21: The Daleks' Master Plan : Parts 1 - 4

Before Watching

My impression, judging by Mission to the Unknown, is that this should be a return to the more familiar ‘serious’ Dalek mode, after the supposedly comedic excesses of The Chase. I’ve already made my mixed feelings about the Daleks clear, and the thought of twelve consecutive episodes of them doesn’t exactly fill me with anticipation.

There are a couple of things which hold out some hope to me, of course. Jean Marsh is always good value and brings a little touch of class to whatever she appears in. Nicholas Courtney’s first Doctor Who role as Bret Vyon should be worth watching. Then there’s the reappearance of the Monk, which I know happens sometime in the second half of the story.

Since this is no ordinary Doctor Who story, what I’ve decided to do is to try to review it in three chunks of 4 episodes each.

After Watching

Episodes 1 – 4

I think that part of my problem with this story so far isn’t that it isn’t any good, but just that it really isn’t all that much my sort of thing. I’ll try to explain.

Now, as we know from “Mission to the Unknown”, the Daleks plan to invade our galaxy, using an alliance of outlying planets and systems. “Mission to the Unknown” took place on the jungle planet Kembel. The TARDIS lands on this planet, since the Doctor needs to find medical aid for Steven who was injured in Troy. He meets Bret Vyon. Now, I’m sure that all even slightly well informed fans know that Bret Vyon was the first character in Doctor Who to be played by Nicholas Courtney, who would go on to play Colonel, then Brigadier Alastair Lethbridge-Stewart from The Web of Fear with Patrick Troughton, until The Terror of the Zygons with Tom Baker, then a couple of guest appearances in The Five Doctors, Mawdryn Undead, and Battlefield. The Doctor becomes caught up in Vyon’s mission to find out what happened to Agent Marc Cory from “Mission to the Unknown”. Despite their initial antagonism towards each other they discover not only the Daleks’ plan, but also that Mavic Chen – Guardian of the Solar System, is treacherously in league with the Daleks.

The Daleks’ Master Plan of the title centres on their use of their latest Doomsday weapon, the Time Destructor – which I presume will do exactly what it says on the tin. To work, the Time Destructor needs a core of the mineral taranium, which happens to be the rarest in the Universe – and this is where Mavic Chen comes in, for he supplies it to the Daleks. The Doctor, who disguises himself as one of the delegates, steals the core, and he, Bret Vyon, Steve and Katarina escape on Chen’s Spar – an ultra-modern spaceship as opposed to an old-fashioned corner shop. Their plan – to deny the Daleks the taranium cores they need, and to inform Earth of Chen’s treachery – they handily found Marc Cory’s tapes on Kembel as proof.

Now, OK, as a set of 4 episodes the first 4 are coherent, and do follow a tight, internal logic. The development of the relationship between Bret Vyon and the Doctor is not without interest. There’s plenty of action and incident as you’d expect from a Terry Nation script – alright, Terry Nation only wrote some of the episodes, the others being written by Dennis Spooner.  But. . . well, I know that this is sacrilege to some people, but in some ways the story so far has reminded me a little of a Blake’s Seven style space opera, and I’m afraid I was never a great fan of Blake’s Seven.

I’ve gone on record before with my ambivalence towards the Daleks. I respect their contribution to the success of Doctor Who, and when I was a kid I was just as prone to running around the playground with one arm out shouting “Exterminate!” as anyone. But I found classic Doctor Who Daleks often to be two dimensional and rather repetitive – although to be fair some of the Dalek stories, such as Genesis of the Daleks did rise well above the common herd. The ‘new’ series Daleks, revived in Rob Shearman’s ‘Dalek’ are far more interesting. Now the Daleks so far in this story have at least been rather more serious and threatening than we saw in The Chase, which is all to the good. But however you dress it up, you can have spam with eggs, spam with beans, or spam with bread and butter, but at the end of the day it’s still spam, if you know what I mean. No? Well, the Daleks are always just Daleks.

The Daleks force the Spar (where did they get that name from? And more importantly, why?) to crash land on a prison planet, Desparus. Before they can take off again, a convict sneaks into the airlock, and he traps Katarina in there with him after they take off. Katarina makes the ultimate sacrifice, opening the airlock to become the first companion to die. This is a hugely dramatic moment, and it’s a shame that this only exists in still photos – and not many of them either, judging by the recon I was watching. I can’t help saying that it is something of a jarring note, though. This is the first time that the Doctor has taken someone on his travels in the TARDIS, and not either returned them (close to) home, or left them in a better situation than the one they came from. Now, you can argue that Katarina may well now be in a better place, but that’s an article of faith, not fact. For me the whole thing was just a little callous, and smacked of just wanting to get rid of a tricky companion who was proving far too difficult to write convincingly for. Almost as shocking was the sudden death of Bret Vyon, gunned down by his sister Sara Kingdom, who has been told he is a traitor.

Well, as I say, I doubt that “The Daleks’ Masterplan” is going to make it onto my all time top 10, but it’s not without its positive attributes so far. There’s precious little slack in these first four episodes, although I could do with a little less of the convicts nattering to each other. I’ve mentioned Mavic Chen. He’s played by an actor called Kevin Stoney, and his appearance is somewhat similar to the current appearance of Sir Tom Jones, what with the perma tan and the shocking white hair and beard. He is terrific though. In the recons he’s consistently the most interesting thing on the menus in this, and that’s just with his voice. In the second episode, “Day of Armageddon”, which still exists, it is very difficult to tear your eyes away from him when he’s on screen.

Overall, well, I’ve seen better, but crucially, I have also seen worse. This hasn’t yet outstayed its welcome, and I’m pretty much ready to watch the next four episodes.

What Have We Learned?

Being a companion of the Doctor just became very dangerous

Taranium is the rarest mineral in the Universe, until the next rarest metal in the universe comes along.