Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150AD
“When tomorrow becomes yesterday, and tomorrow becomes eternity, tomorrow will be the 22nd Century.”
Seen: 27th April 1985
I assume that the closing credits of the Spring 1985 showing of Dr Who & The Daleks on BBC One were interrupted by some kind of continuity announcement to inform the audience that there would be another adventure with Doctor Who and the Daleks at the same time next week. If not, I’m entirely unsure how I, someone who lived in a household that didn’t take a paper, bought the Radio Times only at Christmas, and discovered what was on television by switching it on and having a look, managed to see Daleks’ Invasion Earth 2150AD on 27th April 1985. Because I remember lying in front of the television, my chin in my hands, willing The Saturday Picture Show to end so we could get on with the good stuff.
And good stuff it is, although this was initially the less successful of the two Cushing-starring films produced during mid 60s “Dalekmania”. Dr Who & The Daleks had managed to arrive on the crest of a wave, hitting cinemas at almost the exact point when Dalek television episodes were managing to be watched by 10m people at the height of summer, and comic TV Century 21, with The Daleks strip in residence on the back cover, was selling over half a million copies a week. Whereas Daleks’ Invasion Earth 2150AD came along after the bubble had, if not burst, at least begun to deflate. It was released in the summer of 1966, after a twelve part Dalek serial that ran over Christmas and New Year perhaps tried the patience of Britain, and while it, or at least the English section of it, was distracted by hosting the World Cup.
At this point Doctor Who as a whole was of declining interest to the public at large. It had been a Top 10 programme for much of 1965, routinely being seen by 12 and even 13 million people, even for serials that didn’t feature the Daleks. But after the third episode of that twelve part Dalek story, Doctor Who entered a slow decline in viewing figures that would be followed by an outright ratings crash for the next serial, appropriately entitled The Massacre, in early 1966. The show wouldn’t crack 10m viewers again until New Year 1972. In children’s television terms, that’s a whole generation away. Far enough in the future for both Cushing Dalek films to be then imminently about to receive their TV premieres, back when the lag between cinema release and television broadcast was assumed to be around seven years.
It was generational differences that one contemporary review of Daleks’ Invasion Earth 2150AD was concerned with; “Grown-ups may enjoy it, but most children have more sense.” sniffed The Times on 21st July 1966, the day before release. This was also two days before the World Cup Quarter Finals were played and less than a week after television Doctor Who had limped offscreen for its summer break, having scraped an average of 5m viewers for the final serial of the current run, The War Machines. Despite The War Machines being unimpeachably excellent. The original, Skaro model war machines also had fewer viewers than before. Box Office was below what was expected and writer / producer Milton Subotsky’s option for a third Doctor Who motion picture was never taken up.
The less immediate future would be kinder to the Daleks’ second cinema outing. By the end of the 1980s, this film had a much better reputation amongst fans than its predecessor. Yes. some of them actually liked it. The idea it’s obviously the better of the two has been retained prominence, even as the earlier film’s stock has slowly risen subsequently. In some ways, it’s easy to see why. It’s rougher, tougher and sharper than the first film. It’s more violent and more action-oriented. Dr Who & The Daleks, although made only a year earlier, seems to glance back to the 1950s in terms of its style. It’s also an indoor studio sets picture. Invasion Earth is largely a back lot and locations picture. This means they have radically different looks despite sharing a writer / producer, a director, many props and set elements, and a leading man. In the place of the first film’s indoor forests and matte painted mountains, we have believable British streets under a real sky. Real life places are invoked and even visited. Sloane Square. Bedford. Watford. Characters carry recognisable modern weapons which click and clunk as they are loaded and fired. Multiple characters threaten, and even kill, with knives.
Invasion Earth is a far more mimetic film than the first, and that kind of “imitation of life” is easily taken for “realism” by audiences. The 1950s may not really have been a more innocent time, but Dr Who & The Daleks is certainly a more innocent film. Invasion Earth is determinedly heading towards "kidult" (ugh) whereas & The Daleks is openly for children. You only need to see which aspects of the film the trailer foregrounds to see the truth of that. The Daleks, a fading fad, are de-emphasised. Their subordinate Robomen, ostensibly new, are emphasised and described as “Living dead men!” The presence of Ray Brooks is glossed with a reference to his appearance in Swinging London classic The Knack… and How to Get It (1965). Which its hard to imagine that much of Doctor Who's core audience had seen. In this context even the prominence of Peter Cushing’s credit seems linked to his Hammer fame, rather than his previous turn as Dr Who. After all, the trailer doesn’t even mention the character’s name. Although it does want you to know that 2150AD is "a year that will thrill you and terrify you."
That trailer was also the audience's introduction to Bill McGuffie's often discordant score for the film. Malcolm Lockyer’s music for Dr Who & The Daleks evoked a sense of wonder. Of exploration. Like the blasted forest of Skaro and the elven Thals, it suggested a fairytale. McGuffie’s jazz influenced music for Invasion Earth stomps. Literally. The repetitive beat of its drums echo as the Robomen march prisoners across ruined London or the Daleks’ mine, creating both the impression and the criticism of militarism that that inevitably implies. "Look at these authoritarian marching gits", it seems to say, “Look at these fascists."
This doesn’t seem to have been Subotsky’s original plan. An earlier draft of the film’s script survives at the BFI, and it’s a lighter and breezier affair than that used for the final film. The Daleks are generic space invaders, their Nazi qualities toned down, and their mine-workings less reminiscent of the work camps of occupied Europe in the 1940s. This script’s London is a less bleak and desolate place. Even as eventually made the film lacks the creeping dread, the genuinely post apocalyptic ambience, of the early episodes of the television serial on which it’s based. They show television Doctor Who leaning into its heritage within the television play, in a way the motion picture adaptation can’t really do. Largely because it doesn’t have one. Perhaps the film’s final script offers a compromise between Subotsky’s initial instincts for an adaptation and the source material? There are certainly changes between that first script and the finished film that suggest the adapter has returned to the television serial or its scripts while working on later drafts; pulling bits of the tv version ignored by the earlier draft back into later ones, with them then ending up in the film.
(I don’t propose to attempt a scene by scene comparison between the finished film and the BFI draft; not least because there’s one in Jonny Morris’ very fine book on the serial which I’m unlikely to surpass. So you should just all go and buy that at the link above instead.)
We might conclude that one of the perhaps multiple stages between Subotsky’s early draft and the film’s shooting script was carried out by David Whitaker, television Doctor Who’s original Story Editor / Head Writer. That a redraft was the source of his “Additional Material By” credit at the film’s opening, just under Subotsky’s for the screenplay. That might explain the shift towards the tone of the tv original, and the reintroduction of material from the tv serial not included in Subotsky’s surviving draft, such as the appearance of a black marketeer character, and the male companion trying to divert the Daleks’ bomb as it makes its journey to the centre of the Earth.
(This is not Jonny’s own conclusion; to find out what that is, you should, as I’ve already said, go and buy his book.)
Grimness, perceived realism and violence are things that are important to some audiences, including a fandom desperately craving to be taken seriously, as 1980s Doctor Who fandom so often was. (I also suspect that the absence of ostensibly frustratingly overt continuity clashes with the parent series present in Dr Who & The Daleks made the whole thing easier to enjoy for other kinds of fan.)
There is also, to be fair, a greater character depth to this film than the other; a greater sense of emotional truth. Rebel Wyler’s arrival arrival back at the insurgents’ base to discover he is only the only returning survivor is genuinely poignant. Daleks and Robomen clearing away the dead after the failed attack on the saucer has a frisson of human tragedy. Again though, it does not come close to the emotional pull of the original serial. Horses for courses, I suppose.
By the 21st Century Daleks’ Invasion was being praised not just by prominent fan / creatives such as Mark Gatiss, but also the likes of Mark Kermode, Alex Cox and Stuart Maconie - and as an outstanding example of popular British cinema of the 1960s. The irony of course being that, in the 1960s, it wasn’t actually all that popular.
The only modern critic I can find to advance a public preference for the first film is former Doctor Who Magazine editor Marcus Hearn, who did so in his sleeve notes for the soundtrack album of both films issued in 2009. Marcus also wonders what 21st century children would make of the films. As I noted in my post on Dr Who & The Daleks last month, if my primary school aged son and his cousins are anything to go by, they find them rather thrilling. Form is temporary, class is permanent? I’d like to think so.
Whoever shaped the script ultimately used for production, it’s an effective distillation of most of the best aspects of the serial, with them cunningly moved around and reshaped into 84m of adventure. It’s shot in a matter-of-fact, but quick moving style by Gordon Flemyng, one that’s nevertheless distinct from the more stately way he approached the first film. (Particularly impressive are the single take crane shots towards the end of the film, as the Daleks glide around their base like monstrous insects moving through the inside of some vile extraterrestrial hive.)
At the centre of that distillation, more so than in the previous film, is Cushing’s delightful more-steely-than-before Doctor. His is an effective interpretation of the Doctor's core character (inquisitive, reckless, prickly, never cruel nor cowardly) buttressed by fun business and mannerisms all the actor's own. (His old man walk! His middle-distance-stare and wiggled eyebrows combo!)
With him we have an effective trio of companions, even if Jill Curzon is given almost nothing on the page to work from in the creation of Dr Who’s niece Louise. (In Subotsky’s draft, this character is still Barbara. Presumably Jennie Linden was unavailable or unwilling to reprise her role.) Curzon nevertheless gives a fun performance that mixes earnestness and a kind of distance that now seems to anticipate 1970s television companion Romana. She also has an outfit that absolutely rocks.
Roberta Tovey is splendid as Susie. A brightly engaging child lead who is neither winsome nor annoying, she holds her own in two-handed scenes with the charismatic old pro Andrew Keir. Which is something far more experienced actors failed to do elsewhere in Keir’s long and solid film career. You completely understand why Cushing was impressed with her the first time round, and reportedly told director Flemying he would only do another Dalek picture if Tovey too was retained.
The best of the three is, of course, Constable Tom Campbell, played by the great Bernard Cribbins. (I am grateful to Doctor Who Magazine regular Matt Michael for pointing out that you can see by his uniform that Campbell is not a PC, but a Special Constable, and thus a talented amateur fighting crime in his spare time, like Dr Who himself.) Cribbins is easily capable of both the tough stuff and the comedy the part asks of him. He’s also capable of bringing subtlety to moments where a lesser performer would coast. He delivers an early line about the possibilities of time travel in such as way as you know he’s already thinking about how the Tardis could be used to make the arrests he missed out on in the pre-credits sequence. He makes “While they’re having their breakfast” a joke about the Daleks, which it doesn’t have to be on the page. He does a tremendous “embarrassed face” when Wells criticises him for deliberately accessing the mine, and even reacts to the Daleks’ murder of Thompson (played by Christopher Lee’s regular stunt double and future Alien Eddie Powell) with an expression that suggests an ordinary, essentially decent person horrified by encountering violent death for the first time.
That moment of compassion is a good example of how this film serves admirably as a showcase for much of what is good about television Doctor Who, even while not being a part of it. It links with the frequent presentation of the Doctor and his allies as plucky underdogs, fighting against implacable authoritarianism simply because it must be done. The aforementioned black marketeer Brockley, played with seething smugness by Philip Madoc, represents Doctor Who’s long established mistrust of the profit motive, and the climax of the film is another example of the series’, and its lead character’s, tendency towards brilliant improvisation in the face of imminent catastrophe.
That climax, as the Daleks are sucked into the ground by mavitation fields, and their flying saucer follows them, cannot be faulted; it was arguably not surpassed as a Dalek based set piece until the 21st century revival of the television series. The Daleks themselves, while in a standard livery slightly less effective than in their previous cinema appearance, still dazzle in their variety of colours and their sheer numerousness. Again, it would be the 21st century, the one between the film’s manufacture and its setting, before television Doctor Who could show as many Daleks onscreen as this film manages, and even then only thanks to the magic of CGI.
But here is a thought. On television, we know the story is set in the 22nd century thanks to a calendar found in the warehouse the Doctor and Ian investigate during the first episode. But in the equivalent section of the film, there’s no such calendar to be found. Or if there is, it lies undiscovered at the bottom of a wooden crate at the end of scene. Both the television and film versions of this serial have been mocked, gently and not so gently, for their 1960s styled 22nd centuries. But in the cinema, we only have Dr Who’s word that this is 2150 at all.
Onscreen, the same ad campaign for breakfast cereal Sugar Puffs is running both on the street in 1966 where Tardis first encounters Tom Campbell, and near the Embankment Tube station of Dalek occupied future London. Also on the walls of the station? A tatty, but relatively recent, poster for a wrestling match between Tony Mancelli and Johnny Yearsley, a fight that the internet informs me occurred in 1967, and was one of the last of Mancelli’s career. Why would they have such a thing in a tube station in 2150? Perhaps more worryingly, that 1966 street can be seen in the background in the future seen later in the film. It's almost unchanged by nearly two centuries of progress, let alone an alien invasion.
Unless the Daleks have invaded some kind of Epcot type London theme park, and no one bothers to tell the visitors from the Tardis, the most likely explanation is that the Daleks of the Amicus’ universe conquered Earth at some point between the release of Sergeant Pepper and the three day week. Maybe the Tardis has simply taken Dr Who, Tom, Louise and Susie to 21:50. Ten to ten at night, and just a few years in the future.
Of course, none of this is intentional, and it was nowhere near my head in 1985 when I delightedly watched Tom drive away with the thieves he’d apprehended thanks to that fancy bit of time travelling footwork from Dr Who. (A strong argument against David Whitaker penning this scene, which is not in Subotsky's draft, is that time travel simply doesn’t work like that in his version of the series, and that’s true across all other media he contributed to. For more on Whitaker's Doctor Who, I recommend this biography.) I wanted to watch the film again. Immediately. But I couldn’t. Because I hadn’t recorded it on one my single personal video cassette. I have no idea what was on it instead. It seemed important at the time.
My mistake was partially rectified a year or so later when my school friend Adam’s Mom picked him up an ex-rental VHS of the film from somewhere or other. Probably the sale bin at the video rental shop in our village, if I’m honest. But I don’t know that. In any event, it was a commercial release of the film that, until the moment she handed it over in triumph, we didn’t even know existed. It was the 1980s. Information on such things wasn’t exactly easy to come by. Especially if you weren’t out of Junior School yet. But after that moment, you bet we watched it again and again. The 22nd century on tap. Or at least on tape.
Yesterday, tomorrow and today.
Update: @jimlynn.bluesky.social informs me there was an announcement at the end of the previous film’s screening the week before; he has uploaded it to the Internet here.