Tremulous times here at THT Worldwide. An innocent rummaging caused a cascade failure of sorts which left the Tour wonky for a few days until the ship of state, as it were, was righted. Only fitting, therefore, to look at a similarly tremulous story, one which widely, and deservedly in the eyes of the Tour, is a bit of a curiosity for a very particular, and very Tour based, reason.
With the advent of color in Doctor Who in 1970 in the Pertwee era in Spearhead From Space, logic would follow that the images for any story would begin to be comprised with more color images. And yet black and white photography would continue to pervade Doctor Who stories for some time to come.
Now for Tour purposes some of this has to do with the sources associated with these stories. Print-sourced images would be B&W for all sorts of reasons. Still, pun intended, you would think that 1985 most of this would have been swept away.
Not so with Timelash.
The Tour currently has 200+ images for this story, and almost 120 of them are B&W, nearly 60% of the overall haul. Perhaps it’s fitting that for a story where matte walls, dressing, and sets were not just a design but a story choice, that so many of the images would reflect that. It’s just odd.
We tried to find the inverse of this, a 60’s story with an unusual color image count and the best we could do was The Mind Robber, but even there it was roughly a third of those 90+.
Next time … it’s color all the way.