Sunday 5 April 2020

What's Wrong With... Mission to the Unknown


Not a lot to say about this story, as it consists of only a single episode. Technically, it is more of a prequel to the forthcoming 12 part epic The Daleks' Master Plan.
Viewers at the time wouldn't have known this, of course, and must have been perplexed as the end credits rolled without the TARDIS, the Doctor, Steven and Vicki having appeared. They would also have seen the ostensible hero of the episode, Marc Cory, gunned down by the Daleks - his mission incomplete.
It might only be one episode, but there are a few problems with it.
The Daleks are convening a meeting of their allies to discuss progress with some unspecified attack. This would naturally involve a great deal of security, and they've deliberately chosen a planet with no intelligent lifeforms present. And yet Cory's spaceship is able to make a landing not far from their HQ. It then takes the Daleks a while to find it.
We hear that Kembel is one of the most dangerous planets in the universe, but the only dangerous thing we see are the Varga Plants - which have been imported from Skaro and aren't native to Kembel at all.
There's confusion in the script about the definition of a galaxy, and it is also suggested that the Daleks come from the Solar System. The Supreme Dalek talks of allies coming together from 7 of the Outer Galaxies, yet according to the photographs we only see 6.
The last spaceship to arrive is said to come from the planet Gearon, yet the last delegate to turn up on screen is Malpha (one of the only delegates who we can positively identify), and we'll find out later that another of the delegates who has already been on screen was Gearon - meaning he arrived before his spaceship.
There's confusion as well about the name of the organisation Cory works for. One minute it's the Space Security Service, then it's the Special Security Service.
Lastly, you's think a story with just one episode would have a fairly straightforward title - the one seen on screen. Not so. Some fans insist of calling it "Dalek Cutaway" whilst some production paperwork referred to is as "The Beasts from UGH" (United Galactic Headquarters). In production terms, it wasn't made by the team who made the subsequent Master Plan (which would have prevented some of the inconsistencies between the two). Mission to the Unknown was actually produced as the fifth episode of the Galaxy Four block.

No comments:

Post a Comment