Doctor Who: "The Daleks"

[pmcray]

Everything changes again at the end of episode one with the sight of Barbara being menaced by a plunger. Just imagine if "The Sensorites" or some counter-Earth story had been the second story. I don't think we'd be talking about DW today. As I have said before, Daleks are bloody scary (I do want to get one). They shouldn't be really: they shouldn't be any scarier than a miniature tank. We know there is something alive inside a Dalek, that they aren't jut robots, but a Dalek as a Dalek seems organic in a way that, say, moving car with a person inside it doesn't. They don't have legs, they don't have faces, they don't look organic, and yet they are definitely alive. It's a classic arachnid reaction. Odd then that the production team didn't learn the lesson. I long for a monster that isn't a person in a suit, although at least DW has generally made more of an effort than Star Trek.

The Daleks here (there's seems to be only about six of them plus some cardboard cutouts) are pretty wimpy compared to later Daleks, but people just hadn't seen anything like them before. They were as fresh as The Beatles and they caused a sensation (I will discuss further when we get to the later stories).

The TARDIS has a faulty fluid link. Well, the Doctor says it does so that he can get to go and explore the Dalek city in search of mercury. The Dalek city has storerooms, just like a university department on Earth and the storerooms conveniently contain bottles of mercury. It is unclear what the Daleks might use it for, or why it would be in the kinds of bottles found on Earth. It seems odd today that Ian even suggests looking for in the city (or perhaps that he has any reasonable hop of finding it). Presumably the atmosphere of Coal Hill School was thick with the vapour from spilt mercury. Perhaps it had got him. I recall they had some mercury at Longridge High School in 1992; I don't suppose though they would now. Of course, mercury suggests the alchemists and Hermes Trismegistus. Whether that was David Whittaker really had in mind for the Doctor at this stage is debatable (see T&M).
 
The thing is that it is hard to imagine today that the TARDIS does not have a universal replicator/nanofactory aboard, or at least the kind of workshop facilities that a large or - small - warship would have. Of course, people didn't realise how big the TARDIS was in those days. If does have a food machine, which, of course, is presumably some form of specialised personal nanofactory. There is a problem here: to us, it is clear that the Doctor must know more than he is saying about the Daleks, for instance, and about the capabilities of the TARDIS. But thinking in this way seems dishonest both to the original creators and to the audience of the time. No-one in 1963 knew that the Daleks were going to the Doctor's greatest enemy (again see later stories though) and no-one knew about personal nanofactories. We've got to take the text as far as we can as it is presented to us.

We get the classic DW story structure again of the Doctor  and companions becoming involved in a conflict between two antagonist groups. In "An Unearthly Child", we just get Kal, but here we get the Thals. Unfortunately, they are far more obviously refugees from the John Gielgud school of acting than the more kitchen sink cavepeople. The anti-pacifist message does perhaps leave a slightly bitter taste. It occurs me that if Ian is same age as William Russell then it wouldn't have been Malaya that Ian learnt his fighting skills, but Burma (I don't know what Russell himself did during the war).

We get to see what is inside a Dalek, well, a hand. We also get the old get inside a Dalek and pretend to be a Dalek gag. In the first Dalek story. Given what we know of Daleks now, it's hard to believe that Ian could do that, but 1964 was a simpler age (although, of course, double declutching). The Daleks do use CCTV, although not effectively as they might, but at least it is there. There is a great deal of fairly tedious being captured and escaping, but eventually they get back to the TARDIS at the end of episode 4, although to discover - D'oh! - that they left the fluid link back in the Dalek city. So, effectively this is a story of two halves with the second recapitulating the first. Nation is no master of dramatic structure (again see later). So, the Thals have to risk their lives to help get the fluid link back, but at least they get to discover manly aggression and do defeat the (few, remaining) Daleks. Barbara has a bit of thing going on with Ganatus, who gives her some cloth to make a dress. There is quite a bit of this kind of thing in early Who and I will, again, discuss it in more detail later.
 

Overall, it would have worked better as a four episode story. The Doctor is still a sinister old man, whose quite happy to risk the lives of his companions and complete to slake his curiosity. The Daleks are like nothing on Earth and it is easy to forgive a creeky and dull story a great deal for them. And it would have been much easier still in 1964 (see the ratings).

Now Write On...

We might like to see some more of those Daleks. Oh. yes... We get back to Skaro and see the Thals again in the years to come. Of course, they are blond and blue-eyed. There are things we might want to do with that (I shall see to what extent they were done). We might like to find out what happened to Ganatus - and that dress. But this is the Daleks' story. And we aren't going to run out of Dalek stories.