June 3: Day of the Daleks Episodes Three & Four

The Doctor narrowly escapes that Dalek (and we get another reprise of the "sting" as well), only to be plunged into a nightmarish future where the Daleks rule the Earth (again; see The Dalek Invasion of Earth for the previous time).  The Daleks rule with an iron fist (plunger?) and humanity has been reduced to a race of slaves, with only a handful still able to fight back.  But the Doctor is determined to find Jo Grant in this, and sets off to do so.  These scenes have a nice touch to them; even if they're not necessarily as apocalyptic as the script implies, they're at least atmospheric.  Although the scene of the slaves emptying giant trash cans with just a little bit of gravel in them leaves something to be desired.

But all too soon, the Doctor is captured and interrogated before being released by the Controller and fawned over.  Jo and the Doctor are reunited, but the Doctor spends his time criticizing everything he's seen, calling the Controller out on the conditions of the slaves.  And this is actually a bit of a problem; the audience hasn't really seen much evidence that things are as dire as the Doctor says.  We've seen some empty fields, a handful of slaves, and some interrogating, and that's about it.  But that's where putting the Daleks in this story pays off.  Because we know what the Daleks are like, and we can imagine a world under their reign.  So even though we're told often about how bad things are without seeing much evidence for it, the Daleks' presence make it easier for us to accept that what we're being told is the truth.

But it's time for the philosophical discussions to end.  The Doctor and Jo attempt to escape on a three-wheeled Honda trike in what might be the least exciting chase ever (the trike appears to have underinflated tires and doesn't move very fast, which leads to lots of slow-motion jogging from the pursuing Ogrons), but they're recaptured and the Doctor is hooked up to the mind analysis machine by the Daleks in order to be properly interrogated.  And here we see that the title sequence not only represents time travel, but also the Doctor's mind.

The Doctor is interrogated by the Daleks. (Day of the
Daleks Episode Four) ©BBC

Episode four doesn't have a reprise of the "sting", but that's probably because the cliffhanger reprise has been edited slightly.  Since this episode is concerned with wrapping things up, it's a game of two halves.  Thus, the rebels conveniently storm the Daleks' base in order to rescue the Doctor and Jo so that he can go back and kill Styles for them -- Styles, you see, lured all the world leaders to his country house and blew them up, leading to a hundred years of war and a ravaged planet that was easy picking for the Daleks.  The guerrillas want to go back and change history by killing Styles so that he can't kill all the other delegates, thus ensuring that the Daleks never invade.  It's never clear why history regards Styles as the architect of this explosion, given that he also died in it, and in any case the Doctor quickly works out the real cause: Shura is the one who blows up the house with everyone inside.  "Styles didn't cause that explosion and start the wars.  You did it yourselves."  So now the plan is to send the Doctor back and save everyone from being blown up inside.

The Daleks aren't going to stand for this, so they decide to also go back and exterminate Styles and the other delegates (since, curiously, they seem aware that they're in an alternate future that wasn't supposed to be: "The Daleks have discovered the secret of time travel.  We have invaded Earth again.  We have changed the pattern of history," the gold Dalek tells the Doctor).  So while the first half is set in the 22nd century, the second half is set in the present day (well, near enough).  And so while the Doctor gets everyone to evacuate Auderly House (even if Styles is very reluctant to evacuate -- although, weirdly, the implication is that the Doctor has explained that time travellers from the future are there to assassinate everyone rather than the more sensible "Everyone get out, there's a bomb in the cellar"), a huge Dalek task force of, er, three Daleks and a handful of Ogrons arrives to kill everyone.  Never have the limitations of the series' budget been clearer.⁶⁴  But this time Shura blows up the Daleks and the Ogrons, rather than Styles and his delegates: history is therefore saved.

Even with the occasional glitches, there's a sense of self-assuredness about Day of the Daleks, as if everyone involved knows the best way to do things and is comfortable in doing them.  There aren't any uncertainties in the presentation, and there are a number of moments where you can tell they're trying to see what they can do to stretch themselves even further (such as the curved door in the Dalek base and the CSO-ed video screen that pulls back at the same rate as the main camera shot, to make it look like there really is a video screen set into the wall).  The script is clever (even if it's not quite as original as it sometimes thinks it is) and the acting is generally superb, with Katy Manning in particular having worked out the best way to play Jo Grant.  Day of the Daleks sees the show back on top.







⁶⁴ The special edition on the DVD attempts to rectify this well-known issue by adding in a bunch of CGI Daleks and additional scenes to beef up the numbers.  It also changes all the Dalek voices (which are somewhat different from how they'd been in the past, but they're not that bad) to more "proper" voices done by BBC Wales Dalek voice Nicholas Briggs.