Doctor Who A-Z #68: Planet of the Daleks (1973)

Planet of the Daleks is the penultimate story – Invasion of the Dinosaurs is the last – to have material missing from the archives, specifically the colour negative of episode three. A colourised version has been made, but I watched a version where this one episode was in black and white. This allows for a useful comparison with the Hartnell serials the rest of the story is consciously evoking, not least in the decision to follow straight on from the last story. For the series’ tenth anniversary season, producer Barry Letts wanted to match the twelve-episode length of The Daleks’ Master Plan, so he commissioned Terry Nation to write a story that would pick up directly from the end of Frontier in Space.

Judged on this ambition, Planet of the Daleks is a straight failure. The ending of Frontier in Space, in which the Daleks are revealed as the hidden hand (plunger?) behind that serial’s interplanetary tensions, offers Nation the chance to launch straight into his adventure with no build-up. Instead we get an episode of the Doctor and a very stylishly-dressed Jo wandering around the jungle planet Spiridon, building up to the big reveal of a Dalek at the end of episode one. This, despite the fact that the Doctor has specifically requested the Time Lords take control of the TARDIS and bring him straight to the enemy. He can’t possibly be surprised by the appearance of a Dalek, and we can’t possibly be surprised by it either, but Nation is too wedded to his “Dalek reveal at the end of episode one” formula to incorporate this into the story.

There will be a lot of critical things said about Terry Nation in this entry, so let’s remind ourselves of some of his good points. His 1960s Dalek serials aren’t always sophisticated, but they represent a kind of spectacle that had never been seen on British television before. Indeed, prior to new series stories like The Pandorica Opens or Joy to the World, they wouldn’t be seen on British television again. Nation was the first writer shrewd enough to work out that the format of Doctor Who – specifically the presence of the TARDIS – allows you to tell stories that hop from a prison planet in the far future to ancient Egypt without any difficulty. It’s a remarkable thing to cotton on to so early in the show’s lifespan, and the Pertwee years – which are built on spectacle, starting from the founding decision to make the show in colour – should be the perfect venue for it.

Unfortunately it doesn’t quite come off. Part of the problem is that the show in 1973 is simply too different to the show Nation used to write for, and the black-and-white episode really highlights this. One of the subplots in this episode involves a team of Thals trying to burrow into a Dalek city, a scenario which harks back strongly to the later episodes of The Daleks. Yet the uncanny, atmospheric strangeness of that story is missing. The sound effect of the Dalek city – that eerie, throbbing hum – is reused, but in the earlier story the whole city seemed to be similarly pulsing with alien, uncanny energy. Here, the accent is on action, pacing and adventure, and Nation’s long exploration scenes feel like filler rather than a trek into unexplored territory.

This isn’t altogether a bad thing. Planet of the Daleks is directed by David Moloney, who can do action better than anyone else helming the show at this point, and by the time of Pertwee’s penultimate season the production as a whole is a tightly-run ship. If you have any fondness at all for the surface pleasures of Doctor Who, Planet of the Daleks is a very easy, comfortable watch. The problem is, in Nation’s absence David Whitaker and Louis Marks worked out some new ways for the Daleks to be interesting, whereas in Planet of the Daleks Nation falls back on scale as an easy way to impress the viewer.

There is a school of thought, which I share, that the Daleks are at their most menacing when their numbers are limited. On paper, an army of Daleks is more of a threat than a lone Dalek, but Robert Shearman made a single Dalek feel like an unstoppable invasion force. Here, by contrast, no matter how many thousands of Daleks are sequestered on Spiridon, the logic of a Doctor Who story means this whole fleet will probably be vanquished by one admittedly well-practiced Time Lord, and so it proves. Every time the Doctor, Jo and the Thals go one-on-one with a Dalek, it’s embarrassingly easy to defeat them, particularly when the Doctor notices their vulnerability to a certain strange liquid found on Spiridon. He describes it as a form of ice that’s taken liquid form, and no matter how hard the script tries to make that sound fantastical and outlandish, you can’t help but think liquid ice is usually referred to as “water”.

The script has a fair few of these unintentionally funny moments. I am particularly fond of the scene where the Thals try to help the Doctor escape a lift shaft by handing him a rope with a loop tied in it. It briefly looks like they’re handing him a noose, which is a bit pessimistic. Script editor Terrance Dicks had his misgivings about the story, particularly the Thals, who he felt were barely characterised. Nation seems to have accommodated Dicks’s notes as the story went on, and the final episode features a sudden proliferation of unexpected romantic subplots among the Thals, inserted with a gracelessness that reminded me of The Day Today‘s spoof soap opera The Bureau.

The Thals in general are an odd fit for this story – they’re introduced as a military force with enough explosives to take out a squadron of Daleks, yet the Doctor constantly refers to them as a race known for their peaceable nature. Nation transparently hadn’t thought about who the Thals were beyond the straightforward allegorical role they fill in The Daleks, and he wouldn’t come up with any new story function for them until Tom Baker’s first season. Hating Planet of the Daleks feels almost cruel; it’s silly and watchable, and Pertwee almost manages to persuade you that its constant technobabble means something. But it is slightly too successful at evoking the feel of Hartnell-era Doctor Who. In the end, it reminds you that the show has come a long way over the preceding ten years, and it doesn’t really need to be telling stories like this any more.

Next: The Green Death (1973)

Graham’s Archive – Planet of the Daleks

Full Doctor Who Archive Here