It must have been very tempting for them to write a rude word or draw a rude picture on the Dalek, lol. The Doctor examines the Dalek and says it has "total loss of vision" which is hardly surprising when they have coloured in its eye. Also, by painting it black, has the Doctor just given that Dalek a promotion?
Jo manages to get outside the spaceship, then she collapses and drops the tape recorder for the TARDIS log, then she gets up and goes back inside. This is textbook Terry Nation, putting the clues exactly where they need to be for later on in the story. An invisible Spiridon follows Jo in.
Codal gets bonked on the hed by an invisible Spiridon wielding a visible log - not the TARDIS log though, one made out of wood. The CSO for this bit is really bad, I expect Barry Letts must have insisted upon it.
The Daleks find the Thal spaceship and decide to blow it up. The Doctor has found the TARDIS log and thinks Jo is still inside the ship (and so do any viewers at home who haven't seen this story before, or who are unable to anticipate the many clever twists and turns Terry Nation puts into his plots) so he tries to stop the Daleks, but they just capture him instead by pewpewpewing his legs - a very rare example of the Daleks using their weapons non-lethally, as well as a callback to the same thing happening to Ian in the first Dalek story.
The Daleks pew the spaceship. Oh noes, Jo is still inside it!
The Doctor is able to get up and walk right after the spaceship blows up, and he gets taken to the Dalek base and put in prison there.
The Doctor already looks fed up. Maybe that is because, although this is only the first time he has been captured in this story, he is mentally adding it on to the 10 times he was imprisoned in Frontier in Space? Or maybe it is that the sequence of him being put in prison goes on for slightly too long in order to pad out the episode?
Codal is also in prison there. The Doctor says he thinks Codal was brave to risk getting captured so that Taron and Vaber could get away, which leads to the two of them discussing what it means to be brave. This dialogue is one of the better parts of the episode.
Doctor: "Courage isn't just a matter of not being frightened, you know."Codal: "What is it, then?Doctor: "It's being afraid and doing what you have to do anyway. Just as you did."
This is a good message and is something we cats try to keep in mind when we are mewing at Hoover to make it go away. The Doctor remembers being imprisoned by the Daleks in previous Terry Nation stories, so starts looking for a way to escape, starting with the good old "let's take a look in our pockets" plan.
Despite having the sonic screwdriver (and he definitely does, because we saw him try and fail to open the door with it only moments earlier), the Doctor uses a normal screwdriver to try and turn the TARDIS log into a device.
Surprise! Jo is still alive and has been rescued by an invisible Spiridon. He treats the "fungoids" on Jo's arm, but she still sounds wary of him - I can't say I blame her, he still constantly sounds like he is making a creepy telephone call to her. He tells her that the spaceship was destroyed by the Daleks, to which Jo replies
"Daleks? Daleks here?"
Why is Jo surprised by this? Was she not paying attention at all during the last part of Frontier in Space?
Taron and Vaber argue about what they should do next, and Vaber pulls a gun on Taron to demand they do things his way. Their standoff is interrupted by another spaceship crashing really close to them, so they team up again to investigate, and find it was a second Thal spaceship. Taron talks to Rebec, the first of the survivors they find, while Vaber looks for others. Rebec says they came all this way just to warn Taron and his Thals about how many Daleks are on the planet (of the Daleks):
"The signal we intercepted was to Dalek Supreme Command. It stated that the force assembled on Spiridon was now complete. It gave their numbers. Well, somewhere on this planet there are 10,000 Daleks!"
That's a lot of Daleks! The BBC must have had complaints from the cats of 1972 about how few Daleks there were in Dave the Daleks, so they aren't taking any chances this time. No wonder this is the cliffhanger - the SFX mannys need as much time as possible to build all the props.
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