The War Games |
BBC The War Games (colourised) |
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| Episodes | 10 |  |
| Story No# | 50 | |
| Production Code | ZZ | |
| Season | 6 | |
| Dates | Apr. 19, 1969 - Jun. 10, 1969 |
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With Patrick Troughton, Frazier Hines, Wendy Padbury.
Written by Terrance Dicks & Malcolm Hulke. Script-Edited by Derrick Sherwin. Directed by David Maloney. Produced by Peter Bryant. |
| Synopsis: The Doctor and crew land amidst a myriad of wars from human history, run by aliens for their own purposes... now in colour! |
A Review by Andrew McCaffrey 9/3/26
The people who do these cut-down and colorized omnibus versions of Doctor Who serials do "get it". I know this because even though James Bree's incredible line-reading of "What a stupid fool YOU are!" was cut from The War Games... In Colour, it was reinstated as an easter egg on the Blu-ray release in full glorious color (in the special features menu, literally labeled as "easter egg").
I'll admit at the start that I still don't quite grok the purpose of these edited releases. The idea of colorization is fine, I suppose, so long as the originals remain available. Drastically chopping the running length of this (and the previous release, The Daleks... In Colour) is supposed to appeal to the sort of person who is interested in 1960s television but not interested enough to actually watch it. These people must exist, one assumes, though if they number so many that they need to be catered to is anyone's guess.
I'll admit to not being totally in agreement when I hear people complain that television of this style and era is overly padded. It's television, it's all padding if you want to come down to it. If watching too much padding is something you're not interested in, then just go to the wikipedia entry for the story and read the plot summary and move on with your life.
That said, I do have sympathies for someone who doesn't quite have the patience for the entirety of the original ten episode run of The War Games. That version is currently streaming on Youtube with an incredible runtime of four hours and fifteen seconds or approximately 240 minutes. The new edit comes in at a mere 95 minutes, which means an incredible amount of editing that needs to happen.
A lot of the American Civil War portions are cut, as they don't really contribute to the overall story. A lot of the connective tissue of the story is removed as well if it doesn't actually contribute to the plot. You have to, for example, take it on faith that Lt. Carstairs and Lady Jennifer Buckingham are honorable and worthy of the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe's trust instead of gradually watching the relationships grow over the first couple of episodes.
But it does sort of work. There's a 15 or 20 minute sequence in the middle that feels like an extended "previously on Doctor Who" recap. Some of the humor is lost (I'm thinking of the comedic timing of the different sequences where the Doctor comes back and irritates the War Lords' chief scientist). But overall, I think it holds together well.
I think this edit works better than the previous restructuring of The Daleks (despite The War Games being three episodes longer), probably because of the difference in the structures of the two stories. The War Games has several "capture and escape" sequences that can be more easily excised while The Daleks had a lot of build up in between the different journeys back and forth across Skaro.
That said, while I was watching I kept thinking to myself that I could follow this because I'd seen the full version several times before, had read the novelisation, etc. I did wonder if someone coming at the story for the first time would be as comfortable with the experience.
As for the colorization of the picture, I think it works quite well in this story. Making the original story in black and white wasn't an artistic decision, but rather a practical one because the show was still a season away from switching. But many of the costume and production folks were already transitioning with an eye to color. Any scene set in the War Lords' base looks fantastic in color.
There are extra edits and insertions at the end of the story. I'll stay vague to avoid specific spoilers. Ordinarily I would have been annoyed at this level of, say, fanwank, but coming at the end of this still-epic story, I was completely on-board with them. Again, the original story exists, so you can completely ignore it as far as worrying about continuity, but I found them to be fun and silly additions.
On the other hand, using musical cues to imply that the War Lord is actually is Master is, of course, very wrong.
They did remove one of my favorite moments in Troughton's tenure, which I knew wouldn't make the cut as --- on paper --- it's just an extra bit of runaround. It's the moment in episode ten where Jamie thinks the Time Lords forgot to put the forcefield back up and they have one more chance to escape. Troughton's performance suggests the Doctor knows it's absolutely futile but plays along because he wants to do a comedy run through corridor sets with his friends one last time.
I don't know who these colorizations and severe edits are aimed at. It's probably not me. The Daleks didn't quite work for me; The War Games did. I don't know what (if anything) is next, but they're an interesting curiosity. Seeing something like The Web Planet cut down to an hour could be interesting, especially if the colorizers are allowed to go completely bonkers on it, which would fit the story.
(As a bit of fun, before this edit was announced, but after The Daleks had been edited and colorized, I speculated on what serial could be done in this manner next. The War Games was the obvious choice. However, I thought it would be cute if they did something like keeping the WWI, Roman times and Civil War scenes in black and white to keep them looking historical, and only switching to full color for scenes set in the War Lords' HQ and on Gallifrey. After all, The Wizard of Oz was something of an epic too.)