72: Death to the Daleks

Before Watching

Now, there’s a title to get your pulse racing. I’m going to have to be careful not to say too much before we get to the after watching section of this review, since I’m afraid that this is another of those shown in its entirety on the Horror Channel within the last couple of years, which I found the time to sit down and enjoy. Terry Nation, then returned to the fold as it were with season 10’s “Planet of the Daleks”. That essentially was something of a remake of his own “The Daleks” from season 1. In fact, Terry Nation did develop a reputation for rehashing his own material. There is a lovely story, possibly apocryphal, in which Terry Nation is having a meeting with the Producer and Script Writer du jour, discussing a script, and he is supposed to have asked whether they liked it. The producer then replied, “We love your script, Terry, just as we loved it every time you sold it to us in the past.”

So, bearing in mind I only last watched it about a year ago, can I reasonably expect to derive anything new from this story? Well, yes, maybe I can. For when I watched it last week I had not seen every Dalek story before Death to the Daleks. Now I have, and so you never know, this in itself may mean that I come to view it in a different light. Let’s see, shall we?

After Watching

Unless I’m imagining it there’s quite a famous publicity shot from the 4^th Doctor’s time which shows Sarah, clad in beach wear, emerging from the TARDIS with the Doctor, expecting to be in some exotic location, but finding that snow is falling all around her. She should have known better by then, since in the start of this story he has clearly promised to show her a good time in some exotic location, as she starts off dressed in blue beachwear this time. The Doctor is always doing this in the classic series, taking his companions off for a promised holiday in a beauty spot which never materializes, should you pardon the pun. Only a couple of stories ago he kept trying to drag poor old Jo off to Metebelis 3 – no wonder she went off with the Welshman.

We know pretty much what we’re going to get with a Jon Pertwee story now. It’s never going to blow your mind, with the sheer brilliance of a “Mind Robber” or “Deadly Assassin”, but it’s never going to plum the depths of “The Twin Dilemma” either. Seriously, write down a list of the worst Jon Pertwee stories, and then see how many of them would be in your bottom 10. Not many, I’ll be bound. So then, since it’s Jon, the Doctor is going to be dashing around, being heroic, throwing out expositions, barking at idiots, and saving the day – because that’s what the Third Doctor does, without fail. There’s plenty of that in this story.

The TARDIS lands off course, on the planet of the Exxilons. Something is draining power out of the TARDIS. The Doctor meets a group of people from Earth, who are trying to get a supply of Parrinium, (and when you pronounce this on the telly it sounds uncomfortably like perineum) which is essential to fight a terrible space plague. Their ship has been drained of power. So has a ship belonging to the Daleks, who have come for the same reason. Even their guns fail. This is an interesting idea – after all, a Dalek is almost defined by its gun. So what does one do when the gun doesn’t work? Simple – make an alliance with the humans – who can be as evil as Daleks when they want to be – and make sure that you bump them off as soon as you get the opportunity. Fix a different kind of gun to your redundant gun, and hey presto, you’re hot to trot.

So the Earthlings and Daleks strike up a fragile alliance, and put the indigenous Exxilons to work, getting the parrinium for them. See how I told you that humans could act just as evilly as Daleks. This is a point that we are obviously meant to make for ourselves, and the Doctor’s opposition to what is happening really does him some credit.

Meanwhile Sarah has in her own inimitable fashion stumbled up to the great city of the ancient Exxilons. Now, at this stage we get some serious echoes of “Colony in Space”. In both stories an ancient civilization has decayed, and the native in habitants, have descended to ‘primitivism’ over many generations. They have left behind their great city generations ago, but worship it. To enter is forbidden, and just as Jo did in “Colony in Space”, so does Sarah in this story and when the Exxilons find Sarah there they duly take her away for sacrifice.

The resolution to the plot involves the Doctor discovering that it is the city draining power from the TARDIS and the ships. With the help of Bellal, a ‘good’ Exxilon, he enters the city, beating booby traps and facing challenges, with the Daleks hot on his heels.  Now, cards on the table, I like the trope of finding your way into an ancient city, facing challenges and overcoming them to reach the treasure that lies within. It was used to great effect in 3 of the Indiana Jones movies, and is far older than Doctor Who – going back to Rider Haggard’s “King Solomon’s Mines” and arguably back as far as the mythological story of Jason and the Argonauts. Classic Doctor Who used a slight variation on this theme in “Pyramids of Mars” and again in “The Five Doctors”, but this was the first.

I don’t know whether this had anything to do with it, but this story would have been in the planning stage right about, or just after the time of the great Tutankhamen exhibition in the British Museum in 1972. Now, my parents didn’t actually take me to see the exhibition, which was a shame. I can’t complain too much because they did take me to see the BBC Special Effects exhibition in the Science Museum. I did get to see the 2007 Tutankhamen Exhibition at the O2 Arena, which had more exhibits than the 1972 exhibition, but sadly not the gold death mask. However, I digress. At the time of the 1972 exhibition there were a lot of books and a lot of TV shows about Tutankhamen and the discovery of his tomb. Now, I can’t say for certain that this was the catalyst for my love of this particular archaeologically based adventure genre, but then I wouldn’t say that it wasn’t either. Who knows, it may even have been the inspiration for this aspect of the story. Admittedly this only uses some of the trappings of the genre. There’s no great prize, no enlightenment awaiting the Doctor at the heart of the ‘tomb’, only the opportunity to hopefully destroy the city.

The City itself, even more than the Daleks, is the great enemy in this story, and it’s an interesting idea, one that takes this story some way beyond “Colony in Space”. In short, the Exxilons built the city to be capable of repairing and maintaining itself. Hence we have the huge and tentacular roots that attack the Doctor when they believe him to be a threat to the city. The ancient Exxilons fitted the city with a gigantic supercomputer for a brain, and the city instantly realized that it could function much better on its own, and cleared itself of its infestation of Exxilons. The only remaining descendants are the ‘primitive’ Exxilons on the surface, and the small band living under the city, like Bellal. The idea is a different slant on the dangers of technology. The City’s purpose was originally to provide a home to living organisms. When  it becomes seemingly sentient it destroys the organisms it was built to serve, thus losing its’ purpose at the same time. The City’s purpose then becomes its’ own continued existence and nothing more,  which essentially is a warning to us all , since its’ existence is at best, sterile, and at worst, malign. The message would seem to be then, that to simply be is not a good enough purpose for existence. Self-perpetuation is a means, but it should never be an end in itself.

The City and its’ history give us a clue to another source or influence upon the story. When he is shown some of the markings which are on the City wall by Bellal, the Doctor realizes that he has seen the same markings on a temple wall in Peru. Really? When? It wasn’t during the Aztecs, since anyone knows that they lived in Mexico. Leaving that to one side, this looks again like another nod to human development being guided and aided by aliens, as we saw in “The Daemons”, which ties in with “Chariots of the Gods” and by Erich Von Daniken, and its many sequels and imitators. Not for the last time in Doctor Who, either. This ‘Shaggy God story’ was first published in 1968, and its’ enjoyably crackpot theories became hugely popular in the early 1970s, partly due to a 1970 documentary, and a number of TV shows. Without wanting to spend too much time paraphrasing the text of the book, Von Daniken and his imitators and successors claim that they believe that human civilization developed through the intercession of technologically advanced alien beings, who were worshipped as Gods, and that there is ample proof available if you know what you are looking for.

This is the third of four Dalek stories which have appeared once a season since season 9. Yes, I know that they appear in the end of Frontier in Space – but that acts more of a lead in to this story, not unlike the Daleks’ appearance in “The Space Museum” paving the way for “The Chase”).You’ve got the intelligent story which reintroduces the Daleks (Day of the Daleks), then the Daleks’ Greatest Hits story (Planet of the Daleks), and after this the epic story which introduces the origins of the Daleks – and so I always think that this is the ugly duckling of the four. Which is a shame considering that it’s certainly more original than the preceding Dalek story.  An enemy (in this case the City) more powerful than the Daleks are is an interesting departure.

The Daleks have had another makeover for this show. The Daleks in “Planet of the Daleks” were dark, matt coloured daleks, which gave them a more military,’ this means business’ feel. The Daleks in this story are certainly brighter than we’ve ever seen them before. Their bodies are painted silver, and a bright silver at that, while all of their lumps and bumps are black. This does make them stand out far more against the dull, sandy and grey background of the quarry which stood in for the planet Exxilon (which was presumably unavailable due to prior commitments). It does also make the scene where the Dalek bursts into flames after an attack by the Exxilons more vivid as well.

In fact, destruction is something of a keynote in this story, certainly in the last episode. There’s the destruction of the city itself. The city hasn’t been a bad model up to this point. There is a tendency to only go a couple of ways when you’re designing an alien city of the future. Domes, spires and aerial walkways is one – like the city of the Mechanoids in “The Chase”, and the other is mega-ziggurat. This city is the latter. All in all its’ destruction scene is a little bit of a letdown. Presumably it was made from a block of something like polystyrene, and acetone or something similar was poured over it. So the city just sort of subsides, liquefies and congeals, and the overall effect is not the most effective.  Likewise, the classic TV series, as opposed to the film, has always had a bit of a problem with Dalek ships. We recall the flying saucer in “The Dalek Invasion of Earth” and the ‘Dardis’ in “The Chase”.  In the climax of this story, after the Doctor has given the City’s brain insoluble problems to deal with to give it the equivalent of a stroke, the Daleks, in time honoured fashion, decide to do a runner with the loot.  All of which allows grizzled Scottish space marine, Dan Galloway, to smuggle himself and a bomb aboard the Dalek saucer – result? – Mit der bang, mit der boom, mit der bing bang, bing bang boom. A little simplistic, but then this is the Pertwee era, and if the denouement doesn’t actually involve reversing any polarity, then that’s sophistication enough.

Compare this story with next season’s “Genesis of the Daleks” and you can learn a lot about the differences between the Pertwee era and the series with Tom Baker. Which we will do. What we mustn’t do though, is forget that this is maybe not the greatest of all Dalek stories – there’s no maybe, it isn’t – but it rattles along well enough, and that’ll do for me.

What Have We Learned?

When Apple finally get around to inventing the iCity we should probably give it a miss.