OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 168
STORY NUMBER: 036
TRANSMITTED: 24 June 1967
WRITER: David Whitaker
DIRECTOR: Derek Martinus and Timothy Combe
SCRIPT EDITOR: Peter Bryant
PRODUCER: Innes Lloyd
FORMAT: CD: Doctor Who: The Evil of the Daleks
TELESNAPS: The Evil of the Daleks: Episode Six
The three new Daleks continue to play with the Doctor engaging him in a game of trains pushing him round the room. The Doctor explains that he and Jamie are their friends and gives them name & a marking: Alpha, Beta & Omega. All the Daleks are recalled to Skaro. Maxtible tells Waterfield Victoria has been released and Waterfield searches for her while Maxtible packs a bag. He discovers a device on the floor: a Dalek Time bomb. He is dismayed that the Daleks intend to destroy his lab. Waterfield returns and attacks Maxtible but Maxtible knocks him out and leaves with the last Dalek. The Doctor & Jamie find Waterfield and jury rig the time machine to follow the Daleks, disappearing as the bomb detonates. Victoria & Kemel are held in a cell on Skaro: Maxtible visits them before leaving with a Dalek. The Doctor, Jamie & Waterfield have arrived outside the city. The Doctor finds a tunnel to the interior. Maxtible encounters a black domed Dalek, angry at his failure to bring The Doctor to Skaro. An alarm sounds: intruders are detected. Dalek Omega is found by another black domed Dalek and taken away. Victoria is taken away by the Daleks and screams, attracting the attention of the Doctor's party who then meet Dalek Omega in the corridor. Dalek Omega is a fake, which the Doctor detects pushing it off a ledge to it's doom. The Doctor's party reach the Dalek control room where they encounter the giant Emperor Dalek. They have used the Human Factor to define The Dalek Factor. The Emperor has the Tardis and commands the Doctor to use it to spread the Dalek factor through human history.
Thus does the Dalek plan stand revealed. It's a bit like a typical Cyberman plan: over complicated and a bit rubbish. They can easily travel in time themselves distributing the Dalek factor, the Doctor's useless to them now. Oh well. The child Daleks are great, a contrast to the usual Dalek behaviour and unlike the servant Daleks in Power absolutely genuine.
We get to see the Dalek Emperor on screen for the first time here. There's been a Dalek Emperor in the comics for ages, a gold Dalek with a sphere shaped dome replacing the existing dome and neck. Many people later speculated that the Emperor might be Davros, TV creator of the Daleks, and in a self fulfilling prophecy the white domed but armless Emperor of Remembrance of the Daleks is revealed to be Davros. A Dalek Emperor is seen in the new series too in Bad Wolf & Parting of the Ways but that one's obviously a Dalek. You can't be sure when this story is set in Dalek chronology but my guess is this Emperor isn't Davros. If I had to point a figure at someone I'd be looking at the Dalek leader in Genesis of the Daleks.
I've been listening to many of these audio only episode while out and about on buses and trains: Evil 6 was heard while travelling from Kingston to Richmond to get some lunch (very nice Dim Sum, thank you. Why can't you get Dim Sum in Swindon?) On the way back a chap sitting opposite me on the bus was wearing a Salvador Dalek T-Shirt, parodying the famous Dali painting of the melting clock! An odd coincidence!
And so we get shift in location number two to go along with a further twist in the story. The thing I love about both apparent Dalek plans is they make a kind of contorted Doctor Who logic. The Daleks want supremacy enough that you can almost accept them pursuing whatever anyone else has that allows them to defeat the Daleks. Likewise the idea that they want to win by forced conversion to Dalekness rings true.
ReplyDeleteThe Dalek Emperor is brilliant - a really good voice can make or break a monster and this one is a classic. The few surviving images and the audio do make me think that they couldn't really have done better than that. (I personally like to think that the Dalek Emperor is..... the Dalek Emperor, something and someone that we haven't met before or since it makes it feel a bit more special I think).
As to their slightly daft plan... it would make sense if they think that The Doctor has better time travel technology than they do - they may just be vastly overestimating (instead of the more usual underestimating) him......