NB: This episode no longer exists in the archives, nor is there a full set of telesnaps. Representative images are therefore used to illustrate it.
Synopsis:
Chen forces Steven and Sara to enter the Dalek underground bunker at gunpoint...
They try to reason with the Guardian of the Solar System, attempting to convince him that the Daleks no longer regard him as an ally, but his mind has snapped. He actually believes that the Doctor is out to usurp his strong position with the Daleks.
He escorts them to the subterranean control room, where the Supreme informs him that their alliance is over. His mind refusing to accept the reality of the situation, Chen actually begins issuing orders to the Daleks. When they refuse to move, he fires upon the Supreme.
His weapon is useless against it, and it orders his extermination. Chen dashes from the room.
Forgotten in the confusion, Steven and Sara see the Doctor emerge from the shadows. He gives Steven the TARDIS key.
The Daleks catch up with Chen. He dies with a look of sheer disbelief on his face.
The Doctor activates the Time Destructor on low power, then urges his companions to return to the TARDIS. The Daleks cannot fire upon the him for fear of damaging their weapon.
He leaves the room, shielded by a Dalek, then uses his cloak to jam the door behind him.
The Destructor's power is increasing, and a powerful wind begins to blast through the jungles of Kembel. Steven has gone to the TARDIS, but Sara has held back, determined to stay and help despite the Doctor's warnings. The weapon is beginning to affect the environment, and they will not be immune.
The Daleks have unjammed the door and are now in pursuit.
Soon the jungles have withered away and only a blasted desert remains. The Doctor's strength is draining away, but for Sara the effects are terminal. She is rapidly ageing to death.
Steven spots them approaching the ship. He sees the pair collapse, and decides to risk going outside to help.
It is too late to save Sara, but the Doctor is still alive. Attempting to switch the Destructor off, he accidentally puts it into reverse. The Doctor's strength begins to return and Steven helps him into the TARDIS.
They observe the pursuing Daleks being overpowered by the Destructor, their casings disintegrating.
The core of the Time Destructor soon burns itself out, leaving the surroundings totally changed.
The Doctor and Steven emerge and see that all that remains of the Daleks are primitive embryos.
Back in the TARDIS, they reflect upon all the lives that have been lost in their efforts to thwart the Daleks' Master Plan - especially Sara, Bret and the tragic Katarina - before moving on to their next destination...
Next episode: War of God
Written by: Dennis Spooner
Recorded: Friday 14th January 1966 - Television Centre Studio TC3
First broadcast: 5:50pm, Saturday 29th January 1966
Ratings: 8.6 million / AI 57
Designer: Barry Newbery
Director: Douglas Camfield
Additional cast: Mary Ward (aged Sara)
Critique:
And so the Dalek epic finally reaches its conclusion. It had seen several fall by the wayside over its twelve weeks - both on screen and off.
Three companion figures had been killed - Katarina, Bret and Sara - whilst behind the scenes John Wiles and Donald Tosh had handed in their notices. Douglas Camfield promised himself that he would not be directing another Doctor Who story anytime soon, and Ray Cusick had also had enough. He wouldn't design for the show again, though his Dalek design continues to thrive into the 21st Century.
Little did he know it, but the seeds of William Hartnell's departure had also been sown during these three eventful months.
Also taking a break was Terry Nation, who would not write again for the series again until 1973.
In the meantime he pursued his attempts to have the Daleks launched in their own series, in an hour-long filmed format similar to the work he was doing with ITC and its ilk. A pilot was prepared, known as "The Destroyers", which would have continued the Space Security Service's efforts to combat the Dalek threat. A number of stories appeared in the Dalek books of the period. Despite having killed her off, these featured Sara Kingdom along with her brother and a humanoid android named Mark Seven.
So confident was he that Nation even bought the Dalek props from the Curse of the Daleks stage play, which had run for four weeks over the Christmas period. This was written by David Whitaker, who would pen the next two Dalek TV stories, and was a sequel of sorts to the very first Dalek story, as well as containing plot elements he would later reuse in The Power of the Daleks.
Above, a colourised image, by Clayton Hickman, from the stage play.
Right from the initial story outline, it was always envisaged that the Daleks would finally be defeated when their Time Destructor device was turned against them.
Story editor Donald Tosh was working under the assumption that this would be the last ever Dalek story, and they would be defeated forever.
The Doctor deduced that the Daleks would not open fire in their control room when he saw that they did not kill Chen there - working out that they didn't want to damage their weapon.
He argued with Steven that he alone could withstand the effects of the Time Destructor, specifically pointing out that he was not human and that ageing a few hundred years would be of little matter to him.
When put into reverse, the device caused time to roll back hundreds, rather than millions of years.
The working title of the episode in these earlier stages was "A Switch In Time".
Filming on this episode began on Thursday 30th September 1965. Scenes completed that day included the Doctor carrying the Time Destructor through the jungle with Sara, and shots of Jean Marsh in aged make-up. The Destructor prop was comprised mainly of Woolworths plastic tumblers, made to be lightweight so that Hartnell could carry it comfortably.
Filming continued the following week, with Mary Ward joining the cast to play the elderly version of Sara. Camfield claimed that he was inspired by H Rider Haggard's She for these scenes. (Hammer had released a version of this, with movie Dr Who Peter Cushing, in April 1965).
Further finale sequences were filmed the next day, involving Hartnell and Ward in special make-up. Two Dalek props were rigged to explode and collapse in on themselves, and a starfish-like embryo was manipulated from beneath by a design assistant (see below).
For her death, an image of Ward prone on the ground was mixed to a skeleton dressed in Sara's SSS uniform, which in turn mixed to a powdered outline which blew away in the wind.
Unhappy with the amount of material he had to work with, Camfield returned to Ealing on 27th December to record additional shots. Hartnell was initially booked for this day but wasn't required in the end. The day concentrated on the Daleks - four of which were used.
Owing to the changes in the previous week's script to remove Hartnell from the episode, further changes were necessary to the opening sections of this instalment, now that the Doctor was no longer present until later in the action.
Chen would have taunted the Doctor with Sara's loyalty to him and of how she had been proud to be chosen as the agent to kill him. On being escorted into the control room, the Doctor had pretended not to notice the Time Destructor, but had slowly moved over to it as the Daleks were distracted by Chen's increasingly crazed behaviour.
The opening credits were shown over a shot of the Daleks in their control room.
In studio, Kembel was represented by two sets - one jungled and the other as it appeared after the Time Destructor had done its work.
The last of the six planned recording breaks was to move the TARDIS prop between these sets.
Others were to move the Daleks, as with recent weeks, but one saw some set rearrangement, and another was used to add aged make-up to Marsh. The majority of the final scenes had been filmed at Ealing.
The destruction of the Daleks was seen on the TARDIS scanner, whilst the closing credits were shown over the dematerialising TARDIS.
The roller-caption jammed - causing a three minute overrun on the night.
The Daleks' Master Plan was offered to only one other territory - Australia. This was minus the seventh instalment, The Feast of Steven. A comprehensive list was prepared of material that would need to be cut in order for it to be passed by the Australian censors, who were notoriously strict. Scenes from almost every episode were included - to the point that it was realised that it would be impractical to proceed any further with the sale.
The videotapes of all episodes were junked between 1967 - 69.
A 16mm film copy of Devil's Planet still existed in October 1971, as a clip from it featured on Blue Peter.
That for The Traitors was loaned to Blue Peter in November 1973 for their Doctor Who 10th Anniversary feature. It was never returned to the BBC library, and its disappearance remains one of the series' great mysteries.
As previously mentioned, two episodes turned up at a Mormon church in South London in 1983, with a third being returned by a BBC engineer in 2004.
The story overall remains one of the most sought after missing adventures. I'm sure I'm not the only person who would dearly love to have seen the scenes of Chen's descent into madness - especially the look on his face when he finally realised that the Daleks had indeed turned against him.
From the audio, the finale certainly sounds exciting, overlaid with the Time Destructor's relentless clockwork-like sound effect and the roaring of the wind.
- The ratings take a tumble for the concluding instalment - falling by more than one million viewers. The audience never knew how long a storyline was going to last, and it may be that they simply got bored with this story - not realising that it would be the finale this week. The previous instalment had been low in incident, which may not have helped.
- Once again, though, it's a case of fewer people watching - but those who did liked what they saw. The appreciation figure jumps by 8 points, to the highest score for this serial.
- This is the second shortest episode of the story, at 23' 31" (the briefest instalment being The Nightmare Begins). Camfield explained that this was due to the final two scenes of Sara's demise being cut as too gruesome.
- Jean Marsh would return to the series on one further occasion - playing Morgaine in Battlefield. In this she featured opposite her one-time screen brother Nicholas Courtney, by then famous as the Brigadier.
- Kevin Stoney was ready to return to the series when Camfield came back during the Troughton era. He had one further magnificent villain to play in Tobias Vaughn, in the 8-part The Invasion. A final role would see him opposite the Cybermen once again, as Tyrum in Revenge of the Cybermen.
- Hartnell's absence from the previous episode was noted by the TV critics this week - many of whom were now expressing an increasing boredom with the Daleks. The writer for the Daily Worker thought that even the kids were getting fed up.
- The Supreme and one of its underlings appeared on Blue Peter on Thursday 3rd February, helping Valerie Singleton concoct a Dalek-themed tea party. This can be viewed on the DVD of The Dalek Invasion of Earth.
- On the same day Terrence Woodfield appeared in full costume and make-up as Celation on Junior Points of View, which featured viewer feedback on the serial. This was in response to one viewer asking for more information about "the polka-dot thing that keeps going "ssss" all the time".
- Woodfield read out the programme's address at the end of the episode, then - bizarrely - finished with: "Eee, I could do wi' a luverly plate o' whelks". Now that's a clip we'd all love to see recovered some day.
- Other viewers bemoaned the death of Sara, whom they felt had been the strongest character the programme had seen in a long time; comments about the Doctor's frequent "Hmmm"s; and a general wish that the Daleks might be rested for a while as they were everywhere these days.
- Below, a colourised behind-the-scenes shot of the climax. A design assistant, in newspaper hat, prepares to manipulate the Dalek embryo on the devastated Kembel set at Ealing:
- An image of Jean Marsh as Sara Kingdom was used to help illustrate the BBC's 1967 Annual Report:
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