So here we go again. I must confess that after a weekend off it’s a bit difficult to find the motivation to get back into this story. I don’t know enough about 1960s television to know whether stories stretched over 7 weeks were a popular concept but I can’t really see this format ever returning nowadays.
Our heroes are found pushing Ian around in his Dalek shell. Various to-ings and fro-ings ensue but the striking thing about this is still The Doctor during the arguments as to whether our little band of travelers should help the (frankly rather simple minded) Thals. Susan and Barabara want to help prevent them getting shot to pieces in the Dalek trap but the Doctor…
“The Thals are no concern of ours…”
This is only one of a number of times in this episode when the Doctor shows a complete disregard for the Thals. This blog doesn’t have a catchphrase as such but if it did then “This Doctor really is a bit of an arse” would probably be towards the top of the shortlist. It’s hard to think of any Doctor following Hartnell who shows as scant compassion for others.
Anyway, the episode progresses as the Thals walk into a pretty basic trap and the Daleks succeed in shooting at about 20 people and hitting only one of them. The Thals – and our heroes – run away.
Ian attempts to explain the Daleks’ obsession with shooting people as:
“A dislike for the unlike”
“I don’t understand”, replies the Thal, and Ian has to teach the Thals the basic concept of racism… The Daleks have always been an oblique but obvious reference to Nazis and never more so than now.
Aaaaaaanyway, it turns out Ian dropped/lost/had taken from him the central piece of sparkly tat (Fluid link I think. Not sure we ever heard about them again after this…) that the TARDIS can’t manage without. And so with the Daleks trapped in the city still, the Thals thinking about packing up and going home to avoid the Daleks henceforth, I can’t help thinking the producers rather missed a trick and could have ended this one 3 episodes early.
The Thals’ blatent pacifism continues into Episode 5. Ian gets the lead Thal to punch him in the now-traditional way of proving a man can be provoked and therefore should be able to punch other men in the future.
Meanwhile in the Dalek city, the Daleks have figured out radiation will help them live. “We do not have to adapt to the environment, we will change the environment to suit us…”. Now, I’m not much of an environmentalist but I do think that this is the stage a Dalek version of Al Gore would be having a fit of some sort.
Eventually, the Thals decide to attack the Daleks. And their long and winding road to the least defended part of the city begins. For pacifisists they’ve inherited a decent tactical bent at least.
Episode 6 is (in the early way of individually titled Who episodes) entitled “The Ordeal” and I can’t help but wonder if the producers were onto something at this point.
The Doctor does actually get a bit proactive (hitting things with a stick counts as proactive, right?) though he’s immediately captured. Maybe we should just be leaving everything to Ian after all…
Ian and Barbara spend virtually the whole episode working their way back into the Dalek city. This just drags, frankly. I genuinely don’t think a modern story – be it Doctor Who or anything else – could get away with this sort of pissing about. Other than getting 25 minutes older I really don’t feel like I’ve achieved anything in watching this episode. It’s out of the way I suppose…
The final episode starts as Ian and Barbara finally make it back into the city. They wander around a bit.
In the end the Daleks’ plan is a pretty decent one. Dump a load of toxic radiation into the Skaro sky, kill off the Thals and the Daleks can live grumpily ever after. But it is handled in a pretty tedious manner. Having a Dalek count down from about 50 does not create riveting viewing. But then our heroes arrive on the scene and after all the build up it’s a very quick ending, albeit a slightly silly one. It turns out you can harm Daleks by throwing rocks at them and hitting them with sticks.
In the end they manage to cut the Daleks’ power supply and Ian boots an immobile Dalek into a control panel for the fun of it.
And, just like that, they’re done and won. It does seem an irritatingly simple conclusion to what was quite a long drawn out process.
So, in short: The story is basically there but it’s dragged over (at least) three too many episodes. But ultimately it has a decent idea at the heart of it and it gave us The Daleks who do, at least, go onto star in a few other properly decent plots and two of my all time favourite stories, way, way down the road…
And our next story up is only two episodes long. Easy.