Wednesday, 14 August 2013

The Daleks Master Plan - The Nightmare Begins

Well I’ve finally reached the second longest story in Doctor Who history. After having to endure ‘The Myth Makers’, its great to get to this story. It’s good how this story references ‘Mission to the Unknown’. People watching this in 1965 would have remembered this and so it would be a nice bit of continuity. The episode has a wonderful title which is one of Terry Nation’s strengths and the title pretty much sums up the story. The action from ‘The Myth Makers’ spills over with Steven recovering and the departure of Vicki still very much being dealt with.

Katarina has joined the TARDIS crew and whilst her involvement in the previous story is somewhat limited in the previous story, here she makes up for it. With Steven somewhat out of action, its falls to the Doctor and Katarina to get involved in the story. It’s clear from this episode that Katarina is going to be restrictive influence in this story. She is too primitive and if the Doctor and others have to explain things to her then the story will take twice as long. It’s not Adrienne Hill’s fault and she does the best that she can but it doesn’t take away from the fact that character was always destined to have a short life span.

Nicholas Courtney makes his first appearance in Doctor Who as Bret Vyon. He is immediately unlikeable as he tries to steal the TARDIS. The way that he boards the TARDIS is sneaky and is very untrusting.  He gets his commence and spends the latter stages of the episode being tied up. After four episodes of doing pretty much nothing, its nice that William Hartnell finally gets to do something and he is the best he has been since at least the last season. He seems to be having a ball after the interaction with Bret.
Mavic Chen is probably one of the most iconic baddies in Doctor Who. From his opening scene he carries an aura which is instantly mesmerising. He is the Guardian of the Solar System but is in fact in league with the Daleks. This seems like the first part of their Master Plan but at this time we don’t know the finer details which is something to look forward to.

It’s a cracking opening episode and for the first time since ‘Mission to the Unknown’ I feel some energy in the story. I think that as they have twelve episodes to tell the story there is the time to pace it much slower. We are introduced to the key characters and it’s a well written story by Terry Nation.

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