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
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Story Code
K
Title
The
Dalek Invasion Of Earth
“Friends” Title
The
One With Daleks In London
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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?
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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
