In so many ways, this is Doctor Who. Landing on an alien planet, exploring and getting into trouble… This is why the show is still going today. No time has passed for the travellers since last week’s escapade, but the tension between the Doctor and his travelling companions is already down to much more bearable levels - Of course Ian and Barbara are still scared and want to get home, but we also see Ian getting curious about the petrified forest, and touching scenes in the TARDIS as Barbara has a bonding moment with Susan (and, to an extent, the Doctor).
In fact, it’s surprising, particularly when compared to the last three episodes, just how much business The Dead Planet gets through in its 25-minute runtime. The TARDIS crew explore the forest, hang around in the ship and get to grips with the city, and not once does it feel rushed. If I hadn’t already known what the cliffhanger was (Ah, that cliffhanger. Not sure how effective it really is, but god bless Jacqueline Hill for the way she puts her all into overselling the floor manager waving a sink plunger around), I’d have been wondering if I’d missed the end of Episode 1 by mistake.
But the biggest positive about this episode is that the TARDIS crew - all four of them - are front and centre, driving the plot rather than reacting to it from the sidelines. This is what episode two of story one needed to be. Daleks or no Daleks, it’s a change without which the series wouldn’t have seen out the year, let alone the century.
The Daleks, then. They had to turn up sometime, especially on a DVD called The Daleks. I have a complete and total unashamed love for Skaro’s finest, and they’re on fine form from the beginning - the fact they’re so quick to paralyse Ian and threaten him with death just shows, in case there was any doubt, that they don’t mess around. There’s still one or two kinks to be worked out, though - not least the fact that giving them long scenes where they’re chatting amongst themselves is a pretty dreadful idea. Everything. Takes. So. Long!
As for the TARDIS crew, once again they find themselves incarcerated - Doctor Who isn’t Doctor Who without a prison cell. But unlike when they were dumped unceremoniously into the Cave of Skulls, there’s a sense of peril and urgency here as they realise that their radiation sickness is killing them and that the Daleks aren’t likely to help. But they do send Susan off into the forest to pick up the Thal drugs - and it’s a wonderfully atmospheric bit of television, with lighting, sound and various film techniques combining to make it genuinely scary.
Something they’ve got right about the Daleks from the beginning (and that gets a bit lost at times as the series goes on) is that they’re cunning. Sure, the offer to the Thals may not be the cleverest evil scheme ever committed to film, but there are several points in this episode - such as allowing Susan to keep the other set of drugs - where they’re a lot more than just “Exterminate!”. And it’s not too hard to side with the Daleks a little bit - Alydon aside, the Thals come across here as a group of boorish lads and their token woman, who happily joins in with their banter and casual sexism. Would their loss really be the worst thing in the universe? No. No, it would not.
The rest of the episode is devoted to a spot - or rather, a long and grimy streak - of good old-fashioned working things out. It’s like a scene from a point-and-click adventure game (scrape mud off shoe, use mud on camera, examine metal floor, talk to Doctor Who), but the protagonists are about as bad at it as I usually am, and it takes sodding forever. Still, for the slow build it’s a satisfying conclusion, and it’s pleasing to watch our heroes escape using nothing but their brains, a cloak and some mud.
And the episode ends with the partial reveal of a Dalek, which is exactly how it should be - the Kaled mutant (or at this point, the ‘Dal’) is a thing of mystery, an unimaginable horror represented by a single grasping claw. Brilliant.
This is the one that should probably be called The Escape, as the majority of it deals with the TARDIS team’s attempts to leave the Dalek city rather than the titular ambush. And how they don’t get killed as they bumble through the corridors is an absolute mystery - for the Daleks not to see through their ruse suggests a serious lack of intellect on the part of the Doctor’s oldest foes. There’s a neat bit of false jeopardy with Ian not being able to escape from the Dalek, though; the scene in which the viewer is left for a moment to wonder if he’s been exterminated is a fun example of a well-worn trope.
Not that there was ever much danger of Ian being killed off even at this early stage, as once again it’s his show. It’s still rather distressing to see the Doctor trying so hard to ignore the plight of the Thals and run away, because it’s so out of keeping with the intergalactic do-gooder he’ll eventually become. Fortunately, his companions have more scruples than the old man and Ian goes back to warn the Thals - or does he? It’s hard to understand why he waits for so long on the sidelines before actually warning them, like an actor waiting in the wings. Perhaps he didn’t know he was being filmed? Whatever the case, you have to wonder if more of the Thals (laaaaads) could have been saved if he’d emerged from his hiding place sooner. Naughty Ian.
Wow. I take back everything I said about the Doctor’s companions having scruples - what an utterly selfish bunch! They start the episode by standing around talking about how they must make the Thals fight and die so that they can get their fluid link back and leave this godforsaken planet - and it takes far, far, far too long for the time travellers to decide that actually this probably isn’t a very nice thing to do. They still get the Thals to fight, of course, but not before justifying it to themselves with the idea that the Thals should fight in order to not die. Or something. The travellers aren’t aware of any immediate threat to the Thals at this point, so it still all feels rather self-serving. At least it’s Ian, not the Doctor, who manages to goad the Thals into violence - it’s difficult enough to rationalise the Doctor’s behaviour in some of these early episodes as it is, without putting that one on his shoulders.
Of course, Daleks being Daleks, the Thals are in immediate danger, but it’s for good reason; we’re used to the Daleks wanting to exterminate and subjugate for the hell of it, but this episode brings them as close as they’ll ever get to a tragic twist with the revelation that they can’t exist without radiation (We’ll gloss over that one later, along with the whole static electricity thing). Sure, they plan on nuking the planet’s surface, but it’s only so they can go outside and play in the forest.
Ian and Barbara reach the swamp of death, and once again the production team have done a surprisingly good job of realising its horrors. It’s not as atmospheric as the forest in the second episode, but it’s still pretty tense stuff.
Never a truer word spoken… With most of the pieces already in place for the final episode, the ‘action’ slows right down and we’re treated to the lacklustre adventures of Barbara and Ganatus. It’s hard to pinpoint whether the actors playing the Thals are at fault or whether Terry Nation simply wasn’t interested in his Aryan creations (It’s probably a bit of both), but the story certainly doesn’t make it that easy to care about the plight of any individual Thals. The subplot that falls especially flat is that of Antodus, the cowardly Thal who pops up only to suggest turning back and then kills himself at the start of the next episode. RIP Antodus. You’re not missed.
The stuff with Susan and the Doctor is good, though; the grandfather-granddaughter dynamic has got a bit lost in the mix since the first episode, so it’s nice to check in and see that they still care about one another. I also like that the Daleks make a point of bringing up the lift that the Doctor and friends destroyed during their escape from the city; there’s just not enough alien species willing to present the Doctor with an invoice for damages as the series goes on.
This episode is fascinating, because deliberately or otherwise there seems to be a single concrete moment where the Doctor goes from being the man who ran away from Gallifrey to the defender of the underdog. William Hartnell reacts with such horror and anger to the Daleks’ plans to irradiate the surface of Skaro and render it uninhabitable that it feels like his “no more” moment, the one in which he goes from being a passive observer to a meddling hero. Perhaps I’m overselling it - after all, the Doctor’s role in the story’s resolution is still fairly light, aside from his refusal to help the Daleks as they beg for mercy - but the Doctor is not the same man at the end of the story; he’s in no rush to replace the fluid link and get away anymore - though that’s an easy position to be in once the Daleks are dead…
The story’s climax itself feels weirdly slight. It has all the makings of something big - a lengthy countdown to a massive explosion, a ragtag army of Thals in hotpants… But the Daleks’ defeat ends up being rather low key - though the bit where Ian gives a Dalek a kick is fun.
This is the story that saved Doctor Who and guaranteed its future for at least the next year, and it’s not hard to see why: it’s intelligent science fiction, a tale of good versus evil, with the protagonists actually taking the initiative and driving the story forward. Oh, and did I mention it’s got Daleks in? Raymond Cusick’s design is instantly iconic, and it combines with the grating voices to produce something truly alien and quite unlike anything that’s been seen before or since. It’s a story that runs out of steam an episode or two too early, but by that point it doesn’t matter - the spell the early installments weave is such a powerful one that the crimes of the last few episodes are largely forgivable.
