Doctor Who fans of a certain vintage will have fond memories of the omnibuses that were a regular Christmas treat during the first half of the 1970’s (they would occasionally pop up during different times of the year as well). Although there were no hard and fast rules, 6 parters (original running time 150 minutes) would tend to get chopped down to 100 minutes or so and 4 parters (original running time 100 minutes) would be reduced to around the hour mark.

This fad for omnibuses continued into the next decade and the early years of the Who VHS range. And (bashful confession to follow) I’m afraid that it clearly infected me – so much so, that when I started taping the series off-air in the mid 1980’s I attempted to do so in omnibus fashion.  What was I thinking?

In my defence, it was probably a question of economy (two four-parters with no opening and closing credits could just about be squeezed on an E180). I should have bitten the bullet and bought some E240 tapes, but they were more expensive and my pocket money would only stretch so far ….

On we move into the DVD age, and omnibus would occasionally appear – although this time as special editions, complementing the original episodic version. Some though, weren’t really that special at all.

The 60 minute edit of Enlightenment is a good case in point. Cropped to widescreen and featuring new CGI effects that managed the neat trick of looking worse than the original effects, it’s worth watching once (in slack-jawed amazement) and then placing it back on the shelf with a sorrowful shake of the head.

The Day of the Daleks SE also raises my hackles a little bit. Partly because the “incorrect” Dalek voices on the original (Oliver Gilbert, Peter Messaline) were replaced with “correct” voices on the SE by Nicholas Briggs but mostly because they cut out the best line (“no complications”).

All this amiable preamble leads us to The Daleks in Colour premiered on BBC4 yesterday (the 23rd of November 2023 which – unless you’ve been living under a stone recently with no access to social media – you’ll be sure to know was Doctor Who‘s 60th birthday).

The 175 minute original has been cropped down to 75 minutes, then coloured in with the addition of some new CGI effects, voices and an expanded soundtrack by Mark Ayres (adding to Tristram Cary’s original incidental music).

In this form, it’s certainly lean (and you have to say that very little of note is missing). This might lead you to suppose that the original seven parter was ridiculously bloated, but that’s not really the case (although the original trek through the caves seemed endless).

Few Doctor Who stories made between 1963 and 1989 don’t feature some creative (and occasionally not very creative) running on the spot. That’s inevitable in an episodic serial – if it’s a four-parter, then part three has to operate in a holding position (by now, the story has been successfully set up but it can’t be concluded until part four, so there’s little left to do except fill).

Sometimes this is done in a very blatant way – Deadly Assassin 3 takes the prize for this.

But while it’s easy to pick any story at random and identify plenty of scenes which don’t advance the story at all, that doesn’t mean that they serve no purpose. Old Who gave the audience time to breathe – this new edit is assembled at such a breakneck pace that by the end I felt exhausted. In this way though, it did feel almost like an episode of the modern series (a backhanded compliment if ever there was one).

It was only in 1971 that it became possible to score Doctor Who stories directly to the material recorded. Prior to that, the composers were required to read the script, discuss timings with the director and compose musical cues that hopefully would fit the action.

Tristram Cary’s work on The Daleks was very effective, if a little sparse (his cues were recycled three times in the future though – on The Rescue, The Ark and The Power of the Daleks – and were just as effective there). But “sparse” isn’t a term you could use for Mark Ayres’ additional music.

He begins quietly enough, with a handful of cues that could possibly have fitted into the original story, but it’s not long before he goes bonkers and the music is turned up to 11. Few scenes escape his attention, which, I’m afraid, made me appreciate the original (where music tended to punctuate the action, not serve as a constant companion) all the more.

Watching The Daleks in Colour I was reminded of those 1980’s Laurel & Hardy colorizations. Bits of The Daleks in Colour look better than others, but at no point did I ever feel I was watching an original colour programme. Indeed, the garish colour and the thumping soundtrack began to get a little wearying after a while, leaving me pining for the monochrome original. Still, at least now I’ve seen it I’ll never have to bother with it again.

Rounding up, one argument proffered on a regular basis about why this sort of thing is a good thing, is that since many people struggle with black and white material, a coloursation offers them a chance to watch a story they’d otherwise skip. Personally, I think that anyone who can’t watch black and white films and television shouldn’t bother – they’d be much better advised to find something they do enjoy. Archive television isn’t for everyone and there’s no disgrace in admitting so (I certainly feel no shame in confessing that a great deal of modern television leaves me cold).

The Daleks in Colour has created some interesting talking points and I wouldn’t be surprised to see a number of other stories given the same treatment and released in BD steelbook form (as always with Doctor Who, the market’s there) but the next time I want to enjoy the first Dalek story in an abbreviated fashion with many of the nuances excised, I’ll pluck down off the shelf the original abridgement (Dr Who and the Daleks from 1965, starring Peter Cushing as Dr Who).