1.2: The Daleks

In which Doctor Who makes some new friends, and our heroes start the universe on the path towards the Time War.

Broadcast: December 1963 to February 1964

Watched: March 2019 to, er, May 2019. (Honestly, episode 6 is a draaaag.)

First, a note on titles. Once upon a time this story would appear in lists as “The Daleks, a.k.a. The Dead Planet, a.k.a. The Mutants”. The previous one was “An Unearthly Child, a.k.a. 100,000BC”.  (My hipster take is that the first story is actually a one-parter called by the former name, then a three-parter called by the latter, but no one ever listens to me.)

This vagueness resulted from the fact that the first 25ish Doctor Who stories, like the modern show, gave every episode a different name. That meant that the stories as a whole often didn’t have names beyond (in this case) “Serial B”. As a result, what a story was really called was often a question with no answer: the names that eventually attached to stories were sometimes invented after the fact by fans.

But. Even if this story was not officially called The Daleks on a single piece of paperwork in the production office, it has been officially referred to as such – on novelisations, DVDs and so on – for decades. So I don’t give a f**k that nobody in the production office ever called it that: The Daleks is its name. End of.

1. The Dead Planet

"Ian, where are we?" Is she really expecting him to be able to answer that?

Also, is there meant to be a sort of negative effect when they first enter the forest, or is something up with my telly? (Apparently there is. It represents the neutron blast.)

Anyway, this episode is actually... really good? The petrified jungle is a really nice idea, impressively done given the budget, and the scenes in the city are genuinely fantastic. I know the received wisdom is that it’s the first appearance of the Dalek – or, part of one – in the cliffhanger that sells it, but actually the whole episode is really well-designed and haunting and magical in the way the first episode is but the rest of Serial A isn’t. After a run that wasn’t as good as I remembered it’s nice to be surprised on the upside.

Other thoughts:

• Ian breaking Susan’s stone flower because Barbara has called his name is hilarious

• Ooh the first Billy fluff. He covered it up well.

• During his “all I ask you to do is believe we’ll go back” speech, Ian basically has his crotch in Barbara’s face and they are absolutely banging.

• The food dispenser is hilarious. 

• The Doctor claims he can work out where they are from the stars alone.

• “The city! We are bound to get some mercury there!” Oh sure we’ll pop down to Tescos. 

• Ian finds a mine! Ian pokes a mine with a stick. Ian is a science teacher somehow. Lucky it wasn’t a mine after all.

• By breaking the fluid link, the Doctor sets the universe on a course for the Time war. What a prick.

2. The Survivors

The way the camera moves at the start gives you the impression you might be seeing from the perspective of the mysterious unknown creature again.

Ian freaking out about radiation while the Doctor is mostly curious about it is quite nice characterisation. 

The Daleks are great props but they are not immediately terrifying, despite how everyone on screen reacts to them. Do they ever paralyse rather than kill someone again? 

Susan laughing at the idea there’s someone inside the Dalek is strangely lovely.

It is very odd watching the Daleks interrogating the Doctor and thinking this is the same guy who’ll later do, well, everything the Doctor does in every other Dalek story. Also, the Daleks seem oddly reasonable in this one: it’s not obvious to me why they give a shit whether the regulars survive.

Susan calls him Ian. Is that the first time? 

Oh! That’s why the Daleks are being so nice. They’re not. Metal c***s.

I’m getting ahead of myself, but a mysterious and frightening creature who later turns out to be nice following Susan through the jungle is something Nation nicks from himself at least twice, isn’t it?

[At this point I got interrupted by my beloved showing up, 40 seconds from the end of the episode, but I think I can extrapolate that it involves Susan leaving the TARDIS, seeing a Thal and screaming.]

[Later:] Oh wait no it doesn’t she just walks out.  Huh. What a cliffhanger.

3. The Escape

Oh wait, there’s a Thal! “You’re perfect!” Get a room. 

"So the Dalek people have survived." This doesn’t fit with Genesis at all does it? Bloody hell Terry.

I like the way they just cut Susan’s return to the city and suddenly she’s back. But it’s weird how much of this is happening in reported speech.

WTF is going on with the Thals’ trousers? Also these guys are rubbish, I’m siding with the Daleks.

One Dalek holding up Susan’s letter to show another is hilarious.

Susan pulls one camera out of the wall and another blacks out. Wow. This programme isn’t realistic at all.

Oooh we are learning about static.

F*** me the Thals are boring. And they talk utter shite. “The Daleks hold the key to our future!” You what, mate?

The actual escape takes forever and is not even slightly exciting.

4. The Ambush

Forgot to say... the cliffhanger, of the Dalek’s claw appearing from the machine, is nicely creepy.

Susan’s stage wink when she pretends to try to run is very silly indeed.

Ah, the first appearance of two Dr Who staples: “Veeeeeery slooooowly cutting through a doooooor”, and “Using misleading editing to make it look like someone’s in more trouble than they actually are”.

Model work!

The long build up to the Daleks inevitably attacking the Thals should be tense but just bored me. Is this normal?

Ian uses “human” to mean “played by a human”. He and Barbara then encourage the Thals to beat the crap out of the Daleks, rather than taking the far more rational approach of buggering off and leaving the Daleks trapped in the city forever more. 

When the Doctor says they should leave the whole thing alone… he’s right, isn’t he? But they don’t, and the result is the Time War. Nice one Ian. Well f***ing done.

[I would later find out I’m wrong about this, because the Daleks decide to threaten the Thals with an unprovoked neutron bomb. But I wouldn’t find out for some time:]

5. The Expedition

The fact it’s taken me three weeks to get back to this is significant. Bloody hell I’m bored.

The Doctor and Barbara seem to take it as read that the Thals will sacrifice themselves for the regulars. Pricks. Also, their whole anti-pacifist thing is bordering on sick, especially when Ian pretends to engage in some light human trafficking - even if the combination of 1930s arguments about appeasement and 1960s terror of nuclear annhiliation is sort of interesting.

Transcript courtesy of Chakoteya.

Watching a Dalek dying of poisoning is oddly traumatic.

The scary lake that doesn’t kill anyone seems to have inspired the Ghost Monument oh no he’s dead never mind. What a cliffhanger. 

I know they were just desperate for material but blimey this really didn’t need seven episodes.

6. The Ordeal

“Do you always do what Ian says...?” Phwoar.

Blimey, is that whirlpool a special effect? Is it the first one?

The attempts to draw emotion out of the fates of assorted identical Thals are brave but hopeless. Obvious gay vibes with the guy doing the mourning though.

Still, I love the model city. Also, the fact that the visuals on the Daleks’ communicators are the opening credits.

Why exactly is it so much harder to get to the city this time than the previous times? (Apparently they are going through the mountains this time, because of some plot.) And how do the Thals know the customs of “your planet”?

Haven’t a clue how this would have seemed in 1964, but viewed from the present it really doesn’t have any tension in it at all, does it? There’s no sense of danger for anyone we care about and while I admire the attempt to create a sense of landscape in a tiny studio it just doesn’t work any more. Oh, you’re throwing a rope over are you? Who gives a-

Oh Ian accidentally killed that bloke, Fellanus or whatever. Pity.

This story really starts to drag doesn’t it?

[A note for anybody still reading. But the show, and my enthusiasm for watching it, picks up again soon enough. First, though:]

Realised that having watched this after being in the pub, I had taken literally none of it in. So I still need to watch it properly. Truly this episode is well named. So:

6. The Ordeal [repeat]

Okay this makes more sense when sober, I’ll be honest. Still not great but there’s more to it than I realised when watching pissed and distracted by my phone. As 20 minutes of peril for the kids of 1964 it’s probably fine, though it wastes the Daleks and doesn’t have a theme and also seems dependent on our finding the Thals in any way interesting or watchable.

Funny that the Daleks use “radio and television” waves. Amazing there isn’t more bakelite.

Also funny the way the Thals seem to know they’re secondary characters. And confusing the Daleks by reflecting light at them is amazingly silly.

Mind you, I love the scene where they’ve clearly put tape over the top and bottom of the lens to imply rock.

The cowardly one is the only Thal who isn’t a moron. Vanatus covering for him to make him feel guilty is a nice touch though.

The Doctor infers quite a lot from the fact the Daleks only use one cable doesn’t he? Clever chap.

Right. Onto the finale. Will our heroes make it? Stay tuned!

7. The Rescue¹

The Doctor promising the Daleks the secrets of the TARDIS feels like a significant moment, given everything that’s to happen over the next half century.

The countdown is a nice attempt to generate tension but our heroes seem weirdly relaxed and it is very very unclear why the counting stops at four. Oh wait! They accidentally switched the Daleks off. There’s a stroke of luck. That… wasn’t actually very dramatic was it?

The contrast between the Daleks as advanced but trapped, while the Thals are primitive but free, feels a bit under explored. 

Also, Vanatus spends the whole story trying to bang Barbara, and Ian doesn’t notice. This, I suspect, will become a theme.

The cliffhanger suggests that “the Doctor broke the TARDIS, the big twat” will also be a theme.

Next time: The Edge of Destruction! 

1. This of course is a title that’ll later be given to a story in the second season. Early Doctor Who titles are a nightmare.