The Evil of the Daleks

Episode 1

Hannah: They could have just called it The Daleks.
Me: We've had that one.
Hannah: But evil is all they are.

The Doctor and Jamie are still at Gatwick Airport on the trail of the missing TARDIS.

Hannah: So this is another undercover operation, happening at exactly the same time as the Chameleons in The Faceless Ones? These people are watching the airport and they didn't notice that those other people were aliens? Or maybe they did notice.
Me: And it's still the same day that Ben and Polly left Earth, which means it's also the day that The War Machines takes place and William Hartnell is currently across town dealing with WOTAN. So all three things are happening in London at the same time.

There's no point waiting until the Daleks make an appearance before talking about them; it's not like it's going to spoil the surprise, they're in the bloody title after all.

Me: Do you remember at the beginning of The War Machines, when the Doctor says that he's having the same sensation he gets when the Daleks are around?
Hannah: Ah! So he was right, he was just in the wrong area of London.
Me: Yes, well, it was written a year earlier, so at the time it was obviously intended to be a reference to WOTAN. But now we discover that the Daleks are in London at the same time, so in retrospect it probably was the Daleks he was sensing.
Hannah: The Daleks obviously aren't going to make much of an impact if the other Doctor never quite noticed they were here.
Me: To be fair, he was rather busy at the time.

Hannah quickly deduces the secret of Edward Waterfield's brand-new Victorian antiques, sort of ("He's going back in time and stealing Victorian clocks?"), but not why he's using the TARDIS to lure the Doctor and Jamie into a trap.

Hannah: He's definitely Victorian. He's got sideburns and everything. Maybe in the future the Doctor accidentally strands him there, so he doesn't like him.
Me: Interesting theory.
Hannah: And he just happens to have bumped into other people who want to help fund his hatred.
Me: What, like a Kickstarter?
Hannah: Yes! The Daleks are giving him money to help him get his own back. Oooh, look at those shiny sewing machines.

This last remark is a reaction to the high-tech secret room in Waterfield's study; presumably it was one of the stretch goals on his crowdfunding project.

While the Doctor and Jamie bide their time in a café, and Hannah strains to hear the 1967 chart music on the jukebox (incidentally, the tracks are "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen" by the Seekers and "Paperback Writer" by the Beatles), the hapless Kennedy breaks into Waterfield's office and starts poking around. It's clear to Hannah that this isn't going to end well.

Hannah: Why would you start having a fiddle?
Me: Sorry, I didn't think you'd notice.
Hannah: No, he's randomly flicking switches! Something might explode.

Sure enough, a Dalek turns up and starts making a fuss.

Me: Any comments?
Hannah: I love Jamie trying to deal with the modern world.

Episode 2

The good news is that, unlike the rest of the story, this particular episode actually exists; the bad news is that there's no sixties chart music in this one, which is a pity because "Waterloo Sunset" was number two this week in 1967. Anyway, we open with the Doctor and Jamie sneaking into the antiques shop after dark.

Me: It's a good thing Ben and Polly have already left, otherwise you'd have all four of them trying to hide in there.
Hannah: It wouldn't work. They're very bad at hiding as it is.

The door to Waterfield's study opens.

Hannah: It might as well be a large box, propped up with a stick and with a little cat treat inside it. "Doctor is curious, Doctor wants to find things. Here, kitty kitty, in the box."
Me: It's more subtle than that; they've cleverly set up a string of clues with only just enough information to keep the Doctor and Jamie following the trail.
Hannah: Which is weird, because if you wanted the Doctor to turn up here, why didn't they just tell him where they'd taken the TARDIS instead of making him jump through all these hoops to get here?
Me: He might not have come.
Hannah: Because he thinks it's too obvious? I'm pretty sure he'd still go.

The door to the secret room opens ("They're shaking the box of cat treats directly in his face now"), and the Doctor and Jamie are kidnapped and brought back in time to a Victorian house in 1866. The Doctor briefly looks horrified when Mollie the maid makes a reference to "the master".

Hannah: Obviously he didn't exist yet; he wasn't a thing. But retrospectively, seeing as they're supposed to have known each other since they were children, that's really good, even if it was a lucky accident.

This particular master is Theodore Maxtible. Hannah may not have much luck with identifying sitcom stars of the 1970s, but let's see if she can recognise a bona fide film star.

Me: Maxtible is played by Marius Goring.
Hannah: I don't know who that is.
Me: He was Conductor 71 in A Matter of Life and Death.
Hannah: (long pause) Well, he's changed a bit.
Me: This was twenty years later.
Hannah: He's changed quite a lot; I could never have told you that this is the same person. He was covered in make-up before, and now he's covered in beard.

Our attention is drawn to a portrait of Waterfield's late wife, and we're told that his daughter Victoria is the spitting image of her.

Hannah: And what an image! Did they randomly ask if anyone could oil-paint? They got the actress, painted her face and then saw that it was terrible but didn't have time to re-do it.

Waterfield has been helping the Daleks because they've taken Victoria to ensure his co-operation. They also seem to be force-feeding her to keep up her weight, for reasons that neither of us can quite understand.

Hannah: Are they fattening her up, or just trying to keep her alive? It's a bit creepy when the Daleks walk out of the room but the entire head swivels round to carry on talking to you. They're like evil owls.

As Maxtible and Waterfield helpfully provide exposition to the Doctor and the audience, Hannah's attention is drawn to the laboratory setting.

Hannah: They always have bubbly things, but you really shouldn't leave things bubbling like that without being watched. It's completely foolish. No decent chemist would do that.

Jamie, meanwhile, has been attacked and kidnapped ("Jamie gets a holiday next episode, then"), which is a problem because the Daleks want to subject Jamie to some potentially lethal tests so that they can identify and distil the elusive "Human Factor".

Hannah: The Doctor has a difficult choice to make; I wonder how other Doctors would have reacted. What is this test; psychological or biological?
Me: Maybe it's a urine test.
Hannah: Very interesting story so far. I had no idea where it was going to go, and I'm pleasantly intrigued. A lovely frolic.

Episode 3

It soon becomes obvious to Hannah that Jamie was only abducted because we needed a cliffhanger for episode 2. He is saved by the intervention of Arthur Terrall, but Terrall's split personality only raises further questions.

Hannah: Everything about this is very odd.

Unknown to Jamie, the Doctor agrees to put him through the test; Jamie must rescue Victoria Waterfield so that the Doctor and the Daleks can record the qualities he exhibits.

Hannah: I thought it would be something like that. They're going to discover what the human spirit is and see if they can isolate it. But I don't understand what they're expecting to gain; either they want to splice themselves and make some kind of hybrid, or they want to learn from humans, which is never going to happen. Daleks don't learn. They're just angry and shooty.
Me: They're always learning.
Hannah: They've learned how to go up stairs, I suppose, but how can they learn to love?
Me: They're not looking for a matchmaking service.
Hannah: They want some humanity, and that's what humanity is; the ability to empathise with other people and adapt your own actions to the needs or wants of others around you. Unless you're a sociopath or a psychopath, most humans have the ability to empathise.
Me: Two and a half thousand years of philosophy have failed to agree on exactly what humanity is...
Hannah: I'm not saying that's exactly what humanity is, but I'm saying that it's the closest we can get to putting it in a nutshell. It's all the stuff that they've discarded over the years, which is love and understanding, so I don't see how they expect to put that inside themselves.

The Doctor provokes Jamie into having a furious argument with him, and wraps it up by forbidding him to rescue Victoria. The reverse psychology works beautifully.

Hannah: Sneaky.
Me: He's definitely one of the more manipulative Doctors.

Hannah is still trying to work out the reason behind Terrall's constant dizzy spells and personality switches.

Hannah: Is he supposed to be a sort of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde type? Or is he a remote-control person, and there's interference on the line?
Me: You think maybe someone in that Victorian kitchen keeps turning on the Kenwood food mixer?
Hannah: What on earth is going on with this guy? It was a complete waste of plot and suspense to have Jamie get kidnapped only to be immediately released, and this split personality is just weird and confusing. There'd better be a decent reason behind it all, otherwise it's just been a twisty plot for no reason except to fill time.

Maxtible seems very willing to co-operate with the Daleks.

Hannah: I always thought it was strange that the Daleks have no hands and can't do anything, and now they've hired someone to be a physical person to be in the way. They don't want to just kill people, they want to control and be big.
Me: They want to be big?
Hannah: Big and in the way, rather than just this great big metal roly thing.
Me: In the way of what?
Hannah: Daleks can be easily walked around; they're not very dexterous, they can't turn quickly, they don't have hands, and they don't even have easy access to all rooms and terrains. They can kill you instantly, which is a good persuader, but unless they're willing to shoot their prisoner to try and disable them, they have no way of making somebody stay where they want them.
Me: What about that thing that paralyses your legs?
Hannah: Well, they haven't used that since their first appearance. But even then, they can't carry them, so once they're paralysed and on the floor, that's it; they'd just have to kick them along the ground to get them to where they want to go, so paralysing someone's kind of pointless. They can't keep Victoria hostage because she could just run off, and they wouldn't want to shoot her because she's leverage. They need people to do things for them, so they've got a man in to do the "arms" bits and the "locking in" bits.
Me: And the beard bits.
Hannah: I'm sure Daleks could have beards.

Episode 4

This week's plot: Jamie and his new friend Kemel, a mute, muscular Turkish man, spend a whole episode overcoming deadly traps in their quest to rescue Victoria. That's it.

Hannah: Kemel's not doing what he was told by Maxtible, which was to block Jamie no matter what. He told Kemel that Jamie is evil, but then Jamie saves his life so he can't possibly be evil. What if that was all part of evil Jamie's plan? I mean, on a human level, yeah, I think if someone saves your life, you want to think they're not such a bad person. But if you're given explicit instructions to protect something, and that's your job, you should do it. You don't know this bloke who's turned up in a skirt.

Luckily this is interspersed with the Doctor and a Dalek monitoring Jamie's progress whilst comparing notes.

Hannah: It's just weird.
Me: I know, but that's why it's so much fun. I love it, it's such an odd dynamic.
Hannah: Perhaps he's just playing the Daleks; he's clever and tricksy, so maybe he's using Jamie's behaviours to create a "better" Dalek, in the human sense. I don't see how the Human Factor is really going to help them, though. There's a lot they could learn about humanity that would suit them, but I doubt they'll find it in Jamie.

Jamie and Kemel finally reach their goal, only to find a Dalek waiting for them.

Hannah: I wanted it to have a wig on.
Me: I think a transvestite Dalek might be stretching credibility a little bit too far.
Hannah: It honestly wouldn't seem that unusual anymore. All of this is just weird. An evil Dalek plan to get some brainwaves, taking place in a Victorian house...?

Episode 5

The Doctor is imprinting Jamie's qualities into positronic brains, which will be implanted into three test Daleks.

Hannah: They trust their greatest enemy with what are essentially three of their babies?
Me: They're obviously bad parents.

After a sword fight with Jamie, Terrall's erratic behaviour is explained when the Doctor reveals him to be under the control of the Daleks. Not that it explains his magnetic body.

Hannah: I'd like to see Jamie having a sword fight.
Me: Why?
Hannah: I don't know. Swords and kilts. They go together. Okay, so his strange behaviour has finally been explained, mostly. But I'm still not sure why they kidnapped Jamie for two minutes. It really did just fill time and introduce the character; it provides excitement for the viewers but it's completely pointless.

For a brief moment it looks like the Daleks are going to exterminate Kemel, much to Hannah's dismay, but it turns out they still need him to scoop up Victoria and accompany them back to Skaro.

Hannah: Oh, of course, he's still the hands. Because the Daleks can't carry her themselves, like I said. They're shitting useless.

Jamie challenges the Doctor again, and this time he's had enough; he wants to leave.

Hannah: That seemed very poignant; it feels like Jamie is really prepared to leave him forever. I like how their argument helps explore the Doctor's character, and voices the viewer's concerns about the Doctor's cavalier behaviour in this situation. Yes, the Doctor behaves callously, but underneath he's constantly trying to resolve the situation the best way he can, subtly manipulating everyone, and the complexity of his approach can sometimes make it seem doubtful which side he's on. He's an odd man with a brilliant brain.

The Doctor activates his three test Daleks.

Hannah: Please be Daleks with Scottish accents. "These are your children, Jamie!"

When the human Daleks turn out to be childlike and playful, Hannah isn't sure what to think.

Hannah: It's all very strange.
Me: You know how we've talked before about Daleks being emotional creatures, but having childish emotions? By essentially removing the evil from their nature, he's created benignly childish creatures who enjoy playing games.
Hannah: Has the Doctor committed subterfuge, or are these the human things that the Daleks wanted? Either these "nice" things will round the Daleks and improve their breadth for scheming, or they'll clash so badly they'll go insane. Nice.

Episode 6

When they're done playing trains ("They shouldn't know what trains are"), the human Daleks are summoned to Skaro; the Doctor, Jamie and Waterfield follow them, only just making their escape before the house explodes. It's been a while since we last saw the Dalek city, but Hannah is unmoved by its reappearance.

Hannah: It's a cardboard model.
Me: You know, this is the first time we've been back to Skaro since the Daleks first appeared in The Daleks.
Hannah: Not counting the film.
Me: You want to canonise Dr. Who and the Daleks, do you?
Hannah: No. It's a shame the episodes are missing, I'd really like to have seen the planet. Nostalgia.

I've always adored the human Daleks, but now I love them more than ever, if only because of the big beaming grin it produces on Hannah's face. The Emperor Dalek doesn't seem to strike much of a chord, though.

Me: Do you recognise this chap?
Hannah: I could have a guess. Davros?
Me: No.
Hannah: No?
Me: No.
Hannah: The Dalek Controller, or whatever he's called, then?
Me: This is the giant Dalek Emperor that Christopher Eccleston meets in his last story. Or possibly another one that looks very similar.
Hannah: There's so many different variations of Dalek from all over this place; I don't know the difference between any of them.
Me: It's the Emperor Dalek.
Hannah: Yeah, well, I don't know what that means.
Me: It's a big Dalek in a giant tank.
Hannah: I don't remember that. I don't know the difference between the Emperor Dalek and Dalek Commanders or whatever they're called.

The Emperor reveals the Daleks' real motive for identifying the Human Factor: it enabled them to identify the Dalek Factor, and now they want the Doctor to spread it throughout Earth's history.

Hannah: What, and make humans want to kill each other? Why? That's just silly. Surely the Daleks will want to come along and do all the killing themselves. I don't get what their plan would achieve.

Episode 7

Hannah doesn't understand why the Daleks have successfully infected Maxtible with the Dalek Factor but it hasn't worked on the Doctor.

Hannah: So it affects Daleks and humans? But it doesn't affect Time Lords?
Me: Correct.
Hannah: That's very silly. Dalek and human DNA isn't anything similar.
Me: Maybe the Dalek Factor and the Human Factor are two sides of the same coin? Like a shorthand for good and evil? It's not like there's a Time Lord Factor.
Hannah: Hmmm. It's very questionable.
Me: If there is such a thing as a Time Lord Factor, the Doctor has certainly never had it.

Waterfield is shot by a Dalek while saving the Doctor's life, but manages to stay alive long enough to make the Doctor promise he'll look after Victoria.

Hannah: They usually die instantly. No one gets to die slowly when they're shot by a Dalek. How many times has the Doctor been shot by a Dalek?
Me: It happened to Tennant once, but I think that's the only time. He takes a fatal blast and then regenerates into the same body.
Hannah: Oh yeah, his cheat. So technically he's number ten and eleven.
Me: Well, no; he did regenerate but he didn't change, so he's still the same Doctor. His cells regenerated and he used up a life, but he kept the same form.

I decide not to point out that the unnumbered John Hurt incarnation means that the tenth Doctor actually represents his eleventh and twelfth lives. Let's deal with one can of worms at a time.

Hannah: Why can't every Doctor decide to do that?
Me: Well, for a start, it would mean they'd need to find a lot of actors who look exactly like William Hartnell; and secondly, he only managed it that time because of that trick with his severed hand. If every Doctor chopped off their own hand immediately after regeneration and kept it stored on the TARDIS, maybe they could do that. Besides, he would still lose a life and run out of regenerations just as quickly, so it's not really worth mutilating yourself.
Hannah: It grows back.
Me: It still hurts, and it wouldn't prolong your life at all.
Hannah: But at least you could make a decision about whether you want to be you; it must be a horrible thing to know that you've got to die and become someone else. You've got all the memories, but all of your feelings and emotions and attitudes are different.
Me: He would also need to carry his severed hand around in a big tank everywhere he goes, just in case he dies.
Hannah: He could fix it up to be some kind of lanyard. Does it have to be a whole hand? Could it just be a pinky finger round his neck?
Me: No, it couldn't.
Hannah: If they try to destroy the hand, does it regenerate?
Me: No.

It's fun to imagine how various Doctor Who stories might have played out if the Doctor had been carrying his severed hand around with him; it could be tricky getting through customs at Gatwick Airport in The Faceless Ones, for a start. (Although it would certainly give a whole new meaning to the term "hand luggage".) Back on Skaro, the Doctor has started a civil war and the infected Daleks are turning against the Emperor.

Hannah: Does the Emperor have guns?
Me: I don't think so.
Hannah: What an oversight.

There's still one member of the guest cast who hasn't been killed or turned into a Dalek yet, but this is soon remedied when Maxtible throws Kemel over the edge of a cliff.

Hannah: No! How could he possibly be strong enough to kill him?
Me: You're really upset, aren't you?
Hannah: Yes! He was such a lovely guy. They could easily have just taken him home, or kept him along... I suppose they didn't want to bother taking anyone back. They thought "oh shit, the Doctor can't actually take him back to Victorian London."
Me: Canterbury.
Hannah: "We're stuck with Victoria; we can't kill her off because that would just be mean. Kill everybody else off."
Me: So you think Kemel would have made a good companion?
Hannah: No, of course not! He doesn't talk! It would be a bit tedious for the actor to have to stand around every week and not talk. Companions are there to pose questions for the Doctor to explain to the audience.
Me: He'd be a sight more interesting than some of the companions that do talk.
Hannah: So he died, Maxtible got turned into a Dalek, and Waterfield had to die, just so that the only one left was Victoria because she's young and fit and able to be a companion.
Me: When did you realise Victoria was going to be the next companion?
Hannah: I had suspicions when they left the house and it blew up. Then I was pretty sure as soon as her dad died.

As Skaro burns, the Doctor declares that this is "the final end" of the Daleks.

Hannah: What happens to the human Daleks, then? They're not all dead; some of them are still alive. We know that the Daleks come back and they're just as evil as before, so did the Human Factor help at all? Or did all the Human Factor Daleks die?
Me: Well, in retrospect we do know that, but in 1967 this was intended to be the last Dalek story ever. It's supposed to be a proper swansong.
Hannah: Oh, okay.
Me: They didn't want to keep paying Terry Nation every time they wanted to use the Doctor's main enemies, so they decided to write the Daleks out of the series and promote the Cybermen as the main antagonists instead because they were solely owned by the BBC. So that's the last time you'll be seeing the Daleks for a while.

The Score

Hannah: I don't know how I feel about this story. It's quite a long one for the amount of stuff that happens in it.
Me: You reckon? I think there's maybe one episode of padding in the middle, where Jamie is running around the Dalek version of Fun House to rescue Victoria, but other than that I think it's pretty tight.
Hannah: There's a lot of weird stuff in it, but it's not as loose and flappy as some others have been. I enjoyed it all; some of it was a little difficult to get my head around, but nowhere near as taxing as some other ones. I think the only problem is the fact that it's held in a Victorian house which is so big that somehow there are people living in the house that haven't seen the Daleks. And they came to Earth because Maxtible happened to create a time portal with some mirrors. Very dodgy science. It's a good, interesting story but it hangs on a lot of loose threads. I liked it, but why did everyone have to die?
Me: Because it's Doctor Who.
Hannah: The thing is, though, I really like the three little Daleks. They've very cute.

8/10

Me: This is considered one of the all-time great Dalek stories, by the way.
Hannah: It was very, very good, but it wasn't stunning for the full seven episodes.