Doctor Who (Classic) 059: Day of the Daleks // Season 9 (1972) Review Part 1

A promo for the serial

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.

The Lucky Dog (1921) Review

Stan Laurel in the film

The Lucky Dog is a silent short subject from 1921. It contains a lot of the qualities of its contemporaries; scrawny protagonist, quaint jokes, cartoonish villain, cute animals, cute girls (my favorite). It’s a product of its time. In this one, Stan Laurel, who looks like a mix of Harold Lloyd and Conrad Veidt, is the protagonist. He’s kicked around from scene to scene, never doing much, but often having stuff done to him. He finds a dog in the beginning, not because he was looking for one, but because the dog found him per se. He doesn’t seek out the girl, but more her to him. It’s an interesting way of telling the story. The protagonist is a very nothing person.

The physical comedy is good. Most of the cast give pretty moderate performances. The only particularly good physical comedians are our protagonist and a relatively minor character played by a then bit actor named Oliver Hardy. Hardy’s character is the secondary antagonist. Any scene with them is great, but infrequent.

For most comedies, scenes that don’t have jokes should be cut. This film is no exception. The numerous scenes with few or no jokes drag like crazy. An engaging story in a comedy can excel with non-comedy scenes, but this story ain’t Some Like It Hot.

SPOILERS

The female of Laurel’s desires, played by Florence Gilbert, takes a liking to Laurel’s dog, which leads to her interest in the man himself. She is with another male character, who is credited as her boyfriend. Why she would just leave her boyfriend (without saying anything) for some guy is confusing. It made it hard to pinpoint her character or relationship to other characters. She also loses her own dog at one point and almost immediately stops caring.

Laurel is robbed by Hardy, then after Laurel and Gilbert leave in Gilbert’s clearly very expensive car. The boyfriend, played by Jack Lloyd, enlists Hardy to harass Laurel as revenge. This is a little too absurd for my taste, but seeing as we know nothing of Lloyd’s character, I can buy it. When the four cross paths, they start out friendly, but not for long. This leads to my favorite scene in the short. Earlier in the film, Hardy fires his gun, which doesn’t seem to work. Here, he has two and tells Laurel that he’s going to kill him. Laurel is mostly nonchalant, but is scared of the guns themselves. He closes his eyes and plugs his ears, but doesn’t attempt to stop Hardy from shooting him. This bit of comedy is absurd in its own little way. It almost seems like a parody of contemporary protagonists which don’t react much to peril. The two actors interact very well. Both guns jam, which is a nice payoff to the gag. It’s especially nice as it was foreshadowed.

Unfortunately, the rest of the film is very standard and nonsensical. The girl is kidnapped by Lloyd. There’s no reason to do this as they’re so far on good terms. She probably would’ve left with him willingly to wherever he would’ve taken her. Upon the kidnapping being stopped, she stops caring almost immediately. The dog bothers the two antagonists and the film ends without resolving anything.

OVERVIEW

The weird characterizations and lack of a fluent story hold The Lucky Dog back from going anywhere. There’s some good scenes and concepts, but the amount of filler and pretty lame jokes kill the movie. It’s not too much of a time waster as it’s only two reels, but it’s still 23 minutes that could be better spent. I’d only recommend the scenes with Laurel and Hardy together.

Woman of the Year (1942) Review

A frame from the film

After seeing It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963), I gained an appetite for its kinda-protagonist’s actor, Spencer Tracy. After seeing The Philadelphia Story and learning of the life of Katharine Hepburn, I gained affection for her as well. Excitement hit me upon learning that the two were in a lot of films together, nine to be exact. This film was especially interesting to me as in most of the Hepburn films I’ve seen, she was paired with Cary Grant, another brilliant actor. So how does she do with Tracy?

The chemistry between Tracy and Hepburn is immediately apparent. They click together incredibly. Neither overpowers the other’s performance. You’re never thinking “I wish they’d stop showing this one and give more screen time to the other.” If this same script was given to worse actors, you probably would, as the first half of the film is mostly from the perspective of Sam Craig, played by Tracy and the second half is mostly from the perspective of Tess Harding, played by Hepburn. In each character’s “half”, there’s chunks of film where the other character is absent. It’s an interesting concept for a film and it’s done pretty well. There are some moments of drag, mainly in the first thirty minutes. This film needed a slow pace, which it does have, but there were better ways to utilize it. In better films, establishing scenes, like showing characters working so we know what they do, also tell us a million other things. Those establishing scenes here usually don’t tell us that much.

What won me over with this film are how fascinating the two main characters are and how much we see from them in only 114 minutes. We see them feeling on top of the world and very depressed. There’s scenes of them demanding respect from the other and scenes of them desperate to give respect. We get a general idea of the characters at the start and we get more and more layers. Not everything shown with the characters is well done or makes sense, but the overall concept works well.

The ending is truly engaging with a slow sequence of Tess doing what she thinks is best for her and Sam. Every movement and action she does is a brushstroke on her canvas. The ending is a little misogynist, based on how her character is treated, but it’s not misogyny for the sake of it. Tess is living in the 40’s and what’s happening is what’s expected. Sam realizes that this turn is not best and wants Tess to be a person. This is summarized with a really good line from him at the end of the film.

Woman of the Year has a lot to say about its time, relationships, and how to operate as an opinionated, frustrated adult. While it’s not entirely politically correct, it uses that to create a more compelling narrative which just gives more to the characters and ultimately produces a satisfying ending. Even with two good actors, that complexity could be distilled and ruined, but with these two brilliant actors, we get a breezy classic ahead of its time.

Cold Turkey (1971) Review

No context

As a fan of Dick Van Dyke on a damn near religious level, I’m determined to see all the little nooks and crannies of his career. This little film popped out of the blue and it seemed worth a watch! The premise is very interesting; a town can win a lot of money if they don’t smoke for a whole month. The Tobacco companies which announced the contest and will cough up the dough, desperately don’t want anyone to win. Dyke plays Rev. Clayton Brooks, who loves his town and wants the community to work together not for his personal gain, but for everyone’s sake.

Dyke gives his character everything he needs. He’s a brilliant public speaker, it makes sense as he’s a reverend (giving him public speaking practice) and a nice, but complex, person. Most of the other actors are alright. There’s no bad performances, but plenty of ones that are forgettable and character-less. This movie doesn’t need to be full of big characters, but it would’ve been nice to have them. There’s plenty of good jokes in the film, but also plenty of weak ones. A common criticism garnered at the film is its slow pacing and filler. While that wasn’t a big problem for me, the filler is there and it really shouldn’t be, especially as there’s a lot of scenes that should’ve been in the film that weren’t.

There’s a lot of logic leaps in the film. There’s a character that desperately wants a cigarette and threatens to hurt people for one. How did that guy not fail in the first few days? If I wanted a cigarette that badly, I’d leave town for some. My biggest complaint about Cold Turkey is that there’s a lot of Chekhov’s guns setup that have no pay off. Characters have scenes which establish how they think or behave, but there’s nothing out the end of that. Rev. Brooks’ wife seems to be unhappy in her marriage. That seems like it should be a big element to the film, but there’s a lack of closure. There’s tons of loose plot threads hanging at the end.

When the climax started, there was a lot of funny moments and tension, but as it continued, the film dissolved into nonsense. The last scenes have a huge case of tonal whiplash and before there’s time to simmer on what’s happening, the film’s over. Ironically, the ending is payoff to no setup, the opposite of my big problem with the film.

OVERVIEW

This movie should’ve been longer to let the audience experience the dread and the minds of the characters. We do get that, but not enough. The film wants to move along to the end, hoping you’re filling in the gaps, but it’s hard to feel very much. This would have been less of a problem if the actors were better, but they mostly aren’t what they need to be. Overall, Cold Turkey isn’t too shabby. If you like satires that are a little corny; film’s designed to be filled with jokes (though not all are very good); or any of the prominent actors, especially Dick Van Dyke, there’s many worse ways to kill 101 minutes of your time.