Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: Planet of the Daleks Episode Six

The Doctor, Taron, Codal and Rebec escape from the Dalek by means of the Doctor throwing his Spiridon coat over it. By the time the Dalek has finished announcing

"I CANNOT SEE! VISION IMPAIRED!"

they have run away. This leads into more running around the corridors of the Dalek base being pursued by Daleks, similar to scenes we saw back in part three - even down to the Daleks trying the same plan of trapping our heroes in the "lowest levels" of their base. Except this time that is where the Doctor wants to get to, because they already have the set for it that is where the Dalek army is being kept.

The Daleks hear that the "Dalek Supreme" will "touch down on Spiridon shortly." They also now know that the Doctor is the Doctor:

"HE IS THE ONE KNOWN AS THE DOCTOR, THE GREATEST ENEMY OF THE DALEKS."

It is interesting that it took them so long to figure this out, and that it makes no difference to the plot that the Doctor is their "greatest enemy."

Outside, Jo and Latep see the Dalek Supreme's spaceship landing. The Dalek Supreme is a mix of gold and black, and it has bigger lights on its dome and a torch for its eye, so we can tell it must be a Very Important Dalek.

Jo: "I've never seen a Dalek like that before."

Latep: "He's something very special: one of the supreme council."

I'm not sure how Latep could know this, but it's not important, fun as the idea of Thal secret agents spying on the Dalek supreme council to get the latest gossip is. The Dalek Supreme even has his own incidental music, which we hear as he comes into the Dalek base and orders the Dalek army to be thawed out. He then turns on one of the local Daleks:

Dalek Supreme: "THE ACTIONS OF THE ALIENS HAS CAUSED CONSIDERABLE DISRUPTION OF OPERATIONS ON THIS PLANET."

Dalek: "THIS WAS A MATTER BEYOND MY CONTROL."

Dalek Supreme: "YOUR ORDERS WERE TO EXTERMINATE THEM."

Dalek: "IT HAS NOT BEEN POSSIBLE! WE HAVE BEEN UNABLE TO USE THE BACTERIA BOMB!"

Dalek Supreme: "THE RESPONSIBILITY WAS YOURS! YOU HAVE FAILED! THE SUPREME COUNCIL DOES NOT ACCEPT FAILURE!"

The Dalek Supreme then exterminates the unfortunate Dalek.

The Dalek army starts to wake up and some of them begin to move around, so the Doctor knows he hasn't much time left to do his plan. There are also Daleks trying to break in to exterminate our heroes, although they are stopped by an improvised barricade instead of the door so can't do another classic slow-cutting this time (signs of the previous slow-cutting remain in the set, which is a nice touch). A Dalek from the army, still woozy and grumpy from having just been woken up, knocks down the bomb before the Doctor can put it in position, so the Doctor has to climb in among the still-sleepy Daleks to get it back.

The Doctor finally explains his plan to the Thals and, of course, us:

Doctor: "Well, this whole area is simply honeycombed with ice tunnels. Now, a bomb put in the right place could so weaken those walls that the pressure of the ice would burst through the walls and flood this entire chamber."

Taron: "Bury the lot of them?"

Doctor: "That's the theory."

Rebec: "But it won't destroy them, just put them back into their deep frozen state of suspended animation."

Doctor: "Yes, but it would take centuries to melt them out."

Latep and Jo come in from the ventilation shaft and Latep uses one of the bombs to blow up the Daleks who have just breached the barricade. Then they join up with the others, meaning the separation of our heroes into two groups was completely pointless... except for making the story longer.

The Doctor and Codal set the other bomb, and it blows up more of the Daleks that were chasing them, as well as letting the "molten ice" in to make the Dalek army all wet and cold and unhappy. Poor Dalek army, they only wanted to have sleeps.

The remaining Daleks in the control room see what is happening, and are good enough to pass this on to us:

Dalek: "SENSORS REGISTERING ICE NOW ADVANCING THROUGH UPPER LEVELS!"

Dalek Supreme: "ADVISE SUPREME COMMAND THAT OUR ATTACK FORCE IS TOTALLY IMMOBILISED, AND THAT WE ARE THE ONLY SURVIVORS. SET SELF-DESTRUCT ON ALL INSTRUMENTS. WE ARE ABANDONING!  WE ARE ABANDONING! WE ARE ABANDONING! WE ARE ABANDONING! WE ARE ABANDONING!"

The Thals realise they can steal the Dalek Supreme's spaceship to get back to Skaro.

Codal thanks the Doctor and makes a gesture to him, which the Doctor returns. I suspect this gesture is the Thal equivalent of the manly handshake. Taron and Rebec also want to thank the Doctor (I said "thank"), but in a different way:

Taron: "Doctor, we'd never have succeeded without all your help. I wish there was some way of thanking you."

Doctor: "As a matter of fact, there is."

Rebec: "Yes Doctor?"

Doctor: "Throughout history, you Thals have always been known as one of the most peace loving peoples in the galaxy."

Taron: "I hope we always will be."

Doctor: "Yes, well, that's what I mean. When you get back to Skaro, you'll all be national heroes. Everybody will want to hear about your adventures."

Taron: "Of course."

Doctor: "So be careful how you tell that story, will you? Don't glamourise it. Don't make war sound like an exciting and thrilling game."

The Doctor gives both of them manly handshakes (and a Mary Whitehouse-sanctioned kiff for Rebec only) before he says goodbye.

Latep has asked Jo to come back to Skaro with him. Smoove, Latep, very smoove - even cat relationships aren't that fast. Jo says

"No, I'm sorry, Latep. I'm very fond of you, but you see, I've got my own world and my own life to go back to."

She gives him a consolation kiff on the cheek. 

Latep turns and immediately offers a manly handshake to the Doctor. Smoove. What a player.

The Doctor and Jo watch the Thals take off in the captured spaceship, but then they see the Dalek Supreme and the surviving Daleks coming after them and have to run back to the TARDIS. There is one final peril from the spore-spurting plants - a nice mirroring and callback to the opening of the story, just as you would expect from a master-craftsmanny like Terry Nation - and then they are safe.

The Dalek Supreme pews uselessly at the TARDIS as it dematerialises, then he turns to his minions and gives them a pep talk:

"PREPARATIONS WILL BEGIN AT ONCE TO FREE OUR ARMY FROM THE ICE. WE HAVE BEEN DELAYED, NOT DEFEATED. THE DALEKS ARE NEVER DEFEATED!"

The final scene is a coda in which Jo wants to go home to Earth instead of exploring the "many hundreds" of other worlds with the Doctor. This is a gentle bit of foreshadowing for what is to come in the next story, while also resembling the sort of bridge between episodes that used to be common in the more serialised era of the early years of Doctor Who.

What's so good about Planet of the Daleks?

What a treat it must have been for viewers of the show's 10th anniversary season - first the old Doctors returned, now the Doctor's oldest enemies return, written by their original writer, and in the same old style the programme used to be written in, even.

In the days* when it was not possible to watch the older Dalek stories whenever you wanted, this was a throwback to those early stories, with the Thals making their first appearance since the very first Dalek story, and the Doctor and Companions going constantly from one peril to the next as they move through the plot.

But those black-and-white, Hartnell-era stories were really only proto-Nation compared to Planet of the Daleks. Here we can see the full complement of El Tel's tricks of the trade all together in one story, a Best of Terry Nation if you will, or a Terry Nation's Greatest Hits: a countdown, a plague, a self-sacrifice, a hostile alien environment, a MacGyveresque solution to a problem, a character with a name like 'Tarrant,' "space medicine," etc. etc. As a wise cat once said:

Terry Nation, Terry Nation,

Terry Nation, that's what you need

If you want to be the best

And if you want to beat the rest

Oo-oo Terry Nation's what you need;

If you want to be a record breaker, oooooh.

And Terry Nation has never been more of a broken record than here.

Pertwee Six-Parter Padding Analysis

The amount of padding in this story is highly subjective, because, for a story with surprisingly short cliffhanger reprises (and even no reprise in one case), the main plot is very slight. Planet of the Daleks takes the form of an adventure story, with the heroes going from one peril to the next, and so the central plot is really just something to hang those escapades upon. This inevitably leaves a lot of the episodes' run time that could be considered inessential to that main story and therefore 'padding.'

Cutting out all the inessential sub-plots or side-perils could probably reduce this story down to about two parts, which can make it hard to watch in a single sitting because that two partsworth of main plot can feel very stretched when spread across six. This is felt even more acutely if watched back-to-back with Frontier in Space (given its own issues with padding) and I pity the fool that attempts to marathon those 12 episodes all together, even if they are intended to make one epic story between them. 

* Of course we are still living in those days, since there are still multiple episodes of The Daleks' Master Plan, containing plenty of Nationy goodness, that remain missing.