DALEK INVASION EARTH: 2050AD

Welcome to what may be the only unmitigatingly critial review on the blog. Last night, I was feeling grumpy, so my pa brought out Dalek Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D. He had some happy memories of the film as a kid, and presumably the idea was to cheer me up by joining in my obsession. And I did cheer up - it had the unintended effect of unleashing my fan bile, and I had a brilliant time tearing the poor thing to shreds.

Perhaps I'm about to damn it for crimes it never claimed to be innocent of. It's a glorious technicolour piece of camp - the best of bad sci-fi. The marvellously overblown title says it all. I'd love to treat it fairly - but that's not a fan's job. I couldn't help but be really bothered by all the problems. Not using the proper TARDIS takeoff noise, for example. It's such an iconic image and sound, neither changed since 1963, so seeing them split was a weird experience (see Scary Things 3: Don't Screw with the TARDIS).

I was so very distracted throughout by the absence of William Hartnell and William Russell, both of whom I really missed. "Hello, I'm Doctor Who," says Peter Cushing, proving at once how much he isn't and never could be. Movie-Doctor isn't a Timelord, just a harmless old duffer who somehow cobbled together a time machine in his shed. It's an important difference. He's the image of what the Doctor - our Doctor - only pretends to be, because bubbling underneath he's got that other thing going on. Provoke him and, almost without warning, he turns into Mr Uber Scary "More Than Just Another Timelord" Intergalactic Policeman Who Never Would "Stop Now OR I WILL STOP YOU", a guy so imposing, with so much authority, that he gives Sensorites headaches simply by walking in through the door. Peter Cushing never does that - he can't, because he is only the doddery old human. What he had to do, he did well - "back in the cell?" - and gives such occasional flashes of genius that you wonder how he could have played our Doctor. But I couldn't help a vague certainty that Colin Baker could have sorted the entire thing out in 25 minutes, including time to be nasty to Peri.

I've nothing particular against tyke!Susan - like her grandfather, she really loses something without her freaky alien mystique. Louise, however, is a total waste of space. She can't even act - she doesn't even try. She has no discernable character, or role: instantly forgettable. I do like her suit-thing however. Bernard Cribbins was cribbinsley - he did the companion thing well enough. We were particularly amused by the sequence where he attempts to fit in with the other Robomen, reminding us of a Woody Allen farce (sketch upcoming). The supporting cast were all pretty good, but given nothing to do - several extras disappeared from the plot without warning. I particularly liked Brockley, who makes that same mistake minor baddies have been making for decades.

Yes, let's talk about the "Robomen" - they look like the Sharaz Jek round of a Doctor Who Cosplay Contest. They have a security force made up of gimps with whips. Wonderful. I still don't get why the Daleks would entrust security to a lesser species, but there you go. The special effects are pretty awesome. I love destroyed London - I ADORE the Dalek spaceship. One canon quibble I can live without is about the Daleks themselves - they're so cool, it must be genuinely hard to do them wrong. I like the colourful designs as much as the drab originals, and my nerdy brain started trying to work out what the colours represented. Unlike the Cybermen, who are entirely without emotion unless you're in the 80s, the Daleks merely lack all the useless emotions. They're still sneaky, spiteful bitches under the metal casings. I adored the idea of the cell being a "Dalek intelligence test", and particularly liked the swimming Dalek. They even disintigrated in a cool way. I got very excited when they mentioned rels, especially because the rel isn't totally compatable with our seconds - rels are slightly smaller. Even if death by fire extinguisher isn't quite as threatening as laser beams. These Daleks are wimpy compared to their TV counterparts - at several points, characters really should have ended up dead. We were amazed how much 2025 A.D. looks like the 1960s, and impressed by the "highly advanced radio" in the Robomen helmets.

While we're talking continuity, the Daleks presumably timetravelled to Earth, as their prescence evidently resulted in some serious time-space distortion. How else would Bernard Cribbins be able to scale a shaft which logic dictates should be about 22 miles deep, how else would Doctor Who and his friend be able to do the five day hike from London to Bedford in about ten minutes?The worst crime was however the music. Oh PAIN, the sound of Cybermen big band - "oh good, they brought a skiffleband" commented my pa. Even scenes that could have been dramatic, could have been scary were scuppered by appalling 60s noise. I haven't seen the original episode Invasion Earth, but I'd guess that like The Daleks compared to Doctor Who and the Daleks, it's more visceral, more real. That's the amazing thing about original, 60s TV-Who - how non-rubbish it is. Being Terry Nation in origin, I've no doubt the original is far more grim and relentless.

Can I justly criticise the film for not being "as good"? I think so. Certainly for a fan, you do need to take this with a pinch of salt - and a notebook for snarky comments. I also think much of normal humanity would find it unbearably campy and cruddy. But there's a third group - fans of bad sci fi, a group I normally count myself among. From that perspective, it's just glorious - Daleks blowing stuff up! Daleks being blown up! I'm just rather saddened that my geeky brain got in the way of me enjoying it for what it was - meaningless, technicolour fluff. But with Daleks in!