Oh,
for the love of Gond.
This
was the last Dalek story I had never seen, and I'd actually been quite excited about
it, though I never used to give two stuffs about the Daleks. As a kid I saw
them as the monsters who had weathered the least well, the ones that creaked
and doddered while others skulked. Watching 60's Doctor Who in sequence made me
realise how special the Daleks actually are. That they are the only point of
continuity for the Doctor for several years, and the ones who symbolically
separate him from Susan, Ian and Barbara, and Bret Vyon, Sarah Kingdom and
Katarina too.
Oh,
and Brian Cant!
They
rival us as the Doctor's biggest fans, watching him on space telly in The Chase – in fact every Dalek POV is
like a little fan vid – and he in turn is the only one who really appreciates
how human these tin pots can be. Where other Hartnell aliens are misunderstood
or misled, and Troughton monsters are mindless drones or insatiable animals,
the Daleks are a bit like Hartnell or Troughton themselves if they were
half-robot and faintly insecure.
And
for most of the 1960s they also had a whiff of movie magic about them. They
were the only truly special effect in the show, barring the Tardis console
itself (sound effects included) - when either of those becomes the focus for
the story, Doctor Who suddenly feels like
a weird space: like Radio Caroline
breaking in upon the Light Programme.
Well,
if you didn't already know, Death to the
Daleks doesn't really work this way.
I
don't think there's anything really wrong with it being primarily a visual
story. It can actually make it more potent than Pertwee's talkier tales. The
first episode, the seeming death of the Tardis and the terrors of the Exxilon
mists are gripping and disturbing, and a perfect counterpoint to a Doctor who
is always in control, particularly when Sarah has just begun to trust him.
Writing
an entire story around some mining (better to call it panhandling) on a desert
world, and a deserted, fully automated city, really is a gamble with the money
stacked against you, though. This is a dismal story in every sense: bleak and
monotonous.
It's
worth picturing it designed by someone who liked colour. Someone who could make
it as lurid as Planet of the Daleks
or, going back a bit, Claws of Axos. The
interviews with designers on both Time
Warrior and Dinosaur discs
include the wistful memory, 'I was so excited to be assigned Doctor Who and so
disappointed it wasn't set in space.' This one seems to feel the reverse, if
his naff interiors are anything to go by.
You
can't blame the director. He's doing everything he can. Some shots are quite
thrilling – but a suite of studio footage on the DVD shows what an atmosphere
of inertia the Daleks could conjure (never mind Terry Nation's lacklustre
script). They lumber forward, they look the wrong way, their guns get jammed.
You sense how difficult it was to get anything to ignite on set. You have to
feel for Pertwee himself. It's like sparring with a filing cabinet.
(Although,
memorably, a Dalek does burst into flames – when you hit it with a stick. Worth
knowing. And in the best outtake I've seen in many a year, they whisper! The
Daleks confer by squawking at each other sotto voce for the first, last and
never time only: the scene was reshot with the usual shouting.)
I
fell asleep around the end of episode three, and on rewinding to see what I'd
missed, found that I hadn't. I can't help but be reminded of Patrick
Troughton's final season. Not a bad season, all told, but a confused and
aimless one. Say what you like about the Doctor's lack of mystery after his
trial, and the cosy UNIT family (including Master) but at least it gave the show
and its heroes a solid identity. Now these narratives are ended, those gains
are slipping away. Death to the Daleks
is a dangerous example of people treating Doctor Who as a given, without
knowing the characters and without having the enthusiasm to do something new
with them.
It's
about time for a new broom.
