One of the challenges of writing about color in film and television is analyzing its impact without being able to show it in motion. Stills are helpful aids, but they don’t capture the viewing experience—especially when it comes to the question of how color alters our perception of space and movement. This is why “A Dalik is (now) a Many Splendored Thing” is simultaneously pleasurable to view and successful in making a straightforward argument about color use and meaning in moving images. By placing the same/similar scenes side by side,  Johnston helps us see how color defines “the known and unknown spaces” of the storyworld: the TARDIS gains prominence while the petrified forest becomes more legible while also blossoms into sumptuousness. The music selected for the soundtrack perfect sets the mood and our relationship to the period.

As Johnston notes, this case is unique in that it is an example of a black and white television program directly adapted for color film, which provides us with an opportunity for a comparative exploration across media forms and with greater specificity. We can see how closely the film tracks with the original tv program, likely in an effort to please fans of the original, while also offering viewers a moment to both explore the storyworld in more heightened and sensual detail and, as Johnston points out in his discussion, help define objects existed outside or alongside the text, such as merchandising.

I think the side-by-side comparison is both effective and affecting. In viewing the video essay, it is striking to see just what color can do to moving images—how it generates sensation/emotion, crafts space, draws attention, brings a sense of style/art/modernity to the media text. I do wonder, however, if it is altogether fair comparison. Johnston notes that he reconfigured the televisual to match the cinematic, which I think is fine as long it’s acknowledged. However, I wonder about the quality of the televisual image—it seems washed out and degraded. Were these clips taken from an old kinescope or experienced generation loss from some other form of copying/storage? This seems like an important detail to take into account when considering how audiences at the time might have been viewing the show and comparing it to the film version and in considering the aesthetics of film vs. television during this period. In watching this video essay I was also reminded of how the moment of a networks full conversion to color (occurring in the late 1960s in the US) provides us with examples of particular shows being produced in black and white and then in color. In those cases, while the results of color conversion can be quite stunning and transformative, there is also a legibility, clarity—a crispness—to the black and white versions that put the two versions on more equal footing in terms of the quality and legibility of the image.

Overall, this piece is provocative and instructive on a number of levels and could be used in stimulating theoretical and historical connections for further research and be used in the classroom to generate much thinking and discussion about color use, spectatorship, genre, and comparing aesthetic strategies across and through media platforms.