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| A Dalek is attacked by hostile natives. |
4 episodes. Running Time: Approx. 98 minutes. Written by: Terry Nation. Directed by: Michael Briant. Produced by: Barry Letts.
THE PLOT:
A sudden power drain forces the TARDIS to materialize on Exxilon, a barren world whose surviving population has devolved to a primitive state. The advanced city nearby was once the pinnacle of their civilization, but they now worship it as a god, even making sacrifices to appease it.
The Doctor and Sarah aren't the only ones trapped. A human Marine Space Corps vessel was dispatched to mine the rare mineral parrinium for the treatment of a plague afflicting the outer colonies. Also marooned by the power drain, the crew has found itself hunted by the natives. A third party has also come, a race the Doctor is all too familiar with:
The Daleks!
Also without power, the Daleks reluctantly agree to work with the humans until they can restore power. But the Daleks are too resourceful to remain helpless for long...
CHARACTERS:
The Doctor: His pragmatism is strongly shown in this story. He proposes the truce with the Daleks, even knowing that they can't be trusted, because working with them will increase the humans' chances of survival. Later, when they're attacked by the natives, he refuses to allow scientist Jill Tarrant (Joy Harrison) to get herself killed in a pointless attempt to retrieve a dead man's body. The natives surround them to take them prisoner, and he surrenders - the only choice, he notes, "when the only alternative to living is dying."
Sarah Jane Smith: This is the first story to write her more or less as "standard Doctor Who companion," but Elisabeth Sladen still boosts the material. When she meets Exxilon rebel Bellal (Arnold Yarrow), her body language shows wariness even after he's reassured her that he's friendly. It's only when she learns that the Doctor is in imminent danger that she forgets her fear and grabs onto Bellal's arm to beg for help. There are two scenes in which Sarah complains to the Doctor, and in both moments Sladen punctuates the line with a warm smile, which keeps the character from coming across as irritable.
Galloway: The first half makes Duncan Lamont's Galloway into almost a human Dalek, coldly willing to leave the Doctor and Sarah to their deaths. When the Daleks manage to jury-rig weapons to subdue the natives, they state that they will exterminate hostages until the Exxilons agree to their terms. Galloway approves: "That should bring them around to our way of thinking." He defends this to Tarrant, dismissing the Exxilons as primitives whose lives don't matter. Alas, instead of building on this, the story makes him as generic as the other crew members in the second half, with his former amorality all but forgotten.
Bellal: One of several Exxilons who are considered outcasts because they do not worship the city. When the Doctor admires the city, Bellal tells him that "to us, it is evil." He basically acts as the Doctor's companion when he takes him to the city in Parts Three and Four. As they navigate through a series of traps and puzzles that wouldn't be out of place in a 1990s LucasArts adventure game, he admits that he's afraid, but that there's no choice but to go on.
Daleks: Though they reach an agreement with the Doctor and the humans, they have no interest in honoring it. They hide their true numbers, making sure that no more than four Daleks are visible to the humans at any point while the rest lurk in the ship. Their ingenuity allows them to create primitive projectile weapons in place of their usual death rays - and they test their targeting on miniature TARDIS models, which is an amusing touch. Part Two is the only episode in which they are particularly resourceful, though, with the second half of the story making them appear more ineffectual than they've been since The Chase.
THOUGHTS:
OK, so is the Episode Three cliffhanger the most arbitrary one ever? As the Doctor and Bellal progress through the maze that is the Exxilon city, the Doctor stops Bellal from moving forward, urgently telling him, "Don't move!" Then the camera cuts to a dramatic shot of... a pattern on the floor. At which point the credits roll. I have to admit, I about burst out laughing.
Unsurprisingly, this was not the intended cliffhanger. A glance at the Doctor Who Wiki reveals that the episode was meant to end a few minutes earlier, with the Doctor trying to solve a puzzle while the Daleks are on the verge of entering. Part Three underran, and so the cliffhanger was moved, giving birth to The Floor Mural of Doom.
I would rate Death to the Daleks as the weakest of Pertwee's three Dalek stories. The cleverest conceits are the reluctant team up between Doctor and Daleks and Galloway's Dalek-like qualities. Both of these are abandoned after Episode Two, and the rest of the plot boils down to a quick-fire tour of Dalek clichés: Hostages, slave labor, self-destructing upon failure, and lots of shouting about exterminating without actually doing it. Writer Terry Nation seems less interested in his signature creations than in the Exxilon city and the divergent native factions, leaving his most famous creations feeling more than a little tacked on.
This serial makes up for some of its script weaknesses by being rather well-made. Lighting is dim in underground scenes, helping to make aliens and pieces of technology look less fake and more threatening than they otherwise might. Action scenes benefit from slight camera tilts, close shots, and (by standards of the time) rapid cuts. Unlike Invasion of the Dinosaurs, in which production decisions conspired to make the effects look as bad as possible, the choices made in this story result in what should be a dreary "quarry runaround" looking much better than it has any right to.
The first episode is the best one. There's some decent atmosphere as the Doctor and Sarah find themselves on this strange planet, and there's a building sense of mystery. The story gets weaker as it goes along, but it remains generally well-paced. Scenes of the Doctor solving logic puzzles inside the Exxilon city are silly and don't amount to much (the power drain is solved not by the trip into the city, but by an explosive planted in a subplot)... but I'll still admit to enjoying it.
OVERALL:
Death to the Daleks isn't what I'd call "good." Several elements aren't exploited to their dramatic potential, and plot turns sometimes end in narrative dead ends. The Daleks are at their most generic, and it's easy enough to see why a new direction was found for their next appearance.
Each of Pertwee's Dalek stories is weaker than the one before. This one feels more than a little threadbare, devolving too rapidly into a compendium of Dalek clichés. Still, it at least moves quickly from one cliché to the next, and it's generally well made.
I can't exactly recommend it, but I didn't mind watching it. I can certainly think of worse ways to burn off 100 minutes.
Overall Rating: 5/10.
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Next Story: The Monster of Peladon
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