Day 49 — February 18th 2021
Counter Plot and Coronas of the Sun
Counter Plot (The Daleks’ Master Plan — Episode Five)
One of the things I really like about this story — and this episode is a great one for showing it off — is the design of the uniforms. I’m not talking just about the uniforms for the SSS, but the ones worn by everyone across the story. There’s a great continuity of design where you really feel that these characters all belong to the same world, and that’s brilliant.
The SSS uniforms are the cream of the crop, of course, and there’s something oddly beautiful about them. I’ve always thought that if I were to ever turn my hand to cosplay, then this is the outfit I’d want to recreate. Indeed a few years ago I tried to track down some of the original designs to make my own, but sadly there’s none surviving.
They clearly can be recreated brilliantly, though, as evidenced on the covers for the upcoming Dalek Universe series from Big Finish. I’m amazed that the design hasn’t turned up in the new series before now, too, as I think they’d look really stylish back on screen.
Then there’s the design of the other ‘human’ characters in the story — from Mavic Chen all the way down. That they’re wearing Tabards shouldn’t really work… but it sort of does. I like that Chen is the only one who gets an all white look, complete with his ‘Guardian of the Solar System’ logo on the front, but I love that his second in command gets a half logo on an all-black version of the same costume. I assume there’s probably another character in one of the missing episodes who has the reverse, with the right side of the pattern on his costume. When my son was born a friend sent a babygrow emblazoned with the Mavic Chen logo on the front, and I greatly enjoyed telling him that he’d grow up to outwit the Daleks one day.
Who knows, he might!
The scientists get their own take on the same basic look, complete with thier own ‘science’ logo on the chest. I don’t think I’d ever really noticed their costumes before, but I found myself oddly drawn to them today. It really does feel like all these people inhabit the same world, and I like that.
It makes me wonder about other characters that we can’t see in The Daleks’ Master Plan. We’ve no visual record of the two characters seen arguing over what to watch on telly in The Nightmare Begins (and looking back, that strand of the story never really went anywhere, did it?) but I’m wondering if they had their own version of the tabards, complete with a ‘radio monitoring’ logo on the chest? Or were they SSS personnel, meaning they were in that uniform? We may never know, and I’d dearly like to!
Anyway, enough wittering on about clothing. This episode contains what I think might be the single scariest moment in 1960s Doctor Who — and it’s William Hartnell being spun around during the transportation to another planet. The effect of the screen flaring while our heroes writhe about in pain is great, and I’m glad it’s one of the episodes which has survived, as I’m not sure you’d have ever guessed it looked like this otherwise. Slightly less effective is the sequence of them actually travelling to another planet — achieved by having Peter Purves and Jean Marsh jump up and down on trampolines (recorded the same day as Katarina’s death, and on the same trampoline, fact fans). The idea is fine in principal, but it makes it all the stranger that we don’t see William Hartnell at all during that sequence. I’m not suggesting that you force him onto the trampoline, but at least feature him when you do the close ups of the other two!
Perhaps the most effective part of this episode is the cliffhanger, because it’s brilliant, and certainly the best one we’ve had in an absolute ages. Surrounded by their enemies, Doctor Who announces ‘I’m afraid, my friends, the Daleks have won’. Come on! That’s fantastic! And in a story where I genuinely believe in the threat the Daleks pose, it’s all the more effective.
Although I note the Dalek from The Chase with the little spinning attachment is back again in this episode, and that means I’m going to have to absolutely buy a model of one to go with the Dalek Invasion of Earth ones currently flanking my computer. I’m going to end up with all the 1960s Dalek figures, aren't I? 7/10
(The Daleks’ Master Plan — Episode Six)
Something that’s quite impressive about The Daleks’ Master Plan is that it manages to make the Daleks seem genuinely scary and powerful while also allowing them to be the target of Mavic Chen’s sarcasm… which somehow makes him even more powerful than he is elsewhere! There’s a great confrontation between them in this episode, where they both try to gain the upper hand;
Black Dalek: You make your incompetence sound like an achievement.
Mavic Chen: Incompetence now, is it? You forget that the original blunder was not of my doing. I journeyed to and from Earth to correct a failing your security force should have dealt with. The core was stolen from here. My actions have brought about a situation which will allow you to recover the missing taranium easily and simply. If that is a failure, then I have failed.
Black Dalek: Report.
Dalek: The fugitives have stolen our pursuit ship and left the planet Mira.
Mavic Chen: And you had the audacity to accuse me, Mavic Chen, of incompetence.
I could spend ages listening to these two bickering with each other.
Elsewhere in the episode, though… Oh it’s all just a bit by-the-numbers. This story is proving to be an unusual one, with some episodes standing out as being especially good while others sort of bob along not really doing very much. It especially seems a bit naff that after one of the very best cliffhangers we’ve ever been given in Episode Five it’s followed up here with one of the flattest cliffhangers ever.
There’s something interesting about the way the story seems to have been wrapped up in this episode, with Doctor Who tricking the Daleks into taking the fake Terranium and then escaping in his TARDIS (more on which in a moment), and I argued when I watched this story eight years ago for my last marathon that we should stop thinking of it as a 12-part epic and instead split these six episodes off into a story of their own, and I’m still of that mindset here. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to think that this story has finished, even if it is with a bit of a damp squib.
Something that really threw me once we were back on Kembel is the way that Doctor Who suddenly starts talking about his ship, the TARDIS. Because he does it just like that — ‘my ship, the TARDIS’ — multiple times in very quick succession. I get that they’re trying to set up that they’ll be safe because they’re inside the forcefield, but come on! We get the following six sentences all within 90 seconds;
‘I will hand over the taranium outside my ship, the Tardis.’
‘Outside my ship, the Tardis, or nowhere!’
‘The young man will give you the taranium when the girl and I are safely inside my ship, the Tardis.’
‘ I will give you further instructions from inside my Tardis.’
‘Steven, hand the box over to Chen. Then come inside the Tardis.’
‘You had a shield round you. You know, similar to that one that protects my Tardis.’
You can see how that sounded odd! A 6/10 today, I think, which is probably a point less than the episode deserves, but I feel a bit worn down by the story as a whole by this stage.
