CAST:
William Hartnell as The Doctor
William Russell as Ian Chesteron
Jacqueline Hill as Barbara Wright
Carole Ann Ford as Susan Foreman
John Lee as Alydon
Philip Bond as Ganatus
Dalek Voices - Peter Hawkins and David Graham
Daleks - Robert Jewell, Kevin Manser, Michael Summerton, Gerald Taylor, Peter Murphy

The Story:

Fleeing the “Tribe of Gum” from prehistoric Earth, the TARDIS lands the Doctor, his granddaughter Susan, Barbara and Ian on the devastated planet of Skaro.  Destroyed by nuclear war, the time travelers are trapped while exploring the remains of a city by the Daleks, mutated survivors of the war, who now need travel machines to survive.  Also on the planet are the Dalek’s long time enemy, the Thals.  Having mutated into the perfect human specimens, the Thals are peace loving farmers who have left their homeland in search of food.  The Thals provide the time travelers with an anti-radiation drug, but the Daleks take some of it to use on them selves. It is hoped that with the drug the Daleks will be able to get rid of their travel machines, leave their city, and destroy the Thals; thus having the planet all to themselves.  Realizing that the Dalek machine draws static electrical power from the floor of their city, the Doctor and his companions use a cloak to isolate one of the machines from the floor.  Escaping from their cell the travelers learn that the Daleks are planning to ambush the Thals.  Warning the Thals the Doctor and is companions return to the TARDIS, only to learn that a part of the Doctor’s ship has been left in the city (the Doctor having sabotaged his own ship as a way to convince the others to explore the planet).  Showing the Thals the danger the Daleks pose to them, the time travelers and their Thal allies break into two groups.  One will attack the city through the swamps and caves, the other, lead by the Doctor, will attack the city’s defenses. Meanwhile, within the Dalek city, the Daleks learn that the drug used by the Thals to ward off radiation is deadly to them.  Realizing that they need radiation to survive, the Daleks plan to expose Skaro’s atmosphere to radiation from their nuclear reactors.  This of course, will destroy all other life on the planet.  Breaking into the city the time travelers and the Thals attack the Dalek control room moments before the Dalek reactors fire radiation into the atmosphere.  Destroying the Dalek power supply, the Daleks expire. Believing that the Dalek menace has passed, the time travelers leave Skaro.

The serial that made Doctor Who an overnight success, this is by far the best of the Dalek stories, even with the limitations of early 1960s special FXs.  A strong character driven adventure, the story fully focus’ on the development of both the main characters as well as the Daleks themselves.  The Doctor in this episode is still portrayed as an anti-hero, while Ian and Barbara’s close relationship begins in this story.  The Thals are well portrayed as the noble heroes of the story.  Their costumes, although reflecting the styles of the early 60s are not dated by any measure.  The morality play between the Thals having been the antagonist of the war now turned farmers, and the Dals, having been teachers now turned antagonist, is well played out.  The Daleks in this episode are of course, in their original form (minus the shoulder slats featured from “The Chase” on), and come across on the screen as truly menacing.  In addition the serial has one of the series all time best episode endings where Barbara is menaced by a Dalek plunger at the end of episode one.  If there is one drawback to the episode it falls within the final fight scene in the Dalek control room near the end of episode seven. Somewhat slow moving it is never made fully clear exactly how the Dalek’s power source is destroyed (although it is suggested that it happens when a Dalek is pushed into a power relay).  In 1965 the story was re-written for the first Dr. Who movie Dr. Who and the Daleks, starring Peter Cushing.  Unfortunately the film did not capture the essence of the television original, mainly because of the editing of the story from a 140 min. seven part serial to the 90 min. film format.

Overall Episode Rating: 5 out of 5

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

     

The Story:

Attempting to return Ian and Barbara to their own time the TARDIS lands in 2174 London.  The time travelers find the city abandoned, and soon are surprised to find that the Earth has been invaded by Daleks.  The Doctor and Ian are captured while Barbara and Susan hook up with a resistance group.  The Doctor is almost robotised (a Dalek process that turns humans into living robots), but is freed when the resistance attack the Dalek ship, using a new type of explosive.  The "bombs" prove useless against Dalek casings but during the attack Susan and a resistance fighter named David manage to get the Doctor away.  Ian however is unable to escape, and finds himself trapped aboard the Dalek ship.  Barbara is separated from Susan and makes her way across the horrors of occupied London with the help of Jenny, a resistance fighter, and Dortmun, the crippled head of the resistance.   The Doctor in the meantime has decided to head for the Dalek's vast mining complex in Bedforshire, hoping to find the secret of the Dalek invasion there.  The Doctor, Susan and David barely escape London before the Daleks destroy it.  Barbara, guessing that the Doctor would head for the Dalek mine, begins to trek across the devastated English landscape, with Jenny in tow (Dortmun having sacrificed himself so they could get away).  They seek refuge in an old farm house, only to be turned over to the Daleks by the houses occupants.  At the Dalek mine, Ian, having escaped from the Dalek ship, stumbles through the Dalek tunnels and into the operation room where the Daleks are preparing their explosive device. Their plan is to remove the magnetic core of the earth and replace it with a power unit. This will allow the Daleks to pilot the planet like a giant space ship.  On the outskirts of the mine workings the Doctor, Susan, David and Tyler, another resistance fighter, survey the Dalek base. The Doctor quickly works out the means in which the Daleks are powering themselves (when not drawing power from the floors of their base).  He sends Susan and David to destroy the Dalek's transmitting unit, and once destroyed, the Daleks on Earth become helpless, as static power is no longer transmitted to their machines.  Meanwhile, Ian has diverted the Dalek explosive device down an old mine shaft that adjoins the Dalek shaft.  He quickly joins Barbara (who had started a RoboMan revolt against the Daleks), The Doctor, Susan, David and Tyler on the hilltop over looking the Dalek's mine workings.  The device, upon it's detonation, releases the Earth's molten core and the Daleks still on the surface are destroyed in a massive explosion.  The Dalek Saucers, unable to break free in time, are destroyed as their entire base is engulfed in a volcanic eruption.  Returning to the TARDIS, the Doctor, Ian and Barbara depart, leaving Susan on Earth to live with David.



Dalek Invasion of Earth is a very ambitious story hampered only by the limitations of it's budget.  The excellent story, once again character driven, as well as the extensive use of location shooting, adds to epic feel of the production.  Yet despite these efforts the story dose suffer from rather obvious production faults.  The limitations of studio filming are very obvious for this story, especially for all the scenes which take place aboard the Dalek saucer.  The set, constructed as a large single room divided by a single wall, never gives the illusion of a large saucer, suggesting that it could hold maybe 5, at the most 6 Daleks at any given time.  To make matters worst, camera angles used within the saucer are never framed to suggest different rooms of the ship, and make it painfully obvious that the "ship" is a single set.  The most noticeable of this is during the rebel attack on the saucer at the end of part two.  Several rebels enter the Dalek ship in the hopes of freeing the prisoners.  The camera dollies from the control center passed the one wall and into the prison section where the Doctor is being robotised.  The camera then pulls back to show the Red Dalek (the Black Dalek prop with only its primer coat of paint) watching the processes.  Behind it, a mere few feet away, the camera reveals the rebels in the control center trying to free the prisoners.  One has to ask, did the Red Dalek not see the invaders, or did it not care?  For the production itself several new Dalek props were constructed to increase the ranks of the already existing "Dead Planet" versions.  The new constructions can be easily told apart from their earlier versions by the silver eye stalk they adorned.  To suggest the Daleks had overcome their dependency of being powered through the floor, radar dishes were added to the backs of each prop, as well as new skirt sections (the original skirt section clearly visible attached to it) to hide the larger wheels needed for location shooting. In 1966 Dalek Invasion of Earth was produced as the second Dr. Who movie.  Daleks: Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. proved a much better successor to the first film.  The 120 min. television story transferred much easier to the 90 min. time frame of the film, and high production values allowed for far more dynamic staging of events which could not be realized on the small screen. became the second and last television story to be transferred to the big screen.  Once again starring Peter Cushing as Dr. Who.

Overall Episode Rating: 4 out of 5

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

Episode Title: The Chase
Written by: Terry Nation
Director: Richard Martin
Producer: Verity Lambert
Script Editor: Dennis Spooner
Production Designer: Raymond Cusick
No. of Parts: (6) Six
Air Dates: 27 March 1965 to 17 April 1965

CAST:
William Hartnell as The Doctor
William Russell as Ian Chesteron
Jacqueline Hill as Barbara Wright
Maureen O'Brien as Vicki 
Dalek Voices - Peter Hawkins and David Graham
Daleks - Robert Jewell, Kevin Manser, John Scott Martin, Gerald Taylor

The Story:

As the Doctor fiddles with a Time/Space Visualizer the time travelers picked-up from the space museum on Xeros, the TARDIS slowly makes it way through the vortex.  As the Doctor gets the Visualizer to work, each of his companions take a turn looking in on events of the past.  Ian picks Abraham Lincoln's speech at Gettysburg while Barbara is interested in seeing Shakespeare at Queen Elisabeth's court.  Vicki, the TARDIS' newest traveling companion (Susan, the Doctor's granddaughter, having stayed in 22nd century London with David), picks a 1965 performance of The Beatles.  Soon however, the TARDIS lands on the desert planet of Aridius, where the explores decide to stay for a while.  As Ian and Vicki explore, Barbara and the Doctor take in the sun.  Soon they realize that the Doctor had forgotten to turn off the Visualizer, and as Barbara adjusts the controls in the hopes of shutting down the machine, the dreaded sounds of the Daleks come screeching out of the speaker.  It appears that Barbara had tuned the Visualizer into Skaro, and the Doctor and her witness the Daleks depart in their time machine to hunt them down.  Meanwhile Ian and Vicki have stumbled into the city of the Aridians, aquatic people whose planet had been drying up. Attacked by a Mire Beast, a carnivorous life form which had invaded the city in search of food, the pair are caught in an explosion designed to trapped the Mire Beasts in the parts of the city they already inhabit.  Ian is knocked out, and Vicki goes in search of help.  On the surface, the Doctor and Barbara are caught in a sand storm, and loose the location of the TARDIS.  As the sand storm ends, the Doctor is horrified to see that the Daleks are already on Aridius.  The Dalek attack squad uncovers the TARDIS, but it proves impervious to Dalek attack.  The Daleks then give the people of Aridius an ultimatum; turn over the time travelers or be exterminated.  The Aridians agree, and are about to hand over the Doctor and Barbara (who had stumbled upon two Aridians outside the entrance to the city), when Vicki appears seeking help for Ian.  At that moment a Mire Beast breaks through a closed off doorway, causing the Aridians to flee in panic.  In the tunnels leading to the surface Ian has recovered and discovered the TARDIS being guarded by a Dalek.  Setting a trap, he is joined by the others, who help lure the Dalek over the edge and down into the tunnels.  As the remaining members of the Dalek attack squad arrive, the time travelers dash into the TARDIS and dematerialize.  The Daleks depart Aridius in their time machine to follow the Doctor.  In the council room the Doctor discovers that the Dalek time machine is following the TARDIS.  A frantic chase through the Cosmos begins.  After a brief encounter on the 86st floor of the Empire State Building, the TARDIS materializes on the deck of the Marie Celeste.  Taken for a stowaway, Barbara escapes back into the TARDIS just moments before the Dalek time machine arrives on the ship (the crew leap into the sea at the sight of the Daleks).  The TARDIS then lands in what appears to be a Gothic castle.  Exploring the travelers encounter a ghost, a witch, Frankenstein and Dracula.  Convinced that they have arrived in a dimension of the human mind, the Doctor is convinced that the Daleks could not follow them. The TARDIS has in reality, landed in an amusement park house of Dracula and Frankenstein.  The Daleks arrive and attack both the time travelers as well as the automated amusement props.  This shorts out the computer of the Frankenstein prop, which begins to attack the Daleks.  Ian, Barbara and the Doctor escape in the TARDIS but Vicki is forgotten in the confusion.  She stows away on board the Dalek and sees the Daleks create a robot double of the Doctor.  Back in the TARDIS the Doctor is finishing his work on a device which will short out the Daleks' static power supplies, when they realize that they've left Vicki behind.   Realizing that when they next land they will have to fight it out, the time travelers prepare for battle.  The TARDIS finally lands on the planet Mechanus, with the Dalek time machine a few moments behind. Vicki manages to sneak out of the Dalek ship in time to warn Ian about the robot Doctor.  Mimicking the voice of the Daleks, the Doctor confuses the robot and then destroys it.  Setting themselves up in a cave for protection, the travelers are taken prisoner by the Mechanoids (forgotten robots sent to the planet to get it ready for colonization).  In the Mechanoid city they meet Steven Taylor, an astronaut from Earth who crashed on Mechanus years before.  The Daleks follow the time travelers into the city, where the Doctor sets off the static control device, which overloads the Dalek's power circuits.  The remaining Daleks and Mechanoids fight and destroy each other as The Doctor and his party escape.  Finding the Dalek Time Capsule in the forest not far from the TARDIS, Ian and Barbara use it to get back to their own time.


Although another ambitious story The Chase overly fails not because of problems within the script, but because of the limitations of the production department.  The sets are poorly constructed and it is painstakingly obvious in several scenes that the actors are walking around the same prop over and over again.  Several obvious problems which appear on screen should not have occurred at all. The most perfect example of this is when the Doctor and Ian enter Frankenstein's lab to investigate what is lying on the table. Although the Daleks have yet to arrive in the spook house, a Dalek prop is clearly seen sitting behind the gated doorway at the back of the lab.  This prop would later be used to confront the Doctor when he re-enters the lab later, but would it have been so hard for the prop department to throw a sheet or some other article over the prop to hid it?  By far the worst set is the one depicting the inside of the Dalek time capsule.  Although impressive in its conception, the over use of cardboard cut out Daleks, Aaru movie Daleks (with their bases removed), and poorly painted swirling wall panels completely ruin any effect of realism.  Of course there are several "firsts" in the episode.  This is the first episode to introduce the Daleks with the standard shoulder slats around their mid-section. Designer Raymond Cusick explained that he had come up with the design because he did not like the look of the radar dish which had been used in the previous story.  Unfortunately the appearances of the slats are never explained in the episodes.  In addition the episode introduces the Dalek ability to create very convincing robots, or duplicates, which would play a major role in the Peter Davison  Dalek story.  The Chase was originally planned as the third and final Peter Cushing movie, but poor box office receipts from Daleks: Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. canceled any plans for future productions.

Overall Episode Rating: 3 out of 5