Baseshment I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

Odelecol Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

Humaira Grant It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Cristal The movie really just wants to entertain people.

malmborgimplano-92-599820 I haven't seen any DW episodes from the pre-Tom Baker era so I can't compare this film to its contemporary TV episodes, but I've seen a lot of SF films from this era and this is pretty standard product. I notice that it was made by the same team of Milton Subotsky and Max Rosenberg that made the Amicus horror anthologies in the 1970s, which I love, and compared to even those low-budget films this is super low budget and unsophisticated, but it does have the same earmarks of comparative good taste, especially in visual presentation (the use of Technicolor is outstanding) and casting. Jennie Linden and Roberta Tovey are both high-ranking companions.Peter Cushing's Doctor (who's given a somewhat different backstory than the Doctor in the TV series--he's apparently human, and the creator of the Tardis) is kind of underwritten and he plays him in the manner of one of Boris Karloff's kindly old mad doctors. With his white brushed-back mane of hair, velveteen jacket and checked trousers there's a visual similarity between him and Peter Capaldi's Twelfth Doctor. A baton has clearly been passed.

jc-osms With the celebration of 50 years of Doctor Who in full swing. I was interested to observe a place in the time-line reserved for the TV movie Doctor, played by Paul McGann but not for Peter Cushing's twice-cinematic version. There is of course a good reason for that, in that this isn't the Doctor at all. For the purposes of the anticipated cinema viewer and no doubt dumbing down somewhat for the target American audience, this Doctor is no alien, no two hearts, no Gallifrean. Instead he's a slightly absent-minded, doddery, even frail elderly inventor who just happens to invent a time machine, call it the TARDIS and answers improbably to the name Doctor Who. Which is a pity, as with just a little bit more exposition, his origin could easily have been subsumed into the plot and almost forgotten about, as this adventure gathers speed, but no, commercial considerations win out and thus we get a Doctor who isn't the Doctor.This fatally cripples the story, at least for this die-hard Whovian, but there are some compensations elsewhere. Firstly we get to see the Doc in colour five years before Jon Pertwee's incarnation did the same on the small screen in the classic "Spearhead From Space" adventure. The story itself, adapted from an earlier TV episode, is okay too and of course Peter Cushing is engaging in the title part.On the down side though, the film plays too much to the family entertainment brigade, with some fairly feeble attempts at humour, too much screen time to the infant girl companion, good as she is and worst of all variety entertainer Roy Castle as the male companion here, acting like he's in a Carry On film, all pratfalls and gaucheness. It gets hard to take the story seriously with him mooning all over the place.But all that said, it entertains pleasantly enough, the studio sets are okay, with an interesting experiment in using a green gauze lens (I would imagine) to depict the spooky forest and of course the Doctor, not for the last time, saves the day and still gets home in time for tea. So it ever was...

BA_Harrison Early series of Dr. Who are renowned for their cheap sets and dodgy special effects but you'd think they might have made a bit more of an effort for the character's first big screen outing; although other reviews on IMDb claim that the film features better production values, I just don't see it, the use of a few lava lamps as decoration and a rotating plywood computer qualifying as rather crap in my book. Plywood (or possibly chipboard) also seems to feature rather heavily in the construction of the Dalek's city (sprayed gold to look alien, of course) and the inside of the Tardis, while the film's larger studio sets are completely lacking in atmosphere.In addition to the crap set design (seriously… lava lamps?), the film suffers from an incredibly dull script (the plot dumbed down for a younger audience), a baffling performance from the usually reliable Cushing who portrays the Doctor as a doddery old git, Dalek's that use fire extinguishers as weapons, a pathetic race of peaceful aliens, the males of which wear make-up reminiscent of Boy George circa his clubbing days, and a very silly ending that sees the Daleks counting down from 100 before using their most devastating weapon, giving the good guys plenty of time to spoil their plans. The less said about Roy Castle as comedy relief, the better. I only hope that the follow-up movie, Daleks' Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D., lives up to my fond childhood memories.

Tweekums As this film opens it quickly becomes apparent that this incarnation of the doctor is very different from the television version; he is not a Time Lord but an elderly, human inventor living with his niece Barbara and his granddaughter Susan and his name is Dr. Who; not The Doctor. When Susan's new boyfriend, Ian, visits he is shown the latest invention; TARDIS; a machine capable of transporting to any time or place. Ian accidentally activates the machine and they fine themselves on a strange alien world. It appears to be long dead but as they look around they find a city. They return to TARDIS but it doesn't work; Dr. Who explains that a part is broken so they will have to go to the city to find the mercury it needs to work. Here they run into the Daleks and learn that there was a war between the Daleks and the Thals which left the planet a radioactive wasteland; the Thals have found an antidote to the radiation but the Daleks can't leave the city and must live in special protective machines. They hope to use the doctor and his travelling companions to lure the remaining Thals into the city so they can eliminate them once and for all.It took a while to accept this version of Dr. Who as he is so different to the television version; Peter Cushing did a good job in the role and Roy Castle was fun as comedy relief Ian; of the girls young Roberta Tovey seemed to perform better as Susan although Jennie Linden's Barbara didn't really have much to work with in her underwritten roll. The opening scene made it clear that this would be fairly tongue in cheek when we see the two girls reading science books and the elderly doctor is reading The Eagle (a comic). In common with most sci-fi of its time there is no explanation as to why creatures on an alien world would be speaking English just as there is no surprise on the part of the characters when this happens. Taking advantage of the fact that the film is in colour, unlike the TV show at the time, the Daleks come in a wide variety of colours; they weren't a particularly formidable opponent once the final battle came unfortunately; all the heroes had to do was grab the and turn them to face each other and let them kill each other! The Thal where aliens of the 'almost human' variety with little charisma; this meant they weren't interesting characters. Overall I was a bit disappointed with this; possibly because I was expecting something closer to the television version; it wasn't bad though and a laughed a few more times than I'd expected.