Day 176 — June 25th 2021
Planet of the Daleks Episodes Three and Four
Planet of the Daleks — Episode Three
I’d made a note while watching today that the direction in this story was a cut above the rest, and in checking the credits I see it’s a welcome return to the series for David Maloney, directing his only* Pertwee serial. I wasn’t overly fussed with his work on The Mind Robber or The Krotons, but The War Games was brilliant and I’m pleased to see the same is true here.
I’m especially keen on the way he shoots the Daleks — there’s some great use of shadows being cast against the walls which somehow work to make the creatures all the more threatening. A particular highlight is the moment a Dalek patrol stumbles on Doctor Who and Codal making their escape, where the whole scene is infused with far more tension than it might otherwise hold.
The direction is helped along by some gorgeous sets which I suspect shouldn’t work but somehow do. They’re very plain — lots of blank blue walls — but there’s something so stark and simple about them that I can’t help loving them. Once again I’m sorely tempted to switch to watching this in black and white, because I think it would look even better like that.
(Truth be told, I did try to switch, but despite digging through the options on the TV I couldn’t find a way of doing it. Ho hum. One day!)
Lots of sequences in the corridor are also shot on film because of the special effects involved, and regular readers will know that I’m always a fan of doing as much on film as possible. It makes the whole thing look so much more expensive, and even the slightly tatty Dalek props look beautiful compared to the VT material in studio. There’s some gorgeous close ups which work incredibly well.
We get our first glimpse of the Dalek army in this episode, when Doctor Who discovers them hidden away at the heart of the planet. I watched the original version first, looking gorgeous again on film and comprised of lots of Dalek models. The cliffhanger came only seconds later and I realised that this was probably the sequence they’s tried to replace with new effects. I went back and watched again, and while the new shot is very well done it’s lacking some of the charm the original had. I suspect that’s just me being a sucker for a film shot, though! I’ll probably do both versions of the later cave shots, too, just to compare.
Having thought about how lovely the colour palette and lighting was inside the Dalek base it was only after watching this one that a friend pointed out that the episode had been recoloured and was only available in black and white for around 30 years or so. It’s impressive, because I can’t claim to have noticed that fact at all. There’s an interesting article on the Restoration Team’s website about the way it was done (which I’ll admit went entirely over my head).
Back when I was doing Season Seven I commented on how well Pertwee’s original costume worked, and said that I wasn’t a fan of the more elaborate versions that crept in later in his tenure. They’ve only really come to the fore this season, with an all-green version for Carnival of Monsters and Frontier in Space, and now the vision in purple which appears throughout this story.
I’ve always thought of this costume — complete with leather gloves! — as looking a bit ridiculous… but it’s brilliant, innit? The colour really suits Pertwee, and I think it looks brilliant in action. There’s some great close ups in this episode (on film, of course) which really show off the texture of the jacket. So I’m prepared to admit that I was wrong — the Third Doctor Who’s more elaborate costumes are brilliant. I don’t think it quite beats the Season Seven look for me, but it’s a close second.
I’ve not a lot else to add for this episode, save to say that I’m enjoying it and it’s another 7/10.
*He reshot the ending of Frontier in Space, too, apparently, but I’m not sure that really counts.
Planet of the Daleks — Episode Four
I find it really interesting that my enjoyment of a story (or otherwise) dictates how willing I am to overlook little faults in the production. There’s plenty of moments in this episode which I’d be calling out here as being rubbish were I not enjoying the story so much. There’s a bit early on, for example, where a Dalek is trying to get through a doorway and the top of the prop is wobbling all over the place. You honestly expect it might fall off. And then there’s another Dalek wandering around with a crudely-drawn map sellotaped to its plunger, which looks so ridiculous as to almost be beyond words.
And yet I don’t care about any of it, because Planet of the Daleks has proven a surprise hit for me! I didn’t go into this story expecting to hate it, but I couldn’t remember very much about it from the last time around so I wasn’t expecting to be loving it quite as much as I have been.
It also helps that for every slightly dodgy moment with a Dalek in this one, there’s a host of brilliant bits too. There’s a point in this episode where Jo manages to trick two of the pepper pots into getting themselves blown up, and it’s genuinely exciting to see the bits of Dalek casing strewn across the jungle floor as the smoke clears.
And then there’s the Dalek lifting off on an ‘Anti Gravity Disc’ to chase after the escaping prisoners. I can’t tell if the Dalek prop is being lifted up and off the ground or if it’s just that the camera is craning down to give the illusion, but whichever it is it really works. Indeed, I’d go so far as to say it’s one of the best shots of a Dalek we’ve ever had in the series, and that’s high praise indeed…!
Heck, even the little Dalek model which rises up the shaft in pursuit looks pretty good when you suspect it probably shouldn’t. What I’m saying is that I’m more disposed to overlook all of these things when in any other story — a Frontier in Space, for example, I’d be keener to find fault. We’ll come back to that in a moment.
It’s a nice surprise, because my recollection of Terry Nation stories from the start of the year is that they weren’t all that great. The Daleks didn’t blow me away, The Chase I actively disliked, and The Daleks’ Master Plan wasn’t all that either. Admittedly The Dalek Invasion of Earth was fab, but it’s hardly a brilliant hit rate. Here, though, I’m enjoying a return of all his tropes — we get the addition of a deadly virus in this episode — and I’m finding so much to enjoy.
There’s a rare amount of depth in here for a Terry Nation script, including some rather nice touches of drama between the Thals themselves. I love the hints of romance between Taron and Rebec, and there’s some great material when Doctor Who and Jo are reunited, too, with the former having thought the latter was dead.
It’s in that scene that we get something of a let down, but not for this story. Catching up on evens since they last saw each other, the pair touch on the ending from Frontier in Space;
Jo: ‘What did you say to the Time Lords in your message?’
Doctor Who: ‘Well, I told them about the Dalek spaceship leaving the Ogron planet and told them to send the Tardis after it.’
Jo: ‘But what are the Daleks doing on this planet?’
Doctor Who: ‘They’ve got an army based here, Jo, the mightiest army of Daleks there’s ever been.’
Jo: ‘But when we were on the Ogron planet, we put a stop to their plan to sort of cause a war?’
Doctor Who: ‘Well, evidently that was only part of their plan, to make their conquest easier perhaps. With an army this size, we now know they intend to invade the galaxy anyway unless we can stop them.’
I said a couple of days ago that Frontier in Space had ended on something of a confusing note, with all the characters and plot threads completely dropped in the transition to this story. Here we are four episodes in and this is the first mention we’ve had of the events there. As if that weren’t bad enough, during this exchange Doctor Who basically says ‘well, the events of Frontier in Space don’t really matter, because the Daleks could have invaded anyway’.
It would probably be fair to blame Terry Nation for the lack of continuity between the two stories. After all, his six-parter follows on from the former, and was shot a couple of months later on. Equally some of the blame needs to go to Barry Letts and Terrance Dicks. They’re the ones steering the show at this point, and so they should have perhaps been more on top of making the two stories dovetail properly, or else abandoning the idea entirely.
But the thing that really annoys me is that they tried to do just that. The very end of Frontier in Space — the TARDIS scene — was a late addition, recorded two months after the end of production on that story, as part of the studio session for the first episode of this story. The intention was to use Doctor Who’s message to the Time Lords as the bridge between the two stories.
I feel that if you’re going to go to the effort of recording and adding in an additional scene to link the two stories up, perhaps there should have been more work put into actually making them link up. At the very least have Doctor Who explain that the Master will struggle to escape the Ogron planet and that the Earth and Draconian governments will have to work together to regain peace while the TARDIS goes off in search of the Daleks. As it is we get no resolution to any of the plot lines in that story.
And as such I’m taking drastic measures today — I’m lowering the score for Frontier in Space Episode Six to a 2/10. It wasn’t my favourite episode in the first place, but in retrospect there’s no actual ending to the story. It ends up simply being a sequence of events which just… stops. I’ve never retroactively amended a score before, but I figure if they can go back and change the ending two months down the line, then I can do the same with my score two days later.
As for the fourth episode of Planet of the Daleks? That’s a much healthier 8/10.
