A year on from the colourised version of The Daleks, released to tie in with Doctor Who’s 60th anniversary, comes The War Games in Colour, another root-and-branch re-editing of a 1960s classic.

It’s fair to say these releases are not to everyone’s taste, with opinions ranging from horror at the sacrilegious butchery involved in cutting down 10 episodes to a brisk 90 minutes, to enthusiasm for the creative use of Doctor Who’s back catalogue. My response is largely positive, tempered by some of the production choices – one of them in my view particularly misjudged.

The colourisation is hugely impressive, with results that for the most part don’t feel out of step with early 1970’s Doctor Who. In the preview feature in Doctor Who Magazine #611, producer Phil Collinson says that one reason for the choice of The War Games was the improved quality of footage in the later 1960s stories, and indeed there’s a crisp clarity here that The Daleks in Colour couldn’t achieve.

My most persistent niggle was that the shade of blue chosen for the Doctor’s shirt felt too vibrant – coming after Barbara’s dazzling pink blouse last year, maybe this will be an annual tradition? But overall, it felt to me that someone coming to this material afresh could easily think it had been filmed in colour.

As with 2023’s story, it’s the editing that will have proved more controversial than the colourisation. Such a drastic reduction in running time was always going to lead to some treasured footage being excised. There are some terrific guest performances in The War Games, particularly among the villains, and it was a shame to lose so much of their plotting and manoeuvring for power. But some re-edited sequences, such as the inter-cutting of Jamie and the redcoat soldier with Lady Jennifer and Lieutenant Carstairs as they separately analyse just what is going on worked well, serving to deepen the sense of mystery.

In line with expectations, much of Part One, with the travellers’ arrival and the story set-up, was retained, along with most of the trial at the conclusion. There was some heavy pruning in between although, amusingly, there was still a fair amount of escape and recapture for the regulars to endure. It seems to me that it’s best to view this version and the original as very different creations. Doctor Who was made to be watched weekly in short instalments, and if this kind of update isn’t for you, that’s entirely understandable.

I had mixed feelings about the new special effects created for this omnibus. As with the Doctor Who DVD animations, my standard for judging these things is whether they feel in keeping with the spirit of the original production, and what would have been possible for the production team to create at the time. So I was happy to see shots of SIDRATS in flight, and the colour clips of Quarks, Yeti, Ice Warriors, and the rest during the trial were a real treat.

But the inclusion of CGI sequences of the Gallifreyan dome felt too modern, and I felt the regeneration, whilst undoubtedly technically impressive, would have benefitted from being created more simply. It was nice to see a bit of Spearhead from Space, though, and I had to laugh at the TARDIS calendar not being able to make up its mind whether it was 1970 or 1980.

On the topic of the regeneration, the biggest misfire of the whole thing had to be the Doctor being shown images of his future selves. It felt insulting to Peter Capaldi (too old?! Bloomin’ cheek…) and surely missed the point that the Time Lords, growing impatient with the Doctor’s obstructiveness, put up a fairly cursory set of possibilities, rather than pre-ordained future incarnations.

That aside, however, and accepting that it won’t have been for everyone, I enjoyed this pre-Christmas opportunity to enjoy one of the series’ classics in a new form. It made me appreciate Patrick Troughton’s Doctor, full of impish mischief and unable to break his ‘habit of getting involved in things’, all the more. And it has to be said once again that, whether it’s a colourised re-edited version, an animation, or a photo reconstruction, there isn’t another programme that gets this type of treatment. Whether you approve or not, it’s a thing of wonder that people keep spending time and resources on new versions of old Doctor Who stories – and that has to be something to be grateful for.

The War Games in Colour can be viewed on BBC iPlayer and will be released on DVD and Blu-ray later this year.