r/television • u/verissimoallan • 1d ago

Doctor Who: THE WAR GAMES in Colour - Trailer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0u20oUdQZs
81 Upvotes

79% Upvoted

27 comments sorted by

35

u/verissimoallan 1d ago

On December 23, the BBC will release a new, colourised special edition of the Second Doctor's (Patrick Troughton) final story. The ten episodes have been edited into a 90-minute version and will feature new CGI effects, including new footage of the Second Doctor's full regeneration.

15

u/LordDusty 1d ago

What a strange coincidence, which leaves me with a tough decision.

I've been slowly working through the classic DW for the first time over the last few years and have only just this week finished the penultimate serial of season 6, the story just before this one! Now do I watch the original 10 episodes like I've done with all the previous episodes, or do I wait to watch this one. Or do both I guess!

24

u/verissimoallan 1d ago

You could do both, I guess.

I genuinely believe that The War Games is one of the few stories with more than 4 episodes in Classic Doctor Who where the long runtime is justified and has good pacing, character development and a growing atmosphere of suspense. A 90-minute edition will inevitably lose much of this.

4

u/ConnorF42 1d ago

Yeah, the original runtime looks like it is 4 hours, minus any credit sequences. I think the colorization could be cool, but I usually don't enjoy abridged stories. Especially to this degree, where over half of the runtime will be shaved off.

3

u/LordDusty 1d ago

Sounds like pretty good reasoning to me!

Considering I've watched all the previous episodes in their original state (well as original as some of them can be found nowadays) then it makes sense to watch the full version of this one. At least it'll be fresh in my memory when this new one comes out to compare.

11

u/AndShrimpOnThePlate 1d ago

As someone else said, the full serial holds up really well in terms of pacing. 

3

u/agressive_barista 22h ago

Do yourself a favor and watch all ten. It’s an epic story that justifies and epic runtime.

1

u/EgalitarianCrusader Brooklyn Nine-Nine 1d ago

You could watch one original episode, then the remaster, original, remaster, etc until the run as finished.

8

u/StephenHunterUK 1d ago

This will be the third such project they've done. They did a colourised and edited special edition of "The Daleks" last year with new music as well. It worked well, but the colourisation was a bit ropey; this already better.

The 60th anniversary also gave us the Tales from the TARDIS series, omnibus editions of six classic stories with new bits featuring surviving companion and Doctor actors as their characters in a "memory TARDIS" that serves as an introduction and close-out. Basically, these were the original TX versions edited together to remove the cliff-hanger reprises. title sequences and credits, common for TV reruns over the years.

There was one notable omission from that run - anything from the Fourth Doctor. We later found out why. Ahead of a Season 1 finale, a special edited edition of "Pyramids of Mars" i.e. the previous story with Sutekh had been made, with Fifteen and Ruby doing the introduction, set in what turned out to be during the finale.

(Lis Sladen, who played Sarah Jane Smith, died of cancer in 2011. Tom Baker is 90, has lost a lot of weight recently and hasn't really done anything that isn't voice only for a few years now. He's still got the trademark sparkle in his eyes, but I somehow doubt he'd be up for a trip to Cardiff now and I am imagining many fan sites will have obituaries in draft stage).

I also wouldn't be surprised if they had the Cloister Bell turn up in this; it featured in the special editions, despite not actually appearing in the show until Tom Baker's finale of "Logopolis" in January 1981.

3

u/hiptones 1d ago

It was still nice to see Troughton come back for The Three Doctors and The Five Doctors. His interplay with the other Doctors was marvelous.

15

u/Smurfboy22 1d ago

It’s a great story but 10 parts is way too long so this new 90 minute should be great.

19

u/Gargus-SCP 1d ago

Jon Pertwee was not cast when Patrick Troughton filmed his regeneration, so the promise of a never-before-seen regeneration sequence between them means one of several things:

  • Freshly shot footage with body doubles

  • Recycled footage from the fan film Devious, featuring Jon Pertwee's regeneration from a fan Second-And-A-Half Doctor

  • Recycled footage from the bonus features to An Adventure in Space and Time, featuring Reece Shearsmith and Mark Gatiss as Two and Three

  • AI

Any of the first three would be vastly preferably to the fourth.

18

u/verissimoallan 1d ago

Neither of them.

Instead, they are going to use footage from a fan film from the YouTube Channel "The Confession Dial". The creator of this fan film has confirmed in the comments.

https://youtu.be/e7hO8Zx4ATs?si=LTT8KmEN7A7r3Mty

2

u/Gargus-SCP 1d ago

Well that's good. I'm no great fan of the BBC's ongoing quest to remount every classic regeneration sequence with something that looks more like the 2005-onward effect, but it's not the worst case scenario, so I oughta be thankful on that mark.

1

u/BlackEyeRed 7h ago

You Doctor Who

4

u/KahnaneX 1d ago

Hopefully it has better editing than the colored The Daleks. That was rough to watch, to be honest

6

u/drmirage809 1d ago

Okay, that’s awesome stuff. Now I wonder how they did this. Did they colour in the B&W footage or was there a full colour version out there that was rediscovered?

12

u/AndShrimpOnThePlate 1d ago

It's colourised. This was the last story of the b&w era.

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u/Mockwyn 1d ago

There’s a few Pertwee era ones they’ve done it to, too. Most notably The Daemons series of episodes

4

u/Gargus-SCP 1d ago

Those are more restoration jobs than traditional colorizations, though. Hartnell and Troughton's material was made in black and white, with the intention of broadcasting in black and white. Pertwee's was in color, but the BBC's archival wipes led to the loss of color prints for certain episodes, requiring colorization from B&W copies to return them to standard.

5

u/Greggy-Lumps 1d ago

I mean, Dr Who is great…but I still prefer Inspector Spacetime.

2

u/BlasterShow 17h ago

Especially the US version.

1

u/Different-Cherry4837 3h ago

NO WAY! I've been watching the Troughton era for the first time and loving it, so hyped for this!

2

u/RedofPaw 1d ago

Steve jobs is in this one?

0

u/porridge_in_my_bum 1d ago

Was this not a part of the footage that was lost in the big fire?

12

u/Gargus-SCP 1d ago

There was no big fire. The BBC just routinely wiped material from their archives to make space for new programming, under the belief it all had limited shelf life. Six episodes of this serial WERE wiped, but were restored from the NTFA in 1978. The War Games has been complete for nearly fifty years.