Dr. Who and the Daleks (1965)
Director: Gordon Flemyng
Starring: Peter Cushing, Roy Castle, Jennie Linden
Synopsis:
An eccentric scientist shows off his latest invention capable of traversing time and space and ends up on an alien world devastated by nuclear war where two the survivors of the two opposing sides square off for the final battle.
Impressions:
This may make me look like some sort of heretic given my specialty, but I'm not particularly invested in the Doctor Who franchise. I've seen a few eps and was inspired to import some Jelly Babies from the UK after seeing a compilation vid of their appearance in the show back in the day, but that's it. However, seeing that Peter Cushing portrayed the Doctor in this (and the other of the two feature films the franchise produced), I had to give it a shot. Most of the series' lore is jettisoned for this outing. Instead of being a pseudo-immortal alien, the Doctor is just one of those old absentminded professor types, quite a different sort of character than what I'm used to seeing from Cushing. I don't know how dedicated fans will take these deviations, but as a standalone film, I found it a bit of a mixed bag. Like many films spun off TV series, it felt like an overlong TV episode (or, more charitably, a couple episodes cut together as a single piece) and not a great one. It's hard to take the Daleks too seriously as a threat (something demonstrated in the movie itself) and their dialog gets really grating. It's fairly standard 60s-era scifi and if that appeals to you, it might be enough to make it worth seeing, but I have my reservations about the overall entertainment value.
50/50