The Chase
The Daleks are back.
Armed with a time machine of their own, the Daleks are on a singular mission to hunt down the Doctor and the TARDIS crew and assassinate them following their interferance with the invasion of Earth. This is where the dynamic between the Doctor and his arch foes changes to become what it will be known as for the rest of the series, when the Daleks will forever know his name and be obsessed with killing him. But they will also fear him, and later on will even endow him with a name in their own folklore: Ka Faraq Gatri, or, Bringer of Darkness. Imagine if you will from the Daleks' point of view: this stranger has stopped and entire invasion force, and now a crack sqaud of Daleks will be sent after him to exterminate him once and for all.
And of course, they'll fail.
I couldn't help but feel that this story was maybe two episodes too long. The TARDIS is pursued across time and space by the Dalek ship, landing on the planet Aridius (a planet that has obviously changed its name as it was once covered by vast oceans and was anything but arid), then the top of the Empire State Building (which allowed me to merge it with a viewing of Sex and the City - I watch it between episodes when things get slow), the deck of the Marie Celeste, a haunted house, and then the planet Mechanus. Okay, it's a chase. The Daleks are chasing the Doctor. I get it. But it's a pretty thin premise, with all these short stops thrown in for the sheer novelty of it. The dialogue between the regulars is not the best, although they have the whole family atmosphere going on at the very start, with Ian reading some book in the living quarters, Barbara hard at work making a dress for Vicki, the Doctor tinkering with something he liberated from the museum on Xeros, and Vicki wandering the ship bored. As the story progresses there are some weak interchanges, and some pretty bad slips in the visual effects department including Daleks on sets where they are not supposed to be, studio ceilings visible over the top of the TARDIS console room walls, and boom mics and studio cameras lurking in the jungle on Mechanus. And then there are the supporting cast in episode 6 - the Mechanoids and their captive human, astronaut Steven Taylor. The Mechanoids were soon paired off as the new mortal enemies of the Daleks, and the two species would have wars across the galaxies in comic strip adventures. They're cooler than the Thals. And as for Mr Taylor and his panda, Hi-Fi.. well... wait and see.
At the end of the adventure though, it's goodbye for Ian and Barbara. They've had enough and they take an opportunity to go home. The Doctor is outraged, citing reasons of terrible risk involved with their desires, but the real truth is he has grown attached to them since they came on board the TARDIS. Susan has left him, and now the last of his original crew are going too. I'd be annoyed if I was being left with custody of Vicki as well. Maybe they should get someone new on board, some hunky guy to be a bit of eye candy but also make him a bit like Ian, have him challenge the Doctor on occasion but still make him his own man, someone maybe from the future who doesn't need everything explained to him.
Hey.. where'd that Steven Taylor guy get to...
NEXT EPISODE : THE TIME MEDDLER
UPDATED 9 OCTOBER 2005: I showed the edited highlights of The Chase to my friend Jay yesterday. I had warned him that this is one of the worst examples of production values, with sound bleeding from scene to scene and all sorts of visual bloopers like strings on bats, Daleks where there should be no Daleks, BBC studio cameras and boom mics visible here and there, flubs of dialogue, and the awful kaleidoscope outer space scenes with the TARDIS in flight. Jay was apalled and kept whimpering "Why, Sean? Why?". I look at it as a great opportunity for the restoration team to clean up some of those effects, maybe tidy up some sound issues, really get their teeth into a project. We shall see one day.
Armed with a time machine of their own, the Daleks are on a singular mission to hunt down the Doctor and the TARDIS crew and assassinate them following their interferance with the invasion of Earth. This is where the dynamic between the Doctor and his arch foes changes to become what it will be known as for the rest of the series, when the Daleks will forever know his name and be obsessed with killing him. But they will also fear him, and later on will even endow him with a name in their own folklore: Ka Faraq Gatri, or, Bringer of Darkness. Imagine if you will from the Daleks' point of view: this stranger has stopped and entire invasion force, and now a crack sqaud of Daleks will be sent after him to exterminate him once and for all.
And of course, they'll fail.
I couldn't help but feel that this story was maybe two episodes too long. The TARDIS is pursued across time and space by the Dalek ship, landing on the planet Aridius (a planet that has obviously changed its name as it was once covered by vast oceans and was anything but arid), then the top of the Empire State Building (which allowed me to merge it with a viewing of Sex and the City - I watch it between episodes when things get slow), the deck of the Marie Celeste, a haunted house, and then the planet Mechanus. Okay, it's a chase. The Daleks are chasing the Doctor. I get it. But it's a pretty thin premise, with all these short stops thrown in for the sheer novelty of it. The dialogue between the regulars is not the best, although they have the whole family atmosphere going on at the very start, with Ian reading some book in the living quarters, Barbara hard at work making a dress for Vicki, the Doctor tinkering with something he liberated from the museum on Xeros, and Vicki wandering the ship bored. As the story progresses there are some weak interchanges, and some pretty bad slips in the visual effects department including Daleks on sets where they are not supposed to be, studio ceilings visible over the top of the TARDIS console room walls, and boom mics and studio cameras lurking in the jungle on Mechanus. And then there are the supporting cast in episode 6 - the Mechanoids and their captive human, astronaut Steven Taylor. The Mechanoids were soon paired off as the new mortal enemies of the Daleks, and the two species would have wars across the galaxies in comic strip adventures. They're cooler than the Thals. And as for Mr Taylor and his panda, Hi-Fi.. well... wait and see.
At the end of the adventure though, it's goodbye for Ian and Barbara. They've had enough and they take an opportunity to go home. The Doctor is outraged, citing reasons of terrible risk involved with their desires, but the real truth is he has grown attached to them since they came on board the TARDIS. Susan has left him, and now the last of his original crew are going too. I'd be annoyed if I was being left with custody of Vicki as well. Maybe they should get someone new on board, some hunky guy to be a bit of eye candy but also make him a bit like Ian, have him challenge the Doctor on occasion but still make him his own man, someone maybe from the future who doesn't need everything explained to him.
Hey.. where'd that Steven Taylor guy get to...
NEXT EPISODE : THE TIME MEDDLER
UPDATED 9 OCTOBER 2005: I showed the edited highlights of The Chase to my friend Jay yesterday. I had warned him that this is one of the worst examples of production values, with sound bleeding from scene to scene and all sorts of visual bloopers like strings on bats, Daleks where there should be no Daleks, BBC studio cameras and boom mics visible here and there, flubs of dialogue, and the awful kaleidoscope outer space scenes with the TARDIS in flight. Jay was apalled and kept whimpering "Why, Sean? Why?". I look at it as a great opportunity for the restoration team to clean up some of those effects, maybe tidy up some sound issues, really get their teeth into a project. We shall see one day.
Labels: Barbara Wright, Daleks, Ian Chesterton, Mechanoids, Steven Taylor, The 1st Doctor, Vicki
posted by Sean Hoover @ 9:07 PM
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