Fan Film Theater: Doctor Who – Flight of the Daleks

I’m not ready yet to make this an official catagory, but at least I’m finding this interesting. One of my goals is “if they’re not going to make the stories I want to read, I’ll make them myself”. So I’m thinking why not show what others are doing that I find interesting, and may be offering me a bit of inspiration. I may go beyond fan films, though, since there are also fancomics that I like to read, and that’s the area I plan to make my own start in.

Tonight is number two on my list of favorite things I find interesting. The list would be:

1. Transformers
2. Doctor Who
3. Godzilla

In other words, I’ll get a Transformers story before a Doctor Who story and a Doctor Who story before a Godzilla story. Everything else, however, are usually out of luck when one of the other three are available. Tonight I’m looking at a Doctor Who fanfilm. (And if anyone knows of a good Godzilla fanfilm or something in the Kaiju arena that isn’t Kaiju Big Battel, which I do enjoy when I come across it, please let me know.)

Maybe it’s just the fanfilms I’ve come across, which for full disclosure probably aren’t even half the Doctor Who fanfilms/fanshows on the net, but a lot of them seem to enjoy using the Cybermen, the Master, or the Daleks in one form or another. If this is what you’re about to do with yours, may I present Flight of the Daleks, produced by VortX Productions. They have been making fanfilms since 2000, according to their site, and not just tales of the soon-to-be last of the Time Lords. That other multi-actor world-saver, James Bond, has also been done by VortX, but I never got into Bond so I can’t judge it. I can, however, judge this:

Now this isn’t perfect, and I’ll get into that in a moment, but I do like the story, even if it does feel a bit forced to get the Daleks, the Cybermen, and UNIT together. I wouldn’t mind hearing more about the backstory with Sophie and Captain Halloway, and how the Doctor was involved in that first meeting. However, VortX has a habit of having different companions each movie without explanation. The next movie had a character named Sadie as his companion, and there were different companions in the TVTL films they inherited the world from. I also like the little touches, like the news reports and the couple playing with the camcorder just as the Dalek’s ship crashes.

This wasn’t A.F. Harrold’s first time as the Doctor, and I like how he’s his own Doctor, rather than trying to be one of the actors. As long as you get the basics, being your own Doctor is the way to go, and most fanfilms get this right. However, you also have to make your Doctor interesting, and this Doctor is. He certainly has his own quirks, like drinking tea made from spider husks (I’m with Sophie as preferring my tea the way we Earthlings usually do it) and plans within plans, but less willing to endanger his companions than even his other lives, and they don’t exactly put their companions in the line of fire. It’s also nice that he has his own costume, rather the one in a previous movie that looked like a variation of Tom Baker’s outfit.

The CG isn’t the best ever done, but still rather good. It also a smart usage. A lot of fanfilms just decide that they’re low budget and might as well not ignore it. VortX doesn’t go through the time-consuming and rather expensive task of building sets for the TARDIS, the TV news set, the Dalek ships and shells or the Cybermen ships, but doesn’t shy away from using them, or making them look even less low budget than the original series. (Which of course a fanfilm is, since their couch cushions have even less change than a couch at the BBC, plus the BBC has more couches.) Instead, they just use virtual sets and Daleks, and (for what you expect of a fanfilm) it comes out much better than you’d think.

The Daleks are well done, although there are times when you can’t hear their dialog. Sometimes the music is the culprit, while other times it’s just the voice altering process they use to make the voice actors sound like Daleks. However, they do a good job of imitating the voice types used by the various Dalek VAs to seperate one Dalek from another. You can tell which Dalek is speaking, even if you can’t see them at the time. Bonus points for bringing in the Special Weapon Dalek. (I believe that the “official” name of the Dalek with a cannon for a chest.

The Cybermen in this one are rather hardcore, even ripping one of the Dalek’s right out of his shell. They’re also willing to wipe out the Earth in order to get the data crystal out of Dalek hands. So much for using us for raw material to create new Cybermen. I can’t say I’m a big fan of the costumes, though. I’m glad they didn’t go the CG route for the Cybermen, but the colors are too dark, and the heads look like a box (which it probably is, but still..) with an visor. In a previous film, The Plague of Lynchwood, the Cyberman costumes were much closer to the typical costume, and they weren’t even “normal” Cybermen, being a creation of the Master, but based on the Mondas cyborgs. That’s disappointing.

All in all, however, well made production. I would also encourage you to check out their other works, including The Plague of Lynchwood, which as I recall was also interesting.