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. 

68: Planet of the Daleks

Before Watching

There’s a body of opinion that suggests that this story is a virtual retread of “The Daleks” from the first season. In fact I wouldn’t mind betting that this was the story that, when he asked the production team what they thought about it, they replied – We love your story Terry – we loved it every time you’ve sold it to us in the past. – Well, I cannot tell a lie, I liked this one when I watched it as a kid. I like the escape from the city where the Doctor and his Thal companions all made a sort of parachute/balloon affair and used it to ascend the rising hot air in a ventilation shaft. Very cool.

My recollection of that this story dovetailed out of “Frontier in Space”, and that the two stories worked together more closely than any two others since The Space Museum/ The Chase. We’ll see about that. A shout out for Bernard Horsfall as well, who plays one of the Thals – always brings a little bit of class to any role he plays does our Bernard.

After Watching

Right then. If you have watched every Dalek story so far, as I have, and then you watch the first episode of “Planet of the Daleks”, then maybe you’ll be struck by just how much of this seems familiar. It’s almost a case of being ‘Now That’s What I Call Daleks” – even though one of the Daleks themselves don’t appear until right at the end of this first episode, and it’s disabled when it does. Look at what we have – a jungle planet (The Daleks’ Master Plan) - Thals (the Daleks)- killer plants (Mission to the Unknown) – the crew, who are about to die, saved by medicine/treatment provided by the locals (The Daleks) – invisible aliens (The Daleks’ Master Plan). Despite all of these familiar Dalek trappings, we are actually in an original story – either the Doctor, or the Time Lords with whom he communicated at the end of “Frontier in Space” has steered the increasingly reliable TARDIS to Spiridon, the planet where the Daleks are massing their army for the attack on Earth. So at least the first episode sets out what’s going to happen very clearly. The Doctor must first of all recover, persuade the Thals into an alliance, find out what the Daleks are actually up to, and put a spanner in the works for them.

I had to laugh at the first cliffhanger. The Doctor and the Thals discover a round dent in the ground. There is obviously an invisible thing there. The Thals produce a couple of spray paint cans. “What’s that?” asks the Doctor. Oh, for God’s sake, Doc, it’s a flippin’ spray can! -is not what the Thals reply, sadly, - and they begin to spray the creature which – shock horror – turns out to be a Dalek! This might be a shock to the Doctor, although considering the last episode it shouldn’t – but why it would come as a shock to viewers, when the story is called “Planet of the Daleks” is something more of a mystery.

Speaking of Thals a moment before, there’s an interesting juxtaposition between two of the actors who play them. Both recur in several Doctor Who roles. On the one hand we have Bernard Horsfall – and on the other we have Prentis Hancock. Now, my admiration for Bernard Horsfall as a guest star is a matter of record in earlier volumes, so I won’t go on too much about that. However, if I single him out, I probably should probably single out Prentis Hancock as well. He made his first appearance in the show in “Spearhead from Space” where he didn’t stand out one way or another. However as Vaber the Thal in this he’s been giving a typical Prentis Hancock performance – extremely intense, and that’s for every single line that he’s given, right up to the point where you want to just give him a slap and tell him to stop overacting and calm down. I watched “Planet of Evil” a few weeks ago on The Horror Channel, and he was a main character in that, playing it exactly the same way. We’ll look at that one in more detail when we get to season 13. As I recall he did the same as Paul Morrow in “Space 1999” although it’s such a long time ago that I watched this my memory may well be at fault here.

You know, a funny thing happened as I watched this story. With each successive episode I found my cynicism subsiding, and a growing willingness to say, yes, maybe this is rubbish, but it’s good rubbish. I’m guessing that this is partly due to nostalgia. Thus, since I clearly remember being thrilled as a kid when the Doctor and the Thals – who now included a woman, Rebec, from another crashed Thal ship – rising to safety using a polythene chute as a parachute cum hot air balloon in a dalek air vent, I took a guilty pleasure in watching it again now. By the end of episode 4 I realized that I was actually enjoying it quite a bit more than I had enjoyed “Frontier in Space”, and frankly I wasn’t expecting that.

It took a while, but eventually that old Dalek favourite, deadly plague/bacteria designed to kill a huge section of the native population (Dalek Invasion of Earth) eventually raised its head. Which actually made me start to wonder what the invisibility thing was all about, apart from the fact that Terry Nation did like his invisible monsters. After all, they’re on Spiridon because it’s a convenient place to build a giant fridge to chill your Dalek army until you’re ready to invade the next planet. So the invisibility thing really is a red herring, although it does provide a scene whereby the ‘good’ Spiridonian who saved Jo’s life earlier releases the deadly bacteria in a sealed room, so that if the two Daleks inside the room open the doors, then the whole Dalek city will be contaminated. After being shot, he turns visible, and we see that his head looks just a tiny bit reminiscent of a Cardassian (that’s one from Deep Space Nine, and not the awful Kim and her tribe).

Where’s the swings there’s also roundabouts. Or to put it another way, while the story had me on its side by about halfway through episode 4, it lost me again pretty soon afterwards. Bernard rounds upon Rebec for coming on this ‘suicide’ mission. Why? Because he loves her. Ah, bless. Then we have the night on Spiridon, which certainly seems to last a good 12 hours to me. It’s obvious padding, I’m afraid, and generally episode 5 drags its heels towards its weary conclusion. Old Prentis throws a major wobbly when Taron/Bernard says he has to wait until later to play with his explosives, and so on and so forth. At last, the Dalek Supreme having arrived, they get to attack the city, with the obligatory splitting up of the Doctor and the companion. The Doctor goes off with the Thals, while Jo goes off with a member of the New Seekers.

I should say something about the Dalek Supreme here. My immediate thought when I saw it was that this was very like one of the film Daleks, what with its rather wide bumper, and much bigger headlights, and a check in The Television Companion reveals that it was actually adapted from a film Dalek that Terry Nation had in his possession. There you go. The Dalek Supreme looks quite impressive in his black and gold livery, although in one scene his dome wobbles up and down as he’s talking which is somewhat less impressive. Generally the Dalek Supreme is an interesting addition to the Dalek mythos. We only really started to get an explicit idea of the Dalek chain of command in The Evil of the Daleks, where we met the impressive, though impotent, Dalek Emperor. Now he was clearly different from the other Daleks. In this story, though, the Dalek Supreme, when killing a Dalek who was responsible for not capturing the Doctor and Thals, states that the Supreme Council will not tolerate failure. All of which opens up some interesting questions, namely, what are the Daleks doing having Supreme Councils? Who are on the Council? How did they get there? Who voted them in? It just doesn’t quite sit right with our concept of the Daleks as basically a Fascist dictatorship.

Well, anyway, there we are. The Doctor and his Thal friends manage to set off an ice volcano which buries the Dalek Army, and will take several centuries to melt through. Handy that. The New Seeker, who turns out to be a Thal called Latex, or something like that, clearly has the hots for Jo (ah – back to “The Daleks”) and proposes to her, but she refuses, saying that she wants to go home. In case we missed the point, when the Doctor is basically offering her the choice of all the planets in the universe, she brings up an image of Earth on the scanner, and tells him she wants to go home. A subtle way, I would say, of preparing us for her farewell in the very next story.

What Have We Learned?

Daleks shut down a) when they are in extreme cold – and b) when they’re invisible. 

21: The Daleks' Master Plan : Parts 9 - 12

Episodes 9 – 12

Episode 9 – Golden Death

I find myself hoping that we do actually get some real plot development now. After all, we still have 4 episodes to go, and this story is now in danger of becoming The Chase on a grand scale.

OK – who’s writing this one? Oh, Dennis Spooner again. Right – where are we? Well, in Ancient Egypt so it appears. As the Dalek machine approaches, Chen muses why it is that the TARDIS has landed, and not tried to take off again. The answer is that the Doctor is trying to properly repair the TARDIS lock. So what else actually happens in this episode? Well, the Daleks arrive, Steven and Sara see their ship land, and think it’s the Monk’s. They investigate, but get hauled off by the Egyptians after seeing the Daleks and Chen emerge. The Monk arrives, and walks out of his ship straight into an ambush by Chen and the Daleks. The miserable worm agrees to help them and to get the taranium from the Doctor – who has of course been eavesdropping. He sabotages the Monk’s TARDIS, having removed the directional unit. The Monk tries to get into the Doctor’s TARDIS – can’t, and the Doctor attacks him. Ho hum.

Episode Ten – Escape Switch

Oh, we’re back in live action. That’s a relief. So, Sara and Steven free the Monk from the sarcophagus into which the Doctor put him. Guess what? The three of them get captured by the Daleks. The Monk’s duplicitousness actually saves them when he tells the Daleks that he has brought the Doctor’s companions as hostages, and that the Doctor will exchange the Taranium cores for their release. It’s Chen who latches onto the idea, saying that the Doctor’s loyalty to his companions is unshakeable. I wonder how he can say this based just on his brief acquaintance with the Doctor? Meanwhile, back in pyramid HQ, the Egyptian workers decide that they will attack the Daleks at precisely the same time that the handover is taking place, which enables the Doctor to get away, but not to take the taranium with him.

Having removed the Monk’s directional unit, the Monk’s TARDIS will work, but without the Monk being able to control where it lands. In fact, in exactly the same position that the Doctor himself has been – which at least puts him slightly better off than he was previously, since he’s not marooned. The last we see of the Monk is him swearing to get revenge on the Doctor. Well, it hasn’t happened yet. I know that the Monk has never reappeared (I’m not a subscriber to the Monk-regenerated-and-changed-his-identity- theory) which is a bit of a shame. I think that there was quite a bit of mileage left in the character, but I guess that he was created by Dennis Spooner, whose time as script editor had already ended, and who would not write for the series again. So nobody else fancied resurrecting him. Shame.

Episode 11 – The Abandoned Planet

Guess what? The planet isn’t actually abandoned – it’s just meant to look that way. Things are at last coming to a head. The directional unit despite blowing up seems to have worked since the travelers are actually back on Kembel. The Doctor does make a point of telling us, though, that this is a one shot deal, and it’s definitely up the spout now. So the Doctor heads off back into the Dalek city for a final showdown, and is captured by Chen. As for Steven and Sara, well, they watch Chen’s ship blow up, thinking that he is on board. They then find a doorway in the mountainside which is obviously the way that the Daleks come and go from the city. They conveniently find all of the treacherous allies of the Daleks imprisoned, and free them all to go back and warn their galaxies of the impending Dalek invasion.

I mean, we’re obviously building up to a climax here, but for all of that there isn’t a great sense of urgency. Still, now that we’re coming towards the climax I am actually looking forward to the last episode – and not just because it is the last episode. This story might not necessarily be epic in scope, but it has managed to keep me at least partially interested throughout the 12 episodes, and that’s not easy when you consider that I often fidget through 6 parters.

Episode 12 – Destruction of Time

Well, this is it. Mavic Chen’s usefulness appears to have come to an end as he finally indulges in one carpet chewing scene too many, and the Daleks dispose of him. A shame, perhaps that it’s so abrupt, but it does serve to illustrate the point that however smart you are, ultimately this is exactly what working with Daleks will bring you. It’s much better than, I don’t know, having the incorrigible old Tom Jones lookalike suddenly repent and make some great self sacrificial gesture against the Daleks.

The deus ex machina in this particular situation, then, is actually the Doomsday Weapon itself. The Doctor activates the Time Destructor, and puts the Daleks into the dilemma that they want to shoot the Doctor, but they will destroy their weapon if they do so. It’s very like the stand off with the taranium in earlier episodes.

On the telesnaps the Time Destructor looks just like a globe with some Perspex tubes sticking out of it, but the ticking effect imbues it with a real menace, and for me it dominates the last 15 minutes of the story. The ageing of Sara looks good on the surviving photos – I wouldn’t be surprised if it looked even better in live action. Very hard lines on her though, since all she was trying to do was to help the Doctor. Now, when Steven flicked the switch that put the Time Destructor into reverse, the Doctor was given back the years that had been taken away from him, but it didn’t bring Sara back to life – which is probably just as well since that was a place in which the classic series certainly didn’t want to go. It begs the question, does Sarah Kingdom count as a real companion or not since she only featured in one story? Well, she was certainly in more episodes than her predecessor Katerina was.

It’s difficult to know what to say to sum up The Daleks’ Masterplan in any fair way. It’s sometimes described as epic, which claim can only really be justified in terms of its length. As it is the story itself only really takes place over 11 of the 12 episodes, since you can’t really count The Feast of Steven. I think in some ways it’s quite clever in the way that the story is structured, at least cleverer than it’s often given credit for. The first 4 episodes for example foreground Bret Vyon. The next two are about Sara Kingdom and how she becomes a companion. Episode 7 is a lighthearted pantomime – which works like a caesura in the development of the story. Episodes 8,9 and 10 benefit from the Monk’s presence, while the last 2 endings are the climax. 

What Have We Learned?

It is possible to construct a story which plays out over twelve episodes. Whether it is a good idea to do so is another question.

Ancient Egyptians were wimps.

The Monk presumably is still out there somewhere, endlessly wandering

Taranium comes from Uranus

21: The Daleks' Master Plan : Parts 5 - 8

Before Watching

Well, I know that Jean Marsh, last seen as Richard the Lionheart’s sister Joanna in “The Crusades” is going to have a lot more to do now. Last we saw Chen was sending her off to assassinate her brother – who happens to be Bret Vyon – having convinced her that he is a traitor. My main thought is to ask myself the question – how are they going to spin this story out for another four episodes – let alone another 8?

I know that one of the coming episodes – The Feast of Steven (number 7) was the first ever ‘Christmas special’ and has been widely criticized for being such, especially for the moment when the Doctor turns to the camera at the end and wishes all the folks at home a Merry Christmas.

After Watching

Episode 5

Following the bloodbath of the previous episode The Doctor, Sara and Steven are the victims of cellular dissemination – which means they are caught in a primitive transmat beam. Right “they’re moving through space towards a strange planet, the nature of which we can only guess at” says the blond one of the two scientists with silly tunics and sillier pudding bowl haircuts. I’ll have a guess – I said to myself. Bet it’s a jungle planet. Yep – I was right – and helpfully it’s a jungle planet a lot closer to Kembel than Earth is.

There’s a lovely scene in which Kevin Stoney virtually chews up the scenery when his bald henchman Karlton suggests a way of putting a spin on the travellers’ being sent to Mira as a deliberate security measure. A word too for Maurice Browning who plays Karlton. He is absolutely terrific himself, and his reaction to Chen’s little megalomaniac outburst is priceless.

On Mira we find Steven slapping an unconscious Sara Kingdom and taking her gun, then footprints appear from nowhere in the sand, being created by an invisible beast of some kind. I think it’s the first time that invisible monsters have appeared in Doctor Who. “The Visians. We can’t see them, but they’re very vicious.” The Doctor helpfully informs us. The end of episode 5 looks like one of those which Terry Nation wrote in order to see if Dennis Spooner could write his way out of it – namely the Doctor, Sara and Steven are surrounded by Daleks, and the Doctor announces that it seems as if the Daleks have won. Pah, he’ll have something up his sleeve.

Episode 6 – Coronas of the Sun

We start with a stalemate. The Doctor has the taranium, which means that the Daleks cannot fire at him, because of the effect it will have on the taranium. This gives the Visians time to attack the Daleks, and in the confusion, the Doctor and co escape. Their decision to escape on the Dalek pursuit ship is predictable, but a little disappointing – we’ve already seen them all escaping on a stolen ship once in this story.

This leads to a terrific confrontation between Mavic Chen and the Daleks. I don’t remember ever seeing anyone else apart from the Doctor ever giving a dalek such a dressing down, especially when the news comes through that the Doctor has stranded the dalek squad on Mira. This leads the Daleks to take remote control of the spaceship, and again that’s a little bit of a cop out since that was done with Chen’s ship as well. They break the dalek control, then find themselves caught in a sort of tractor beam. Now all the time this has been going on the Doctor has been manufacturing a fake taranium core. It is Steven’s idea to activate it by using antiquated gravity force technology. The Doctor and Sara poo poo the idea, so he does it anyway. It works, but knocks him out, and when he starts to recover he is covered by a force field. Hmm – bit lucky that.  So, having been brought down on Kembel, the Doctor makes the condition that he will only hand over the taranium in front of the TARDIS. Which means that he and Sara can sneak into the TARDIS, Steven can hand it over, then walk into the TARDIS while the daleks are shooting away his forcefield. It’s all a bit convenient.

Continuity wise I really want to know how the Doctor can just hand the key over and have Sara, who has never seen the TARDIS before, open it without destroying the lock. Cliffhangerwise, it’s a bit of a damp squib too. The TARDIS lands on an unknown location, and the scanner is on the blink. Steven goes to open the doors, and the Doctor stops him, announcing the atmosphere outside is poisonous. That’s it – the cliffhanger. Somehow I don’t see Terry Nation having sleepless nights about writing himself out of that one.

Episode 7 – The Feast of Steven

I forgot – this episode is the infamous Feast of Steven. Dennis Spooner was probably under orders not to write the Doctor into a hole which would take too long to extract himself from. So it turns out that we are actually back on Earth. The first bit sees the Doctor invade an episode of Z Cars. It’s clearly played for laughs, but really isn’t all that funny, although I dare say it might have raised the odd titter when it was first shown. Steven steals a police uniform and poses as one of the boys in blue to rescue the Doctor, who has been arrested coming out of the TARDIS, and adopts a cod Liverpool accent to do so (Z Cars was set in a fictionalized Merseyside town called Newtown) and I must admit I half smiled when the Doctor asks why he’s speaking in the accent, and Steven justifies himself by saying that everyone else is doing it. Alright, alright, calm down, calm down. After ten minutes or so’s nonsense they leave in the TARDIS.

As they’re going Sara says that she has forgotten about the Daleks for a moment, to which the Doctor replies “My dear, you must never forget about the Daleks.” Yet the episode continues to do precisely that. Now we materialize in silent movie era Hollywood. This bit may have been better in the live action original, but as a recon it’s pretty poor, especially since the first couple of minutes are so noisy you can’t really understand what’s happening. Alright, I’m being churlish. There are a couple of chuckles in this second half of the episode. It’s obviously meant to be tongue in cheek – hence the use of old silent movie caption cards to the accompaniment of tinkly wobbly cinema piano music. I liked it when the Doctor told the actress in the recreation of Valentino’s the Sheikh to put some clothes on for instance. It’s not a great line, but it’s something, as is ‘this is a mad house, it’s all full of Arabs!’ You wouldn’t get away with that line now. Finally the interminable Hollywood sequence ends, and the Doctor produces a bottle of champers, gives a glass to Sara and Steven, and the wishes all of us at home a Merry Christmas – arrghhh!

Look, it is what it is. This episode contributes nothing whatsoever to The Daleks’ Masterplan other than making the original audience wait for a fortnight for the story to continue rather than a week. So you have to judge it on its own merits. Considering that Terry Nation did have a pedigree as a comedy writer, having written for Arthur Haynes (means nothing to you now, but he was big back in the early 60s), considering that then the comedy is forced, and lumpy. I have seen some rather kinder reviews suggest that this episode is actually about the show cleverly mocking itself. Well, maybe the first half is. But even so, the purpose of the show is to entertain, and while it might well have done just that to an unsophisticated Christmas audience back in the 60s, it struggled with me in 2015, and ultimately, it lost.

Episode 8 – Volcano

Interesting title. The Daleks have a bit of a problem with volcanoes – as I recall the Doctor turned their Bedfordshire mine into a volcano in the climax of the Dalek Invasion of Earth. Right, we’re back to the story in this episode. Daleks, Chen and a couple of other knobbly bobbly and spiky aliens gathered to watch the test of the Time Destructor. The Daleks decide to use one of them, Trantis, the spiky one, as a guinea pig. When the Daleks discover that the core is the problem they round on Chen and accuse him of giving them useless taranium.

“It came from Uranus, I know it did!” he remonstrates. Hmm. Is that Dennis Spooner giving the less mature among the grown ups a better laugh than the whole of the previous episode offered, I wonder? In an episode full of surprises, an even better laugh was given when we got something straight out of the opening of Douglas Adams’ “Life the Universe and Everything” when the TARDIS materialized in Lord’s cricket ground, and the commentators carried straight on with their commentary, speculating on the effect that the appearance could have on the match if it stayed for a speculative 10 minutes. Of course, this aired long before Douglas Adams wrote the 3^rd Hitchhikers’ book. Adams was script editor of the show for Tom Baker’s penultimate season, and a big fan of the show when a child, so the chances are that the passage from his book must have been inspired – if only at a subconscious memory – by this episode. It must have seemed even funnier when first broadcast, since there wasn’t the book to compare it with back then.

So, the TARDIS, which has been chased – a la the Chase – lands on a volcanic planet, and the Doctor announces sadly that they haven’t shaken off the chaser. Who turns out to be – well well well, our old friend the Monk. Alright, I knew this was going to happen, but the original audience didn’t. It must have been a lovely surprise when a door in a large rock opened, the background music changed completely, and out popped good old Peter Butterworth. The meddlesome one is after his revenge, and he messes about with the lock on the TARDIS. The interplay between the Doctor and the Monk when they find him, about to drop a rock on their heads (is that a deliberate echo of the Doctor’s actions in An Unearthly Child?) are as good as ever. His plan, apparently, is to maroon the Doctor in the same way that he was marooned by the Doctor. It works too, until the Doctor does something fancy with his ring – it’s impossible to see exactly what on the recon, and it works.

So, we have the TARDIS and the Monk’s TARDIS in the time space continuum, and just to complicate matters further, a Time machine arrives from Skaro, and Chen and a Dalek squad set off in it. This one looks a bit better than the MFI table inspired design from The Chase. The last few minutes remind us that this would have been shown at New Year, as the TARDIS lands in London on New Year’s Eve, and the episode ends with the Daleks chanting exultantly that now the death squad are on their way nothing can stop them and conquest is assured. A triumph of hope over experience there, methinks.

So that’s episodes 5 – 8. I was actually really rather starting to enjoy the story when the Feast of Steven came along. I mean, I can understand why they did it – the gritty gloom of what had gone before in the previous 6 episodes is hardly Christmas fare after all, but I kind of wish they hadn’t. Especially considering how much episode 8 actually had going for it. Well, two thirds of the way through now, so I confidently expect to be able to make it all the way.

What Have We Learned

You can make your own personal force field just by pratting around with a gravity force generator and a fake taranium core

You can bypass the dimensional stabilizer of a TARDIS, but it will give you a very bumpy ride if you do so. 

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. 

19: Mission to the Unknown

Before Watching

I hope this one is alright. This one is the only whole story never to feature the Doctor or any of his companions. What it is, then, is a precursor, a teaser if you like, to the epic (in length, anyway) 12 parter The Dalek Master Plan, which is coming up after the next story, The Myth Makers. So if this is rubbish, then it’s only going to put me off that story, and believe me, that’s a hell of a lot of story to be put off of. There is a certain fascination to see what a Doctor Who story can be like without the Doctor in it, and so without further hesitation, let’s find out.

After Watching

I asked what a Doctor Who story is like without the Doctor in it, and now I know. It’s like part of a substandard James Bond film, where it’s set in space, and James Bond himself is a bit pants.

Mission to the Unknown is at heart a relatively simple tale. Special Agent Marc Cory – Licensed to Kill (no, honestly, he really does say this) is with a crash landed Earth expedition on the Planet Kembel. His mission is to find out exactly what is going on with the Daleks. They have been unseen in the galaxy for over 1000 years since the Dalek Invasion of Earth was defeated, but there have been reports that they are casting their beady eyestalks in this direction again.

Cory hits paydirt. The Daleks have a city on Kembel, and once he enters it The Daleks are discovered forming an alliance with various alien representatives of the outer planets with a view to conquering Earth. It seems as though the Daleks manage to find Cory and kill him before he can alert Earth , but . . .

I watched the Ian Levene animated recon and it passed quickly and inoffensively enough, I suppose. It was a bit of a dour 25 minutes though. I liked the idea of the Varga plants, a species genetically engineered by the Daleks and then transplanted on Kembel. These plants kill you with their thorns, and then you become one of them. These are the first killer plants in “Doctor Who”, and they certainly won’t be the last. Without the Doctor and companions, though, it’s all a bit pointless, and time will tell how essential it is to have seen this before you start watching The Dalek Master Plan. I mean, the fact that it would be five weeks before The Dalek Master Plan actually started – plenty of time to forget what actually happened in this one – suggests it isn’t all that important. So does it stand on its own right? Well, it all depends on your feelings about the Daleks. As I may have mentioned before, I’m not the Daleks’ biggest fan, and as such, I didn’t think that their presence alone was enough to justify this episode.

What Have We Learned?

Doctor Who without the Doctor is just Who?

16: The Chase

Before Watching

Even though I’ve never watched “The Chase” before I know that this is Ian and Barbara’s last story. I have mixed feelings about it. I think that William Russell did a sterling job in what , at times, must have seemed to him like utter nonsense, and my admiration for the acting skills of Jaqueline Hill has already been put on record in this very blog on more than one occasion. But I do accept that things change. Ian and Barbara’s job was originally to be the viewer’s anchor, our point of focus. With so much strange an unusual going on around them, with the Doctor proving so mercurial and unpredictable in the earliest stories, they were a reassuring presence. But things have changed since then. We know the Doctor now, and while he can still be snappy, and prone to sudden fits of anger, we know that he wants the best for his friends, and will never let them down. His body might not let him solve situation through his physical prowess, but he’ll solve them anyway, through other means. He is now the hero of his own show. He no longer needs Ian to get him out of scrapes, and he no longer needs Barbara to argue with, and to pull him back in when he is out of line. Time for them to go.

As with the preceding story, “The Space Museum”, this one really doesn’t have much of a reputation. It’s not true that fandom in general has no good words for the story – they have many very good words for it, none of which I can use in a family blog. As ever, though, I intend to keep an open mind – and I have a box of tissues on standby for Ian and Barbara’s farewell.

After Watching

Never has the phrase ‘somehow manages to be less than the sum of its parts’ been more appropriate for a Doctor Who story. “The Chase” doesn’t maintain the level of sustained madness we saw in “The Web Planet”, but it has moments which are so . .. well, for want of a better phrase, downright wrong, that are unmatched in any of the shows I’ve watched since I began. And yet . . .

I liked the way that the first episode took it for granted that you had remembered what had happened before, and showed the TARDIS crew having some downtime and the equivalent of a lazy Sunday afternoon, before tuning into the Dalek channel on Time TV. It’s not quite as good as Dave, but better than QVC.  I also liked the scene of the Dalek assassination squad trundling their way into their time machine. Their time machine itself, I did not like so much. The only way that I can describe its external appearance is like this. I once saw a coffee table made out of three pieces of MDF. Two piece slotted together in an X to make the stand, and on top of that went a large circular piece for the table top. Imagine that scaled up, and that’s what the Dalek time and space ship looked like. It’s all very disappointing. I suppose that the Daleks never did get a hang of aesthetics. Their spaceship in The Dalek Invasion of Earth earlier in this season looked crap too.

In Terry Nation’s non-Dalek story, The Keys of Marinus, he opted for a very episodic series of episodes – if that’s not a tautology – or to put it another way – under the umbrella of the search for the keys, the travelers ended up participating in several different self-contained adventures, and there’s more than an element of this in “The Chase” too. The first of these takes place on the desert planet, Aridius. This planet is home to the Aridians, a race of semi humanoids with some rather fishy features, who remind me just a tad of the aquaphibians’ King Triton in “Stingray”. I knew from “The Wife in Space” and “Running through Corridors” that one of the Aridians is none other than Hywel Bennett. The same sources had alerted me to the fact that Martin Jarvis was also one of the Menoptera in “The Web Planet”. In both cases I wouldn’t have spotted this fact unless I’d noticed it on the credits. These fishy wimps are put to work, brushing the sand away from the TARDIS by the newly arrived Daleks – using toothbrushes by the look of it – and as soon as the Daleks put the slightest bit of pressure on them they promise to hand over the Doctor and the crew. Serves them right that the Doctor did nothing to solve their own problems and left them in the lurch.

The next part of the story saw the TARDIS land on the top of the Empire state building, which allowed me to indulge in another enjoyable bout of pointless pedantry. When the TARDIS eventually dematerializes, the wall behind it is clearly a brick wall. Well, the Empire State Building is not, and never was made of bricks. The nearby Chrysler Building, which is slightly smaller, and slightly older to the tune of a few months, was built from bricks, and is actually the world’s tallest brick building. Blue Peter’s Peter Purves (remember the name, he’ll be back) plays the amiable cretin Morton Dill from Alabama, who decides that the sudden appearance of the TARDIS denotes that a movie is being shot there, and greets the Daleks when they appear soon after in the same manner. Why don’t they shoot him? Heaven alone knows, but then this section of the story is very clearly being played for laughs. Doesn’t find many of them, but it tries.

Off again then, and this time onto a sailing ship. For the very last time, a humanoid male gets the hots for Barbara again. When she got back to civilization, I bet that was one thing she didn’t miss. Although I don’t know, maybe in 60s Britain this was the norm for her. Anyway, the Daleks arrive soon, the Travellers escape, and a jolly free for all ensues in which the crew all end up leaving the ship , as does one Dalek which walks – er – trundles the plank for reasons best known to itself. Hands up who didn’t know that the deserted ship would turn out to be none other than the famous Mary Celeste?

Enough of this enforced jollity. The TARDIS lands in a haunted house – and for a while the DOCTOR decides that this must be a recess of the human mind. Huh? Barbara becomes a most un-Barbara like screamer, as Dracula and Frankenstein both rear their unconvincing heads. The Daleks arrive, and are attacked by the Dracula and Frankenstein robots? – if that is what they are. Vicki somehow gets separated and ends up on the Dalek ship, just in time to see them making a replica of the Doctor, whose mission will be to kill the Crew. As the TARDIS departs we see that this is all an exhibit for the Ghana international fair of 1999.

Well, with two episodes of pointless padding over, we can at least now get on with the story – such as it is. Vicki somehow manages to evade capture on the Dalek ship. These Daleks are particularly inept – as you can see from the pig’s ear they make of the Doctor’s replica. In many shots he is played by Edmund Warwick, who, bless him, didn’t bear much of a resemblance to William Hartnell, either facially, or in body type. I’m sure that there was some rationale behind the decision not to have William Hartnell double up as his own double, but it was to the detriment of the story.

Right then, to the climax on Mechanus. Mechanus, planet of giant mushrooms, and robots that look like geodesic domes. Actually I like the idea of the Mechanoids. They were robots left on Mechanus to tame the jungles, make it habitable for humans, and build a city, and then the humans abandoned the project, and the Mechanoids developed minds of their own. There’s quite a nice model city, where the daleks have a good old rumble with the Mechanoids, and the Travellers meet the shipwrecked space pilot Steven Taylor. Now, Steven’s resemblance to Morton Dill is a hell of a lot better than the robot Doctor’s resemblance to the Doctor, and hardly surprising since it is the self same Peter Purves we first met a couple of episodes ago, although not the same character. Was there a rule against having more than one actor playing two parts? If so – why do it this way. It makes no difference whether Peter Purves or another actor who looks nothing like him plays Morton Dill. Go figure.

Alright, Ian and Barbara’s departure. This one forms a real contrast with Susan’s. There’s no room for sentiment here as they have to practically beg the Doctor to set the controls on the Dalek timeship to take them home. He gets all angry and grumpy, telling them that there is a 50% chance that they will die in the process. We know while we’re watching it though he is only saying this because he can’t bring himself to tell them how much he doesn’t want them to go, and how much he is going to miss them. I have to say – me too. I’ll be honest, I’d think twice about getting into a timeship that looks like flat pack MFI furniture. It was good to see them get a little montage of them enjoying being back in London. They’re going to be alright, and if they manage to get a little jiggy with each other now, well, good for them.

What Have We Learned?

Well, we know what really happened to the Mary Celeste - sort of

Doctor Who and Dracula and Frankenstein really don't mix

Aridians are a bunch of ...  
Peter Purves had a career before Blue Peter

5. The Keys of Marinus

Before Watching

Ah, I told you that this one has been on my hit list for donkey’s years didn’t I? Having read some comments about this story online I get the idea that it has a reputation of being Terry Nation’s Difficult Second Album. I remember the Voord, who are the main villains in this story, from a story in the first Doctor Who Annual. I don’t know how much they cost now, but you could pick one up in decent nick for pennies in jumble sales back in the 70s.

I liked the idea of the Conscience Machine, of the keeper of it living on this isolated island, and of the quest for the Doctor and the companions to bring back the five keys. This basic plot engine was similar I suppose to the Key to Time malarkey in Tom Baker’s day.

I can remember reading Philip Hinchcliffe’s novelisation back in the day, and not being overly impressed. I can’t for the life of me remember anything that happens in it. So let’s rectify that now.

After Watching

Well, I’m very sorry to all the naysayers, but in my opinion, that really wasn’t bad at all. I loved the first episode. Alright, the filmed shot of Susan’s shoe dissolving in the acid pool isn’t that well done, and there are some fairly obvious errors. I will be honest, I watched this one back with the text on to confirm that I had seen a stage hand who wasn’t supposed to be there when the Voord was caught out by the revolving wall. I don’t mind that much. In some ways it’s a real contrast to the opulent production values of “Marco Polo”. Then Arbitan the Keeper appeared, and I exclaimed, “That’s George Colouris!” George Colouris would have a pretty decent claim to being the first big name guest star actor ever to appear in Doctor Who. Maybe the name doesn’t mean a great deal to you now, but George Colouris had a very important role in one of the most important films ever made in the History of Cinema. During the late 1930s Colouris was working in the USA, and joined Orson Welles’ Mercury Theatre. In Citizen Kane Colouris is cast as the lawyer who has to break the news to Kane’s mum that her son has become heir to a multi million dollar fortune, and then becomes Kane’s exasperated legal guardian.

Colouris brings a certain gravitas to the party, although somehow some of this is lost when he asks the travellers if they will look for his daughter while they look for the keys for him. I don’t know, I would have preferred him more powerful and other worldly than being concerned about lost daughters. I mean , it’s not exactly a crucial plot point that Sabetha, who we meet first in episode 2, actually is Arbitan’s daughter. It wouldn’t make any real difference if she wasn’t.

Once again, though, as with “The Daleks”, the Travellers’ initial reaction is ‘stuff what’s going on here, we’re off back to the TARDIS’. Mind you, the whole thing with the Conscience Machine is rather dodgy. Arbitan’s info dump about it is a little bit of a yawn, but basically it turns out that this is a mind control device. Yes, he says that he will only use it for good, but that’s not the point. Mind control is wrong, so we are forced to ask the question, can you achieve good through doing something evil? Put it another way, quis custodiet ipsos custodies? Yartek, leader/controller of the Voord developed the ability to resist the Conscience Machine some 700 years earlier,which is why the keys were dispersed throughout Marinus. OK. But the Machine has had an upgrade of some kind, and will now work on Yartek, so Arbitan wants his keys back. He can’t be arsed to get them himself, so wants the Doctor and companions to go and fetch them. Understandably their reaction is ‘Thanks but no thanks.’ so Arbitan places a forcefield around the TARDIS so that the travellers can’t leave anyway. Now, I won’t be the first to ask why Arbitan doesn’t place one around himself at least, in which case the Voord wouldn’t be able to kill him. The answer being that George Colouris had specified that he could only do one episode, so for the story’s sake he has to be killed off. I really shouldn’t watch these episodes with the text on. I like the transporter bracelets that Arbitan gives them. The text suggested that Terry Nation liked them as well, and that’s why he used transporter bracelets in Blakes Seven. I thought that they had to use transporters for the same reason that Star Trek did – because special effects shots of spaceships landing on planets were too expensive and looked crappy anyway. But maybe this story is why he picked on bracelets.

I didn’t see anything greatly wrong with the first episode. As for the ones that followed, well, I’m sorry, but I like a good quest storyline. In fact I don’t even mind a not so good quest storyline. The Velvet Web – episode two – is an unusually poetic title for Terry Nation, and although the pace is quite languid at times, it’s actually rather good and quite amusing. The way this story has been worked out is that they have a self contained adventure in each place where a key can be found. For an action-minded script writer like Terry Nation I can see that this must have had a huge appeal. For set and costume designers however it must have been an absolute nightmare. The plot of “The Velvet Web” owes something to the lotus eaters episode from the Odyssey. The Doctor and companions arrive in a place where it seems that the locals’ dearest wish is to provide for their every whim and desire. Only as the story develops does Barbara begin to see what is really happening. The fabulous clothes they have been given are rags. The Doctor’s laboratory he has asked for is a mostly empty room with a couple of dirty mugs. It turns out that this place is run by the Morphotons, a group of brains with eyes on huge stalks, living in jars. Their brains have outgrown their bodies. Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m always in the market for a brains in jars story. They feed the unwary with visions of being given their wildest dreams, while simultaneously leaching away their memories of their life before, eventually placing them into zombie-like slavery. Once Barbara has broken the compulsion though she goes into the room where the Morphotons are kept, and – well – she only manages to smash one of the jars, but it seems to do the trick. The brains shrivel and die, and the travellers and two slaves, Altos and Sabetha are freed from their compulsion. Altos and Sabetha who is Arbitan’s daughter, were both originally sent by Arbitan to retrieve the keys.

There is a reason why Sabetha and Altos join the band. This is the first time that one of the regulars got a fortnight holiday break during the season, and it’s William Hartnell. So in the next two episodes they get to take over some of his lines and actions. Speaking of which , episode three sees Terry Nation revert to type with the title. This one is called “The Screaming Jungle” because it is set in a Screaming Jungle. Now, let’s be fair, we’re in good, Indiana Jones territory with this one. You have a jungle, and a strange temple that surely houses the artefact we’re after. Yes, there it is on the statue’s forehead. Barbara reaches up to grab it, throws it down, and then the statue’s arms grab her, and it pulls the old revolving statue trick. Worse than that, Sabetha looks at the key, and it’s a fake! Remember that, it’s a plot point we’ll come back to later on. Ian does the same as Barbara, and when the two of them are reunited, they find Darius, who gets his clothes from the same monk’s oufitters as Arbitan. He conveniently dies, when giving them a cryptic clue to the whereabouts of the key. I have to say that Ian, the Science teacher, is a little slow off the mark in realising that it’s a chemical formula, but hey, we all have our off days.

Right, so episode 3 was jungle – where are we going for episode 4? What looks like the polar ice caps. I bet the designers were tearing their hair out by this time. Ian and Barbara fall into the hands of Vasor, a big fur trapper, who looks like he’s eaten half a badger and left its arse hanging out. Like Ganatus before him, he has the hots for Barbara, and unlike Ganatus, he isn’t going to be a gentleman about it. Ian, whom he sent out to die with wolf-attracting raw meat in his bag, returns with the other three whom he went out to look for, and saves the day.

Right’ let’s have a wee digression on sexual morality in “Doctor Who” shall we? It’s what you’ve all been waiting for, I’m sure. In 2015, watching the first series, I suppose it’s inevitable to ask the question about Ian and Barbara – are they or aren’t they? But I have to wonder, was that question even on the agenda in 1963? I mean, let’s look at the facts. They weren’t married  - not to each other anyway, so I suppose that a hint of anything the least bit sexual wouldn’t have been allowed. Here’s a point too. Does anyone ever actually say that Ian is single? We know that Barbara is Miss Wright, and that in 1963 Miss meant Miss. But how about Ian? True, he never mentions having a wife and/or family, but then some men don’t. He doesn’t wear a wedding ring, but again . . .

I rather like the quest elements of this episode. They have to cross an ice chasm on a rope bridge. Hmm. That’s the second time in two stories Terry Nation has had our heroes having to cross a chasm. He clearly has something about them, and you don’t need me to make the obvious Freudian connection. Inside the ice cave they find the key, encased in a block of ice, surrounded by four frozen knights. The idea is that they have to turn on the central heating pipes – no really – in order to melt the ice, which will at the same time wake up the knights. Meanwhile, old badger-arse chops turns up and disconnects one end of the rope bridge. Well, Susan crawls across on some large icicles, and reconnects the bridge, while the others use the time honoured method of grabbing the key and running like hell. If only they’d not left their bracelets with the trapper. One long trek later . . .

The last key, then is retrieved when the story changes tack again to become a courtroom drama, when Ian is accused of murdering a museum guard and stealing the key he was guarding. Ah, but the guard was working with the Doctor, who is back from his hols. And the Doctor defends Ian, while Barbara, Susan and the other two find the murderer. OK – rather run of the mill and humdrum, although again, a complete contrast to what has gone before. Finally back to where it all started and the Conscience Machine. We get our first sight of Yartek, the real villain of the piece, who has a Voord helmet, although his doesn’t have an antenna. Earlier on, each of the Voord helmets had a slightly differently shaped antenna on it – thus foreshadowing the Tellytubbies by several decades. None of them ever take their helmets off so we can’t see if they are humanoid, or if their helmets are shaped oddly because they’re shaped oddly. We can’t even tell if Yartek is a Voord – he calls them his ‘creatures’ so it suggest that maybe he isn’t. Right, remember the fake key? Guess how the good guys bugger up the conscience machine? Well, we’ve seen worse denouements I’m sure.

Overall – and a lot of people won’t agree with me – I really rather enjoyed this, and it didn’t terribly outstay its welcome. Jacqueline Hill is always value for money, and you can definitely see how relationships between the TARDIS crew have changed since “The Daleks”. They ‘ve been through so much by this point that they know how to all pull together – even if Susan is still being underused.

What Have We Learned?

Sometimes what looks like a man in a wetsuit actually is meant to be a man in a wetsuit.

If a man in a white robe gives you a transporter bracelet – don’t take it off and leave it in a fur trapper’s hut.

Brains in jars are never to be trusted.

If it’s written by Terry Nation, thumb forward through the script until you reach the bit with the chasm.