The Nightmare Begins - a Review

The Nightmare Begins has the task of setting up a  a 12 part epic, though it has been helped on its way by the prequel episode Mission to the Unknown. That laid the groundwork as to the Dalek plan to invade the Solar System, aided and abetted by an alliance of beings from the Outer Galaxies. (They go by various names, but we'll go with Planetarians).

 

This episode follows on 6 months or so later, bringing the Doctor into events and introducing us to the agent who came looking for Marc Cory - killed in the stand-alone instalment. Bret Vyon is played by Nicholas Courtney, the future Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, and so this marks his very first appearance in the series.

We also get to spend some time with short-lived companion Katarina, who only joined the series in the (now lost) previous episode. There's another direct link to that episode as Steven has contracted blood poisoning from a sword wound inflicted during the fall of Troy, and he's seriously injured.

We're back on the densely jungled planet of Kembel, where the Daleks have assembled their invasion force and where their alliance meets.

Having sat out Mission to the Unknown, the Doctor is unaware of what is going on here, and is simply looking for medical help for his companion. We know far more about this place than he does.

The Dalek Master Plan is shown to have expanded to include an enemy working within the Solar System itself - its Guardian, Mavic Chen. 

His appearance is certainly one of the things I was most looking forward to seeing when it was announced that this was one of the two episodes recently recovered from a private collection by Film is Fabulous. Kevin Stoney is superb, and he is responsible for two of the greatest villains in the history of Doctor Who - Chen and Tobias Vaughn.

Despite the absence of telesnaps, we did know a little about what this episode looked like. Three clips survived - the TARDIS materialisation, the landing of the Spar 7-40 at the space-port, and the longer sequence showing the ambush and death of Bret's colleague Kert Gantry. Also, the jungle and some sets for the Dalek city are seen throughout the surviving second episode.

What we have been missing are the TARDIS interior sequences, and the Communications Centre scenes on Earth.

We can now see Chen's introduction, via a couple of incidental characters - Lizan and Roald - watching a news broadcast featuring him. The bald-headed Technix, who featured prominently in publicity images back in 1966, have only been seen very briefly (crewing the Spar).

They're one of the more obscure characters in the series thanks to all those photos - but a lack of actual footage. And no-one talks about them in dialogue. Is it simply policy that these workers have to shave their heads, like part of a uniform, or are they - as I suspect - some sort of genetically engineered drone workers, or clones. (Spin-off literature goes with them being clones in one place, and cyborgs in another). Sadly we still don't know, but at least we now get to see them.

One thing which strikes you even more is how the Earth of the year 4000 resembles a fascist technocracy. We had already seen the literal uniformity of its people - everyone seems to wear tabards - and the jackbooted security forces which police it, but this episode certainly reinforces the image.

Unfortunately, we don't get to see any more of the Planetarians here - they aren't introduced until The Day of Armageddon.

The Daleks themselves don't show up until quite late on in the episode - the ambush on Gantry - and are merely shown waiting to welcome Chen later on. (One thing I didn't know was that the Dalek Supreme doesn't feature in this instalment). 

The episode concentrates instead on Bret and the TARDIS crew.

Despite playing another character of military bearing, Bret is a very different character to the Brigadier, which demonstrates just how good an actor Courtney was.

Things we wouldn't have known about without the visuals include Bret's communicator resembling the ones later used by the Cybermen.

Whilst he and Kert mention Varga Plants, they don't actually feature in the action - but we see a couple of them lurking in the jungle. 

I certainly had no idea that Steven spent the entire episode shirtless and in modern trousers. I had expected him to still be wearing his ancient Greek gear.

One rather shocking image is a lingering shot of the dead Kert's face, eyes wide open and mouth agape.

Something else I wasn't aware of from the soundtrack was the way Roald mouthed the words of Chen's speech, clearly having heard it all before. 

It's these little details which we lose out on by only having the audio.

As well as being a very good episode for Courtney, William Hartnell is at the top of his game here, even though he spends most of the episode talking to himself.

I think you can also see, very clearly, why new companion Katarina simply wasn't sustainable.