A year on from his first attempt putting some of his illustrations through AI and creating trailers for “Classic” Doctor Who out of them, artist Daryl Joyce – author and artist of The Illustrated Journey: Sixty Years Through Space and Time – has created a new look at Genesis of the Daleks.
The original story by Terry Nation, starring Tom Baker as The Doctor, opens with the Time Lord being recruited to end the Dalek menace before it begins, “hired” by the Celestial Intervention Agency. Daryl has gone back further, offering new scenes for the story – and whether you’re a fan of AI or not, it’s certainly impressive.
Before hackles are raised, the use of AI regularly prompting much discussion, as far as I am aware, Daryl has only used his own work to create this “trailer”. That is his choice.
However, as also noted, he has used generative AI to animate it, which is trained, as one commentator noted elsewhere, “on a black box of data”.
“If you have a moral issue with something like Midjourney, you may have the same issue with this, otherwise it’s rather a selective bias,” they suggested.
We have asked Daryl for more information.
AI such as Sora or Kling are platforms widely used in the animation of images. Both, it is claimed, have “learned” how things move in the same way Midjourney has “learned” what things look like. (Midjourney’s scraping of artists work without permission to train its AI is widely known).
Over two decades, Daryl’s original work has appeared in Doctor Who Magazine, on the Big Finish range of audio dramas and on BBCi’s cult Doctor Who site.
“I thought I’d have another go at creating some new elements and scenes, and using an extra years worth of editing experience to revamp and rework my illustrated Genesis of the Daleks trailer,” he explains. “Yes, I know some people hate Ai ‘slop’ and whilst I agree that the proliferation of AI has its attached problems, one could say the same about Photoshop ruining film posters for years and CGI being often less believable than practical effects, however, there’s surely a middle ground where it can be used as a tool to advance work already created.
“As an illustrator for a long time I am using AI to add movement and create something that entertains me and lets me indulge in presenting my stuff in a new way through visual and sound editing; essentially something akin to a trailer for a graphic novel.
“Enjoy, or not, but try to be polite.”
The not-for-profit release has prompted a wide range of reaction, from fellow artists praising the work to others feeling the use of AI is a road best not travelled, pointing to the fact that Daryl has “fed the machine”, his art now open to exploitation by others; the environmental cost of AI use; and the morally dubious scraping of original work by many companies to train their AI platforms.
You can check out more of Daryl’s art and work on Instagram, X and YouTube
This isn’t the first time Daryl has tried his hand at bringing a new take to Genesis of the Daleks. Back in 2022, he shared two tantalising spreads of a graphic novel he’d begun developing back in 1993, and created an impressive faux film poster published on his now defunct, hijacked website …
• You can check out more of Daryl’s art and work on Instagram, X and YouTube
• The Illustrated Journey: Sixty Years Through Space and Time (AmazonUK Affiliate Link)
‘It all started out as a mild curiosity in a junk-yard, and now it’s turned out to be quite a great spirit of adventure don’t you think?’ … so spoke the Doctor during Doctor Who‘s first season, and from that ‘mild curiosity’ the show has gone on to explore strange new worlds in this universe and others, taking in all times and places along the way.
For Doctor Who‘s sixtieth anniversary, we considered that perhaps the best way to celebrate would be to remind ourselves of all the adventure, thrills, alien species, monsters, villains, companions and excitement that the Doctor has experienced on his many travels, all with his most faithful of companions, the TARDIS, by his side. Sometimes ‘the old girl’ gets left behind, or sidestepped in time, but most often she is there at the start, and again at the end, waiting patiently for the Doctor and his friends to return in order to whisk them all off somewhere else, where more adventure awaits.
And what better guide than the incredible artwork of Daryl Joyce. Joyce has been at the forefront of Doctor Who artwork for many years, creating imagery to accompany many tie-in works, but this is the first time that a work of this magnitude has been attempted … trying to encapsulate most of the Doctors adventures and voyages in one book. We did consider trying to cover them all, but the book would have ended up twice the size – unmanageable – so with Daryl’s help we have filtered and filletted the journeys and present the majority … with a few additional sidesteps and images along the way, all to celebrate sixty amazing years of travel in time and space …
‘From the misty streets of Shoreditch in 1963, to dark and spooky planets via ancient Rome, Troy and literally hundreds of locations in between,’ explained Joyce. ‘The aim was to respectfully up the scale, bring the imagination to life and give it all the gothic polish that Robert Holmes inspired in my appreciation of Doctor Who.’
An adventure through memory, to scenes and places explored and encountered by the Doctor and his friends…
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John is the founder of downthetubes, launched in 1998. He is a comics and magazine editor, writer, and Press Officer for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He also runs Crucible Comic Press.
Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine and Overkill for Marvel UK, Babylon 5 Magazine, Star Trek Magazine, and its successor, Star Trek Explorer, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics; and has edited several comic collections and graphic novels, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”, and Hancock: The Lad Himself, by Stephen Walsh and Keith Page.
He’s the writer of comics such as Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs”, with Dave Hailwood.
Categories: Art and Illustration, Digital Media, Doctor Who, downthetubes News, Other Worlds, Television
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