The updated special effects on the original series DVDs

I am always cautious about new special effects being added to something. The Star Wars Special Editions are confoundingly inferior to the theatrical versions. However, I've learned to be open about the concept after seeing what a nice job Paramount did with the remastered classic Star Trek episodes. The new Star Trek effects are appropriate for the aesthetic of the era. They aren't flashy, they don't draw attention to themselves, they just look nice and are built to fit into the show without changing the original intent (there are no "Greedo shoots first" moments in other words).

I've been doing a total rewatch of classic Who starting from last year and for every story that has the special effects option I have it turned on this time around. I've found that the new effects are in good taste and work to convey the intent of the original effects so I'm quite pleased with them. So long as the original versions are also available, I have no problem with the new effects. To me, they present another way of enjoying the show.

I agree that The Dalek Invasion of Earth is well served by the updates. The revised Mara in Kinda is also better. For both of these stories, the updated effects are a very small part of the story, and do little to change the overall effect except to remove the most painfully awkward bad effects.

The updated effects for The Five Doctors substitute a silly-looking effect for a simplistic one.

The re-edits of Day of the Daleks and Enlightenment are less justifiable. For both stories there is a complete reworking of the material, and for the former there was additional footage shot. The results are more glossy, but somehow less satisfying than the originals.

The re-edit of Curse of Fenric stands up very well, though the effects themselves weren't the main thrust.

I can't recall offhand whether they did revisions for Invasion of the Dinosaurs, but that story could only benefit. As would the Loch Ness Monster scenes from Terror of the Zygons, and the view of the Great Vampire in State of Decay, but sadly these were not done.

Wasted effort. The biggest change was supposed to correct for the appearance of the continents at the end of the Cretaceous, and they botched it horribly. They merely moved the continents around, but kept their current outlines and didn't make the adjustment for changes in sea level, locations of inland lakes and seas, or differences in the coastlines. I don't know where they got their research, but it wasn't any place that knew what they were talking about.