Episode 72: The Executioners

Synopsis:

On Skaro, a Dalek reports that the time machine of their enemies has just left the planet Xeros. It is informed that they are to be pursued and exterminated...

In the TARDIS, Vicki is bored. Attempts to engage with the men simply annoys them as they don't wish to be disturbed. Ian is reading a book, and the Doctor is working on the machine which he took from the museum on Xeros. She goes to see Barbara who is making a new dress for her - and annoys her by accidentally spilling the contents of a tray over it. They hear a high pitched noise and rush to the room where the Doctor is working. He tells them all that the device is a Time-Space Visualiser. Vicki knew that they were working on such a machine when she left left Earth for Astra in 2493. 

Every event in the history of the universe still exists as light particles - and the TSV can home in on these and allow the user to see them. To demonstrate, and test the machine, Ian is asked to name a location and date.

He chooses Abraham Lincoln delivering the Gettysburgh Address, and they see this appear on the device's screen. Barbara's choice takes them to the court of Queen Elizabeth, and an audience between her, Sir Francis Bacon and the playwright William Shakespeare. Vicki picks a television performance by the Beatles. She is surprised to learn that they played classical music.

The TARDIS commences landing at their next destination and they go to the console room, unaware that the TSV is still switched on.

They emerge from the ship to find themselves in the middle of a desert landscape. Sand dunes stretch off as far as the eye can see, the horizon broken only by strange organic sculptures. They see two suns, moving rapidly across the sky and realise that days are only a few hours long here.

Ian and Vicki decide to go for a look around, and the Doctor gives him a device which will help guide them back to the ship - a "TARDIS Magnet". The Doctor and Barbara will remain where they are and settle down to sunbathe for an hour or so.

The explorers discover a metal ring sticking out of the sand atop one of the dunes. Vicki is worried about what it might do, but Ian pulls it free anyway. A large panel slides open. They descend into a tunnel, and are confronted by a huge tentacled creature lurking in the darkness.

Barbara hears a high-pitched noise coming from within the TARDIS and the Doctor realises that the TSV is still operating. He asks her to go in and turn it off. As she approaches the machine see sees Daleks appear on its screen and calls for the Doctor.

They see recent events on Skaro, as the Black Dalek Supreme sends a squad of Daleks to find and destroy the enemy time machine and its occupants, travelling in their own space-time machine.

They go outside to look for Ian and Vicki. The TSV can only show events from the past, so the Daleks are already on their way.

Night falls and a sandstorm strikes the area. It passes quickly, but they are shocked to find that it has completely changed the local landscape. They have no idea where the TARDIS lies - and the Doctor had given his locator device to Ian. They then see a buried Dalek pushing its way up out of the sand only a few feet away...

Next episode: The Death of Time

Data:

Written by: Terry Nation

Recorded: Friday 30th April 1965 - Riverside Studio 1

First broadcast: 5:40pm, Saturday 22nd May 1965

Ratings: 10 million / AI 57

Designers: Raymond P Cusick and John Wood

Director: Richard Martin

Additional cast: Robert Marsden (Abraham Lincoln), Vivienne Bennett (Queen Elizabeth), Hugh Walters (William Shakespeare), Roger Hammond (Sir Francis Bacon),  Peter Hawkins and David Graham (Dalek voices), Robert Jewell, John Scott Martin, Kevin Manser, Gerald Taylor (Daleks), Jack Pitt (Mire Beast).

Critique:

The story which was initially known simply as "Dalek Three" and then as "The Pursuers" was commissioned from Terry Nation whilst The Dalek Invasion of Earth was still in production. 

A decision had been made to standardise the episode pattern for each season at four instalments per story apart from Dalek stories, which would get six. (The Web Planet, however, was regarded as being a showpiece story and it was also granted the longer episode count). 

It was during the making of that story that its director, Richard Martin, was offered the third Dalek story, having just directed the second as well as part of the first. Despite the fiery relationship he had with Verity Lambert, Martin enjoyed working with her but was determined that this story would be his last. He later claimed that he felt emotionally blackmailed into accepting it by Lambert.

Having done "us going to them", and "them coming to us", Nation sought a different format for the new Dalek story, and looked to his earlier The Keys of Marinus for the structure. That had seen a quest set-up, with the TARDIS crew visiting a diverse range of settings. In place of the quest, Nation came up with the idea of a chase, which would give the story its overall title.

He came up with a selection of settings - some alien planet and some historical period. Once again the opening episode would mainly concentrate on the TARDIS crew exploring a new environment, with the Daleks held back for the first cliff-hanger. In the same way that World's End had closed with the surprising image of a Dalek rising from the Thames, Nation sought a similar image for The Executioners, and the desert setting necessitated what was seen on screen.

Not all the settings made it into the finished programme. For a long time some of the action was to take place in ancient Egypt, at the time of the building of the pyramids at Giza, but this was eventually held back for another time - eventually finding its way into The Daleks' Masterplan. Another planet - Stygian - had strange light which rendered its inhabitants invisible, and this was also kept back for the fourth Dalek story where it became Mira, home of the Visians.

This first episode once again followed the pattern of having only the regular cast present, with no other characters for them to interact with. 

There is an end of term feel to it, as we see what the Doctor and companions get up to when the TARDIS is between adventures. Ian is quite relaxed, reading a science fiction book (the cover for which was designed by Cusick). Barbara is in the bedroom area dress-making. Vicki is bored - she has always been seeking adventure since joining the TARDIS crew. The Doctor is working on something scientific.

For the Time-Space Visualiser scenes, Nation had some ideas. It was suggested that for the Abraham Lincoln speech a clip could be lifted of Raymond Massey in the 1940 movie Abe Lincoln in Illinois.

The Shakespeare sequence was originally somewhat different - with the Bard being seen to furtively buy Hamlet from Bacon and give it the more lurid title of "The Blooded Dagger". An earlier draft had Shakespeare with his wife Anne Hathaway.

One idea dropped was a speech by Winston Churchill.

Despite their global fame, obtaining the Beatles material was not straightforward. At first the idea had been for them to cameo made up as old men on 3-D colour television, celebrating the 50th anniversary of their first BBC TV appearance. This was vetoed by their manager Brian Epstein, who was fiercely protective of their image.

A clip from Top of the Pops was then considered - until the production team discovered that these weekly programmes were not retained by the BBC. Each episode was immediately taped over.

Eventually it was decided to use part of a forthcoming performance which was going to be filmed at Riverside on Saturday 10th April of the band performing Ticket to Ride. This led to a continuity issue as Ian appears to know the song, despite it only being released months after he and Barbara had left London.

Another problem is how Vicki can claim to be a fan, having visited their memorial theatre in Liverpool, when she seems to have never actually heard any of their music.

Lambert announced that the story would not have any location filming, but when Martin returned from his holiday following The Web Planet he decided that some scene-setting would be filmed at Camber Sands in East Sussex for the Aridius landscape.

Maureen O'Brien claimed that this was the only occasion when she ever got to film on location. However, this cannot be the case as neither she nor William Russell were present when this filming took place on Friday 9th April. This was the day The Dimensions of Time was in studio.

Doubles were employed for Ian and Vicki - David Newman and Barbara Joss. The latter had played the Optera Nemini in The Web Planet.

Another obvious continuity error occurs as we see Vicki with her hair in bunches in studio, but with her hair longer and untied on location.

Martin insisted on a lightweight Dalek prop being used for the cliff-hanger sequence - against the advice of the design team. Ray Cusick argued that once you bury an object in sand it is almost impossible to pull it out due to a suction effect, as the damp sand grips the object. Martin persevered and a local man was even paid to prepare a pit, but even a partially buried Dalek prop proved impossible to budge when towed by a truck.

A rethink was needed and Cusick came up with a model replacement shot.

If the cliff-hanger was designed to replicate the impact of the Dalek in the Thames, it was undermined by the addition of a silly voice - the Dalek huffing and puffing as it pushes itself up, for no reason whatsoever. 

Nation included a touch of humour in this story - which, despite him being best known as a comedy writer, failed to raise so much as a smile. Later, he would vigorously defend his creations from being ridiculed, but as of 1965 he was quite prepared to allow the Daleks to be made fun of. 

The main TARDIS set was kept to the bare minimum since it featured in only one brief scene. In fact, the console wasn't even present in the studio, to save space. When the Doctor opens the doors, Hartnell simply stands in front of the camera and does some business just below the lens - only pretending to be handling controls.

The Dalek time machine was referred to as a "Dardis" in the draft scripts. It was dressed by Cusick with props from their first two stories. The machine had a rear door so that the same three Daleks could pass through and come round again behind the camera to make it look like a bigger force.

The TSV was built by Shawcraft Models utilising a normal TV monitor. Despite originating on Xeros, it had the names of Solar System planets around its screen.

Owing to the diverse range of sets and props needed for this story, having learned their lesson on The Keys of Marinus, a second designer was allocated - John Wood, who had designed The Web Planet.

Following broadcast of The Executioners, at the weekly programme review meeting, Huw Weldon expressed his unhappiness that the Daleks had featured so briefly. It was pointed out to him that the Daleks were co-owned by Terry Nation and so stories involving them were more costly. Following a discussion, it was decided to combine the two Dalek stories planned for the next season to deliver a double-length epic. Lambert agreed to this - despite the fact that she knew that she would have left the programme by then.

Trivia:

• The ratings and appreciation figures both show a marked improvement on the previous week, thanks to the Daleks.
• It was as part of the publicity for this episode that Terry Nation claimed to have made up the word "Dalek" from the spine of a telephone directory for DAL - LEK. No such directory existed, however, and he later admitted that he made this up due to him constantly being asked where the name came from.
• After a month based in Television Centre, the series returned to its regular haunt at Riverside Studios in Hammersmith.
• The Lincoln and Shakespeare sequences were filmed at Ealing on Monday 12th April.
• Recording overran by 10 minutes due to Shawcraft props arriving late.
• This is the only episode of this story to feature the Black Dalek Supreme. As well as its colour scheme, it can be recognised by the small strip of wood used to repair one of the horizontal rings beneath the dome (see the image above) - a repair job first seen in The Dalek Invasion of Earth. The prop will be repainted silver as an ordinary Dalek for the remainder of the story, but you will still be able to recognise it by that strip of wood.
• Nation adopts his usual habit of naming a planet after some geographical aspect of it - in this case its deserts. It is therefore called Aridius (originally just Aridus). However, we are later told that this planet was once covered in oceans - so it seems highly prophetic that it was given a name referring to dryness by its aquatic inhabitants.
• A scene in Nation's first draft saw Barbara tell the Doctor about a holiday she had in Cornwall and encountering a travelling circus, which involved her ending up in Ireland with some performing seals. Unsurprisingly, this was dropped early on.
• The Mire Beast was bright orange in colour. It was made by the freelance father and son team of John and Jack Lovell rather than Shawcraft. Verity Lambert had been concerned about it and the Fungoids, after the problems they had experienced with the Slyther.
• Hugh Walters would make two further appearances in the series - as Runcible in The Deadly Assassin and as Vogel in Revelation of the Daleks.
• Roger Hammond returned to the series in 1983 to play Dr Runciman in Mawdryn Undead.
• Radio Times once again covered the opening instalment of the new story. This was a larger feature than the usual half page of late, however. Of the two photographs only one came from the story itself, the TARDIS image coming from The Web Planet: