EPISODE: The Daleks Part 5: The Expedition
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 009
STORY NUMBER: 002
TRANSMITTED: 18 January 1964
WRITER: Terry Nation
DIRECTOR: Christopher Barry
SCRIPT EDITOR: David Whitaker
PRODUCER: Verity Lambert
FORMAT: DVD - The Beginning Boxset
The Tardis crew provoke the Thals to fight the Daleks, while the Daleks discover they're allergic to the anti-radiation drugs the Thals have, conclude they need radiation and decide to explode another Neutron bomb. The Tardis crew and the Thals split into two groups to attach the city. Ian & Barbara go with the Thals attacking the Daleks back door via the lake filled with Mutations.
A very talky episode in places,especially earlier on during the debates about if the Thals should fight or not.
There's much more Daleks than I remember in this episode, lovely Dalek Point of View shot as it enters the control room. Earlier in the story they're working to reduce the radiation, have they never realised before that they're dependant on it?
The Daleks were of course a HUGE success and very soon had spawned an entire industry. To this day a significant proportion of the Doctor Who merchandising market centres around Dalek toys. Go to eBay, search on Dalek* and look in the Toys & Games category. When I was growing up in the seventies I had a Dalek toy (Red Palitoy talking Dalek). We've had Daleks that move, Daleks with a friction drive in them, Daleks with swappable parts, big Daleks, small Daleks, Dalek plasysuits and even a Dalek fairground ride!
I actually quite like this episode. The discussion about whether the travelers should persuade the Thals to abandon their cultural pacifism to survive in the face of the fact that the Daleks want to kill them all is an interesting moral dilemma. Future Doctor Who will pretty much assume that the right thing to do is to galvanise people to fight the monsters, but here it is still open for discussion.
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