Doctor Who Death to the Daleks: Part One (1963–1989) Online

Jon Pertwee battled the Daleks several times, and this has to be the best of the bunch.

Part one opens with a particularly murky atmosphere, it's very eerie and sinister, with great accompanying music, some fine sets, and of course the appearance of Skaro's finest.

Some really fine guest appearances, including those from Duncan Lamont and John Abineri.

I criticise several episodes around the time, for being a little slow, this one certainly isn't, it's well paced, with lots of action.

Part one, starts off really well, it just gets better as it progresses. 8/10

Review of all 4 episodes:

This adventure has the Daleks in a bit of a different kind of story to usual. The TARDIS is stranded on a planet with all its power drained. The Doctor and Sarah Jane venture out onto the planet and come under attack from natives of the planet called Exxilons. They also find a small group of humans who are similarly stranded and powerless. The end of the first episode has a great cliffhanger as another ship arrives and as The Doctor and the humans gather to meet the ship's occupants, thinking it will be a rescue party they are faced with Daleks. A pity the title gives away their presence but the cliffhanger scene is done brilliantly.

Instead of being the usual invaders or destroyers, in this story the Daleks are also stranded on the planet with their ship and all their weapons drained of power. They have to agree a truce with the humans and work together to try to find a way to overcome their power loss and escape from the planet. Of course the Daleks evil intent is ever present and they quickly try to gain the upper hand.

This adventure has credible, well acted human characters, great performances from Pertwee and Elisabeth Sladen in the lead roles and interesting use of the Daleks. The Exxilons are decent background characters with a friendly Exxilon providing an endearing alien character with a little depth. There is plenty of action and thrills. The 'roots' of the city are an interesting idea and very well realised as robotic tentacles.

The final part is a little disappointing in my opinion compared to the preceding episodes as the quest through the city does not really excite me. Also after the great cliffhanger to episode 1 the 'cliffhanger' to episode 3 is really lame. However, these niggles are relatively minor. All in all this is an excellent Dalek story and an excellent sci-fi adventure.

Review of the Complete Story:

DEATH TO THE DALEKS is hardly a classic serial from the Jon Pertwee era of Dr Who, although it does have plenty of charm to recommend it to the fans. The story opens as the Doctor and Sarah Jane experience a massive power drain on the Tardis, which forces them to land on a murky and remote alien planet. They hook up with a human space expedition while being menaced by some unpleasant inhabitants.

The look of this serial is one of the things I liked most about it. There are exotic cities, weird rag-clothed aliens, some funny masks, and a murky, barren, alien planet all filmed in an old quarry somewhere. Inevitably the Doctor's most famous enemies also make an appearance, although the Daleks present a rather ordinary foe here with little of the fear factor that viewers are usually exposed to.

The bug-eyed aliens are more interesting, especially the friendly one that Pertwee hooks up with in the latter stages; it makes for amusing viewing. Elisabeth Sladen has little to work with but Pertwee's not bad and some of the guest stars (Hammer's Duncan Lamont, Joy Harrison) are good value. Not perfect, perhaps one for the fans to enjoy instead.

Review Of All Four Episode - Some Spoilers

Death To The Daleks is a very workman like story from the show . Unlike Day Of The Daleks that revolved around mind bending and thought provoking paradoxes involving time travel , Death like Planet from the previous year is just a basic comic strip type adventure as you might expect from Terry Nation along with contrivance and plot holes

One of these plot holes involves the Daleks landing on the planet Exxilon and like the Tardis crew and the human expedition find any electrical power has been rendered useless . It's never explained why the Daleks themselves don't die within their travel machines but the audience aren't supposed to dissect the finer details of plotting . It does mean however the Daleks are somewhat impotent since their weaponry doesn't work

This plot turn affects the story somewhat . The Daleks are iconic TV villains down to the novel way the extermination ray works . People are turned in to a monochrome/colour photo negative , scream and fall dead . It's a very simple but oh so effective special effect and NuWho embellishes the effect just slightly . Watching the Daleks here go around machine gunning the Exxilons is very mundane

In fact the whole story is mundane . New script editor Robert Holmes changed Nation's Exxilon from a jungle planet in to an arid desert one . You can understand the thinking behind this but it means that all the location filming is restricted to a quarry in Surrey , and that's not when the planet Exxilon sudden turns in to some plastic boulders in a television studio . The jumps between the location film work and the VT studio work is very jarring

Death To The Daleks is nothing more than a season filler and would have been totally forgotten as a story if it hadn't featured the Daleks . It's a watershed story since it's the last time the Daleks would appear in the show without Davros and when you see stories like this you start to realise what a stroke of genius Davros was for the show

When the TARDIS suffers a mysterious energy drain and crash-lands on the planet Exxilon, the Doctor and his current companion Sarah Jane Smith find themselves embroiled in a power struggle on the planet. There are several different parties to this conflict, including two rival factions within the Exxilons themselves, an expedition from Earth sent to obtain supplies of the mineral "parrinium", which is the only cure for a deadly plague, and the Doctor's oldest adversaries, the Daleks, who have their own nefarious reasons for seeking the parrinium.

As is common with "Doctor Who" serials, much of the plot involves the Doctor and his pretty young companion running away, being captured and then trying to escape, in this case from the Exxilons, who want to sacrifice Sarah Jane for religious reasons. The Exxilons, however, looking like mobile piles of rags, are not really Terry Nation's most inspired creation or the Doctor's most frightening enemies; I cannot imagine many children taking refuge behind the sofa whenever they appeared on screen. A lot of the storyline revolves around the mysterious city which the Exxilons regard as sacred. Yet the Exxilons themselves appear to be a primitive race with a Stone Age culture. Who then was responsible for building the city? (The answer to this question is provided in the course of the serial).

This serial came towards the end of Jon Pertwee's reign as the Third Doctor, and seeing it again reminded me that it was in Pertwee's time that Elisabeth Sladen's Sarah Jane first took over the role of his companion. I always associate her much more with Tom Baker's Fourth Doctor. It serves as a good example of Pertwee's interpretation of the role. Although his Doctor is supposedly an alien Time Lord he comes across as an eccentric upper-class English gentleman, something of a dandy with his velvet jackets and cravats. Despite his race's immense technological capabilities, he is not infallible or all-knowing, even though he generally gets the upper hand in the end, and always remains a gentleman in behaviour as well as in his accent and style of dress.

"Doctor Who" was famous (or infamous) for its small budgets, but normally this did not make a huge difference to the quality of the programmes. "Death to the Daleks" is, however, one serial where more money might have made for an improvement. The Doctor describes the Exxilon city as "one of the 700 wonders of the universe", a description which might suggest something spectacular, yet the city we actually see looks very shoddily built indeed. Unless, of course, the "wonder" is that an entire city could have been built so cheaply, probably by the outer space equivalents of cowboy builders.

The serial has been described as having "too much rather than too little plot", and this is an assessment with which I would agree; the existence of several different competing groups, originating from at least four different planets (Exxilon, Gallifrey, Earth and Skaro), and the internal tensions within some of those groups, makes the plot over- complex and at times confusing. The day is, however, at least partially saved by the appearance of the Daleks. As has often been pointed out, Nation intended them as a Nazi analogue, and in this serial their Nazi characteristics- their ruthlessness and their conviction that all other life-forms are their inferiors- are fully brought out. It is these very characteristics which make them such satisfying intergalactic villains, something instinctively realised by those generations of children who have paraded around their playgrounds chanting "Exterminate! Exterminate!" We never paraded around the playground pretending to be Cybermen or Sontarans. And certainly not Exxilons.

It is not, however, simply the Daleks' viciousness which makes them so satisfactory. Equally satisfactory is the way in which the best-laid plans of Daleks gang agley with even greater regularity than those of mice and men. It is notable in this serial that the ruthless and self- seeking characters all come to a sticky end whereas the selfless and compassionate ones not only survive but also come out on top. By the end of "Death to the Daleks" the "Whoniverse" may be down from 700 wonders to 699, but it possesses one wonder in which our own universe is generally lacking- a systematic link between virtue and reward and between vice and punishment.