Mission to the Unknown

I'm really torn on this one. I would love to surprise Hannah by showing her the episode as contemporary audiences would have seen it; on the other hand, I also want her to assess it fairly without being distracted by trying to work out what the hell is going on.

Me: Okay, I'm going to explain what's happening here because audiences at the time would have been confused, and I want you to appreciate it and make an informed judgement. This is a standalone episode, in a manner of speaking. And the Doctor isn't in it.
Hannah: At all?
Me: Not at all. And nor are Vicki and Steven.
Hannah: Well, that sounds like it's not an episode of Doctor Who.
Me: Well...
Hannah: It sounds like a filler that they aired at the wrong time. Or just an excuse for everyone to have a holiday for a week.
Me: It's the end of the recording block, so they would have had a holiday immediately after this anyway.
Hannah: It sounds like someone made a bad decision.
Me: And it's not entirely filler, because it's not actually a standalone story as such. It's sort of a prologue.
Hannah: Does it lead up to something that happens in the next episode?
Me: Not the next episode, no. That's the other thing that would have confused contemporary audiences.
Hannah: So they build something up and then don't come back to it for a while.
Me: Well, quite. The season opens with Galaxy 4, which is followed by this cutaway episode without any of the regular characters, which is then followed by a completely unrelated story with the Doctor and companions and the series continues as normal; the plot threads in this episode don't get picked up until later in the series. So it's a sort of prologue, but audiences at the time wouldn't have known what to make of it at all.
Hannah: They probably would have just been really annoyed that they'd sat down to watch for half an hour and it wasn't the show that they wanted to watch.
Me: Maybe, but it's a very bold and confident move for the show to make.
Hannah: "Tonight on EastEnders: we watch some random bloke in Norfolk for half an hour."
Me: It's also Verity Lambert's last episode as producer, after working on the show since the very beginning.
Hannah: Go out with a flop, that's what they say.
Me: You haven't seen it yet, it might be amazing.
Hannah: I can't see any reason why it would be amazing. It's not an episode of Doctor Who.
Me: Okay. Well, treat it as a standalone episode for the moment and judge it on its own merits, but bear in mind that it also sets up events that will become important later in this season.
Hannah: Is this a reconstruction?
Me: Yes.
Hannah: So it's a shit version of a shit episode?

She relents a little when she sees the writing credit.

Hannah: Oh, Terry Nation wrote it?
Me: Yes, why?
Hannah: He writes good stuff.

Hannah very quickly notices the subtext of our stand-in protagonist, Marc Cory.

Hannah: Ah. So he's like a space spy.
Me: We're at the peak of the popularity of the spy film here. They're obviously going for a James Bond feel.

She's not terribly surprised to see that the Daleks are back, and clearly finds their Varga plants much more interesting.

Hannah: Ah. So their thorns make people go mad. And now he's also a zombie! Excellent. Do you know those ants that get parasites...
Me: You mean the fungus that turn them into zombie slaves?
Hannah: Yeah, and then the ant climbs to the top of a plant, and then fungus sprouts out of its head and the spores come out like this. It looks like he's covered in fungus.
Me: That's almost exactly what happened. The Varga plant's thorn hits you, the venom affects your mind and makes you want to kill people, and then eventually it turns you into a Varga plant.
Hannah: Creepy.

Cory's tape recorder seems a little ridiculous now, given that this is set around the year 4000, but the planet Kembel looks a lot more impressive. What we can see of it, anyway.

Me: Jungle looks good.
Hannah: It does. It's got plants in.
Me: I mean for a studio set.
Hannah: I'm sure it would look worse if the cameras were panning around a lot and we could see the edges. From these still images, it just looks dense.

She's utterly baffled by the concept of the Daleks holding a meeting with delegates from seven alien planets.

Hannah: Why do they have allies, considering they hate everyone?
Me: They've called a meeting of representatives from other galaxies.
Hannah: Is it so that they can kill them? Daleks hate everyone.
Me: They may have ulterior motives, but they obviously need some help in the meantime.

Our hero is eventually killed by the Varga plants, and Hannah is impressed that we're finally able to see a story where the Daleks win.

William Hartnell's contract specified that he would be credited for every episode, even the ones where he doesn't appear; it's not normally quite so noticeable when he goes on holiday in the middle of a story, but it's a lot more striking here.

Hannah: His absence is even more obvious there. He's definitely not been in the whole episode and he still gets credited.
Me: So there we go; that was the original "Doctor-lite" episode, long before "Love & Monsters" or "Blink" came along.
Hannah: He was in those ones!

The Score

Me: So, those events will be picked up later in the season. But in the meantime...?
Hannah: I liked it. I like people turning into plants and things like that, and it's interesting that the Daleks win and... well, there wasn't a huge amount of plot.
Me: If you're going to do a story without the Doctor, I suppose you need to have the Daleks. Terry Nation wanted to do a Dalek spin-off show, so I expect this is pretty much what it would have been like.
Hannah: It was interesting that the Daleks had some supposed allies. I mean, they hate everyone so it doesn't seem very plausible.
Me: You'll have to see what happens when we come back to it later.
Hannah: So you want me to give it a score?
Me: Would you?
Hannah: Well, obviously zero, because it's not a Doctor Who episode.

0/10

Me: It's more of a Doctor Who episode than that film was. And it's a prologue to another story...
Hannah: Yes, I know! It is Doctor Who and it was actually really good. But it was made weird by not having the Doctor in it at all. It may be a prequel but it's ages away from the actual story, although I wouldn't know that if you hadn't told me. The lack of Doctor makes it really difficult to score. It was really good but there was no actual Doctor Who in it and there wasn't enough of anything, but what was there was good.

6/10

Hannah: It was interesting but it didn't feel quite right.