Is This Worst Doctor Who Episode Ever Made?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 ก.ย. 2024
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The Chase is highly entertaining for lots of reasons. But due to its ambition and issues with some of the production crew, episode four has a disproportionately high percentage of fluffs, gaffes and failures compared to a typical episode. In this video we breakdown all its issues, and take a peek at episode five as a bonus.
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I really like The Chase, it's honestly my favourite Hartnell Dalek story. It's just a lot of fun, honestly, I can't explain it beyond that.
the chase is one of the greatest stories of all time, it's completely perfect in every way and so qwirky
As a kid I thought this was a fantastic story. Bought the DVD as an adult (more 👴🏼than 👨🏼) and watched it twice over again.
Nothing in which Daleks invade a haunted house and fight Dracula and Frankenstein could possibly be the worst anything... No matter how nonsensical and anticlimactic the final reveal is.
You've made a glaring error, there: Frankenstein is the name of the creator, not the monster.
It’s like people who say Tannoy when they mean public address system; Tannoy is a brand name!
Yeah it's actually a great episode lol. 👌
@@Captain-Cardboardhoover for a vacuum cleaner,Dyson for an expensive brand of shit?we get it. But it's English usage,get over it.
@Captain-Cardboard I really enjoy this episode where Frankenstein meets Dr. Who. I used to draw pictures of Dr Who and Frankenstein with my biro.
Sue me. 🙄🙄🙄
Clearly the person who made this hasn't seen Space Babies...
It's absolute bonkers but one of the most enjoyable Doctor Who stories ever made. I never tire of watching it, especially 'Journey into Terror'.
It's a silly and very entertaining serial.
Body slamming the Dalek is a little bonkers.
Being a Star Trek fan, I did not see the pattern in the stars as an ‘A’ but the Starfleet Delta instead!
Is the Special Weapons BBC Camera in episode 6?
The chase is a mess of fantasy and "reality" at a time in the series when it was supposed to be "educational".
This "educational" meme in 2024 is absolute shite. It was on in the same slot as other adventure serials.
They were asked to keep historical stories accurate as possible and that was dropped almost immediately.
@@papalaz4444244Wrong on so many levels it’s physically painful.
@@DrWhoFanJ No it isn't. You are 100% entirely wrong. Sydney Newman was no educator. He wanted an exciting serial. Verity Lambert wasn't an educator. She worked in commercial tv. Name any serial you can say "this is a lecture for kids"
@@DrWhoFanJ Name any part of the drama documentary where they were planning lessons for kids?
@@papalaz4444244 Literally every single story has at least one or two educational moments.
The whole reason for the historical stories was to teach the history, and the sci-fi stories existed to teach science.
These are all very-well-documented objective facts.
🐙
Please keep these coming. I am about as unobservant as can be but even I was thrown by the premature Dalek in Frankenstein's laboratory. The plastic bat is just great.
I still find The Chase a fun time to watch.
I've loved this serial ever since I first saw it in 1965, when I was nearly 8 years old. I thought at the time that it was the best Doctor Who ever! I still remember writing about it at school, accompanied by a drawing of the Dalek time machine pursuing the Tardis through time and space! I was the target audience and it was the greatest thing ever as far as I was concerned!
Technically flawed, but some good writing in places. In terms of writing, the worst would probably be something from the last few years, after the revival went off a cliff.
The good thing about being a Dr Who fan is that you spend your life rewatching the stories, and as a result, you go from basic "this story is rubbish" opinions in your childhood to being more critical and analytical when you get older. It can either redeem a story when you can pinpoint what does and doesn't work, or at the very least it helps you understand why you don't like a certain story. I'm really enjoying the bluray collection releases for giving me a chance to rewatch stories in the context of the season they were made, and to see what works and what doesn't.
When you have a short studio time (just a coule of hours at most) and no real time for reshoots (physical edits to video tape were restricted that that time too, what do you expect?
Yep agreed those reasons did make it hard to make a perfect show. But there were also other Hartnell episodes that were far far better under the same restrictions.
@@Dalek6388 It's what happens when studio delays forces the blocking of the episode to start several hours late. The cast and crew were largely winging it throughout because they hadn't been able to block and fix any problems. Hence a lot of cameras off position, cast coming in early for cues, stray Daleks, etc.
A lot of the glaring errors would have been better planned and rehearsed if they'd had time to rehearse it all on the day.
In my opinion The Chase is a tough watch - as a youngster back in the early 90's I remember seeing The Daleks and Dalek Invasion of Earth on VHS and thinking they were good stories ...and then a couple of years later The Chase was released on VHS and my reaction was what the hell is this? - a story so silly and comedic that it bordered on parody. But over the years I've softened by opinion and I can laugh at scenes such as the stupid stuttering Dalek or the other Dalek that throws itself off the sailing ship shouting ''YEAAAH !'' - however, the story ends with one of the most brilliantly acted departure scenes - Hartnell gives a masterclass performance in emotion ranging from anger / concern to sad / reflective - his final line to Vicky ''I shall miss them'' - I don't think much acting was required here - he looks genuinely upset as he had formed a close working bond with William Russell and Jacqueline Hill.
Back then, it was amateur special effects but professional story-telling... these days, it's the reverse.
For me, being technically perfect doesn't make a show entertaining or even necessarily add that much to the quality of entertainment.
Part of the fun of classic Who is all it's quirks, I read a comment once that said a lot of the choices were two things: 1. We didn't have the budget. 2. The director said "let's do x". To be honest, a lot of the quirks of "The Chase" aren't really noticeable unless they're pointed out. I'm not saying that makes them forgivable, but I don't think it hurts the overall story.
Another unrelated BTS story. In "The Stones of Blood", the director wanted to celebrate 15 years of Doctor Who by having Romana present the Doctor with a cake for his 751st birthday. But the producer felt the idea was "self-indulgent," so they didn't shoot it. The cake was later eaten by the production crew, and sadly, no photos of this cake exist (to my knowledge).
A fun, but definitely wobbly episode! 😂
I feel like the director was strictly thinking of the footage in terms of what the average British viewer would realistically be able to see in a low-quality, small TV screen without being able to pause or rewind. In that sense, the Daleks in the funhouse and William Hartnell's stand-in probably wouldn't be nearly as obvious. Personally, I like the pragmatism. I even dig the fun kind abstraction of the Doctor moving over to the Dalek screen in a close-up; they must have seen the reels to check what the background looked like, so you have to conclude changing it must have been intentional.
You forget that back in those days (a) the TV image quality was often much poorer than you present here (thus obscuring odd shadows etc.) and (b) audiences, even children, knew how to suspend their disbelief when presented with a story.
To answer your question: No. This is not the worst episode ever made. I have been going through the Doctor Whos on BBC iPlayer. By far, the worst is The Web Planet in the second series with Hartnell. Every episode - every scene - is an embarrassment to television.
The real mystery is why Peking would cancel a haunted house at Ghana’s world’s fair
Is it possible alot of the edge problems wouldn't have been seen on the smaller 1960s tvs? Surely the resolution would have been lower, hiding some of these gaffes, unlike modern lcd panels...of course some are just awful but how can you not love it?
Doctor Who And The Antiques Of Acorn...
😂
The visible string of the bat can be forgiven, since the concept is that this is a fun house, and the bat is meant to be visibly fake.
I really wish we had A Cushing version of The Chase. I can imagine that the haunted house would have a real Hammer Horror feel to it!
Production quality & mistakes are not in anyway detracting from my enjoyment of The Chase. The poor, uncreative & pedestrian - back of a ceral-packet style story - on the other hand - is less exusable- and yet - I still enjoy it. I clearly have that very necessary low quality threshold that seems necessary for early Doctor Who!
It's really dumb, but at least there's a lot of stuff going on in it and the climax with the Mechonoids is actually kind of spectacular.
The Chase has my favourite Dalek design 🐙
What's with the bit where Edmund Warwick who, in all his other dialogue, just "lip syncs" to Hartnell saying it, EXCEPT for one bit which he does in his own voice (much plummier than Hartnell).
Man I love The Chase
Another for episode 5: when Vicki first finds the light corridor in the jungle, in the distance behind her a stagehand’s hand visibly reaches down to the ground and then slowly pulls back out of shot again.
To be honest who would have seen these errors on an old black and white tv back in the 60s and even then as kids would we have realised they were mistakes?
405 lines was a very forgiving format. It even convinced us that 25 year old Jackie Lane was 17 years old as Dodo.
This is definitely why I don’t like to be too nitpicked about goofs from this period, they would have been almost unnoticeable. The way the stories were filmed, they also often had no retakes. You need to essentially see this era as being akin to a series of filmed stage plays more than TV as we see it now.
@@adamsinclair1959 Whenever I watch 60's WHO - or more specifically, Hartnell - I just shrug off the production errors. I know in reality they'd been doing tv for - you know - like almost a decade... so should know what they're doing, right? (ha!) I think it's pretty amazing considering the time frame that they were dealing with, that they had as few problems as they did!
First Dr Who Story I ever saw when I was 6 years old .
When NOTHING ended up on the cutting room floor. Now THIS is how you get it done on schedule and under budget and all the union members were happy because they got their breaks on time and got to go home on time.
They were post-editing things out of episodes right from the start. There were means of fixing certain things in editing - and doing retakes at the end of the night was also possible to 'drop in' to the episode.
But editing time was tight. And this episode would have needed a lot of work. Easier just to let it go out. It wasn't the only programme that went out with flaws. TV was used to some oddness (particularly in live TV) and viewers just accepted things more when it happened at the time.
Short answer: No.
Long answer: noooooooooooooo.
But great video :)
Are there any other classic story’s the “fixed” for the DVDs? I had no idea they did that
There are a few that have had bits and pieces tidied I think
Absolutely continue going through The Chase as it is such a fun story, and I'm eager to know how much changed for the DVD release.
Although I'd change the title for this video into something less clickbait-y. You're gonna get a ton of people who'll just comment without seeing the video just so they can complain about Chibnall and Moffat and Russell (something I've already been guilty of).
Yep getting plenty of those comments 😂
Is it me but Martin's work on the show always seems really undisciplined? There's a sense of "this is really too ambitious for me, so that'll have to do" about his stuff. But I do love The Chase. It's terribly executed. Lazily directed. But it is riveting car crash telly. See also The Web Planet.
Marvellous rundown! Fully support the idea of of doing eps 1-3, please & thank you!
Just found your vid and really liked it. I would be interested to see a review of The Chase after it was watched on a 1960's TV set. I am old enough to remember to the poor quality black and white TV's and quite frankly, a lot of those issues would be almost invisible or indeed, concealed by the snow or fuzz or horizontal hold issues you experienced more often than not.
And I think the next episode you see the camera just sitting there in the jungle, clear as day.
Episode 5 also famously features a whole camera in shot in the scene where the Daleks are discussing their plans near the TARDIS.
wow, do you think you could talk about my favorite dalek story next? The Planet of The Daleks.....best Dalek story ever
The Chase is great fun
I have to admit, I did enjoy those episodes a lot. They had a more-personable feeling like the old network dramas - _Westinghouse Theatre_ or whatever; better yet, it seemed like the actors were having fun. As you've said in other videos, the little defects in production were'n't going to show up on a small TV but watching them now only makes them more charming. I mean, as long as the characters didn't see the bat string* then it makes the final reveal even funnier. BTW just noticed recently that William Russell passed away in June, almost 100. :(
*Not to be confused with the Bat String™ that you find in Batman's utility belt.
The Chase is certainly a wild ride and very entertaining!
Would have been interesting if this got the big screen colour treatment like the original daleks and 2150 invasion.
I never knew the DVD had fixed some things. They must have done a good job since I never noticed
I thought it was brilliant even though I only watched it for the first time a few years ago it’s a billion times better than anything with the current dr
By the time Sylvester came around I was already 14 and thinking - this is not going down well with my schoolmates. It's just how it was. The Chase is almost designed to defuse the ridicule surrounding the series. But I don't know if it did that. Viewed through the lens of someone who grew up in the hypercritical early 1980s, it made you hide behind a sofa for a different reason.
I gotta be honest I really loved The Chase
Definitely the m.ost bonkers 60s Dalek story
If you don't enjoy The Chase, you have no joy in your soul. If nothing else, it's a damn ambitious story, kinda wish we'd got a film adaptation like the earlier Dalek stories, could have smoothed out some of the rough edges and better realised some of the bigger ideas.
Sure. It’s got plenty of flaws as a story. In fact, it’s hardly a story - more like a string of short skits hung together with a loose, overarching theme. There’s that dodgy moment when the Frankenstein monster beats up a Dalek and you can see right up the Dalek’s skirt. There’s the Dalek in the background in a scene where there shouldn’t be one because they forgot to move a prop. There’s Morton Dill. There’s the Dalek ‘umm-ing and ah-ing’. There’s the William Hartnell double that looks nothing like William Hartnell.
But it’s also rather fun. A bit silly. But fun. It doesn’t lecture you. It doesn’t try to make some sort of deep socio-political point. It doesn’t expect you to think too hard. And given who the target audience was back then (sorry if it upsets people, but it was a family show predominantly aimed at children) and given the expectations of 1960s British audience, it delivers!
Is it my favourite Dalek story? No. But it’s by no means the worse. And I find it to be far more watchable than any Dalek story from Moffat’s era onwards. And more fun that a lot of Dalek stories from RTD’s first tenure too.
I had this in the box set with Remembrance of the Daleks when I was a kid. Probably only watched the Chase once. I had forgotten almost all of it. Honestly I find the first doctor stories practically unwatchable due to the age and general production quality.
I watched this adventure back in the 60s and thought it was great
Before I was able to watch The Chase when PBS finally got the episodes, I was aware of it by the episode guide published by Target and then some images. After The Web Planet not being the masterpiece that the Target novelization made it out to be, I was more forgiving of The Chase. I am probably one of the few people who enjoys all six episodes, although I will admit that episode 6 is my favorite of all of them.
I can't stand the chase I find it really boring and slow.
I've only ever watched it twice once on video and when I got it on dvd with the space museum.
Interesting, but I loved the story and remembered it from first transmision very fondly ! No problems as far as I am concerned. I knew all about boom shadows and such, my Father worked on the show ads a sound mixer. Many years later I too worked on DW 🙂
I've always been a bit ambivalent about Richard Martin as a director on "Doctor Who" but if memory serves he had a fairly long career so I've always wondered how he was perceived in the industry.
Ha ha this is great but I can guarantee that neither myself nor probably many other 7 year olds watching this back in 1965 on those olde black and white tellys noticed a single one of these glitches...we just wanted to see Daleks and more Daleks! I was never actually frightened of the Daleks but this haunted house episode really did scare me back then Lol. .
I adore the chase, especially the haunted house episode, but I always cringe when Vicki freezes before running 😅
Love videos like this, though on CRT TVs some of the crew etc slipping into shots wouldn't be visible as old TVs cropped the edges off (and even more so at the rounded corners)
first of all we are lucky this story was not wiped, yes it has alot of big flaws IE the doctor's robot double LOL but it is a fun story. comedy in dr who does not always work. if they had of made a third dalek movie with the hammer horror monsters and actors it would have been fun and it is a pity it never got made (with AI and CGI maybe one day it will be made)
I saw this as a kid back in the sixties, it was just a bit of a laugh, no one took it seriously. Doctor Who has always interspersed more ridiculous stories with the more serious and even dark. The special effects were of course extremely suspect back in the day too but I still prefer the sixties and seventies Who. But that of course is probably due to my age.
It would be interesting to see a video about all the retouches they've done. I had no idea they were doing any editing outside of the marketed new vfx versions included as special features.
This is forensic level observation. Do you solve murders in your spare time? 😮 More please; this is fascinating stuff!
yes i would be very interested to hear more about The Chase - one of my favourite adventures & your critique of its production values only enhances my enjoyment
Obviously you're very accurate and very passionate, but this was a bit sad to watch. How hard Dickie Martin must have tried and how difficult it must have been.
Isn’t there a BBC camera lurking in the jungle in plain sight in part five?
One of the stair statue maidens turned up as set dressing in an episode of Sixties Steptoe, from one junkyard drama to another.
Don't be bloody daft, The Chase rules.
almost like he said he loves it at the very start of the video you didn't watch
Honestly? All the mistakes add to how fun the Chase is
Tbf, even if produced perfectly, it would still be silly.
LOL, Yes please, more of this.
No, that's The Twin Dilemma Episode 1.
yes please do more, I love these :)
Adverts stop at 3:26.
This was 1965 ? FFS
Worst story ever?
No.
Worst Dalek story of the 1960’s?
Yes, by a country mile. Other 5 are all fantastic
Er, also the Grey Lady creeping around the back of the set when she's not supposed to be there. Dracula's pre-recorded dialogue not materialising for a few seconds. The Frankenstein monster suddenly getting a jacket. Jacqueline Hill missing her dialogue cue. Missing bell tolling sound effect.
Yes, you should take a look at episodes 1- 3!
Web planet is the worst
Web Planet is the best; an impressionistic masterpiece!
I loved the chase
The Chase is a great little story…….who cares about the technical stuff.
I agree. This was back in the era of cheapish sets and improvised not very special effects. One was expected to use a certain amount of imagination watching shows like this (and dispense with most thoughts of reality). I loved the story as a kid and I’ve got a DVD copy of it as an adult. Still get a chuckle out of it and I think it is STILL better than a lot of TV shows today.
@@csbenzo Well said that man, it’s almost like going to the theatre where your imagination takes over. TV was like that in those days. Unfortunately I can’t remember this story as a child, it’s one that didn’t stick with me for some reason, although I can remember looking forward with anticipation to ‘An Unearthly Child’ like it was yesterday. What with the Kennedy thing, that weekend will be with me forever. I was only five at the time, well three months off of being six 😊
It's awful.
Amazing job getting Sir Christopher Lee to narrate your videos.
😂
I love the Chase. It’s just so completely bonkers and daft I can’t help but enjoy it every time I watch.
My favourite character has to be the “bumbling” Dalek stationed in their time machine whose only job seems to be to be to grumble at everything it’s asked to do. It’s my little theory that this was a relation of the Supreme Dalek or the Emperor and none of the rest of them are allowed to complain how useless they are at their job.
@andrewwebb3431 I call him Dozy Dalek because he always seems to be half asleep. 😂😂
Watched this video in 144p so I can live the 1960's television experience (or what I imagine it to have been like).
To be fair, it did disguise things like the string on the bat puppet and the camera reversing behind Ian... but not the actors waiting for their cue or someone scurrying across the DARDIS floor in front of the daleks!
Perhaps if I watch it from a screen on the other side of the room instead of right in front of me...
405 lines in digital resolution would be 377i so watching in 360p is akin to 405 line resolution.
This story was exciting when a copy was doing the rounds in 80’s . A degenerative copy of a copy
But since AI and blue ray its been cleaned up
No it's a nice adventure wish some people would stop pulling the old dr who down as it was the lack of money and bad acting that mad dr who what it was but it was the story that kept everybody watching as a classic fan I've tried watching modern dr who and to be frank there not my cup of tea sorry but i go as far as Colin Baker and that's about it for me but other than that thanks for your videos as there quite interesting in so many ways.
@PaulGould-t7u Bad acting? Their acting knocks spots off 5th rate actor Capaldi. I cringe when I see the so-called acting of today. They all act like David Caruso when he stands sideways looking mean as he puts his sunglasses on in CSI Miami.
2024 says: "Gosh. The special effects they used 60 years ago weren't very good, where they?"
Even in the 1960s a viewer was expected to use a bit of imagination. Many episodes of The Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits had by today’s standards very basic special effects. It’s almost part of the charm.
Great video, however, I was always told that the worst Doctor Who was in fact "The Gunfighters", which I have seen, and in my opinion is way worse than "The Chase", one thing that you have to remember is that at the time of the original broadcast, almost every person viewing was doing so on a small screen, B&W, 405 line television set, like the one that I'm told I watched it on aged 5 and half in 1965, a lot of those things wouldn't have so obvious to the viewer.
You guys are doing a great job.
@storkythepunk The Gunfighters is one of my favourite Hartnell stories. It's much better than The War Machines.
And also that these episodes were expected to be watched, enjoyed, then forgotten about. No one back then could have dreamed that years later they could be watched repeatedly, argued over, and subject to intense analysis! Contemporary episodes of Z Cars or other drama series were probably just as bad/good!
@@denniscattell Also, the BBC didn't have a reputation of showing loads of repeats back in those days, they were only really kept for export, apart from the reshowing of the very first episode, I don't think that any were repeated until (I'm probably wrong here lol) "Spearhead from Space".
@@Poliss95 Actually I do agree, I think that the reason why The Gunfighters was considered the worst because it had the lowest viewing figures for a lot of Dr Who history, but that isn't always a mark of quality, or lack of, besides I don't think that the American accents were any worse than Peter Purves on top of the Empire State building in the Chase.
Dracula's voice clearly not working on the first go,(sounds like its played in rather then an an actor doing the voice line) before eventually working always makes me chuckle.
@younglad1 Dracula is a robot that hasn't been used in ages. The attraction is closed remember. It's not surprising that the voice is out of synch.
Yes - the video's compilers missed that one.
To be fair, considering these were essentially 'one and done' episodes that would have been viewed on small screens, we can forgive a fair amount.
Given the pace with which they popped out these stories in the sixties it is perhaps unsurprising they messed up on occaision
Its a shame this wasnt the basis of a 3rd Cushing Dalek movie. Was the Dalek that was hoisted in the air a new light weight prop?
Great vid as always
It was lightweight yes. We cover more about it in our first ever Terry Nation Army video.
@@Dalek6388 It's the same one that falls off the Marie Celeste...
I wonder how many of these mistakes would be apparent on a 545 scan line TV of the period?
@eddiegaltek 405 lines.
All of them. 405 lines is hardly so bad that you can’t see the errors. People were just used to production errors like these as the rest of British TV was made in the same multi-camera way so didn’t really pay much attention to errors like these anyway.