The Doctor Who Viewing Project: The Daleks
Dec. 7th, 2008 12:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gogmagogTime for another Classic Who post! (Sorry it's been so long since the last one; I meant to finish it over Thanksgiving break, but work has kind of snuck up on me, and also this is a long serial.)
Previous posts:
Season 1: An Unearthly Child
Doctor Who 01x02, The Daleks
This is, of course, not only the second Doctor Who serial ever, but the first appearance of those most iconic foes of the Doctor, the Daleks. At seven episodes, this is one of the longer stories of the entire series (the only ones I can think of off the top of my head that are longer are The Invasion, The War Games and of course The Daleks' Master Plan, though there are quite a few other 7-parters as well); as such, it necessarily has a certain amount of filler, though the exciting parts are exciting enough to compensate for them.
The story begins where An Unearthly Child left off - with the TARDIS crew getting ready to explore the mysterious new planet on which they've landed, not noticing that the radiation meter which previously read safe levels has now gone up into the danger zone. The group go to investigate the planet, discover a petrified jungle created by some kind of neutron bomb, and on the other side find a highly-advanced metal city.
The Doctor wants to explore it, but his companions want to go back to the TARDIS and find some way home; he has to give in, but secretly sabotages the TARDIS so that they will have to go back and explore the city to find the material needed to "repair" it. This is a glimpse of a Doctor that we don't see quite as much later - a mercurial old man who's willing to willfully put his and his companions' lives in danger to satisfy his curiosity - and it brings a certain level of moral ambiguity to Hartnell's early portrayal of the Doctor: after all, can a man who would do something like this truly be trusted?
Of course, on their return to the city they make the oh-so-wise decision to split up and look for the mercury they need, and things go entirely pear-shaped. At the end of episode 1 sensible schoolteacher Barbara, who in exploring the city somehow finds herself trapped in an elevator that takes her to the lower levels of the city, screams as she's menaced by a mysterious creature with a plunger arm, in what is probably the most famous cliffhanger in the show's history...
The Doctor, Ian and Susan all go looking for Barbara when she fails to reappear, and soon discover the creatures for themselves, who of course turn out to be Daleks who imprison the other three with Barbara; when Ian attempts to escape, they zap him with the never-again-used "stun" setting on their arm-guns, paralyzing his legs. By this point Team TARDIS has discovered that the planet has toxic levels of radiation, and are all suffering from various levels of radiation poisoning, the Doctor and Barbara most severely. The Daleks interrogate the increasingly incoherent Doctor, and discover that the other group on this planet of Skaro - the Thals - apparently left the TARDIS crew anti-radiation medicine outside the ship. Since the Daleks want a sample of this anti-radiation medicine, presumably so they can eventually escape the underground levels of their city, they must send someone back to get it: and Susan, as the only able-bodied person left, is the one chosen to make a run through the forest back to the TARDIS.
Susan's run through the petrified forest is genuinely creepy (especially given that she is consistently much more frightened by threatening natural environments than threatening high-tech ones), and rarely has the TARDIS been utilized as well as it is at the end of episode 2 - when Susan finally finishes her nightmarish run and finds refuge in the TARDIS, then realizes she has to run back with the anti-radiation medicine as soon as possible, so visibly braces herself to go back out:
Of course, on leaving she immediately runs into the Thals: more specifically, the dreamy metrosexual Thal man Alydon and his stylish turtle cape. The Thals are camp Aryans, and seem to be the requisite hippie "la la peace and love, man" species, with their quilted vests and leather pants and clearly well-waxed bodies (on both genders). Like a Smurf colony, they have a gazillion men and one woman, Dyoni (well, there are a few other women who appear in the background of a few scenes); on the other hand, maybe they only need one woman, as aside from their first leader - Dyoni's father, killed in episode 4 - and Alydon, all the men mostly seem more interested in Alydon than Dyoni. (The only real exception is the Thal Ganatus, who does seem just as interested in Barbara, of which more later.) Anyway, they ask Susan to tell the Daleks that they would be happy to make peace with them in exchange for food.
She does so on her return, and of course the Daleks treacherously reply that they will do as the Thals suggest while secretly planning to kill them all. Team TARDIS realizes the Daleks' horribleness, and as soon as they get their anti-radiation meds they plan an escape made of win, that involves Ian commandeering a Dalek casing (after ousting its previous occupant) and making their way out via trickery. Unfortunately the Daleks soon cotton on to their plan, but don't manage to catch them in time (thanks to a well-placed rock in an elevator shaft), while the Doctor and his crew run to inform the Thals that the offered food is a trap. The Thals escape with minimal casualties, and join Team TARDIS back at the ship. All seems good, and the Doctor and co. are ready to return to the TARDIS and head off when they realize that, oh noes! the Daleks took the fluid link - the piece of the TARDIS the Doctor had removed to sabotage it - when they questioned Ian, and it's still back in the Dalek city.
Faced with a need to return, the TARDIS crew of course needs the Thals' help...but they're firmly pacifist and refuse to fight the Daleks. It takes Ian claiming that he'll take their Smurfette to the Daleks to trade for the fluid link that finally gets Alydon to slug him and realize that hey, maybe sometimes you do need to fight! And lo, they start preparing for a full-on assault of the Dalek city. Meanwhile, the Daleks are discovering that the anti-radiation drug is actually poison to them - that they've adapted to need the radiation to live. So they begin to plan to expose the land to radiation to make it more hospitable to Daleks (and uncoincidentally less hospitable to anything else).
Meanwhile, our heroes and the Thals are planning a two-pronged assault: the Doctor, Susan, Alydon and most of the Thals will make a frontal attack on the city, while Ian, Barbara, Ganatus, his brother Antodus (who, because he is a coward-with-a-capital-C, is clearly doomed to die in some self-sacrificing blaze of glory), and a couple of other Thals sneak up on the city from behind, through a monster-infested marsh and some caves. The Doctor and Susan succeed in some Dalek-sabotage, but are caught. Alydon's group and Ian and Barbara's meet up in the Dalek city as the Dalek plan to dump radiation all over the area is nearing completion, and they manage to free the Doctor and, in the nick of time, accidentally destroy the power source for the Dalek city, leaving all the Dalek casings powerless and dooming the Dalek mutants inside.
It ends with Team TARDIS bidding farewell to the Thals (Ganatus' farewell to Barbara is the most poignant), and taking off again...only for an explosion to occur inside the ship, knocking all four crew members unconscious. (Dun dun dun!)
What makes The Daleks so iconic is not really the writing, though it is generally good (which I imagine is due more to David Whitaker, the script editor, than to Terry Nation, the credited writer, who was more of an idea man). What makes this story work so very well is the visual and the aural aspects. Nothing is quite as alien as a Dalek, which bears no resemblance to anything human or animal or even organic but is clearly not a robot either; the idea of the horrific clawed alien living inside this odd-looking but very functional metal shell, even if it does look slightly like something you might buy at IKEA, is chilling. And as Lawrence Miles and Tat Wood have frequently pointed out in their About Time series, 60s Doctor Who was truly revolutionary in its soundscapes: you might see things like it on other shows, but no other show sounded like it, and this serial is a great showcase for that. Strange, slightly atonal synthesizer music for the Dalek city, incredibly well-done burbling in the caves, and of course the infamous Dalek voices calling for "ex-ter-mi-na-tion" all combine to make this sound both surprisingly modern (for something approaching 45 years old) and surprisingly effective in its alienness.
Interesting factoid: the man who more than any other created what we now know as the Daleks, Raymond Cusick, was actually a replacement for the original designer who was slated to do this story but had scheduling conflicts. That designer has made a name for himself since...he was a certain Ridley Scott.For more information, check out Wikipedia's article on the story!
And finally, a little bit of humor...
DOOMSDAY, UR DOING IT WRONG
Next time, the TARDIS goes crazy and Barbara makes everyone realize her total awesomeness!
Season 1: An Unearthly Child
Doctor Who 01x02, The Daleks
This is, of course, not only the second Doctor Who serial ever, but the first appearance of those most iconic foes of the Doctor, the Daleks. At seven episodes, this is one of the longer stories of the entire series (the only ones I can think of off the top of my head that are longer are The Invasion, The War Games and of course The Daleks' Master Plan, though there are quite a few other 7-parters as well); as such, it necessarily has a certain amount of filler, though the exciting parts are exciting enough to compensate for them.
The story begins where An Unearthly Child left off - with the TARDIS crew getting ready to explore the mysterious new planet on which they've landed, not noticing that the radiation meter which previously read safe levels has now gone up into the danger zone. The group go to investigate the planet, discover a petrified jungle created by some kind of neutron bomb, and on the other side find a highly-advanced metal city.
The Doctor wants to explore it, but his companions want to go back to the TARDIS and find some way home; he has to give in, but secretly sabotages the TARDIS so that they will have to go back and explore the city to find the material needed to "repair" it. This is a glimpse of a Doctor that we don't see quite as much later - a mercurial old man who's willing to willfully put his and his companions' lives in danger to satisfy his curiosity - and it brings a certain level of moral ambiguity to Hartnell's early portrayal of the Doctor: after all, can a man who would do something like this truly be trusted?
Of course, on their return to the city they make the oh-so-wise decision to split up and look for the mercury they need, and things go entirely pear-shaped. At the end of episode 1 sensible schoolteacher Barbara, who in exploring the city somehow finds herself trapped in an elevator that takes her to the lower levels of the city, screams as she's menaced by a mysterious creature with a plunger arm, in what is probably the most famous cliffhanger in the show's history...
The Doctor, Ian and Susan all go looking for Barbara when she fails to reappear, and soon discover the creatures for themselves, who of course turn out to be Daleks who imprison the other three with Barbara; when Ian attempts to escape, they zap him with the never-again-used "stun" setting on their arm-guns, paralyzing his legs. By this point Team TARDIS has discovered that the planet has toxic levels of radiation, and are all suffering from various levels of radiation poisoning, the Doctor and Barbara most severely. The Daleks interrogate the increasingly incoherent Doctor, and discover that the other group on this planet of Skaro - the Thals - apparently left the TARDIS crew anti-radiation medicine outside the ship. Since the Daleks want a sample of this anti-radiation medicine, presumably so they can eventually escape the underground levels of their city, they must send someone back to get it: and Susan, as the only able-bodied person left, is the one chosen to make a run through the forest back to the TARDIS.
Susan's run through the petrified forest is genuinely creepy (especially given that she is consistently much more frightened by threatening natural environments than threatening high-tech ones), and rarely has the TARDIS been utilized as well as it is at the end of episode 2 - when Susan finally finishes her nightmarish run and finds refuge in the TARDIS, then realizes she has to run back with the anti-radiation medicine as soon as possible, so visibly braces herself to go back out:
Of course, on leaving she immediately runs into the Thals: more specifically, the dreamy metrosexual Thal man Alydon and his stylish turtle cape. The Thals are camp Aryans, and seem to be the requisite hippie "la la peace and love, man" species, with their quilted vests and leather pants and clearly well-waxed bodies (on both genders). Like a Smurf colony, they have a gazillion men and one woman, Dyoni (well, there are a few other women who appear in the background of a few scenes); on the other hand, maybe they only need one woman, as aside from their first leader - Dyoni's father, killed in episode 4 - and Alydon, all the men mostly seem more interested in Alydon than Dyoni. (The only real exception is the Thal Ganatus, who does seem just as interested in Barbara, of which more later.) Anyway, they ask Susan to tell the Daleks that they would be happy to make peace with them in exchange for food.
She does so on her return, and of course the Daleks treacherously reply that they will do as the Thals suggest while secretly planning to kill them all. Team TARDIS realizes the Daleks' horribleness, and as soon as they get their anti-radiation meds they plan an escape made of win, that involves Ian commandeering a Dalek casing (after ousting its previous occupant) and making their way out via trickery. Unfortunately the Daleks soon cotton on to their plan, but don't manage to catch them in time (thanks to a well-placed rock in an elevator shaft), while the Doctor and his crew run to inform the Thals that the offered food is a trap. The Thals escape with minimal casualties, and join Team TARDIS back at the ship. All seems good, and the Doctor and co. are ready to return to the TARDIS and head off when they realize that, oh noes! the Daleks took the fluid link - the piece of the TARDIS the Doctor had removed to sabotage it - when they questioned Ian, and it's still back in the Dalek city.
Faced with a need to return, the TARDIS crew of course needs the Thals' help...but they're firmly pacifist and refuse to fight the Daleks. It takes Ian claiming that he'll take their Smurfette to the Daleks to trade for the fluid link that finally gets Alydon to slug him and realize that hey, maybe sometimes you do need to fight! And lo, they start preparing for a full-on assault of the Dalek city. Meanwhile, the Daleks are discovering that the anti-radiation drug is actually poison to them - that they've adapted to need the radiation to live. So they begin to plan to expose the land to radiation to make it more hospitable to Daleks (and uncoincidentally less hospitable to anything else).
Meanwhile, our heroes and the Thals are planning a two-pronged assault: the Doctor, Susan, Alydon and most of the Thals will make a frontal attack on the city, while Ian, Barbara, Ganatus, his brother Antodus (who, because he is a coward-with-a-capital-C, is clearly doomed to die in some self-sacrificing blaze of glory), and a couple of other Thals sneak up on the city from behind, through a monster-infested marsh and some caves. The Doctor and Susan succeed in some Dalek-sabotage, but are caught. Alydon's group and Ian and Barbara's meet up in the Dalek city as the Dalek plan to dump radiation all over the area is nearing completion, and they manage to free the Doctor and, in the nick of time, accidentally destroy the power source for the Dalek city, leaving all the Dalek casings powerless and dooming the Dalek mutants inside.
It ends with Team TARDIS bidding farewell to the Thals (Ganatus' farewell to Barbara is the most poignant), and taking off again...only for an explosion to occur inside the ship, knocking all four crew members unconscious. (Dun dun dun!)
What makes The Daleks so iconic is not really the writing, though it is generally good (which I imagine is due more to David Whitaker, the script editor, than to Terry Nation, the credited writer, who was more of an idea man). What makes this story work so very well is the visual and the aural aspects. Nothing is quite as alien as a Dalek, which bears no resemblance to anything human or animal or even organic but is clearly not a robot either; the idea of the horrific clawed alien living inside this odd-looking but very functional metal shell, even if it does look slightly like something you might buy at IKEA, is chilling. And as Lawrence Miles and Tat Wood have frequently pointed out in their About Time series, 60s Doctor Who was truly revolutionary in its soundscapes: you might see things like it on other shows, but no other show sounded like it, and this serial is a great showcase for that. Strange, slightly atonal synthesizer music for the Dalek city, incredibly well-done burbling in the caves, and of course the infamous Dalek voices calling for "ex-ter-mi-na-tion" all combine to make this sound both surprisingly modern (for something approaching 45 years old) and surprisingly effective in its alienness.
Interesting factoid: the man who more than any other created what we now know as the Daleks, Raymond Cusick, was actually a replacement for the original designer who was slated to do this story but had scheduling conflicts. That designer has made a name for himself since...he was a certain Ridley Scott.For more information, check out Wikipedia's article on the story!
And finally, a little bit of humor...
DOOMSDAY, UR DOING IT WRONG
Next time, the TARDIS goes crazy and Barbara makes everyone realize her total awesomeness!
