Mission to the Unknown

For the first time ever, this story features none of the regular cast. In fact there is no mention of them whatsoever. It must have been quite a surprise for people watching this in October 1965. I wonder at what point people started to get impatient at not seeing the Doctor, Vicki or Steven. Nowadays its that not unusual to have an episode where the Doctor and the companions don’t feature that much but this is the only time that their absence is noticeable.
 

Whilst we don’t get the regulars we do get a group of people who work for the Space Security Service and we are on the planet of Kembel. The Daleks do appear in the episode so whilst we don’t get the Doctor we get his nemesis.  I like how dangerous the Varga plants are considering they are just plants. It’s harder to know which is the greater threat, either the Daleks or the Varga plants have the ability to cause harm but it seems like the Varga plants can cause a more elaborate death.

Considering that they get the rare opportunity of leading the story I must say that Barry Jackson (Jeff Garvey), Edward de Souza (Marc Corey) & Jeremy Young (Gordon Lowery) all did well in their group. However I was most impressed with Robert Cartland as Malpha. The speech he gives at the end is quite good and sets up the upcoming Dalek epic brilliantly and shows that he is going to be a character that the viewers should remember.

The second half of the episode is set aside to set up the Master Plan part of the Daleks Master Plan story. This episode is the prequel to that adventure and when listening to it I must admit that I got quite caught up in the adventure. It’s been several episodes since I really got into the story. Not since the last Dalek story have I not had a niggly feel of disappointment. In Mission to the Unknown I thought that this could easily have been extended because the Space Security Service crew had a good story and there was plenty to see from the Daleks and their traitors. It’s just a shame that this episode no longer exists on video as it would a cracker to watch.