DALEKS: INVASION EARTH 2150 A.D.

(vt Invasion Earth 2150 A.D.) Film (1966). AARU. Dir Gordon Flemyng, starring Peter Cushing, Bernard Cribbins, Roberta Tovey, Jill Curzon. Screenplay Milton Subotsky, based on a 6-episode DR WHO tv story by Terry NATION, The Dalek Invasion of Earth (1964). 84 mins. Colour.

   This was the second movie made by coproducers Milton Subotsky and Max J. Rosenberg to cash in on the popularity of the Dr Who tv series, the first being DR WHO AND THE DALEKS (1965). The DALEKS, almost 200 years on, have invaded Earth (largely unchanged since the 1960s) intending to empty its core and use it as a giant spaceship, but Dr Who and his colleagues, who include a London bobby (Cribbins) from 1966, thwart their plan in a story devoid of dramatic tension or science: Earth's north and south magnetic fields, we are told, meet below Bedfordshire, and can be used to suck the Daleks into oblivion at Earth's centre. The greatest ineptness of the screenplay is its failure to give Dr Who, here played as a doddery old gent by Cushing, anything at all to do.

   PN