Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. by Milton Subotsky
5 August 1966
A year on, much has changed in the TV version of Doctor Who. By the time we got to Dr. Who and the Daleks, sure, Susan had already been gone for a while, and Ian and Barbara had left, but only just. By the time we reach this sequel, however, the program has gone through two changes of producer, everyone but Hartnell who was on at the time that the first movie came out has gone from the main cast, and the show has started to experiment with new styles of story in preparation for its biggest change yet. But here's Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. with the same aura of charming anachronism, utterly unchanged even after all that's happened. There's almost something delightful about that, though at the same time it is a bit of a reminder that these changes are only accelerating, and it isn't long at all before Doctor Who is going to change forever...
So, I'm not one to beat around the bush. Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. is quite good. I'd say better than the first movie. This is owed in part to it simply being based on a superior serial, but it does also feel like the production team has learned from making the first movie and applied these lessons to make a smoother finished product. The eye candy is once again front and center, the technicolor Daleks this time accompanied by some brilliant sets of a ruined London. Little things like the flying saucer being somewhat better than a pie tin on a string once again let us know that we now dwell in a world where money exists. I was particularly impressed with the stunt work when that poor bastard tries to escape from the Dalek saucer and totally collapses through an awning and into a pile of rubble, a stunt that would never have made it into the TV show in this period. The Daleks are stuck with fire extinguisher guns again, but nobody's perfect...
Character-wise, Peter Cushing's Dr. Who takes on more of a leading hero role than in the last film, and seems to have developed some charming new habits like needing to put on Special Gloves every time he's going to inspect something. Roberta Tovey's Susan - or Susie, to my perpetual bafflement - returns but seems much the same as before. Curiously, Ian and Barbara are nowhere to be seen, likely owing to scheduling conflicts, and are replaced by a young Bernard Cribbins as the delightful Tom, and Dr. Who's niece (!!!) Louise. Appropriately, my first outburst upon hearing her introduced was to exclaim Louise who?! (Well yes, quite.)
Cribbins was far and away my favorite part of this movie. He's a skilled comic actor and has a lot of physicality in this movie that I found amusing, as best seen in the (frankly misjudged overall, but still entertaining) scene where he's imitating the Robomen to get off of the Dalek saucer. It's a weird kind of reverse nostalgia, since I was thinking of his future appearances in the BBC Wales iteration of the show all the while. Speaking of actors who have been in the TV series, there are loads of them. I had to look up most after the fact, though I recognized Old Mother from An Unearthly Child/100,000 BC and Daxtar from The Daleks' Master Plan. Obviously, Philip Madoc needs no introduction. His character here is fantastically slimy. I'm looking forward to additional appearances from him.
Thematically, the movie preserves the original's anti-fascist allegory, which is admirable in and of itself, even if the central message is sometimes buried under all the spectacle. Notably, the end of the movie seems to have no issue whatsoever with rewriting Tom's recent personal history, something which would never fly in the proper show. That definitely threw me, even though his takedown of the robbers was quite funny.
It's a real pity that they never got around to a third movie in this vein, as it feels like they were growing more confident in making these, and Cushing's Dr. Who was starting to take on a life of his own as something more than just a Hartnell impersonation. Alas, this one was a box office flop, which made plans for a third flick based on The Chase almost immediately dead in the water. For the public, it seems, the luster of Dalekmania had finally worn off, with two movies, thirty-six TV episodes, countless licensed toys, and an honest to god Christmas single depicting them having been produced for the public from 1964 to 1966. The well is tapped, the cash cow milked utterly dry, and Dalek fatigue has set in for the the average viewer, as it now almost has for me. Since all this success has revolved around them rather than the title character himself, I'm almost led to ask, as time for the Daleks is running out, is time for the Doctor running out as well?
The Smugglers will kick us off with Season Four next.
(Modified from the original posted at Gallifrey Base on 9 May 2020.)
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