REACTION: The War Games in Colour
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- Опубликовано: 8 фев 2025
- Paul and Thomas react to the 2024 colourised version of the 1969 classic Doctor Who Story 'The War Games'.
You're watching The Shallow Proclamation. Doctor Who fans Paul (who's seen all the episodes) and Thomas (who's been watching from Christopher Eccleston onwards) are working their way through all the Doctor Who content.
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Star Trek: TOS had CGI stuff added for rerelease.
RE Continuity - I studied film & TV in the early 2000's, and was involved with editing all of the short films that I worked on through that period - 5 or 6 shorts. Going through that process, you become more aware when watching media when something didn't quite work, because you KNOW how it's done. But, sitting watching content with my wife - most of those errors just fly by unnoticed. So - when watching this cut down version of the War Games, as well as being reasonably familiar with the content, I did notice a lot of the work going in to redux the story, but to the average viewer - I would bet they wouldn't see half of it.
I really enjoyed this, for me this was real Xmas special! I wouldn't have bothered with The Master hint they did and I think the outside pics of the evil lair didn't blend well with the older stuff at all,, but that aside, I'll probably rewatch this more than the orginal. Loved the ending, even though I do love the dark open ended ending to the original, its lovely to see the gaps filled in.... and to see the lovely faces of the 3 main actors in colour, they all look so young !
I think one of the shots of Pertwee was from Inferno, from Episode 7 when the Doctor wakes up from his coma.
There are colour photos of the sets so they had decent references.
Topher's Phantom Edit has been leaked for years. I don't think he's been confirmed as the supercut guy though.
I really enjoyed it. The first time I watched it was when on the night it aired on BBC4 and I was rather tired after a working day, so I wasn't very observant. My reaction was generally positive, but when I saw reactions and reviews to it, and comments on social media, they were mostly pretty negative, especially about the new music, which surprised me. So I watched it a second time, this time quite attentive, expecting that I would now see more flaws. In fact, it looks like I was entirely right in thinking that the music was done well and was in keeping with the video content, and my opinion of the whole thing has only improved.
Though I didn't notice on either viewing the regeneration sound to suggest the War Chief was regenerating.
Apparently, all the added content at the end was from a fan-made RUclips video, which has been around for quite a while. I wasn't aware of that on first viewing. I was quite critical of the computer generated animated Third Doctor, which I felt, and still feel, to be unnecessary and jarring, not fitting the rest of the content. But that is a minor thing.
All they had to do is add colour. They had one job
Colourising 90 minutes of footage is not the same as colourising 250 minutes of footage. It would've cost 3 times as much, and they're niche products with very narrow profit margins.
As with “The Daleks” exercise I’m a bit “meh” with this. I thought the colourisation was better done this time around and quite surprised how well the story worked considering nearly 2/3 of it was chopped. The regen redo was ok, I could have laid money on the new era faces being used as options for the Doctors new appearance but Troughton’s disdain for those is funnier as a result IMO, tidying up the TARDIS landing from Spearhead was nicely done and the TARDIS not deciding if it was the 70s or 80s raised a chuckle. One thing I fully expected to see at this point was a nod to the “6b” theory, thought that would have been an irresistible tinker.
The one thing that let this down for me (as with “Daleks”) was the music, far far too much, made me feel like I was watching one long overlong highlights video. The term “incidental” seems to have been lost on whoever put this together. Prime example is the use of Murray Gold’s “Master” theme whenever the War Chief appears. If they had just used that one little bit of Dudley’s motif in that one little moment they did and left it there it would have been far more effective.
Overall an interesting curio, definitely suited for the more …er…attentively challenged, but I’ll keep to the original for future rewatches.
Just an alternate way of viewing a story like the 2 Peter Cushing Dalek films are
There is something about how they filmed this year of Who which may have helped with the colour, I forget the details but , very roughly speaking, something like they filmed onto black and white with a colour camera..or vice versa..something like that lol
The natural settings helped early on, the colours would be muted anyway. For me the editing and colouring in was a definate step up from the last one.
I loved their work on adding color. I'm okay with there being a version that merely cuts bits of the story for the benefit of those who can't be bothered to watch the whole thing. But the ret-conning... oy. For this, making the War Chief the Master just makes the whole scope of the Timelords smaller. What next? The Meddling Monk was the Master? I like the idea that the Timelords aren't perfect, and there are other rogues out there (or in there, in the case of Borusa - who was handled perfectly over time, slowly becoming more and more corrupt with each incarnation.) Giving his future possible selves as regeneration options - really didn't make much sense. Really wish there was another "good" rogue Timelord out there. I'd have honored the original premise, brought on another Timelord as a companion who ends up inheriting the moniker as the original Doctor died. At least it would have kept some sense of jeopardy in the show. Now he's overpowered, even "bi-regenerating", which again... makes no real sense.
The modern penchant for rewriting history for no real reason is irksome. From the Timeless Child (which made no sense, since Matt Smith's Doctor had to be "given" new regenerations having reached the end of his regenerations - yet now he's had an endless stream of them, as well as the entire story of the Master in classic WHO who was disfigured having tried to regenerate past his limit, having to find another way to "regenerate" by taking over another person's body), to even the regen into Jodie - fine with a regen into a female form, but why not give a dramatic reason for it (much as they did to explain the regen into Capaldi.)
Good change is good change, bad change is bad change, change for the sake of change is pointless, and it's just made spaghetti of the lore.
There's a lot to agree with here.
I absolutely loved this, ... except! For the Master implications. Remove that crap, and this is a 12/10.
There's certainly some good software to remove music and leave everything else... though it's always going to be worse than if you actually had the original tracks before the music was added. That said - they've done a pretty good job on the music.
The colourisation never feels "forced" or wrong... good skin tones, which is the usually very obvious problem if there is any.
It really is just amazing!
Troughton's shirt was white on set, apparently, and as for insinuating The War Lord is The Master goes completely against writer, Terence Dicks explicit wishes. If he were alive today he would be mighty pissed-off, and I wouldn't blame him. 9/10 for the colourisation and fan-made regeneration, but naff all for the rest.
Terrance, in the 90s, did write a new adventure with the war chief regenerated. But that was long after saying that the two were never the same. You'd think that they'd do a tie-in to an earlier dtory as the actor was in a Hartnell historical. 🤷♂️
Apparently Charles Dickens ghost is also very unhappy at all the film versions of A Christmas Carol, as he didn’t have script approval
@ false equivalence.
Dicks never let continuity get in the way of a good idea...
I think they cut it down a bit too much. There were parts that I wouldn't have known what was going on if I hadn't seen the full version.
Yes perhaps cutting down 10 episodes was a bit optimistic
You know what if they’re gonna retcon the Doctor’s timeline but adding incarnations before Hartnell, it would only be fair to retcon the Master’s timeline but making the War Chief an incarnation. Two Friends with the Two Retcons. Problem Solved.
The fact they start with an establishing shot of Earth when the story tells us a couple episodes later that it's on "a planet selected for the war games"... I've not seen the whole condensed version, but based on clips and other reactions, I wish they'd just color it and not remove 70% the material or adding in new material or corny circus music. The revisions do characters and plotting a disservice as too much overlaps at just the wrong times.
The Doctor seeing his 21st century incarnations also has a great meaning to the phrase "what an incredible bunch!" A shame they didn't even include Pertwee's visage, and the materialization at the end had a bizarre audio edit
Im sure if you’d offered a few hundred thousand pounds to colorise the rest they might have accepted - maybe you can send them your credit card details so they can contact you when they do the next colorisation
I did that shot of Earth, and it was entirely intentional...
The colour is more successful for The War Games as the quality of telerecordings is better than The Daleks.
The music is based on Dudley Simpson's original compositions but Mark Ayres has recreated them with samples to work to the new length.
Cutting it down didn't work though as there was too much plotting - you miss why anyone does anything.
Writer and script editor Terrance Dicks flatly refuted the idea that the War Chief was The Master.
I’ve removed a comment I made here as due to my being an idiot who had a senior moment I was guilty of inadvertently putting a spoiler on the thread, for which I apologise as I want Thomas to react to Classic Who without anything being given away. Hope the damage has been limited successfully. 😞
Don't worry. I think you're fine.
The problem being at Ten Parts this story rattles along and being shortened really doesn't do it any favours, especially when part of the run time includes the regeneration and AI generated shots of the aliens lair which are used repeatedly.
It's a thumbs up for this edition of The Shallow Proclamation, but a thumbs down for this rendition of a classic story.
Wow, you guys are back! I was starting to think you'd gone troppo.
This is the first I've seen of The War Games in Color as it's not available yet in America. Did they ever actually say or show that The War Chief was the Master other than the musical cues? I'm not at all big on the idea. I can't fathom why everything has to go all tiny universe like Star Wars these days, where everyone is related to everyone else. Next thing you know and the Meddling Monk will be an even earlier incarnation of the Master.
I think the skin tones on this look absolutely dreadful. Everyone looks like a corpse. The original War Games is a classic as it was. No need to do these things.
It starts out well, but ends up an incomprehensible mess. It basically becomes a clip montage. Cutting a 4 hour story to 90 minutes was a fool’s errand. Even halving the duration would have been a struggle. The Resistance subplot is gone, but the characters are all there at the end with no explanation. The War Lord base model is bad, and the CGI Gallifrey looks totally incongruous.
Has Ben Cook said that he was inferring that the War Chief is the Master? Or did they just want ‘villainous time lord music’? It doesn’t make sense that he’s the Master because the interaction with the Doctor is all wrong.
9 minutes per ep. GO! This is a hard pass for me. This isn't even a retcon, it is f@ckery = bad fan fiction.
Well, that was an abomination.
It was totally and very unnecessary it was alright as it was.
I'd had rather had seen you guys continued on with season 10 than seeing you react to this bucket of vandalised crap a colourised episode with a new old regeneration no one really asked for or wanted or needed this is RTD propaganda I also hated that they retconned the War Chief is the Master considering Terence Dicks has insisted they are not the same character including two novelisations he did that also confirmed this. It was butchered to death 50% of story cut out all this because morons like RTD and Collinson think it's fun. I will always stick with the proper 10-part original in glorious black and white.
The intended audience is people who have never seen it and would never sit down to watch it as it was originally broadcast. The BBC have done a LOT of research and found there's a sizable demographic out there to whom that applies. Basically, if you've watched the original, by definition, you aren't the intended audience. And that's fine. Not every product ever made is intended for every audience member. My cousin has only ever seen New Who (and only really the tail end of Whittaker to now, given her age), and she thoroughly enjoyed it. It served its intended purpose very well. I can guarantee she would've stopped watching almost immediately if I'd sat her down to watch ten episodes of The War Games in black and white. 🤷
@@somerandomguy2073 If we could handle it as kids I'm sure they could too. I think RTD and Collinson as well as the BBC underestimate their modern audience if they are given the time to learn to put away their short attention spans and actually pay enough attention to the actual story I can assure you they will get straight into it I have a 8 year old cousin and she's loving the black and white episodes so I think there's more of a younger audience out there that's willing to watch the original than what RTD and Collinson anticipate.
@@JudgeJosephDredd1989 Amazingly, it's still on iPlayer for anyone to watch as it has been for years. I'm willing to bet that more people have watched the colourized version than the one on iPlayer.