Synopsis:
The Emperor of the Daleks informs the Doctor that he will be forced to take the "Dalek Factor" and spread it throughout all of human history using the TARDIS...
In a special weapons room nearby, the Daleks prepare a machine.
In their cell, Maxtible is telling his fellow captives about the promise made to him by the Daleks, to provide him with the secret of turning base metals into gold. When Jamie threatens him, a Dalek guard orders that he is not to be harmed.
Waterfield attempts to get Maxtible to use his apparent influence with the creatures to help them but he refuses. The Doctor tells Victoria that he may have to sacrifice everyone to avoid doing what the Emperor has demanded. He cannot see the whole human race destroyed just to save their lives. At one point he considers taking them away in the TARDIS, possibly to his own planet.
In the weapons room, a Black Dalek is shocked when one of the worker Daleks questions an order. It goes to report this to the Emperor.
A panel opens in the cell, and the prisoners are able to see into the weapons room where the machine is ready. Maxtible then witnesses a quantity of iron being turned into gold. He is encouraged to move forward to see the device more clearly, but as he passes under the door arch his body is enveloped in a strange forcefield.
The Doctor realises that he has been subjected to the "Dalek Factor" and now, mentally, he is one of them.
The Emperor meanwhile insists that the Black Dalek to identify the test Dalek which had questioned its orders.
That night, Maxtible hypnotises the Doctor and has him pass under the archway - promising that he will be reunited with the TARDIS which has been placed outside the city. This is a ruse to turn him into a mental Dalek like himself. They will now work together to refine the "Factor".
Maxtible shows him the equipment they will use, but the Doctor secretly tampers with it - swapping a glass vial for another he had in his pocket. He indicates to Jamie with a wink that he has not been transformed. he then insists on being taken to see the Emperor.
In the control centre he explains that the Daleks who have been infected with the "Human Factor" can be cured with exposure to the "Dalek Factor". All Daleks must pass through the arch to ensure that no rebellious element remains to sow dissent.
The Emperor agrees, and the Daleks begin to file under the arch.
The Doctor admits to the prisoners that he has swapped the "Factors" and the Daleks are actually being humanised. He was not affected by the arch as he is not human.
He sends the others to the tunnel system so they can escape the city, though Waterfield insists on staying to look for Maxtible.
Throughout the city, the Black Daleks come across humanised Daleks. When they begin to destroy them, they fight back. Seeing this, the Doctor encourages the humanised ones to rebel.
He finds himself trapped in a corridor as Black Daleks bear down on him and open fire - but Waterfield throws himself into their path, knowing that only the Doctor can save everyone. As he dies, he asks that he look after his daughter.
The Emperor recalls all loyal Daleks to the control centre to defend it as battle rages through the city.
As they pass along the tunnel, Maxtible attacks the fleeing prisoners. He kills Kemel by throwing him over a precipice, but then withdraws due to the Emperor's recall order.
The Doctor sees him heading into the midst of the fighting, before making his own escape.
Soon the conflict reaches the control centre and the Emperor itself is attacked.
The Doctor heads for the hillside where the TARDIS is located, and where Victoria and Jamie are now waiting. He tells her of her father's sacrifice, and informs Jamie that they will take her with them.
As they stand overlooking the burning city, the Doctor tells them both that they have just witnessed the final end of the Daleks...
Next time: The Tomb of the Cybermen
Written by David Whitaker
Recorded: Saturday 24th June 1967 - Lime Grove Studio D
First broadcast: 6.25pm, Saturday 1st July 1967
Ratings: 6.1 million / AI 56
VFX: Michealjohn Harris & Peter Day
Designer: Chris Thompson
Director: Derek Martinus
And so Season 4 comes to an end with what could be described as the first ever proper season finale. The series hasn't done anything really special to close its seasons so far - or to open a new one - but here we see the final destruction of the Doctor's arch-enemies after four long years, something akin to the type of finale we have been given since 2005.
As we've previously noted, Terry Nation was seeking to launch the Daleks in their own TV series and interest from the BBC had not been forthcoming. He was still adamant that such a series could be a success and so was now looking to the US for a production partnership.
Unhappy with the way Whitaker treated his creations, and the complication of their ownership being shared with the BBC, Nation had elected to withdraw permission to use them in Doctor Who.
The Evil of the Daleks would therefore see the Daleks being written out of the series with the Doctor finally defeating them by triggering a cataclysmic civil war.
This pleased Innes Lloyd as he now had the popular Cybermen as the new recurring menace for the Doctor to encounter - and the BBC did not have to pay extra for their use as they had with the Daleks.
Whitaker titled this episode "The End of the Daleks".
For the Dalek weapons room he included in his script references to a number of specific machines, all of which had featured in the 1965 publication The Dalek Pocketbook and Space-Travellers Guide from Souvenir Press - mostly his own work. These devices included a Dust Gun, capable of spraying deadly dust throughout the cosmos; the Magnetron, which can attract spaceships out of the sky and force them to land on Skaro to be examined and retro-engineered; and the Dreamwave, capable of transmitting images into the minds of their enemies at great distances.
A Magnetron device had actually featured in the TV series, in The Daleks' Master Plan.
Filming for the final episode took place on Wednesday 26th and Thursday 27th April, when some 15 Louis Marx toy Daleks were filmed at Ealing for the battle sequences. Some had their domes painted black but otherwise they had not been adapted, unlike the ones used in The Power of the Daleks for the production line sequences.
They had small explosive charges built in and some contained packets of a gooey substance. These were shot on silent 16mm film.
The destruction of the Dalek city model was also captured during these sessions.
More substantial filming too place at Ealing between the studio recording of Episodes 1 and 2, for the live action battle scenes. These were directed by Timothy Combe, who was given a credit for these on this episode. He had been working on the series as a Production Assistant since 1964, and would go on to direct two Jon Pertwee adventures.
This took place on Tuesday 16th and Wednesday 17th May. Footage was again silent, but on 35mm film this time, using two cameras.
Peter Day and Michealjohn Harris provided lightweight Dalek props, made of balsa-wood and polystyrene to be blown up, their casings filled with green foam. A lightweight version of the Emperor was also created for scenes where it is apparently wrecked. This had removeable panels, with electronics installed behind. The molten foam caused problems as the studio staff refused to clean up the mess afterwards. Three of the Daleks had been given black domes, with two silver. Sound effects included pouring water onto hot metal to produce a sizzling noise.
As the Emperor prop was about to be exploded, word came down from Sydney Newman, via Innes Lloyd, that there was to be some hint that the Daleks might survive - leaving the door open for their potential return at some later date. Once the Emperor blew up, Combe arranged for a small light to continue to pulse within it, suggesting that it still lived.
This filming was captured by studio designer Tony Cornell on 8mm and, along with some of the city model filming and the off-air audio recording, has subsequently been released as "The Last Dalek" on DVD / Blu-ray, giving us a taste of the story's epic conclusion. Another version on DVD features a commentary track by the VFX staff in place of the soundtrack.
The final episode was recorded at Lime Grove on Saturday 24th June when Patrick Troughton's son Michael, who would go on to appear in Last Christmas, was in attendance as a visitor. He got to sit inside a Black Dalek. Two of the props had black domes and the other three silver, though once again the domes were interchangeable if necessary. The fifth Dalek was operated by Ken Tyllsen, who had once played a Sensorite and had operated a Dalek before in The Dalek Invasion of Earth.
Two recording breaks were planned - the first coming after Maxtible had been to report to the Emperor, accompanied by a Black Dalek, and the other after the Doctor encouraged his friends to leave the cell through the transforming arch.
The inlay effect was used for people passing under the arch, as their bodies were seen to ripple and distort.
One sequence planned but never filmed was when a Dalek went out of control in the weapons room, smashing into various glass tubes and bottles. Unfortunately these had already been broken during the day through careless handling, so the shot had to be dropped.
As with the end of the previous episode, the set was composed of lattice-like elements which could be rearranged to form different rooms and corridors. This required careful lighting as other sets might show beyond them.
There were a number of small cuts made for timing reasons - six in all. The first was just after the reprise as the Doctor, Jamie and Waterfield are led from the control centre to the cell. The Doctor ponders why the Dalek Emperor is so sure he will help them. The second was a scene of Daleks checking their machines in the weapons room. The third was the end of a scene in which the Doctor and Maxtible discuss the control device which had been used on Terrall.
Next was a sequence just after Maxtible had been transformed, where the Doctor attempts to speak with Alpha before it is sent away. Jamie asked if it really was Alpha, but the Doctor wasn't sure.
The fifth cut came in the scene where Maxtible reports back to the Emperor that the experiment has been successful. The final edit came with a cell scene in which Victoria tried to reassure Jamie, after he believes that the Doctor has been transformed.
Interestingly, the Doctor at one point talks about taking his fellow prisoners away in the TARDIS, to either another universe or to his home planet - the first time he has mentioned this since his personal musings alone in the TARDIS at the end of The Massacre. Then he had talked of going home himself, before accepting that he somehow cannot. All we know of his home is that it is "a long, long way from Earth". We'll learn a little more about the Doctor in another quiet scene between him and Victoria in the next story.
The talk of going to another universe seems to be a throwback to the earliest days of the series, when the writers - Whitaker included - demonstrated a rather shaky grasp of cosmology. We'll later discover that there is only one prime universe, with others being only rarely visited alternative dimensions, accessed accidentally. Basically, the writers confuse universes with galaxies.
Some questions we need to ask: if the Daleks know that the test subjects had marks placed on their casings by the Doctor, why do they need to subject every one to the "Factor"? Surely they could just look for the marks - yet the Black Dalek claims they have searched "without success".
Also, why is the TARDIS moved outside the city, when Maxtible only needs to make the Doctor think it's there? If he believes his hypnotism is effective, why move it at all? It's a bit of a contrivance that the ship is safely outside the city when it is destroyed.
Season 4 had seen the biggest shake-up in the series' history to date, with the high risk strategy of changing the lead actor at the conclusion of its second story; the arrival of the Cybermen as a popular new menace; and the introduction of a highly popular companion in Jamie. After initially wanting to have contemporary companions reflecting Swinging London, Lloyd had cooled on the idea and now gone for a pair of companions who both came from Earth's history (though he had tried to retain a contemporary companion had Pauline Collins agreed to stay on as Samantha Briggs). The issue that people from the past would need to have everything explained to them - as previously argued by John Wiles and Donald Tosh - had been resolved by simply ignoring the problem.
Behind the scenes there had been some consistency, in that Lloyd remained producer throughout, and Gerry Davis only stepped down part way through the final story. And whilst Lloyd was keen to move on, his successor was already working on the series and being groomed to take over, helping to make for a smooth transition when the time came - a time which was rapidly approaching...
Whilst it was the end of the season for the viewers, the production team would go straight into the next story, which would then be held back to open the fifth season.
- The ratings see a slight dip for this final episode, though it manages to achieve the highest appreciation figure of the serial.
- The episode was broadcast at a later time due to live coverage of the Wimbledon tennis tournament, which placed it against the popular talent show Opportunity Knocks! on ITV.
- The episode was repeated at 5.15pm on Saturday 23rd August 1968, when it was watched by an audience of 5.5 million - a huge increase on the previous week. The AI was 49.
- An Audience Research Report was commissioned for this episode in early August. There were 180 respondents, some of whom hoped that the Daleks were gone for good. A small number hoped that the entire series would not return. Positives included a general satisfaction with Patrick Troughton's performance, and the "absolutely wonderful" special effects.
- For some reason the story was sold to Australia later than most, so that it was first broadcast between The Web of Fear and Fury From The Deep.
- It was shown in August 1969 in Hong Kong, Singapore in December that year, and New Zealand in the summer of 1970. By the mid 1970's all copies were believed destroyed, until Episode 2 turned up at a car boot sale in 1983.
- The story was released in animated form in 2021, along with the orphan episode. A couple of easter eggs to look out for are the names of later Doctor actors on the shields in the trophy room, and Maxtible has candlesticks in the form of Weeping Angels.
- The story generated a DWM comic strip sequel featuring the Eighth Doctor - Children of the Revolution - which depicts Dalek Alpha and the humanised Dalek survivors living secretly underwater.
- Cut lines from Day of the Daleks would have revealed that the rebellion on Skaro was eventually quashed.
- You could get your photograph taken with a Black Dalek at Dudley Zoo in 1967...
- And pop group The Troggs (best known for Wild Thing) had themselves pictured with one of the props...
- Finally, another wonderful retro movie-style poster from Oliver Arkinstall-Jones:
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