Despite its undeniably important place in the history of both science-fiction and Doctor Who, there is no escaping the fact that The Doctor's first encounter with his future arch-enemies, The Daleks, goes on a bit.As would soon be shown by the its movie incarnation - Dr Who And The Daleks - this seven-part, three hour story could easily be cut in half without losing any of the main plot points.
The First Doctor (William Hartnell), Susan (Carole Anne Ford), Ian (William Russell) and Barbara (Jacqueline Hill) arrive on the war-ravaged world of Skaro, having escaped Stone Age Earth.
Barbara and Ian are still rather annoyed at being 'kidnapped' by The Doctor and just want to go home, but the wily Doctor sabotages The TARDIS to give the party a reason to explore a nearby deserted city - allegedly in the hopes of finding some mercury to fix the supposedly broken fluid link.
Little do they realise that they are all being exposed to radiation poisoning the longer they stay on the planet, left over from the one-day Neutronic War waged on Skaro 500 years earlier between the philosophical Dals and the warrior Thals.
Making it to the city, the group is captured by the resident daleks, the descendants of the surviving Dals who now exist in mobile containment units and have been living beneath the city in a self-contained environment.
The daleks are unaware of any other survivors from the war, but allow Susan - initially believing our heroes to be Thals - to return to the TARDIS in the hope that she will contact other survivors and bring back anti-radiation medicine.
Susan is found by the Thals, who have evolved into Aryan, pacifist, farmers but are now seeking new sources of food. The Thals are equally oblivious to the existence of the daleks and are easily tricked into entering the dalek city, where they are ambushed by the daleks - who despise anything that doesn't look like them.
The TARDIS crew escape with the Thals and are about to leave Skaro when Ian realises the daleks have taken the fluid link off of him and so they must return to the city.
Meanwhile the daleks, discovering the Thal-made anti-radiation medicine is actually poisonous to them, realise they need the radiation in the atmosphere to survive and so decide to flood the planet with more radiation!
There follows a very long and drawn out expedition back to the dalek city, trying to find ways in that aren't guarded by the killer pepper pots.
It's this second half of the story that really drags, despite supposedly being a race against time (before the daleks terminally pollute the planet).
The pacing, which was already rather leisurely, virtually grinds to a halt; for example, almost an entire episode is devoted to a trip through underground passages and most of that revolves around getting across a bottomless crevasse.
Unfortunately, the action doesn't improve once the TARDIS crew and the Thals have their final showdown with the daleks - the 'epic' final confrontation more closely resembles a massive playground bundle between over-excited children than a titanic struggle for ultimate survival between two races.
At this early stage in the show's life, The Doctor was not the lovable rascal he would become, but rather a frail and selfish old man, willing to resort to dangerous subterfuge to get his own way. Clearly he still had a lot to learn from humans!
Meanwhile, Barbara is involved in a chaste bit of flirting with one of the Thals, a sub-plot echoed years later in the Thal-human romance of Jo Grant in Planet Of The Daleks, seemingly oblivious to the obvious affection Ian has for her.
Doctor Who was already quite popular in the 1960s, but it was this debut appearance of the daleks in its second story that raised the programme's profile in the general consciousness of the country, and pretty much guaranteed its future by spawning "Dalekmania" - a phenomenon which gripped Britain in a similar way to Beatlemania.
Yes, it's a shame The Daleks isn't a tighter story, but I'd rather have it in this form than not at all - because without the daleks, created by Terry Nation and designed by Ray Cusick, we probably wouldn't have any Doctor Who today.
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6 persons have something to say about this!:
At seven parts, "The Daleks" does have a fair bit of padding and it could be trimmed.
But what we have to recall is that the Hartnell stories were not made to be watched all in one sitting. The stories are meant to be seen in chunks of one episode at a time and the production team had no clue we'd still be watching them and analyzing them 40 plus years later.
I find that with Hartnell stories, if I sip them rather than watching them in one big gulp, I enjoy them more.
They were a product of their era. And I wouldn't change a thing about them.
You are so right,Michael, we are watching them in a format very alien to that in which they were intended to be seen. However, I still have heaps load of respect for them and genuinely believe that some of the early black and white stories are just as good as any being produced even today (e.g. The Time Meddler, The Aztecs or The Mind Robber, off the top of my head)!
BBC Four put this story on a few months ago, while the current series was on One and Three; it seemed like a great opportunity to grab some of the younger Who fans, if only they hadn't picked such a plodding story! Something like The Aztecs would have been a much better choice, as the Dalek name alone doesn't cut it.
Or a later, pacier dalek story, perhaps?
I would have gone with Remembrance..., but I seem to recall that the BBC Four showing was part of a themeed season, celebrating Verity Lambert I think, so I can see why they went with a Hartnell story.
absolutely agree. WAY too long on the tunnels. Just to get around that wall!
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