Doctor Who Do You Think You Are?

It's been a while since I've written a blog, so here's a list of Doctor Who episode/story titles mashed up with TV shows. Be reassured that the worst of them didn't make the blog.

Horror of 30 Rock
The Armageddon Krypton Factor
Wide Awakening Club
Britain's Got Talons of Weng-Chiang
The Mister Makers
Strictly Come Snake Dancing
Escape to the City (of death)
The Five Flying Doctors
Six Feet Underworld
Time Team and the Rani
Michael Palin's Full Circle
T4 to Doomsday
Planet of Fireman Sam

The Exciting Guide to The Rescue

I accidentally skipped a week, but I'm back with a new companion and a new phase for the programme! Originally from August 1999, here's my take on The Rescue!

Quick reminder:
For previous posts, you can scroll around this site, or go to my Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/ExcitingGuide) which will link only to those parts of my blog devoted to the Exciting Guide. If you need to understand what I'm doing, there's a link to my intro here: http://chapwithwings.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/watching-every-tv-adventure-of-doctor.html

Story Eleven

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Story Code

L

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Spoiler Alert!  If you don’t want to know the true nature of Koquillion, as revealed in this story’s final episode, skip this one.

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Title

The Rescue

“Friends” Title

The One With The Pet Sand Beast

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Episode Titles

The Powerful Enemy

Desperate Measures

Current availability

Both episodes exist.

Source

UK Gold omnibus repeat transmission.

The cliffhanger at the story’s end is again omitted.

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Date

2493.

Vicki’s ship left Earth in 2493.  By all inferences, that is still the year.

Genre

Mystery/Whodunnit

Plot synopsis

1.         The TARDIS lands in a cave on the planet Dido.  Ian and Barbara explore, and find a crashed Earth ship.  They are confronted by the bizarre semi-humanoid creature Koquillion, who persuades Ian to return to the Ship to fetch the Doctor.  The creature pushes Barbara from the ledge, and causes a rockfall to block the cave.  Barbara is rescued by Vicki, one of only two survivors from the crashed ship.  According to her story, she was ill in the ship when the entire crew were invited to a meeting by the local inhabitants, only for an explosion to wipe out all of them.  Only Bennett survived, but was robbed of the ability to walk.  Koquillion now controls their lives, in return for protection from the rest of his people, but Vicki believes he does not know about the rescue ship due in 69 hours.  Meanwhile, Ian and the Doctor are finding their way out of the caves, but accidentally set off a mechanism which causes spears to emerge from the wall, edging Ian towards a hideous creature waiting below.

2.         Ian manages to dodge around the spears, and they deactivate the trap.  The creature moves on towards the Earth ship - Barbara sees it approaching Vicki, and kills it with a gun from the ship.  Unfortunately, it turns out that the creature - “Sandy” - was harmless, and effectively Vicki’s pet.  At this point, the Doctor and Ian reach the ship to a less than rapturous welcome from Vicki.  When she calms down, the Doctor goes to Bennett’s room to find it empty.  He follows his trail through a trap door to the natives’ hall of judgement, where he unmasks Koquillion as Bennett.  He had killed a crewmember from the ship, and was under arrest, so arranged the deaths of the entire crew and the local inhabitants as a cover-up.  The Doctor is losing the ensuing struggle, but two of the natives unexpectedly turn up, and Bennett is killed fleeing.  Vicki is asked to join the time-travellers, and accepts.  The Dido natives disable the communications equipment on the Earth ship.  The TARDIS leaves Dido, and next materialises on the edge of a cliff, promptly tumbling off.

Pitch

Agatha Christie with no suspects.

The Money Shot

Koquillion is revealed by the TARDIS (episode 1).

The Doctor and his kind

• Susan’s departure certainly seems to have affected the Doctor.  He sleeps through the Ship’s materialisation for the first time, and is more than ready to invite Vicki on board - Barbara shrewdly recognises his need to replace Susan.  On the other hand, he doesn’t seen overly tetchy or prone to brooding, both of which one might have expected.  In fact, he seems positively jaunty!

• The Doctor says that he never got a degree in medicine.

• He remains a patronising arse, as proved in his attitude towards Vicki on the Earth ship.

The TARDIS log

• The Doctor states that “materialise” is a better word for the TARDIS than “land.”

• The wheezing, groaning sound is all present and correct here.  Here’s a thought - what if that noise is another of the TARDIS’ faults, and the occasions where it arrives or departs silently were rare occasions when the Ship has worked properly?  This would explain not only that conundrum, but also suggest that the ridiculously bumpy dematerialisation witnessed in episode one of An Unearthly Child was a further flaw.

• The Doctor makes a point of turning the power off once the Ship has materialised.

• Apparently, No.4 switch opens the door.

• Ian uses the Doctor’s key to get into the TARDIS.  How is it that he managed this, considering how complex the lock is supposed to be?  One can only presume that (a) since The Daleks, the Doctor has simplified the lock, or (b) he has taken time out to instruct Ian and Barbara in how to use the key properly.  Unless anyone’s got any better suggestions, I am going to plump for (a).

Past Journies

• The Doctor has visited Dido before, and can tell where he is by examining rock samples.

The history of Earth

• Manned space flights are apparently fairly standard in the late twenty-fifth century, although time travel is not.  Bennett, as Koquillion, asks Ian and Barbara where their “rocket ship” is, but this somewhat primitive terminology was probably supposed to be in character.

Alien Worlds

• From what we have seen of it, the planet Dido is rocky and not very hospitable-looking, with a network of caves.

• It gets dark early on Dido.

• The inhabitants of Dido are humanoid, with a rich ceremonial tradition.  They are a friendly race, and violence is completely alien to their natures.  When the Doctor first visited Dido, their population numbered barely a hundred.  There is no way of knowing whether this second visit has occurred before or after the first, or what the population of Dido was before the Earth ship crashed, but thanks to Bennett, it is now considerably less.

• Dido is also host to large, ugly, vegetarian beasts with green eyes.

Script Heaven

• Vicki “Yes!  You’re right!  I’ve been here a long time!  I know what it’s like here!  You’ve only just come and you’re trying to ruin things!  It was all right before, it was!  The rescue ship’s coming and...nobody asked you to come here, nobody!...Go away!”  And what’s so good about it is, she’s so right!

Villainous Plotting

• In order to cover up his murder, Bennett takes advantage of the ship’s crash, and of the subsequent meeting between the ship’s crew and the local inhabitants, to engineer an explosion to wipe the lot out.  By blaming the whole thing on the locals, and using Koquillion to keep Vicki in line, he’ll be rescued in a few days with a star witness and be completely off the hook.  Nice plan.  Here’s a better one.  Kill Vicki as well, then you won’t have to dress up as a monster or pretend to be a paraplegic for the rest of your life.  Cunning, eh?

The Doctor’s Achievement

He unmasks Bennett’s little scheme and puts an end to it, although arguably there’s no reason why those two natives couldn’t have stepped forward and had a go at him anyway.  He also gives Vicki a home and a family again, which is nice.

Body Count

Despite the large body count in the backplot, only Bennett and Sandy die during the course of the story:

2.

Screams / Twists Ankle

• Vicki is not short for Victoria.

• Vicki is now an orphan.  Her mother died a while ago, and she and her father boarded a ship bound for Astra, only to crash.  Her father was then killed by Bennett.  Even her pet monster was shot by Barbara.  A ripe candidate, then, for adoption by the time travellers.

Checkov’s Plot Device

Checkov’s Supposedly Dead Natives?  No, doesn’t wash with me, either.

EffectsWatch

• For the second story in a row, the dodgiest effect is the big ‘orrible monster.

Notes

• I believe this is the first story since An Unearthly Child not to start with the regulars in the Ship.

• In the end credits to episode one (which I have not, of course, been privileged to see), Koquillion is credited as “Sydney Wilson.”  This is a pseudonym so as not to give away the character’s true identity.  The name derives from two of the series’ creators - Sydney Newman and Donald Wilson.

• There is a nice - and very telling - moment near the beginning when the Doctor starts to address Susan before realising she isn’t there any more.

• The basic plot of this episode  - where an unconvincing monster terrorises the central cast, only to be de-masked in the closing moments and promptly apprehended by the authorities - was later turned into a long-running TV cartoon series, entitled Scooby Doo. (NB. I would like to point out that I wrote this months before DWM said exactly the same thing in Issue 286.  Humph.)

Queries

• If the inhabitants of Dido are so friendly, where do the Indiana Jones-style spears sticking out of the wall come from?

• If the only exit from Bennett’s room is via a secret trap door, how did Vicki think Koquillion left the ship in the first episode?

• Why did the ship crash?

• Why did Bennett kill the crewmember?

• How did the natives survive?

• How many of the natives have survived?

• Where have they been all this time?

• How are these peaceful people going to prevent that rescue ship from landing?  And how will sabotaging the crashed ship help in this?

• How the hell did Bennett hope to keep up the illusion of being crippled when he had his first medical examination on the rescue ship?

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On-screen Credits

Taken from end credits to Desperate Measures.

CAST

Dr. Who - William Hartnell, Ian Chesterton - William Russell, Barbara Wright - Jacqueline Hill, Vicki - Maureen O’Brien, Bennett & Koquillion - Ray Barrett, Space Captain - Tom Sheridan.

CREW

Written by David Whitaker.  Title Music by Ron Grainer with the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.  Incidental Music by Tristram Cary.  Costumes supervised by Daphne Dare.  Make-up supervised by Sonia Markham.  Designer - Raymond P Cusick.  Associate Producer - Mervyn Pinfield.  Producer - Verity Lambert.  Directed by Christopher Barry.

Review

It’s difficult to know what to make of this story.  It does show a great deal of promise, and then rushes to an end after only two episodes.  Now, this could be a good thing - The Daleks, The Keys Of Marinus and The Dalek Invasion Of Earth have all shown that when Doctor Who tries to over-extend its stories, they have a tendency to become bitty and lack continuity.  But two episodes is pushing it a bit.  In fact, this two-parter - written by the series’ story editor - is blatantly a vehicle to introduce the new regular character, Vicki.  And boy aren’t we glad of it.  Now I shall reserve judgement upon this character for the moment, until we’ve seen a bit more of her - it could go either way.  But she’s already a damn sight preferable to Susan - get that delicious moment when she has a go at the perpetually well-meaning travellers:  this scene would have been just annoying with Carole Ann Ford doing her “emotional” bit, but with Maureen O’Brien it’s great.  It also shows the travellers up for what they are.  Look at Barbara - she’s got so cocky with this space travel lark now she think she can show up, take stock of the situation at a glance, and open fire on anything that looks ugly.  It’s about time they all got taken down a peg or two, and I thoroughly enjoyed it, even if Vicki was made to apologise to everyone afterwards.  The plot is a nonsense, the two-episode format meaning that so many questions are left unanswered (see above) that it’s perfectly obvious that it just wasn’t thought through well enough.  I think this could have made a decent four-parter, but the concepts are wasted on what is effectively a basic introduction story.  Still, if that’s what it is, at least it takes the opportunity to give her background, a personality and a few good, weighty scenes to chew on.  I think the new improved TARDIS crew is going to be enjoyable.

 Rating

5 / 10

The Exciting Guide to The Dalek Invasion of Earth!

So, Amy and Rory have left the TARDIS at the hands of arguably the Doctor's most prominent returning enemies. Let's look back at a similar situation in season 2, when the first ever companion departure occurred following six episodes of Dalek action.

And wow. Back in 1999, I really wasn't keen on "The Dalek Invasion of Earth" - and even less keen on Susan!

Quick reminder:
For previous posts, you can scroll around this site, or go to my Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/ExcitingGuide) which will link only to those parts of my blog devoted to the Exciting Guide. If you need to understand what I'm doing, there's a link to my intro here: http://chapwithwings.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/watching-every-tv-adventure-of-doctor.html

Story Ten

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Story Code

K

Title

The Dalek Invasion Of Earth

“Friends” Title

The One With Daleks In London

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Episode Titles

World’s End

The Daleks

Day Of Reckoning

The End Of Tomorrow

The Waking Ally

Flashpoint

Current availability

All six episodes exist.

Source

BBC Video release.

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Date

2167.

A calendar in the warehouse reads “2164.”  This may, of course, be an old calendar.  As the Daleks invaded Earth some ten years before this adventure, we can place the invasion anywhere between 2154 and 2164, and the events of the story about ten years afterwards - so anywhere between around 2163 and 2175.

This now enables some rough dating for The Daleks as well.  It can be placed anywhere between 2164 and 2664.  See below for explanation.

Personal Chronology

On the above theme, I am saying that The Dalek Invasion Of Earth takes place earlier in Dalek history than The Daleks.

Genre

Alien Invasion.

Plot synopsis

1.         The Ship arrives in London of the future.  Susan manages to sprain her ankle, as well as blocking the TARDIS door with fallen rubble.  The Doctor and Ian go for help, and find a dead man wearing a strange metal helmet.  They return to the Ship, but Barbara and Susan have been taken away by two men - Carl Tyler and David Campbell - to a secret hideaway, where they meet the wheelchair-bound Dortmun.  The Doctor and Ian see a spaceship overhead, which lands at a heliport.  They find themselves surrounded by helmeted zombie-men, and plan to swim for it, but are blocked as a Dalek unexpectedly rises from the Thames.

2.         The Doctor and Ian are taken into the Dalek saucer along with a man named Jack Craddock - a fourth man is killed trying to escape.  They learn that Earth has been invaded and is now under the control of the Daleks, who broadcast an ultimatum - the resistance must surrender, or London will be destroyed with firebombs.  The Doctor manages to open his cell door, but it was an intelligence test, and he is sent to be turned into one of the Robomen.  Meanwhile, the resistance, along with Barbara and Susan, launch an attack on the saucer armed with Dortmun’s new bombs, but the Doctor is already undergoing the robotising process.

3.         Most of the rebels are killed or dispersed in the attack:  the bombs were a failure.  The Dalek saucer heads for the Dalek mine in Bedfordshire - Ian stows away, although the Doctor has escaped.  Ian rescues a fellow stowaway named Larry Madison from a robotised Craddock - Larry is hoping to find his brother at the mine.  Dortmun, Barbara and another rebel called Jenny head for the Civic Transport Museum looking for survivors, while Tyler goes elsewhere on the same mission.  Dortmun makes improvements to his bomb, but is killed testing it on a pair of Daleks.  David and Susan find the Doctor, but as they are resting, the Daleks place a firebomb nearby.

4.         David manages to defuse the bomb.  The Doctor passes out, presumably from a combination of exhaustion and Dalek drugs, and Susan and David leave him in hiding while they look for a way out of London.  Barbara and Jenny flee London in a truck from the museum.  David and Susan bump into Tyler in the sewers.  Susan has a close shave with an alligator before they all return to the Doctor.  Ian and Larry reach the mine, and meet Ashton, a black marketeer.  They try to get help from him, but he is killed and they are trapped by the Slyther, a creature belonging to the Black Dalek.

5.         Ian and Larry manage to push the Slyther down the mine to its death, but are accidentally lowered down the shaft themselves.  Larry finds his brother Phil, who has been robotised - the brothers kill each other.  The Doctor and party reach Bedfordshire:  Susan and David are obviously becoming close.  Barbara and Jenny find shelter on their way to the mine in a little house with two women, who promptly betray them to the Daleks for food.  The Daleks announce their intentions on Earth - to cause an explosion in the Earth’s magnetic core, replacing it with a propulsion unit which will enable them to pilot the planet.  Ian is hiding inside the penetration explosive device, as it moves into position.

6.         Ian manages to disable the device and escapes the Daleks.  They fire it again, but this time it becomes caught on a blockage engineered by Ian, although the Daleks do not realise.  They abandon the mine.  The Doctor and Tyler rescue Barbara and Jenny, while David and Susan manage to immobilise the remaining Daleks:  Barbara uses the Dalek equipment to order the Robomen to turn against their masters.  Everyone flees the mine before it explodes, taking the hovering Dalek saucers with it.  Earth is free, and the travellers return to London.  After the debris is cleared from the Ship, the Doctor, Barbara and Ian leave:  Susan is left behind to marry David.

Pitch

The Daleks.  On Earth.  A bit like Independence Day.

The Money Shot

A Dalek rises from the Thames (episode 1).

The Doctor and his kind

• As in The Sensorites, the Doctor professes a dislike of arms, and this time refuses to take a gun.

• Susan stays behind on Earth to marry David Campbell.  I’m guessing this answers the question of whether the Doctor and Cameca would have been sexually compatible!

• And how nice to know that the Doctor’s people chastise their children in the same way we do! (See Script Heaven.)

The TARDIS log

• The TARDIS again makes no sound when it lands, but the familiar wheezing, groaning sound is present when it takes off at the end of the story.  Is there any sort of pattern to this?

• Why does the scanner screen only show water?  I know it hasn’t exactly been reliable of late, but isn’t it supposed to show what’s directly outside the Ship?  Well, they weren’t actually in the Thames!  Anyway, it was broken at the end of the last episode.  Maybe they found a new tube.

• The TARDIS has an outside speaker.

• Why are we back on Earth?  Has the Doctor managed to pilot the Ship more accurately?  Possibly his hazy knowledge of their previous location was enough to make an educated guess - after all, he made it more or less exactly in Planet Of Giants, having come directly from revolutionary France.  In which case, they should be able to do just as well next time.

The history of Earth

• Around the middle of the twenty-second century, the Earth was bombarded by meteorites.  This was seen as a cosmic storm, but they were really germ bombs, spreading plague to weaken Earth.  Whole continents of people were apparently wiped out - Asia, Africa, South America.  An antidote was eventually created, but by now Earth was divided into isolated communities, enabling a Dalek invasion force to land, destroying some cities and occupying others.  The surviving leaders of the different Earth races resisted the invaders, but were all killed.  Some humans were turned into Robomen;  others serve as slaves in the great mining areas created by the Daleks - the foremost of these being in Bedfordshire, England.  Pockets of resistance continued to resist them, and eventually managed to destroy the Dalek saucers and the Bedfordshire mine.

• In 2164, Battersea Power Station still exists, but has lost two chimneys.  There is a heliport in Chelsea, and Big Ben has stopped chiming (although it is re-activated after the Daleks’ defeat).

• The old woman in the woods describes attractions in pre-Dalek London as including “moving pavements” and an “astronaut fair.”  One can only presume that only some of the pavements moved, as the ones we see look no different than they did 200 years previously.

• London (and presumably other towns and cities) is now overrun with animals escaped from zoos, and many of the country’s dog have formed wild packs which roam the woods (although this last may have been a lie).  I can only presume, however, that other animals were affected by the germ warfare, as I can think of no other explanation for the absence of birdsong noted by the Doctor on the banks of the Thames.

• Craddock asks the Doctor and Ian if they have been on a moon station, and seems to think it is a viable possibility.

Script Heaven

• The Doctor “What you need is a jolly good smacked bottom!”

• David “She says she can cook.” Dortmun “Oh, can you?” David “And what do you do?” Susan “I eat.”

• Dalek “We are the masters of Earth!  We are the masters of Earth!  We are the masters of Earth!”

• David “This is my planet!  I just can’t run off and see what it’s like on Venus!”

• The Doctor “One day I shall come back.  Yes, I shall come back.  Until then, there must be no regrets, no tears, no anxieties.  Just go forward in all your beliefs, and prove to me that I am not mistaken in mine.  Goodbye, Susan.  Goodbye, my dear.”

Script Hell

• David “They dare to tamper with the forces of creation?” The Doctor “Yes!  They dare!  And we have got to dare to stop them!”

• The Doctor “x=gamma, now that means roughly two and a half per cent, so that should give us a curve of round about eighty degrees...”  Technobabble at its most supreme!

Catchphrase

Having refused to use their catchphrase all story long - and been reticent about it even in their previous adventure - the Daleks go all out with it in the final two episodes.  The first really classic version is the Black Dalek’s in episode 6.

• Dalek “Do not try to escape or you will be exterminated!  Move!”

• Black Dalek “Exterminate him!  Exterminate him!  Exterminate him!”

• Black Dalek “Arrange for the extermination of all human beings.”

• Dalek “I will arrange for their extermination.”

Villainous Plotting

• Okay.  The Daleks have invaded Earth and drilled deep into the planet’s surface, so that they can explode a device in the magnetic core, remove said core and insert a propulsion unit, allowing them to pilot the planet anywhere in the universe.  Now stop me if I’m being thick, but does that make any sense to anyone?  At all?  Why are they doing this?  What’s wrong with spaceships?  Why the Earth?  Does anyone really think this is possible?  Has everyone just gone completely mad?

The Doctor’s Achievement

He has helped to ensure the Daleks’ plan failed, and destroyed their invasion force - Earth is free to rebuild.

It’s The End Of The World As We Know It!

• Earth saved: Once.  This is arguably the first time that the Doctor has actually saved the planet Earth from destruction (I figure being turned into a glorified spaceship counts as destruction!)

Body Count

Quite high.  We see at least 4 Robomen killed (including the suicidal one at the start, the dead one in the warehouse and Phil Madison), though others probably die too.  At least 4 Daleks die on screen too (including at least one run over by a truck) plus their entire invasion force.  Dead humans include Dortmun;  Larry;  Baker;  the escaping prisoner in episode 2; Ashton; a heard-but-not-seen runaway; and “most” of the rebels who attack the saucer.  Also the entire of Asia, Africa, South America and God knows where else perished in the Dalek invasion.  So it’s impossible to calculate, then.  On screen, however, let us set the figure at:

17.

Screams / Twists Ankle

• Susan claims to be familiar with atomic devices.

• Barbara’s sweater is blue.  According to Ian, anyway.  We can’t exactly tell the difference.

• As a parting shot, Susan helpfully twists her ankle at the start of this story.  Well done.

• Oh, I’ve Been Captured Tally:  3.  Barbara and Jenny survive a surprisingly long time before being, well, captured in episode 5.  Oh well.  The Doctor rescues them next episode.

Hypnotised left, right and centre (and friends)

• I shall count the Robomen as an instance of possession, especially since it’s used to dramatic effect by pitting brother against brother.

• Hypnotism:  2 instances.

• Possession:  1 instance.

Checkov’s Plot Device

No, but they do use the Daleks’ own weapon against them, which is symmetry of another kind.

EffectsWatch

Urgh.

• The Dalek saucer in flight is absolutely bloody awful.

• I can confidently say that man-in-unconvincing-rubber-suit Slyther is the worst monster yet to appear in Doctor Who.

• Dig the lo-tech mine plan on the Daleks’ wall.

• The mine explosion is all stock footage.

• EVERY fight sequence etc is crap!  Note especially the attack on the saucer in Chelsea, and the fight in the sewer in episode 5.  Only the chase through London in episode 3 deserves any kind of applause.

• All right, one good point.  Bonus to the designer who kept the Dalek door design from The Daleks.

The TARDIS wardrobe

• Ian seems to have split the back of his jacket.

Dalek history

• In the middle of the twenty-second century, the Daleks invaded Earth with germ warfare and a fleet of saucers with a view to transforming the planet into a moving base.  They were defeated after several years, and their invasion force destroyed.

• The Daleks have dishes - akin to twentieth century satellite TV dishes - attacked to their casing, which presumably allow them to move about without having to rely on static electricity.  This begs the question of why these dishes aren’t fitted as standard, especially “a million years” in the future.  Daleks as mobile as these would not have been stranded in their city in The Daleks.  Possibly the technology takes a lot of energy, and the Daleks of the earlier story were short on many resources.

• This story confirms that the Daleks are a space-faring race, so some may indeed have survived their apparent destruction in The Daleks.

• This is apparently the “middle history” of the Daleks - the events of The Daleks, when they were seemingly destroyed on Skaro, took place, according to the Doctor “a million years ahead of us in the future” - although this should be taken with a pinch of salt, as the Doctor had no idea where or when they were at the time.

• We may have a contradiction here.  In The Daleks, we learned that the Dal/Thal war began five hundred years prior to the events we see, and it was suggested that only then did the Dals retreat inside their machines.  So how can this be a million years before those events?

• I am going to take an executive decision here to cure these continuity problems.  The Doctor is surely only guessing with his problematic “a million years” comment - I am going to presume he is wrong.  This story makes a lot more sense if it takes place some time after the Dal/Thal war - therefore shortly before, around the time of or after the events of The Daleks.  The Daleks who invaded Earth were probably either off on their travels or already dead at the time of the events in this story.

• We can now come to a rough guess about the dating (in Earth years) of The Daleks.  If they left Skaro only after the Dal/Thal war, then the latest possible date for the Doctor’s encounter with the Thals on Skaro is 500 years after 2164 (i.e. 2664).  Let us guess that, in fact, the Dal/Thal war came to its peak around 1850, thus placing The Daleks in 2350.

• There is a Black Dalek, who seems to be in charge - he is described as the “supreme commander” and the “kommandant of the camp” - i.e. the mine in Bedfordshire.

• The Daleks have the ability to transform human beings (and other races?) into zombie-like Robomen, controlled through helmets which apparently pick up high-frequency radio waves.  When the control wears off, the Robomen go insane and die.

• Dalek technology impresses the Doctor - he calls the saucer a work of genius.

• The Slyther is presumably another example of the mutated creatures who live on Skaro.  The Black Dalek keeps it as a “pet” (according to Ashton) - it roams the mine area eating people.  Nice.  (The Slyther’s mutated state is another argument to prove that The Dalek Invasion Of Earth takes place after the Dal/Thal war).

• Dalek casing is waterproof.  The humans have named the metal from which it is made “Dalekenium.”

• One Dalek is knocked over in the attack on the saucer, and remains oddly silent and still.  What does this mean?  I thought it would have been spitting blood.

• Have Dalek IQs dropped?  When ordered to exterminate all humans, one starts randomly intoning “kill...kill...kill...”  Hardly suitable behaviour for a race of brilliant scientists.  Mind you, there’s always one, isn’t there?  On the other hand, it seems to be a general species characteristic - the wet Dalek earlier grated on about being the masters of Earth somewhat unnecessarily.

• All right, it has to be asked.  How do the Daleks get up and down stairs?  Dortmun’s difficulties only emphasise this.

Dudley!

• The music during Barbara, Jenny and Dortmun’s flight through London avoiding Daleks is extremely distinctive.

Susan

            Susan is of the same race as the Doctor, and we must presume she is, as she appears to be, his granddaughter.  There is far more we don’t know about Susan than what we do know - her age is a mystery, for although she appears to be a teenage girl, and fits in well with other teenage girls such as Ping-Cho in Marco Polo, her wealth of experience and knowledge betrays a greater age.  Her people’s gift for telepathy is particularly strong in Susan, but it’s not a trick she can pull often - she is only able to make use of it on the Sense-Sphere because of the ultra high frequencies.  She has a thirst for knowledge, and seems quite as happy in an Aztec seminary as in an English school.  She often speaks longingly of her home planet, and yearns for somewhere to belong.  Her devotion to her grandfather is often tested, largely by his insistence on treating her like a child when she feels she is a woman, but never so much as when she is forced to choose between remaining in the TARDIS with the Doctor and leaving him to marry the human David Campbell.  Her loyalty to her grandfather wins out, but the Doctor locks her out of the Ship, making the decision for her - he knew she could never leave him.  One presumes she will now join David on the farm he intends to run, as his wife.

            On a personal note, I can’t stand the bloody woman, and I won’t miss her whining and screaming one little bit.

Whoops

• Why on Earth do the time travellers take so long to notice the poster?

Notes

• A Dalek in the background refers to exterminating all humans as “the final solution.”  Is anyone still failing to see where the imagery is coming from here?

• No-one on Earth in 2164 (especially David Campbell!) seems too worried about the Doctor and Susan’s extra-terrestrial nature, nor their amazing vanishing Police Box.  Of course, alien invasion will do that.

• How long does it take to get from London to Bedfordshire?  It seems just as quick for the Doctor to walk it as it does for Ian to fly.

• Sexism still not dead, then.  “Can you cook?”

• On the other hand, Jenny may be the first genuinely interesting female character to crop up in the series.

• It’s not a very good resistance group - it takes Barbara to come up with the old Trojan horse trick.

• Barbara continues to use her cunning in the mines later on.  Her ploy to get into the control centre is appalling, but somehow works.  The bluff involving Hannibal and the Boston Tea Party is ace, though.

• Dortmun is a chess player.  Seems appropriate.

• David defuses a bomb using acid and a big stick!  Clever chap.

• The Doctor actually passes out in episode 4 because William Hartnell was absent during recording.

• We find time for a moment of humour:  a Dalek interrogates a dummy in episode 3.  “Who-are-you?”

• Another great scene is where the Doctor chews Susan out for taking David’s advice over his, only for David himself to turn up and defer to the Doctor as the senior member of the party.  Here’s a man who knows how to get in with the in-laws.

• What fun to drive a truck through a line of Daleks!  Can I have a go?

• Almost more fun are the Doctor and Barbara’s impressions of Daleks while giving the Robomen their new orders.

• There’s some great hiding in plain sight in episode 6.

• The Doctor Who title sequence, or something very like it, is conspicuous on Dalek screens in episodes 3 and 4 - we last saw this effect being recycled in An Unearthly Child episode 1, to represent the TARDIS taking off.

• Someone is marketing very odd calendars.  Would you buy a calendar you could only tear a page off once every 365 days?

• The Doctor takes Susan’s worn out shoe.  She still has her TARDIS key, but drops it.  There are now two keys to the Doctor’s Ship on Earth - one by the banks of the Thames, and one left behind in Cathay several adventures ago.

Queries

• If the Doctor knows all about the historical events of, for example, the Reign of Terror, why does he know nothing about the Dalek Invasion?  Surely it’s as much a historical event as anything pre-1964 to a time traveller?  And why does he feel no compunction about interfering in these events, while forbidding Barbara to change one line of history in The Aztecs?

• The Daleks invaded the world, not just Britain, and not just Bedfordshire.  Do we presume that every single Dalek saucer was hovering over that mine when it exploded?  Otherwise, what happened to the rest of the occupying forces?

• What happens to the Robomen now?  Will the survivors of Earth be able to restore their personalities?  Or will they be yet more casualties of war?

• What was that Dalek doing in the Thames?

• Was Baker, perhaps, short-sighted?  I saw that Dalek way before he did!

• And why is this scene so divorced from David, Susan and the Doctor?  They’re only round the corner!

• All right, so humans are compatible with the Doctor and Susan’s race.  But where would that have left Barbara and Ganatus?  Can all races interbreed?  Or all humanoid races?  Where, exactly, do you draw the line?

• “Before you attempt to conquer the Earth, you will have to destroy all living matter!”  What does this mean, precisely?

• Why Bedfordshire?

• What do these episode titles mean?  They seem to have reached previously unscaled heights of surreality.  “The End Of Tomorrow?”  And which waking ally, exactly?

• Firebombs.  What are they, exactly?  And is the death ray working?

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On-screen Credits

CAST

Dr. Who - William Hartnell, Ian Chesterton - William Russell, Barbara Wright - Jacqueline Hill, Susan Foreman - Carole Ann Ford, David Campbell - Peter Fraser, Carl Tyler - Bernard Kay, Dortmun - Alan Judd (1-4), Jenny - Ann Davies (2-6), Larry Madison - Graham Rigby (3-5), Craddock - Michael Goldie (2-3), Thomson - Michael Davis (2), Baker - Richard McNeff (2-3), Wells - Nicholas Smith (4-6), Ashton - Patrick O’Connell (4), The Women In The Wood - Jean Conroy (5); Meriel Hobson (5), Robomen - Martyn Huntley; Peter Badger, Dalek machines operated by Robert Jewell; Gerald Taylor (2-6); Nick Evans (2-3, 5-6); Kevin Manser (2-6); Peter Murphy (2-6), Dalek Voices - Peter Hawkins (2-6); David Graham (2-6), Slyther Operator - Nick Evans (4-5).

CREW

Written by Terry Nation.  Title Music by Ron Grainer with the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.  Incidental Music composed and conducted by Francis Chagrin.  Fights arranged by Peter Diamond (5).  Costumes supervised by Daphne Dare (6).  Make-up supervised by Sonia Markham (6).  Film Cameraman - Peter Hamilton (1,3-4,6).  Film Editor - John Griffiths (1,3-4,6).  Lighting - Howard King (6).  Sound - Jack Brummitt (6).  Story Editor - David Whitaker.  Designer - Spencer Chapman.  Associate Producer - Mervyn Pinfield.  Producer - Verity Lambert.  Directed by Richard Martin.

Familiar Faces

Nicholas Smith (Wells) was later to become more famous as Mr Rumbold in Are You Being Served?

David Graham (Dalek Voice)         Dalek Voice in The Daleks.

Peter Hawkins (Dalek Voice)         Dalek Voice in The Daleks.

Robert Jewell (Dalek)                      Dalek in The Daleks.

Kevin Manser (Dalek)                     Dalek in The Daleks.

Gerald Taylor (Dalek)                     Dalek in The Daleks.

Review

Well, what a difference.  This six-episode epic ditches Doctor Who’s credibility in almost every aspect.  The plot is so threadbare it would embarrass a Roland Emmerich film, the effects are uniformly disastrous.  The acting is by and large good, but we rarely get a chance to enjoy this, as promising characters (e.g. Craddock, Ashton) are summarily killed off within an episode.  This leads to a lack of continuity which really makes one wonder if the story knows where it’s going.  As it happens, it’s going to Bedfordshire, which is a shame, because the London locations were the story’s one real strong point.  And then there’s the Daleks, of course, and they are as good as the last time we saw them, if a little under-used.  The Robomen were a mistake - not even slightly scary, they also take screen time away from the Daleks themselves.  As for the ridiculous Dalek invasion plan, someone was clearly asleep when that one was passed.  And the ending embraces the one-explosion-solves-it-all philosophy that Doctor Who really should be above.  I think the problem here is that the series has tried to be just too ambitious, and production costs are stretched a little too much.  It’s a shame, because on paper it looks like a corking concept.  The realisation, however, leaves much to be desired.  But I don’t want to give the impression I hated every moment of this story.  Of course not.  Each episode can be watched quite harmlessly, and the various set pieces enjoyed one by one, except for the crap ones.  It’s only when you sit back and think about it that the whole thing falls apart, and I’d really prefer this series to stand up to that kind of scrutiny.  On the whole, the Daleks are a creation with great potential, and I’d like to see writer Terry Nation do something more worthwhile with them in future.  What must be said, though, is that Susan’s departure from the Ship is well-orchestrated.  The Doctor’s parting comments to her, and his grandfatherly way of making her decision for her, are thoroughly in-keeping with the established relationship, and however much I may dislike her, I can’t help but be touched by that scene.  And I think that says it all.  A six part story full of explosions and deaths, and the best bit is a heart-to-heart scene between two of the regulars.  And that scene was written not by Terry Nation, but by story editor David Whitaker.  Learn from this.

Rating

5 / 10