Everywhere I look – published reviews, online reviews,
forums, polls - Planet of the Daleks
seems to be greeted with a trifling shrug of the shoulders. I hear “It’s Terry
Nation’s Greatest Hits” or “It looks cheap.” There are two things wrong with
those statements: When did Terry Nation’s Greatest Hits become a bad thing? If
it were, you might have chosen the wrong programme to hero-worship. And when
did we start judging a Doctor Who story by how cheap it looks? Surely, that’s
an instant write-off for the whole of the first 26 years and quite a bit of the
Eccleston/Tennant eras these days too.
I watched Planet of
the Daleks when I was 11. It was repeated weekly with those funny, little
5-minute documentaries beforehand. And it was bloody wonderful. It would be
easy to say that I view the story with rose-tinted fan goggles but actually I
am really quite good at disassociating myself from those initial reactions and
seeing a story for what it really is. (Hello, Silver Nemesis, old friend.) Planet
of the Daleks remains, to my eyes, bloody wonderful and as fans of Doctor Who
and the Daleks we should all learn to love it. Here’s why:
Katy Manning IS
Doctor Who! Episode One is Jo Grant’s story. In an unusual stylistic move, Jo
Grant narrates the story to the viewer as she experiences it. Pertwee’s having
a rest in the TARDIS cos he’s feeling a bit polystyrene. Most of Episode One
works without dialogue. In that sense, it’s a traditional Terry Nation
6-pages-stretched-out-to-25-minutes but it’s gripping. Here, we really see Jo
come into her own. She’s far removed from the ham-fisted bun vendor of Terror of the Autons a few years before.
It also climaxes with the wonderfully camp idea that the Doctor forgot he was
chasing Daleks and didn’t know he was in a story called Planet of the Daleks (and neither did we) and so ends the episode
with a completely surprised and emphatically spat out cry of “Daleks!”
Episode Two is even better. The Doctor genuinely thinks Jo
is dead and is quietly heartbroken, Pertwee’s performance becoming more
understated. “They murdered her,” he tells Latep, bereft. It’s a subtle change,
not brilliantly forecast by the script but Pertwee absolutely sells it. His
pathetic screams as the Daleks gun down the Thal ship a few minutes earlier are
genuinely horrifying. When the rescue craft arrives at the end of the
instalment, Rebec’s revelation is so stunning in its specificity as to be
utterly believable: 10,000 Daleks?! In accordance with His Elegance the Lord Pertwee,
His Highness Bernard Horsfall goes for the subdued cliff-hanger acting approach
and it pays off.
The story continues apace. The action sequences are
terrific. The climb up the shaft which ends Episode Three so excitingly and
fuels the narrative for the first part of Episode Four looks splendid on film
and stands out as one of the story’s most successful set-pieces. I love how
Pertwee drops a few rungs down the spine of the shaft before grabbing hold, his driving-gloved hands those of an action man in his prime. It really is thrilling stuff.
In fact, the end of Episode Three is a masterclass in the art of the cliff-hanger,
scenes built upon sequentially and ending in as edge-of-your-seat fashion as
can be imagined.
By Episode Six, Planet
of the Daleks is delivering even more giddy thrills – an enormous golden Dalek
to better the later Victory design; a
cool spaceship that easily betters the one seen the following year in Death. At this stage, we can look back at
the accumulation of thrills Terry Nation has presented us with and look on agog:
ice volcanoes, space plagues, lift shafts, bombs, jungle nightlife, debilitating
fungus, an underground army of Daleks, Rebec hiding inside a Dalek (never gets
old), invisible Daleks, purple Spiridon cloaks, those weird laundry baskets
with cargo nets over the top, Jo Grant’s blinggy fingers. Seriously, the fun
never ends.
The story does have its faults, admittedly. The Golden Boss
Dalek’s lights don’t chime with its dialogue, Prentis Hancock is in it and
there are so many Louis Marx Daleks as to be a little bit bloody obvious. The
mix of videotape jungle to outdoor quarry is jarring but the jungle set Peter
Grimwade would have died for on Kinda.
There is enough exciting incident and character interplay for Planet of the Daleks to tear across the
screen. It’s colourful, it’s broad, it’s comic book Doctor Who - but sometimes,
that’s just how I want my Doctor Who to be. Planet
of the Daleks rocks.
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