NB: This episode no longer exists in the archives, nor is there a full set of telesnaps. Representative images are therefore used to illustrate it.
Surrounded, the Doctor announces to Steven and Sara that he believes that the Daleks have finally defeated him...
However, they will not fire upon them as they might damage the Core. Before they can be taken captive, the Daleks are attacked by a large group of Visians.
When shot, the creatures briefly become visible. A number of Daleks are destroyed - smashed up or pushed into the depths of Mira's swamps.
In the confusion, the Doctor, Steven and Sara slip away in the direction of the pursuit ship.
Having suffered heavy losses, the Visians withdraw and the Daleks go after the Doctor's party.
They have found only a single Dalek sentinel at the ship. They blind it with mud and then steal the vessel, leaving the pursuit group stranded on the planet.
They notify the Supreme on Kembel.
The Doctor decides to make a duplicate Core which may prove a useful decoy. He hasn't much time as the Daleks seize the ship in a magnetising beam and begin to drag it towards Kembel.
The Core copy looks identical - but does not glow like the original. Steven suggests using the ship's gravity force to achieve this. The Doctor and Sara mock his idea. Irritated, he goes ahead and attempts this anyway on his own.
He is knocked unconscious to the floor - but the taranium now glows like the original material.
On waking, everyone is surprised to find that a side effect of the gravity force has been to envelop him in a forcefield.
The ship is brought in to land on Kembel and is immediately surrounded by Daleks who are accompanied by Mavic Chen, newly returned from Earth.
The Doctor informs them that he will only hand over the Core outside his TARDIS, which has been left in the jungle where it first materialised. The Supreme agrees.
At the clearing, the Doctor and Sara enter the TARDIS whilst Steven remains outside to hand over the Core. As soon as he does so the Daleks open fire - but he is saved by the forcefield and joins the others.
The TARDIS dematerialises, but the Daleks do not care. They have retrieved the Core and can proceed with their plans.
In the TARDIS, Steven finds that the Dalek weapons have dissipated the forcefield.
The ship begins to land at its next destination. The Doctor discovers that the scanner is not working. To repair it, he will have to go outside and fix the camera eye.
After checking his instruments, however, he announces that the atmosphere outside is highly toxic...
Next episode: The Feast of Steven
Data:
Written by: Dennis Spooner
Recorded: Friday 26th November 1965 - Television Centre Studio TC4
First broadcast: 5:50pm, Saturday 18th December 1965
Ratings: 9.1 million / AI 56
Designer: Raymond P Cusick
Director: Douglas Camfield
Critique:
This is the first episode of the story to be written by Dennis Spooner. He had been brought it in at the outset as Nation would never have managed to provide twelve episodes' worth of material. He and Spooner were already collaborating closely on adventure series The Baron, so the ex-story editor was the obvious choice. As it happened, Nation could barely provide enough material for his own instalments, and they were being heavily reworked by Donald Tosh and Douglas Camfield.
The sixth instalment was, in an early draft, the one in which space agent 'Brett Walton' was to have been killed - not at the hands of his sister but by the Daleks.
The original plan had been that the cliffhanger of the previous episode would have been the Doctor and friends stealing the Dalek ship, unaware that they had walked into a trap as it was programmed to bring them straight to the planet 'Varga'.
The Doctor was to sabotage the unspecified device he had stolen from the Daleks by removing its "vital core", so that when he handed it over it would not work.
Some filming took place at Ealing on Wednesday 29th September for Mira scenes. Spooner had planned for the whole Dalek-Visian fight to be pre-filmed.
References to the TARDIS crew being "time-travellers" had to be changed to "fugitives" when it was realised that the Daleks did not know who they were at this stage.
It was suggested by the writer that they could use rear-view footage of a rocket going into space to indicate the pursuit ship leaving Mira. In studio, the ship should simply be a ramp leading up to a drum-like shape - the suggestion being that the main body of the craft was off-screen above.
Using mud to blind the Dalek's eye-stalk, the Doctor mentioned that he had used this means of attack before - a reference to his escape from the cell on Skaro in The Daleks, with Barbara, Ian and Susan.
When Nation and Spooner later talked about trying to outwit each other with their cliffhangers, it was only in the middle episodes that they alternated with each other.
Nation writes the episodes on either side of this one, before Spooner takes over for the second half of the story.
On the afternoon of recording William Hartnell recorded some vocals to be used as loudspeaker announcements, treated to sound Dalek-like as the Doctor was using their equipment to broadcast from their ship.
The Visian costumes (see below) were simply rough baggy overalls, with a hood covering the head, so that no human features could be seen. They were only to be seen fleetingly with the Dalek extermination effect, and do not match the descriptions of the creatures given by the Doctor - or the footprints seen in the previous episode.
With only four Dalek props, but scenes on both Mira and Kembel, most of the evening's recording breaks, of which there were seven, were spent moving them back and forth between sets.
There is no record, but it is thought that two versions of the closing scene were recorded, each with a different "Next Week:" caption. This is because there was some thought being given to the seventh episode being withheld from overseas sales, due to it being a specifically festive instalment.
Spooner and Nation had already discussed this with Tosh when devising their cliffhangers for the middle episodes. They had to work for the British audience, but foreign viewers should not see any disruption from the missing episode.
- The ratings see almost a million viewers turn away - no doubt due to the proximity of Christmas. The Saturday before Christmas would have been the busiest shopping day of the year, as well as the date of many activities such as children's parties and pantomime visits. The AI sees a significant increase, on the other hand - up five points.
- As mentioned last week, this episode was originally going to be titled "Counter-Plot". The new title sounds good but is pretty meaningless, and bears no relation to the events. It may have come from Nation, as he was rather fond of pretentious titles.
- Ray Cusick reused some old props to dress the exterior of the Dalek pursuit ship - the small round tables first seen in The Sensorites. One is positioned on either side of the foot of the ramp.
- Stunt man / fight arranger Derek Ware was booked to rehearse the regular cast in the ancient art of custard pie throwing the day before recording this episode. This had been planned for the Christmas Day episode.
- A Visian costume:
- Some rehearsal shots featuring Hartnell in civvies, and Kevin Stoney in costume but not make-up. Note the TARDIS set glimpsed in the background above the Black Dalek in the right hand image:
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