Doctor Who: Peter Cushing (1965-66)

Doctor Who: Peter Cushing (1965-66)

Non-canon Doctor | 2 films, approx 83 mins each.

01. Director Gordon Flemyng's Doctor Who and the Daleks (1965) is the first feature-length outing for the time-hopping Time Lord, Doctor Who. Except, he's not a Time Lord yet because his Gallifreyan origins had yet to be invented or explored in 1965.

Peter Cushing stars as the titular traveller, his version of which is a dithering grandpa-type that I suspect may have been a high-school physics teacher at one point in his life, because how else could he build an actual working time machine in his spare room?

The script is based on a seven-part TV serial by Terry Nation and starring First Doctor William Hartnell, simply titled The Daleks in home media releases. [1]

The film presents a kind of H.G. Wells version of the Doctor, which makes it sound a lot better than it is. It's hampered by being a British TV production (i.e., modest budget) with a non-threatening menace that feels completely set-bound and lacks any kind of impetus. Yes, the TV series had many of the same failings, but a movie offers the opportunity to overcome such limitations, given that it has more money, time, and personnel to work with. Alas, it fell short of such goals.

It's not considered true cannon in DW lore, and frankly it's not very good but I learned that even Daleks like lava lamps, so I guess it wasn't a complete washout.

02. Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. (1966) was Cushing's second and last outing as the Doctor, in a film once again directed by Flemyng and likewise based on a TV serial originally written by Terry Nation, namely the six-part The Dalek Invasion of Earth. [1]

It's only slightly better than the first outing. Neither the script nor Cushing attempt to expand the nuances of the character whatsoever, so it's left to the villains to bring anything interesting to the table. Those villains are once again the xenophobic Daleks. Wisely, they're slightly more threatening this time, as are the Nazi-style militant underlings under their control.

Unfortunately, any kind of atmosphere built up by the mechanical menaces is destroyed frequently by awful music that seems to have been left over from a second-rate BBC sitcom.

It was fun for me to see Cushing in this kind of role, but it's not something I'll revisit often.

[1] The Daleks (1963-64) is the second serial in Season 01, and The Dalek Invasion of Earth (1964) is the second serial in Season 02 of the Classic era.