It was interesting to read quite a few disparaging comment recently about the quality of special effects in Classic Doctor Who and so thought I would start a thread to show some of the best moments. Here are a few that I thought of:

The TARDIS is captured by the Time Lords at the start of Trial of a Timelord

Mel is caught in the Rani's 'bubble trap' in Time and the Rani

Please add any others that you can think of.

I really like the Medusa head in The Mind Robber - creepily effective IMO.

The image of the vortex on the Tardis scanner as the Tardis dematerialises for the first time in An Unearthly Child. Still as effective as ever.

Those are two excellent examples Mulett, but I think you need to look no further than the very earliest days of the show for a brilliant example - the TARDIS dematerialisation effect. Simple maybe, but SO effective that we all took it for granted almost immediately.

Also from 1963 - the clever mix of actors and model as the original TARDIS crew look down on the Dalek city in The Dead Planet. Again we take that sort of thing for granted these days but back then this was quite a complex effect.

It's the things that we don't really notice as effects that are often the best effects. The things that look simple, but which are actually carefully crafted. I love the Auton guns - a stunningly effective effect.

I always thought the stop motion Krynoid was quite good and there isn't anything better than the 74 - 79 vortex intro.

Absolutely; the dematerialisation, the noise of the TARDIS . . spellbinding! I know modern Who has played about with this a little, but amazing that 50 years later that special effect is essentially unchanged. There are probably a lot of classic Who special effects that are taken for granted just because they became so commonplace.

Yes, two of the worst stories have two of the best special effects! One of my favourites are the Drashigs, done so well as basically hand puppets.

The Doctors' face appearing in the title credits, I believe they were too scared to do this for Hartnell right and it started for Troughton. Quite creepy and innovative for its time.

I think the TOATL one is what came to mind the moment I saw this thread and for me that is the best effects Classic Doctor Who ever achieved in terms of quality.

However, I do agree with some of the other posts about the older effects that were good for their day. The Unearthly Child 'Trip through Space.' effect is as riveting today as it was back then I agree some of the title sequences are good as well and I still think the starfield sequence of the Eighties is just awesome.

Just another couple of effects worthy of mention. I think the Pink Sky in Mindwarp is quite good, aside from where it jars in places.

The other one is the church blowing up in The Daemons. It still does look real to me, I could swear they had actually blown it up if I didn't know any different!

http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Title_s...=Doctor-6a.jpg

Doctor Who Special Effects from Classic Who at it's Best

I do remember the opening sequence of Time and the Rani, where the TARDIS was captured, was held up to be something very special as an effect at the time.

the zygon spaceship. Tom bakers title sequence..does that count??

daleks and mechanoids fighting in The Chase final episode.

Peri's clevage.

I almost added "Turlough's speedos" . . .

That is a Special Effect all of it's own.....

Turlough saves Peri from drowning . . there's something for everyone!

Ruth Baxter scared me as a teenager with the special effects.

As much as some of the early episode effects appear quite ropey today, they were really cutting edge at the time. I just watched the Android Invasion and Brain of Morbius and some of the CSO effects are pretty seamless. There's none of the old fringing. I would never have known the corridor extension in Brain of Morbius was CSO if the commentary hadn't pointed it out!

You just reminded me of the old painted backdrops used during this period. Some of them work, some of them don't. I think the most effective one is the backdrops used to add extra corridors in the distance like in The Keys Or Marinus or The Daleks. In actually in Black and White it really does look like there are extra corridors in the distance there.

I'm watching The Ice Warriors at the moment and the set does look really convincing as well. That is, until they start using stock footage mixed in of wolves and other animals, that shatters your disbelief.

Talking of CSO, I think the one thing that gives the Black and White stories a bit of an edge over the 70's and 80's ones as well is not having the mixing of real life images and backdrops etc you mentioned. Many a time, especially during the Pertwee Era, you'd get a CSO backdrop which fringed around the edges and in stories like The Green Death, they mixed it up good and proper between scenes filmed on location and others in the studio against a CSO backdrop. Time Flight in the 80's has the worst mix of effects I've ever seen and that doesn't help.

So in that sense Black and White triumph's as it didn't have to rely on CSO to make an effect and therefore sometimes, but not always, the sets were a bit more convincing.

I know by today's standards its very simple, but I think this sequence from The Mind Robber is very effective and must have been really shocking at the time.

YES! I love the Vervoid story, and the Ruth Baxter moment is brilliant. It still spooks me to this day, and there's a genuine atmosphere of creepiness and nastiness in that story.

Similar to Ruth Baxter: Arthur Stengos in Revelation of the Daleks.


Also, I'd like to nominate Kane melting (Dragonfire), the Rani's bubble-traps (Time and the Rani), the pink skies of Thoros Beta (Mindwarp), the faces in the tomb (The Five Doctors ... another scary moment), Varne melting (Attack of the Cybermen).

Really, the show was doing some cutting-edge stuff in the 80s. The Tereleptils and Tetraps were properly groundbreaking in their use of animatronics.

Going back into the show's history ... the "time warp" in the sarcophagus (Pyramids of Mars), the simple take-off and landing of the Tardis, false perspective stuff from the early B&W stories .. I could add more if I had time to stop and think.

One that si so simple is the view of the village church from afar in The Awakening: the church is painted onto glass and isn't actually there! I had no idea until I saw the DVD docco.

There's so much more to early DW than just wobbly sets.

I think some of the space scene shots with the ships in 'Enlightenment' are gorgeous. Weeelll, everything about that story is fantastic.

in honesty there were some good looking monsters in the mccoy era,
the destroyer,heamovres,the gods of ragnorok.

Cannot believe that no one has mentioned City of Death on this thread yet!

The Dalek invasion of Earth, of course! Bombs that made weak flashes and distant rumbles, guns which fired from somewhere behind the barrel, the Slyther, a color changing Dalek...yeah. Great story, but the effects were quite possibly the worst I've ever seen in DW. Mind you, the use of stock footage at the end was pretty good, as was the noise that the Slyther made (@terrifying.)