<span class="SFPTagline"> From SCIFIPEDIA </span>

Dr. Who and the Daleks
Release Date	August 27, 1999
Genre	Sci Fi
Director	Gordon Flemyng
Screenwriter	Terry Nation (series) Milton Subotsky (screenplay)
Stars	Peter Cushing Roy Castle Jennie Linden Roberta Tovey Barrie Ingham Geoffrey Toone Michael Coles John Bown Yvonne Antrobus Mark Petersen
Studio	Amicus Productions

Dr. Who and the Daleks (1965) is the first of two theatrical films released in the 1960s based on the BBC's popular series Doctor Who. Both films were produced by Amicus Productions and starred Peter Cushing in the title role.

Rather than create an entirely new Doctor Who adventure, Amicus chose to remake the second story from the television series, The Daleks (aka The Dead Planet). The titular mutants from this story, who resided in metallic casings and whose primary goal was to “Exterminate!” humans, soon became the most enduring of his interstellar adversaries and their popularity with British audiences was perhaps greater than that of the Doctor himself. Thus, an adaptation of Terry Nation’s serial seemed a safe bet for Amicus to introduce the Doctor to the big screen—and in color—for the very first time.

Milton Subotsky penned the screenplay based on Terry Nation's orignal television scripts, with additional material by the show’s script editor, David Whitaker. The film changed the Doctor from the Time Lord of the series to an eccentric human inventor, played by Peter Cushing. Unlike his television counterpart (William Hartnell's often prickly first Doctor), Cushing's character was amiable and actually called himself "Dr. Who." The film also portrayed the Doctor's granddaughter Susan as a much younger girl and changed her teachers Ian and Barbara into an older granddaughter and her awkward boyfriend.

The film was directed by Gordon Flemyng, who worked almost exclusively in British television for the thirty-odd years of his decidedly unremarkable career.

Synopsis

The Doctor’s invention, the TARDIS (Time And Relative Dimensions In Space), is disguised as a police call box, and can travel through time or space. It does both, whisking the Doctor and his granddaughters Barbara (Jennie Linden) and Susan (Roberta Tovey) away when Barbara’s clumsy boyfriend, Ian Chesterton (Roy Castle), stumbles against the controls. When the TARDIS lands, they find themselves on the planet Skaro in the distant future.

Poisoned by nuclear war, Skaro is inhabited by two races: the peaceful, humanoid Thals, and the deadly Daleks, which are protected by their mechanized armor. Joining forces with the Thals, the Doctor and his companions undergo the usual quotient of captures, imprisonments, and escapes, but ultimately defeat the Daleks by interfering with the magnetic forces that control their futuristic city.