Season Two@60- The Dalek Invasion of Earth

 

Its sixty years since the second season of Doctor Who was first broadcast so I thought I’d take a look at selected stories courtesy of the Collection box set, recently re-issued in standard packaging. To begin with, a story that brings back the Daleks at the height of Dalekmania and waves goodbye to a companion for the first time ever…

I originally knew of this story when it was called `World’s End` back in the days when the `official` titles of many First Doctor stories were actually those of the opening episode. Certainly most viewers in 1964 would not know the overall name with which we are now familiar so would have no idea till the end of part one that the Daleks were returning (unless the excitable press gave it away- these days there would be location shots on TikTok) and the suspense is well built. What I’ve noticed about these Sixties stories is how grounded they are from the travellers' perspective.  So, each predicament or puzzle is debated initially in the context of something every day- it could be this, it could be that- until those options are discounted slowly to unpeel the real problem.  The modern series rarely does that preferring to leap to the Doctor explaining something that he already knows.

The opening scene in which we pan from a disturbing sign declaring `it is forbidden to dump bodies in the river` to a semi aware Roboman about to walk into the Thames is about as stark a Doctor Who open as any era offered. It’s a hard-edged story; as Terry Nation would often return to in his sci fi work, life was tough as a rebel and there is no sugar coating around it. Little attempt is made to soften the situation by way of character, even Jenny and David are seemingly numbed to their predicament and put the needs of the rebellion over any personal thoughts. The rest of the episode mostly concerns our four travellers working out where they are so the Doctor and Ian explore while Barbara looks after the injured Susan whose sprained ankle is such a significant plot driver that it’s sudden healing in episode three, only a few fictional hours later, is noticeable. These scenes are perfectly rendered by director Richard Martin and designer Spencer Chapman.

This is definitely a production that builds up quite an atmosphere using some small yet well-furnished sets plus location footage that was rare in those days. If the method by which they become trapped- Susan’s climbing up a wall bringing down part of a bridge- is slightly contrived it means they are stuck in this dangerous future world. Few TV dramas of the time could build such convincingly crumbling buildings that are robust enough to allow the actors to clamber around. The focus is on the grimness of what they realise is a future London. There’s some debate over when this story is set, the Doctor does find a calendar dated 2164 but says it’s been there a while whereas the film version is specifically dated 2150. The appeal of setting it two hundred years from transmission is obvious, though slightly undercut by the fact that the London we see is unchanged architecturally from the one viewers would know. I’m sure some watching would be asking- how come nothing new has been built in two hundred years?

This is Susan’s swansong and though she does receive more attention here remains in the injured panicky mode which by all accounts Carole Anne Ford was tired of conveying, even if she does a convincingly good ankle twist (this is harder than a lot of actors think it is). There is some foreshadowing dialogue about staying together and Susan telling David she feels she’s never truly belonged anywhere. William Hartnell seems especially eccentric here, umming all over the place, my boy, but we catch something of the Doctor that became established in his era; that of the defiance in the face of the antagonist. Captured by the Daleks, he stands up to them verbally even though they could kill him here and there. Ian and Barbara are the regulars who have best developed though. Both are now far more resourceful than their early, timid adventuring with Ian becoming something of the action hero. William Russell’s sturdy performance is a perfect foil for Jacqueline Hill’s Barbara who manages to retain her femininity despite adapting quite easily to undercover rebellion. I did smile when it’s her plan the rebels use after presumably months of debate yet it’s an idea that seems obvious.

The writer also loved cliffhangers even if their logic wasn't always solid. Even something as improbable as Ian managing to get inside the missile due to explode at the Earth’s core and then disengage it and escape is so absurd it actually works. Adventure always demands unlikely feats and I’m not sure why Doctor Who fans don’t embrace this sort of thing with more fondness. I wonder sometimes if  James Bond influences the writer’s treatment of Ian who remains unflappably besuited for the most perilous endeavours. Barbara’s bravery – when you consider how the character started- is remarkable too. It’s easy to imagine a Sixties spin off with these two back on present day Earth solving mysteries.

Their actions make the victory a team effort; Terry Nation seemed to prefer that to the idea of one heroic character doing the lot and it works well here.  The writer would use this template of a small band of rebels battling an overwhelming authority again in Blake’s Seven and several subsequent Doctor Who stories he wrote while the remaining survivors of a post pandemic humanity roaming familiar yet deserted streets was very much the backdrop of Survivors. The deserted streets and abandoned locations foreshadow that later series.

The rebels themselves in the first half of the story are given just enough material to allow us to differentiate between them though their tendency to die heroically means there is jeopardy to their actions that feeds into the tension of the episodes. Part three is especially good as we accompany Barbara, Jenny and Dortmun through London’s deserted landmarks at Westminster, the camera rolling alongside them with a stealth hardly ever seen in this era of the programme. We see Daleks trundling around familiar sights such as Trafalgar Square and the Royal Albert Hall. This freshness makes the programme feel more alive blowing away the cobwebs of stodgy dialogue scenes. Even the studio material often has a briskness we would not associate with the show up to this point.

A lot of this is presumably down to director Richard Martin’s familiarity with the pros and cons of working with Dalek props as he had helmed three episodes of their debut story a year earlier and pushed for a less conventional approach to these unique creatures. He was emboldened enough to accept the challenge of `The Web Planet` soon after this story. His work on the series is ambitious and stands out from the crowd. 

Taking the series outside clearly has advantages and the production manages to film without a sight of the public, though there is one shot where you can see traffic in the distance something which only shows up because of the clarity of modern tv pictures. We also have the iconic shots of Daleks in this most English of places and it seem churlish to note how well swept the streets are considering we’d been told earlier it’s a decade since the Dalek plague was launched.

These are still not quite the finished Daleks we know. For one thing they sometimes say “kill` rather than “exterminate” and they still have the tendency to talk in human vernacular amongst themselves. Their voices are higher pitched, nevertheless their appeal at the time is easy to relate to especially when they make great use of the large sets, gliding and sliding about with an ease that has never been better even in the modern versions. They still look so otherworldly, especially in monochrome.  The Robomen are creepy too and have a zombie like gait. When we later see a character we’d already met as a human now transformed it underlines the risks the rebels are taking.

Despite the sweep of the first half of the story there are still moments that are more in keeping with the slow but sure pace of other stories of this era notably a scene when the Doctor and Ian are locked in a cell with some sort of crystal machine. A clear time waster, this scene’s purpose is no more than confirming the Dalek’s theory that because the Doctor spoke out, he is somewhat more intelligent than everyone else. It’s amusing that they had this test ready just in case. Dortmun’s bombs on the other hand have been put together with no noticeable resources, no wonder they don’t work! Nation is clearly uninterested in this detail so we get scant background on this potentially interesting character until he makes one of those melodramatic self-sacrifices.

The second half of the story loses focus somewhat avoiding exploring the characters in favour of a series of new perils, a few of which seem unnecessary. There’s alligators lose in the sewers while around the mine, a creature called a Slyther lurks. People have been unkind about the Slyther (it’s a man in a sack etc) but in the murky monochrome I feel it works rather well. The alligator turns out to be stock footage but they might have got some of a more fearsome variety- the specimen used looks more like a large newt.

While both provide moments of danger it is at the expense of other aspects that require attention. For example the black marketeer Craddock is here and gone in a couple of scenes, the two women living in the cottage's appearance is also brief. These are potentially interesting characters who are taking advantage of the situation and can offer a different perspective to the rebels.. In the case of the latter they are also the only characters to speak about the world of the twenty second century (mentioning things like the Astronaut Fair) though this is at odds with what we’ve seen in the location footage.  Most of all we seem to learn next to nothing about Tyler (an energetic Bernard Kay) or Jenny despite their prominent part in the narrative. It feels as if Terry Nation won’t let us go more than a few minutes without some new danger. Luckily he does give the character Larry(Graham Rigby) some background in the search for his brother whose outcome is quite tragic and well handled.

The story becomes more ambitious once we reach the mine in Bedfordshire with some dialogue inserted that asks the questions a viewer would- why are the Daleks using the time consuming human labour and – yes- wooden baskets to shift rocks when it would surely be in their power to drill using a weapon through the Earth’s crust? We don’t get an answer though. The larger unasked question is why would a species who already have space flight go to all this trouble to tunnel into a planet so they can enable it to fly? Someone earlier floats the idea that they are looking for something that can only be found on this planet and that seems a much better premise for their operations.

The story is best known these days for the first departure of a regular and this follows the series’ first kiss albeit one broken up by the arrival of the Doctor who sagely notes that “something is cooking.” The bond between Susan and David is given time to show and convinces making the last scene a warm, theatrical farewell. William Hartnell, who has to some extent given a blustery, uneven performance in this story, delivers the Doctor’s speech perfectly and Carole Ann Ford reciprocates with a wordless touching of the shape of the TARDIS after it has dematerialised before she takes David’s hand as she drops the TARDIS key.  It almost feels like the start of a dance. This scene was apparently penned by David Whitaker though the seeds of Susan’s impending exit have been scattered throughout the story.

This story definitely moves with a speed often missing from this era and combined with very well-choregraphed action sequences, strong performances and of course the Daleks scores highly enough to be one of the best first Doctor tales. We should remember that the flaws and faults we find now come from watching multiple times on TVs far more likely to show these things than the sets on which viewers watched this story just the once sixty years ago. What those viewers would take away are its bold images- the Daleks gliding around London, the lrge spaceship entrance,  the cliffhangers and settings, the van driving through Daleks, Susan’s farewell. `The Dalek Invasion of Earth` feels like an affirmation that Doctor Who was here to stay.