Doctor Who
Dalek Invasion Earth 2150 A.D.
By Terry Nation
Reviewed By Steven Harris
Released on 5th
August 1966, a year after Dr. Who and the
Daleks, this sequel is probably slightly superior to the first Regal Films
production yet fared less well at the box office. Again based on a Terry Nation
storyline which had already appeared on television in the canonical world of Doctor Who, Milton Subotsky’s screenplay
was also worked on by David Whitaker who, like Nation, had himself written
several Hartnell era stories for the show. Gordon Flemyng was again directing
and musical lessons had possibly been learnt from the first film as the
incidental music is less frantic and supports the action more successfully
although there is still a tendency towards the twee rather than truly dramatic
instrumental interludes.
Peter Cushing
returns as Dr. Who, the human clever clogs who has built the Tardis. Roberta
Tovey is back playing Susan but her older sister is nowhere to be seen. Instead
a niece of the Dr. is on board, Louise(Jill Curzon). Joining them, after a
failed attempt at foiling a robbery from a jewellery, is Bernard Cribbins as
Special Constable Tom Campbell. Yes, Bernard Cribbins who would stamp himself
all over the revived TV show between 2007-10 as Wilfred Mott, grandfather of
Donna Noble.
Happily the
producer has clearly realised that the slapstick interludes given to Roy
Castle’s character in the first film were incongruous and Cribbins is not
burdened with such light relief duties, instead largely being allowed to play a
more straightforward action hero.[1]
There are quite a few heroic types: Ray Brooks handles the role of David, the
young man with whom Susan stays at the end of
the TV version of this plotline. Dortmund, the leader of the human
underground resistance shows great courage in sacrificing himself to save
others mid-movie.
If Dr. Who and the Daleks plays on Nazi
tropes, Invasion can be read as a
version of the French Resistance while Hitler’s soldiers were occupying their
country. Which also means the evils of collaboration for some characters, as
evidenced by two women in a lonely cottage who betray Susan to the Daleks and
the supercilious Philip Madoc playing an opportunistic swine with no
discernible allegiance to either humans or Daleks. Yes, Philip Madoc who would
later appear in the real Doctor Who
on four separate occasions, most notably in classic Tom Baker serial The Brain of Morbius.
Beyond the
theme of occupation the main premise of the film is that the Daleks are using
human slaves to dig down into the centre of the Earth in order to set an
explosion which will strip the planet of its magnetic core. Once this is done
the planet can act as a spacecraft which the Daleks intend to fly off towards
Skaro and live on, presumably because their home planet is becoming
uninhabitable even for them.
There are
plenty of flaws, not least of which is a terrible lack of continuity. Cribbins,
spontaneously searches for Louise aboard the Dalek ship despite not having been
informed by anyone that she had been part of the party attempting to rescue
Cribbins and the Doctor, who had just narrowly avoided being turned into
robomen slaves. The Daleks can apparently pinpoint a single truck driving
across country and yet are incapable of working out where the human resistance
groups might be hiding. Dortmund’s bombs are supposed to be ineffective against
the Daleks yet several Daleks are seen to explode once they’ve been attacked
with just these devices.
The Dalek
spaceship is good though, even accounting for the scene in which the strings
holding the model in the air are embarrassingly visible. The Dalek voices are
more intimidating than in the previous film too, the vocoder obviously having
been set at the right rate of modulation. It helps that the word ‘exterminate’
is as conspicuous by its overuse as it was by its absence in Dr. Who & the Daleks. Peter Hawkins
and David Graham again provide the voices for the metal dustbins (as Dortmund
calls them).
The suits worn
by the robomen make them look like nothing so much as Dalek gimps. All they
need is a ball gag and for the Daleks to make them writhe around on the floor
begging to be hurt and the movie could have found itself a cult BDSM following.
The denouement
is somewhat rushed. The main protagonists, having been separated into little
clusters throughout the film, regroup at the mine where the Daleks are digging
down towards the Earth’s core. Amidst reunions Cribbins is instructed to climb
into the deep shaft and somehow divert the Dalek’s bomb down into an older
shaft. Here, apparently, the bomb will set off a magnetic reaction which will
do for them pesky Daleks good and proper. Which begs the question, why wouldn’t
the magnetic core of the planet have caused them problems in the first place? This
is a flaw which has not been resolved from the TV series so they just carry on
regardless. It does allow for some fantastic Dalek deaths, however, with one or
two metal pepperpots being sucked into the shaft in a fashion that will be very
familiar to those who watched Daleks and Cybermen being pulled into the void at
the end of 10th Doctor story, Doomsday.
As a nice twist
and a decent use of the time travel aspect of the Tardis, the film ends with
Cushing returning Bernard Cribbins to his own timeline but a few minutes before
the robbery in the jeweller’s shop. This lets Special Constable Tom Campbell
render the getaway driver unconscious and then knock out the other two robbers
when they climb into the car. He drives them off to the station daydreaming
about promotions and OBEs.
Had the movie
fared better at the box office there were plans to film another Terry Nation
Dalek story, The Chase. It was not to
be, thankfully. Despite having learnt lessons from the first film, Daleks: Invasion Earth 2150 AD, is still
a substandard B-movie. The effects are slightly improved, the acting better
but Cushing is almost a co-star in his
own movie. Some would argue that the Daleks themselves are the stars and they
come across better here than the other film. Even so, they still seem less
menacing than they do on the small screen. Not even trundling along some
familiar landmarks can increase the scare factor. Luckily the adventures of a
time traveller in his police box would remain on the television where they
belonged and nobody would ever again make the mistake of trying to turn Doctor Who into a film format. Oh damn,
except for that McGann movie, of course.
[1] Ironically, Cribbins is a superior comic actor to Castle but it is
nevertheless still a blessing that the film does not descend into pratfalls and
silliness.
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