"Ian, do you really think now is a good time to demonstrate what a good arm wrestler you are?"
Title of episode: “The Ordeal”
Title of Serial: The Daleks
Chronology: 2nd serial, 10th episode overall
Part: 6 of 7
Doctor: William Hartnell
Companion(s): Susan Foreman, Ian Chesterton, Barbara Wright
Written by: Terry Nation
Original air date: January 25 1964
Down by the lake, something stirs. The party rush towards the sound of a scream to see nothing but an empty water bag on the shore and a lot of debris floating around a whirlpool-y thing. “Not a worry,” says our man Ganatus. “Obviously yer man fell in, farted in terror as he drowned and that’s what made that whirly thing. Nothing to be concerned about. I never liked him anyway.” Ian says “There’s nothing we can do here”, which I read as “I will be f
ucked if I’m going in after some bastard I didn’t even know. Let’s get the hell out of here.” And they do, though one of the Thalls seems more upset than the others, and I’d wonder if the one wot done got sucked down by the big starfishy thing was his boyfriend? Hey, when on the planet of the Daleks, ya know? Back at the TARDIS, it’s quite funny how Susan suddenly can’t remember the simplest things, like the points of the compass. “There are corridors,” she tells the Doctor and Hard-On, “leading North, South, East and… and… um, um, er, ah - LINE?!” Well, she doesn’t, but the way she pauses makes it seem like she’s forgotten what comes after east.
The Doctor seems suddenly all pally with the Thalls - obviously only until he gets his doodad back - calling them “My friends”, while Hard-On says of the Daleks “I wish I knew what they had planned for us.” Believe me, me old mate, you don’t. You really don’t. As it goes, the Daleks have heard it will take 23 days before the neutron bomb is ready. They’re not impressed. “F
UCK THAT FOR A GAME OF GAL-AC-TIC WAR-RI-ORS!” says Control. “I WANT RAD-IA-TION AND I WANT I NOW!” Meanwhile, Ganatus is getting his hole - oh I mean getting into Barbara’s hole. Well, okay, travelling through a hole - all right all right! A cave! You’re no fun - with Barbara, and I can see sparks flying. Oh no wait: that’s just my overloaded plugboard giving up at last. But there does seem to be some attraction between the tall, handsome Thall and the shy, retiring, prim and proper teacher. Ooooh!
"Heigh-Ho, heigh-ho, it's off to work we go..."
They locate a sort of tunnel and, oh hell I don’t know. I can feel my brain cells dying one by one as I suffer through this. Anyway Ganatus goes down on Barbara - sorry, sorry! goes down
while Barbara pays out the rope, but of course she’s a girl and can’t do anything right, so the rope slips and our Ganatus ends up on his arse in a sort of cave. Beneath the cave. If you know what I mean, and if you don’t I don’t care. There are lots of tunnels branching off from this under-cave, so they all swarm down to have a butcher’s. Meanwhile, back in the Dalek city, Control bemoans the lack of digital HD quality visual signals. “ARE THERE PIC-TURES?” he asks, to which another Dalek shrugs “NO, THE RE-CEP-TION IS BAD!” Well, it is the BBC, mate. Know exactly how you feel. Remember ghosting? No? Then sod ya.
"Just stringing you along? Why, Ganatus! Whatever gave you that idea?"
The Thalls plod along through the caves while the Doctor and Susan get back into the city somehow and short out the system: some nonsense about static electricity, the key to the TARDIS and a bag of rubber bands. Well, maybe not the last, but it might as well be, for all the sense this makes. Ian and Ganatus try to out-hero each other as they come, Star Wars-like, to a cliff over which they’re going to have to jump. Please fall, please fall, please … aw. Back in the city, the Doctor’s self-satisfaction at blocking the power to the Daleks quickly fades as the Daleks capture them and let them in on the little surprise they have for the Thalls. Oh, and Ian is about to go over the edge as one of the other Thalls - the one who might be the boyfriend of the starfishy things's breakfast, and who has been moaning about how they're all going to die, is proven right as he jumps and doesn’t make it. Sigh. Oh well, nearly there: one more to go. Be brave, be brave.
Comments
Jesus, this is the worst and most boring episode so far. Nothing really happens, and the little that does is so hard to follow it’s - well, it’s not so much that it’s hard to follow, you just couldn’t be bothered. Again it’s a lot of wandering around doing nothing much - this time in caves - and even the slight excitement of one of the Thalls falling is not enough to lift this piece of tripe out of the rubbish bin. It’s just terrible; incohesive, slow, dull, boring, incomprehensible. After a reasonable cliff-hanger ending last time, it just kind of sticks its hand in its pockets, shrugs and shuffles off uncertainly. It’s hard even to find anything to write about it. Even the Daleks have decided they couldn’t be arsed waiting around for three weeks for the N-Team to get their s
hit together and sort out a simple neutron bomb. I mean, how hard can it be? It’s not rocket sc - oh. Wait.
Well anyway it’s boredom on steroids, and sadly most of the episode is taken up by the tedious Thalls and Ian doing their version of the seven dwarfs or something. There’s not enough Dalek in it, and when they’re there they’re more kind of cameo roles than anything. Susan makes herself a little useful but is still talking constantly in that annoyingly hysterical scream voice, and the Doctor seems inordinately pleased with himself. I wondered, before this began, why it was called “The Ordeal.” Now I know.
Diagnosing the Doctor
Note: I’m starting a new system wherein each character (including the Doctor) gets ten points if they do something positive, minus ten for something negative or annoying.
Sure, he thinks he’s sorted everything out by cutting the power to the Dalek city, but if he has done, then how is it the Daleks can still move around? Shouldn’t they all be impersonating Collectors’ Edition Boxed Deluxe Dalek Specials, a snip at $99 plus tax and shipping? But they’re rolling, rolling, rolling without a care in the world. So what’s the point? His smugness in this episode is even more annoying than his all but absence in the previous ones, but I suppose he is at least extracting his digit and doing something, so that has to be worth something. His impassioned appeal to the Daleks not to blow them all to kingdom come so they can bask in some lovely gamma rays falls on deaf ears, or it would, if Daleks have ears. Still not impressed. Given that he both does something useful - stretching the meaning of the word to breaking point - and is very annoying, both his scores cancel out and he ends up where he was last episode.
Doctor: First (William Hartnell) - S01E10 - Minus 75/100
Charting the Companions
As most of the action focuses on him, Ian is the star this time around, leading the Thalls deeper into the cave and then helping them swing across like demented Tarzans, and it’s pretty clear he ain’t too happy about the burgeoning friendship between Ganatus and Barbara. Well, something is definitely burgeoning in Ganatus’s pants, anyway. Maybe we’ll see a fight for Barbara! After all, who cares what she thinks, right?
Speaking of Barbara, she does a little spelunking with Ganatus (it’s a word used for going exploring in caves, you filthy…) so at least she’s making herself useful, though I do find the quip her big brawny new best friend makes a bit pointless, as he says they won’t honour the custom of ladies first that they observe on her planet. How the hell did he know about that? It’s hardly something you’d drop in a casual conversation is it?
Susan is as usual pretty much useless, though she does eventually remember than the fourth direction of the compass is west, and she cleverly works out that the panel the Doctor is trying to open in order to bugger up the city’s power and really piss off the Dalek Electricity Board slides up, and is not on a hinge. Clever girl! Who says they’re only good for making babies?
Ian gets I suppose 20 points as he does all right, while Barbara does more than just sit around crying and claiming they’re all going to die, and wishing she was back marking pupils’ homework, so 10 for her. Susan I can really not award anything to, leaving us with this score at the end of the episode, which pretty much reflects how terrible this one is, and it's got some stiff competition. I almost miss Za. Well, no I don't, but it's a close-run thing.
Susan: Minus 45/100
Ian: 85/100
Barbara: Minus 10/100