Techniscope

Techniscope was the Technicolor 35mm film format used to record, non-ally, and distribute, Dr. Who and the Daleks and Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. These were the only two Doctor Who stories recorded in the format, which was somewhat popular in Europe in the 1960s.

The technique was used to capture an aspect ratio of 2.33:1 to negatives, which could easily be anamorphically stretched to cinema "standard widescreen" dimensions on a more standard film stock, in turn offering 2.35:1 for projection. By contrast, BBC Wales Doctor Who was produced at a 1.7':1 aspect ratio, with the show later shifting to 2:1 from series 11 forward — meaning that the two Dalek movies are noticeably wider widescreen than the modern, high-definition television series.

Within the film industry, Techniscope was developed as an economising measure, and particularly associated with low-budget Italian films of the 1960s. It achieved twice as many frames in the same length of film as, for instance, the more standard stock, by halving the size of each image to an interval of two perforations. This in turn meant that the positive print was blown up by a factor of two. Natural image degradation therefore occurs, which, paired with the generational loss of quality prior to distribution, is usually noticeable to even untrained eyes if they are given the opportunity to compare images in quick succession.

Nevertheless, the cost savings were considerable enough to have made many European filmmakers take notice of Techniscope. Certainly, the lower quality image would not have seemed retrograde to contemporary British Doctor Who fans, who were used to seeing William Hartnell in variable, terrestrially-broadcast black-and-white. The choice might have been more noticeable to the American audience, who had by 1965 become accustomed to 's more impressive and other anamorphic formats.