Happy 60th Birthday, Daleks

60 years ago today we got our very first glimpse of a Dalek, It was only the end of the plunger, menacing Barbara (wielded by future Doctor Who director Michael Ferguson). We had to wait another week before we got to see the full effect of what are now an iconic design (which has been meddled with a few times since - always unsuccessfully).

The BBC have released the covers for the Blu-ray and Steelbook versions of the colourised first story, due out 12th February.

Inspirations: Vincent and the Doctor

 

Vincent and the Doctor is this series' "proper" celebrity historical. Victory of the Daleks had included Winston Churchill, but his wasn't essential to the plot. We could have seen the Ironsides already deployed at any WWII military establishment.

This story can only work with the inclusion of Vincent Van Gogh at this specific point in his life - just a few weeks before his suicide.

The Dutch painter (1853 - 1890) commands vast amounts of money for his works today, but famously only ever sold a single painting during his short, turbulent lifetime.

A number of his paintings are visually referenced in the episode:

It opens with Van Gogh painting Wheatfield With Crows (July 1890).

The Doctor and Amy examine The Church at Auvers (June 1890) when they spot the Krafayis lurking in the window.

Vincent is found at the café on the terrace of the Place du Forum, Arles - subject of Café Terrace At Night (1888).

We see him paint over one of his many self-portraits.

His bedroom looks like Bedroom in Arles (also known simply as The Bedroom) (1888).

(Suffering an initial touch of writers' block, Curtis rearranged the furniture in a spare room whilst on holiday in Italy to resemble this painting - which gave him the impetus to get started).

Amy knows he painted lots of Sunflowers - and the joke is that he doesn't like them. She inspires him to paint them. Van Gogh produced two sets of sunflower paintings - the first in Paris in 1887 and the second in Arles the following year.

After the death of the Krafayis, the Doctor and Amy get to imagine the night sky as Vincent sees it - and it transforms into Starry Night (June 1889).

Other works can be seen in the background in his house and at the museum.

The working title for Richard Curtis' story was "The Eyes That See The Darkness" - based on a line from Don McLean's 1971 song about Van Gogh - Vincent (1971): "the eyes that know the darkness in my soul".

Being Curtis, Bill Nighy features. He has appeared in a number of his films, including Love Actually, About Time, and The Boat That Rocked.

Curtis' movies and TV episodes are famous for tugging the heartstrings, and his Doctor Who story is no exception to his style.

Neglected in his own lifetime, and suffering from crippling emotional health problems, Van Gogh gets to see how both he and his work are appreciated when taken to the Musee D'Orsay in Paris in the present day.

(Though wouldn't it have made more sense to take him to his very own museum in Amsterdam?).

After seeing the First Doctor on his library card a few weeks ago, we now see his device depict his face as Hartnell and then Troughton when he tests it on himself.

The accordion player at the café is playing a version of Murray Gold's I Am The Doctor. 

Chances by Athlete - the music from the gallery scene - was selected by Matt Smith as it was one of his favourite songs at the time.

Vincent hearing Scots as Dutch is part of a running joke about the TARDIS translation system - e.g. Latin sounding Celtic. It's an in-joke as well since Karen Gillan and Tony Curran are both Scots.

Some have seen the shape of the tree next to the TARDIS landing site at the end of the episode as mirroring the crack in time.

Next time: Gareth Roberts adapts one of the comic strips. There's a lot of it about...

Episode 96: Coronas of the Sun

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.

Synopsis:

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.

Trivia:

• 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:

What's Wrong With... The Stones of Blood

The opening sequence was only recorded after Graham Williams vetoed a birthday scene in the TARDIS - this being the time of the series' 15th Anniversary, and 100th story. It would have been a nice little scene, with the Doctor pleased to accept from Romana a new scarf, exactly the same as his old one.

Instead we get a recap of the Key to Time set-up. The all-powerful McGuffin appears to be kept in an old fridge in a plain black room. It all looks very cheap.

David Fisher is the worst writer of the season for integrating the Key into his narrative. The opening scene would have been the work of Anthony Read. The segment turns up right at the end, just as though it were simply an afterthought.

Why has it taken this long for Romana to ask about the background to their mission? Surely knowing of the threat from the Black Guardian and his agents would be something that she ought to have been warned about.

Why does Cessair make do with sharing a little cottage when she could continue to own the big mansion?

If it's because she's in a Sapphic relationship with Prof. Rumford, as certain sections of fandom like to think, then couldn't they share the Hall instead?

The Druidic cult is introduced as followers of the Cailleach - who is being impersonated by Vivien Fey / Cessair. What she gets out of this we never know. 

Why continue this for centuries when she's an alien from an advanced civilisation. She doesn't get any benefit from the deception that we ever see.

Why does she kill De Vries? Is it because he was too stupid to recognise a solitary bicycle lamp approaching?

Having authority over the neighbourhood may have been useful in the past, when she was the acknowledged landowner, but these days she's just an ordinary local, staying in a cottage.

What is Cessair doing on Earth all this time anyway. She can flit back and forth to the spaceship anytime, and has the Great Seal of Diplos (really the Key segment) which surely has the power to get it moving again.

Not so much something wrong as personal opinion, but the story seems to lose its way once the action moves to the spaceship. Courtroom drama can be very static and dull, unless you're Hitchcock or Billy Wilder. The first half works better, having some of the Gothic trappings reminiscent of the Hinchcliffe-Holmes era.

Why does Romana ask why they can't see the spaceship, when the Doctor has already told her that it's in Hyperspace?

Why does the Doctor have a tea-towel covering his gun-like machine when he fills it? It wouldn't be to hide the fact that the crystals are already in the end piece would it...?

How would falling into the sea destroy an Ogri?

The legal code followed by the Megara is rather silly. Surely even logical machines would know that they had been prevented from carrying out their function by being locked up, and that releasing them isn't necessarily a crime - especially one punishable by death.

Why do they destroy the Ogri when it can't possibly harm them, and one of their responsibilities is to have them taken back to their own planet?

The Doctor dismissing them by simply waving the Seal at them is most unsatisfying. Its particular powers are ill-defined.

Cessair had it for thousands of years - so why didn't she use it to send the Megara away?

Beatrix Lehmann - the real life inspiration for Cabaret's Sally Bowles - struggles over her lines at times. But we love and forgive her for it.

Inspirations: The Hungry Earth / Cold Blood

This two-parter very much looks to the Pertwee era for its inspiration.

The Third Doctor was the first to encounter the Silurians, and then their marine cousins the Sea Devils (both of whom only ever returned once, opposite the Fifth in the underwhelming Warriors of the Deep). An appearance in the revived series was always on the cards - though we would have to wait another 12 years before we saw the Sea Devils again. 

The Hungry Earth / Cold Blood features another UK colony of Silurians, whose shelter has been disturbed by the activities of a scientific research project - the Wenley Moor cyclotron then, and a Welsh deep mining operation here.

In recognition of the naming controversy, the creatures are referred to as Homo Reptilia here. Their creator, Malcolm Hulke, had selected the name "Silurian" purely because it sounded good, and he thought - in the pre-internet era - that the era was a suitable one. He corrected this after the production team received letters about it, and had the Doctor rename them Eocenes in The Sea Devils.

Unfortunately this is also wrong. The Triassic to the Cretaceous were the eras of the large reptiles.

The Doctor attempts to prevent conflict and begin peaceful negotiations between humans and Silurians - just as he tried in the two Pertwee stories. As in The Silurians, one of the reptile people is a war-monger who undermines his efforts, and as in The Sea Devils, an aggressive human does the undermining.

This story at least ends with the Doctor setting up a future round of negotiations, when the time is right.

(Though there is no sign of human-Silurian co-existence in any future-set story).

An early design for the new Silurians was very much based on the originals. However, Steven Moffat decided to veto the third eye (supposedly because Davros already had a third eye that lit up...).

Sadly, we end up with a rather sub-Star Trek make-up. The masked versions have a similarity to Sea Devils.

The Silurian guns are based on the Sea Devils'.

Another obvious Pertwee inspiration is the energy dome which is set up to isolate the village. This clearly mirrors the heat barrier from The Daemons.

There's no trace of green ooze turning people in werewolves, but we've seen an experimental drilling project in Inferno.

A medical procedure harmless to humans but potentially fatal to a Time Lord, we have also seen in the Pertwee era - in The Mind of Evil.

Chris Chibnall was given the Silurians as a given, along with the idea of "we drill down to them - and they drill up to us". It was Moffat who decided that these Silurians should belong to another branch, to explain the changes.

In an interview, Chibnall described his intention as Passport to Pimlico meets Tremors. 

Passport to Pimlico (1949) is a classic Ealing Comedy, in which a district of London finds itself cut off, diplomatically and physically from the rest of the UK.

Tremors (1990) is a Kevin Bacon-starring comedy-horror about carnivorous subterranean creatures attacking an isolated desert town.

As far as the series' story arc is concerned, this was a key piece. At the conclusion we see the crooked smile crack, and Rory is first killed by Restac, then removed from time by it.

Amy forgets who he is.

The Doctor retrieves an item from it which proves to be debris from the TARDIS - revealing to him that his ship is at the heart of the explosion which is rippling throughout all of time and space.

Some aspects of this won't be resolved until Christmas 2013.

Next time: It's Richard Curtis, so expect to have your emotions manipulated. And Bill Nighy.

Sing-a-long-a-Goblin Song...

Radio Times have published the lyrics to The Goblin Song, which hit the top of the iTunes chart today. The song was released with the clip from the episode.

It's bizarre to say the least...

https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/sci-fi/doctor-who-the-goblin-song-lyrics/

Episode 95: Counter Plot

Synopsis:

Having just gunned down Bret Vyon, fellow agent Sara Kingdom orders her colleagues to kill his two accomplices...

The Doctor and Steven come across a chamber devoid of staff, which has an electronic device sitting at its centre. This includes a glass casing containing some white mice. As they investigate it, Sara enters the chamber and demands that they hand over the Core.

They are all unaware that their presence has been noted too late by scientists Froyn and Rhynmal, working in a nearby control room. They are using the chamber to conduct a matter transmission experiment. The object with the mice is to be transported across space to the far distant planet of Mira.

The experiment has already been triggered when their presence in the room is noted, and is too late to stop.

As the chamber seems to dissolve around them, the Doctor, Steven and Sara suddenly find themselves hurtling across the cosmos...

Karlton arrives and is furious with the two scientists. They explain about their experiment, stating that the choice of Mira was deliberate as travelling the great distance was one of their goals.

A signal comes through, indicating that the transmitter on the device is working. The mice have arrived safely, so Sara and the fugitives are probably alive too.

She, the Doctor and Steven have been deposited in the middle of an alien swamp. Before regaining consciousness, a curious invisible being examines the agent.

On Earth, Mavic Chen panics over what the Daleks will do when they learn he has failed to recapture the Core. Karlton reassures him, suggesting that he tell the Supreme that he sent the fugitives to Mira deliberately. Too much attention was being drawn to them at home, and Mira is close to Kembel - so they were sent there, with no means of escape, so that the Daleks could pick them up.

On Mira, the Doctor, Steven and Sara meet up. The young man has taken Sara's weapon. As they discuss what has happened, the agent admits that Bret Vyon had been her brother.

Initially insistent that she has done her duty, she begins to suspect that the Doctor may be telling her the truth about Chen.

The Doctor knows where they are by the presence of the Visians - Mira's invisible inhabitants. They are giant savage creatures, with clawed feet.

The Supreme despatches a pursuit ship to capture them. On landing, the Daleks locate the device sent from Earth and destroy it when they see that it is transmitting. They then come under attack by the Visians. 

Chen advises Karlton to assemble a force on the planet Venus, whilst he will return to Kembel - determined to be at the heart of things when the Core is retrieved.

The Doctor, Steven and Sara have sought shelter in a small cave. Looking out, they find themselves surrounded by the Dalek group.

The Doctor announces that the Daleks have finally defeated them...

Next episode: Coronas of the Sun

Data:

Written by: Terry Nation

Recorded: Friday 19th November 1965 - Television Centre Studio TC4

First broadcast: 5:50pm, Saturday 11th December 1965

Ratings: 9.9 million / AI 53

Designer: Raymond P Cusick

Director: Douglas Camfield

Additional cast: Bill Meilen (Froyn), John Herrington (Rhynmal)

Critique:

Counter Plot is the second of the three surviving episodes from The Daleks' Master Plan.

After being seen briefly in the previous instalment, this is Sara Kingdom's first full episode, and is the one wherein she begins to transition to companion status.

This only comes after she has admitted that her devotion to duty has led her to gun down her own brother. This leads to an obvious problem, in that it is difficult to see why she would be turned to the Doctor's cause so quickly. She simply accepts what he and Steven are telling her, even before the Daleks turn up to confirm it.

The episode allows us to see Maurice Browning's Karlton. He clearly sees himself as an Eminence Gris, the real power behind Chen - and we see how he is the most level-headed of the pair. Whilst Chen panics, he coolly works out a way to not only solve their problem, but turn it to their advantage.

It's a great pity that the character is completely forgotten about in the second half of the story. In all probability he will have taken control of the Solar System after Chen's demise. His "Second... next to you" clearly indicated his ambitions.

The visit to Mira was in Nation's very first draft, when he described it as the "Planet of Mists". This fogbound planet was to have savage invisible natives.

It had originally been intended as one of the locations visited by the TARDIS in The Chase, when it was called the planet Stygian.

For its cliff-hanger, the Doctor and his companions were supposed to be lured into stealing what they think to be an empty Dalek spaceship - only for it to be a trap. The vessel has been programmed to take them straight to Varga (as Kembel was then named).

A later draft called the Visians "Visilens", described as "the invisible spirits of evil". (They were also "Visions" at one point).

During production on The Baron, Nation and Dennis Spooner had co-written an episode entitled There's Someone Close Behind You, and this prompted the working title for this episode - "There's Something Just Behind You".

Nation left the matter transmission effects to the director, but suggested it looking as though they were slammed back against a wall. They should look to be in pain but unable to speak.

He described Mira as resembling the Florida Everglades, and specified that it should never be apparent whether it is day or night on the planet. It should just be dark and gloomy all the time.

A white mud, unique to Mira, was used by Steven to attack the Visians (presumably to make them visible). Nation also gave a description of the creatures for when they came to be seen - tentacled beings similar to upright Mire Beasts. The creatures also spoke in early versions.

Scientists Froyn and Rhynmal were originally named Frayn and Bosworth.

There were problems at Ealing on the day of filming Mira sequences - Wednesday 29th September. One of the Dalek props arrived late, and one of the Visian footprint effects failed to work (retained in the finished episode).

Some shots of the jungles were realised with model work.

During the rehearsal period, Sydney Newman phoned John Wiles to congratulate him on the opening episode of the serial.

A problem arose, however, as William Hartnell fell ill at the beginning of the week. The scripts for the next two episodes were amended to reduce the Doctor's role.

Barry Learoyd, head of the design department, raised a concern with Wiles that his people were not being given sufficient notice of scenic needs each week. This was in part due to the issues which Donald Tosh and Douglas Camfield were experiencing with the lack of workable scripts from Nation. They were having to (re)write much themselves.

Production this week moved to another studio at Television Centre (Studio 4). 

For the initial shots of the matter transmission process, Hartnell, Marsh and Purves had to stand and gurn and grimace for close-ups, which were then treated by whitening them out with a video effect.

Footage from Ealing of Marsh and Purves, bouncing in slow motion on a trampoline, showed them being transported through space. 

Hartnell would never have agreed to doing this, and wouldn't have been asked anyway, as he was very much playing up his age and ill health at this time.

The Mira set had dry ice supplied to show the low mist. Jean Marsh had thin wire laid under her loose-lying hair which when moved indicated the Visian examining her.

Clumps of bushes were moved using a similar technique with cotton twine tied around them. 

When the Daleks exterminate the Visians they are not seen to become visible in this episode, though they will be in the next.

The closing scene of the Doctor and companions in the cave entrance was recorded a second time at the end of the night, on film this time so that it could be played in as the reprise at the start of the following episode.

Counter Plot was cleared for wiping in August 1967. However, in July 1983 a 16mm film copy was recovered from the basement of a Mormon church in Wandsworth, South London, along with a copy of Escape Switch.

Trivia:

• The ratings continue to see-saw, with a half million increase and a two point rise in the appreciation figure.
• This episode was the subject of a BBC audience research report, wherein 201 respondents gave their feedback. Adults found it "bland" though children had enjoyed it.
• Counter-Plot was to have been the title of the sixth episode.
• The bald-headed Technix were originally called Technocrats, and were described as Karlton's 'Special Force'.
• We have to ask why Froyn and Rhynmal are working so far away from the transmission chamber, with no window to observe their experiment, or even a camera. They have also allowed the door to be left unlocked, so anyone can wander in - which is exactly what happens. It's an odd way to conduct such an important scientific experiment.
• John Herrington will return to the programme as the ill-fated engineer Jim Holden in Colony in Space.
• Bill Meilen worked right up until his death in 2006, latterly providing videogame voices - including Don Corleone in The Godfather. In 2004 he featured in the Battlestar Galactica reboot series.
• Had Nicholas Courtney won the role of King Richard in The Crusade, this would have been the second story in which he and Jean Marsh played siblings.
• Radio Times once again gave the serial an illustrated episode synopsis: