What's Wrong With... The Daleks

In the best traditions of the Classic Era of the programme - especially during this first season - we start with a reprise of the cliffhanger from last week's episode. You'll remember that the TARDIS had just fled prehistoric Earth (probably) and arrived in a misty forest of strange looking trees. The Doctor asked Susan to check the radiation meter on the console, and it read normal. After she walked away, the dial then went up into the danger zone.
Presumably it is still flashing away throughout the first episode of this new story - when they gather back in the console room after freshening up, and again when they come back from their walk through the forest, and even when they are all standing around the console preparing for the Doctor to take them away from here. And yet no-one seems to notice it flashing away. It's not that you have to turn it off and on - Susan simply checks it as though it reads automatically, so it should be indicating "Danger" the whole time.
It should be noted that the biggest thing that went wrong with this opening installment was the entire episode. There was audio feedback from the production gallery on the soundtrack, making it unbroadcastable, and so the whole thing had to be remounted a couple of week's later.
There was one advantage to this, however. Designer Ray Cusick had been unhappy with the model of the Dalek city which Shawcraft had supplied. He later claimed that they were good prop makers, but not good designers. He had sketched out his idea for the city, and they had taken his scribble a little too literally. The remount allowed him to get them to redo the model.

How it might have looked...

How it did look...

When the TARDIS crew set out on their initial exploration of the forest, they come upon the first ever alien creature to be seen in the show - a Magnedon. William Hartnell struggles a little with his dialogue as he discusses it with his companions - describing it as "seti-solidified", and he forgets to add the "inner" part about its magnetic core - correcting himself by adding it afterwards.
In the forest a wind machine is used to rustle Ian's hair, drawing his attention to the fact that the branches aren't moving. However, the scenic backdrop is also seen to move in the breeze.
Back in the TARDIS, no-one seems to notice the Doctor bending down to sabotage the mercury fluid link under the console, even though they are all standing around it. No-one has noticed that he has disappeared out of sight seconds before the fault occurred - or put 2 + 2 together to work out what he has just done.
Once they get to the mysterious city, the equipment in the laboratory clearly isn't designed for a race who have sink plungers as their only means of manipulating things. None of it matches the other machines we later see, which have large round dials.
Once everyone is incarcerated in the cells, we get one of Hartnell's most famous fluffs - when he talks of "anti-radiation gloves" instead of "anti-radiation drugs". I suppose we could allow him this, as the Doctor is delirious and suffering from radiation poisoning at the time.
There is no way that the message Susan writes for the Thals is anything like what the Dalek dictated to her. Her signature takes up half the page for a start. Later on, when the Thal leader Temmosus reads it it will have changed anyway.
One Thal says they left their plateau a year ago, whilst another says it has been four years since they set off.
The TARDIS crew seem not to have noticed that they were being spied upon in the cell until the Daleks mentioned knowing about the Thals - which they could only have overheard. However, we know that the Dalek security cameras move around (as seen in the first episode), so it seems odd that no-one in a bare cell noticed the camera-shaped gizmo moving about as they walked around and realised that it was a camera.
One of those things which don't make sense only in hindsight - the Dalek mutant removed from its casing has a man-sized hand, with fingers. No other Dalek seen later in the series has an appendage like this.
Ian seems to know that the Daleks are lead by a council, despite this never having been mentioned when either the Doctor or Susan was with them.
The dome of the casing which Ian was hiding in has clearly been pre-cut prior to its destruction.
You can tell that Ian Chesterton was very well brought up. He politely waits until Temmosus has finished his speech before jumping out and warning him he has walked into a trap - which allows the Daleks time to prepare to exterminate him. And none of the Thals seem to notice the sinister metal machines which have emerged from the shadows to surround their leader. He beckons them forward when the Daleks have moved to a few feet from him.
I am not going to raise the issue of the cardboard cut-out Daleks which are used to bulk out the numbers in the control room scenes, as most critiques of this story are wont to do. Naturally, we all watch these episodes on DVD on HD TVs, the stories all digitally remastered. We need to remember the context of viewing this story as it went out in the winter of 1963 / 64. Audiences would have been watching this on 405 line televisions, with relatively small screens. The cut-outs simply wouldn't have been all that noticeable.
Whether or not the audience might also have seen the rubber ring used to inflate the tentacled swamp monster is another matter.
The sequence where the Doctor and Susan carry out a bit of sabotage on a piece of Dalek equipment sees the flash going off too soon and not matching with the sound effect.
Another miscued sound effect is the Dalek scanner in their control room which relays pictures of the Thal camp. The images appear before the sound effect of their being shown.
How on Skaro does Ganatus know that Earth has a "ladies first" custom?
In the cavern trek scenes, the rock Barbara uses to secure the rope for Ganatus is either a very light volcanic type of stone, or it's made of polystyrene. We suspect the latter, as it is the same stuff which Ian grabs onto when he's almost dragged into a chasm. You can see the white core of the material when he breaks a bit off with his fingers.
The climax of the story involves a countdown, as the Daleks prepare to release more radiation into the atmosphere of Skaro. This countdown reaches 40, then we cut to a scene of the Thals, with Ian and Barbara, trying to get through the closing section doors. This takes the better part of a minute, yet when we return to the control room the countdown has only just moved on to 39. The countdown stops at 4 when the Thals break in to the control room and there is a lengthy battle sequence, yet the radiation doesn't get released whilst they are fighting. This can only be explained by the countdown leading to a manual release of the radiation - so the Dalek in charge fails to proceed because his boss has stopped counting.
The Daleks are defeated by their power draining away, and yet the lights stay on and Susan seems to think that their food - produced by artificial sunlight - will still be available to the Thals. And just what sort of food is it that the Daleks eat anyway?
Last but not least, the Doctor seems to think that birds will re-evolve on the planet in one or two generations. Maybe the Thals have told him that there are birds elsewhere on Skaro - just not here - and he hopes they will migrate once the Thals start to cultivate the land.
The next story is set up when we see the TARDIS console explode and the ship is plunged into darkness. It's a much smaller console room than the one we saw in the last story, and in the first episode of this one. It'll be huge again when next we see it - but that's for another time...