Context for those unfamiliar with Doctor Who
In the classic era of Doctor Who, stories were divided up into multiple episodes, in a serialized fashion. This story is four episodes long. The show follows The Doctor, the protagonist, on various adventures through space and time in his ship called the TARDIS. Since Spearhead from Space, he’s been exiled to Earth and aiding the monster fighting-military organization, U.N.I.T. Other main characters are U.N.I.T. members, Jo, The Brigadier, Benton, and Yates. This article is part of a review of Doctor Who‘s ninth season.
Doctor Who has returned with not only a new season, but with the show’s famous villains reappearing for the first time in over four years. The Daleks are an icon of the show that are among the most recognizable elements of the show. Originally, this season’s Dalek story was going to be its finale, but this was changed as this season had no “hook”. Season 7 had a new Doctor and setting, Season 8 had the introduction of the Master, and now this one has the return of the Daleks. Speaking of the Master, having appeared in every serial of Season 8 as a contract regular, it seems understood that there weren’t any good ideas left for him, so he doesn’t appear in this story.
Day of the Daleks is a bit of a mixed bag. There’s some great acting and laughably bad acting in the bunch. The regulars are great as usual, though most get little to do this time around. The Brigadier, Benton, and Yates simply head their soldiers and move around when a bunch of guys are needed to fire some guns. There’s some good comedic moments with them. In fact, this story blends in comedic moments pretty well. In the beginning, the Doctor is in a weird situation and he argues and banters with “another” character. The absurdity of the situation and the Doctor’s reaction are hilarious. The Doctor has some quippy lines at someone who is trying to appear above him. The Doctor’s lines are both good jokes and show that he doesn’t respect them. Lesser stories cram in jokes for the sake of it. The Doctor has another good line about “forgetting the unimaginative nature of the military mind.”
Infamously, the Daleks in this story have really silly voices. The voice actors, who were brought in for this story, have never voiced the Daleks before and clearly didn’t get them right. They awkwardly pause their sentences and lack menace. This story got a “Special Edition” which, among other things, dubbed in a better voice actor for the part. There were only three Dalek props available for use and whenever there needed to be more available in one scene, editing is used to give that illusion, but only three ever appear on screen at once. It doesn’t really look right as some scenes would only work if you could see a bunch of Daleks. You can’t really feel their presence with just three. The Special Edition also corrects this problem.
We get another villain in the Ogrons. They’re aliens who assist the Daleks. We don’t get much from them, but they look cool. They also sound lame. A lot of Who stories have monsters that simply speak in a slightly deeper voice than a normal dude. I hope the Ogrons comeback and have more to do. We get an all around good villain with “The Controller”, played by Aubrey Woods. He, a human, assisted the Daleks in their various plans. We start out seeing a very narrow view of his character, but more and more things happen which show more layers of him to the audience. He has great facial expressions throughout the story, which paint a picture of the character.
There’s some excellent camera work in this story. One character threatens another at a point and we get some big closeups on their faces. The tension’s very sharp. One person was in some trouble at a point and there’s a very still and clinical shot of their face. The cinematography is pretty impressive.
This story of course has its silly moments. One I like is when the Controller dismisses the Ogrons after speaking to them, only to say one last thing to them. The Ogrons awkwardly turn to listen. I wonder if Woods had accidently forgotten that last line. We get more from the Third Doctor era’s overall story with him trying to fix the TARDIS’ “dematerialisation circuit”, which has been unavailable to him since the beginning of Season 7. It takes me out of the story a bit as the thing is really small and simple. It looks like a prop for a low budget show that no one knew what it should look like. It would be better if it was larger and more complex looking. It looks too cheap and nothing. The Flux capacitor from the Back to the Future movies has the kind of look that would work better.
Episode 1 overall works as a decent setup to the story. We get good character moments with the Doctor. We see him relax with some wine, think hard on big problems, and knock over a guy with only one available hand. To nitpick, a Dalek briefly appears in the middle of the episode and then more prominently at the end. It would’ve been better if they appeared for the first time at the end as a little twist. There’s an amusing bad effects moment where their monitor is unintentionally moving due to there clearly being strings supporting it off camera (this was also fixed in the Special Edition). It all leads to a pretty classy and effective cliffhanger.
SPOILERS
In Episode 2, the Doctor is attacked by three people in soldier uniforms who are trying to kill a man the Doctor knows named Reginald Styles. In my notes, I refer to these three as The Three Stooges, due to their comically bad acting and lines. One of the soldiers, named Anat, says “We are soldiers, not murderers.” to one of the soldiers who was about to kill the Doctor, but she let two random, innocent U.N.I.T. soldiers be killed in Episode 1. She also almost let them kill the Doctor before he began to convince her not to. The only reason for that line’s existence was to give a reason for them to not kill the Doctor.
The Doctor and Jo are tied up in a basement by the soldiers, where we get some good character moments. The Doctor and Jo almost immediately enable themselves to speak, but they can’t free their limbs as their arms are tied behind their backs. It’s a good moment to see the Doctor so effortlessly free his mouth so he can talk. Jo calls the soldiers criminals and the Doctor says that’s prejudiced. This shows the Doctor’s age and mindset. It’s perhaps a subtle moment showing that the Doctor has met a lot of people in a lot of times. People are often misunderstood to be worse than they are. The Doctor and Jo are let out of the basement to talk to the Brigadier on the phone. Jo is accidentally teleported away with an odd device and the Doctor is thrown back in the basement. I like that the Doctor’s mouth is left uncovered. While probably just a mistake, I’d like to think it’s because they knew he’d just take it off again.
Jo appears in the 22nd century where the Controller greets her. He asks for information of who she is and what she’s about. She mentions knowing the Doctor and the three soldiers. The Controller is very polite. He details how evil the soldiers are. The Doctor escapes only to be attacked by an Ogron. The Doctor kills some of them. The Doctor didn’t know what the Ogrons were about, but he still killed them. This was an unfortunate moment which is incredibly out of character. Usually he would try to understand an apparent enemy. He criticized Jo for jumping to conclusions on the soldiers, but he’s basically jumping to conclusions here. One soldier goes missing, the other two run to a tunnel, followed by the Doctor. We get an excellent cliffhanger where the Doctor runs in the tunnel and uh-oh, a Dalek appears. Role credits! I love that ending as it’s so quick and sharp. It happens at the perfect point and leaves you wanting more. It’s so good. “Oh crap, a Dalek! Episode over!”
In Episode 3, we see more of the Controller’s character when he brilliantly manipulates Jo’s gullible nature. The Doctor is kidnapped by the Dalek’s men and questioned. Here he disrespects them with some sassy lines. The Doctor is collected by The Controller and taken to Jo. The Doctor criticizes the Controller helping the Daleks, leading to one of my favorite lines in the serial, “Now that’s an old fashioned point of view, even from my standards.” It’s telling, witty, and funny. His follow up lines are also great. Something that also happened a few serials ago was the Doctor escaped capture and was almost instantly recaptured, thus making the escape pointless. Well, it happens again here. The Doctor is trapped by the Daleks and the credits start rolling on him in capture before we cut to the normal background. It gives more prominence and importance to this moment.
The Controller convinces the Daleks not to kill the Doctor. In their conversation, the Controller subtly shows that he doesn’t entirely like the Daleks by saying “They can be reasonable.” This implies he thinks they normally aren’t. There’s a good transition from the Controller saying there’s nothing the soldiers can do to stop the Daleks to them working to save the Doctor. They do so and we get another great scene where the Doctor tells the soldiers not to kill the Controller. The Controller has a brilliant facial expression showing a lot of different emotions, as he expected the Doctor to not care about him being killed. The soldiers give the Doctor an unfortunate expository dump about why they went to the 20th century. It could’ve been more subtle. Every little plot thread left unresolved in this story is tied up here. This scene is far too long. Basically, they went to kill Styles for blowing up a bunch of delegates, which led to the start of World War 3. The Doctor realizes that the explosion was actually by the soldier that was still in the 70’s. Ironically, in trying to prevent the war, he caused it. It was interesting to make it seem like the story forgot about that guy, but now he’s relevant again in the final episode.
The Dalek’s harshness to the Controller, often threatening his life, and the Doctor’s kindness pay off when the Controller tells the Daleks he’ll stop the Doctor from going back in time, but then lets him. Unfortunately, when the Controller finds him, he explains why he’s letting the Doctor go, even though we could already infer that. It’s a good moment overall. If the Doctor let the Controller be killed earlier, the Daleks would’ve sent a harsher force to stop the Doctor and he might not have made it back.
The Daleks somehow know the Controller betrayed them. It doesn’t really make sense that they’d know. The Daleks kill him in an emotional death scene. I got attached to the character and I didn’t want to see him go. The death scene was mostly brilliant. The Doctor goes back in time and tells Styles to evacuate the building everyone’s in. He tells the Brigadier to use force if needed to clear everyone out. The Doctor finds the soldier. The soldier insists on dying for the cause and the Doctor lets him. Here we have two out of character moments from the Doctor. The first is effective, he’ll allow military force in order to save people, but here he is just letting this dude die when it could be avoided. Usually, someone who kills themselves to save the day does so behind the Doctor’s back and wishes.
OVERVIEW
Day of the Daleks has a good message about how people who want to do good can still create big problems that weren’t considered. There’s some very sharp acting, such as in the end when you can see the episode on the Doctor’s face (not literally), showing that he’s experienced a lot. It’s just a testament to the brilliant performance Jon Pertwee always gives as the Doctor. The Daleks appear very little here, but it works as this serial is about the characters and the story. While there were certainly problems that needed to be fixed, the overall affair is quite entertaining and well paced.