DOCTOR WHO: DEATH TO THE DALEKS and One of the Universe’s 700 Wonders

“DEATH TO THE DALEKS” – Season 11, Serial 3, Story 72 – Written by Terry Nation; Directed by Michael E. Briant – The Third Doctor and Sarah are on their way to have some fun in the sun when the power cuts off in the TARDIS. They exit to find themselves on Not Tatooine But Could Be, where they get embroiled in a hoo-hah between the native Exxilons, some Space Marines, and the Daleks. The latter two are looking for parrinium, which can only be found here and is the only mineral that can stop a plague and save billions of lives. Not that any of that matters. Because The Doctor And The Daleks (And The Space Marines) All Have To Work Together To Get Off This Crazy Rock.

Oh, what could have been.

DEATH TO THE DALEKS is a completely infuriating serial to watch because it has, at its core, one of the all-time great ideas in DOCTOR WHO history: the Doctor and the Daleks have to work together to face down a common threat.

It could be absolutely brilliant. At the very least, it should be a tremendous amount of fun to watch these two hated enemies uncomfortably work together. It should be, but it isn’t. Playing to the formula of the time, DEATH TO THE DALEKS takes this brilliant idea and jams it into a semi-enjoyable story about competing factions, the need for a rare mineral, and the mystery of why the power has been cut.

The big crime is that you could practically replace the Daleks with anyone – the Cybermen, the Sontarans, an army of Candymen - and I’m not convinced this serial would be any different, at all. In fact, I think having the Daleks in this serial instead of someone new actually hurts DEATH because from the moment the Daleks show up, the Doctor is all, “Don’t trust them. They’re evil. They’ll betray you,” which robs the story of any sense of mystery or tension.

That’s not to suggest that DEATH is an awful serial, just that it’s sort of a slightly-subpar-middle-of-the-road serial. For all of the limp tension and failure to take advantage of the Doctor/Dalek Team-Up idea, DEATH isn’t wholly a waste of time. There’s some nice Doctor-Sarah Jane moments, and-

Wait, let’s get to Sarah Jane. Sometimes I get the sense that Terry Nation wrote these Dalek serials at a typewriter that magically transported him back to 1963. Much of Sarah Jane’s sense of independence and fight that was present in THE TIME WARRIOR and INVASION OF THE DINOSAURS is missing from the script here. (I wouldn’t be surprised if the script literally says “SIDEKICK GIRL” instead of “SARAH JANE.”) You can literally see where Elisabeth Sladen (with, one hopes, help from Jon Pertwee and Michael Briant) insert little moments of her independence into Sarah Jane.

It’s hard to watch SJS play all frightened and stereotypically “girly” after watching her assert herself in the previous two serials. It’s no fun to watch her beg the Doctor not to go anywhere while she jumps back in the TARDIS to change out of her swimsuit when all that’s really happened is the TARDIS loses power someplace cold and foggy.

The Doctor, of course, does wander off, getting captured by the Exxilons, and then escaping to end up with the Space Marines. When he’s with the Space Marines (who are really more like the Space Scientists), we get all the plot stuff – they’re trapped here without power, they need the parrinium, the Exxilons are meanies. The Doctor is just starting to wrap his mind around all of this when the Daleks shows up.

They do their “Exterminate” bit except their weapons are rendered useless by the same energy dampening field that’s effecting everything else. It’s kinda funny, and everyone realizes right away that a temporary team-up might be in their best interests, but then Nation doesn’t do anything with it. Everyone is quickly imprisoned by the Exxilons (where they see the natives have captured Sarah Jane Smith) and the Daleks are instantly trying to work a side deal that works to their advantage.

Blah blah blah.

Because it’s four episodes instead of six, the plot moves forward quick enough that I was able to find some enjoyment in all of this; it might be formulaic, but it moves relatively quickly. The Daleks prove themselves capable at adapting as a Dalek raiding party arrives to attack the Exxilons, allowing the Doctor and Sarah Jane to run into the underground tunnels. Down there, the Doctor meets a monster and Sarah Jane makes friends with Bellal, an Exxilon that lives beneath the surface because he doesn’t agree with the ways of the surface folk.

The back story here is that the Exxilons built this amazing city (one of the 700 Wonders of the Universe, according to the Doctor) and fitted it with a brain. (Yup, a brain. A computer brain, not a brain in a jar.) Once the city got its brain up and running, it decided it didn’t need the Exxilons, so it killed most of them. Even though Bellal makes all nice with Sarah Jane, she’s instructed by the Doctor to go help the captured Space Marines. (After the Daleks attacked, they made all the survivors their slaves.) The Doctor and Bellal go into the city, which is populated by a series of booby traps that would make Choose Your Own Adventure proud, and they have to battle this big super computer in some not-very-interesting challenges. While this is happening, Sarah Jane is pulling a bait-and-switch with the parrinium the Daleks have collected from the slave labor force.

The serial ends with a bunch of things blowing up. One of the Space Marines sacrifices himself to blow up the Dalek ship. The Exxilon city blows up.

And that’s it. There’s some nice moments in DEATH TO THE DALEKS but on the whole this is just a very average, very bland story. I’m a bit surprised that the BBC still hasn’t released this serial on DVD (it’s out on VHS and a DVD release is apparently scheduled for 2012 sometime) since it stars the Daleks, but maybe they figure if they hold this DVD out they’ll sell more copies by creating a buzz over the release of a Pertwee/Dalek serial.

I won’t be buying it, but I wouldn’t object to you buying it for me.

DOCTOR WHO: PLANET OF THE DALEKS is Like a Bland Sandwich In Between Two Awesome Slices of Bread

“PLANET OF THE DALEKS” – Season 10, Serial 4, Story 68 – Written by Terry Nation; Directed by David Maloney – Picking up where FRONTIER IN SPACE left off, the Third Doctor and Jo end up on a planet full of Daleks – like 10,000 of them. They also run into some Thals. And they try to invade a Dalek-controlled city. While operating out of a jungle. Sound familiar? It should. Because We Saw This Serial Before, Back When It Was Called THE DALEKS.

OK, let’s get the snark out of the way right off the top – PLANET OF THE DALEKS has a lot in common with the first appearance of the Daleks called, er, THE DALEKS. The original appearance of the exterminating robots was also written by Terry Nation and PLANET feels like a retread. It’s not completely the same, of course, but there’s enough reference points here to make the comparison seem intentional. It’s an homage.

Or lazy, depending on one’s point of view.

I’m willing to give Nation and the producers the benefit of the doubt given that this is the Doctor’s tenth season and a throwback episode to the first season might have seemed like a good idea. It’s not like the Hartnell years were available for purchase on DVD or anything in 1973, so perhaps PLANET’s similarity to THE DALEKS came across as a wonderful bit of nostalgia.

For me, however, PLANET offers a few good moments in the midst of a lot of tediousness. Which isn’t to say this is a serial to avoid; there’s a bit to like here in the smaller character moments and the show tries to throw plenty of action at you to keep you interested. Still, like far too many Pertwee serials, what could have been an amazing 4-part serial is a slightly-better-than-average 6-part serial.

PLANET opens where FRONTIER IN SPACE left off – with the Doctor injured and the Daleks on the run. This first episode does a great job building tension and just plain being really interesting. The Doctor sends the Time Lords a message but then passes out, and Jo does her best to help him get to bed and get some rest. Jo is scared at what’s happening, but instead of sitting down and crying, she proves that she’s still go the ol’ get up and go she’s demonstrated back to her initial appearance in TERROR OF THE AUTONS.

When I watched the Pertwee run the first time a couple years ago, I came away lukewarm on Jo – she certainly wasn’t the best but she certainly wasn’t the worst. I remember being more touched by her departure than I was expecting, finding it a surprisingly emotional good-bye. This time around, however, I’ve really come to admire Jo. She’s not the best ever Companion but I really do like her. Part of this is her fantastic chemistry with Pertwee. Watching the two of them interact, I feel like I’m seeing two relationships on display: the Doctor/Jo partnership and the Pertwee/Manning. Whatever else that’s going on in the story, I like watching these two relationships. And I like Jo now, too. I think what’s changed is that this time around there are more Pertwee episodes available to watch and I’ve seen their relationship evolve. I’ve also become more attuned to the little moments they share, and this relationship – as much as any Doctor/Companion relationship – is defined to a greater degree by the small moments instead of the large ones.

In PLANET, the TARDIS lands on an alien planet and in the middle of a jungle.Jo has a wounded Doctor to deal with, and after doing what she can for him, she leaves to find someone who can. She leaves not knowing if there’s anyone around, and I love that about Jo because this quite extraordinary woman recognizes the limits of her own abilities and instead of caving when she hits that wall, she looks to do an end-around and find someone who can do what she can’t. Back in TERROR OF THE AUTONS, she was trying to prove herself to the Doctor. She doesn’t need to do that anymore, but here she is, still willingly putting herself out there for the good of the Doctor. In TERROR, she was doing it to prove herself; in PLANET, she’s doing it because she cares for him.

She ends up running into the Thals, who are here on the planet Spiridon to try and stop the Daleks. Or something. They crashed and there’s only a few of them left. (Until they run into more survivors later in the serial.) It’s a shame that as soon as Jo finds the Thals, they stick her in a closet to keep her from danger. Doubly unfortunately, the serial does the same thing to her, as she gets infected with some Spiridonian fungus and passes out.

Blah.

At the same time she’s getting knocked out, the Doctor is recovering, and there’s a very real (and disturbing) sense that Jo has somehow overstepped her bounds for the creators of the narrative. I would have loved to see a Jo-centric serial. I understand that wasn’t likely, but more of Jo would have been nice.

After the entertaining episode 1, the next four start to drag a bit. There’s a good attempt at action, but it just gets a bit tedious. For instance, there’s a really inventive esacpe as the Doctor and three Thals make a parachute and ride some hot air currents up a ventilation shaft, but it takes for … ev … er to get them up the shaft and to safety. There’s bombs and a Gold Dalek and fights with Daleks but there’s very little urgency even with all the running around. PLANET feels caught between how serials used to be made and how they’re made now; it feels like this serial wants to bust out of the early ’70s formula, but no one will let it.

It’s the smaller moments that give PLANET its best moments. There’s a wonderful scene between the Doctor and Codal (one of the Thals) on bravery. The Doctor gets captured in an attempt to save Jo (he thinks she’s in a spaceship that the Daleks are about to destroy). Imprisoned with Codal, the Doctor is at his emotional best, telling the nervous and self-critical Codal that the Thal might be a smart scientist but he’s an idiot about people. Their chat has the Doctor as his scoldingly affectionate best. By the end of their chat, Codal feels better about himself and his situation. Really good stuff. There’s another few scenes like this between the Doctor and other Thals, too, but it’s just not enough to elevate this serial beyond being a decent watch.

To bring things back to Jo, she develops a relationship with the Thal Latep and he invites her to go back to Skaro with him at the end. She says no, but it’s clear she’s affected by this possibility. Back in the TARDIS, Jo wants to go back to Earth. At first, the Doctor is a bit incredulous – they can go anywhere and she wants to go to Earth? Jo doesn’t want to go to Earth, though, she wants to go home, and for the first time you can see in her face that she’s ready to make her exit from the TARDIS.

But that’s for another serial.

The next serial, in fact.

For all DOCTOR WHO reviews to be found at Atomic Anxiety, please visit the Doctor Who Review Index page. Thanks!

DOCTOR WHO: At the FRONTIER IN SPACE, We Say Hello to Me and Goodbye to the Master

“FRONTIER IN SPACE” – Season 10, Serial 3, Story 67 – Written by Malcolm Hulke; Directed by Paul Bernard and David Maloney (uncredited) – The Third Doctor and Jo get embroiled in the Master’s plot to get Earth and Draconia involved in an interstellar work. There’s lots of going back and forth and lots of “we don’t believe you” and “why should we believe you.” And yeah, it’s one of those classically padded serials that takes too long to get anywhere, but there’s a lot of good here, too, and a bit of sad. Because This Is The Final Bow For Roger Delgado As The Master.

There is no official goodbye, unfortunately. The Master’s plan begins to crumble at the hands of the Doctor, his hired Ogrons panic and flee, and the Master shoots the Doctor in the head and then runs off in the growing confusion.

And that is the last we see of Roger Delgado. A few months after this final appearance, Delgado was tragically killed in a car wreck in Turkey, and the Master wouldn’t be seen on screen again until 1976 (THE DEADLY ASSASSIN) and not again with a human face until Anthony Ainley took over the role in 1981 (THE KEEPER OF TRAKEN). It must have been a noticeable absence for regular viewers at the time, as Delgado’s Master had been a consistent presence since his debut two years earlier (TERROR OF THE AUTONS).

Delgado was almost always entertaining, almost always able to bring the most out of the sometimes incredibly daft scripts he was given. The script for FRONTIER IN SPACE is an average one but in the scenes where the Master is placed alongside the Doctor and Jo, he shines.

One of my all-time favorite Master scenes takes place near the end of FRONTIER, when he’s captured Jo for the second time and plans to use her to trap the Doctor. First, he tries to hypnotize her, but she rebuffs him by reciting nursery rhymes. He’s foiled but gains some respect for “Miss Grant,” so he tries to use his fear-inducing machine on her, and again, she proves herself too mentally strong for that machine. He can’t help but be impressed, and I had a sudden desire to see The Adventures of the Master and Jo Show.

Delgado is great playing off the Doctor, too, and he feels so integrated into the Pertwee/Manning personality dynamic this time around that even after all these appearances I really found myself wishing for more. For not the first time you get the sense of a shared bond between the two Time Lords and a reason why, even though the Master keeps trying to kill the Doctor, there’s feelings between them. This relationship between Pertwee’s Doctor and Delgado’s Master is a clear inspiration for the Tennant/Simm relationship during the relaunch.

The plot of FRONTIER is workmanlike is concept and sometimes dreary in execution. The Master is manipulating hostilities between Earth and Draconia by using a fear machine to get each side to think the other is attacking them, when really it’s the Ogrons doing all the attacking and raiding. This leads to some really, really tedious time on Earth. The Doctor and Jo are believed to be Draconian spies by the Earth forces, and no matter what they say, they’re not believed. The Earth President is inclined to want peace, her main military chief is inclined to want war, and thus he continually acts like a roadblock. It gets a bit frustrating because we have to see it over and over again. Once is really all we needed to see to get the point.

Once the Master shows up, Malcolm Hulke’s script does its darnedest to keep things going, and FRONTIER is one of those odd serials that feels bloated at the beginning rather than the end. There’s a bit too much back and forth, but at least there’s movement. When we get to the end we get a really interesting twist; instead of the Doctor defeating the Master and having a pretty bow put on the story, the Daleks show up out of nowhere, the Master shoots the Doctor, things get chaotic, and Jo helps a wounded Doctor into the TARDIS where he sends a telepathic warning call to the Time Lords. It’s a rather exciting final few minutes, and doesn’t just lead into the next serial – it shoves everyone forward into PLANET OF THE DALEKS.

FRONTIER is a serial, then, that sits on the other side of mediocre. It’s not great, but it’s not bad, and it’s well worth watching for all of the great interaction between Pertwee, Manning, and Delgado. In fact, their interaction does elevate the serial beyond the tedious political bits and if you’re looking for some good old fashioned WHO, you could do a lot worse.

It also has a bit of special meaning to me, as this was the serial being broadcast when I was born. Not, you know, in the room when it was happening, but it was during this run that I emerged into the world, which means the first episode of DOCTOR WHO broadcast after I got a name featured the Master and the Daleks.

I’m sure 1 day old me would have been mighty impressed.