CommentsXp Best movie ever!

CrawlerChunky In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Micah Lloyd Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

Roxie The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

AaronCapenBanner Peter Cushing is one of my favorite actors, a veteran of many classic horror films, from Hammer Films and Amicus, which produced this theatrical version of my favorite series, an adaptation of the second story, but first Dalek adventure from the TV show, called 'The Daleks', which starred William Hartnell as the Doctor, William Russell as Ian, Jaqueline Hill as Barbara, and Carole Ann Ford as Susan.Here, all the parts are recast, since this does not share the same continuity as the series. How could it? Despite Cushing's likable performance, this film is a pointless and dumbed down version of the brilliant and atmospheric TV original, superior in every way possible. The F/X to this film look more dated than the series, which has aged quite well.Finally saw it on DVD, with a double feature of the sequel.

Ian Brown Purists of the BBC cult programme will doubtless sniff at this cheerfully undemanding little spin-off by Amicus producers Milton Subotsky and Max Rosenberg. But, aimed squarely at Saturday morning children's cinema audiences, its not without its charm. Not least the paint-box colours (the petrified surface of planet Skaro is lit by a lurid green light) and lava-lamp decor. 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 here Cushing's Doctor is little more than a doddery old grandfather, with none of the crotchety antagonism of William Hartnell, the role's originator. And the Tardis interior is just a mess of overhanging wires and junkyard cast-offs rather than the wonderfully sterile, futuristic control room of the small-screen.The Daleks, though larger, are more ungainly and don't have the streamlined menace of the TV ones (perhaps the only monsters on film to actually swivel with sheer pent-up malice). Worst of all, their exterminators just scoosh out rather pathetic white smoke. Was the original x-ray laser effect, turning the TV screen image negative, deemed too scary, even though most of its audience would have thrilled to it at home? There's not a great deal more to commend it. Roy Castle clowns around rather embarrassingly as the young male lead, while Jenny Linden barely gets a line of script as the heroine. All in all, eleven year-old Roberta Tovey walks away with the acting honours.

Tweekums As this film opens it quickly becomes apparent that this incarnation of the doctor is very different from the television version; he is not a Time Lord but an elderly, human inventor living with his niece Barbara and his granddaughter Susan and his name is Dr. Who; not The Doctor. When Susan's new boyfriend, Ian, visits he is shown the latest invention; TARDIS; a machine capable of transporting to any time or place. Ian accidentally activates the machine and they fine themselves on a strange alien world. It appears to be long dead but as they look around they find a city. They return to TARDIS but it doesn't work; Dr. Who explains that a part is broken so they will have to go to the city to find the mercury it needs to work. Here they run into the Daleks and learn that there was a war between the Daleks and the Thals which left the planet a radioactive wasteland; the Thals have found an antidote to the radiation but the Daleks can't leave the city and must live in special protective machines. 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. The opening scene made it clear that this would be fairly tongue in cheek when we see the two girls reading science books and the elderly doctor is reading The Eagle (a comic). In common with most sci-fi of its time there is no explanation as to why creatures on an alien world would be speaking English just as there is no surprise on the part of the characters when this happens. Taking advantage of the fact that the film is in colour, unlike the TV show at the time, the Daleks come in a wide variety of colours; they weren't a particularly formidable opponent once the final battle came unfortunately; all the heroes had to do was grab the and turn them to face each other and let them kill each other! The Thal where aliens of the 'almost human' variety with little charisma; this meant they weren't interesting characters. Overall I was a bit disappointed with this; possibly because I was expecting something closer to the television version; it wasn't bad though and a laughed a few more times than I'd expected.

fedor8 A colourful piece of 60s sci-fi nonsense for the kiddies. For 60s kiddies, mind you. I'm not quite sure how the 21st-century kiddies would react to this. Unless they're younger than 7 (or a bit on the daft side) they might find it all a little too goofy and dull.Granpa, a small girl with an IQ of 249, a comic-relief oaf, and his blond gal accidentally leave Earth in Cushing's time/space-travel "room", when the blond sexually assaults her boyfriend with an attempted hug and kiss. The four cartoon characters suddenly find themselves in the midst of an age-old conflict between some tin-cans and a tribe of very lazy blond people who do nothing all day but sit around their forest, staring into trees and putting on bad make-up. It is up to the 4 silly Earthlings to restore peace to this strange cardboard planet. After all, isn't that what Earthlings are well-known for, restoring peace everywhere they go? The Daleks aren't even proper robots. Sure, they speak in a slow, almost retarded monotone, and they move slowly (on wheels?), but inside each tin-can there is a small Dalek whom we (conveniently for the budget-restrained special-effects department) never get to see. Not that I was dying from curiosity to find out what they look like, mind you. The Daleks are given voices that are so over-the-top annoying that I had to mute the sound on occasion when they were talking, I simply couldn't bare to listen to them anymore. The movie's biggest crime.Cushing & co visit the Dalek city upon their arrival, and then they go back to their "room" in the forest. Then they return to the city, get captured, then manage to escape back to the forest, only to get re-captured. Yes, it's that kind of cheesy sci-fi with the usual table-tennis plot that goes nowhere. The Earthlings are basically like four ping-pong balls that move between the Daleks and the Thaals, between the city and the woods. Yes, the Thaals. Their name has a double A in it and they're all extremely blond. Dutch? Who knows.Funny creatures, the Thaals. They start off as a bunch of placid, apathetic, cowardly Gandhinistas, refusing to fight or kill anything or anybody in the name of pacifism, even finding excuses to not defend themselves against a bunch of decidedly anti-Thaalian quasi-robots. Cushing keeps trying to change their minds, to make them appreciate all the joys which armed conflict brings with it, but they simply won't budge. Yet all it took, in the end, was for one punch to be thrown by a Thaal, and these formerly inactive lazy hippies rapidly become a bloodthirsty fighting army, ready to destroy as many Daleks as they could. They suddenly understood: violence can be a lot of fun.Yes, it's that kind of 60s movie. To top it all off, we are even forced to watch a protracted climbing sequence. I mean, what would a goofy 60s sci-fi film be without some mountain-climbing-related padding?