My memories of this story, which I’ve never
actually watched yet, come from two sources – the Peter Cushing film version,
and the Target novelization. I’ll make a brief digression about that now: -
Although my earliest
clear memories of Doctor Who come from watching Patrick Troughton in The Mind
Robber, The Invasion and The War Games, I was only 6 when Jon Pertwee took
over, and so my acquaintance with the second doctor owes a lot to the Target
novelisations of the mid 70s. Actually, I read my first Doctor Who novels a
year or two before Target published their first. My primary school library had
old hardback copies of Doctor Who in an Exciting Adventure with the Daleks,
(the Daleks) and Doctor Who and the Zarbi (The Web Planet) which had been
published in the 60s. Target started publishing the three original doctor who
books – these two along with The Crusades – and several new ones, which enabled
me to get acquainted with the second doctor again.
Now, remember that
this was 1974. Today, if you have the money you can enjoy Dr. Who stories from
any era, either through DVDs, or recons and audios of missing episodes. I think
that VCRs existed in 1974, but it would be almost a decade before my family
owned one, and even if we had it would be a long time before the BBC released
their first official Doctor Who video. (Revenge of the Cybermen, which was the
first video I ever bought, out of my first ever grant cheque.) At that time the Target books were the only
way that you could experience the adventures of an earlier doctor which, by an
accident of birth, you had been too young to see when they were first on. Ten
years old, I loved “Doctor Who and The Abominable Snowmen”. It was written by
Terrance Dicks, based on the scripts by Mervyn Haisman and Henry Lincoln.
Sadly, all but episode 2 of the original serial are missing, and not having
listened to the audio I can’t comment on how faithful it is. Terrance Dicks was
very much Target’s go-to writer, and he ended up writing more than 60
novelisations. In my opinion he was a good, safe pair of hands who could be
trusted to treat other writer’s work with respect, and always managed to
produce something readable, no matter how unpromising the material he was
working with.
Forty years later,
it’s difficult to be hard and fast about exactly what I loved so much about
that book. Patrick Troughton was my first doctor, and Jamie was the first
companion I could remember, so that probably had something to do with it. I
liked the reference to an earlier, untelevised, adventure where the Doctor took
the sacred bell for safe keeping. The Great Intelligence also reminded me
somewhat of the Nestene Consciousness from the 2 Jon Pertwee Auton serials –
Spearhead from Space and Terror of the Autons, both of which I really enjoyed.
A short while later
Target published their second Troughton novelization, “Doctor Who and the
Cybermen”. This was based on Troughton’s 4th serial, The Moonbase.
Again, I thought it was a terrific read. I know this is sacrilege to many
serious and casual Who fans, but I’ve always liked the Cybermen even more than
the Daleks. This is probably because of the huge impression The Invasion made
on the four and a half year old me when I first watched it. “Doctor Who and the
Cybermen” was written by Gerry Davis, co creator of the Cybermen along with Dr.
Kit Pedler, who had written the original serial.
For the rest of the
70s Target concentrated more on publishing novelisations of the adventures of
the 3rd and 4th Doctors. By the end of 1980, apart from
the original 3 pre-Target novels, the only other novels of serials which I
hadn’t actually seen were “Doctor Who and the Tenth Planet”, “Doctor Who and
the Dalek Invasion of Earth”, “Doctor Who and the Keys of Marinus”, “Doctor Who
and The Ice Warriors”, “Doctor Who and the Web of Fear” and “Doctor Who and the
Tomb Of The Cybermen”. While I never read a Target that I didn’t enjoy, it’s
fair to say that I didn’t enjoy any of them quite as much as those first two
Troughtons. It’s hard to say why: maybe because I was older, maybe because they
stopped using the wonderful Chris Achilleos artwork on the covers, which had
made each book a thing of beauty in its own right. The covers reached their
nadir for me with the photographic front covers of most of the first two
seasons of the 5th Doctor. Decades later, when I saw “Tomb of the
Cybermen” on DVD for the first time I was delighted to find I enjoyed it more
than I remembered enjoying the novelization.
Well, what with A
Levels and then University, then job hunting, marriage and fatherhood all
following in quick succession during the 80s I lost touch with what was going
on in Target, although I was sorry when I read that Virgin, who had purchased
W.H.Allen were dropping the imprint, although not the novelisations.
I suppose that if I were to read a Target
novelization now I might be a little disappointed, maybe think that they were a
little simplistic, not great literature, whatever. But that wasn’t the point of
them. The fact was, that at the time it was the best, in fact the only way of
connecting with the show’s history and the wealth of great stories from the series’
illustrious past. That’s not a bad legacy for any imprint.
The film I’ll come to in due course. What I
will say though is that as I recall the story made perfect sense in an 83
minute film, while the original series has no fewer than 7 episodes. All of
which suggests one word to me – padding.
What I will be interested in is seeing how much
of what we know and ‘love’ about the Daleks was already present in this first
story. Cards on the table folks – while I liked the Daleks I was never as crazy
over them as some people – although when I was about 15 I did build a 12inch
high motorized Dalek, complete with microphone so you could speak through it. I
wish I still had it. My Giant Robot from Robot was really good too.
After
Watching
The first episode has a totally different pace
from the first episode of “An Unearthly Child”. This is more leisurely,
although it doesn’t lag. The TARDIS lands on what we later discover is Skaro.
After wandering about a bit, and finding trees, and a dead metal creature, the
crew notice a huge city away in the distance. The three companions are adamant
about going back to the TARDIS, while the Doctor wants to explore. So the Doctor
sabotages the TARDIS! What a tool! I don’t remember that happening in the film
at all. In fact I don’t remember it happening in the novel either, although
it’s 40 years since I read it. As an aside, that novel is presented as the
first adventure if I recall correctly, and does explain how Ian and Barbara
came to be on the TARDIS. Which must have been confusing for kids in the 80s,
after the novelization of An Unearthly Child was published.
I have to pause to remind myself that when this
was made, the audience didn’t actually have years of experience of Doctor Who
to draw on when making up their minds about the Doctor as a character. So
although I’m watching and thinking – that’s not the Doctor, he wouldn’t do
that, the point is that while no, the Doctors I grew up with , Jon and Tom,
probably wouldn’t have done that, they had the benefit of being that much older
and experienced than the first Doctor. They had all of his experiences to draw
on. I mean, if faced with exactly the same situation just 40 years apart, let’s
say at the ages of 20 and 60, would we all react in exactly the same way both
times? Probably not.
Going back to The Daleks, you can see where
Terry Nation was drawing inspiration from for this story. After all, this was
written during 1963, just a year after the Cuban Missile Crisis, when by all
accounts the world came closer to potential nuclear war between the USA and the
Soviet Bloc than at any other time before or since. So the aftermath of
catastrophic nuclear war is the backdrop to the story. The world of Skaro has
been decimated by neutron bombs, which destroy life, but leave buildings
intact, hence the Dalek city surviving.
Speaking of Daleks, I was surprised that the
only bit of Dalek we get to see in the first episode is right at the end, where
Barbara is menaced by what looks like a sink plunger sticking out of the
camera. We see plenty of them in episode two, though, and one particular thing
they do has led me to formulate a theory. The Daleks stun Ian, which is
remarkably restrained of them, and not something I think we’ll see happen too
often after this. Ian thus survives and then later he is the catalyst who
persuades the Thals to attack the Dalek city. Hence the Daleks draw the
perfectly reasonable conclusion that if you show any kind of mercy it will only
be thrown back in your face, and adopt a shot to kill policy. Therefore Ian is
actually responsible for hundreds of on screen – and millions of off-screen –
deaths.
Actually the merely stunning Ian rather than
killing him is not the only thing in this second episode which leads me to draw
the conclusion that these particular Daleks are a bit . . . soft. . . for want
of a better word. Knowing that the travelers are dying of radiation poisoning,
they order that one of the travelers has to go out and fetch the medicine which
was left by the Thals at the TARDIS. While they are briefing Susan they make
the point that the Thal survivors of their nuclear conflict must be, and I
quote “Disgustingly mutilated”. Ooh, get her! I mean we don’t get to see a
naked Dalek in this story, only a mutilated hand and claw underneath a Thal
cloak, but even so it’s made pretty clear that they’re no oil paintings
themselves. But that’s not what took me aback so much with this remark. No –
what made me sit up was that a Dalek would use an adverb like ‘disgustingly’.
Since when were the Daleks ever interested in aesthetics? Towards the end of
the episode one of the Daleks notes about the Doctor words to the effect of – The old man is dying
– to which the other replies “Then he must die – there is no help we can give
him.” The reply is interesting. It implies that they would help if they could –
while we all know that later on, if a Dalek was told such a thing about someone
he didn’t know from Adam the reply would be – Good – or something to that
effect.
A little later on, in episode three, one of the
Daleks tells the others that they should give the travelers the water that they
are asking for since it will, and I quote, “Lead them into a false sense of
security” Since when did the Daleks ever give a tuppenny damn about such Machiavellian schemes?
I suppose we’d better get to the scene where
Ian climbs inside the Dalek. Look, I don’t like it any more than you do. Ian
has not long ago compared the Daleks to fairground dodgems, and now he tries to
take the analogy just a little too far. Serve him right that he can’t get out
of it at the end of the episode.
Now, I want to have a look at the gender
politics within this show. I can’t make up my mind whether Ian’s insistence
that it must be him who goes back to the TARDIS, even though one of his legs is
still not working, is chauvinistic or heroic. It’s probably meant to be heroic,
since this story is very much Ian’s story, but even so it reflects a little of
the attitude of 1963, or Terry Nation, or both, towards the equality of the
sexes. Later on the girl Thal expresses disapproval that Barbara is allowed to
carry the drugs and notes “You’d be better off giving it to a man”. Later on
from that Ganatus the Thal, who clearly fancies the pants off Barbara,
expresses surprise that Ian allowed Barbara to come along on the expedition
through the swamp. And you thought that it was the previous story which had the
cavemen in it. Now, in all honesty, I just cannot make up my mind whether these
are just rather obvious examples of the chauvinist attitudes of the early 60s,
or whether the show is in fact subtly making a point – basically saying look –
this is in the future, and yet these wimpy blond aliens still have these
outdated attitudes to women. Hang on – this is written by Terry Nation. It’s
not subtly mocking anything.
I’m not used to individual episodes of a story
having their own titles, but I can’t make up my mind if I like them or not. I
mean episode 3 is called the Escape – yet the crew don’t even start trying to
escape until right at the end of this episode, although they do talk about it a
bit. At the start we meet Alydon, our first Thal. I’m irresistibly reminded of
H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine. Alydon is so clearly an Eloi to the Daleks’
Morlocks. Mind you, I may be more influenced by the George Pal film than the
original novel, since I’ve never actually read it. Now, when Alydon info dumps
on Susan about the war and the history between the two races, it’s a good
example of how a long running drama series can end up tying itself in knots and
contradicting itself. Here Alydon refers to the other lot as ‘the Dalek’
people. Now, in Terry Nation’s own ‘Genesis of the Daleks’, over a decade
later, we find out that the ‘Dalek’ people were actually the Kaleds. In which
case you wonder how Alydon and the Thals would ever have heard the word Dalek
in the first place, and why they’d choose to use this term rather than Kaleds,
presuming that none of them had ever gone into the city. Maybe some had and
escaped to tell the tale somewhere along the way.
These Thals do the classic alien thing of all
wearing the same clothes. In this case, the boys wear these rather strange
leather trousers with circular holes in the sides. Ok – moving swiftly on, the
Thals walk blindly into the Dalek trap, taking them anti radiation drugs, oil
cans, and what look suspiciously like several rolls of Andrex. Now, in all
honesty, I somehow doubt that my reaction – the Thal leader Temossus walked
right into the Dalek trap, and so deserved what happened to him because he was
a knob – was the one which was expected from the audience in 1963. Personally I
think that Dalek-Thal relations might have turned out quite differently had Ian
not appeared to stir the doo-doo, shouting out that it was a trap, thus
panicking the Daleks into firing. Chalk another death up to Chesterton.
The end of Episode four was a surprise. The
Thals make it perfectly clear that they’re not going to fight the Daleks, which
the travelers accept, and decide that it’s time to go. Never mind what happens
to the Thals they leave behind. Then Ian finds out that the Daleks took the all
important TARDIS fluid link off him in their city. That’s the cliffhanger at
the end of the show. Now, at the start of episode 5 Susan, Barbara and the
Doctor all lean heavily to Ian to persuade the Thals to attack the Dalek city.
I was surprised to see Barbara do this. In “An Unearthly Child” Barbara is the
guardian of the crew’s conscience, yet here she’s just as eager to line up the
Thals in front of them as a human – er – humanoid shield. Ian is not only the
action hero of this story, but it turns out that he is the moral hero as well,
and to be fair to William Russell he plays it for all he is worth. Ian says,
“The only way that the Thals can fight is if they themselves want to.” Lovely sentiments,
which he rather undercuts by forcing Alydon to give him a clip around the chops
for messing about with his bird. Far from the other Thals grabbing him and
holding him back with the words ‘Leave it Alydon – ‘e ain’t worth it’ , they
immediately drop their pacifism. That was fortunate wasn’t it?
There were a couple of odd things I rather
enjoyed about episode. The Dalek given the radiation drugs seems to have a
protracted and very noisy orgasm – I defy you to watch the scene and come to
any other conclusion yourself. The Dalek laserscope started up with what
sounded suspiciously like the same noise my ZX Spectrum used to make when it
was loading up a game on the tape recorder. Then Alydon got to utter this
predictable but still rather good line – “There’s no shame in being afraid to
die, there is only shame in being afraid to live.”
I’m afraid I rather lost a bit of interest
after episode 5, until the second half of episode 7. Once a story gets longer
than 4 parts there is always the likelihood that some of what you see on screen
will be padding. In fact this is even true of some 4 part stories. Being 7
episodes long it was inevitable that The Daleks was going to run out of
inspiration sooner or later. For me The Ordeal was the episode too far. Basically
you get a bit with Ian, Barbara, Ganatus and some other Thals, getting
themselves all into trouble in the swamp on their way around the city – then
you cut to the Doctor and Susan and their Thals – then you cut to the Daleks in
their control room (the first of many such scenes in Dalek stories) - then back to Ian and Barbara. It’s all
formulaic stuff, maybe lightened a little by the fact that Ganatus seems to
have the hots for our Barbara, but not a lot.
As for the climax of the story, well, you remember
how soft I said that these Daleks were earlier? Well in the climactic fight
scene, a Thal gets shot presumably on full power, and still gets up , grabs the
Dalek and power slams him into a wall, which finishes him off. These Daleks
weren’t half easy to kill. Still, at least the Doctor and companions get their
first leaving proper leaving scene in the show’s history – last time out they
were chased off with sticks and stones. I did like the Doctor’s very disdainful
comment to Alydon who comments that the war against the Daleks is finally over
– “No doubt you will have other wars to fight.” Just in case we hadn’t already
got the point. This was written less than 20 years after the end of world war
II, and it spells out the message pretty clearly. The Thals are clearly what we
would recognize as ‘good’ – and their pacifism is noble, but utopian, and if
you don’t actually live in Utopia, then utopian ideals are a luxury you can’t
afford. It is not enough to be opposed to evil and tyranny – you have to take
action.
Taking it a step further, I guess that it is
possible to see “The Daleks” as an allegorical moral fable. In the Daleks we
see the threat of nuclear war. We can call them the Soviet Bloc if it makes
things easier. In the Thals we see the pacifist unilateral disarmament lobby.
While we are invited to admire their nobility, we are also shown that to be
unwilling to fight for what is worth defending is ultimately an indefensible
moral stance. Hence the Doctor’s closing remarks.
Let’s try to being all of this to some kind of
conclusion, then. Watching “The Daleks” for the first time was something of a
disconcerting experience. Even though I’ve never watched the story before I got
a strange feeling of déjà vu. In part this may be memories of the film. I don’t
think it was just this, though. The Doctor escaping from Dalek controlled
buildings, complexes, cities, or spaceships, for example, is one which has
recurred many times in slight variations, and it was easy to lose sight of the
fact that this was the first time that it happened. The Thals were a little
drippy for my liking. Also, and it pains me to admit this, the Thals turn out
to be the goodies in the story, and not being a pretty person myself I find it
rather a cliché and rather annoying that it’s the pretty people who win. Here’s
a thought which must have been made before. Parallels have often been drawn
between the Daleks and the Nazis. Aren’t the Thals a bit, well, a lot, Aryan?
Hitler would have liked the look of them, if nothing else.
Still, it had its moments, and if I’m sitting
here and saying that I’ve seen a lot of this sort of thing done in Doctor Who,
and done better in other stories, the simple fact is that this was the first
one to do them. Rousing a native population to stand firm against evil and/or
oppression. First. Helping the weak and/or good and giving them the opportunity
for a new start and brighter future. First. Meeting terrifying and alien
creatures and overcoming them through intelligence, bravery and integrity. First.
I could go on, but there’s no point. The Daleks made Doctor Who into a success,
and “The Daleks” made them.
What
Have We Learned?
The TARDIS can be disabled by removing the fluid link. Mercury is somehow important to its function.
The Doctor can still be a grumpy and unsympathetic old git, and he is also prepared to lie, cheat, and put the whole crew in danger to get his own way.
Barbara has a similar effect to Viagra on humanoid beings
Ian Chesterton is probably responsible for millions of deaths.
NEVER
threaten a Thal’s girlfriend.
The Daleks
run on static electricity (good trick if you can do it) and the power is shut
off in their city at the end of the story. So they won’t be back again.
It is
possible to remove the Dalek creature from its casing, get into that casing,
and get out again without becoming in the least bit slimey.
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