REVIEW:
Blu-ray review: Daleks’ Invasion Earth 2150AD
(Umbrella, PG)
Peter Cushing nearly made an appearance in the Doctor Who 50th anniversary special The Day of the Doctor.
For showrunner Steven Moffat so loved the Doctor Who films of the 1960s, starring Cushing as the Doctor, that he tried to write them into his story.
“I wanted every Doctor to make some sort of appearance,” Moffat recently told Doctor Who Magazine. “But what about Peter Cushing Now I love those movies… In my head, in the Doctor’s universe those films exist as distorted accounts of his adventures.”
Doctor Who and the Daleks was a 1965 big screen remake of the first black and white television serial to feature the Daleks, while 1966’s Daleks – Invasion Earth 2150 AD was based on the 1964 serial The Dalek Invasion of Earth.
Cushing’s movies, then, are based on the early days of the show when there was only one Doctor (William Hartnell) and the idea of Time Lords and regenerations hadn’t even been considered. In this film the Doctor is a human scientist travelling in time with his family.
By the second film it could be argued that the Daleks were more popular than the Doctor himself. The world had gone Dalek mad.
Without doubt the Dalek are the stars of the film, in all their multi coloured glory, followed by Cushing and Bernard Cribbins, a hapless special constable who mistakes the TARDIS for a real police call box, close on his heals.
Cushing would go on to star as Grand Moff Tarkin in Star Wars, Cribbins as Donna Noble’s Grandad Wilf in the David Tennant era of the show.
The film is very much the product of its time, aimed at a young audience. It’s full of Daleks, chases, explosions and breath taking escapes . . . and not much else.
The setting very lack lustre, sadly resembling 1950 rather than 2150.
But it does what it says on the cover, and is a fun way for a Doctor Who fan to spend a couple of hours. The Blu-ray is packed with special features including an excellent documentary on the Dalek craze that once swept the planet.
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– Stuff
