The Dalek Invasion of the Earth The Evil of the Daleks |
BBC Day of the Daleks |
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| Episodes | 4 |  |
| Story No# | 60 | |
| Production Code | KKK | |
| Season | 9 | |
| Dates | Jan. 1, 1972 - Jan. 22, 1971 |
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With Jon Pertwee, Katy Manning,
Nicolas Courtney, Richard Franklin, John Levene. Written by Louis Marks. Script-edited by Terrance Dicks. Directed by Paul Bernard. Produced by Barry Letts. |
| Synopsis: Soldiers travel back in time to prevent the Daleks from conquering 22nd century Earth. |
A Haiku by Finn Clark 26/9/20
Does the plot make sense?
Quite a strong Dalek story,
But why no ghost mood?
Gorgonzola 700 million, Daleks nil by Jason A. Miller 10/4/26
Watching Doctor Who in sequence is a nightly triumph in Seasons 7 and 8. Every story in Season 7 a classic, each one better than the last; Claws of Axos and Colony in Space are not the most beloved parts of Season 8, but there's really not an unwatchable story in the bunch. Considering how rough a stretch Doctor Who had between Wheel in Space and Space Pirates, this greatness is a joy to bear.
And then comes Season 9.
I've always had mixed feelings about Day of the Daleks, but, before reaching it in my rewatch, I hadn't seen it in about ten years, and couldn't remember precisely why.
Episode 1 is actually a fine script. A haunted-house mystery, with disappearing guerillas, time technology, weapons from the future and an assassination attempt on an English diplomat on the eve of a global peace conference. Pertwee-era Who is always best when there are political implications.
Helping out is Paul Bernard's direction --- he does lots of interesting match-cuts and dissolves and scene transitions --- and some really good UNIT-family character business. Nicholas Courtney gets an actor's dream scene in Episode Two, as he juggles two urgent phone calls at once, one from a Cabinet Minister and the other from a worried Captain Yates. There's some really funny byplay in Episode One between Yates and Benton over a tray of wine and cheese. And Jon Pertwee is at his stone-cold best (I say that in every story; his remarkable self-confidence and humor as the Doctor is the best thing that's happened to this series in years) in the "one-man food and wine society" sequence. The plot stops so that the Doctor can sample the gorgonzola; this character bit, like the cheese itself, is absolutely delicious.
Unfortunately, that's where the good bits end. Louis Marks just has no idea what to do with great companions. Barbara Wright stupidly not telling anybody that she's been poisoned by DN6 helps sink Planet of Giants. Sarah Jane Smith getting kidnapped like seven times in Masque of Mandragora. And in Episode One of Day of the Daleks, Jo Grant is literally frightened by a clock. She gets catapulted forward through time after not listening to every single person in the room who told her to drop the time machine and gets bamboozled by the quisling Controller of the 22nd Century. She spends most of the story sitting in her 22nd century cell. Katy Manning deserves far more.
And then there are the Daleks. This is not Louis Marks' fault; he didn't write a Dalek story, the Daleks were forced upon him. And nobody briefed Paul Bernard that the Daleks are important, because the Episode Two cliffhanger is the biggest missed opportunity in Doctor Who to date. A Dalek materializes; the Doctor comes face to face with his greatest enemy in five years. It's an underrunning episode so Bernard has an extra minute to play with. Surely, time to milk the reaction --- have the Dalek appear? Zoom in on the Doctor's face? Have the Dalek recognize its greatest enemy and start chanting about death to the Doctor? Cut back to Pertwee for a zoom-in and a concerned reaction shot?
Nah, says Paul Bernard. He rushes through, with no time to appreciate this long-awaited reunion between friend and foe. It takes a weak story indeed to mess up the Daleks, but Day of the Daleks pulls off the trick --- and that's not even counting the misfire Dalek voices (later replaced in the special edition).
The rest of the script has competent moments. I like the visual pun between the 22nd century rebel fugitives being called "guerillas", while the Ogrons are literal gorillas.
However, the actual guerillas are pretty dire. The DVD production notes tell us that Marks was inspired by the plucky Israeli soldiers who'd won the then-recent Six-Day War, but Anna Barry on the DVD audio commentary hints that she took her inspiration from the other side. Get your folk heroes straight. The guerillas risk everything to travel back in time, supposedly laser-focused on killing the one man who they believe to have started World War III. What's the first thing they do? Vaporize two innocent UNIT guards. Rob Shearman in Running Through Corridors makes the excellent point that one of these guards could have been Shura's grandfather, thus wiping Shura out of existence. The guerillas are motivated but unpleasant and incompetent (things get a little better when their leader, Monia, shows up in Episode Three), and Boaz's death scene in Ep Four is so badly directly that even on this, my Nth viewing, I still wasn't aware that he'd died in that scene until it was mentioned by other characters many scenes later.
The Daleks are a failure even beyond the one bad cliffhanger; I blame Bernard and Huw Weldon (the BBC exec who forced them into a pre-existing script), not so much Marks or script-editor Dicks. They get, really, only one proper scene with the Doctor, early in Episode Four. Their lone action scene is an assault on Auderly House --- only from one direction; bad tactics --- and are blown up once inside. That's it. And sound guy Brian Hodgson couldn't get their voices right. So they sound bad, act bad... they're surplus to requirements in what's now their weakest story to date, even worse than the sillier aspects of The Chase, or the interminably repetitive Maxtible House episodes of The Evil of the Daleks.
There's good stuff in Day of the Daleks. The early mystery about the time-traveling ghosts. The early chemistry between Pertwee and Manning (their Episode Two conversation trapped in the cellar is wonderful), the early UNIT Family material. Every scene Aubrey Woods is in, especially his defiant betrayal of his Dalek masters in his final scenes; this is an underrated guest turn. Later on, Doctor Who would insist on pure ham from its guest stars, from Graeme Crowden to Sacha Dhawan, but here there's still time for nuanced, poignant guest performances (c.f. Clive Morton later this season).
Unfortunately, the direction, which is good on setting up scene transitions, fails the Daleks and the mystery and what should have been the most important cliffhanger of the season. The writing fails the guerillas and Katy Manning. And Jon Pertwee's Doctor casually kills Ogrons with a laser gun, which is a new low for the character, a moment so bad that the Restoration Team erased it from the Special Edition. This is easily the weakest Pertwee serial out of his first ten and an inauspicious start to the season.