Synopsis:
Vicki, trapped on the Dalek time machine, is horrified to see their android copy of the Doctor explain that it is to infiltrate and kill the TARDIS crew...
The Doctor completes the device he plans to use against the Daleks as the TARDIS materialises at its next destination. Emerging, he and his companions discover that it is a swampy, densely-jungled world - ideally suited for fighting Daleks.
They are attacked by giant mushroom-like plant creatures - carnivorous Fungoids. It is night-time, but they are surprised to see huge floodlights illuminate the area. They form a sort of corridor through the trees, and the Fungoids seem to shrink from the light. At one end of the corridor of lights they discover a cave, and decide to rest there.
The Dalek time machine arrives in the jungle. Once they have exited their ship, Vicki sneaks out after them. The killer robot has been sent on ahead to seek out the TARDIS crew.
Realising that the corridor of lights will draw the Daleks straight to their hiding place, the Doctor, Ian and Barbara search for its power cable in order to break it. As they achieve this, Vicki finds herself plunged into darkness, and she is attacked by a Fungoid. She screams and faints.
This is heard and recognised by the others, and Ian and the Doctor rush out of the cave to find her.
The robot takes this opportunity to infiltrate the group. It goes into the cave where Barbara is waiting, and informs her that Ian has been killed by a Fungoid. It then lures her outside to go to him.
The Doctor and Ian find Vicki and bring her to the cave. She wakes up and tells them of the robot duplicate, and they realise that Barbara would not have left the cave unless it was at the urging of one of them.
In the jungle, the robot attacks Barbara but she manages to run off. The others arrive and in the confusion no-one knows which Doctor is the real one and which is his deadly double. The robot gives itself away by calling Vicki "Susan" - suggesting out of date information has been fed into it. The Doctor fights his duplicate and defeats it.
They return to the cave, and as they doze they fail to notice a camera descend from the roof to scan them.
In the morning they see that a massive metal city, built on columns, has been towering over them the whole time they have been here. They then spot the Daleks closing in on them.
The Doctor attempts to fool them by pretending to be the robot, but the Daleks see through this immediately. Trapped in the cave, the Doctor and his companions prepare to fight.
Suddenly a huge panel opens in the rockface. Beyond is an elevator containing a large spherical robotic creature. It instructs them to enter...
Next episode: The Planet of Decision
Written by: Terry Nation
Recorded: Friday 28th May 1965 - Riverside Studio 1
First broadcast: 5:40pm, Saturday 19th June 1965
Ratings: 9 million / AI 56
Designers: Raymond P Cusick & John Wood
Director: Richard Martin
Additional cast: Murphy Grumbar (Mechonoid), David Graham (Mechonoid voice), Jack Pitt, John Scott Martin, Ken Tyllsen (Fungoids).
This marks the first occasion in which the Doctor is referred to directly as "Doctor Who" - but fortunately only in the episode title. Dialogue in the original draft had included the Doctor claim: "There's not enough room in the Universe for two Dr Who's", and "... should make an interesting item for my memoirs - the death of Dr Who".
The Daleks have plenty of opportunity to name their greatest enemy, yet fail to do so.
The robot gives itself away by calling his younger female companion "Susan". Unless there have been a series of unseen adventures with the Daleks, this means that they have deemed the Doctor their ultimate foe purely on the basis of his initial visit to Skaro, and later interference in their 22nd Century invasion of Earth.
In the case of The Dalek Invasion of Earth, there is no evidence on screen that they recognise the Doctor from Skaro, and on watching it again there seems very little sign that they are even remotely aware of his involvement in events in London and Bedfordshire post 2164. They have him captive on their saucer, but see him only as a possible human threat that needs to be "robotised", and they don't actually clap eye-stalks on him after he gets to their mining operations.
We therefore have to wonder how, and when, the Doctor came to earn this reputation with the Daleks. They even know that he has a machine which can travel through time, and that it is bigger on the inside.
His defeat of their Time Destructor "masterplan" might seem a much more likely impetus to have them construct a time machine to pursue and exterminate him, and that this story comes after The Daleks' Masterplan - but then why would they programme their robot to have Susan amongst his companions?
The planet Mechanus was originally going to be called "Vapuron, the planet of mists" in Nation's original draft.
His new robotic race, which he hoped would prove to be as successful as the Daleks, were the Mechonoids. At first called a "Mechon", the name was changed as it sounded too much like "Mekon" - Dan Dare's regular villain from The Eagle paper. At one point a Dalek will still refer to the robots as "Mechons".
The robots are called "Mechonoids" throughout the script, though their first on screen credit mistakenly calls it a "Mechanoid".
It was originally intended to be a tall, bollard-shaped machine - slightly bulbous in the upper half - with the operator standing upright inside. It would be covered in flashing disc shapes.
Ray Cusick opted to make it spherical and covered in triangular panels, based on the geodesic designs of architect Richard Buckminster Fuller.
Three Mechonoids were built in total, and they were big enough to take a second operator from the design department to work the VFX at Ealing.
Whilst one of the props would be seen in the TV studio, it was planned that the later battle involving all three would be filmed at Ealing, so it was okay to give it a flame-thrower as a weapon. It would never be operated at Riverside.
The inspiration for the city was the work of another architect - Frank Lloyd Wright.
The robot Doctor is seen properly this week - perhaps seen a little too well. Wherever possible, William Hartnell is used to portray both the Doctor and his deadly double. Where actor Edmund Warwick does have to be used more prominently, it is very clear that he doesn't look very much like Hartnell at all.
Warwick has thinner, sharper features.
Hartnell took time off rehearsals for this episode to pre-record some dialogue for his robot double.
Knowing that the duel would be exhausting for her star, Verity Lambert arranged for the sequence to be recorded during the afternoon camera rehearsal period, so Hartnell would have time to recover.
Hartnell was filmed by two cameras simultaneously, one with him facing left (as the Doctor) and the other facing right (as the robot), with a third camera catching the companions' reactions.
Whilst Hartnell played the robot in the cave scene with Barbara, Warwick played the real Doctor briefly.
Relying on the Doctor to say the right thing is a mighty risky way of deciding which is the real one and which the robot. The real Doctor often makes verbal slip-ups - like never getting Ian's surname correct - so it is a wonder that the companions accept his calling of Vicki "Susan" as a sign of him being an imposter. Earlier in this season, he was calling out for Susan in the TARDIS, having forgotten that she had just left.
As previously mentioned, the Fungoids were originally going to feature in the Aridius section of the story. Nation described them as egg-shaped, black in colour and having a texture "like tripe". The costume designer simplified this to giant toadstool shapes made of rubber.
Terry Nation loved the word "fungoids" - a name conjured by Ian, and not necessarily their true nomenclature - and he used it on other occasions, such as in The Planet of the Daleks.
As jungles go, this is one of the weakest we have ever seen in the series, as it lacks any three-dimensional elements. The supposedly swampy ground is clearly the flat studio floor, painted with some odd lines, whilst the trees and plants are simply printed on hanging gauzes.
The designer of the jungle was John Wood.
The cinema Daleks are in evidence once again, static and confined to the background, but at one point we clearly see Camera 5 intruding into shot on the right of the screen.
- The ratings drop by another half million, but the appreciation figure rises by two points.
- On the Monday of rehearsals (24th May), Hartnell was formally issued his contract for a third season of Doctor Who.
- One line of dialogue from Warwick is actually spoken in his own voice, instead of miming to Hartnell.
- The trio of Fungoid actors were nicknamed Fungoid Fred, Toadstool Taffy and Mushroom Malone.
- There was another overrun in studio - the fourth consecutive one - and this time it was a whole 27 minutes.
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