TME > Video > Commercial Releases

The Daleks [The Mutants (1963/4)]


The Doctor is about to have his first meeting with the Daleks...

The TARDIS lands in an alien, petrified jungle, beyond which lies a mysterious, deserted city. The Doctor insists on exploring, but before long the TARDIS crew all begin experiencing the early effects of radiation sickness. And then they discover that the metal city isn't as deserted as they first thought...

    -- from the DVD release, 2006

Initially released with very little remastering (and with the final moments cut to remove the last "Next Episode" caption, as one of the earliest black and white stories in the video range, this story also almost formed a part of a boxed set called "The Beginning" on video in November 1999.

Fans reacted badly to this, as the set would also have included the only VHS release of Inside the Spaceship, and they felt they were being forced to buy a story they already owned.

The remastered version would, therefore, be released by itself in 2000, and the notion of a box set would not be revisited until 2006's DVD set of the first three stories - also entitled "The Beginning".

Episode timings on DVD: 24'19", 24'25", 25'06", 24'27", 24'30", 26'10", 22'24"
Episode timings on PasB: 25'02", 24'27", 25'09", 24'27", 24'31", 26'15", 22'24"

 

VHS releases

  



05/06/1989: UK - BBC Enterprises - BBCV4242 (two videos, subtitled 'The Expedition' and 'The Dead Planet', cellophaned together - deleted 14/8/1995)
01/12/1989: Aus/NZ - PolyGram - BBC42422 (packaged as above) [not pictured]
27/06/1995: US - CBS/Fox - 8253 (doublepack, renumbered by Warner Home Video to E1275 in 2000)

None of these releases were remastered and all were missing their "Next Episode" captions at the end of the final part, and a fade to black in the first part.

In order to comply with BBFC guidelines, the video opened with captions, displayed above.



26/02/2001: UK - BBC Worldwide - BBCV6960
??/04/2001: Aus/NZ - Roadshow Entertainment - 6960

This was fully remastered by the Restoration Team, for intended including in the abortive "The Beginning" box set. Cover art by Black sheep.

In order to comply with BBFC guidelines, the video opened with a caption and was renamed "The Daleks [Remastered]".

DVD releases



30/01/2006: UK - 2Entertain - BBCDVD1882(B) - Part of "The Beginning" BBCV1882
28/03/2006: US - Warner Home Video - Unknown Cat Number - Part of "The Beginning" [not pictured]

In order to comply with BBFC guidelines, the Play All feature led first to an 18-second caption (right).

Box set images

 

Cover art for the UK/Aus by Clayton Hickman. An early version of the UK release looked somewhat different...:

DVD Bonus features

Creation of the Daleks (17'04")
A documentary on the making of the serial, featuring interviews with many of the original contributors.
  • Sydney Newman, in an archive interview, recalls telling Verity Lambert not to include any bug-eyed monsters.
  • Richard Martin tells us his amazement at working with script editors and he and Lambert tell us about David Whittaker and Terry Nation.
  • Raymond Cusick on Nation's obsession with "white, featureless" rooms.
  • Lambert, Cusick and Martin explain the fictional genesis of the Daleks.
  • Cusick and Martin discuss the early Dalek designs and how the original four were built.
  • Michael Summerton, Dalek operator, shares his first memories of the Daleks.
  • Cusick on the Dalek tools, using gauze to allow the operators to see and adding lights so the Daleks could identify themselves (Summerton suggests the latter is why actors were hired rather than technicians to operate).
  • Martin explains how the gyrating Daleks came about, which Summerton expands upon.
  • Brian Hodgson on how the Dalek voice was created, from a technical point of view, and David Graham and Richard Martin from an artistic viewpoint. Martin also explains the difference between his voice and Peter Hawkins'.
  • Cusick explains the Dalek insides.
  • Final thoughts on the enduring popularity of the Daleks...

Interviewers: Richard Molesworth, Andrew Beech
Camera: Une Herzer
Sound: Angus Anderson
Images Supplied by Derek Handley
Colourist: Andrew Parkinson
Special Sounds by Brian Hodgson
Music Composed by Tristram Cary
Produced by John Kelly
BBC Worldwide (C) BBC MMV

Gallery (5'32")
50 b/w  and 14 colour photos, plus 5 colour photos of the commentary recording.
With thanks to: Barry Newbery, BBC Photograph Library, Doctor Who Magazine, Derek Handley, Tony Clark
BBC Worldwide (C) MMV

Commentary
The Survivors (Verity Lambert & Christopher Barry)
The Ambush (William Russell, Carol Ann Ford & Christopher Barry)
The Firemaker (William Russell, Carol Ann Ford & Richard Martin)
All moderated by Gary Russell
(As this was part of a box-set release, budget would not stretch to a commentary for every episode)

Production Subtitles
By Martin Wiggins
 

Restoration Notes

For the 2000 VHS rerelease, Stuart Fyvie transferred and deblobbed the episodes from the best available source - it was discovered however that the fourth episode was missing its sound (which would have to be added from another source) and the seventh was scratched for the last few minutes. An alternate source of slightly lower quality was used to patch in most of this sequence, although even that was missing the 'Next Episode' caption, which had to be taken from the scratched version and repaired as best as possible.

For the DVD release, Mark Ayres remastered the audio from the magnetic soundtracks (using the optical track where necessary to correct some faults), adding back in the word "I" to Ian's "I think this is the way we came" in the first part, the "Stop" of "Stop here!" around 6 minutes into the second and the beginning of a countdown in the final part, all of which were due to poor editing in the 60s. Click were removed at the 20 minute mark of episode three, around a line that was dropped in in post-production, episode five was resynched by 2 frames throughout - the print having lost its synch when it was originally transferred and the Thal wind in episode in episode six (when the Thals are reflecting light onto the Dalek city) was smoothed out, as the original studio sound had been faded up and down repeatedly following some post-transmission editing.

On the video front, some electrical disturbance was smoothed out in the first episode, and Furnace was used to correct some very distorted frames in the third. A massive offlock when Ian is walking around the sculpture in episode four was partially repaired using interpolation and Paintbox (due to the large amount of movement, this is not a completely invisible repair). A sequence of four Daleks in the control room was dropped into the fifth episode from a 35mm film used in a 1964 edition of Blue Peter, and 112 missing frames were repaired throughout episode six using Furnace and Paintbox - the previous repair to episode seven was once again made.

Classifications

05/05/1989 - Story passed as 'U' by the BBFC for the UK
05/10/1989 - Story passed as 'G' by the OFLC for Aus/NZ
04/11/2005 - A collection of bonuses from the boxset, including the Daleks documentary, classified a '12' by the BBFC for the UK - the '12' was not due to the Daleks documentary, but rather for some content in disc 1. Another selection, including the photo gallery, passed as 'PG'.

Despite the extended ending, the story does not appear to have been reclassified in the UK. An error in the cover art gave this disc a 12 - this was due to the language used in the bonus features for disc 1, which was accidentally labelled a U.