Day 48 — February 17th 2021
Devil’s Planet and The Traitors
Devil’s Planet (The Daleks’ Master Plan — Episode Three)
I like that Brett isn’t an all-out good guy. I mean, we know he’s a hero because he’s fighting against the Daleks and they’re definitely the bad guys, but he’s not exactly going out of his way to help Doctor Who. Take the fact that he’s willing to leave Kembel without ‘grandad’ as he calls him. It feels like a bit more than we usually get from guest characters in Doctor Who, and I don’t think it’s just the fact that Nick Courtney is playing him which gives us greater depth than I’d usually expect. God help me, I’m becoming a Terry Nation convert!
Although… perhaps I’m not. Because despite this being Episode Three of a twelve part story, it’s still very much an ‘Episode Three’, isn’t it? Not an awful lot seems to happen here, which is unusual given how packed the last couple of Nation episodes have been, and I’m including Mission to the Unknown in that. Our heroes don’t really get anywhere today, despite arriving on another planet. It all feels a lot like padding until we get to the cliffhanger and put Katarina in danger.
Even the Daleks don’t get an awful lot to do here, but I’ll admit that I love them exterminating Zephon. I spent so much of The Chase moaning about the Daleks being reduced to cheap jokes, but this story is doing everything it can to reverse that. It’s great that they’re so willing to dispatch one of their allies because he spoiled their plans, and I love that they have no qualms about it. These are proper ruthless Daleks, the kind you always imagine but don’t always get on screen.
I did find myself amused by some of the narration on this episode’s soundtrack, though, as Peter Purves describes the Supreme Dalek as ‘showing signs of extreme agitation’. Couldn’t tell you why, but that conjures up an especially funny image for me!
I’ve been trying to work out if this is the first time Doctor Who has been so far away from his TARDIS since the series began, and I’m fairly sure that it is. In The Sensorites they leave it on the human spaceship when they go down to the Sense Sphere, but they know it’s there floating above them somewhere. I’m fairly sure this is the first time that we’ve actively seen our heroes leave the planet the TARDIS is on, and with no indication of how they’ll get back to it. It’s a surprise that more isn’t made of the idea — and I wonder if it’s simply a case of things getting missed in the changeover to the new production team.
I’m disappointed not to have more to say about this episode, so I’m leaving it with a 6/10.
I’ve had an ace up my sleeve to fill space for when I found little to say about an episode in this story, though I’ll admit I was expecting to use it later on during all the Egyptian stuff. It’s not a particularly interesting fact, but I reckon Peter Purves has a ‘Dalek Jumper’ that he’s particularly fond of. It’s this one;
The image on the left was taken during rehearsals for this story during the winter of 1965/66 (we don’t know which episode specifically was being prepared), and the one on the right was taken in 1967 during Blue Peter’s ‘Design a Doctor Who Monster’ competition. I’ve got nothing else to add, it just amuses me that Purves shows up wearing the same jumper in two photographs related to the Daleks. Hey, I told you I was using this fact to fill some space!
It is worth saying here, though, just how brilliant Peter Purves is in Doctor Who. I’ve always had a tendency to think of the Hartnell companions as starting out really good and then becoming a bit of a revolving door later on in the run. But Purves always gives it 100% and Steven is a really interesting character. I’ve not heard any of his Big Finish audios, but I’ll admit that I’m tempted on the back of how much I’m enjoying Steven so far.
It also helps that Peter Purves is a lovely person in real life, too. He played a part in one of the films I made at university in 2008 (he was playing an exaggerated version of himself in a series about a show that was like Blue Peter but was not Blue Peter. Sarah Greene was part of the cast, too, and even provided her own fabulous 1980s wardrobe), and sent a lovely ‘sorry I can’t make it’ message for the best man to read at my wedding. He opened his speech with a message from Steven Taylor and closed it with a quote from The Underwater Menace, and it’s fair to say that both of these things luckily slipped right over my bride’s head.
Steven feels like a companion who doesn’t get spoken about very much and I reckon it’s time to change that. Justice for Steven Taylor!
The Traitors (The Daleks’ Master Plan — Episode Four)
On the subject of companions… we have to have the debate today; does Katarina count as a Doctor Who companion or not? I’ve fluctuated back and forth on the subject over the years, but on this watch through I think I’m going to go with ‘no’. Fans have all sorts of ways to judge who counts and who doesn’t, but all of these systems seem to hinge on them having to have at leats one person who doesn’t fit the criteria but still counts just because. But I think the only system that really works is ‘does the person feel like a Doctor Who companion or not?’
Katarina gets to travel in the TARDIS, which is often taken as a sign that someone is a companion, but she only makes the one trip between Troy and Kembel and she never really knows that she’s travelled in the TARDIS. She spends the entire trip caring for Steven, and even when they emerge into the jungle she doesn’t know she’s on an alien planet, she just thinks this is part of the afterlife. She certainly fulfils some companion functions during her handful of episodes, but no more so than any of the one-story stand in companions we get during most stories in Season One.
So no, Katarina simply doesn’t feel like she’s a Doctor Who companion, and therefore I don’t think of her as being one.
The debate often gets applied to Sara Kingdom, who’s introduced to us in this episode, but I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that she’s not a companion either. She’s — once again — a one-story stand in. Yes, she gets to travel in the TARDIS a fair bit during her single story, but that’s not enough for me. She’s an assistant to Doctor Who during The Daleks’ Master Plan, but she’s not a companion for me.
Watching through this story I wonder why Brett never gets debated as a companion, actually. He doesn’t get to travel in the TARDIS (although he does get to go inside, which is more than poor Liz Shaw gets in Season Seven), but he fills the role of an assistant to Doctor Who just as much as Sara will later in the story. So I reckon if you count Sara then you need to count Brett too. So there.
Whether you think Katarina counts or not there’s no denying that her death in this episode is genuinely shocking. And it always surprises me, too, because for some reason I have it in my head as the cliffhanger ending to this episode, not something that takes place only a few minutes in. We’ve got a few snatched seconds of her death, but I’d love to see the full thing. I’d love to see Brett’s death, too. It’s likely to be far less spectacular — he’s simply shot in a corridor — but it’s still another unexpected moment. It’s just not to sort of thing that happens in Doctor Who at this stage. People die, yes, but not usually when they’re so close to Doctor Who.
Doctor Who gets to give a lovely eulogy after Katarina’s sacrifice, and I think I’m right in saying that it caused some friction between him and still-new producer John Wiles, because Hartnell deviates slightly from the scripted dialogue. It still comes across well, but in the script it’s slightly tighter and neater;
‘She didn’t understand. She couldn’t understand. She’s saved our lives — and the lives of all beings in the solar system. She has become what she wanted, and how I shall always think of her; a daughter of the gods.’
It’s a beautiful piece of writing, and ironically is a more sentimental goodbye than Doctor Who gave Vicki a few episodes ago. Although it does amuse me to imagine that Doctor Who forgot Katarina’s name soon enough. I just don’t believe he still remembers her by the time he turns into David Tennant.
The Daleks continue to be ruthless bastards in this episode, and I’m still loving that. Here they destroy one of their own units because they failed to capture our heroes when they reached the planet Desperus. The Daleks are simply better when being portrayed like this — they’re far more of a threat and you can see why Doctor Who is so worried about them. Weirdly it has the effect of making me want to go back and mark The Chase down even further, because I’d have loved Ian and Babs to leave the show following a proper encounter with the Daleks like this. They were cheated!
8/10
