Production Code B
First Transmitted:
CAST
 Crew Christopher Barry: Director1, 2, 4, 5 Elizabeth Blattner: Make-Up Jack Brummitt: Studio Sound Tristram Cary: Incidental Music Jack Clayton: Studio Sound Raymond P Cusick: Designer1-5, 7 Daphne Dare: Costumes Jeremy Davies: Designer - 6 Stewart Farnell: Film Cameraman Michael Ferguson: Assistant Floor Manager Ron Grainer: Title Music and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, arranged by Delia Derbyshire Jeremy Hare: Assistant Floor Manager Brian Hodgson: Special Sounds Verity Lambert: Producer Richard Martin: Director 3, 6, 7 Terry Nation: Writer Mervyn Pinfield: Associate Producer Geoff Shaw: Studio Lighting Norman Stewart: Production Assistant John Treays: Studio Lighting Ted Walter: Film Editor David Whitaker: Story Editor
Plot Outline from Wikipedia When the TARDIS arrives in a petrified jungle, the Doctor and his friends are unaware the planet is highly radioactive. The Doctor insists they explore a futuristic city they spot beyond the forest but Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright are unconvinced. to force his companions to do so he sabotages his own TARDIS by emptying the mercury fluid links. He now insists they must all search the distant city. The next morning when they emerge from the TARDIS they find a box outside, holding vials filled with an amber liquid. Susan Foreman places the box in the ship for safekeeping, after which the four travellers head off to the mysterious city. It is entirely built of metal and there are no stairs, only metal ramps; while the doorways are fashioned as squat rounded arches. Barbara manages to open a door, revealing a corridor beyond, but a shutter soon falls cutting her off from her colleagues. Within moments a strange creature emerges from a nearby lift, threatening her with a metal arm. Ian, Susan and the Doctor enter a room full of machines, including a Geiger counter, which confirms they’ve been exposed to radiation. The trio realise the gravity of the situation, prompting the Doctor to admit his sabotage of the fluid link. This causes more mistrust between them and Ian takes the fluid link hostage to ensure the Doctor helps him look for Barbara. The trio continue to explore the city and are soon captured by beings known as Daleks, who imprison them together with Barbara. It soon becomes apparent they are all suffering from radiation sickness, with Barbara succumbing very quickly. The Doctor is interrogated by the Daleks, who explain something of the history of their predicament. They are survivors of a neutronic war with the Thals, which has caused mutations to both races, and the Daleks are now confined to their travel machines limited to the boundaries of their metallic city. They are reliant on a variation of static electricity to provide them with the ability to move. The Doctor persuades the Daleks that the travellers will die from radiation sickness if no drugs are found, so Susan is sent to retrieve them from the TARDIS. She makes her way out of the city and back into the petrified forest. Having located the anti-radiation drugs in the TARDIS she emerges from the craft to find an alien being confronting her. The stranger is a striking, handsome, blonde man named Alydon. His appearance proves his race, the Thals, have not suffered the same disfiguring mutations as the Daleks. He explains that he brought the drugs to Susan and now gives her more, hoping she will be able to save her friends. The Thals live in the forest and did indeed have a war with the Daleks, but they believed the robotic creatures were all now dead. He explains that the Thals have travelled many miles across the planet (named Skaro) in search of food as their race is near starvation. The Thals now hope to broker a treaty for food with the Daleks. Susan heads off to the Dalek city while Alydon returns to the Thal encampment and tells them about his encounter, hoping Susan can broker a peace and trade agreement. Susan reaches her friends and passes round the drugs, then contacts the Daleks and explains the Thals are now looking for peace and food. The Daleks imply acceptance, asking the Thals in return to help them cultivate the land, but in reality they are plotting revenge and extermination of their old enemies. The message of peace is conveyed to the Thals, who are invited to collect food from the entrance hall to the Dalek city the following day. Having recovered with chemical help, the Doctor’s party succeed in overpowering one of the Daleks and decide to use the robotic shell as a means of escape. The reptilian monstrosity within is dumped while Ian squeezes into the Dalek casing. In this guise he escorts his three friends through the city, hoping they can make a break for freedom. The ruse works thanks to some quick thinking on the part of Ian, who even convinces another Dalek that he is one of them and is taking the three human prisoners for further questioning. However, when the same Dalek makes enquiries it discovers that it has been duped and sounds the alarm. After a tight squeak getting out of the casing, Ian and his allies find themselves at a window where they observe the Thals arrive to collect the food and make peace with the Daleks. As the Thals take the food the Daleks open fire, exterminating several Thals including their leader Temmosus. The surviving Thals including Alydon regroup and find the four travellers. They all travel together to the Thal encampment where a young Thal named Dyoni provides a history of the planet Skaro from a Thal perspective. It seems that the Daleks were once known as Dals, humanoids similar to Thals who mutated into their current form after the lengthy neutronic war. The Thals have reacted to their history by adopting pacifism as a creed. However, it soon becomes apparent that the TARDIS crew need fighting allies – Ian has left the empty but vital fluid link in the Dalek city and they must retrieve it somehow. Ian eventually spurs Alydon on to display aggression when he threatens Dyoni, prompting the new Thal leader to hit him. This must now be channelled against the Daleks and the Thals agree to help the TARDIS crew. One group will accompany Ian and Barbara as they cross the swamp, then go around the lake to the mountains, where they can enter the city unseen through a back entrance. The other group, led by the Doctor and Susan, will try to sabotage the Daleks’ surveillance equipment. In the Dalek city their enemies start to regroup and test the medication left by the travellers which they now deduce is deadly to them. As a response they decide to increase the levels of radiation on Skaro and thus make it impossible to the Thals to survive. The attack party heading for the Lake of Mutations makes good progress on their lengthy journey. Four Thals called Elyon, Kristas, Ganatus and Antodus, the latter two of whom are brothers, have accompanied Barbara and Ian. Vast pipes are used to take water from the lake into the Dalek city. The lake also contains many mutated offshoots from the war and Ian soon spots a multi-tentacled creature in the water. The assembled party are shocked to hear one of their number, Elyon, scream as one of the monsters drags him below the murky surface. It is clear Elyon is dead but the party has to head on up the mountain. It remains a treacherous journey, with narrow fissures and no clear paths for their journey. At the front of the city the Doctor’s party have succeeded in disabling the Dalek surveillance cameras using large mirrors to reflect sunlight into them. This persuades the Daleks to reorientate their probes on to the Thal encampment rather than the other possible entrances. The Doctor and Susan become bolder and move to sabotage some static electricity control boxes, but their activity has alerted the Daleks, who soon surround them menacingly. They are taken to the control centre of the city and are told of the Dalek plan to irradiate the entire planet. Ian's party has meanwhile found a tunnel that should lead to the Dalek city. Antodus is less secure than his colleagues and starts calling for them to turn back. The situation is made more perilous by rockfalls which stops them retreating even if they wanted to. The only way is onward – and a vast chasm is their next hurdle. One by one the party has to jump across, supported by a rope between them. The last to jump is Antodus, who loses his footing and falls into the abyss, his weight dragging Ian toward the edge. Antodus sacrifices his life to save the others, and cuts the rope, letting himself fall. The others press on and within a short while have found an entrance point to the city. At the front of the city Alydon has also led another band of Thals in an assault, hoping to rescue the Doctor and Susan. By luck the two parties converge on the Dalek control centre at the same time. Together they destroy the Dalek apparatus planning the radiation release and also the power source for the Daleks in the city. The creatures become immobile and soon die. The Thals are repulsed by all the death, but are grateful their struggle is finally over. They all return together to the Thal camp – this time with the fluid link – and the Doctor and his party make their farewells and return to the TARDIS. No sooner than they are in flight there is an explosion on the console and the four travellers fall to the floor.
Analysis by Cuisle We all know the old joke - "I am a Dalek, I will exterminate you…. The earth will be annihilated…. Exterminate… Exterminate…. Oh *@## STAIRS!!' It very succinctly points out the anomalous vulnerabilities of the otherwise invincible Dalek race, arch enemy of the whole universe. Even in this first episode we find out how simple the solutions to defeating them can be. Many critics question whether it ought to have taken seven episodes to find it out. Certainly it seems as if a fair bit of padding went on to stretch the plot out that far. And suddenly realising in the last episode that the evil and soulless monsters can be killed by simply pulling the plug is a bit too much like waking up and finding it is all a dream for complete satisfaction. But even so, the story was a landmark in many ways. It was a challenge for the set designers, who had to think about several vastly different scenes - the desolate Skaro landscape, the jungle, the technologically advanced Dalek city, and the scriptwriters had a much larger subject and cast of characters than the first story allowed. Above all, this is the CLASSIC debut appearance of the DALEKS, the monsters who defined pure evil for a generation. The creation of Terry Nation, who defied the injunction against B.E.M.'s in a big way, made certain that Doctor Who was going to be more than just a Saturday night filler for years to come, and added a new word to the English language - a word, incidentally, which did NOT come from the spine of an encyclopaedia DAL-LEK! Nation made that up to satisfy journalists who kept asking him how he came by the name. But the designer, Raymond Cusick DID get the shape from a pepperpot, after trying many other concepts, this design being ideal because it allowed a man to sit inside and control the Dalek. It was also the ideal shape for rides on every seaside promenade in England, and every child who could put the plastic wash basket on his or her head and say "Exterminate" was instantly a Dalek and the streets of Britain rang with a new kind of game. Forty-five years later, everyone knows what a Dalek is. They get everywhere. The commentators on the 2009 Malaysian Grand Prix even referred to the sound from one of the in-car radio communications as sounding like a Dalek. But is it a classic story in so far as it stands the
test of time? Yes, and no. No, because it is too stretched out and
padded and there is too much dithering about. Yes, because it introduces
some timeless issues. The pacifist Thals who won’t fight even
when they are under attack and Ian’s exhortations to them to
stand up for themselves is a theme that could easily be incorporated
into a modern Doctor Who storyline. The fact that The Doctor and his
companions had a different agenda to the Thals, and that they ‘used’
them to further their own ends is worthy of examination. The issue
of genetic modification and evolution, as well as the futility of
the wars that destroyed Skaro, are universal. If you can sit through
seven episodes, then it is worth the effort.
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