weaved into one 75-minute version. That's unfortunate imo. I'd be interested to see how the new colorization is as they did great work with the b&w episode of Planet of the Daleks, but the condensed version is a no-go for me.

"This release also includes the original seven episodes on DVD in black & white, as they were first broadcast plus a 15 minute exclusive featurette and all special features from the previous release."

Why not make all 7 episodes available colorized, since that's the big draw here, in their entirety? Less work I guess. I'm assuming instead of them colorizing each episode in full, they cut it down to 75 minutes first, then colorized just the 75 minutes they wanted. That's really a shame.

Also - "brand new sound and a new score". Ugh.

Then the original untouched episodes are still in b&w on DVD. At least they could have put them on a blu-ray which has scratch coating.

This could have been a really cool release but not so much as they did it imo. If they included the 75-minute version just as an extra, with the 7 full episodes in color as the main draw, I'd have already pre-ordered it. But who wants to see a version with over half the story missing and all new music and sound effects? At that point it's not even classic Doctor Who.

A huge missed opportunity to get the first Dalek story in full, colorized.

[mar3o]

Also, The UK is getting this set, too. Is the UK going to get 25/50i, or are both regions getting a converted 24fps release? I'm not interested if it isn't going to be in the original framerate in the UK release.

[Mikezilla3k]

OK, why did they chop out 100 minutes from the original episodes for this? Like, that's more than half of it all there. Hell, not even the Peter Cushing film was that short.

Speaking of which, wonder how they're gonna handle the color of the Daleks in this. Doubt it will be the bright primary colors of the movies.

[J.P. Samson]

Russell T. Davies made the calls on this. He decided upfront that he wanted a 75-minute version with the kind of action and pacing that would appeal to a modern (e.g. youth of today) audience. That is also the reason for colourizing. No one will watch stuff in black & white anymore. It took countless hours for a small colourization team to manually colour just this 75 minutes of video using existing photographic stills reference material. There are few computerized automation tools available to them. Bad Wolf Studios and the current Doctor Who executive team are the ones behind this project rather than the BBC directly.

RTD expects the edit to be controversial as they have heavily cut, reworked, and reordered scenes. He even wrote new Dalek dialogue that was then recorded by the now 98-year-old voice actor who originally did it for this story back in 1963-64. There are new CGI special effects such as Dalek gun rays. The new soundtrack score will be based on the original, but looks like it will be a new orchestration and with new cues. Further information can be found in the latest edition of Doctor Who Magazine.

I am cross that they cheaped out and didn't give us a Collection style HD Blu-ray upscale of the original seven black-and-white episodes.

JP

[J.P. Samson]

Originally Posted by mar3o

Also, The UK is getting this set, too. Is the UK going to get 25/50i, or are both regions getting a converted 24fps release? I'm not interested if it isn't going to be in the original framerate in the UK release.

The Daleks was shot at 50i on 405-line black-and-white videotape. I can't imagine they'd deinterlace this to 50p, drop half the frames to get it to 25p, and then slow it down to 24p... unless they want it to look filmic rather than video-like. Now you are scaring me!

JP

[Infallible Presence]

Well, this should be interesting. Given all the new tech advances one should in theory be able to make B&W film look as if it was originally shot in color.

I've been saying for a while now that streaming/disturbing companies should try colorizing their movies and shows to catch supposed new audiences. If anything it be another option in-which to watch them. Plus, for some of these public domain titles out there, it would be a way in theory to have a copyright placed upon the film. Like how many silent films are PD, but because a new score is made suddenly it's copyrighted.

[mar3o]

Originally Posted by Mikezilla3k

OK, why did they chop out 100 minutes from the original episodes for this? Like, that's more than half of it all there. Hell, not even the Peter Cushing film was that short.

Speaking of which, wonder how they're gonna handle the color of the Daleks in this. Doubt it will be the bright primary colors of the movies.

Agreed. 100%. More than half the footage cut out. Awful decision.

As far as colorization, I don't think they just "pick" or make up what colors to use for objects. I think the processing and data analysis can determine based on shades what the original color was. That was even the case with older colorization techniques back in the 80's, and they've come a long way since then. So it's likely they will be whatever they actually were on-set. There's probably information out there on what color they were during filming. I'm sure it wasn't the color Daleks from the Cushing films, since those came later, and they specifically used bright colors for the Daleks in those films to take advantage of color on the big screen.

[mar3o]

Originally Posted by J.P. Samson

Russell T. Davies made the calls on this. He decided upfront that he wanted a 75-minute version with the kind of action and pacing that would appeal to a modern (e.g. youth of today) audience. That is also the reason for colourizing. No one will watch stuff in black & white anymore. It took countless hours for a small colourization team to manually colour just this 75 minutes of video using existing photographic stills reference material. There are few computerized automation tools available to them. Bad Wolf Studios and the current Doctor Who executive team are the ones behind this project rather than the BBC directly.

RTD expects the edit to be controversial as they have heavily cut, reworked, and reordered scenes. He even wrote new Dalek dialogue that was then recorded by the now 98-year-old voice actor who originally did it for this story back in 1963-64. There are new CGI special effects such as Dalek gun rays. The new soundtrack score will be based on the original, but looks like it will be a new orchestration and with new cues. Further information can be found in the latest edition of Doctor Who Magazine.

I am cross that they cheaped out and didn't give us a Collection style HD Blu-ray upscale of the original seven black-and-white episodes.

JP

Figures. I swear he loves swimming in controversy. Awful decision and I don't need to see it to have that opinion. Over 60% of the episodes are left behind for this stupid "project". I'm surprised he didn't decide to de-age the doctor or cgi-out his cane. After all, nobody wants to see an old Doctor shuffling around with a cane.

[mar3o]

Originally Posted by Infallible Presence

Well, this should be interesting. Given all the new tech advances one should in theory be able to make B&W film look as if it was originally shot in color.

I've been saying for a while now that streaming/disturbing companies should try colorizing their movies and shows to catch supposed new audiences. If anything it be another option in-which to watch them. Plus, for some of these public domain titles out there, it would be a way in theory to have a copyright placed upon the film. Like how many silent films are PD, but because a new score is made suddenly it's copyrighted.

The pilot episode for Lost in Space was colorized and cropped to widescreen on the DVD widescreen release of the series. They colorized the pilot episode as a bonus feature. I gotta say it's very impressive.

[mar3o]

Reading the full story in the new Doctor Who magazine issue, they didn't treat this project with even a hint of respect for the original material. It's clear from their comments in the interviews that treating this classic story with the respect it deserves was not a big concern to them. Drastically cut, re-ordered scenes, new dialogue, new music, new effects - reading their comments on this project is sickening to me.

I don't care how hard they worked on the colorization if the end results stomps all over the integrity of the original.

[Cruel Angel]

Sad thing is, their target audience won't know any better. Even IF they buy it (I think most of that audience could care less about the originals) they would probably watch the color version and not bother with anything else.

[Deciazulado]

I would also say choosing the color from color photographs can also be inaccurate. Colors for things shot in b/w are chosen for how they look in b/w.

https://www.prices4antiques.com/TV-P...-D9673579.html



(Same argument for making color exactly = to what's on the cels in animation.)

[bondfooll]

I don't know why everybody's acting like the original 7 episodes are being destroyed. They will still exist. They will always exist. This is just a curiosity that you don't have to watch.

[mar3o]

Originally Posted by Deciazulado

I would also say choosing the color from color photographs can also be inaccurate. Colors for things shot in b/w are chosen for how they look in b/w.

https://www.prices4antiques.com/TV-P...-D9673579.html



(Same argument for making color exactly = to what's on the cels in animation.)

This is true.

Originally Posted by bondfooll

I don't know why everybody's acting like the original 7 episodes are being destroyed. They will still exist. They will always exist. This is just a curiosity that you don't have to watch.

Please quote the part of my post where I said it was. I'm simply disappointed that if they're going through a monumental effort to colorize this, it's a shame that RTD decided to trash the integrity of the story by axing over half the footage for the new cut, along with effects, music, and whatever else he's doing. I would have been very interested in this if it was the original 7 episodes as was originally aired, but colorized with modern techniques. But the additional hackery they've done destroys any interest I had in it. This was likely the only opportunity ever to see this story in color, and RTD has trashed it. He pulled a George Lucas.

It's just an opinion. But I bet I'm not alone.

[Frederick2000]

Originally Posted by bondfooll

I don't know why everybody's acting like the original 7 episodes are being destroyed. They will still exist. They will always exist. This is just a curiosity that you don't have to watch.

Also, this is a 7-part episode from Terry Nation. lol

Anyone acting like there isn't a massive amount of padding that could be easily trimmed without affecting the story one iota, is crazy.

If finding the time and money to colourize 75 minutes was a nearly impossible task, I'd rather it be the 75 minutes that doesn't include endless scenes of the characters trudging along, reiterating the same things and avoiding traps, over and over again.

[mar3o]

The "padding" is still classic Who and I enjoy it.

[oddbox83]

They've cheaped out - the original episodes are DVD only. Presumably the same DVD we already own.

Would have been nice to have a new restoration of the original episodes to tide us over until the season 1 set. Presumably they have already done new scans of the film materials to aide colourisation. IIRC, the DVD restoration used quite old now late-90s transfers.

Originally Posted by J.P. Samson

The Daleks was shot at 50i on 405-line black-and-white videotape. I can't imagine they'd deinterlace this to 50p, drop half the frames to get it to 25p, and then slow it down to 24p... unless they want it to look filmic rather than video-like. Now you are scaring me!

JP

The original tapes are long gone. No videotape copy exists for any of the 1960s Who episodes.

All that survive are film recordings - so 25p.

The DVD restorations used VidFIRE motion interpolation to restore the look (but not the original fields - those are gone, the film recording process either deleted one set of fields or merged them. IIRC some episodes of The Daleks are the former method with cleaner motion, but a marked jagged appearance).

If the new colour version didn't use VidFIRE, then it won't need deinterlaced as it's already progressive, only needing slowed down to create a 24p version.

If they have used VidFIRE then they can use 60i conversion to keep the look.