"Wait in here, he says! I'll make you stars, boys, you just stick with me. Six weeks we've been waiting here! SIX WEEKS! He think we got nothing else to do? Got a good mind to start a Time War, just to teach him a - SSSHHH! Here he is! Act natural! We'll show those fucking Cybermen, lads! All right: One, two, three - DAAAAALEK!"
Title of episode: “The Survivors”
Title of Serial: The Daleks
Part: 2 of 7
Doctor: William Hartnell
Companion(s): Susan Foreman, Ian Chesterton, Barbara Wright
Written by: Terry Nation
Original air date: December 28 1963
Interesting to see Nation use the name he would give his later science fiction series. Unaware that they’re all slowly dying of radiation poisoning because Susan couldn’t be bothered to stay checking the meter longer than a quick glance, our heroes head off to look for Barbara, who has had the bad taste not to turn up, after they gave her a good chance to join them. The Doctor for possibly the first time makes himself useful as he hears something that stops Susan and Ian heading off down the wrong corridor. “Measuring equipment!” he muses. “But for measuring
what? And what’s all this gunk? Wet and sticky?” All right, I added in the sticky, but it’s still funny. If only Barbara were here. Or maybe not: Ian is looking decidedly uncomfortable.
Now the Doctor voices my own opinion on how to get through this. “We need drugs!” he gasps. What an example to set for his impressionable young granddaughter, who to be honest is sounding more like fu
cking Minnie Mouse every second. Does she have to have that high, squeaky, excitable voice? Ian is not best pleased that he is now likely to glow in the dark, and Susan is probably thinking along the lines of “Oops!” Not to worry though: everyone knows the Daleks are the galaxy’s finest pushers so they should be all right. Oh sorry: that’s pushing into extinction. Not quite the same thing. Ian is even less happy when the Doctor ruefully reveals his little subterfuge, which really didn’t fool any of us, did it? What a bastard. He wanted to see the city, they wouldn’t let him, so he stamped his foot and pretended something was broken. Well that’s a fine way for a Timelord to behave, I must say. If you want something and can’t get it, put your Companions in harm’s way. F
uck it; they’re only humans.
Except for his granddaughter. Who isn’t. Human I mean. Or particularly bright. How come she didn’t see through the old bastard’s ruse? She’s supposed to be a genius, isn’t she? Ah, the old “We need this to work and it won’t without mercury so let’s explore that dead city which is definitely dead and not crammed with Daleks I promise would I lie to you” trick, eh? Fancy falling for that! And now he’s ready to leave Barbara to her fate - a fate he landed her in - and slink back to the TARDIS. Ian ain’t having it though, not on his watch. Another fight ensues. All right, as close as the English get to a fight, which is some pretty barbed words and some stony stares, maybe the odd “Now look here my good fellow” if they get really riled. Don’t get Ian angry. You wouldn’t like him when he’s angry. Or happy. Or confused. Or drunk. Look, you just wouldn’t like him, all right?
Anyway he forces the nine-hundred-year-old man to acquiesce to his demand they search for his future ex-wife, and off they go - right into a bunch of Daleks who were taking an evening stroll and could just go right now for some extermination. Yay! Finally we get to see the full thing, and it’s been worth waiting for. To some extent, the basic Dalek hasn’t changed in nearly sixty years; lick of paint, add a weapon, make one a god emperor, you know the kind of thing, but overall very much recognisable as the pesky enemies that still chase successive Doctors, whether male, female, black, Indian or miscellaneous all over time and space. Ian becomes their first victim, though sadly he is not exterminated, just incapacitated. Maybe the Daleks are trying to give extermination up for Lent?
The trio are finally reunited with Barbara, and oddly enough, as he sits down with the aid of the others, his legs temporarily paralysed, Ian asks her did they hurt her, and when she says no he looks annoyed, as if to say “Well dash it all! They hurt me! Why not you?” Maybe because you ran like a big girl’s blouse, Ian. Just a suggestion. Ah well at least the Doctor knows how to keep the spirits of his Companions up. “If we don’t get treatment,” he informs them, “we shall die.” Susan gets hysterical, something she seems eminently qualified to do, and Barbara theorises that there maybe some creatures controlling the Daleks (who have not yet of course been identified as such) while Ian feels sorry for himself. The Doctor is ushered into the presence of the Daleks. “Do not move,” snaps one, “out of the light. I have mislaid my specs.” Okay that last part is mine.
It’s quite a thing, to be fair, to see the Doctor face his age-old nemesis, completely unaware of what they are and the role they will play in his long long life, and in galactic history. It’s kind of like when the
Enterprise encounters the Borg for the first time and Picard orders the shields to be kept down. “Let’s keep it friendly,” he decides. Yeah, we know how
that ends, don’t we, Locutus? And while we’re at it: Hugh? You could have wiped out the entire race and you let your fu
cking morals stop you? How many millions of lives are on your conscience, you bald ethical bastard? But I digress. Back to the Daleks.
Woo-hoo! The word is used for the first time. Now we get the genesis of the Daleks, as they tell the Doctor that there were once two races on their planet, themselves and a people they call the Thalls. Nuclear war ensued between them and the Daleks took refuge in the city, which they say they cannot leave. They agree to allow one of the party to go back to the TARDIS to get the drugs they say the Thalls need, which the Doctor thinks may be those phials they found in a handy box just outside the time machine. Back with the girls Ian is mortified to have to be helped around by two women, but his legs are currently the consistency of blancmange so he has no choice. When the Doctor tells him of the agreement he made with the Daleks, he insists he must be the one to go, being all British and male and heroic, with wobbly legs. Didn’t win the war on wobbly legs you know. I didn’t get where I am today by letting women take risks for me!
(What's HE doing here? Oh. Yeah. Right.)
Susan puts a crimp in his plans though, telling them of the rather intricate Chubb lock on the TARDIS, and how she is the only one who can get in. Rather then than do the obvious and let her go in his place (a woman taking on the role of a man? Really, sir! What do you think this is? 1993?!) he asserts that both must go. Then the Daleks tell him he has to go now, but his legs are still as steady as Michael J. Fox going for a walk, so reluctantly, as the Dalek says “Come on, come on! Haven’t all day! Things don’t just exterminate themselves, you know!” he has to let Susan go alone. Not quite sure why he didn’t just jump on the head of a Dalek and ride it like a Segway, but there you are.
Ooh. Now those sneaky Daleks discuss the fact that they have no intention of letting the humans use the drug, and are only using them as a method to get it into the city, which they can’t leave. What rotters! Back in
Billy's Outdoor Garden Centre - sorry, the forest - Susan is making for the TARDIS as a storm breaks overhead. More stupid close-ups of her face as she runs - what is the deal with that? They probably have about a two-foot square area for her to run in, so have to do tight zooms to cover that fact. Of course, as all women do, especially when under pressure and especially with a camera rammed up their nose, Susan falls. And screams. She’s obviously seen the last thing any woman in a state of distress wants to see: a TV camera. She starts to run, but these things are relentless and it chases her through the trees. But finally she gets to the TARDIS. Just time for a quick bath and a change of clothes then. I mean, Ian said straight there and back, but since when did any teenage girl obey a father figure? Besides, it’s raining outside, and there may be mutants abroad. Best to just wait it out. Wonder who’s on the
X Factor tonight?
Comments
Yeah things begin to move, if slowly. The Daleks don’t disappoint, and I’m sure everyone was shrinking in horror from them back in ‘63, though as I say I was never afraid of them. The voices are pretty much the same as they would always be, other than the rising petulance that entered their tone later. The story of them being trapped in the city is interesting, but again you have to say that not a lot happens. After the initial appearance of the Daleks, it’s back to running round a forest in search of the TARDIS, which to be honest is getting a little tiresome. It’s over there, love! Third tree to the right and hang a left, can’t miss it. A moment in television history certainly, as a man called Nation not only saves what would become one of British television’s greatest and most loved shows, but also sets the template for all science fiction series that would follow. Many of which were superior.
Diagnosing the Doctor
If my opinion of Hartnell’s character could go any further down, it can. And does. What an idiot. For no reason at all, pure curiosity and bloody-mindedness, he introduces the Daleks to humans, to him, their future worst enemy, - and, just as an aside, the entire galaxy - and puts his companions and himself in peril of their very lives. What a leader! What responsibility! What maturity! And even when he admits what he’s done, it’s more with a rueful shrug than an acceptance he may have killed them all. Gobs
hite. I wonder then why the Daleks chose him as the one they would talk to? To them, he’s old and frail (they acknowledge this by referring to him as “the old man”) and I don’t know if they have any sort of gender bias, but Ian is walking on rubber legs, so why not choose one of the two women, who can at least walk unaided? But no: this is 1963, this is the BBC, and nothing but a male hero will do. Christ.
Doctor: First (William Hartnell) - S01E06 - -20/100 (minus 20)
Charting the Companions
You know, there’s a time to be a hero and there’s a time to shut the hell up and realise you are out of the game, and Ian does not seem to know when this is. Despite the fact that his cowardly attempt to escape has had his legs banjaxed by the Daleks, he stubbornly puts himself forward as the candidate to make it back to the TARDIS, when he has as much chance of making it to the moon. Can’t even conceive of one of the women taking on the job, and keeps hammering his legs as if somehow he can force them to work. “Come on now lads! England needs you! Do your duty!” etc. Christ. Again.
Barbara, despite being the first to have a run in with the Daleks, has done nothing this episode but go down on them. Sorry, with them. Go down with them. In a lift. Other than that, she’s returned to the useless pile of blubbering flesh she’s more or less been for all this serial, and before it. Can’t see what she’s adding to the show at all, to be honest.
Susan does a lot of screaming, and it’s partially her fault they’re in the situation they are for not rechecking the radiation gauge, but as she does take on the role of potential heroine near the end and heads out into the forest, making it back to the TARDIS, I suppose you have to give her that.
Susan: 10/100
Ian: 5/100
Barbara: -25/100