Who Review: Day of the Daleks

It’s the late twentieth century, and international affairs on Earth have reached a crisis point . Sir Reginald Stiles is trying to organize a peace conference at Auderly House in England, hoping to avert World War Three. When he encounters what appears to be a ghost threatening him at gunpoint in his study one night, his assistant contacts U.N.I.T. Stiles immediately dismisses the apparition as nonsense, but the Doctor isn’t convinced. Then a mysterious soldier appears on the grounds of the house, dead. His weapon is centuries ahead of its time, and the box he’s carrying turns out to be a time travel device. The Doctor manages to activate the device, but with no apparent effect, so he and Jo volunteer to keep watch at the house overnight while Stiles heads off to China. The next day, they are visited by three of the mysterious soldiers, intent on killing Stiles. Mistaking the Doctor for the diplomat, the leader orders his immediate execution to save the planet from a war he will start. A war that will lead to global devastation, enabling the most ruthless race in the universe to step in and take over…

SPOILER ALERT!! My comments may (and likely will) contain spoilers for those that haven’t seen this serial. If you want to stay spoiler-free, please watch the story before you continue reading!

Jon Pertwee’s third season as the Doctor launched in January 1972 with the return of the Daleks after a five year absence. Louis Marks’ original tale didn’t feature the Daleks, but having just obtained Dalek creator Terry Nation’s permission to bring them back, Script Editor and Producer team Terrance Dicks and Barry Letts wanted to feature them as soon as possible. Marks managed to find a prominent place for them in his scripts, and the result was record ratings for the show.

It’s to Marks’ credit, I think, that the Daleks don’t appear to be late additions. Their role in the story is quite well defined as the brains behind the government, using people to do their dirty work, which is often how they operate. The story of how they rose to power, and found people willing to help them, doesn’t seem contrived.

The story itself is good, and I can’t find any major plot holes. Even the possible objection that, given the ability to travel in time, any failure to stop World War Three could be fixed by simply going back in time again and correcting whatever went wrong, is addressed, though perhaps not very satisfactorily. The “Blinovich Limitation Effect” is given as a reason why you can’t change something you did in the past, rather like the “fixed point in time” is given in the New Series. It’s not really a solid reason, but more like a patch over a potential plot hole.

Perhaps the most intriguing part of the story is the fact that, while the resistance fighters have all along been blaming Stiles for the explosion that resulted in the death of the conference delegates and the start of World War Three, it was in fact their own tampering in time that caused the fatal explosion. This kind of temporal paradox was not new to science fiction, but it hadn’t really been explored in Doctor Who until now, and it’s rather cleverly done here.

I have mixed feelings about the fact that you never really know what’s going on until the last episode. At the beginning, you learn about the rebels and their desire to kill Stiles. You then learn about the government and their oppression of people in the future, and then you discover that the Daleks are the ones in power. By that time, you have all the strands of the story in your hand, waiting for an explanation to tie them all together. That explanation comes in the form of expository dialog in Episode Four. On the one hand this structure keeps the audience in suspense and tuning in each week to find out what’s going on. But on the other, it leaves the audience frustrated, and perhaps confused, and not really engaged with how the Doctor’s going to solve the situation.

I definitely felt the absence of the original Dalek voice actors in this story. The Dalek voices in “Day of the Daleks” just don’t cut it. I’m not sure why Roy Skelton or any of the other voice actors from five years ago weren’t used, but these sound very odd and very out of place. Also, while the Ogrons make for a good, menacing kind of thug monster, they sound like the Gumbies from Monty Python:

The DVD release features a second disc with a “Special Edition” version of the serial, with CGI special effects, and replacement Dalek voices performed by New Series Dalek voice actor Nicholas Briggs. These Dalek voices are definitely an improvement, but I could do without most of the new CGI effects. The DVD came out in 2011, and already they look dated. The only effect I think stands up well is the improved laser blast.

This is one worth watching, simply because it’s a good story, though you will have to overlook some of the production failings noted above. The pace also demonstrates why, with few exceptions, four parts are better than six or seven. Also of interest is the Doctor showing himself to be a wine connoisseur, and the Doctor shooting an Ogron unprovoked. Terrance Dicks regards this as a mistake, since the Doctor would never use violence except when attacked or to defend someone else who is being attacked.