1.22: The Daleks’ Master Plan (episodes 8-12)

In which the master plan doesn’t quite deliver, but that ending, my god.

Messing up the numbering scheme is a long Doctor Who tradition, and this story goes on for ages, so I’ve split it in two. So…

Broadcast: January 1966

Watched: July 2019

8. Volcano

Douglas Adams definitely ripped off the cricket bit for Life, the Universe & Everything. Which feels like it should have been in the last one. Very odd here.

What exactly is the point of the Daleks’ allies? They don’t seem to provide any troops and the Daleks murder them at random.

The monk is a rubbish villain even within the fiction. Everyone laughs at him and then his plan takes 30 seconds to overcome. Love the Doctor refusing to explain how he did it to Steven (e.g. it’s bobbins).

Oh wait this ia the new year’s special isn’t it? Didn’t realise until the London sequence. So it’s also sort of an interlude, even if there are a few bits of plot in it.

It’s quite funny that, having failed to get Ian and Barbara home for ages, the TARDIS now lands in 1960s London every five minutes.

9. Golden Death

Instinctively feel like this episode title is filthy.

I’d totally forgotten the TARDIS had been to Ancient Egypt. Result of the episode being missing I guess.

The Monk totally gives the lie to the 1976 “WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO THE MAGIC OF DOCTOR WHO” review. The first Time Lord we ever meet other than the Doctor is a cowardly little shit.

10. Escape Switch

It is sort of mental that there’s an episode in which some Ancient Egyptians beat the shit out of some Daleks, and it actually exists, and nobody ever remembers it because it’s from a largely missing story. I like the way the boss Egyptian is smart enough to understand it’s just better technology, not some kind of supernatural bullshit.

So disappointed the mummy wasn’t the Doctor pissing about. Also funny the way everyone shits on the Monk the whole time.

Mavic Chen smacking a Dalek was also quite cool.

11. The Abandoned Planet

Why anyone allies with the Daleks when they fuck everyone over at the earliest opportunity is a mystery to me. So is the way Hartnell disappears for a large chunk of this. Week off, inserts filmed in the previous episode?

I quite like Sara’s rage at the Doctor’s (very, very Doctorish) refusal to admit to failure and her bickering with Steven. Shame she’s about to die.

Odd story this, isn’t it? Loads of fun, but after a really focused beginning it goes all over the shop just to fill the time. It never stops being fun, but there’s no particular reason why there needs to be an interlude with the Meddling Monk and some Ancient Egyptians, it’s just there to fill a couple of episodes. It feels like this story is in the wrong order.

The fact the twist is “the Daleks are hiding underground” is a bit silly.

“Chen! But you’re dead!” Idiot.

12. Destruction of Time

I am very confused about what the Daleks’ plan was – how can you hold the whole galaxy to ransom with a thing that will burn out in about five minutes? – or why the Doctor thought actually activating the weapon might help. I’m not sure any of this makes any sense.

BUT it is quite traumatic nonetheless. The noise the Time Destructor makes is weirdly haunting. The idea of Sara crumbling into dust in front of our eyes, too. And Steven’s outburst at the end, while not as good as I’d remembered, is genuinely painful. I imagine if you’d seen this aged 10 it would mess you up.

I sort of feel like Master Plan is brilliant while also kind of being less than the sum of its parts? It doesn’t really earn its length, or the fact it had a whole extra story as a trailer – it just lasts longer. There’s loads of fantastic stuff in there, but I’m not sure it’s about anything, it’s just a succession of incident.

Good. But not amazing, alas.