Day of the Daleks

They recast the Doctor, created a new environment for him, found the formula for ratings success. Having iced the cake, it's time to stick a few Daleks on top. But are they the delicious glacé cherries that add the real flavour to the cake, or just glittering candles to add a bit of sparkle to the ensemble?

To stretch my delicious metaphor a little further, this is a story with brilliant ingredients. Coming after the "Magic!" "Science!" "Magic!" "Science!" dialectic of the previous story, here the Doctor cheerfully assures us that ghosts are possible. Not only that, but when he's around, you get a rare kind - ghosts of people who haven't been born yet. Perhaps even ghosts of people who'll never exist! And where better to encounter them than an old stately home?

This era's gothic urban landscape - factories disgorging Satanic slime, laboratories whose doors are frequently kicked in by monsters, B-roads patrolled by murderous automata - is expanded to include railway tunnels infested with ape-men. Its seething background of political drama - glimpsed in The Mind of Evil - returns as imminent World War. And slowly we uncover more about the world after the war - a stylish dystopia to rival Inferno.

Plus, the Daleks strap the Doctor to a mind-scanner and, thrillingly, summon up images of his earlier selves. Their mortal enemy, stretching back through eternity, or a generation of television viewing (which is similar)!

Unfortunately, the result is a crushing disappointment. If it was a cake, Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood would be looking extremely miffed.

The performers are all fantastic. Jo Grant is trusting and good-hearted. Aubrey Woods is wonderfully sinister, a human being with all his humanity eaten away (I always thought there was something iffy about that sweetshop owner in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory). His zombie dollybirds are extraordinary, and under-used. You couldn't ask for more from Jon Pertwee, particularly in his scenes with Woods. The Controller is 'a quisling, a traitor!' - the victims of the regime are 'old men and women, even children': in one argument, we feel the force with which the Daleks' regime grinds down.

This is necessary, because we don't feel much of it elsewhere. When they appear onscreen, the Daleks are a shadow of their former selves. What's the sound equivalent of a shadow? A poorly modulated bleat? That too. Much as it's an impressive way of presenting them - already the masters of Earth, no shilly-shallying like the villains of Seasons 7 and 8 - they're really not integrated into the story, and criminally there are no big confrontations between them and the Brigadier or the Doctor, or even Jo.

I mean, come on. These are the effin' Daleks!

The direction's limp, with the modern day particularly lacking in atmosphere. A hint of  The Daemons' Dennis Wheatley theatrics would have come in handy for the ghosts at the mansion, which is lit like something out of a sit-com. But having presented them as looking simply like terrorists who have travelled through time, the script takes ages to explain that this is the case. Yes, I know that's okay - we can assume the audience picked it up for themselves - but it misses every dramatic use of time travel, and Aubrey Woods might as well be in a space ship with a transmat hovering overhead.

Equally, the Daleks could have been anyone. There's no sense that there are living beings wiggling those egg-whisks. The whole story would be improved for having Aubrey's zombie dolly-birds as the dominating evil regime. Can't you just see them marching towards that manor house, flanked by Ogrons?

Well, it was nice to look forward to. I'll just have to accept it didn't work out. The nice thing about Doctor Who is that the story has a sort of after-life in the memory: I fancy reading the novelisation at some point, too. Meanwhile, it's time to get really 'out there'...