The Power of the Daleks: A Colourised Cock-Up!

Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad we’ve got The Power of the Daleks as an animation. For all its flaws, and there are plenty of them, as far as Whopix is concerned, having a dodgy animated version is better than having nothing but telesnaps and a few warped 8mm clips. And to be fair to those behind the project, a lot of the mistakes were clearly down to not having enough time or money for proper checking between the work of individual animators.  Blame the Beeb for that one.

So having disappointed fans all over the planet by having animated the episode with avoidable mistakes, the Beeb then compound their original error by colourising the monochrome original and getting the colours wrong!

It starts off okay, but look at the sky. This is meant to be the TARDIS in Antarctica at the end of The Tenth Planet, but the sky on Vulcan will turn out to be pretty much the same colour…

Hartnell on the console room floor looks okay too, but then they forget to colourise the titles. A colour animation with a B&W title sequence just looks weird…

So far so Meh but then, just when you’re starting to get a little bit excited about how this is going to look in colour, things go downhill pretty rapidly with our first sight of Ben & Polly…

I’m sorry but what the heck is Ben wearing? Yuck!

That’s more like it! As if that wasn’t bad enough, the console has turned from green to silver…

Whilst what Ben’s wearing may be open to debate, and he’s not wearing grey chelsea boots for a start, something that’s clearly the wrong colour is Polly’s colony outfit…

How do we know it’s the wrong colour? Because there’s a colour production photograph that tells us what colour it should be!

Which means the colourisers should really have given us THIS instead:

And finally, does anyone think that Dalek embryos are brown???

Nah, Uncle Tewwance was right, the colour for monsters is green!!!

The colourised version of The Power of The Daleks is available on the upcoming Blu-Ray/DVD steelbook release, scheduled for February 6th in the UK.

Power of the Daleks is here!

The wait is over and The Power of the Daleks animation is finally here!

Overall, it’s a very good effort with the only irritant being that there are sections where they haven’t accurately recreated the telesnaps such as the existing 8mm section where Polly recalls what the Doctor said in the tracking room. That and the fact that we don’t see the Doctor getting up off the floor, one minute he’s sitting up, next he’s standing. For those who don’t know the existing footage that well it shouldn’t be a problem, but surely they knew the fans would notice. And knowing they would notice, why not do it properly?

On the plus side they do put the regeneration before the opening credits!

#Powerofthedaleks

7/10

 

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The power of “The Power of the Daleks”

Since Fandom let out a collective Squee at the news that The Power of the Daleks would be released as an animation, it’s been one thing after another…

1] NOVEMBER 5th: The story will be available to buy from the BBC Store, released at the rate of one episode a day, starting November 5th at 5.50pm fifty years to the moment episode one was first broadcast. The first 1000 people to buy get free art cards. Whoopy-doo…

2] NOVEMBER 21st: The story will then be released on DVD

3] NOVEMBER 5th @ 5.50pm: There will be a Live Twitter release of the first three minutes of episode one

4] DECEMBER 31st: Colour version[!] available to buy from BBC Store

5] FEBRUARY 6TH: The story will be released on a Blu-Ray with both versions.

So how many times you can buy this?

Four.

Still, if it helps fund future animations…

KER-CHING!

Power of the Daleks ANIMATED!

Yesterday a video appeared on YouTube which then quickly vanished, blocked by BBC Worldwide on copyright grounds… it was a two minute clip of scenes from Power of the Daleks which had been animated to a very professional standard. I managed to grab the video before it vanished and it looks fantastic! Check out these screengrabs!

Given that the Beeb have blocked the video, is this a leak from an upcoming DVD release? Are the Beeb really going to put out Power of the Daleks on DVD with all six episodes fully animated? It certainly looks like it, which begs the question of why did The Underwater Menace get the Loose Cannon treatment instead?

This year is the 50th Anniversary of Power of the Daleks in 1966, so perhaps a DVD is on its way? Given the troubled history of Dr Who animation to date, you would imagine that the Daleks would be the obvious one to start with if you’re going to invest the time and money for full motion animation since its a release that will appeal to a wider audience than the fans. The animation is much better than that Planet 55 pseudo-magna shite and is about as close to Cosgrove Hall’s work on The Invasion as we’re likely to get. The Daleks are 3D models animated in a 2D landscape and look brilliant. Here’s hoping this isn’t just another leaked animation test but a promise of more to come.

But before we all get carried away into omnirumour territory, thinking that this means every missing story will be animated, let’s remember that we’ve been here before. But it certainly looks like the Beeb are involved with this so let’s just stay mildly excited instead of going for the full squee!

It’s in widescreen 16:9 compared to the 4:3 of the original and is coloured blue but it certainly seems to be the most faithful recreation of a missing episode yet. Perhaps the best thing about this video is that for once someone seems to have taken the time to make sure the animation matches the existing footage and telesnaps something that hasn’t always been the case, like on The Reign of Terror. If you’re going to go to all the trouble of animating a missing episode then you should at least make the effort to make sure it looks like the version that’s missing. It seems at last somebody has:

Is it just me, or do Lesterson and the Doctor look like the work of Mike Collins, the current Dr Who storyboarder and DWM artist? And of course, if they’ve gone to all the trouble of creating the Dalek models for this, if indeed this is an upcoming BBC DVD leak, then you would imagine that there’s a good chance we’d get Evil of the Daleks as well…

We could possibly, hopefully, maybe be only 10 weeks away from what would be the most anticipated release since The Web of Fear…

Whopix Comix – Coming Soon…

I originally completed this project a few years back, but I was never quite happy with it and didn’t really know why. Then Titan Comics came along and there was my inspiration!

Why do a “comic strip meets photonovel” adaptation of The Three Doctors anyway? Much as I like the TV story as transmitted, I can’t have been the only fan wondering what it might have been like if William Hartnell hadn’t been ill. And so I did this to find out.

Originally I didn’t really know what to call this form of adaptation, combining screen grabs with some colourisation and a bit of photoshoppery, but eventually I settled on Telecomic, a combination of Telesnap and Comic since all I’m really doing is following in John Cura’s footsteps.

And so I’ve completely updated the original and I’m much happier with it now. Having posted all the pre-DWM comic strips, and tackled The Underwater Menace as a TV Comic-style strip, the plan is to do some more stories like this. Now that I’ve pretty much completed my Fan Editing mission by doing all of the Classic Series, creatively, Telecomics is where Whopix is going next.

Whopix Comix Presents The Telecomic Adventures of Dr Who!

Starts Saturday 25th July.

The Underwater Menace on BitTorrent

Given the recent announcement that a bundle of News Series eps will soon be available on BitTorrent, and given that BBC Worldwide, in the latest DWM [issue 485]  are saying:

“We would like to reassure everyone that we are currently reviewing the best way to bring fans more classic Doctor Who. Please bear with us – we’ll let you know more as soon as we can.”

Whopix is going to stick it’s neck out and say that the story won’t be out on DVD at all, instead it’ll only be available as a BitTorrent download. Which is pretty shite really, since all we’ll end up doing is burning the bloody thing to a disc ourselves anyway!

Ten Years Ago Today

Bloody hell, is it that time already?

I must be honest, ten years ago today I sat down to watch Rose hoping and praying it would be good but fearing it would be shit. Of course, my fears were groundless and the minute Chris grabbed Billie’s hand and said “Run!” I knew everything would be ok.

Chris Eccles, Billie Piper, Camille Coduri-Milf, Bronze Daleks. What a comeback. God Bless Sir Russell Tea of Gayness. THE UNQUIET DEAD is currently my fave from that first year, such a shame one was all we got. Miserable Northern Git. Let’s hope he comes back on audio sometime soon and does a Sixie.

Ah, David Ten-inch. Eccles was good, but he was even better. The Next Gen’s Tom Baker. The Man. Or at least he was until Capaldi came along. How could you not love the nostalgiafest of SCHOOL REUNION? And of course BLINK is rightly on everybody’s favourites list, even if Freema Agyeman isn’t. For me, it has to be Donna Noble. PARTNERS IN CRIME and that mime sequence. And THE UNICORN AND THE WASP is brilliant, as was Julian Bleach’s Davros, pity he never came back again. As for David, he was The Man. And for many he always will be.

Enter The Moff and dear old Smiffy. Patrick Troughton mk 2 only different. The sheer joy of THE LODGER, and instant classic THE DOCTOR’S WIFE. And then there’s THE SNOWMEN and THE CRIMSON HORROR. Dear old Matt “Schlong” Smith, he had possibly the hardest job of all but the boy done well. Only eight more years ’til he’s back for the Sixtieth Anniversary Special.

The Man. Pietro Capaldini. Jon Pertwee mk2 only better. THE MUMMY ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS. `nuff said. Here’s to the next decade. Gaun yirsel, big man. Yaldi Capaldi!