The Latest Classic Recoloring of Doctor Who Made Some Wild Additions

When the BBC broadcast a special, color editing “Daleks” to celebrate Doctor WhoOn its 60th anniversary last year, apart from an actual edit, the series remained largely the same, down to a shortened runtime. lovely trailer finally teasing the next 60 years of adventures in time and space. With his second shot – this time in Patrick Troughton’s iconic performance as the Second Doctor “War Games”– things have been very different. A lot different.

A color TV special that aired on BBC 4 in England earlier this week continues Doctor Who‘s latest black-and-white story — taking a four-hour epic and whittling it down to just 90 minutes — took the opportunity to collect answers to questions. WHO At this point, fans have for years created a crazy checklist of exact references and acknowledgments of the show’s future, which in some ways are definitive parts of the show. Doctor Who‘s ever-evolving sustainability. Here are the three biggest changes and changes added to the process.

War chief and master

The biggest theory played with “War Games” in color was a connection between the original story and the story in particular. Doctor Whos immediate future is clearer: one of the main antagonists of the series, the Warlord, was nothing more than an incarnation of the Master himself. A newly updated soundtrack incorporated modern music throughout the warlord’s appearances in the colorway. WHO symbol of composer Murray Gold “Master Vainglorious” theme-and when the Warlord is executed by the Time Lords after the climax of The War Games, you can even hear his instructive voice briefly. Doctor Who‘s modern regeneration SFX as his body drifts away.

While the original story always established the Warlord as an unrepentant Time Lord, over the years spin-off material and novels have gone back and forth on the idea that he was an early incarnation of a Time Lord and would eventually take up the mantle. of the Master (the current conclusion is that he originally did so with Roger Delgado’s portrayal of the character). Terrance Dicks and Malcolm Hulke, who wrote The War Games, noted in their post. Doctor Who Aim for the episodic novels where the Master and Doctor are the only renegade Time Lords to escape from Gallifrey in their TARDIS, showing that the Warlord and Master are indeed one and the same. But later original novels as part of the Virgin New adventures the books would also treat the Warlord as a distinct character who survived the events of “The War Games” and would eventually evolve into different incarnations, much like the Big Finish audio dramas, which set up the Master’s previous incarnations separate from the Warlord.

Trial and Doctor’s Faces

A particularly fortuitous twist at the climax of the story occurs during the Time Lords’ trial of the Doctor. After agreeing with the Doctor, there were plenty of dangers in the universe worth facing despite their non-interference policy (here embellished with additional clips from others from the original). Doctor Who stories), the Time Lords still choose to punish the Doctor with exile on Earth and forced regeneration, offering the Doctor several potential appearance options. However, in the paint these faces – which the Doctor still rejects for various reasons – are no longer just random unknowns. Instead, the Doctor is offered the chance to be reincarnated as several of his future incarnations after the third Doctor, as the Time Lords present these visions. we Know that in reality the Twelfth (dismissed as “too old”), the Tenth (“too thin”), the Thirteenth (“too young”), and the Eleventh (described simply as “it won’t be anything!”) They are doctors.

It’s a particularly odd addition, given that there’s no theory or desire that these faces have any special connection to the Doctor. not like Doctor Who It hasn’t explored the idea of ​​the Doctor having incarnations beyond the ones we’re familiar with – we’ve got plenty of examples from the infamous figures in The Brains of Morbius to modern ones. WHOAdding incarnations between the Eighth and Ninth Doctors, such as John Hurt’s “War Doctor” or Jo Martin’s “The Fugitive Doctor” and other incarnations before William Hartnell’s Doctor. But it’s a funny joke at this point that the Doctor has little desire to have any of the few faces we know will end up later in life.

Regeneration of the Second Doctor (and UNIT Dating)

The ‘War Games’ coloring culminates in an almost entirely new addition, using rotoscoped images of Patrick Troughton and Jon Pertwee’s Doctors to set the actual moment of the second Doctor’s regeneration. Here, after a sloppy sequence of the Doctor’s face sitting in a shadowy void in the original series, the action cuts to the interior of the TARDIS, where he shrinks into a chair, glowing as he hears the noise of his departed companions. transforms into its next incarnation with regenerative energy. As we recently coveredthe second Doctor’s off-screen regeneration has been covered in other ancillary material outside of the show itself (sadly no Time Lord-sanctioned scarecrow execution squads this time), but the moment itself has now been adapted into regeneration images. seen in Doctor Who‘s modern era, for better or for worse.

But this canonization is not the only fannish that the new scene does. The newly restored Doctor checks to see when exactly where it lands – before we cut to the first scene of Pertwee’s TARDIS from Space Spear crashing into Oxley Wood – the TARDIS’s displays flicker back and forth briefly between the 1970s and 1980s. That in itself is. another long lasting nod Doctor Who fan theory, the so-called “UNIT Dating Controversy”. Although many of the Third Doctor’s adventures appear contemporary to his early 1970s shows, two dates are noted in the career of one of his closest allies, Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart. It defined the existence of UNIT and elevated Lethbridge-Stewart to its famous rank The Brigade was founded in 1979; and the 1983 Fifth Doctor story “Mawdryn Undead”, which marks Lethbridge-Stewart’s retirement from UNIT in 1976, throws continuity into disarray.

Over the years, several attempts have been made to at least, if not completely correct, the perceived continuity error, both in the TV show itself and in other related media (Doctor Who (at the time, in most cases, the Third Doctor’s time on Earth was considered to have occurred concurrently with his broadcast), so while this wasn’t the first time the controversy had occurred on screen, it was The Answer, hilariously, with the metaphorical hands of the TARDIS in confusion even if it does have an uplift, it’s the first time in a while that we’ve seen it publicly stated.

What These Changes Mean Doctor Who?

Coloring isn’t the only way to experience these series, at least with both stories adapted so far – the original versions of both The Daleks and The War Games are available on physical media. and flow at this pointso anyone who wants to see the embellished original stories can do so, despite the “confirmations” that this latest colorization brings with it.

While many of these changes and retcons are seemingly minor in the grand scheme of things, the fact that the scope of these recolors has rapidly expanded beyond cosmetic tweaks and condensation paint between The Daleks and The War Games is an interesting picture of what future recolors might change. , because each new coloring brings with it an attempt to make more connections. Doctor Whois a broad and often contradictory continuum. It remains to be seen what stories may come next and what changes may come with them. As usual Doctor Whotime will tell.

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