The Chase DVD, Addendum

Well, allegedly Harry Sullivan is an imbecile, but I'm not much better. I said that there were hardly any extras on the DVD of The Chase. Technically, I suppose, that's true; but there's a whole other DVD of extras in the same case, so it's probably a little harsh. What's more, I've even watched some of them! Ah well. To make up for my earlier blunder, here's an addendum with far more detail than I usually lavish on the extras.

Most of these are what my children call "talking heads" documentaries. Everybody is enthusiastic, and to an extent I can see why they put the one featuring Ray Cusick on the other disc as it has a very different feel.

The Thrill of The Chase opens the proceedings, and is, in the main, Richard Martin reminiscing about the making of the serial. He doesn't just repeat what he said on the commentary, which is good; and he's an entertaining raconteur. There is a feeling that here - at the end of his time working on the show - he had simply had enough. He believed that the Daleks had lost their initial punch, he was frustrated by the limitations of the studio cameras and hated some of the production decisions (such as the Aridian costumes). He tells the story of William Hartnell furiously declaiming that he wanted to work again, and I get the feeling that Hartnell wasn't alone!

Martin also claims that Terry Nation's scripts were little more than outlines, and that he spent a lot of time with Dennis Spooner bashing them into shape. I will be looking at similar claims when I get to the Daleks' next outing, so I'll postpone discussion of that until then.

Last Stop White City is up next, and we have the delightful sight of William Russell reading from the novelisation and The Time Travellers. I enjoyed that. The rest of the feature I will also save, this time for my Iananbarbara farewell post.

Daleks Conquer and Destroy and Daleks Beyond the Screen cover all the bases: what they were like to work with, the toys, comics, stage plays, audios and cartoons, along with Birtspeak and Dalek facts. The description of them as petulant panicky children struck a chord, while Rob Shearman mentioning Jim'll Fix It reminded me that there are some watershed moments when what one says in public changes. The shots of the new design were interesting to a neophyte Dalek builder, and the comments about how you need high or low shots for them to work made me think in terms of cinematography. Above all, what came through was the huge enthusiasm for the Daleks that existed at the time (Richard Martin's comments in the first feature notwithstanding).

Shawcraft: The Original Monster Makers was touching but with a few too many talking heads, while Follow That Dalek appealed to me because of nostalgia for the roads and houses of my childhood, even though the repeated sound effects were annoying. I was also interested to see how old Daleks work, and to see larvae guns, moon domes, and macra in colour.

The remaining extras are the Give-a-Show Slides, which I've covered in an earlier review; and the standard Photo Gallery. Isaac always likes these, and he provides a running commentary as if it were some sort of recon (often, for some reason, about the various people in the photos trying to get a decent cup of tea). Occasionally this works really well; I join in sometimes, as does my daughter, and it generally works better with two or three minds on the job. The actual content of the gallery here didn't grab me.

Overall, then, a mix; but despite some reservations I can say that this is an impressive collection of extras.

Next Time:
A glimpse of Iananbarbara's future in Distance. Zyquivilly!