Dr. Who and the Daleks
Tags: good versus evil

Plot synopsis:
It's an ackward moment at Dr. Who (Peter Cushing)'s home, as he is about to meet Ian (Ron Castle), who happens to be the boyfriend of his daughter Barbara (Jennie Linden). She tells her younger sister, Susan "Susy" (Roberta Tovey) to tend to the door up. This is no ordinary family, as Susy had been reading a huge book, by Physics for the Enquiring Mind by Eric M. Roberts, highly advanced for somebody of such a young age - alike the bigger sister, who was reading Science Is Science, and it's grandfather who's reading a science-fiction comic. Ian is clumsy and stubles on entering... again. Ian has brought a present, but Dr. Who insists in showing him his last invention. Susy thinks that Ian is so stupid, he won't understand it, but they three go out to the street to check of the red phone booth. Ian is amazed about how big it's on the inside. The machine will transport everything in time and place.Barbara appears and jumps to Ian's arms. He steps back and sets the machine onto motion with the four of them inside. The scenery immediately changes: they are on a place of jungle twigs and burnt soil called Skaro. It's another planet. Susan is excited to have the opportunity to go around and investigate. She find a kind of alien flower. Barbara screams at the small statue of a crocrodile. On the mayhem, Ian falls onto the thing and breaks it.Susan find the lights of empty buildings. Barbara starts thinking that something terrible happened in that place, and that it's dangerous. Ian tells Dr. Who that he's expected at home, so that they must return. Finally, who obliges. Susan gets lost because she finds another of those beautiful flowers. She runs away because a hand has touched her, but nobody seems to believe her.Back at the phone booth, they cannot see anyone with their surveillance cameras, but Susy insists that she was touched on the shoulder. There are knocks on the door, which startle Ian, but there isn't anybody around. They try to leave, but can't, and when they step aside, Susan courageously picks up a small blue container - it's has four small tubes with a liquid inside.They go to the city, which looks empty. Dr. Who gets tired easily. They enter an empty home with different rooms. Ian's door is the only one which doesn't open automatically, as he needs to touch something. Barbara walks a long corridor, and it looks as though she's being watched. She ends up being trapped and screams. Susan sits on the spot to open up the door. Susy, Ian and Who follow a noise to a communication room. Dr. Who looks tired. When they turn around, the three of them find themselves surrounded by Daleks. Ian is left dizzy by the Daleks, who also took the object which they found. They reunite with Barbara in a room/cell.Temmosus (Geoffrey Toone), Antodus (John Bown), Dyoni (Yvonne Antrobus) and Elyon (Mark Petersen). Some of them believe the letter offering to be their friends - supposedly written by Susan. Who devises a plan to escape using Susan's cape as an insulator. At that moment, a Dalek appears to bring them food, they put food in their periscope and attack it by blinding its eye with the disgusting food. Ian gets into the blue Dalek. There is also the image of a kind of green claw, a proof of the mutations which have taken place in the . Susan leads the way, and pretends to be the blue Dale's prisoner. They are soon found out anyway, so they have to break the lift, but the blue Dalek with Ian inside can't get into it. Now we realise that finally, Ian unstuck the head and was able to leave it in time.The four humans arrive in time to tell the Thals that they cannot hide in the forst forever. In fact, the Daleks are planning to bomb all the planet. However, the Thals have become peaceful, too peaceful. It was war which destroyed the planet and caused all the destruction and polution in Skaro. The Thals insist, and even the death of one of them was not convincing. Dr. Who tells Ian to take Dyoni to the Daleks. The leader won't allow it, so that settles the matter: they will have to fightSusan and Ian with cross a mutant-infested swamp with some Thals. On their way, they find the tubes which are polluting the water. Elyon stays behind to take some samples of the water, when he is eaten by something from the river.The Daleks are reuniting: they want to destroy the Thals forever. The other four follow the pipes to some caves. There is a fight between the two remaining Thals, because one of them wants to go back and forget the city.Who was supposed te watch some cakes, but they get burnt, to Susan's disappointment. Two female ladies are looking at themselves in the mirror, which gives Who an idea. Ian has to jump over a cliff, which he does, but then one of the Thals seems to have second thoughts over the whole ordeal. With plenty of mirrors, Who and the thals will make the detectors useless. The Daleks start to move on. Dr Who and Susan are captured again. The Daleks start the countdown for the bomb.Finally, one of the Daleks decides that they must fight. Dr. Who offers his time machine if the Daleks don't explode the bomb, but the Daleks will figure it out how it works after having exploded the bomb. Susan, Ian and the two Thals enter the Dalek's castle and run away using another lift. Finally, the rest of the Daleks fight.They reach control room. Two Daleks destroy one another. The Daleks destroy the computer when trying to kill Ian. All the Daleks are dead - three seconds left, which Ian alleges it's his lucky number.Why fills up the energy of the time machine. The Thals appreciate what they have done for them. They give Ian the purple coat - which Ian uses. Ian panics because they appear in the middle of a battle during the Roman Empire.They leave immediately.

Review: There was a sequel the next year but little did I know that this film would be my first experience into the world of Doctor Who. In Los Angeles, California 1977 on a local TV station, I would be able to watch that TV Serial and would remain a Dr. Who fan even after the series ended in 1989.
That particular wrinkle wasn't introduced until long after the first couple of Dalek TV series and the two movies.That said, while the film brings back fond memories, and is particularly good to see in widescreen, it is very much a product of its time, and specifically targetted at its market - youngsters who were mad keen on Daleks.
A fun adventure film that, while it may be too dated for today's youngsters, still has a certain sparkle that is perfect fare for a rainy Saturday.While fans of the BBC series "Doctor Who" (1963), upon which the film is based, may be distracted by the film's use of creative licence (the characterizations are very different from those of their television counterparts,) if not taken too seriously, this is a quite enjoyable trek across an alien landscape and a classic battle of good vs.
If, like me, you enjoy checking out the reviews *before* seeing the film, here's the premise in a nutshell: A mishap with silver-haired scientist Doctor Who's latest invention hurls the cast through space and time, landing them in the midst of an eerie alien wasteland.
Needing parts to repair their damaged time machine, the company seeks help in a nearby city, only to be captured and imprisoned by the ruthless mechanical Daleks, a race of machine-bound mutants bent on world domination.To followers of the original TV series, this plot will be as familiar as the Daleks' squawking cries of 'Exterminate,' and despite some changes to the cast (most notably the Doctor being portrayed as a human), it faithfully captures the spirit of the early programs.
(The original TV series didn't drop the black-and-white format until 1970, five years later.)The film's greatest strength is its casting, with the best performance by far coming from veteran actor Peter Cushing, best known to U.S. audiences as Grand Moff Tarkin in Star Wars.
Jennie Linden does an adequate job as Barbara, though her character has no clear role in the story and was probably just included to suggest continuity with the TV series, while Roy Castle provides some (generally successful) comic relief with his portrayal of the bumbling klutz Ian.
They also don't `do' dialogue very well  they are used several times for long scenes where they talk to each other and explain the plot to the audience, these scenes are poor as their delivery mixed with the dialogue is terrible!Cushing makes a good doctor and is better than many of the TV incarnations.
The script lacks bite at times, the plot isn't as inventive as any of the ones used in the landmark TV series, Roy Castle and the comedy relief felt out of place and on occasions because of the overuse of pink plastic sheeting the art direction was a little on the cheap side.
The eccentric doctor Who (the always watchable Peter Cushing) takes his familiars , a little girl (Tovey) and a young woman (Jennie Linden , Women in love) along with her fiancé (Roy Castle) on a trip throughout space and time .
Peter Cushing makes an excellently dotty Doctor, Roy Castle is bumbling as Ian Chesterton and Roberta Tovey does well as a young Susan.
On a final note it is also a shame William Hartnell didn't play the Doctor in the movie, that would have been fantastic, but Peter Cushing is more than good as his replacement..
With the international movie star Peter Cushing O.B.E. to headline, not as a time travelling alien, the last of his breed, but an eccentric, inquisitive and inventive scientific Grandfather, known as Dr.Who, not as The Doctor as he is referred to in the television series.Dr. Who and the Daleks was the first taste of the Doctor Who name for the American market, released there during July 1966, though not too successful in the US', as here in England.
Here they encounter the passive life forms of the Thals, and their struggle against the repressive and destructively evil Daleks, these living creatures that can only live inside their metal casings to survive, their aim, is for interplanetary domination, taking no prisoners along the way, to destroy, to exterminate everything that crosses their path.Dr. Who and the Daleks can share, coincidently, similar parallels to the 1960 movie The Time Machine, with Rod Taylor as George Wells, such as the time traveller and his plight against the evil Morlocks fighting the also passive Eloi people and their uprising for survival.Dr. Who and the Daleks, remember this is 1965, is a wonderful concoction of colour and imagination, with an impressive budget to play with, there was little wasted in creativity and design, with the full use of the Shepperton Studios to their advantage, no expense was spared, the sets are stunning and the Thal costumes look very chic.
Though differing from the television series, this doppelgänger, the parallel world that is Peter Cushing's Dr.Who is at times a little flat, while we are hypnotised by the colourful Daleks and their surrounds, we are sometimes left behind in a script whose pace can reel us back not forward.
Peter Cushing's Doctor is a lovable old sea dog type, of the time traveller variety, very nice to know and not at all grumpy, spiteful and rude; placid and charming is his nature here, it's the adventures that he stumbles across that make him interesting.Dr. Who and the Daleks is basically relying on the success of the television series to help cash in, then watched by millions of children each week.
When Dr. Who (Peter Cushing) shows his time machine TARDIS to the clumsy Ian (Roy Castle), who is boyfriend of his granddaughter Barbara (Jennie Linden), he accidentally transport them and Dr. Who´s granddaughter Susan (Roberta Tovey) to somewhere in space and time.
This is no "2001 A Space Odessey," but then again, you don't have to think too hard about what the ending really means.This movie will probably disappoint most loyal Dr. Who followers, but it will entertain sci-fi fans who enjoy some light fare and aren't too attached to the series..
And some of the planetary landscape mattes are rather magnificent in their comic-strip way.Alas the weakest link, amazingly, is Peter Cushing as Dr Who. Though the film mainly sticks to writer Terry Nation's original story, the producers understandably had to jettison the television serial's back-story (such as it was in 1965) if it was to appeal to the crucial American market.
But in the second serial, the Doctor travels millions of years into the future to the planet Skaro and encounters the iconic alien menace that would capture viewers' imaginations and propel the show forward for over twenty five years: The Daleks.By 1965, Doctor Who's popularity made a film adaptation inevitable.
The Doctor befriends the Thals and helps protect them from the Daleks, who seek to exterminate them all.Since its inception, the television series has developed a fan base with a dedication rivaling that of "Star Wars" and "Star Trek" fans.
As such, enthusiasts will find little that's familiar, and will immediately spot the glaring changes made to Who canon (presumably to make the film more accessible to people who didn't watch the TV series), The main character -- the extra-terrestrial Doctor -- is now a human named Doctor Who, an eccentric scientist who invented the TARDIS in his back yard.
This means that scenes featuring dialog between two or more Daleks -- and there are a fair number of them -- just drag on for seemingly ever and completely kill the pacing.A big selling point of the movie was that, for the first time, viewers would be able to see the Who universe with a bigger budget, and in color (the television series would not be shot in color until 1969).
This first big screen outing for Dr. Who seems to have been aimed at a different audience to the TV series, with Peter Cushing playing a less abrasive version of the TimeLord than William Hartnell.
Dr. Who die-hards tend to dismiss both this film and it's sequel, and it's true that the movies don't fit neatly into the Dr. Who universe of the TV series (even though both movies are remakes of TV adventures) but as standalone movies they are great fun and fine examples of the late and much missed Peter Cushing obviously enjoying himself away from the blood and guts that had become his regular diet..
After saying their goodbyes, the Doctor and the others manage to get back Earth, but not home...The Daleks look quite good in this movie which is quite creepy in parts, especially the forest scenes.
The movie has a good score too.As well as horror legend Peter Cushing, the rest of the cast includes Roy Castle (Record Breakers), Jennie Linden and Roberta Tovey as the grand-daughters and Barry Ingham (A Challenge For Robin Hood).If you are a Dr Who and sci-fi fan, Dr Who and the Daleks is certainly worth viewing.
Doctor Who tries to convince the Thals to reclaim their planet before the Daleks detonate a neutron bomb.First things first, we have to put aside comparisons to the TV Doctor Who. There's very little that's similar between the two, even though this movie is based off of one of the earliest stories from the show.
A real treat , it is just so much fun to watch , Peter Cushing is really excellent as the doctor and is a great strong intellectual foe for the Daleks.
However it had an intelligent script by Terry Nation which has been simplified beyond recognition in this film version.DR WHO AND THE DALEKS features far too much humour , most of which centers around Roy Castle`s Ian character.
Also missing from the script is a high body count, off the top of my head I can only recall two Thals being killed on screen , despite its flaws DALEKS INVASION EARTH 2150  had lots of humans being exterminated which makes it the better film .Any good points ?
Obviously aimed at the kiddies during 60's Dalekmania, another thing this film does so well is to portray the planet of the Daleks as a purple, truly alien-looking and feeling place, something the Doctor Who TV series NEVER managed (having all the Skaro scenes filmed in quarries in bright Earth daylight).
The Doctor isn't a time traveling alien but instead an eccentric and elderly scientist named what else but Doctor Who. Of course there a lot of other changes including ones involving the granddaughters, Ian, the Daleks, etc.
Peter Cushing is, as I wrote above, an elderly scientist who invents the TARDIS (which for those of you who aren't fans means "Time And Relative Demnsion In Space" and looks like a police box but that's me just showing off so moving on).
The story itself, adapted from an earlier TV episode, is okay too and of course Peter Cushing is engaging in the title part.On the down side though, the film plays too much to the family entertainment brigade, with some fairly feeble attempts at humour, too much screen time to the infant girl companion, good as she is and worst of all variety entertainer Roy Castle as the male companion here, acting like he's in a Carry On film, all pratfalls and gaucheness.
Although they make use of many key features of the television series, such as the Tardis (a machine disguised as a police box and capable of travelling in time and space), and the Daleks, the Doctor's most iconic enemies, the films are not generally considered to form part of the official "Doctor Who" canon.
Fair enough Cushing's Doctor is a genius, we know and understand that, but if you take away the Tardis invention, then this could be any old geezer in a sci-fi movie.Things are further muddied by lack of screen time for Cushing, he is strangely secondary here.
I'll take character development and "big ideas" over spectacle and action any time, and so I'll take the original TV serial over this movie.Shame about the Daleks; their multicolored designs look silly, like they're carnival attractions instead of fearsome monsters, and they only kill one person on screen.
Why the co-ordinates weren't set for something like week into the future or back in time a couple of weeks is beyond me.So when they get out on Skaro (which is never really called Skaro in the movie) they decide to pop out and investigate and find a city but Doctor Who's daughter and her date decide to do the sensible thing and when they get back they need more of some fluid thingy to power the TARDIS and they then go to the city to investigate, then the Daleks show up to have them find a drug that the other people of Skaro possess that can stop them from getting radiation poisoning.
I mean while it is dated (like when I saw the other people of Skaro I thought to myself "So THIS was Ziggy Stardust's home planet!") the sets are all well designed, the Daleks at the time looked the best they ever did and while there are obvious fake effects I am going to appreciate the creativity behind what I assume would be the process of making it.So I really think you should just watch the show instead.
Cushing travels to an alien planet and must battle Daleks, which do look the same as in the TV series.
PLOT OUTLINE: While demonstrating his latest invention, a time machine, to his granddaughter's boyfriend, Dr. Who accidentally activates the machine, causing them to teleport to a distant planet where they battle radiation sickness & the Daleks.This is the first of two feature films to have been made from the groundbreaking classic TV series DOCTOR WHO.
There have been comparisons with the series STAR TREK, but what sets them apart is the fact that while Star Trek, while bigger-budgeted than Doctor Who, was nothing more than lightweight sci-fi that was a bit low on ideas (all it did was visit a new civilisation each week & change it so they turn out like Earth), Doctor Who was an incredibly sophisticated science fiction series that had some truly mind-blowing concepts (the TARDIS, an alien spaceship / time machine that could take on any form, but ultimately ending up looking like a police telephone booth, is without doubt the most iconic time-travel machine ever) & having some memorable creatures.Which brings us to the Daleks.
Plywood (or possibly chipboard) also seems to feature rather heavily in the construction of the Dalek's city (sprayed gold to look alien, of course) and the inside of the Tardis, while the film's larger studio sets are completely lacking in atmosphere.In addition to the crap set design (seriously lava lamps?), the film suffers from an incredibly dull script (the plot dumbed down for a younger audience), a baffling performance from the usually reliable Cushing who portrays the Doctor as a doddery old git, Dalek's that use fire extinguishers as weapons, a pathetic race of peaceful aliens, the males of which wear make-up reminiscent of Boy George circa his clubbing days, and a very silly ending that sees the Daleks counting down from 100 before using their most devastating weapon, giving the good guys plenty of time to spoil their plans.
Watching the film, you feel like you are observing an alien world, not a studio set.The actors are all terrific, with Peter Cushing making a fine Doctor.
Eccentric inventor Dr.Who ( Peter Cushing ) is showing niece Barbara, her boyfriend Ian ( Roy Castle ) and grand-daughter Susan ( Roberta Tovey ) around his latest invention, the space/time machine 'Tardis', when an accident propels them to the dead world of Skaro.Following an atomic war, the inhabitants have evolved in different ways; the Thals are beautiful pacifists while the Daleks' bodies have atrophied to such an extent they now inhabit grotesque machines.
The TARDIS controls are accidentally activated & Susan, Ian, Barbara & Dr. Who find themselves stranded on a hostile planet where the evil mechanical Daleks & the humanoid Thals are at war, a war which threatens to destroy the entire planet...This British production was directed by Gordon Flemyng & was based on the popular British TV series Doctor Who (1963 - 1989), I'm a fan of the TV show despite it's many faults & I must admit I was a bit disappointed with this.
The acting is alright, I've always liked Peter Cushing as an actor although I wasn't keen on Roy Castle as the comedy relief.Dr. Who and the Daleks is an OK time waster for the kids or if you love the Daleks, if your a fan of the TV series then this may stray too far off it for your liking.
They hope to use the doctor and his travelling companions to lure the remaining Thals into the city so they can eliminate them once and for all.It took a while to accept this version of Dr. Who as he is so different to the television version; Peter Cushing did a good job in the role and Roy Castle was fun as comedy relief Ian; of the girls young Roberta Tovey seemed to perform better as Susan although Jennie Linden's Barbara didn't really have much to work with in her underwritten roll.
Dr. Who (Peter Cushing), granddaughters Barbara and Susan, and Barbara's boyfriend, Ian, are accidentally transported across time and space in the the Doctor's latest invention, TARDIS.
The humans help the Thals.*Special Stars- Peter Cushing plays the Timelord lead.*Theme- Timelords can help everyone.*Based on- BBC Doctor Who children TV series.*Trivia/location/goofs- Be sure to watch for the several Lava Lamps in the Dalek control room scenes.