Episode 168: The Evil of the Daleks (6)

Synopsis:

The three Daleks sent to Maxtible's home from Skaro have had the "Human Factor" added to their brains. Instead of lethal cunning, they exhibit playful friendliness...

Maxtible leaves the laboratory, satisfied that the experiment has been a success.

After their game of "trains", the Doctor marks each of them with a symbol - naming them Alpha, Beta and Omega. He tells them that he and Jamie are their friends.

After spending some time with the trio, they suddenly announce that they must return to Skaro. All of the Daleks in the house have been recalled.

The Doctor and Jamie set off to look for Victoria as Maxtible returns with Waterfield, who wants to know where his daughter is now that the Dalek experiment is completed. Waterfield lies, claiming she is probably out in the garden. He goes to look for her as a Dalek sets a large box in the middle of the floor.

Maxtible wants to know what this is but is ordered not to touch it. He demands that the Daleks give him the formula they promised him but is only ordered to fetch the Doctor and Jamie. This is overheard by Waterfield as he returns.

Not trusting his old acquaintance and realising that there is more going on here than he has been told, he tries to force Maxtible into telling him the truth. Maxtible knocks him out, then tells a newly arrived Dalek that he hasn't been able to find the Doctor and Jamie.

It tells him that the device on the floor is a powerful bomb which is timed to go off in a few minutes. He is horrified at the thought of losing his home - especially his laboratory, as he believes that without it the knowledge they will give him will be useless as he will not be able to exploit it.

He is forced to enter the time cabinet and leave with the Dalek.

Waterfield has revived and heard them speak about about the bomb, and he warns the Doctor and Jamie as they return, having found no trace of Victoria. 

Unable to deactivate the device, they are unable to use the time cabinet either as it is now simply an empty shell.

The Doctor then recalls the time travel machine which Waterfield had used to travel to 1966. They quickly set it up and activate it as the bomb detonates, destroying the house.

Victoria and Kemel are being held captive in a cell in the Dalek city on Skaro. Maxtible joins them briefly, before being escorted away by a Dalek.

The Doctor, Jamie and Waterfield have arrived on a plateau overlooking the city. The Doctor recalls a cave system nearby which will allow them to enter unobserved.

Maxtible, meanwhile, is having to answer to a black-domed Dalek why he did not bring the Doctor with him.

One of these Black Daleks has noticed a mark on another's casing, and it explains that it was made by the Doctor. It is Omega.

Victoria and Kemel hear an alarm sound as the Daleks announce intruders detected in their city, and she hopes that it is her father come to rescue them.

She is then taken from the cell to join Maxtible in a darkened chamber. She hears him scream out, then is made to do so herself. This is a ruse by the Daleks to lure the intruders into a trap.

They, meanwhile, are moving along a narrow ledge when they are confronted by a Dalek. It proves to be Omega, come to escort them the rest of the way. The Doctor suddenly pushes it off the ledge into a deep chasm, as he has noted that it is not his writing on the casing.

They enter the city and are confronted by two Black Daleks which force them to accompany it.

They enter a darkened chamber and hear a voice booming out from the shadows. A light comes on and a massive static Dalek is revealed. The Doctor identifies it as their Emperor.

He tells it that the day of the Daleks is coming to an end. Somewhere in the city are three Daleks with the "Human Factor". They will come to question their orders and this will sow discontent which will spread. Rebellion will follow.

The Emperor reveals that the TARDIS is here, then explains that the "Human Factor" was merely a means to an end. It has helped to identify a "Dalek Factor". 

The Doctor will be forced to take this to Earth in the TARDIS and spread it throughout the whole of human history...

Data:

Written by David Whitaker

Recorded: Saturday 17th June, 1967 - Lime Grove Studio D

First broadcast: 5.45pm, Saturday 24th June 1967

Ratings: 6.8 million / AI 49

VFX: Michealjohn Harris & Peter Day

Designer: Chris Thompson

Director: Derek Martinus

Critique:

Unlike the other six instalments, there is no record of any working title for this episode from its writer. The novelisation of the repeat showing, by Frazer Hines, which uses these working titles as chapter headings employs "Escape to Danger".

One of the things which Terry Nation disliked about this story was the introduction of an Emperor. He had been content with the Black Dalek Supreme.

We all know that the comic strips published in TV Century 21 comic were the work of David Whitaker, and not Nation, and he had introduced an Emperor there. That had been a distinctive (flidor) gold one, with a spherical upper half and multiple dome lights. It was the Dalek which had confronted the last two natural Dal people when they emerged after the nuclear disaster which befell Skaro, and which forced them to create more of its kind before they succumbed to radiation sickness. As the first, it elected to make itself their ruler and had a special casing built for itself.

Also introduced this week are the Emperor's special retinue which have senior status over the normal silver Daleks. The script refers to them as "Black Daleks", though they obviously only have a black dome and are otherwise identical to the standard model. This is the only story in which this colour scheme appears. 

There were five Daleks available for the whole serial, which had easily replaceable domes to switch from silver to black as the scenes dictated.

In the draft script for Episode 6, the Doctor told Jamie and Waterfield that he had found a way to destroy the Daleks for good - "by making them all like us".

Their city was described as "piercing out of the sand of the desert, with a mountain range to the side... its weird shaped buildings, pillars and projections making up a kind of alien symmetry". No doubt Whitaker was recalling the model city designed by Ray Cusick for their debut, which had featured a mountainous backdrop.

The model was mainly built from balsa wood.

Filming for this episode was limited to model shots, recorded at Ealing on Wednesday 26th April. These were establishing shots of the city, to be seen by the Doctor and his friends as they first arrive on Skaro, plus the use of a Louis Marx toy Dalek for the sequence where the Doctor pushes the fake Omega into the chasm.

On Friday 16th June, Patrick Troughton, Frazer Hines and Deborah Watling were released from rehearsals to film the opening sequence for the next story, where Victoria is introduced to the TARDIS.

Recording seems to have been a mix of tension and humour. Some of the younger cast members raced around the studio in the Dalek bases during the afternoon, and apparently it was whilst making this episode that Hines, trying out one of the props, overheard certain cast members slagging off the director in particular and the programme in general. 

Hines devised the double-entendre "Look at the size of those balls, Doctor!" when first seeing the Emperor. Comments on size would become a running joke with him, sometimes even making it to broadcast, unlike here.

Murphy Grumbar joined Robert Jewell, Gerald Taylor and John Scott Martin to operate a fourth Dalek prop.

As previously mentioned, Peter Hawkins had his voice duplicated and overlaid to provide the deep booming vocals of the Emperor -  the voice previously heard in Arthur Terrall's head.

To relieve a moment of tension in studio, Roy Skelton decided to sing "What's it all about, Alpha?" in Dalek voice - a play on the Cilla Black song which accompanied the Michael Caine movie Alfie, which had opened in March the year before.

There were three recording breaks scheduled. The first after the action leaves the laboratory, the second following the Doctor's destruction of the Dalek on the cave tunnel set, and the third just before the final scene with the Emperor.

This large static prop was initially kept in shadow, then illuminated by a spotlight. The Dalek city interior was composed mainly of white angular supports, which could be rearranged into different permutations to represent various chambers and corridors, set against black drapes.

The Emperor had as part of its dome a segment of a Chumbley, from Galaxy 4.

The TARDIS prop had its doors hung the wrong way round.

There were two small trims made during editing. The first was a shot of the Doctor's party moving through the tunnel system, and the other was a model shot of a toy Dalek moving along the bottom of the chasm.

After an enjoyable instalment which saw the Doctor and Jamie as fish-out-of-water visitors to contemporary Chelsea, the story had moved to Victorian Kent, restricted to the confines of Theodore Maxtible's country house, where Jamie's rescue of Victoria was certainly the most exciting part. If there was padding, it has been well and truly ditched with the departure of those extraneous characters who inhabited the house.

Episode Six now sees the action shift to the Dalek homeworld of Skaro. It's this final section of the story which is best remembered by fans who saw it at the time (on first or repeat broadcast) and it could be argued that it's the bit which most of us would like to see found. The Daleks have worked well in the gothic environs of the house, mainly because many of their scenes were filmed on location at night, but a high tech environment like their city does seem to be their natural habitat.

Before we get there we have the humorous opening scenes of the playful Daleks, making the Doctor play "trains" with them. Nation would not doubt have cringed at scenes of them playing and chanting about "Dizzy Daleks", or the sing-song "Alpha, Beta, Omega. Alpha, Beta, Omega...".

This episode gives guest star Marius Goring more to do at last. John Bailey's Waterfield has had more of a presence up to now, whilst Maxtible has tended to merely flit in and out of the laboratory, fluffing lines - calling Waterfield "Whitefield" at one point, and claiming the Daleks hail from a planet named Skarov. With the experiment out of the way, and those other characters jettisoned, the story can concentrate more on him and his obsession with alchemical secrets, and the relationship which he believes he has with the Daleks.

The city clearly does not resemble the one seen in The Daleks. Not just in its architecture, which can obviously change over the centuries, but also in the geographical location. The city seen previously sat on a plain, with mountains behind, whilst this one has higher ground all around it. 

The Doctor also seems to know all about the tunnel system leading into it, which he claims he recalls from his previous visit. If it's the tunnels which Ian's party used to infiltrate the city then they don't look the same, and he was never seen to enter them anyway. It may well be that he explored off camera between the defeat of the Daleks and the farewell scenes by the TARDIS. An alternative is that this is another city altogether (an idea which some fans have raised to explain how the Daleks could all be destroyed in their debut, and yet still be around later). If this is the case, then the Doctor can't possibly know about the secret tunnel entrance - unless there has been some unseen adventure on Skaro in the interim.

We have to question why, if the Daleks know about the tunnel (and they do, as they send the fake Omega along it) it isn't properly guarded.

Trivia:

• After a gradual decline, the ratings show a massive improvement this week - up 1.7 million viewers. The appreciation figure drops below 50, however.
• The repeat screening was at 5.15pm on Saturday 27th July 1968, when it was watched by an audience of 4.2 million - the lowest of the run - but with a higher AI of 51.
• When Russell T Davies introduced a new Emperor Dalek in Parting of the Ways, he had it served by black-domed versions of the standard bronze Daleks as a nod to this story. There was also a visual clue to the Emperor in the previous episode as we see the Controller of the Game Station permanently wired into its systems, and there's a familiar hexagonal pattern left behind when she gets teleported away.
• A Black Dalek was amongst the inmates of the Asylum of the Daleks, not that you could actually spot it very well. Matt Smith and Karen Gillan actually claimed it as their favourite of the classic models and were photographed with it.
• Radio Times this week featured a piece on Marius Goring, to tie in with the broadcast of this sixth episode:

• There is a recreation of the Dalek Emperor on display at the Adventures in Time and Space exhibition in Peterborough's art gallery and museum, running to October 2025.

• And a Black Dalek was a regular fixture of the Doctor Who Experience throughout its run. Presumably this was the prop which, dirtied down, had featured in Asylum of the Daleks...

Inspirations: The Caretaker

Writer Gareth Roberts tended to be a two-trick pony when it came to his stories for Doctor Who. His first contributions revolved around a famous literary figure and peppered the dialogue with references to their work. 

His other gimmick was to have the Doctor placed into what was for him an unfamiliar domestic setting to see how he would cope. First he used an old DWM comic strip idea and had the Doctor forced to share a flat with someone in The Lodger. In this the Doctor also temporarily held down a job - covering for Craig Owens when he fell ill. Then he gave us a sequel to that story - Closing Time - but concentrated more on the Doctor-gets-a-job angle by having him gain a position at a department store.

Here, he gives us another Doctor-gets-a-job scenario, but this time it's complicated by being at the same place where his companion works - Coal Hill School - and she's started a romance with a colleague there.

The Doctor has gone undercover in a school once before, in order to investigate alien activity, in 2006's School Reunion.

Coal Hill School was the second location seen in the series back on 23rd November 1963, in An Unearthly Child. It was where the Doctor's granddaughter Susan was a pupil, who aroused the curiosity of teachers Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright.

(An earlier idea for the very first story would have been set entirely within the school, with the Doctor and companions shrunk to an inch in height).

Coal Hill School later became a base of operations for the Imperial faction of Daleks as they sought the Hand of Omega, in Remembrance of the Daleks. (The Doctor was mistaken for a potential caretaker in that story).

Missing two years of work did not seen to harm Ian's job prospects as by 2013 he was Chairman of the Board of Governors of the school, as we see in The Day of the Doctor. This was also when we learned that Clara Oswald was now working there as a teacher.

Following Series 9, the school would actually form the principal location for an entire spin-off series - Class. The Twelfth Doctor made an appearance in the opening episode, and it was explained that all that time travel activity back in 1963 had created a weak point in space and time, a bit like the Cardiff Rift, that allowed alien menaces to slip through. By this time the Board of Governors were actually villains, so presumably Ian had by now retired. 

The events of Attack of the Cybermen in the district had added to this phenomenon.

Series 8 features a few visits to the school, but only this episode really concentrates on it. Danny Pink was first introduced in Into The Dalek, and developed as a semi-regular character designed to highlight the conflicting pressures on Clara - a stable home life with a partner, as opposed to the excitement and danger of travelling in the TARDIS with the Doctor.

She attempted to keep these two lives separate - especially when she learned that the Doctor hated soldiers (Danny being ex-army). The Caretaker sees the Doctor and he finding out the truth about each other.

A whole year has passed since the Dalek episode, as Danny was new to the school then, but a parent talks of him here as having been in post since the previous year.

Another significant character in this episode is Courtney Woods, a disruptive schoolgirl first introduced in a flashback sequence in Deep Breath, where she was seen to be the bane of Clara's professional life.

She is there mainly for some comic relief scenes with the Doctor.

When the Doctor discovers from her that that Clara has a boyfriend amongst the teachers, he automatically assumes it is Adrian, the one who wears a bow tie - as his previous incarnation was wont to do.

We also get another appearance by the strange woman seemingly welcoming the recently deceased into some sort of Afterlife - in this instance a policeman who has been killed by the Skovox Blitzer.

The design of this robot was based on Babyface, from Toy Story (1995). This had the head of a doll on a spider-like mechanical body.

The Doctor is heard to whistle part of the Pink Floyd song Another Brick in the Wall (1979), its lyrics tying in with the school setting -  "We don't need no education... / Hey, teacher, leave them kids alone..." etc.

The Doctor and Clara argue over the dating of Jane Austin's Pride and Prejudice. They are both right as she wrote it over the course of 1796 - 1797. (Coincidentally, Jenna Coleman would be seen on TV a few days after this was broadcast in an adaptation of Death Comes To Pemberley - a sequel to Austin's book).

The Head of the school was going to be female - a Miss Coburn, named after Anthony Coburn who wrote the episode which introduced the location. It was then decided to reuse the character already seen in Into The Dalek, Mr Armitage.

At one point the Doctor offers to take Clara to see some Fish People - potentially the Atlanteans ones from The Underwater Menace.

He also offers to take her to the 1814 Frost Fair on the Thames. We'll see him get there in Thin Ice, but River Song had also mentioned being taken to it by the Eleventh Doctor, where she got to see Stevie Wonder perform.

The Doctor had previously assumed the job - and title - of Caretaker in The Doctor, The Widow and the Wardrobe.

Next time: David Niven named his 1971 memoir The Moon's A Balloon. He was wrong. It's an egg...

Story 302: Wild Blue Yonder

In which the Doctor and Donna briefly meet Isaac Newton, before the TARDIS materialises on board a vast spacecraft...

Arriving up a tree in an orchard in the year 1666, the Doctor and Donna accidentally cause Newton to name the force he has just defined as "Mavity".

The TARDIS then arrives in a spaceship and the Doctor and Donna are forced to evacuate it, due to the damage resulting from her having spilled coffee into the console. For some reason, the TARDIS has blasted out some of the old wartime tune Wild Blue Yonder. The Doctor inserts his sonic screwdriver into the ship's lock, in order to trigger its automatic repair systems. They are just setting off to explore when it suddenly dematerialises, the Doctor having forgotten to override the Hostile Action Displacement System.

They are now stranded on this mysterious spacecraft until it comes back for them, and they need to discover what is so dangerous about it that the HADS was activated.

They find themselves in a long corridor. Random, alien, words are broadcast from a loudspeaker system, and each time they hear these parts of the architectural configuration of the corridor alter.

They come across a small robot, which at first appears stationery but is in actual fact merely moving very, very slowly.

They find a computer centre and the Doctor decides to carry out some adjustments. The pair split up to work in different rooms.

Donna notices a drop in temperature, and tells the Doctor of her worries about her family should they not be able to get back home. The Doctor's only response is to comment that his arms are too long, and she is shocked to see that his hands have grown huge and are dragging on the ground.

This is not the Doctor. He, meanwhile, has discovered that he has not been talking to the real Donna, as her limbs are also out of proportion.

The real travellers are reunited and run out into the corridor where clamber into a buggy. The doppelgangers - creatures who identify as the "Not-Things" who originate in the region outside the spaceship - give chase but cannot control their bodies. They grow to enormous size and get jammed in the corridor.

The Doctor and Donna reach the bridge and discover only a void outside. They are at the very edge of the universe, and the Doctor realises that the Not-Things must come from another dimension that lies beyond this one. They hear a strange knocking sound. The random words continue to be announced.

Opening a screen, they see the corpse of the ship's pilot hanging in the void, attached to a cable which causes it to knock against the hull as it orbits the vessel. 

The Not-Things attempt to get in, their bodies attempting to normalise - as though acclimatising themselves. The Doctor knows that they wish to copy then replace them both.

He finally works out what is going on here. The ship's captain killed themselves to prevent itself from being duplicated and replaced, but first set the craft to self destruct. It did this in slow-motion so that the Not-Things would not realise what was going on. The random words are really a countdown, and the robot is slowly moving towards the trigger mechanism.

The Not-Things now have the memories and intelligence of the Doctor and Donna, and so now also know what is about to happen.

The TARDIS returns, and the Doctor and Donna must race to towards it before the alien creatures can reach it first. The Not-Doctor is destroyed as the spaceship begins to blow apart. The Doctor gets into the TARDIS but is confronted by two Donna Nobles, whom he cannot tell apart.

He initially rescues the Not-Donna but then realises his mistake and swaps the real one for the duplicate, which is left to perish on the disintegrating spacecraft.

The TARDIS materialises back in London, and on exiting they are met by Wilf. He warns them that something terrible has been happening since they left, and they see people fighting in the street as an aircraft crashes into the city...

Wild Blue Yonder was written by Russell T Davies, and was first broadcast on Saturday 2nd December 2023. It is the second of the three 60th Anniversary Specials.

Apart from the rather pointless opening sequence with Newton, it is a two-hander for the most part, with David Tennant and Catherine Tate playing both the Doctor and Donna and their Not-Thing doppelgangers. We then get a brief appearance from Bernard Cribbins as Wilf at the conclusion, setting up the events for the final Special. Sadly this was to be his last screen role, and it is his only appearance in the trio of episodes. Filming took place at Camden Market in London, at the same time that the scenes for The Star Beast were recorded.

The episode was dedicated to him.

As with a lot of RTD2's material since taking back the series, the roots are showing. In parts this resembles Midnight, and one is strongly reminded of the film Event Horizon - described at the time as a haunted house movie in space - and John Carpenter's The Thing (alien creature attempting to mimic but getting it wrong). The robot closely resembles the cinema version of Marvin the Paranoid Android.

When it came to advance publicity for the Specials, this concentrated only on the first and last of them. We knew that the first was a screen adaptation of the classic Doctor Who Weekly comic strip, and that the third would see the return of the Toymaker. The lack of any information about this middle episode resulted in all manner of speculation from fans - mainly revolving around a guest appearance by one or more previous incarnations of the Doctor, or the return of a popular monster.

The fact that it failed to deliver either, and proved to be a self-contained bottle-episode, did not go down well at all and it is regarded as the weakest of the three. As I said at the time in my review, it is unfair to blame an episode for not being something which it never once claimed to be.

However, there wasn't any reason for RTD2 to have withheld information about the episode. Scenes of the robot and the spacecraft could have been shown as part of the trailers without spoiling the reveal that that Doctor and Donna at one point are speaking to copies of each other.

Regarding that Isaac Newton sequence... The series long ago gave up on even trying to be educational. 

RTD2 clearly thought that getting the nation's schoolkids to start saying "Mavity" instead of "Gravity" would be a "hoot ", but the problem is that the schoolkids had long since given up on the series.

They've tried to prolong the "joke" but it quickly became an irritation.

The colour-blind casting of Nathaniel Curtis as the great scientist did not go down very well with many - partly through a general anti-wokeness viewpoint but also from those who simply think that real historical figures shouldn't be shown to be something which they were not. I tend towards the latter, on the grounds that it gives a skewed picture of history to children and glosses over the problems of the past. It's not as if we don't know what Newton looked like.

This sequence also features the first appearance in the series of Susan Twist, playing Newton's housekeeper, Mrs Merrydew. Naturally, this became part of the whole story arc for Series 14, as Twist appeared as different people across space and time.

Overall, it's actually a great little episode, held together by the two stars who get to play against each other - and themselves - without the distraction of lots of other characters. Dark and creepy for the most part, that unfunny Newton segment feels tacked on and totally out of place. It's a pity that they couldn't have found a better way for the Doctor to know who the real Donna was. On screen, it's something stupid like the length of a bone, but it would have been far more satisfying had it been something to do with her as an individual which provided the clue.

Things you might like to know:

• RTD2 did originally intend for an old Doctor appearance - the First. However, as time went by he elected to simplify the story so that it concentrated solely on the two stars.
• Not only does the Newton sequence spoil the continuity of the TARDIS initially blowing up with the coffee spill, and the reason for their hurried evacuation of it on the spaceship, but it also contradicts the Fourth Doctor's description of his meeting with him.
• RTD2 had written a lot more material for Wilf, including scenes for The Giggle, but it quickly became apparent that his involvement with the shoot would have to be kept to a minimum. He does feature briefly in the following episode, but it is a body double and some old dialogue of his that is heard.
• In an interview, RTD2 spoke of this episode as a sort of homage to the Season 15 story Underworld, in that much of it was filmed against today's version of CSO, green screen.
• DWM 597 played along with the secrecy for this episode by redacting three of the guest artists. Of these, only Wilf's appearance might have been any kind of spoiler. The other names were those of Curtis and Twist.
• Wild Blue Yonder is another name for a song properly titled The U.S. Air Force - adopted as their anthem by that service in the late 1940's.
• One of those fan rumours was that this episode would be set within the damaged TARDIS, where the Doctor and Donna would be threatened by evil versions of the Eleventh and Twelfth Doctors - this despite Capaldi bluntly stating that he had no desire to return to the series.
• The HADS was first introduced in The Krotons.
• The robot, nicknamed "Jimbo" was operated as a puppet, and not as a man in a costume.
• The spaceship decor contains some hoof-shaped motifs, tying in with the equine nature of the dead captain.
• The Doctor invokes the old superstition that vampires and other supernatural entities can't pass a line of salt (see the TV series Supernatural for a lot of this). This invocation of a superstition is apparently the trigger for him to be plagued by the Toymaker and various other deities over the course of the next two series.

Episode 167: The Evil of the Daleks (5)

Synopsis:

Jamie and Kemel have reached the gallery where Victoria's room is located. They see a Dalek enter the great hall below them, and the door opens to reveal a second...

Throwing a rope around the emerging Dalek, they cause it to tumble through the railing so that it crashes onto the floor below.

Jamie introduces himself to Victoria, who is delighted to see Kemel again.

The Doctor is dining in the trophy room of the mansion when Terrall walks in. He offers him food and wine but he declines, and the Doctor points out that he has never seen him eat or drink since he came into the house, nor, apparently, has Waterfield. Terrall becomes defensive then threatening, brandishing a sword in his direction.

However, the Doctor notices that in his hands it appears to have become magnetised and deduces that his body must contain a lot of electricity.

They are interrupted by the arrival of Waterfield who has come to fetch the Doctor. After they have gone, Terrall attempts to take some wine, but finds it impossible to drink.

A powerful voice in his head commands him to obey...

Jamie and Kemel have barricaded themselves in - but this leaves them trapped. Jamie questions Victoria as to how she came to be abducted, but she can only recall falling into a deep sleep.

It transpires that Maxtible has hypnotic skills, as he is currently using them on Mollie to make her forget having heard Victoria's voice coming from the south wing.

Terrall is observing and questions him about the progress of the Dalek experiment. Maxtible admits that he has come close to disposing of Waterfield, feeling his usefulness is over, but Terrall is continuing to have conflicting thoughts. The voice commands him to obey Maxtible, who orders that Terrall bring Victoria to him.

In the laboratory, the "Human Factor" has been downloaded into three small positronic circuits which are then installed into the brains of the three dormant Daleks which were sent from Skaro.

Waterfield tries to talk the Doctor into refusing to co-operate further as it will make the Daleks invincible, but he angrily rounds on him - pointing out how he has been instrumental in them being in this predicament. Waterfield even considers harming the Doctor, but this is noticed and the Doctor reminds him that his daughter is currently safe with Jamie. 

The Daleks attempt to break into the room where Jamie, Kemel and Victoria are located. Jamie is suspicious as to how one of the Daleks got into the room earlier and, whilst they are distracted at the door, Terrall emerges from a panel leading to a secret passageway and abducts Victoria.

Realising what has happened, the two men quickly search for the panel and find it as the Daleks break in.

They split up to look for Victoria and Jamie finds himself in the trophy room where Terrall is waiting, sword in hand. Jamie arms himself and the two men fight.

Ruth rushes in and her presence causes Terrall to break free of the mental influence which has been commanding him. The Doctor arrives and finds a small black box attached to his neck - a device which has been controlling his actions. Removing it, Terrall is able to warn the Doctor about the Daleks.

The Doctor has Ruth take Terrall away from the house with Mollie.

Kemel emerges from the passage by the laboratory where he finds an unconscious Victoria. A Dalek appears and orders him to pick her up and carry her into the mirrored time cabinet.

The Doctor, Jamie and Waterfield enter after they have gone. Jamie is once again furious with the Doctor, believing him to have no feelings for anyone. Victoria is in peril once again. He states that once this is all over he will leave.

They are interrupted by the emergence of the three Daleks from their packing cases, just as Maxtible arrives. They begin pushing the Doctor around the room. He realises they are playing with him.

He is pleasantly surprised to find that the trio of Daleks have adopted a playful friendliness - taking him for a ride as they play at "trains".

A bemused Maxtible looks on...

Data:

Written by David Whitaker

Recorded: Saturday 10th June - Lime Grove Studio D

First broadcast: 5.45pm, Saturday 17th June 1967

Ratings: 5.1 million / AI 53

VFX: Michealjohn Harris & Peter Day

Designer: Chris Thompson

Director: Derek Martinus

Critique:

David Whitaker gave this episode the title "The Human Factor".

The episode opens with the remainder of the filming which took place at Grim's Dyke on Tuesday 25th April, involving scenes around the minstrels gallery and great hall. 

Some filming also took place at Ealing on Thursday 27th - model shots for the sequence where the Dalek is propelled from the gallery.

Friday 9th June saw Peter Hawkins record more Dalek voices for the later episodes of the serial.

John Scott Martin joined Gerald Taylor and Robert Jewell in studio on Saturday 10th June to operate a third Dalek prop, and Peter Diamond was on hand once more to arrange the sword fight between Frazer Hines and Gary Watson.

Special magnetised props were supplied by VFX which could be picked up by Terrall's sword, alerting the Doctor that his body contained static electricity.

Hawkins' Dalek vocal repeating the word "Obey" was overlaid on itself several times to provide the booming voice in Terrall's head.

It was decided that he would provide the vocals for Daleks Alpha and Omega, whilst Roy Skelton would voice Beta. Hawkins had provided all the Dalek voices for the story up until now. This story would mark Skelton's debut as a Dalek voice artist, and he would go on to take over from Hawkins, providing voices on most Dalek adventures right up until Comic Relief's The Curse of Fatal Death. 

The only scheduled recording break was just before the scene in which the Doctor and Waterfield argue in the laboratory over what they are about to.

Arthur Terrall gets a bit more to do this week rather than simply wander in and out of scenes being a bit confused about things. In hindsight we know that he is under the mental control of the Dalek Emperor, which makes you wonder why some of the things he has been contradictory about went against what the Emperor wanted - like preventing Jamie from undergoing his quest to save Victoria, which is what was required to ascertain the "Human Factor". If this contradictory behaviour is supposed to be due to him fighting against his mental conditioning, then it hasn't been terribly clear, and viewers at the time would have been none the wiser.

As far as we can see, the Doctor has only met Terrall briefly once, in the stables at the beginning of Episode 3, so we have to ask how he comes to know that the man hasn't been eating or drinking lately. He states that Waterfield has also noticed this, yet the Doctor and Waterfield have never once mentioned him, let alone had a conversation about him.

The lengthy sequence with Maxtible hypnotising Mollie is pointless, as the character is about to exit the story anyway and the experiment is pretty much over by this stage. Presumably this is present just to give Marius Goring something to do this week.

Terrall, Mollie and, especially, Ruth have contributed little to the story so far, beyond helping pad it up to 7 episodes, and they are hastily written out here.

At one point, whilst they are arguing together in the laboratory, Waterfield tells the Doctor that their actions may lead to the destruction of an entire race. The Doctor says that it may well come to that. Of course, Waterfield is fearing for the human race, but it foreshadows the (apparent) fate of the Daleks at the conclusion of the story.

This episode contains one of the Second Doctor's most memorable lines. After Terrall has told him that he assumes him to be "a keen student of human nature", the Doctor replies:

"No Mister Terrall. I am not a student of human nature. I am a professor of a far wider academy, of which human nature is merely a part. All forms of life interest me".

Trivia:

• The ratings continue to slip away, hovering just above the 5 million mark - the lowest they'll go for this story.
• At 25' 23" this is the longest of the 7 episodes.
• The episode was repeated on Saturday 20th July 1968 at 5.15pm, when it was seen by an audience of 5.1 million - the same number as watched first time round - and with an appreciation index of 50.
• The Doctor refers to the sword which Terrall is wielding as being Circassian. Circassia is a region of the northern Caucasus which was involved in a notorious war with the Russian Empire, the conflict running for over a century (1763 - 1864). The Russians targeted civilians throughout, an estimated 3.5 million perishing, with many others forcibly resettled to the Ottoman Empire. Many ethnic Circassians now live in Turkey and Israel.
• Around the time he was commissioned to write this story, Whitaker was also working on a movie called Attack on the Iron Coast. This WWII movie starred Lloyd Bridges and Andrew Keir and was released in 1968 - in UK cinemas on a double bill with The Beatles' Yellow Submarine. Cast members with a Doctor Who connection included Maurice Denham, Mark Eden and Glyn Owen.

The Art of... The Evil of the Daleks

For many years a number of Doctor Who stories remained to be novelised. Three writers were responsible for this - Eric Saward, Douglas Adams and Terry Nation. In the case of the latter, Nation had never novelised any of his stories anyway, content to allow Terrance Dicks to cover them once the Target imprint started up, but he was in no rush to see anyone work on any of the David Whitaker scripted stories. 

Apparently this was due to his dislike of them, as he felt that Whitaker never handled his creations properly. He was especially annoyed at the introduction of a Dalek Emperor, as well as anything which did not show the creatures as anything other than ruthless and threatening. In the case of The Evil of the Daleks, he really did not like the three humanised Daleks - Alpha, Beta and Omega.

Nation would eventually allow the outstanding Dalek stories to be novelised, and selected John Peel to do so. Peel had emigrated to the USA from the UK and was very active in organised fandom, including editing and contributing to a number of fanzine publications. He got to know Nation after arranging a convention appearance and the two went on to become friends.

The novel Doctor Who - The Evil of the Daleks was published in 1993 with a cover by Alister Pearson.

For his artwork, the Doctor derives from a publicity shot from The Ice Warriors, whilst the black-domed Dalek comes from a shot of the Gold Dalek in Day of the Daleks.

The book uses the same chapter heading - "The Net Tightens..." - for both Chapters 2 and 7. Despite coming out after the main Target range had finished, it was given a series book number.

Peel included a prologue featuring the Emperor.

The story was first released in audio form on double cassette. This comprised an abridged version of the soundtrack with narration by Tom Baker, in character as the Fourth Doctor remembering this old adventure. The Dalek is clearly the wrong kind for this story, coming as it does from The Dalek Invasion of Earth, whilst the Troughton image was taken during a later season.

This is the only release for the story in any format not to highlight the distinctive Emperor Dalek somewhere on its cover.

This was released in July 1992. The scenes in The Tricolour coffee bar were omitted as the BBC elected to avoid the expense of music clearances.

The soundtrack was remastered and released in unabridged form on CD in November 2003, this time narrated by Frazer Hines. This had the usual photomontage cover, with images appropriate to the story other than the Troughton publicity portrait which derives from the early days of his tenure.

This one also makes use of the publicity shots taken at Grim's Dyke of Hines and Watling posing with a Dalek.

Once again there was an issue with the music in the coffee bar sequences. Whilst The Seekers song could be cleared, the Beatles track could not. Rather than omit the scene, a track by Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich - Hold Tight - was used.

The third and most recent audio release of the soundtrack came in July 2019, when the story arrived on vinyl from Demon Records. This also went for a striking image of the climactic scenes from the final episode. (In the same way that some people accuse The War Games of being nine episodes waiting for the Time Lords to show up, so critics of The Evil of the Daleks will claim it's six episodes of running around waiting for the big battle). On the rear and inside we have other images relating to the final episode.

The vinyl pattern is described by the company as "Orange & Black Haze (Skaro Swirl)".

The surviving second episode of The Evil of the Daleks was released on VHS as part of the Daleks - The Early Years tape, hosted by Peter Davison, and later on DVD as part of the Lost in Time set.

The orphan episode was also included when the story was released in animated form on DVD and Blu-ray in September 2021. The 7 instalments could be viewed either in colour or in B&W. The Tom Baker-narrated audiobook was included as an extra. Unfortunately, the animation is in the usual very basic style, with characters possessing unfeasibly long arms. Likenesses are okay and the Daleks themselves always come across well in animation. 

As usual, a steelbook version was also available:

As you will no doubt be aware, The Evil of the Daleks was repeated in the summer of 1968, and this screening was made to form part of the on-going series narrative by having the Doctor recall these events for the benefit of Zoe at the conclusion to The Wheel in Space, to give her an idea of what she is letting herself in for.

In 2023 Frazer Hines authored a new novelisation of The Evil of the Daleks - the version being related to Zoe by the Doctor, so basically the book of the repeat screening.

The cover design was by Lee Binding, and naturally Jamie takes centre stage as it is written from his perspective. 

Free copies of this new iteration of the story were given away the following year - with an inferior new cover - by Doctor Who Magazine (Issue 609). This also used the new 60th Anniversary version of the logo, and tied in with a number of newer stories being released as Target books. The reason for my dislike of the cover? The Doctor's head and hand are totally out of proportion to his body. It's like a really bad photoshop.

Whilst the cover only credits Hines as writer, inside the credit is shared between him and Mike Tucker & Steve Cole. It contradicts the earlier Peel novelisation by giving Kemel a different origins story.

Finally, prior to the animated DVD release, the missing story was represented on the movie database site (moviedb) with a strikingly colourful photomontage image.

Season 13 - The Collection

Tom Baker's highly regarded second season is the next to be released as part of the Blu-ray Collection sets. No date so far but possibly September.

Extras include new CGI on Terror of the Zygons and new HD versions of the omnibuses of Pyramids of Mars and The Brain of Morbius, as well as that recent Tales of the TARDIS of the former.

There's also a new edit of The Seeds of Doom.

"In Conversation" this time is Graeme Harper, and there's a documentary on Ian Marter.

Masks & Models @ Peterborough

A mixed bag of miscellaneous models, masks and other assorted items this time - though they are themed by coming from just two design sources.

These items are mostly to be found between the two main costume / prop rooms at Peterborough. Most are original models, the first few provided by Mat Irvine, including props from The Face of Evil and The Stones of Blood on which he was the VFX designer. (I've previously shown images of models from one of his other stories - Warriors of the Deep).

From The Face of Evil we get the mountain carved with the Doctor's features - the face of the title - as well as the Tesh spaceship. We also get a couple of weapons - the small handgun as well as the larger laser cannon wielded by Neeva.

From The Stones of Blood we have the Hyperspace projector device and the model of the convict spaceship.

Other items from Mr Irvine include one of his earliest model builds - the Master's prison ship from Frontier in Space:

And we also get "Boris the Spider" and the blue Metebelis crystal from Planet of the Spiders:

As an arachnophobe I found it really creepy to be anywhere near this, even though you know it's only a model and it's behind glass.

The biggest and most impressive model on display is the massive Time Lord space station from Trial of a Time Lord:

Some items from the McCoy era to end this post on, starting with Haemovores from The Curse of Fenric. These come courtesy of designers Sue Moore and Stephen Mansfield:

Next is the melting head of Kane from Dragonfire:

Then, from The Happiness Patrol we have Fifi:

And finally, for now, the Destroyer from Battlefield:

I'll post just one more photo selection from the exhibition, covering the later Cybermen.

What I'll have shown in this series is just a selection of the items on display. There are a lot more masks, models and costumes, and it is claimed that some other items will be added later in the summer - plus there are supposed to be some events planned around the exhibition as well. It's only £5 to enter, and Peterborough itself is well worth visiting if you've never been. (The cathedral contains the burial place of Catherine of Aragon, Henry VIII's first wife, as well as the location where the body of Mary Queen of Scots was first deposited. Her son had it moved to Westminster Abbey on being crowned James I of England).

I'll be back in London at the end of July, and am already planning another day trip...