The Daleks Really Need to Chill Out
Is Planet of the Daleks a warm homage to Terry Nation's original Dalek script, or the frozen-dinner version?
Plot Summary:
Pursuing the Daleks to the icy jungles of Spiridon, the Doctor and Jo team up with the Thals to defeat delay the largest Dalek army ever assembled.
Notable for:
Story immediately follows Frontier in Space
Intended as a sequel to both Frontier in Space and The Daleks, answering “Whatever happened to the Thals?”
Return of Terry Nation as writer for a Dalek story (hadn’t written since The Daleks’ Master Plan)
They had 3 Dalek props from the 1960s stories and seven wooden “extras.”
Barry Letts insisted on the character of Rebec to provide some variety with another female character.
The musical sound effect for the Daleks’ guns is never used again after this story.
Terry Nation created the Supreme Dalek as a response to the Emperor Dalek, which Nation didn’t like.
The story reworks many plot elements of The Daleks: The Daleks have a “city” that the Thals and the Doctor have to enter repeatedly and often covertly. They contemplate releasing a plague (instead of a neutron bomb). Someone disguises themselves as a Dalek. The Daleks paralyze the Doctor just like they did to Ian.
Doctor Who the Collection version has update effects, including a cleaner spinning TARDIS, spaceship landing, and CGI Dalek army.
Pete commentary:
This is supposed to be the big, epic Dalek-heavy payoff that Frontier in Space promised. And it succeeds in that regard, but there’s a forced quality to Planet of the Daleks that makes it feel clumsy and ham-fisted at times. The plot borrows heavily on previous adventures, and there are many lines about how high the stakes are but rarely do you actually feel it. It’s also a big preachy at times, and, like most of classic Who, it’s about 2 episodes too long. It’s surprising how much it holds together. That’s because:
Jon Pertwee and Katy Manning are quite good, if not at the top of their game. Pertwee takes everything quite seriously, and he gives the Daleks their due (despite personally not being a fan). It would have been nice if Jo had more to do, but her concern for the Doctor and (later) the Thals is heartfelt. She gets infected, hit on the head, and threatened by the Daleks, then gets a marriage proposal out of nowhere. You certainly believe that by the end she just wants to go home.
The Daleks themselves. While the Thals are pretty bland, the Daleks are quite good in this adventure, largely because they’re not obsessed with the Doctor or the Time Lords. After doing adventures like The Magician’s Apprentice, Dalek, and even The Chase, it’s good to see a good old-fashioned Dalek “plot,” and one where they don’t even recognize the Doctor until part 6! And the voices — Michael Wisher and Roy Skelton — are on point.
A lot going on here! The Daleks are trying to master invisibility and conquer the galaxy at the same time. You’d think, with 6 episodes, they’d have enough time to do both, but the invisibility plot goes nowhere. Episode 1 shows an invisible Dalek, which suggests we’re going to see this in a bigger way later, but it never happens. You only get a little bit with the Spiridons, and they suddenly start wearing fur coats halfway through. What a waste.
Still, the Daleks are nicely effective in this one. Despite the usual limitations of the budget — and the need for the main characters to survive — the script portrays them as pretty serious badasses, getting shit done: killing survivors, taking slaves, and lots of “plotting.” I would have liked to hear more about how they subjugated the Spiridons (presumably they were able to track/see them via infrared or ultraviolet or something), but I like how blase they are about basically nuking the planet with the bacteria. Killing everything on the planet — just another Tuesday for the merciless machine-creatures from Skaro.
Speaking of the bacteria, what happens when the city is destroyed? Does it get released? Must have burnt up? Froze?
The Doctor’s body is “somewhere below zero” as it heals. Foreshadowing, but does that ever happen again?
Let’s talk about the Thals. It’s nice that they revisited them, but this episode creates more questions than it answers. Are they sharing the planet with the Daleks? Is it just them on Skaro right now? What happens after this? Do they leave Skaro and get a planet of their own?
The jungle set is very impressive. (Grace noticed the quality, too.) There’s nice variety in the plants, and the animal howling sounds are spooky and not too intrusive. They seem to forget about the green light about halfway through, but generally it’s nice and convincing — even a bit freaky.
Given what we see later with respect to the scale of the TARDIS interior, it’s weird that it runs out of oxygen so quickly. However, showing the O2 tanks are mostly empty sounds very Doctor-ish. I suppose he must have learned the trance of not needing to breathe (Terror of the Zygons) after this adventure.
Also: why not dematerialize? Might be lost, but at least you’re alive.
Why does the Doctor forget they were chasing the Daleks in the first place? Also, why tease the audience this way? The story is called “Planet of the Daleks.” We just met the Thals and name-checked the Daleks. The Dalek “reveal” might be the least surprising in Doctor Who.
It’s weird that they keep calling the Dalek base a “city.” It has only one entrance, and there doesn’t seem to be a bunch of buildings, outdoor space, or whatever else makes a city a city. Why not just call it the Dalek “base” or “fortress?”
You never quite believe the Doctor believes Jo is dead. Pertwee isn’t despondent enough.
LOL that Jo gets to play opposite a cassette tape for something like 2 episodes. This reminds me of the spark globe in Remembrance of the Daleks — basically showing some kind of novel technology that hadn’t captured the mainstream yet. Cassette tapes were invented in the 1960s, but they didn’t really explode into the mainstream until the Walkman debuted in 1979.
I might be alone, but I really like the idea of “liquid ice” — not just water, it’s a goop that’s water-like but retains liquid/gel properties well below 0°C. I like the attempt to portray the setting as something more “alien” than your typical pink-skied desert.
This episode introduces the idea that the Daleks can be immobilized or killed by cold temperatures. Uh, OK. That seems weird considering we have repeatedly seen Daleks in the cold vacuum of space (though admittedly not until NuWho), but it just makes little sense if you think about it: Dalek armor is like a tank that protects the mutant inside. Doesn’t it protect against huge temperature changes as well?
That also means the end — where the Dalek army is frozen — doesn’t make a ton of sense either. However, I’m willing to go with it for this episode, even if this weakness of the Daleks is (rightly) never mentioned again.
The Supreme Dalek is fancy (Grace’s word). Gotta love it, though the flashlight eye is a little much. It sucks that they did such a bad job syncing the dialogue with the flashing lights, but it’s a cool moment when it arrives — it definitely feels like the stakes have been raised. I also love how it’s first out of the ship (gotta respect the Vader-like leadership where you go out first, despite the risk), plus its dressing-down of the mission commander is epic.
Looking for a man? Become a Doctor Who companion! Jo rejects Lartep, just as she did King Peladon. She joins Susan, Leela, Peri, Martha, and probably a bunch more for having blokes fall for them in the scope of an adventure. She gently lets him down, and it’s clear the end is foreshadowing The Green Death. Jo, who’s learned to operate the TARDIS console enough to call up pictures of specific planets, now knows what she wants — to get back home, and perhaps stay there.
Let’s just stipulate that the Daleks don’t do basic security: checking any of the Spiridons who come in and out. How do they know who they are? They should at least be aware of the Spiridons who are resistant to their occupation. Also, maybe make the doors a little more controllable from a central location?
The hot air balloon rescue is kinda cool. I like that it’s slightly educational and low-tech. I’ll even buy that the Dalek guns are quickly “Out of range.” However, you’d think, once the Daleks see them, it would be easy to bring them down by simply turning down the heat.
Bernard Horsfall is pretty good as Taron, easily the best of the Thals. You can see why they kept bringing him back. I’m not sure if his character arc was well thought out, but looking at the history of the Thals, it makes a lot of sense that he’s an indecisive and passive “commander” (remember: he was forced into the role). Most others would have killed or at least ousted Vaber for his betrayal, but Taron keeps him around. I don’t think it’s just a numbers thing.
Fun times with Dalek holding the map.
Pertwee has a few speeches — lecturing Cordal on what bravery is, on retaining the “human” element of command to Taron. They’re fairly clunky, but they do align well with the story. The best one comes at the end, with the Doctor telling Taron to not glorify war.
Will it really take “centuries” to dig the Dalek army out? If they build their “city” into the side of an ice volcano, you’d think they would be able to figure out how to dig some holes, clear out the goop, and get them out of there. “No aging process, no degeneration.”
10,000 Daleks doesn’t hold a candle to the number of Daleks in the Time War subsequently. The Doctor says the number of Daleks in Bad Wolf is roughly “half a million,” and he also says there are “millions” of Daleks in the Genesis Ark in Doomsday.
What did Pete’s family think?
Grace and I watched this together and had a lot of fun doing it. Since there are several moments where the Daleks are thrown into pools or covered in goo, we started going, “Hah! You just got gunked!” every time that would happen. She remarked several times how the Thals all look alike.
She loved that the recaps are short in this one.
Four Questions to Doomsday - Pete
Why did the Randomizer take us here? The Randomizer is super into Pertwee now (Gatwa influence?). Having shown us the end of Pertwee’s arc, it shows the beginning of that end, with Jo outgrowing her time as the Doctor. Also: jumping from invisible spiders to invisible Daleks. Heard my complaints about the badly edited and way-too-long recaps in Planet of the Spiders.
And hey — Planet to Planet. C’mon
What if the evil plot had succeeded? Let’s assume the explosion fails to jostle the volcano enough to create the gunky liquid ice floe. All the Daleks are activated and the Dalek ships land to pick them up and conquer the galaxy. However, the Doctor and the Thals still escape, and the Daleks don’t seem to have left anyone on the Superme’s ship, so they can still escape. Defeating the Daleks is now up to the Earth and Draconian empires teaming up and destroying them. It’s a galactic war — perhaps the Daleks’ first — and they do enough serious damage to become a major player on the galactic stage, much larger than they otherwise would be in this time period. That could set the stage for their ultimate conquest that the Time Lords saw in Genesis. Given that the army is just under a little sludge, this is probably what actually happened, just a few years after the events of this story.
Where's the Clara splinter? Clara Oswald, Dalek Killer, breaks into the Dalek city right when most of the Daleks are busy “pursuing” the Doctor et al. at the end. She torches the bioweapon room with some kind of sanitizing radiation bomb that kills the Daleks inside as well as the bacteria, saving Spiridon’s ecosystem when the Daleks end up “abandoning.”
Dalek, Ogron, Professor Hayter, Viscount Banger, Fixed Point in Time, Lady Cassandra, or Zarbi? Zarbi! Certainly too long but also unexpectedly fun, with a nice reworking of the Thals’ place in the universe post-Daleks — doing what they need to in order to resist the Daleks, but not losing their “humanity,” and their love of peace, in the process. It has shortcomings, but in the end it delivers.
Chris commentary:
It isn't just the Daleks who are weird about temperature in this story, what about the Doctor and his ice face?
Let's talk about the Ikea furniture … not ahead of its time
Jo is quite casual about being squirted by plants?
Taron is "qualified in space medicine …" oh really? Did he get his degree from the Space University of Space American Samoa?
Susan's first mention since 1964 and she gets third billing?
"One of the nastiest pieces of space garbage in the ninth system" is a … very Terry Nation line.
The Doctor's surprise when he sees a spray-painted Dalek … did he forget?
The Daleks barely talk! It's like they know their supervisor is on his way. They used to be so sassy … Supreme Dalek is supremely sassy, though.
That scene with the Doctor and the Dalek in the elevator is especially weird, especially since the Doctor thinks Jo just died. Needs muzak
The Doctor's anti-war but also he's all about medals? "For a man who abhors violence …"
The unfortunate mess of the Thals AND the Spiridons all looking the same
Terry Nation, colorizing Hartnell stories before it was cool …
The balloon cliffhanger is a bit naff. "It's not going to work … hey, it worked!"
The Dalek with the map seems really excited to have reading material
Taron is ill served by looking like a total asshole when Rebec shows up: "You might be the reason the Daleks win!" Chill out, dude … "this job doesn't allow for human weakness" … or Thal weakness?
10k Daleks is the mightiest army ever?
Jo's great hiding place for the bombs … "they're right here!"
Latep is totally into Jo because … she's the first person to shake his hand?
She's more into Wester … "The Spiridon that helped me"
Bring their army to life accidentally? That would have been a good twist …
"How we going to do all that? I have no idea!"
Four Questions to Doomsday - Chris
Why did the Randomizer take us here? Pertwee to Pertwee, planet to planet … a story so dull it made me long for Spiders. I'm sorry Randomizer! Also, the weird mention / non mention of Susan.
What if the evil plot had succeeded? Then… with the Time Lords watching and 10,000 Daleks unleashed … the Time War starts earlier? And is easier to win?
Where's the Clara splinter? On the Supreme Council, creating a subset of Daleks for Spiridon that are more sensitive to extreme cold. And Time Lady Clara installed that weird Ikea furniture …
Dalek, Ogron, Professor Hayter, Viscount Banger, Fixed Point in Time, or Lady Cassandra? Total Cassandra