…The Mutants, in which the Doctor and Jo are sent on
a mission by the Time Lords to the planet Solos during the twilight years of
Earth’s Empire. Pity, because that’s supposed to be the title of this story.
Bollocks! In which case, there’s nothing else for it, it’s…
The Daleks
In which the
Doctor treats his companions to a day out at a local site of historical interest (whether they want to go or not); Barbara gets lost in the underground car park; a
load of middle-aged men with bleached hair and leather trousers meet up in the
local woods; and we learn the Dalek’s grow vegetables (although quite what a Dalek’s
going to do with a cucumber is anyone’s guess)…
- The Magnodon - a creature which has the unique distinction of
introducing the concept of unfamiliar, non-humanoid, alien life-forms to the
audience in advance of the big reveal in Episode Two (and once we’ve seen the
Daleks trundling about hither and thither we can think back to this innocuously
happy beast and imagine it moving about in retrospect. If we haven’t forgotten
all about it by then
The Doctor conjectures (i.e. takes a completely unfounded stab in the dark
because he likes the sound of his own voice) that such metal beasts could be
common on this world, going so far as to suggest ‘It could attract its prey to
it if it was metal too’. Eh? Is he seriously trying to tell us
he thinks it, and other creatures like it, could be naturally born on this
world? Those spines would’ve chaffed mummy Magnodon’s cervix like buggery on
the way out if that really were the case! Perhaps it was created by Davros. If
so he was having a bit of an off day, wasn’t he (it must’ve been the same day
he chucked out the Giant Clam idea [seen in Genesis of the Daleks]). I
suppose we should just be thankful the design never became a serious contender
for housing the Kaled mutants. I don’t think The Magnodon Invasion of
Earth has quite the same ring about it for one thing (a line of
Magnodons scuttling over Westminster Bridge would've just looked silly), and as
for Remembrance of the Magnodons, well…the poor bugger we see
doesn’t look as though he could remember the way back from the pub, let alone
the fact there’s a super weapon on Earth in the mid-Twentieth Century that
needs picking up and exploiting. According to the Doctor the one we encounter
here is ‘sidi-solidified’, whatever the buggery that means (I think it might
mean Bill Hartnell needs a sit down and a cup of tea)!
 |
| Ian Speculated it could be another deadly metal beast which inhabited this planet, while Susan just wondered what was so ferocious about a family-sized tin of biscuits. |
- oh look…someone’s left a pencil case outside the TARDIS.
Containing some anti-radiation ‘gloves’ (or so William Hartnell will have us believe).
Hmm, pretty advanced these yet to be seen Thals. Wonder what other astounding
advances they've made in medicine? A scarf that prevents the spread of
chickenpox?
- other terrifying monstrosities
the story offers up (which would no doubt have seen parents across the land
putting the rubber sheets back on the kids’ beds and leaving the landing light
on at night) include a whacking great stock-footage caterpillar which Ian
batters to death with a bloody big stick; an
inflatable bath mat on a rubber ring (does this, therefore, make it the only
monster in Who history to suffer from haemorrhoids), which menaces
Ian (in a not very menacing way) as he has a bit of a travel wash in the Lake
of Mutations; a “something” we don’t actually get a proper look at but which
announces itself with an enormous water-based fart before sucking Elyon
off…erm…his lakeside resting place to his doom I should add (oh my God…it’s not
Kroll is it?); and lots of things lurking about in the background that we only
ever hear but never actually see, including the first use of what I like to
think of as the “farting elephant” sound effect, something that’s used for
years to come whenever the series features a jungle-y/swampy/overgrown-y bit of
alien planet (Spiridon springs immediately to mind). And then of course
there’s…
- The Daleks - they
actually get a bit of a raw deal in this story. No-one attempts to understand
their grievances or is prepared to listen to the catalogue of horrors they’ve
been subjected to in the past. Granted, Terry Nation deliberately paints a very
vague backstory to events. All we really know is there was a
war, one which transformed the teachers and philosophers of old into the
paranoid and crippled revenants the Doctor and his chums fall foul of today,
but as to who started it and who dropped the bomb that brought it to such a
devastating conclusion is left frustratingly unclear (my money’s on the Thals).
The real tragedy that lies at their core is all too readily overlooked and before too long they’re written off as a generic race of lumbering space monsters whose
presence merely serves to get the kids at home running for cover behind the
sofa whilst spending their pocket money on plastic, Dalek-shaped tat from Louis
Marx...increasing the balance on Terry’s bank account in the process. The four-and-a-half episodes
in which they’re presented as a race desperate to keep their inheritance going
in search of a chance of redemption is lost in the mists of Who history
and it’ll be forty-one years and Rob Shearman’s Dalek before they
get any further character development.
 |
| Dyoni, pictured yesterday. |
- The Thals - are the first recognisably humanoid alien race theseries offers up and, erm, well, I think bottle blonde and wooden just about
sums them up. ‘But…they said you were…but, they called you...’ gabbles Susan,
unable to finish her sentence as she vada’s Alydon, the alien hunk, for the first
time in The Escape. Here, let me complete it for you dear “a blonde
haired old fruit”, “a big fairy” (oh hang on, wasn’t that Sidney
Newman’s reaction). Oh - she’s managed it! ‘...but you're not, you’re perfect!’ she gasps, getting it out at
last - *sigh*, look love, this isn’t the time or the place. He might’ve
given you a poke in the forest yesterday, but that’s no reason to start cutting
pictures of him out of magazines and gluing them into your scrapbook. Next step
she’ll be stalking his every move and he’ll be taking out an injunction. Sadly, the Thal fellas
(especially the more mature ones) seem to act like a bus load of hormonal
teenage boys on the day they discovered the delights of wanking. ‘Perhaps it’s safe
for you to talk to her if she’s not yet a woman’ Temmosus tells Alydon after
the latter’s given him a description of Susan, which makes it sound as
though he’s a bit of a letch (actually, he describes Susan as ‘No longer a
child, not yet a woman’ which I’m pretty sure are the lyrics from a Britney Spears
song? Still, at least he doesn’t finish the sentence with ‘…but a great pair of
knockers’). They’re also terribly well spoken. ‘Yes, I was very clumsy’
apologises Alydon to Susan for putting the willies up her in the forest,
sounding for all the world as if he’s just stepped straight off the set
of Brief Encounter. Still, it’s nice to know that in this
post-apocalyptic, radiation ravaged world manners haven’t slipped. Mind you, as
a race they seem incapable of coming to terms with their ancestor’s violent
ways, carrying the guilt with them wherever they go and whatever they do -
which, as far as I’m concerned is pretty much conclusive proof they fired the
first shot in the war that led to all this. They also seem quite chuffed that
‘The once famous warrior race of Thals are now farmers’ (although there’s not a
green waxed jacket or pair of Wellington’s in sight).
 |
| The Thals tin of ancient relics contained a couple of items that were real eye-openers! |
- their records, which
are kept in something that looks like an old catering size Nescafé tin,
shows that they mapped the stars in their galaxy, although, as with the tribe in
the last story, at no point do they seem to have mastered the art of the
mattress. Artefacts that’ve survived virtual armageddon include lots and lots
of spools of tape (maybe they charted the development of their race through the home movie...it’s a pity then that a projector doesn’t appear
to have survived the holocaust that befell them); some rolled up scrolls of
paper (design must’ve been ecstatic at the challenge this set them); some
sheets of metal (that look at bit like table-mats); one fairly thick tome
(perhaps the equivalent of the Thal bible - “In the beginning was the word and
the word was ash blonde hair dye kit by L’oreal”); and a couple of
other bookish type volumes (that someone clearly forgot to return to the
library before the bomb dropped). All told it’s not much to show for half a
million years of evolution is it. It’s like some junk you might find at a car
boot sale and pay 50p for as a job lot.
- all this farting about in the woods with a load of
bizarrely dressed fairies! It’s suddenly become A Midsummer Night’s
Dream. Yet the fact that they’ve just reached the end of a long and arduous
journey, carrying with them a message of peace and hope for the
future and a desperate determination to see the survival of their
species, resonates with the period in which the story first aired,
reflecting as it does the CND Aldermaston Marches of the late Fifties and early
Sixties (and if you squint and use your imagination a bit I swear you can see a
placard waving Michael Foot standing at the back of the set, just in front of the
cyclorama. And if you try this and fail then a glass or two of wine might
help).
- hasn't Susan got the most
atrocious handwriting! It’s just an illegible scrawl in a script that’s even
bigger than the typeface used in the Target novelisation
of Planet of Giants (the
only book I can read from across the other side of the living room...without glasses - and with
my rapidly failing eyesight that’s really saying something).
- Susan clearly didn’t wipe her feet on re-entering the Dalek
city if Barbara’s able to reconstitute the mud that’s stuck to the bottom of
them! My mother would’ve gone fucking ballistic (and let me tell you, when I
was a kid she was far scarier than any Dalek when in a bad mood).
- there might not be much furniture lying around (see
Barbara’s comment in The Survivors), but thank heavens the
Daleks do have an eye-stalk for art, for, plonked quite conspicuously in the
middle of the floor on the upper level they escape to, is a piece which looks as though it was thrown together by
Barbara Hepworth during a particularly uninspired half hour on a wet Monday
morning after she’d run out of coffee. And it’s this that puts paid to the
Dalek’s attempts to follow them up the lift shaft! Hurrah...
- ‘I can get my fingers in!’ shouts Ian excitedly at the door as they make their bid
for freedom, at which Barbara looks a little tense and flushed…and I don’t
think it’s got anything to do with the after-effects of radiation poisoning.
 |
| An Injector Capsule... the means by which the Daleks' plan to spread radiation across the surface of Skaro! Looks like a butt plug to me. |
- Technobollocks:
Dalek hardware includes, (i) the Rangerscope, a tracking
device which isn’t all that to be honest. It’s only capable of following Susan
as far as the petrified jungle before
it loses her. I bet, just like parts of Northern England, the Dalek city found
it nigh on impossible to go digital and had to wait years before they got a
reliable broadband service; (ii) the Laserscope, which is
used to take remote pictures of the Doctor and his chums once they meet up with
the merry band of Thals in the forest (meaning it does exactly the same thing
as the rangerscope! In fact they probably are one and the same
thing, it’s just that Terry obviously forgot he’d already introduced a similar
device three episodes earlier). ‘Have you processed the pictures?’ asks one
Dalek of another, making it sound as if they’ve had to take the film down to
their local chemist in order to get it developed (can you believe it? Yes kids,
in the old days we had to put film in cameras! And you all thought the Tribe of
Gum were a bunch of primitives). Even though the ‘quality is poor’ (whatever
they’ve been doing down below for five hundred years, it’s not inventing better
technology) we’re nevertheless treated to a display of seemingly candid holiday
snaps depicting, what would appear to be…the Doctor studying a saucy postcard,
Susan and Barbara having a good old poke at an injured Thals scab and Alydon
asking Ian where he buys his cardigans from. Whenever the picture changes, it
makes a sound like Winy Miller’s windmill (although on the third image the
sound effect happens about three weeks after the picture’s moved on); (iii)
the Videoscope, which is again something that sounds
suspiciously close to being both a rangerscope and a laserscope, although no
mention is made as to whether it’s VHS or Betamax; (iv) the Vibrascope,
which, sadly, isn’t something the Daleks shove down the inside of their casings
when they’re feeling a tad frisky and want a bit of relief, but rather a means
of detecting the approach of intruders into their city. The results of the
radiation treatment carried out on the various Dalek sections come through on a
piece of equipment that looks suspiciously like the radio my grandmother used
to own while the Dalek city antenna would appear, in Episode Six, to be powered
by a single piddling little cable that runs along the outside of the building -
completely unprotected from the elements or outside attack - and which pokes out of
a similarly exposed and vulnerable fuse box stuck on the main wall. Piss poor
or what? Meanwhile, the Thals, so we learn, mapped space via the Electroscope,
which here on Earth is an instrument for detecting the presence of static
electricity, invented by British physician William Gilbert around 1600. I repeat…1600!
So they’re not that bloody advanced are they! I bet they never even got as far
as inventing the front loading washing machine.
- The History Bit - (well, as a history student I might as well show off the few scraps of knowledge in my possession). The
neutron bomb was a very topical issue in 1963, America performing underground
tests in Nevada that same year. Nuclear obliterates everything, but to somehow
have a weapon which leaves inanimate and non-living things standing is
incredibly eerie and I couldn’t help but be put in mind of all those Protect and Survive public information
films we used to get as a kid in the early Eighties…I wonder if the Thals went
to the trouble of painting their windows white, wrapping themselves in tin
foil, taking their front doors off their hinges and propping them up against a
sturdy wall, and hiding behind them with a torch, some tins of beans and a
couple of pedal bin liners to defecate in?
- ‘Your flat must be littered with stray cats and dogs’ said Ian to Barbara as she insisted they stop to help an injured Za in the last story.That’s as maybe, but it’s as she’s giving Ian a lecture on why she thinks the
Thals should risk their lives for them here that I begin to suspect it could in
actual fact be full of Neo-Nazi memorabilia - swastika embroidered
antimacassars, an iron cross decorated biscuit barrel, signed pictures of
Oswald Mosley on the wall, ‘To my darling Babs, love Os’…that sort of thing. I
only hope that after the first death she finds the time to do a bit of much
needed soul-searching.
- The Expedition marks the first time
we see the Daleks ranks swelled with the aid of cardboard cut-outs (well, it
would be the first time, wouldn’t it…it’s the first Dalek story!) They look
like oversized “action” cards from Weetabix packets
circa 1977. At least I'm assuming they're blown up photographic
stand-ins. Maybe they’re supposed to be a bona fide sub-division of the Dalek
species, one specific to the series during the monochrome era of the show,
whose history has never been explored. After all, we’ve had Special Weapons
Daleks, Emperor Daleks, Imperial Daleks and Fat-Arsed Daleks (thanks for them
Mr Gatiss, just what we needed, Daleks that look as though they need to go on
the Special K diet), so why not add cardboard ones to the
list. Being so flat would certainly make them more agile than their cumbersome
three dimensional cousins - they’d just be able to slide under a locked door
instead of having to spend valuable time getting their cutting devices out of
the box, attaching them and then waiting ten minutes for them to heat up.
Cardboard Daleks - it makes perfect sense! I hereby begin the petition to get
them recognised as true and valued members of the Dalek race.
- after what feels like eighty-nine
episodes, we finally get to the big finale as the Dalek’s begin the countdown
to release more radiation (Chernobyl-like) into Skaro’s atmosphere. And it’s going
really well to begin with. Until the clock reaches 4 that is and everything just
sort of stops…I wonder what was going on up in the gallery?
(This is the moment where, if
this was on television, the screen would go all wobbly, and we’d cut to a scene
of the final moments of this story being recorded…
[The countdown begins…100, 99,
98, 97…]
PRODUCTION ASSISTANT:
Richard…Richard…RICHARD!
RICHARD MARTIN: [waking up
from an early evening snooze] Eh…what? What is it luv?
PRODUCTION ASSISTANT: It’s
the countdown Richard…it’s started.
RICHARD MARTIN: Oh well,
that’s super. I’ll just pop to the bar and get myself a nice large pink gin.
Won’t be a mo’…
PRODUCTION ASSISTANT: What?
No…wait! Richard, there isn’t time…
RICHARD MARTIN: Nonsense
luvvy! I’ll be back in a tick. I’m parched!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[50, 49, 48, 47, 46…]
RICHARD MARTIN: I’m back…
PRODUCTION ASSISTANT:
Richard! Thank Christ. Right, we’re just over halfway…what the? Wait a minute,
where the hell are you off to now?
RICHARD MARTIN: Just going for a
tinkle, luv. Relax! I’ll be seconds…
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[25, 24, 23, 22, 21…]
RICHARD MARTIN: Here we
are…
PRODUCTION ASSISTANT: Look
Richard, this is serious. The countdown’s reached 25. Half the bloody Thals are
on the wrong set, Susan and the Doctor are still sticky-taped to the control
room wall, there’s a stuntman clinging to the lighting gallery waiting to chuck
himself onto set on a bit of rope and the clock’s reached 21 - where the
FUCK are you off to now?
RICHARD MARTIN: Just time
for one more large one…[heads off to BBC
bar again]…
PRODUCTION ASSISTANT:
RICHARD YOU UTTER TWAT!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[10, 9, 8, 7, 6…]
RICHARD MARTIN: Back
again…I’ve brought you a packet of peanuts…
PRODUCTION ASSISTANT:
Richard, you complete and utter arsehole! We’ve reached 5 and we’re nowhere
near ready…
RICHARD MARTIN: What? Why
didn’t you say something? Oh…just turn the bloody countdown off. It’s just a kid’s
show…it’s not as if any c***’ll be watching…)
- Death-O-Meter: 4. Dalek
- squished by a large piece of abstract art whilst chasing Ian up a lift
shaft…the sooner they pull their fingers out and learn to use the stairs the
better then, eh!; 5. Temmosus
- the first person ever to get their arse exterminated by a Dalek. Still, being
bumped off in the fourth episode means we don’t have to see old man flesh
squeezed into a pair of close fitting leather trousers for the remaining three;
6. Tacanda - I bet the Daleks
would be pretty miffed if they ever found out that only the second person in
history to feel the destructive force of their mighty armaments was a
non-speaking extra who only the day before had been sitting in the reception
area on Compact pretending to finger
through a People’s Friend…um,
perhaps; 7. Elyon - this Thal
goes to meet the big hairstylist in the sky after disappearing into the Lake of
Mutations, leaving behind him what looks like half a dozen crisp packets
floating about on the surface; 8. Antodus
- goes to the great Greggs in the sky
after a noble bit of self-sacrifice. He obviously thinks he’s in a Russell T
Davies era story; 9 & 10. Thals - exterminated by the
Daleks during their commando raid on Dalek control, although the word "commando" brings to mind a highly organised fighting force at the top of their abilities,
not a handful of happy clappy pansies going into battle with a couple of bits
of twig and something that resembles a hair comb, and could therefore, used in
this instance, be libellous. By all rights, Kristas should join this list. He
descends from the roof of the Dalek HQ only to be exterminated on hitting the
ground, though he miraculously fights on to attack a Dalek (which in itself is a bit
shite - the Daleks are being attacked so why aren’t the power settings on their
blasters set to kill?), pushing both it and himself into a machine that
electrocutes them both (the daft twat one is tempted to add in here, oh - I
just have). Yet, he survives even this! Just what is this man made of?; 11 - 14. Daleks - so, come the final few minutes of the last episode
the Daleks are dead (these four croak in the control room)…or are they? They
certainly lose their power, but is this enough to kill them? Can they be
reanimated or does the lack of power sever all life-support and kill the mutant
inside? I really don’t know if I should include them in this list, and I’ve
only done so because the Doctor et al seem so sure that they're gonners.
(All Daleks in Section 3 end up kicking the bucket due to
the effects of a bad trip brought on by the Thals “shit”, but we don’t see how
many are affected and they don’t actually die on screen anyway. They just sort of get a bit giddy
and go ‘Aargh’ a lot - a bit like my nephew after eating blue Smarties. Similarly, we don’t know if
the Dalek mutant the Doctor and Ian scrape out of its casing at the end of The
Escape kicks the bucket or not. For all we know, it could just merrily
drag itself to the nearest Dalek casing showroom and pick itself a brand new one.)
Score on the
TARDIS Doors - 8½ - very much a story
of two halves. The first four episodes fairly rattle along and are enormously
compelling. Then things go off the rails a bit as the script is forced to tack
on an expedition that really isn’t needed and which the story itself can't
justify (the Thals just walk in through the front door so what was the point of all the
sacrifices the expeditionary party were forced to make? Ian even tore his
cardigan!). ‘If only there’s been some other way’ says Ganatus as he takes a
last look around the Dalek control room in the final episode “…or if
Christopher Barry hadn’t been busy working on something that paid a bit better”
I’d like to add. Because Richard Martin just isn’t up to the big finale. The Daleks feels very
much like a product of its time - a story full of the worries and paranoia’s of
mid-twentieth century life. Not only does it have resonances with the Second
World War, but feels as if it’s acting in some respects as a warning of the war
that everyone at the time believed was inevitably due to come, and which nearly
did just a couple of years prior to its transmission with the events
surrounding the Cuban Missile Crisis. Consequently, it gives the story a real edge...one which we can still appreciate in the twenty-first century.
 |
| Bloody hell! Dalek mutants really are hideous, aren't they! Quick, put the top back on...I think I'm going to be sick! |
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