The Dalek Master Plan

This is the second longest adventure in the entire series of Doctor Who. At 12 episodes in length, The Dalek Master Plan is second only to 1986's Trial of a Time Lord at 14 episodes. And, of course, due to the brilliant handling of the early episodes of the series, only 3 episodes of this story exist to be enjoyed on television screens. Up until last year, though, only episodes 5 and 10 were held by the BBC archives until episode 2 turned up in the hands of a guy who used to work for the BBC. The existing episodes along with some surviving clips were released on last year's Lost in Time compilation DVD, but the audio soundtrack for the entire story exists on a BBC Radio Collection CD, which made for some fun listening on my way home from Windsor on Sunday.

After the sacking of Troy, the Doctor lands the TARDIS on an alien world in search of help for Steven, who has blood poisoning from his wounds. The TARDIS lands on the planet Kembel some months after Marc Corey has gone missing, exterminated by the Daleks, and agent Bret Vyon and his party have been sent to search. The Daleks have finally pulled together their entire council for the invasion of the Solar System, and it is completed by Mavic Chen, the Guardian of the Solar System, who sees more opportunity for himself by allying himself with the Daleks and betraying his own world. Chen has provided a rare mineral called taranium to be used in the Daleks' time destructor weapon, but the Doctor steals it and with Steven, Katarina and Bret, flees for Earth to warn the authorities. Katarina is killed during the voyage to Earth, and Bret himself dies upon his return having been branded a traitor by Chen. Security agent Sara Kingdom attempts to capture the Doctor and Steven but upon hearing the truth of Chen's treachery she switches sides and joins them. The Daleks continue to pursue the Doctor and his companions through time and space as they did once before, even enlisting the aid of the Meddling Monk at one point before recapturing the taranium core. Daleks, as we all know, cannot be trusted, and once they are set to invade the galaxy they turn on their allies, intent on invading their worlds as well. The Doctor manages to save the day in the end as always, but the price is high: Sara is added to the bodycount.

I can only imagine what it was like to be a child and see Daleks on TV every week for 3 months. And to have such a story! Daleks are at their best when exterminating, and they do that a lot. There are no hiccups with the voices this time (unlike Dalek Invasion of Earth where it sounds like the Dalek voice providers are just sitting around with their noses plugged) and their weapons actually sound like weapons, not the hissing we have heard in the previous adventures. Evolution, I suppose. Then comes the violence factor. Only 3 companions of the Doctor have ever died on screen (4 if you count a robot from 1984's Planet of Fire) and the bulk of that number die in this story alone. This would be the first time the Doctor loses any of his companions to violence, and the effect on his at the end of the adventure is obvious. Steven is stricken with grief as well despite not having known either Katarina or Sara for long before their deaths. I'm frankly surprised that it has taken this long for any of the companions to die given the dangers that they are faced with every day of their lives with the Doctor. Sometimes I wish more would die. I was at a gathering of fans late last year and Rob Shearman, a writer for the new series (episode 2 of the new series, The End of the World, is on tonight, actually...) and he related in a story to the assembled fans that one of the executive producers told him that to her, Doctor Who has always been about death, and she encouraged him to add more of it to his script (which I believe is simply called Dalek). This is the sort of adventure she must have enjoyed the most. Some one once did a count of how many violent on-screen deaths there were in the series but I never thought to do it myself, but in later years there would be a lot more of it, and it would cause the programme to change forever.

Meanwhile, the next story, promises nothing but death...

NEXT EPISODE : THE MASSACRE

The Myth Makers

The TARDIS arrives on a plain somewhere on Earth, and outside two men are fighting a pitched battle with swords and shields. The Doctor emerges from the TARDIS to find out where they are, and one man emerges victorious at the distraction he causes. The victor is Achilles, and he mistakes the Doctor for Zeus. Yes, back in history we go, to that era where myth and history blur and overlap: the TARDIS has landed the travellers just over the ridge from the city of Troy, where a massive army of Greeks has been assembled to conquer the city all over a woman. Steven ends up captured with the Doctor and kept in the Greek camp, whereas Vicki is taken into Troy when the TARDIS is captured, and she is renamed Cressida by king Priam, for he finds the name Vicki to be too hard to remember. Both the Doctor and Vicki are held as captives working under duress; the Doctor must help the Greeks breach the walls of Troy, and Vicki is to help the Trojans repel their enemies. And then there's a big wooden horse.

We all know this story. Like so many adventures, The Myth Makers exists only as an audio soundtrack which I listened to on the way to Windsor, Ontario on Thursday morning. I saw the Brad Pitt version of Troy earlier on DVD and try as I might I could not fully convince myself to mentally mesh the two and have William Hartnell speaking with Mr Pitt, and Maureen O'Brien (Vicki) hanging about a palace with Orlando Bloom skulking about with some other man's wife. Nope. Just didn't work. After a while when you get Doctor Who in your blood, you can see the wobbly sets of the classic era, and the painted backdrop walls, and envision a wooden horse made the size of a chair but shot from afar to look huge. But in this case that is not a bad thing; this is another of those comedy episodes. King Priam is bored with being under seige for 10 years and takes his frustrations out by mocking his idiot children (one who was stupid enough to steal a Greek noble's woman and have a whole fleet come looking for her). The Greeks are tired and want to go home; even Helen's husband says he doesn't miss her and she's pulled this kind of stunt before so he may as well just leave her to it. Add the usual conventions of the TARDIS and its crew being mistaken for things and people they are not, and it actually is pretty damn funny.

Anyone who knows their Shakespeare also knows the story Troilus and Cressida, which takes place within Troy during the Greek seige. Vicki falls in love with Troilus after some dubious flirting and decides that she wants to stay here with him in the distant past with the Greeks hunting them down after the fall of Troy. The Doctor is too rushed to fully comprehend her leaving; Steven is wounded in the sacking of Troy and he enlists the aid of a handmaiden named Katarina to help him get Steven on board the TARDIS. The TARDIS makes good its escape with a new companion, and Vicki is left to become part of history. Or mythology. Or maybe just to die eventually. Steven does not even get to say goodbye to her.

The TARDIS flies on. Vicki must have had some kind of ESP to know to get out now, because when next it lands, the ship will put its crew into the middle of a conspiracy and plans to ransack the galaxy...

NEXT EPISODE : THE DALEK MASTER PLAN