Daleks – Invasion Earth 2150 AD ** (1966, Peter Cushing, Bernard Cribbins, Ray Brooks, Roberta Tovey, Jill Curzon, Andrew Keir) – Classic Movie Review 3308

The acting and production team from the hit Dr Who and the Daleks (1965) reassembles and – guess what? – the rotten robotic mutant Daleks have invaded the hapless planet Earth in 2150 AD and enslaved its population. But there’s more: Dr Who and his time travelling companions arrive on Earth and set about to help human resistance groups to foil the Daleks’ evil scheme to mine the Earth’s core. Producer Milton Subotsky again adapts Terry Nation’s BBC TV serial.

Director Gordon Flemyng’s 1966 sci-fi adventure is an even milder sequel to an already thin TV spin-off, with Peter Cushing re-creating his re-invented characterisation as the benignly good and always gentle, grandfatherly eccentric inventor Doctor Who and Bernard Cribbins successfully replacing Dr Who and the Daleks’s Roy Castle as the comedy turn, making his character much less irritating than Castle’s was.

Also returning from the original is Roberta Tovey as Doctor Who’s granddaughter Susan, who is joined by Dr Who’s niece Louise (Jill Curzon) and a comical male companion, London police constable Tom Campbell (Bernard Cribbins). Other new additions to the cast are Ray Brooks, Andrew Keir, Godfrey Quigley, Roger Avon, Keith Marsh, Geoffrey Cheshire, Steve Peters, Philip Madoc, Eddie Powell, Peter Reynolds, Bernard Spear, Sheila Steafel, Eileen Way, Kenneth Watson, John Wreford and Robert Jewell.

A remake of the TV serial Doctor Who: The Dalek Invasion of Earth (1964), this is the second, and (so far) last, Dr Who cinema spinoff, though a TV film, Dr Who, appeared in 1996. The special effects are by Ted Samuels.

Plans for a third movie based on the TV serial The Chase (1965) were abandoned after weak box office for the second film.

Oddly, Cushing does not mention the Dr Who films in his autobiography, although he kept a collection of newspaper clippings about them in a scrapbook.

The TV Doctor Whos so far are First William Hartnell, Second Patrick Troughton, Third Jon Pertwee, Fourth Tom Baker, Fifth Peter Davison, Sixth Colin Baker, Seventh Sylvester McCoy, Eighth Paul McGann, Ninth Christopher Eccleston, Tenth David Tennant, Eleventh Matt Smith and Twelfth Peter Capaldi.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 3308

Link to Derek Winnert’s home page for more reviews: http://derekwinnert.com/