And with only the second story, the Doctor meets the foes that will, in large part, be responsible for the show making it past a first season, perhaps even giving it the relevance it needed to twenty-five more seasons beyond that.
Even with the obvious shortcomings of age, The Daleks is far more entertaining than the previous three episodes, and in many ways a better introduction than the first episode, since we get a chance to learn more about the characters before they get shoved in a dark cave for 90 minutes. We also get to learn more about the TARDIS, though I'll bet that food synthesizer looked dated even at the time the episode was aired. In the next story, we'll even see it has a button for milk, which looks ridiculous, but at least we get more of a sense of the ship than the brief time we get in the previous tale.
It's interesting how quickly the educational aspect of the show gets tossed out. Sure, they devote some time to discussing radiation and its effects, part of the plot revolves around obtaining mercury for the TARDIS,... but once the Daleks and the Thals enter the picture, the story turns into standard science-fiction fare.
Which isn't to deride the final product, because it is effective. But the story itself has ties to many classic science-fiction concepts, H.G. Wells' The Time Machine being the most obvious. It's the Daleks, though, and their concept and design that make this story a standout.
Given the show's budget, and it's ambitions to be nothing more than a children's show, it's surprising that so much thought was put into the Daleks, as well as their city. The producers could have easily used generic robots or monsters, but instead we get these fairly complex creations that clearly took some time to design and construct. They took the time to decide how they moved about and handled things, and even built a city set that accommodated these actions. It's a nice touch that all the doorways are Dalek height, and all the buttons are easily pushed by the suction arms jutting from their casings. Yes, the show looks as cheap as it always did, but the little touches help, and show a concern for detail that goes deeper than similar shows.
Actually, compared to other shows from this season, the seven episodes that comprise The Daleks look more expensive. They even seemed to have been filmed and edited with more care than we're used to. Where other stories often feel like filmed stageplays, there's a little more editing in these episodes, particularly during suspenseful sequences.
Another thing the show benefits from is the longer running time. As usual, this could have been shortened by an episode or two. Four episodes of the Doctor, Ian, Barbara, and Susan trapped in the Dalek city gets tedious. But one thing this story, and others like it, does that the current series can't, is convey an epic feel to things. Over the course of two and a half hours, you get to know a lot of minor characters that would barely be acknowledged in a standard forty-five minute episode, and you get a real sense that these characters have been trapped in this situation for some time, and you don't know how they're going to get out of it. If they could just figure out a way to pad things that doesn't involve being captured and re-captured, I don't think the length of these older episodes would bother viewers as much.
As with the previous story, it's William Russell as Ian who feels more like the lead of the show, rather than Hartnell. The Doctor spends much of the first few episodes sleeping off radiation sickness. I don't have much of a problem with Hartnell, but I have to admit that there are times when I think he's just too old for the role. He may only be in his mid-fifties, but he looks and acts about seventy. I get that they were going for a grandfatherly type at this time, but it often results in a less than exciting lead character. It doesn't help that when the Doctor is pro-active, he's often doing something like faking damage to the TARDIS so he can convince everyone to travel to the Dalek city. By the end, though, we get some glimpses of the heroic Doctor we're used to.
GRADE: A
There's just something about this story that's always appealed to me. Even as a kid, reading the novelization, I enjoyed the adventure of it, especially traveling through the mountains to reach the Dalek city in the last three episodes.
RANDOM THOUGHTS
Barbara has a bit of a romance going on here with one of the Thals. It doesn't go anywhere, and I wonder if they slipped it in to imply that there's nothing romantic between her and Ian, tamping down any hints of hanky panky on the TARDIS. In later episodes, Ian and Barbara feel more like a couple, and if the new series is to be believed, that's how they end up after their travels.
The Daleks aren't the only aliens with a strong design concept. The Thals all wear similar vets, and leather pants that either have white circles on the legs, or holes cut out of them. It's hard to tell in black and white. It's aged about as well as you'd expect, but at least they look better than the Movellans from the Destiny of the Daleks.
We don't get to see much of the mutated lake creatures, but there's a nice shot of one that looks pretty interesting.
The Doctor's a bit of a prick in this one. He removes a vital component of the TARDIS just to go on an expedition, nearly trapping everyone on Skaro for the rest of their lives. Eventually, the writers will come up with simpler ways to keep the travelers where they've landed, usually involving simply helping someone. In the early days, though, it seems like there's always some reason why they can't leave.
The TARDIS requires mercury to function? Has this ever been brought up since?
NEXT: The Edge of Destruction
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