What's Wrong With... The Dalek Invasion of Earth

London, some time after 2164, looks exactly like the London of 1964. Even the fashions are the same, despite the passage of two centuries. Battersea Power Station has been given an upgrade with a nuclear reactor attached alongside, even though the real power station is currently being turned into luxury flats. One of the problems of trying to depict the future. In 1964, the future looked like it would involve bases on the moon, or even further afield, hover cars, jet packs etc. (Many Doctor Who stories suffer from this failure to get the future quite right - e.g. The Enemy of the World being set in 2017.
We do hear mention of moving pavements and astronaut fairs, but there is no sign of any of this in the street scenes we see on screen.
The Doctor will claim in a later story that the Daleks invaded in 2157. If that's the case, why would people be printing 2164 calendars?
London is supposed to be pretty much deserted, with the resistance in hiding and only Daleks and Robomen patrolling the streets in broad daylight - yet we see a vehicle passing by St Martin in the Fields church (by Trafalgar Square), and there are people strolling in the distance by the Royal Albert Hall.
Just what was that Dalek doing in the middle of the Thames? Do the Daleks regularly patrol the river bottom?
The Doctor claims that this is the middle history of the Daleks, and that their encounter with them on Skaro is millions of years in the future. But those Daleks were clearly the original ones, survivors of the war with the Thals and technologically stunted - not even able to move outside their city. Common sense should have told him that these must be more advanced Daleks - so ones from the future in relation to the events on Skaro.
People familiar with London geography would have winced at seeing dock areas of east London presented as being in the west of the city, where the TARDIS has landed. It should be in Pimlico to get the view of Battersea Power Station, but the first episode is called World's End (an area of Chelsea).
Everyone seems to take a long time to spot the massive poster forbidding the dumping of bodies in the river. The Doctor comes up with a great understatement about the poster - claiming that dumping bodies is "near murder".
Why do the Daleks set elaborate tests for people if they are going to turn them into mindless Roboman drones? If it is to weed out the smart ones who might pose a threat to them then why robotise Craddock, who's a bit thick?
We all know about the Dalek Saucer Commander, with its distinctive half-black, half-silver colour scheme in the second episode. This was basically made up by fans to explain why the Dalek Supreme only had a partial paint job, and why it is fully black in all the subsequent episodes, and we never see the Saucer Commander again.
We hear that the Daleks have started to fire bomb London, yet see no sign of this having taken place. Why plant the bombs manually, rather than simply drop them from their saucers.
David's strategy for disarming a bomb capable of destroying a quarter of the city - pour acid on it then hit it with a crowbar.
The alligator in the sewers is clearly a baby one.
If the Daleks really did invade in 2157, then where did Barbara and Jenny manage to get enough petrol to get them from London to Bedfordshire?
The Daleks choose Bedfordshire to dig their mine. That's one of the most geologically stable parts of the United Kingdom. Lots of other parts of Britain would have been better for drilling.
The biggest problem with this story is the Dalek plan. Why are they wanting to pilot the Earth out of its orbit in the first place? What do they actually want to do with it once its movable? It would take thousands of years just to get to the next galaxy. Surely there are a lot more planets between Skaro and Earth that could have suited their purpose.
The Doctor also seems to think that Earth is the only planet in the universe to have a magnetic core.
The Doctor states that moving the Earth out of its orbit will disrupt the entire constellation. A constellation is just a pattern of totally unconnected stars seen from a certain position.
The Slyther changes appearance between episodes, sprouting a number of new tentacles.
The Dalek Supreme decides to announce their plan over the tannoy - thus enabling Ian to sabotage their bomb. (Later the Daleks will broadcast their Master Plan over a tannoy as well, so this is something they do a lot).
Despite all their technology, the Daleks don't have a mechanism for tracking the bomb's descent down the shaft, so don't notice that it is stuck only part way down, right under their base.
As the Daleks file out of their control room, one of them looks straight at the Doctor, yet seemingly fails to notice him.
At the conclusion, as the slave workers rebel, you can clearly see the set for the TARDIS landing site at the end of the corridor leading from the Dalek control room - even though one's in London and the other's in Bedfordshire. (That dumping bodies poster is visible).
No fluffs this episode - just some awful dialogue, such as the Doctor's threat to give Susan "a jolly good smacked bottom", plus his plan to "pit our wits against them and defeat them".
As far as the production is concerned, there was one thing which went seriously wrong. Hartnell damaged his back when Richard McNeff, playing the rebel Baker, lost his footing coming down the ramp from the Dalek saucer whilst half carrying him - causing Hartnell to collide with a camera mount. The ramp, as can be seen on screen, was quite flimsy and bounced (wobbly bridge syndrome), causing the accident. Hartnell was able to complete that evening's recording but then had to take the following week off to recuperate - which is why the Doctor suddenly faints, with his back to camera, at the beginning of the the fourth episode, but is up and about again at the start of the fifth.