Day 47 — February 16th 2021
The Nightmare Begins and Day of Armageddon
The Nightmare Begins (The Daleks’ Master Plan — Episode One)
I listened to The Nightmare Begins twice today, and I managed to spend money doing it. When I was first getting into Doctor Who I picked up a handful of the Narrated Soundtracks to experience the ‘missing’ stories. I’m sure I’ll talk more about the impact they had on me when I reach The Invasion, but The Daleks’ Master Plan was one of the earliest ones I bought. How could it not be? This story has an epic status. It dominates Season Three, taking up three whole months of its broadcast time, and it’s the only Hartnell Dalek story that’s missing from the archive. When I bought the soundtrack, there were only two episodes of this serial known to exist, and chances of finding any others seemed slim.
And yet, I’m fairly sure I didn’t actually listen to the soundtrack at the time. If I did then I can’t remember it, and you’d think this story of them all would have left a mark! It sat on my shelves for ages, and I eventually sold it on when I bought the second volume of the ‘Lost Episodes’ collections which they put out about a decade later. I’d definitely copied the CDs to my computer, though, and they’d been sitting on an external drive ever since. I transferred the files to Dropbox today so I could start the story while doing the washing up, and you can imagine my surprise when the episode began and there wasn’t any narration.
I decided to go with it. For starters my hands were already soaking in the washing up bowl, and I didn’t want to waste time working out what had gone wrong. I listened to the whole episode, and I enjoyed it… but I was also a bit lost. Quite aside from spending time wondering why there was no narration, there were stretches of the episode where I couldn’t really follow what was going on. People would suddenly pop up in new locations, and action would shift, and I’d have no idea how we’d gotten from A to B.
When the episode finished (and I’d finished the washing up) I double checked. Yes, the original CD release had featured the narration by Peter Purves, and yes it was the same version I had on a CD in the cupboard too. So where on Earth was the narration? I figured out later (via some Googling, though it was surprisingly hard to discover the imformation) that the original release had also included the episodes without narration. Clearly when I’d ripped the CDs all those years ago I’d copied that version — either by accident or design. ‘Not a problem,’ I thought. ‘I’ll just copy the CD again before I start tomorrow’s missing episodes.
But it was niggling at me. I’d enjoyed the episode, but perhaps not as much as I’d been expecting, or hoping, to. There was still cleaning up to do in the kitchen (as a general rule of thumb the wife likes to do the cooking, and I do my part by cleaning it all up afterwards), and it transpired that the orphan episode Day of Armageddon wasn’t on BritBox, so I wouldn’t be sticking that on the iPad to watch next. There was only one thing for it; do The Nightmare Begins again, but this time do the right version with the narration.
Remember a couple of weeks back, during The Web Planet, I said that I was a typical Who fan, easily suckered into buying stories over and over again? That was out in full force today. I bought the original CD release in about 2003, and the Lost Stories re-release in about 2012, and the vinyl edition of The Daleks’ Master Plan a couple of years back. Those later two editions were still sat down the hall in the office. But I wanted to just get on, and not waste time having to copy the CD to the computer then across to listen to on Dropbox…
So I bought The Daleks Master Plan soundtrack for a fourth time, via Audible. The BBC must love me, because I’m paying them every time I fancy revisiting a story!
Anyway, it was the right decision because I enjoyed the episode so much more when I could actually follow what was happening thanks to the narration. For starters we get a cold open reprising the final minutes of The Myth Makers, which I found surprisingly helpful for placing our regulars. It also makes clearer what happens later in the episode, when Doctor Who stumbles across the body and the tape recording from the end of Mission to the Unknown. Without the narration this sequence is just a lot of ambient jungle noise, and the occasional ‘hmm’ or ‘ahh’ from Hartnell.
Luckily, this episode continues the high quality from the story’s teaser episode, and there’s something surprisingly fun about seeing out heroes thrown into the jungles of Kembel and discovering the Daleks’ involvement here. It’s nice that the SSS still get a hefty presence largely thanks to Bret Vyon, and he gets a great line in humour much like Marc Corey did a few episodes back. I particularly enjoyed his theory that their colleague couldn’t have been captured by the Varga Plants because ‘we haven’t seen any Vargas that look like him’. The trendy thing to say about the SSS is that they’re supposed to be James Bond in space — in Mission to the Unknown they’re even described as having ‘a licence to kill’ — but I get that vibe more today from Vyon than I did during Mission.
It’s the second story running where Steven doesn’t make it out of the TARDIS until relatively late in the first episode, but I feel like that’s more justified here than it was in The Myth Makers. It’s great having Katarina on hand to see all of this through — I rather like that she thinks they’re on a journey to the afterlife. She’s going to really wonder what’s going on when they start running into the various delegates!
The other bonus of spending so much time inside the TARDIS today is that we get to see Brett step inside. I’m fairly sure this is a first for the series — until now we’ve only seen Doctor Who and his companions inside the ship. A Zarbi tries to get inside at one point and is repelled (for reasons which aren’t entirely clear), but Brett is the first actual ‘outsider’ we’ve seen invade our place of sanctuary. More that that, he’s being presented as an obstacle (if not an actual enemy) at the time he gets into the Control Room, which makes this all the more dramatic.
Popping in the Lost in Time DVD to watch the next episode also gives me a chance to see the surviving film clips from this one, and oh God they’re good. The sequence where Gantry trips in the undergrowth and turns around to find a Dalek bearing down on him might be my favourite Dalek moment in all of Old Testament Doctor Who. It makes the Dalek truly scary, and the direction of the whole sequence is beautiful. This shot is followed by a close up of Gantry’s gun firing and then a shot of the Dalek gun retaliating and it’s genuinely beautiful — it feels far more polished than a lot of the stuff we usually see. It’s wonderful to see the Daleks being shot by someone who isn’t Richard Martin.
I think I’m right in saying that these sequences exist as the original film prints, and could therefore be included in High Definition on some future Blu-ray release; I’m certainly hoping so, because I’d love to see this in the best quality possible.
An ambitious and exciting start to the story; I’m glad that this was the one I had to do twice, and not something from The Web Planet… 9/10.
Day of Armageddon (The Daleks’ Master Plan — Episode Two)
I know we shouldn’t wish away any recovered episodes of Doctor Who, so I feel a bit guilty for wishing that today’s two episodes were swapped round — that we could have had The Nightmare Begins recovered in full, and just have the film elements from this one. It’s still a good episode, don’t get me wrong, but I think I’d rather be able to see the start of the epic story, while this episode feels more just a part of it.
That said, there’s some impressive elements in this one. Obviously there’s the aforementioned film sequence in which the Daleks are fitted with flamethrowers to burn down the forest. It feels epic in a way that no previous Dalek moment has, and I’m gutted that plans to film a shot of the TARDIS surrounded by the flames was abandoned. Once again I find myself tempted to pick up some Eaglemoss figures, but I’d need three of the flame thrower Daleks if I wanted to be accurate, and I’m not sure the wife would go for that.
This episode also shows off the impressive scale of the Delegate’s Meeting Chamber, which looks huge when first introduced with Zephon walking down the long ramp to join the waiting Daleks at the bottom. I wondered briefly if it might simply be a good use of force perspective to make the room look larger than it really was, but I’m not sure that’s the case. I’ve not got the studio plans for Day of Armageddon, but this plan from later in the serial shows just how big the set really was — it takes up around half of Studio Three at Television Centre.
The idea of a load of monsters meeting to discuss their plans around a table should be ridiculous, but it’s actually surprisingly effective. I’m really keen on them all banging their hands on the table when they’re applauding the near-completion of their plans. The Delegates are also the source of one of my favourite Doctor Who mysteries; namely ‘which Delegate is which?’.
The brilliant Jaqueline Rayner has delved into the mystery far better than I’d be able to here, so it’s well worth having a read of her brilliant Delegate Detective blog if you’ve any interest in obscure aliens from 1960s Doctor Who.
One last thing I noticed today which I’m not sure I’ve ever picked up on before — Doctor Who dates The Dalek Invasion of Earth to 2157. I always thought the date of that story was something of a contentious topic, but perhaps not? He also suggests that if humans look up their records on the events — almost 2000 years before this story is set! — then they’ll discover how to defeat the Daleks again. Which seems optimistic at best, because surely their defeat on that occasion was highly influenced by their plan at the time?!
A slight dip for Episode Two, but a solid 7/10.
