Spent the better part of the day celebrating my mother’s 77th birthday today with family and friends. Despite a couple health scares over the past year, she is in good spirits and always bursting with energy… sometimes to her own detriment considering the oxygen support and other things that she should be taking care of.
It’s also today where Maya got to play with one of her siblings and the results were truly wonderful.
At some point, though, I got a PM from a friend of mine. They’ve been asking if I knew about The War Games In Colour and if I had seen it. For those who don’t know, The War Games is the final Doctor Who story to feature Second Doctor Patrick Troughton before he would pass the reigns over to Jon Pertwee’s Third Doctor the following season. (Troughton would reprise the role in later multi-Doctor stories before his eventual passing.) News of The War Games being made into a colour film surprised me and I looked into it a little more.
Turns out that this “colour” version is a re-edit of the original ten-part story (which clocks in at a total running time of four hours) into a much more brisk ninety-minute film. From what I’ve seen of clips online, the project not only gives the old serial colour, but also adds some additional music bits, some annoyingly anachronistic modern special effects, and perhaps most of all, a new regeneration scene from Troughton to Pertwee done via CG and stuff like that. The only thing I’ve seen is the regeneration scene, which I thought was well done for the most part and certainly a far better take than that one fanfilm thing where some Doctor Who fan put on a Second Doctor costume and somehow got a much older Jon Pertwee to reprise the Doctor for said regeneration. (I’m not begrudging said fan film – later Star Trek fan films would also adopt the practice of bringing in actual Trek actors into the fold before Paramount put the kibosh on that practice.)
At the moment, The War Games In Colour can only been seen on BBC’s online player, which is region locked. Apparently, there’s going to be a Blu-Ray release somewhere down the line and will even include the original serial so people can compare the two works. There’s a part of me that’s actually looking forward to this thing when it becomes more widely available. I’ve always wanted to sample more Classic Who, going so far as to track down a Plex channel that’s showing nothing but vintage Who stuff. It also gives me a chance to sample these more modern takes on classic material… maybe if this turns out to hit the sweet spot, I might consider the season sets that are being put out at the moment.
In other news… I have yet to touch a single lick of modern Doctor Who ever since the David Tennant run… the second one. Apparently, from what I’ve heard, the new Doctor is fine at times, but the stories are kinda rubbish… which, coincidentally, is the same sort of thing I’ve heard when Jodie Whittaker took over the role. I’m sure some people would want to blame the actor for the series going on some proverbial downswing, but you have to cast blame on creative as well. I’ve not seen Jodie’s run yet, but I’ve seen clips and she seemed fine in the role. Hopefully, the Big Finish stuff will give her more juicy stuff to play with and that’ll be a much better sell. Maybe Ncuti Gatwa might have a better run on Big Finish. Maybe you should sell the franchise to Big Finish and let them do all the good Doctor Who stuff.
Maybe one day, I’ll give these things a shot… but that would require resubbing to Disney Minus… and I really, REALLY don’t want to do that.
dtm666 