Planet of the Daleks - Episode 1 (Destinus)

With this opening episode, Barry Letts becomes the longest serving producer of Doctor Who having clocked up 87 episodes. Jon Pertwee is now on 9 away from his century of episodes and Katy Manning now has 66 episodes to her name. This is the first episode that Terry Nation has written since the Christmas Day episode of ‘The Daleks Master Plan’ back in 1965.  Planet of the Daleks is the second half of this epic story and after saying goodbye to Roger Delgado in the previous episode, there is no time to look at how the Master managed to escape but instead chase after the Daleks. Since Terry Nation last wrote for the show, they have scrapped giving each episode a title yet thankfully the information text gave us the title that Nation gave the episode and it’s called Destinus.

The first few minutes of this story take place in the TARDIS and it’s the first time in a fairly long time that this has happened. The action doesn’t stay in the TARDIS for long as Jo ventures out into the endless forest. In these early minutes, Jo is put in some good situations of drama as she comes across the ship and then gets found out by two Thals. One of those Thals is played by the ever reliable Bernard Horsfall who I could watch all day. He’s the reluctant leader of this small group. But obviously we don’t know this at the time, here he’s just a leader. The other two that we meet are impressive in this episode but that will change.

There are some good scenes in this episode. The first impressive one is when Jo is hiding and there is a bit of CSO used to make a phone. That’s right I have praised a bit of CSO, lets not get ahead of ourselves, I think that CSO hasn’t helped the show in the way that Barry Letts thought that it had but there are some good moments from time to time.

One of the critiscms that have been laid at the door of this story is that its basically a repeat of Nation’s previous adventures and whilst that may be true I simply don’t care. I enjoyed this story before I knew this and I still enjoy this adventure. It’s got some great performances and it flows a lot better than most six part adventures. The cliffhanger of this episode is new and really good, the sight of an invisible Dalek, slowly being revealed is a great moment and it’s the perfect end to a very good opening episode and I think that the fact we don’t see the dalek until the very end is typical Nation and its good because it allows the supporting characters to be introduced and mingle with the Doctor and Jo.