The Chase

Chapter The 233rd, where the Daleks and the TARDIS team have a ticket to ride, and they very much do care. 

Plot:

The Daleks have built or obtained a time machine so that they can find and kill the Doctor and his friends, Ian, Barbara and Vicki; picking up a broadcast of this intention on the Doctor's new gadget, the Time Space Visualiser, the time travellers embark on an extended chase. The TARDIS lands in a succession of times and places, pursued by the Daleks, and the TARDIS team face a variety of (quite minor) threats in each locale before they can escape. First is the planet Aridius, then the Empire State building in 1966, then the Marie Celeste in 1872, then an abandoned festival exhibit with anamatronic Frankenstein and Dracula in Ghana in 1996. Each stop, the Daleks close the gap with them a little more, but during the journeys the Doctor is able to build a Dalek-exploding device. In Ghana, Vicki gets separated from her friends, and stows away on the Dalek time vessel. There, she sees that the Daleks have built a robot copy of the Doctor indistinguishable from the real thing (except in medium and long shots). Both time craft land on the planet Mechanus, which the Doctor, Ian and Barbara decide will be the site of confrontation, their plan being to capture the Dalek's craft and use it to go back and rescue Vicki. Quickly, though, they find her and she tells them of the robot; there are a few altercations with it before everyone works out who is Who, and the robot is deactivated.

Dodging the hostile plant life of the planet, the four time travellers end up trapped in a cave surrounded by Daleks, but escape in a concealed lift with a Mechanoid - one of many such robots that have been preparing Mechanus for colonists that never arrived. They travel up to a city that has been built on stilts high above the surface of the planet, and meet Steven Taylor. He crash-landed on the planet two years earlier, and has been kept alive and studied in captivity by the Mechanoids, as he doesn't know the codes to demonstrate to the machines that he's friendly. The TARDIS team prepare to climb down from the high and unguarded viewing platform accessed from Steven's room using unfurled electrical cable. The Doctor sets off his device which explodes a Dalek and sets the city on fire. Steven, still dealing with shock and trauma, rushes back in to the burning prison room to fetch his stuffed toy mascot (his equivalent of a Wilson volleyball); the others climb down. The Daleks and Mechanoids battle on. Steven escapes the city (somehow) and finds his way to the TARDIS (somehow). The others discover the Dalek time-ship, now empty, and Ian and Barbara use it to travel home to London, a couple of years after they left. The Doctor and Vicki watch them return on the Time Space Visualiser.

Context:

Full disclosure: this story came up as a random selection before the last couple of stories blogged, but I held it back to tie in with the write-up of the two Cushing films at the BFI (see Deeper Thoughts below). There's obviously only a fairly loose connection between those spin-offs and The Chase, but I have already blogged the two stories that were used as the basis of those movies (The Daleks and The Dalek Invasion of Earth). As mentioned at the event and noted below, there was an option for a third Cushing Dalek film that was never taken up. The assumption has always tended to be that the filmmakers would have taken the obvious next step, and its script would have been an adaptation of this third William Hartnell ding-dong with the Skaro mutants. The last but one Doctor Who Magazine (at time of writing), which like the BFI event tied in to the Cushing Dalek films in honour of their new restorations, contained a fun comic strip Dr. Who & The Mechanoids written by Jacqueline Rayner and drawn by Russ Leach that suggested what such a story might be like in miniature. It's good that it exists in comic form, as an actual movie of The Chase might have been difficult to produce (more on that in a moment). Anyway, I watched The Chase, which ultimately was the inspiration for no movie screenplay at all, from the DVD an episode a night over the course of a week in June 2022.

First Time Round:

I first watched this story when it came out on VHS in September 1993, Doctor Who's 30th anniversary year. I waxed lyrical about shenanigans surrounding that anniversary in a recent blog post for The Green Death; a couple of things I didn't have space to mention there - which are both apt to provide me with a nostalgia rush whenever I see them - are the special anniversary Who logo that adorned merchandise, and a brief video intro showing each of the seven Doctors faces morphing into one another (google "doctor who 30th anniversary video intro" and you'll find it) that preceded the episodes on the Doctor Who VHS tapes released to buy in that year. The Dalek tin, and The Chase tape within it, feature these embellishments. Oh, I forgot to mention that too: a couple of VHS releases that year came in presentation tins for the first time, grouping together multiple episodes, either because that made sense (all the different sections of the Trial of a Time Lord that don't fully stand alone) or just to randomly pair together two wildly unconnected stories as in the case of the Dalek tin, which as well as The Chase contained Remembrance of the Daleks. I guess the celebratory concept was the start and end of Who's long heritage, the two stories being the oldest and most recent Dalek stories respectively that had yet to be released on video at that point. For the die hard collectors, there were four variants of the tin available, so you could blow a hideous amount of money collecting them all. The only difference was that a different photo appeared on the base of the tin, which I didn't even spot until a friend pointed it out to me. I still have the now rusty tin, and just got it out of a cupboard to check: my variant has a picture of a Dalek! The TARDIS-shaped tin containing Trial of a Time Lord had a whopping seven different variants, a portrait of a different one of the first seven Doctors on each copy. I did not have the money to collect all of these, so - a month later when that tin came out - I went to buy a tin with Colin Baker on its base, only to find they didn't have one in the shop, so I got a Tom Baker one instead (any Baker was better than no Baker to my twisted logic).

Reaction:

As can be seen when they're not bound by the needs of weekly episodic television scheduling and are tightened up to make 90-minute movie scripts, writer Terry Nation's first two Dalek tales are solid, exciting adventure stories. He had done the Doctor and his Earth friends visiting the Daleks, and he'd done the Daleks visiting the Earth. Where would he look for inspiration for his third Dalek story, a difficult second sequel? As he would many times in his future work for Doctor Who, he looked for inspiration in his own back catalogue, specifically reusing the structure of his non-Dalek story from Doctor Who's first season, The Keys of Marinus. Like Keys, The Chase is a peripatetic rush through many different locales that each provide the background to a Doctor Who scenario in miniature (in The Chase, the drama of these micro-narratives rarely rises above a minor squabble), the episodic parts held together as a whole by a straightforward - some might say sketchy - umbrella concept (a quest, a chase). As such, it's hard to imagine what Milton Subotsky (as writer and producer) and Gordon Flemyng (as director) could have made of this plot structure as a 90-minute film. If they'd cut out the bits that don't move the dramatic plot forward, then they'd have a film set almost 100% on Mechanus, which wouldn't give across the spirit of the original, but if they instead featured all scheduled stops of the TV chase in less running time, the resultant film would have been very bitty and the costs of all those different sets prohibitive. It's probably for the best that the second Dalek film didn't do as well as expected at the box office, so nobody had to wrestle with an adaptation of The Chase: it is mostly powered only by the charm of the regular cast's interactions, and the only major drama comes from changes to that regular cast; none of that would have been relevant to a film version.

If a movie budget would have struggled to create the many and varied settings of The Chase, how was the even more cash-strapped television production to fare? With difficulty. There are various B-team monsters - the Mire Beast, the Fungoids - that are barely mobile, and any goodie character has to manoeuvre themselves into trouble (Maureen o' Brien as Vicki basically wraps a Mire beast tentacle around herself in an early scene). I can understand why the Mechanoids are so enormous - they can't look too much like a Dalek, but someone's got to have room inside the props to propel them - but it's still very silly when one is in the lift with the four regulars, who are pressed back against the walls because of the lack of room. Like the Quarks in The Dominators, the voices have been pitched to be in sharp relief to the Daleks, but this unfortunately means one can't work out a word they're saying.  When Barbara asks to be released from the prison towards the end, I've always thought the machine replied "Rot" to her, which seemed a bit harsh. Apparently, it's saying "Threat". Also outsized is the Time Space Visualiser, which is ultimately only used to deliver two pieces of exposition, and some fun bits of business, before never being seen in the series again; it is so big, however, that it would dominate anyone's front room; perhaps this is where a lot of the budget went. As usual, Doctor Who's reach exceeded its grasp, but the design of what's on screen, though a bit cheap, is nonetheless mostly effective. The film work is good, with the early sandy scenes of Aridius shot in a quarry location adorned with weird twisted tree things a stand out, as is the studio-shot film of the Dalek Mechanoid battle at the end. The director Richard Martin seems to be having a few off days when in the TV studio, though; nothing is framed very well, and the actors' blocking doesn't appear to have been sufficiently worked out in rehearsal.

This somewhat clumsy look, plus the episodic nature (the script doesn't dwell in any place or on any threat for more than 15 minutes max), and the lack of urgency (in the middle of this breakneck do-or-die chase, the regulars stop for meals, changes of clothes, and sleep) combine to make The Chase seem a bit shambolic. The humour level is higher than usual too, and it all adds up to an overall unseriousness. There are so many changes of setting in The Chase that some jar when treated in a light-hearted, knockabout way. One example is the Marie Celeste section, which is presented as slapstick, but involves a crew of real historical people, including a mother and child, jumping to their inevitable death by drowning. Similarly, when the time travellers meet up with Steven Taylor in the final episode, he's been in solitary confinement for two years, and has clearly been traumatised by this (Peter Purves plays this very well, and is pretty good in the comic role of Morton Dill earlier in the story too); reacting to this broken man with jokes and giggling, the TARDIS team come over as uncaring. Mostly, though, the light-hearted moments are the best bits of The Chase. It's a shame that the beginning sequence where the quartet just hang out in the TARDIS has to end for something so dull as a Dalek plot to take over; Vicki wandering around aimlessly, bored, the Doctor tinkering with his time TV, Barbara making Vicki a dress, and Ian reading a book on Monsters from Outer Space ("A bit far-fetched"). Each choosing a historical scene to view on the Time Space Visualiser is nice too, allowing for a clip of the Beatles to be included, and for everyone to have a bit of a dance. There lots of nice lines; not laugh out loud funny but charming, like the exchanges about using Barbara's cardigan as part of a Dalek trap (Ian: "It's for the Dalek, not for me", Vicki: "I hope it suits him", then the Doctor's "My dear boy, we're trying to beat the Daleks, not start a jumble sale."

The chase structure means that most of the Dalek scenes show them on their own; this leads to more variety in the voices used to allow differentiation between the different Daleks speaking; that makes sense. It doesn't really make sense to make one a basso profundo but hesitant Dalek who starts every sentence with "Er... er...", but it must have been a deliberate choice, mustn't it? The same sort of choice as having another one cough and splutter as it emerges from the sand for the episode one cliffhanger. I thought it was funny, anyway, whether it was meant to be or not. The unevenness of presentation created questions in my mind related to the fourth episode 'Journey Into Terror'. The Doctor thinks he's entered the realm of nightmares, an environment of the collective unconscious, but he's really in a disused funfair house of horrors. As with any Doctor Who story of this vintage, a certain suspension of disbelief is required. But how much? Is the fake plastic bat that swings into view above our heroes the fake plastic bat of Doctor Who, or the Festival of Ghana? Are the Doctor and Ian supposed to see the string it's suspended on, or are we? Or should neither party acknowledge it? I got cognitive overload trying to work out whether I'm watching the designer's brave stab at a funfair haunted house or an actual haunted house, and came down in the end on the side of it being intended to be an artificial-looking space. As such, the Doctor is being a bit dim imagining his fanciful theories when the prosaic truth is obvious. The Doctor and Ian's next plan is to capture the Dalek time-ship to go back to this haunted house and rescue Vicki, who they think is stranded there. How exactly did they think they could pilot it into the world of the mind?! This, like the Time Space Visualiser, and other details such as the futuristic Vicki living near a castle with a drawbridge, is forgotten as quickly as it was introduced.

The story goes beyond overambitious and becomes operatic in its silliness. Why, for example, did anyone think they could attempt a robot doppelganger plot without access to split-screen, and where they were rationed for how many shooting breaks they could take in studio to move actors into different positions? The resultant solution - the robot is Hartnell in close-up, and a not-look-very-much-a-like in every other shot - is so wrong, it almost becomes right. Just at the point where one thinks the lightweight story might float away completely in a bubble of ridiculousness, it comes down to Earth, literally, with the departure of Ian and Barbara. The final remaining original members of the companion cast, there from day one, their departure was always going to be emotional for those invested watching at home (as well as for the Doctor - Hartnell's delivery of "I shall miss them, silly old fuss-pots" melts the heart), and it's handled magnificently. William Russell and Jacqueline Hill play the scenes with such joy, Russell's hearty and heartfelt exclamation that they have made it back to "London 1965" has such impact that it became a social media meme back when Doctor Who marathons were being shown on Twitch. The interesting touch of showing them having fun as a series of still photographs works well. Ian and Barbara are suddenly back in a world where they have to worry about road tax, bus fares and explaining where they've been hiding all this time. It's testament to the characters that one wants to see them spin off into their own show at precisely this moment; those scenes pile up in the plus column of The Chase, tipping things over to outweigh the minuses.

 

Connectivity: 

In both The Chase and The Haunting of Villa Diodati, the Doctor is accompanied by a three companion team; in each story there is an appearance by historical wordsmiths, references to Frankenstein's monster, and a trip to the 1800s. The force of antagonism comes from monsters encased in metal in both. Both stories see the TARDIS team leaving a location believing some kind of uncanny phenomena has just been witnessed; they're definitely mistaken about the creatures that they witnessed at the festival of Ghana in 1996, and may be mistaken about the ghosts Graham saw in the Villa Diodati.

Deeper Thoughts:

Dr. and Susie Who's Experimental Journal Entries: BFI Southbank Peter Cushing Dalek films double bill, 19th June 2022. It was a sunny London Sunday, and I made my way to the BFI on the South Bank of the Thames to meet a selection of the usual crowd with whom I attend these sessions, who have been mentioned many times before on the blog, David, Trevor and Scott (and later we caught up with Chris, Dave and Tim too). The event was a little different to the usual BFI Doctor Who screenings, as what was being shown wasn't a BBC product, but instead was Studio Canal property. Bought up amidst lots of archive library holdings over the years, the two 1960s Aaru Productions movies starring Peter Cushing and the Daleks have been given 4K restorations by Studio Canal, and were being given their first public outing in the largest BFI screen NFT1 that day. This meant that hosts Justin Johnson and Dick Fiddy did not do the usual quiz (as there were no freebies to give away), and the programme was split into two sessions with a short gap in between, each separately ticketed: the first film Dr. Who and the Daleks with accompanying panel discussion, and later Daleks - Invasion Earth 2150 AD. Johnson and Fiddy also squeezed in a brief Q&A at the start of each session, to give us our money's worth. I settled down in to my seat in the full, sold-out theatre and realised that sat in front of me were Doctor Who writers Robert Shearman and Joy Wilkinson, which was nice.

Fiddy (L) and Johnson (R)

As one of the young viewers that saw the films on first release, Fiddy talked about the wonder of seeing the stories on the big screen, particularly with echoing sound better than he could get through the tinny speaker on his telly at home. He also was not bothered about the differences between the films and their TV inspirations (the Doctor being a human inventor, Susan being much younger, Barbara being related to the Doctor, Ian being a physical comedian instead of a teacher, etc.) as such not quite liberties were routinely taken with adaptations at the time, including those of folk tales like Robin Hood and King Arthur. The preliminary Q&A before the first film then took place; onto the stage came two of the people who had worked on the restoration, Anthony Badger (pictures) and Mark Ayres (audio). Badger told the audience that previous versions of the films on disc had not gone back to use the original negatives. A lot of detective work was required to locate these; the sequel's negatives were easier to find, and when the first film's were located, it was discovered they were heavily scratched. A wetgate process was used to repair them, so the restored versions of both films that we were about to see were therefore based on the best possible foundation of first generation pictures. Ayres explained how he had become custodian of the de facto masters of the films' audio elements. In the 1990s, he had worked on a VHS documentary about the Cushing films with director Kevin Jon Davies called Dalekmania, and was given at that point DATs of music reels and sound effects tracks. After becoming involved in audio soundtrack and Blu-ray releases for the films over the years since then, he had discovered that all other audio sources were of inferior quality to the DATs in his possession.

(L to R) Badger, Fiddy, Ayres

After the Q&A, the first film was shown. Because in the last few years I have only seen 4:3 TV Doctor Who episodes at the BFI, and I had never seen these two Peter Cushing Dalek movies on anything bigger than a TV screen before, it was doubly exciting when the NFT1's screen slowly extended out to its fullest widescreen size and Dr. Who & The Daleks started. The first thing to state is that the restoration is faultless; every frame looked perfect, even blown up to those unforgiving proportions. The two films are going to be shown in Picturehouse chain cinemas across the country in July 2022; if you're reading this in time, and you haven't seen the films on the big screen before, I recommend giving them a try. Apart from the changes to the main characters mentioned by Fiddy, there are a few other changes to the plot of note. The Daleks taking the TARDIS fluid link, a vital plot point, is foregrounded better in the film than in the TV version; unfortunately, the later realisation when our heroes have escaped that they don't have the fluid link and therefore have to go back into the danger of the Dalek city again is undercut by the contraction of the running time - it's not plausible that they would have forgotten so quickly, unlike in the TV version where lots more time has been shown to elapse by that point. The character Antodus, who in the original I thought was an obvious audience identification figure (see the blog post on the Daleks, linked to above in the Context section, for more details), gets a happy ending here. In general, the film adjusts scenes to be less bleak than in the TV version; the scene where the Doctor and Ian goad the Thals by threatening to abduct Dyoni and take her to the Daleks to exchange for the fluid link is played with much more humour.

Watching something with a large audience always highlights more laughs than one ever realised were there watching at home. Something I didn't find quite as funny as the rest of the audience was the Dalek voice rhythms; they are, I suppose, inherently a bit silly, but where they may have tickled me a tad, they led to guffaws from many others. Particularly (unintentionally) funny to the crowd was the poor Dalek at the denouement that doggedly keeps going with his long countdown to the irradiation of the planet, no matter what's going on around him. I did laugh out loud at the exchange where a character shouts "Dalek!, and a Dalek wheels around and says "Yes?" enquiringly. Mainly, though, the Daleks work dramatically, and this was the best they would be framed and shot for many a year, perhaps ever. A lot of the remaining humour, believe it or not, is intentional. Peter Cushing is adept at the 'absent-minded scientist' comedy. Most of Roy Castle's physical clowning lands; it's only at the end that it comes apart a bit, and that's not his fault. The script doesn't really have an ending: leaving Skaro, the TARDIS lands in ancient Rome, and Ian opens the door to see unconvincing stock footage of soldiers advancing. Ian slams the door and then Castle has to essentially busk, pulling lots of levers and so on, as there is a slow fade, but it's too slow and he looks to be getting a bit desperate before the credits roll. Once they had rolled, and the lights had come up, the main panel took place; onto the stage came Anthony Waye (First Assistant Director of both films), Jill Curzon (Louise, in the second film), and Roberta Tovey (Susan, in both films).

(L to R) Johnson, Waye, Curzon, Tovey

Sending apologies for a last minute change that meant he could not attend was Jason Flemyng, the actor son of Dalek films director Gordon, and probably still best known for Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels though he's got an extensive body of work. It was a great shame as his familial connection would have meant some strong and interesting recollections. It's fair to say that the remaining panel wasn't the most engaged or engaging, as for everybody on it the Dalek films were just a job or couple of jobs a long, long time ago. Jill Curzon did a few weeks of filming for Daleks: Invasion Earth 2150 AD during a busy 1960s where she was in demand for films and TV, and she's 86 years old now. Anthony Waye is only a couple of years younger and he's worked on over 80 films in a stellar career, and - let's face it - many of those films are more important than two children's films based on a TV show in the mid-1960s (Star Wars, Bond films, The Elephant Man, etc. etc.). It fell mainly to Roberta Tovey to give more extensive answers to questions, but she was 10 years old during filming and so took some of the more bewildering things she was experiencing in her stride, as children often do. As such, there wasn't much depth of feeling expressed, but all three nonetheless gave it their best. Waye explained the role of a 1st AD is to keep everything on schedule and budget and keep everyone - from the shooting crew to the director - in line. He remembered there being tremendous budget and time pressure, but everyone handling it well. He couldn't remember specifics of the budget, but could remember that he was on 60 old pounds a week (he still had his old contract of employment).

Tovey was aware of the TV show and had watched a few episodes, but wasn't guided by anything she had seen, and wanted to make the part her own. She had to audition for Gordon Flemyng by reading from a book of Spike Milligan poems, and thought she'd messed it up, but the call telling her she'd got it came in before she'd even managed to get back from Shepperton. On set, the Daleks provoked more interest than fear for Tovey, who was curious as to how they worked (they were propelled by dancers inside the shells for the films). Everyone recalled the technical challenges of working with the colourful pepperpots, with Curzon recalling the scene where one fell down a ramp, went onto its side and caught fire, and the challenge of getting the operator out once the shot was finished. Johnson prompted Tovey about a particular method Gordon Flemyng had of keeping her focussed for the first film: he offered her a shilling for every scene of hers that didn't require a retake. At the end of the shoot, he presented her with a suede pouch containing 21 shillings with a note "To One-Take Tovey, love Gordon", which she has kept to this day. Everyone had nothing but praise for Peter Cushing, who from this session and everything else you can hear or read about him, was one of the business's true gentlemen, kind, patient and generous. Curzon recalled going to a museum in his honour in his old home town, and being given an enormous picture of the actor which was then auctioned for charity; Tovey told a sweet story of how she was asked to speak to him in his trailer on the first film, and he told her that he'd been asked to film a sequel, but he wasn't going to do it unless she did too. She agreed and he said "Okay, I'll tell them that we'll do it". This is probably why Tovey preferred the first film as she was together with Cushing and the cast throughout, unlike the second film where everyone was mostly split up.

(L to R) Johnson, Sergei then Dmitri Subotsky, Fiddy

The final audience question was about the song Who's Who that Tovey recorded contemporaneously with the films, and again she described it as being a professional interaction: into the recording studio to sing the song accompanied by an orchestra on day one, then the next day in again to record the B-side. Johnson joked that we would finish with a rendition from Tovey, but she demurred. The final word went to her, as she said "Hope you enjoyed it" to the departing crowd; and we did. After a brief break, everyone trooped back into NFT1 for the second film. Well, almost everyone; Chris, Tim and Dave had apparently screwed up getting tickets, so stayed in the BFI Riverfront bar while it played. The big thing they missed was an unadvertised Q&A with the Dalek films' producer and screenwriter Milton Subotsky's sons, Dmitri and Sergei. They had as talking points several documents related to the Dalek films that were left behind in their father's effects when he passed on. There was a Dalek blueprint for the first film, which is being held up in the photo, but alas I was too far away to capture any detail (it looked like a movie Dalek, unsurprisingly). There was an exchange of memos about the publicity stunt getting the Daleks to appear at the Cannes film festival. This allowed Fiddy to come in with a nice dad joke "You can see why Daleks would be wary of a Cannes opener". The biggest exclusive was the presence of a script for a third Doctor Who related film. This wasn't from the mid-1960s and based on The Chase, though (another document the Subotskys brought confirmed there was agreement for the third film at that time, but it was never made). Instead, this was from about 15 years later, showing that Doctor Who hadn't left Subotsky Senior's mind. It was an adaptation of a property that had gone by the unfortunate previous titles "King Crab" and "Night of the Crabs" that he'd adapted to feature the Doctor. Coming to Big Finish very soon, maybe?

2nd film's title card (note typo bringing the invasion forward 100 years)

The second film then followed, and it was clear that it was so much better than the first. It has a more serious intent, though still a nice balance of light and shade, with Bernard Cribbins in the comic sidekick role doing some dramatic work as well as clowning. The Thals in the first film, love them as I do, aren't roles with much scope to shine, unlike the various hotheads, misguided rebels, profiteers and quislings of the second film's script. This means we get superior turns from a cool Ray Brooks, and a gruff Andrew Keir. Best of all is Philip Madoc in one of his many Doctor Who roles on big and small screen, as the spivvy and smarmy black-marketeer Brockley. There are some great stunts throughout, and some very good explosions and model work. The Dalek Saucer (a model that left a bit to be desired on TV) is fabulous, though on the big screen restoration I was able to see the strings for the first time. Watching these cultural artefacts back to back, one can hear the development of a catchphrase: unless I missed it, the word "Exterminate" is not said once by any Dalek in the first film; by the time of the sequel, it's almost all they say! The film's not perfect, of course: there's some obvious product placement with prominent posters for Sugar Puffs seemingly everywhere early on; and there are some unintentional laughs - a big one was also early on, when the Doctor opens up a roboman helmet and says "Highly advanced" over a close-up of some very 1960s transistors. Overall though, it's fun and enjoyable. It even has an ending, with Cribbins' policeman Tom returned a little early so he can catch the villains that he let escape first time round - this breaks every rule of the time travel narrative, but who cares?! The film over, our entertainment was complete. We went back to the bar and enjoyed a few hours of food, drink and chat. Leaving, we all mused on what would be the next one of these BFI events. There's no word on the next Blu-ray box set, so it might be the animation of The Abominable Snowmen that is coming out sometime later this year. 

In Summary:

Lightweight but fun, just like the 1960s Dalek movies.