Official Trailer

The War Games in Colour Ungraded Colourised Shots

The War Games in Colour Extended Edition Ungraded Colourised Shots

Design

I designed the Colour Palette Template for The Daleks in Colour, which was used again on The War Games. A nice clean and simple layout, it always amuses me that the skin tone is referenced as just one single colour but it provides a good base!

Commandant Gorton featured here has a yellow folder in front of him for which I had no definitive reference and the colour I chose blends in nicely with the other papers on his desk. The teapot, mugs and various pottery dotted throughout the set are directly sampled from two existing colour set photos which proved to be invaluable. There were so many tiny details in that set and not one of them escaped my attention. I’m very proud of it. Even his pencil is sampled from a genuine WW1 one I found online although the green leaves of the plant beiefly seen at the bottom of the stairs is sampled from a houseplant sitting on my desk!

Extended Scenes

The box that Jamie and Zoe are sitting on in this extended scene is only available in the home media release, left me wondering what colour to use. In the end I opted for Feldgrau which is the official colour of military uniforms for the German armed forces and then I blended it in so that it doesn’t draw attention to itself. Fortunately, those red wires above them are visible on an actual colour photo from the set leading from this one. The barbed wire is sampled from actual barbed wire too! As much as possible is authentically sampled. There were lots of blurry movement in this short scene.

This is my colourisation of Wilhelm II, Emperor of Germany and King of Prussia.

Although totally anachronistic, it would have been great fun to have this photo of Wilhelm in colour for one of the extended scenes. Oh well!

Canon

I’m overjoyed that although only briefly included in The War Games in Colour, my colourisations of The Seeds of Death and The Abominable Snowmen are canon. Woohoo! You can briefly see Zoe’s leg in her leathers in The Seeds of Death shots and as Wendy Padbury described her outfit as yellow, so I made sure that was as described. The following slides are my supplied and ungraded shots which are a lot more colourful than those transmitted.

Magazine Articles

Doctor Who Magazine is still available as a printed magazine and you can purchase a copy from www.doctorwhostore.com or a digital copy of Issue 612 of Doctor Who Magazine dated January 2025 that features The War Games in Colour. Quite amusingly with a colourised photo on the cover from a different story – Fury from the Deep

Easter Eggs

In this very brief shot you can see a blue rag behind Patrick Troughton. The colour is sampled from Jon Pertwee’s blue shirt in his finale Planet of the Spiders. See what I did there?

Although I primarily used my Intel i7 32GB Desktop PC to colourise The War Games, I used my antique Dell laptop while my desktop was tied up rendering. It’s a Dell Latitude 5590 with 16GB RAM

Research and Recovery

Colourising Doctor Who led me to uncovering the origin of the title sequence used in the epic 10 part story The War Games. Hours of research into military battles finally paid off when I was thrilled to identify the correct source of the footage and most surprisingly it comes from a time of war not used in the story!…

Nobody had to my knowledge ever documented this and I released my research into not only the title montage but the stock images, illustrations and vehicles used in this story. Fingers crossed I will be credited for this when Season 6 The Collection finally surfaces!

A few precious minutes of HD footage was returned by Chris Hayden, the story’s film editor featuring this very sequence just in the nick time to be included in the colourisation. Listen to the fascinating Podcast here where Chris casually mentions he has the footage!

As a side note, I just happened to be listening to Pink Floyd’s Atom Heart Mother (1970) and noticed that a bomb whistling through the air sound effect (or real sample) from The War Games title montage features in it. Have a listen here.

Not featured in my Title Montage Mystery Solved video, here is a lovely photo dated 11/02/64 of Miss Judith Reeves and Ken Blackhall after their wedding at Chalfont St. Giles. They drive from the church in a 1914 Sunbeam with the number plate B 6264 owned by Judith’s father, which is the exact car that was later to feature in The War Games.

Star Trek Continues

Having discovered Star Trek Continues in 2024, I was inspired by the colour scheme used in the excellent episode Divided We Stand. Do check out this web series as it is absolutely brilliant!

A Colourisation inside a Colourisation

Did you spot my colourisation within a colourisation? One of the photos on set shows that one of the black and white photos pinned up to the bed here is in fact colourised, so I made sure this tiny detail was colourised in the shot that I submitted.

Comparisons

It’s quite interesting to see the shots I submitted vs the transmitted version. The transmitted versions have the BBC logo on and are taken from iPlayer,

Unused War Chief

For reasons that became clear in the episode, it’s a great pity we didn’t have my unused suggestion for The War Priest! It was just for fun anyway 😉

Youtube Reviews

TV Listings