Synopsis:
The Doctor informs his companions that their lead over the pursuing time machine has been reduced to just eight minutes, and this will decrease even further after their next landing. The Daleks are closing in on them...
The TARDIS materialises in a huge darkened chamber. The walls are of heavy stone and there is a huge ornate fireplace. The room is covered in cobwebs, and overall it has the appearance of a Gothic castle. From the architecture, the Doctor assumes them to be somewhere in Central Europe. Ian and Barbara are reminded of haunted houses and old horror movies.
The Doctor and Ian decide to explore, hoping that this might prove a suitable environment in which to confront the Daleks.
Barbara and Vicki look around the ground floor whilst the men go upstairs. They see a skeleton emerge from an old trunk, and are then confronted by a man in stylish evening dress, who introduces himself as Count Dracula.
The Doctor spots a laboratory and he forces Ian to descend some steps so that he can examine what looks like a body lying on an operating table. This proves to be the Frankenstein Monster, swathed in bandages. It awakens and starts to clamber off the table, so they make a rapid exit. They also encounter a ghostly grey lady.
The Doctor tells Ian that he believes they have landed somewhere that the Daleks can never follow - within the human imagination. Ian thinks the answer to be more prosaic than that.
A short time later, the Dalek time machine materialises next to the TARDIS. They emerge and begin to search for the Doctor and his companions. Barbara has accidentally operated a secret panel and been carried behind one of the walls.
The Doctor and Ian spot a Dalek outside the laboratory and so head back to the ship. Barbara is released from the trap. The Daleks are diverted by the reappearance of Dracula, and then of the Frankenstein Monster, which proceeds to attack them. Both of the supernatural figures seem to be immune to Dalek firepower.
In the confusion, the Doctor, Ian and Barbara take to the TARDIS - but Vicki is left behind as it departs.
She seeks refuge in the Dalek ship. With one of their number destroyed, and the TARDIS gone, the Daleks return to their machine and leave, with Vicki hiding on board.
The Doctor holds to his theory, but he and Ian had failed to see that the castle was really part of an abandoned funfair exhibit, based at the "Festival of Ghana" in 1996. The monsters were robotic.
It is only as food is distributed that they discover that Vicki is missing. The TARDIS cannot go back to find her. They must steal the Dalek ship if they wish to rescue her, so their next destination is where they will have to stand and fight their pursuers.
In the Dalek machine, Vicki hears the Daleks plan their next scheme - to create an android copy of one of the TARDIS crew, which will be used to infiltrate the group and assassinate them. They activate a large device which has a tall cylinder at its core. A shadowy figure begins to materialise within.
Vicki looks on horrified as a figure resembling the Doctor emerges from the machine. The Daleks agree that it cannot be distinguished from their enemy. The Dalek commander demands to know if the android understands its orders.
It announces that it knows precisely what it must do. It is to infiltrate and kill. "Infiltrate and kill"...
Next episode: The Death of Doctor Who
Written by: Terry Nation
Recorded: Friday, 21st May 1965 - Riverside Studio 1
First broadcast: 5:40pm, Saturday 12th June 1965
Ratings: 9.5 million / AI 54
Designer: Raymond P Cusick and John Wood
Director: Richard Martin
Additional cast: Malcolm Rogers (Count Dracula), John Maxim (Frankenstein Monster), Roslyn de Winter (Grey Lady), Edmund Warwick (Robot Doctor)
Verity Lambert was never happy with the haunted house section of Terry Nation's scripts for The Chase.
In his original version, Nation had the castle as a real one in Transylvania. The TARDIS had only moved geographical location from the Mary Celeste, so it was still 1872. The castle belonged to Baron Frankenstein, and he had Count Dracula staying as a house guest. The Count gave his first name to Barbara as Gregor. The writer specified that he and the Monster should resemble the Universal Studios versions, as played by Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff.
It was the blast from a Dalek weapon which charged and brought the Monster to life.
The notion that they had been visiting a region of the human mind was the final explanation given by the Doctor in this version, which was not dispelled by any funfair reveal.
Lambert's complaint was that the series had by now created an "illogical reality" of its own, in that this was a universe in which there was a planet Skaro, which was populated by machine creatures called Daleks, and the Doctor had a time machine which was bigger inside than out. To include fictional realms within that reality concerned her. Another concern was that they would be criticised for using someone else's monsters, instead of creating their own. She asked Nation to consider an alternative sequence - but did not go so far as to order him to remove it. In the end, he simply added the "Festival of Ghana" funfair explanation.
According to the sign, the festival has been cancelled by Peking. In the 1960's, the West was concerned about the growing influence of China in the countries which had recently sought independence from the old European powers.
Make-up supervisor Sonia Markham was apparently unaware that Universal Studios held a very strict copyright on the Boris Karloff make-up for the Frankenstein Monster, designed by Jack P Pierce. When Hammer came to make the first colour version of Mary Shelley's story in 1957, their lawyers were poised to issue a writ should it contain any elements from their adaptation unless they were already present in the original 1818 story. This is why Roy Ashton's make-up for Christopher Lee avoids the flat-topped cranium or bolts through the neck which the public had come to associate with the character.
By the time Hammer made The Evil of Frankenstein (1964), a deal had been done with Universal which allowed for a more Karloffian monster.
It confused viewers at the time - and even repeated viewings on VHS since failed to clear up the matter - but what the ghostly Grey Lady is actually calling out is "Unshriven!". This means "not having confessed one's sins" - i.e. she is supposed to have died without having her sins absolved by the last rites.
Trivia:
When Douglas Adams (script editing Destiny of the Daleks) included the Doctor mocking the Daleks' lack of mobility, reinforcing the old joke about them being defeated by stairs, Terry Nation was not happy. However, here it is in one of his own scripts, way back in 1965. In a relatively light-hearted episode, Ian mentions that the Daleks "don't like stairs".
Edmund Warwick had previously played the biologist Darius in The Keys of Marinus and had stepped in at the last minute to replace William Hartnell when the star injured his back and could not record the fourth episode of The Dalek Invasion of Earth. By way of thanks for helping him out on that occasion, and because he bore a passing resemblance to Hartnell, Martin asked him to play the Dalek robot copy of the Doctor. We'll have more to say about this next episode.
It is a confusing episode - even when we are informed that this was simply a funfair "Haunted House" attraction. Why does the Frankenstein Monster attack and destroy the Dalek, if it's supposed to be a tourist-friendly automaton? Why does it change its costume - putting on clothes after first appearing swathed only in bandages? Why are the two automatons operating at all, if the attraction has been closed down?
One also has to wonder why ordinary automatons are immune to Dalek firepower. One explanation might be that they have set their weapons for organic beings, ineffectual against machines.
Things aren't helped by some on screen fluffs and mistakes. The bat which descends when the travellers first go to mount the staircase can be seen to get entangled on the banister, quite obviously suspended on strings. Malcom Rogers mimes rather badly to the pre-recorded Dracula dialogue.
In the laboratory, a Dalek can clearly be seen behind the portcullis-like doorway, long before the Daleks are supposed to have arrived in the story.
Another goof is when a Dalek moves in front of an inlay countdown in the "DARDIS", which then appears superimposed over it instead of being behind it.
- After a steady decline over the last couple of weeks, the ratings actually rise for this episode, by half a million. The audience appreciation figure continues to slide, however.
- Ray Cusick designed the haunted house set.
- Recording overran for the third week running when paintwork on parts of the castle set hadn't dried in time.
- The credits list John Maxim as playing "Frankenstein". This is an age-old misnomer dating back to the Universal horror movies, where the public came to believe that the creation was called Frankenstein, when it ought to be the name of the scientist-creator.
- Roslyn de Winter had previously played Menoptra Vrestin in The Web Planet, as well as choreographing "insect movement".
- John Maxim had other encounters with Dracula and Frankenstein, having been a regular supporting artist with Hammer. He featured in Dracula, The Brides of Dracula, Dracula: Prince of Darkness, and Frankenstein Created Woman.
- He was later offered the role of the Cyberman Controller in Tomb of the Cybermen, but turned it down. He was also considered for the part of Kemel in The Evil of the Daleks. One other Doctor Who role he did play, under his alternative surname of Wills, was that of a Cyberman in The Moonbase.
- The main cast brought family members into studio on the afternoon of recording as guests. Jacqueline Hill can be seen here with William Hartnell's grandson, Paul Carney, as his grandfather poses in the foreground with Dracula and the Frankenstein Monster for publicity images. William Russell's daughter was photographed sitting in a Dalek base with her father and Hartnell.
- The day after recording, Saturday 22nd May, William Hartnell helped open the fete at Pembury Hospital in Kent - arriving in a vintage 1903 de Dion-Bouton car, which was owned by a friend.
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