Sunday, 8 June 2025

Episode 164: The Evil of the Daleks (2)


Synopsis:
Kennedy is rifling through the contents of his employers' safe - unaware that a Dalek has materialised silently behind him...
He tries to run but the Dalek exterminates him. It moves back between the two large machines and dematerialises.
The Doctor had been asked to come to the shop at 10pm, but he has elected to bring Jamie there half an hour earlier. They find the front door open and enter. The Doctor is puzzled by some of the items on sale in the shop. They look to be genuine Victorian objects, and yet they don't appear to have any signs of age or wear.
One item even has its original receipt, so they are not reproductions.
Jamie thinks that Waterfield must have a time machine if he can possess objects which can be both brand new, and a century old.
Waterfield returns to his office to find the secret chamber open, and the Dalek has returned. He is horrified at the death of Kennedy and the callousness of the Dalek. It simply orders him to obey then vanishes again.
The Doctor and Jamie have heard voices, but before they can investigate someone else enters the shop. This proves to be the inquisitive Perry.
Waterfield tears the photograph of the Doctor in two and places half in a small wooden casket, which he leaves in front of the Dalek machinery. He then unlocks the office door and withdraws.
As the Doctor argues with Perry over the TARDIS, they see the office door open and find Kennedy's body, clutching part of the torn photograph. Perry tries to call the police but there is some strange interference on the line. He goes to fetch a policeman.
The Doctor is puzzled as to the cause of the electrical interference. He quickly realises from the length of the corridor and the position of the body that there is a hidden room beyond this one, and they search for a key - only to see the door open.
As they look around the inner chamber, Jamie spots the other half of the photograph sticking out of the casket.
The Doctor tries to warn him but is too late. Jamie opens the box, and they are both overcome by a noxious gas.
Waterfield re-enters the room and all three dematerialise, along with the Dalek machinery.
When Perry returns with a police officer, the shop is empty but for Kennedy's body.
At a large country mansion, a young woman is being held captive by the Daleks. They are monitoring her health, ordering her to eat and measuring her weight.
The Doctor wakes up in an armchair in the parlour of the house, where he is looked after by a maid named Mollie. He then meets Edward Waterfield as well as the owner of this house - Theodore Maxtible.
He explains that the date is June 2nd, 1866, and they are in his home which is located a few miles from Canterbury.
Jamie still sleeps from the effects of the gas, so the Doctor is taken to Maxtible's laboratory. There, the two men explain that they have been experimenting with time travel, building a cabinet full of highly polished mirrors which are charged with static electricity. The Doctor is automatically alarmed at the mention of static electricity. 
Maxtible and Waterfield explain that their experiments drew the attention of hideous inhuman creatures, which now hold them to ransom. They hold Waterfield's daughter, Victoria.
The Doctor's suspicions are confirmed when a Dalek emerges from their time cabinet.
Jamie has now woken up, and he meets Mollie and Ruth - Maxtible's daughter. He notices a portrait and learns that it is of Waterfield's late wife, but also closely resembles his daughter.
The Doctor is informed that the Daleks wish to conduct an experiment in order to identify the "Human Factor" - that set of skills and abilities which has led to their defeat so often in the past. The test subject is to be Jamie.
After Ruth has left, a man named Toby sneaks into the parlour from the garden, overpowering Mollie then knocking out and abducting Jamie.
The Doctor and Waterfield enter the parlour a few minutes later to find him gone.
Two Daleks have returned to the laboratory. They insist that the experiment begin immediately. 
Any delay will result in death...

Data:
Written by David Whitaker
Recorded: Saturday 20th May 1967 - Lime Grove Studio D
First broadcast: 5.50pm, Saturday 27th May 1967
Ratings: 7.5 million / AI 51
Visual Effects: Michealjohn Harris and Peter Day
Designer: Chris Thompson
Director: Derek Martinus
Additional cast: Marius Goring (Maxtible), Brigit Forsyth (Ruth), Jo Rowbottom (Mollie), Windsor Davies (Toby), Peter Hawkins (Dalek voices), Robert Jewell (Dalek)


Critique:
Episode Two of The Evil of the Daleks is the only surviving instalment of the story, so it's the one we know best. It sees the action move away from contemporary London and back in time to mid-Victorian Kent. A number of new characters will start to be introduced here, some of whom will prove to be superfluous to the plot unfortunately. We also get our first sighting of Victoria, who will go on to become a popular companion.
Deborah Watling was a member of a well-known British acting dynasty, daughter of Jack Watling who featured in many movies of the 1940's and '50's. She had been acting from an early age, including a regular role in the 1958 ITV series The Invisible Man, and had auditioned for the role of Polly the year before. Then, Innes Lloyd had thought her too young and not really fitting the 1960's 'dolly bird' image he had envisioned. A Radio Times cover depicting Watling as Alice in a 1965 BBC biographical drama about the life of Lewis Carroll reminded Gerry Davis of the actress when it came to this story.

After Pauline Collins had declined joining the series as the contemporary Samantha Briggs, the decision had now been made to turn a character from this story into the new female companion. The Victorian setting, and the fact that this was the name of one of Davis' own daughters, determined her name.
Watling wasn't the first actress offered the role. It was initially given to Denise Buckley, but negotiations with her and her agent fell through. 
Another candidate for Victoria was Jo Rowbottom, who was given the role of the maid Mollie Dawson instead.

Whitaker's original episode title was "The Net Tightens". Initial drafts also featured Waterfield's wife Ann. 
Tuesday 25th April saw two photographs being taken during the location filming at Grim's Dyke - the setting for Maxtible's home. One was a nocturnal image of the house for establishing shots, taken at 11.30pm. The other was a shot of Watling in costume, which would be used as the basis for the portrait of Victoria's mother seen in this episode. Designer Chris Thompson enlarged this then painted over it.
Two days of filming at Ealing Studios took place between the recording of episodes one and two, which covered the climactic battle in the final instalment. To ease pressure on Derek Martinus, these were directed by Timothy Combe, who had been working on the series since its first season and who would go on to direct two stories featuring Jon Pertwee as the Doctor.

The cast were now joined by Marius Goring, playing Theodore Maxtible. Martinus admitted that he was quite overawed by him, as he was famous for roles on the big screen as well as small. One movie he is particularly remembered for is Powell and Pressburger's A Matter of Life And Death, in which he plays the effete French aristocrat who is sent to fetch David Niven's RAF bomber pilot to the Afterlife, thanks to an administrative error. 
However, once the director saw how the actor threw himself into the role he was able to relax.
Patrick Troughton had featured in an episode of The Invisible Man, but not one in which Watling had appeared. He had worked several times with her father, however.
He and Hines took the young actress under their wing. Hines and she had already met during the location filming.
Watling was also looked after by Brigit Forsyth, who would go on to comedy fame as Thelma, wife of Bob Ferris in Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads?.
Interviewed in DWM  issue 212, Watling was mostly concerned about spots which broke out on her face on the day of recording her first episode.


In studio, Griffith Davies featured to enact his death scene, after which he was only called upon to play Kennedy's corpse.
Once again, dematerialisations in the hidden chamber were achieved by mixing from live action to a still image of the empty room - this time with the Dalek travel machinery also removed for when everyone leaves for the final time.
When the Doctor picks up half of the torn photograph, because of the complexity of the camera angles it would require, Troughton was recorded on the main set holding the photo, whilst another camera showed the close-up of the picture in his hand, actually being held by extra Barry Ashton on another part of the set.
Maxtible's parlour had french windows opening onto a garden, so sound effects were added to give the sense of the birdlife outside, as well as representing the "flying pests" which the Dalek accused Victoria of feeding.
Goring calls Waterfield "Whitefield" at one point.

The time-cabinet was given a specifically Victorian Gothic design, and had doors which hinged both ways so that the Dalek operators could enter or exit easily. It had a false back. The casket trap issued dry ice.
BBC visual effects also built the Dalek weighing machine, which featured flashing lights and an illuminated wall display.
As you can see from the rehearsal image above, the bedroom set was raised off floor level. Martinus had worked with Daleks before, on Mission to the Unknown, and knew their limitations, visually, so sought to shoot them from interesting angles.
Only one of the two Daleks seen in the closing sequence had an operator inside, the director taking care not to show that its dome lights did not flash with dialogue. The Dalek operated by Robert Jewell was a brand new prop provided by Shawcraft Models.
As mentioned last time, a continuity announcer had to read a statement about Terry Nation creating the Daleks over the closing credits, as it had been too late to amend the captions for this instalment.

Annoyingly, when it came to using a clip from this story to introduce the repeat screening at the end of The Wheel In Space, they elected to use one from this surviving episode - otherwise we might have had a nice clip from a missing instalment.
The film recording of this episode had been returned to the BBC in 1987, having been bought at a car boot sale by collector Gordon Hendry, along with the third instalment of The Faceless Ones.

In the same way that it's surprising that the first "quarry as alien planet" doesn't feature until The Savages, so it often surprises that the series doesn't visit the Victorian era properly until now. The First Doctor was always considered someone who would not look out of place in the late-Victorian period, and with its origins partly in 19th Century science fiction / fantasy literature this time zone would appear to be a natural fit for the series. As it is, the action will be confined to this one residential setting - the location for which just happened to have once been home to a very eminent Victorian - Sir William Gilbert, of Gilbert & Sullivan fame.
Famous Victorian scientists get name-checked - Michael Faraday (1791 - 1867) and James Clerk Maxwell (1831 - 1879). Unfortunately David Whitaker's grasp of science is not very good, and he muddles his facts about the pair. He has an obsession with static electricity, but doesn't understand its properties.
The Victorian obsessions with science and making money are both on show. Waterfield and Maxtible are amateur scientists, and Maxtible states that he has the money to indulge their interests.
We have to ask why Maxtible has a portrait of Waterfield's wife in his home, and the suggestion is that both Edward and Victoria also live here. It has been suggested that Maxtible was responsible for ruining his friend, and so took them in by way of recompense. (Hardly out of charity - it's not in his nature - but perhaps in order to have some hold over him, perhaps exploiting his technical skills).
We will later discover that his current wealth isn't enough. Like the writer, he has an added obsession about alchemy - the ancient lure of transmuting base metals into gold.

One other question we do have to ask: if the Daleks have time machines, why visit 1866 in the first place? Why not simply set up a base of their own in 1966 to ensnare the Doctor?
And was it really WOTAN which the Doctor sensed when he arrived in Fitzroy Square? He did say that he got the feeling when Daleks were about - and we've now discovered that they were active in Chelsea at the exact same time. It's a massive coincidence that two lots of aliens and a home-grown menace should all strike the London region at the same time. Could one of these other incidents have been set up by the Daleks as a means to trap the Doctor? The Chameleons are the obvious ones, as how else could the Daleks know that the TARDIS would be found, unattended, at Gatwick Airport for them to steal?

Trivia:
  • The ratings see a drop of more than half a million on the opening instalment.
  • Opposition on ITV included talent show Opportunity Knocks! in the London region, Lost In Space and Bonanza.
  • The episode was repeated at 5.15pm on Saturday 15th June 1968, when it was watched by 5 million viewers, and had an appreciation index of 52 - marginally higher than the original broadcast. 
  • Television Today highlighted the debut of Deborah Watling in the series on 29th May, featuring a publicity photo of the actress in costume at the Grim's Dyke location. At no point is Victoria ever seen in the grounds of the house in the programme. Nor does she ever take tea with Ruth, as another publicity image showed.
  • Another actor considered for the role of Maxtible was Patrick Wymark. Best known nowadays for Where Eagles Dare, Witchfinder General and The Blood on Satan's Claw, he was the star of The Plane Makers (1963 - 65), which morphed into The Power Game (1965 - 69). Wymark played the anti-hero John Wilder in both series. Lloyd had wanted to work with him for some time, and even considered him as a replacement for William Hartnell as the Doctor.
  • Losing out to Windsor Davies, who will become famous for comedy roles in numerous films and the army concert party sitcom It Ain't Half Hot Mum, was actor Christopher Benjamin (Inferno, The Talons of Weng-Chiang and The Unicorn and the Wasp).
  • Frazer Hines once claimed that he was sitting inside a Dalek casing one day during a break in recording, and overheard a couple of guest stars criticising the show - unaware that the prop was occupied. As this is Hines' only Dalek story, we can only assume that he was referring to a pair of these guest artists. He did not say who they were, however. Goring is reported to have thoroughly enjoyed his time on the story, whilst John Bailey had been in the series before (as the commander in The Sensorites) and would appear again a decade later (as Sezom in The Horns of Nimon). Saying that, Colin Douglas, after appearing in The Enemy of the World, had claimed he would never do another Doctor Who as he felt the programme beneath him - only to turn up later in The Horror of Fang Rock.
  • On the Wednesday following broadcast, at the BBC weekly programme review meeting, Huw Weldon was disappointed to learn that this might be the last ever story to feature the Daleks.

No comments:

Post a Comment