After the last episode, people up and down the country must have been wondering what was on the end of that sink plunger. However they decided that we would have to wait a little longer to find out as we return to the Doctor, Ian and Susan who are still looking for Barbara. They are much weaker than they were in the previous episode and it’s not long before they discover the Geiger counter (or the Skaro equivalent) and figure out that they are suffering from radiation poisoning. It’s also at this point that the Doctor confesses that there is nothing wrong with the fluid link like a child confessing to their parents that they have broken the family vase.
It’s nearly 5 minutes before we get
our first site of the Daleks. But when we do we’re not just treated to one, but
to several and their monotonous voice must have struck fear into many people.
We are also treated to what happens when people don’t follow their instructions
and William Russell becomes the first person ever to feel the effects of the
Daleks’ gun. It’s a shame they didn’t have the catchphrase ‘Exterminate’ yet. The
effect was simple but effective.
After Ian has been struck down we
are told that it’s not permanent so it’s nice to know that they can change the
setting on their gun. Barbara is reunited with the Doctor, Ian and Susan and
their cell is quite big but sparse. Nice bit of humour when Barbara notes that
there isn’t much furniture and Ian responds by saying that it doesn’t help very
much.
We find out that there are the
metal creatures and they are fighting against Thals. We get a nice bit of
history about the war and when the Daleks are talking about the Thals we learn
just as much about the Daleks as we do about the Thals because the Daleks tell
the Doctor that the Thals must be horribly mutated and this creates a nice bit
of drama as one of the regulars are being told to go back into the forest. This
is done during the first encounter between the Doctor and the Daleks. Quite a
historical episode yet its wonderfully standard. The Doctor is weak and yet the
Daleks don’t really care.
The central performances are all
very good. I love how William Hartnell’s hair seems to have a mind of its own.
It’s all up in the air in an attempt to show the viewer that he’s affected by
the radiation. Hartnell is good in this because the Doctor has to take some
responsibility for them being sick and captured and he does this very well. The
Doctor seems to be affected the most by the radiation. Apart from his scene
with the Daleks, he doesn’t really do very much in the episode. William Russell
puts in another good performance. Despite being sick, Ian is willing to go out
to get the anti-radiation drugs. He feels like it should be his responsibility
to get the drugs even though he can barely walk. Carole Ann Ford is very good
in this episode and it might be more to do with how childish Susan has been in
recent episodes. Apart from her reaction to the Daleks (which is a perfectly
natural reaction), she is perfectly fine and Carole Ann Ford is given something
decent to do. She’s given the cliffhanger all to herself which she does well
with. Sadly Barbara isn’t given much to do in this episode. She spends all of
it locked up and when they are reunited, she has got worse. Jacqueline Hill has
to basically do capture and suffering from radiation sickness type acting which
she does perfectly fine but it wasn’t her finest episode but it’s more to do
with the writing than the actress herself.
Despite this being the sixth
episode in the show we learn that there is a defence mechanism on the TARDIS
lock. This plot point serves a purpose here but it’s never mentioned again. It
means that Susan has to go and it forces the character to do something she
probably wouldn’t have done normally.
This is another well directed
episode. There are some shots in the Dalek Command Room where the camera is
sitting on the floor means that we are looking up at the Daleks. There were a
couple of shots like this. The shot where it starts on the regulars but pulls
back to show them surrounded by many Daleks is one of my favourites. There is a curious return of the static shot
whilst the actor is running on the spot. This time its Carole Ann Ford and I
still think it’s a rather curious way of filming.
The final couple of minutes are
focused on Susan as she makes her return to the TARDIS. It’s perhaps the most
screen time she’s had to herself since the show started and together with the
directing it’s a scene. As cliffhangers
go, it’s the weakest one so far. Susan exiting the TARDIS and then it fades to
black. It’s not the worse cliffhanger in Doctor Who history but after 5
cliffhangers which have all been strong it’s a shame that this one falls a bit
short of what we have come to expect. As an episode it only really has one
selling point and that was finding out what was on the end of the sink plunger
and there was an awful lot of sitting around talking with not much in the way
of activity. A good episode but not as much fun as the previous episode
RATING
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