"EXTERMINATE! EXTERMIN - What do you mean, check back next episode, love? I blew off a major meeting to be here! Who's going to pay my expenses? Oh yeah? Wait until my union rep hears about this! You will all be EXTERMINA - yes, yes, I'm going..."
Title of episode: “The Dead Planet”
Title of Serial: The Daleks
Part: 1 of 7
Doctor: William Hartnell
Companion(s): Susan Foreman, Ian Chesterton, Barbara Wright
Written by: Terry Nation
Original air date: December 21 1963
An early Christmas present for the series, as, following the - and let’s be totally fair to it - utter s
hite of the first serial, Doctor Who finally got going and once and for all secured its future. Like I say, Wiki maintains the series was cancelled after
An Unearthly Child, and with good reason I would have thought, however the gap between the end of that serial and the beginning of this is the customary week, so I don’t see how they could have changed their minds over seven days. Whatever the truth of the matter, there’s no doubting that this was the first real Doctor Who story that grabbed the public imagination, introducing us to one of the greatest science fiction villains ever to grace the small screen, and causing us all to run around the schoolyard (if we were of that age, which I would have been, though some time later - hard to run around when you’re only five months old!) shouting “Exterminate! Exterminate!” Possibly the first time the word came into proper usage over here.
This serial also brought us into the orbit of one of England’s finest science fiction writers, who would later go on to create another classic British science fiction drama, the much darker
Blake’s 7 as well as the equally dark
Survivors, and who would also give us one of the series’ recurring villains (with no thought given for the fact that he would be, basically, disabled, going around in a wheelchair and talking through a Stephen Hawking-like translator), the curator of the Daleks, Davros. Terry, you are missed. Science fiction in the UK is not the same without you, and you left an incredible legacy.
But back in ‘63 Terry was a fresh-faced thirtysomething, and after a disagreement with comedy icon Tony Hancock, had rethought his previous decline of the offer to write for this new science fiction programme the BBC were running. With a family relying on him and now unemployed, Nation decided any job was better than none, and television history was about to be made.
The second serial begins exactly as the last ended (minus open-mouthed cavemen wondering where the magic box has vanished to) as the time travellers arrive at their new, unknown destination and give a rather cursory once-over to the radiation meter, which is showing normal, but as soon as they leave the needle slips into the red. Isn’t it always the way? I suppose you’ve got to feel for our heroes. They have all of time and space to choose from, and where do they end up? In another fu
cking forest! Though this time it is noticed that the soil seems very poor, more like sand really, dust, and the Doctor wonders how trees could grow in such soil? Ian comments there is a wind, which nobody seems to have noticed before, though maybe that’s just the beans again.
It quickly becomes apparent that everything here is petrified, and yet they find a flower growing in the soil. Once they remove it though it crumbles in Susan’s hand, and a strange creature which seems to be menacing them - sort of like a cross between an alligator and an armadillo - also turns out to be made of stone, or turned to stone. As the title may have given away, this is a planet with not much to speak of in the way of things being alive. Ian continues to cozy up to Barbara, no doubt hoping to get his end away. I mean, it’s not like there’s anyone else for her to choose is there? From his point of view, he is literally the only man in the world for her. Whether she thinks so too is so far unclear, but you can’t fault him for trying.
Then they come across a city. Wait, what? Yeah. A very advanced-looking, space-age city. The Doctor uses the word six years before the man who will make it synonymous with his character when he breathes “Fascinating!” though his favourite and most-used phrase so far seems to be “I don’t know”. I suppose it’s also possible that could be stretched to “I don’t know therefore aliens”, though in this case he would of course be right. The Doctor, originally eager to leave, now decides he will go exploring in the city. However it will soon be dark, so he can’t go till tomorrow and they head back to the TARDIS. On the way, Susan gets separated from them and has the feeling of being watched in the forest, and then touched. I must say, for a supposedly hardened space/time traveller, she spooks very easily.
The TARDIS goes one better than Star Trek again, producing the world’s first replicator, as they all eat, something they haven’t really done since they chowed down on the roasted flesh of some unnamed animal, possibly a tiger, back in the stone age. Clever enough, and almost prophetic. Good to see that Nation doesn’t go for the old idea of their food being in tablet form; it’s more a kind of, I don’t know, bar or something? But it tastes just like, well, bacon and eggs, as they asked for. As they make to blast off again, one of the component fails (
quelle surprise!) and the Doctor says he will need mercury to repair it. As the only place they can reasonably hope to find this is in the city, then, what do you know? They’re going to have to go to the city, just like the Doctor wanted. How serendipitous!
On exiting the TARDIS (which annoyingly everyone insists on referring to as “the ship”, even the Doctor himself) they come across a small flat box, inside which are a collection of glass phials. Susan goes back in to run tests on them. On entering the city, everyone feels weak and a little sick. That’ll be the radiation then. They rather stupidly just blunder in and wander around, without any real plan or strategy, walking through this door and that, getting separated and you can see what’s coming now, can’t you? I mean, we’re five minutes away from the end and our intrepid Barbara has walked off on her own, doors opening and closing behind her. Cue Dalek and horrified scream…
Well, it seems she’s blundered into some sort of lift (elevator to you Americans) and now it’s going down, and that surely cannot be good in anyone’s view. Certainly not as the end credits loom, ready to roll. And there it is. Dalek (well, probe of Dalek), scream, roll credits and it’s time for the six o’clock news. See you next week, kids!
Comments
Ah much better, though
should I say much? You know, not really. In the last serial they spent much of their time blundering around a forest in search of something, and here they spend most of their time blundering around a forest in search of something, then the rest of their time blundering around a city in search of something. Well I suppose it’s a nice change of pace, but no action yet. Still, with a Dalek, or part of one anyway, on the scene things are bound to liven up. Is this Skaros? I wonder. I’m not as
au fait with Dalek or even
Who lore to be able to answer that question, and to be honest, I am trying to sort of approach this project with as little foreknowledge as possible. I know who and what the Daleks are, of course, but beyond what everyone knows, I have no idea of their genesis, their home planet (other than its name and that they probably hate it, like they hate everything else - didn’t someone like David Tennant say that all Daleks
are is hate?) so this will be new to me, and I don’t want to ruin it, so don’t tell me.
The budget for this episode must have been as small as for the previous, because other than the drawing of the city and a few automatic doors and corridors that look like they were made for
Alice in Wonderland after she drank the bottle, not much in the way of effects. The forest looks to have again been provided by
Billy’s Outdoor Garden Centre, and the things the time travellers eat have a vague kind of pop tart look about them. There’s little in the way of music, though I think Doctor Who was not really a show for incidental music, was it? Probably cost more, and to be honest not much suspense either. The trips through the city look more like someone navigating their way through a government building than a city full of traps and terrors. There’s just no real sense of danger or fear here, but it’s early days yet I guess.
Diagnosing the Doctor
Not a whole lot to say again. The only real thing I can comment on is that possibly the Doctor is more wily than assumed, as I bet that component that “broke” is a trick, a way for him to get to explore that city. There’s a very annoying smirk on his face as Ian admits that they have no choice now but to go into the city, so it looks like he set the whole thing up. He seems quite content, however, to cede the leadership to Ian, even stepping back with the others while the big male hero checks out the deadly flat box with the phials by the expedient of, um, poking it with a stick. He also admits a certain weakness when he concedes to Barbara that the age gap between him and Susan often bothers him, like he can’t think on her level, and is glad to have the teacher speak to her on his behalf. He renews his fight with Ian, as they argue over whose fault it is that they are here. Feisty I guess. Still not the kind of man I would be inclined to follow though.
Doctor: First (William Hartnell) - S01E05 - 3/100
Charting the Companions
As above, Ian takes charge, and loses no opportunity to put his arms around Barbara, probably assuming that in true science fiction fashion they may soon have to repopulate the Earth, or at least get a chance for a quick wriggle in the bushes of some unknown planet. Hopefully, when he does get his chance to get into her pants, if he does, he doesn’t do so in the past, or if he does, he wears a johnny, because otherwise the time continuum is going to be most pissed at this sudden addition to the human race, throwing its calculations out and potentially f
ucking up history. But so far, she’s remained relatively resolute. Ian has certainly so far emerged as the
de facto leader though.
Susan is a little more use, taking the samples to be examined, making the tea as it were with the replicator, and helping her grandfather in a way that says “I’m not just here to draw in the teenage boys, you know!” But she kind of is. I’ve yet to see her do anything that convinces me they would not all be better off leaving her at the next stop and continuing without her.
Barbara is used mostly as a kind of hybrid of mother and teacher, calming Susan down and giving Ian somewhere to rest his brawny arms, but other than that she doesn’t really contribute much. Mind you, since she’s in the final scene and is about to be the first to see a real live Dalek, she may rise in prominence next episode.
Or be exterminated. Either is good.
Susan: 5/100
Ian: 45/100
Barbara: -5/100