Saturday, 20 May 2017

163 The Evil of the Daleks: Episode One

EPISODE: The Evil of the Daleks: Episode One
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 163
STORY NUMBER: 036
TRANSMITTED: Saturday 20 May 1967
WRITER: David Whitaker
DIRECTOR: Derek Martinus
SCRIPT EDITOR: Gerry Davis
PRODUCER: Innes Lloyd
RATINGS: 8.1 million viewers
FORMAT: CD: Doctor Who: The Lost TV Episodes Volume Four(1967)
TELESNAPS: The Evil of the Daleks: Episode One

"Who's taken the Tardis?"

The Doctor & Jamie see a lorry carrying the Tardis drive off from a hanger. The man minding the hanger, Hall, knows not where the Lorry has gone but tells them the name of the company that took the Tardis. A man called Kennedy listens to their conversation in a nearby field. The Doctor & Jamie follow Hall in a taxi while Kennedy reports events to his superior, Edward Waterfield, a man dressed in Victorian garb. Waterfield's assistant Perry arrives telling him "the object has arrived" and commenting on how authentic the brand new Victorian clocks Kennedy has look. The delivery is a Police Box - The Tardis. Hall and Kennedy meet at a warehouse and fight: Hall is knocked unconscious. The Doctor finds him and takes from his person a matchbox for the Tricolour coffee bar while Hall mutters the name "Ken". Kennedy reports all that has happened to Waterfield who shows him photos of the Doctor & Jamie: Kennedy confirms it was them. Kennedy spies on Waterhouse as he accesses a secret room from his study. Waterfield sends Perry to the Coffee bar where he meets The Doctor and Jamie, instructing them to meet Waterfield at his shop at 10pm. Perry confirms the arrangements have been made to Waterfield before leaving to go home. Kennedy is ordered to return later in dark warm clothing. Waterfield slips into the secret room and confers with unseen masters. After Waterfield leaves Kennedy breaks into the study and then into the inner chamber, which contains some advanced equipment. As Kennedy looks for something to steal a Dalek appears and advances on the terrified Kennedy demanding to know "WHO ARE YOU?"

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Yup, that's the traditional "Reveal The Dalek" ending we expect but that's a gorgeous effect there for the time, mimicked years later at the end of the opening episode of Remembrance of the Daleks.

We're back in mystery territory again here: who has taken the Tardis and why? The who is obvious: people acting for Waterfield who in turn is obeying the Daleks who seem to have set some trap for the Doctor. The Why will take some while to become clear.

The Beatles' 'Paperback Writer' and The Seekers' 'Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen' were used in the Café scenes but for rights reasons they've been substituted for the CD release.

Although this episode is long since destroyed, a small section of footage remains from the last few moments, embedded in a different episode on Doctor Who. In 1968 The Evil of the Daleks became the first complete Doctor Who serial to be repeated in the gap between the close of Season 5 and the start of Season 6. It was prefigured at the End of Wheel In Space 6 by The Doctor displaying events on the Tardis scanner: Kennedy's encounter with the Daleks. Episode 1 of Evil, repeated the following week, then had some extra voice over on top of the opening scenes. For some while this footage was thought to be taken from the reprise in episode two (also sourced from this episode) but it's been discovered that what's used in Wheel 6 is fractionally longer than the material found in Evil of the Daleks 2.

Bob Hall is played by Alec Ross, the first husband of actress Sheila Hancock who would later appear in The Happiness Patrol as Helen A. Although this is Ross' only Doctor Who appearance it's not the only time he's appeared with the Daleks: he plays a Police sergeant in the missing third season Out of the Unknown episode "Get off of my Cloud"! Hall died of cancer in 1971.

You can probably guess what's about to happen to Griffith Davies, who plays Kennedy!

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The Dalek voices here are provided, for the first time, by Roy Skelton who has previously voiced the Monoids in The Ark and the Cybermen in Tenth Planet. He will contribute Dalek voices to most of their appearances from here onwards. Inside the shell is Robert Jewell who had been a Dalek operator in all their previous TV appearances as well as the two films and played a Zarbi in the Web Planet and the clown in Dalek Masterplan 7: The Feast of Steven. Jewell will return once more to Doctor Who as The Dalek in The War Games but he also plays a Dalek in the Out of the Unknown episode mentioned above, Get Off Of My Cloud, which you can find out more about and see some pictures of at Dalek 6388's Five Years in the Cold page.

There's some nice location work in this episode with Kendall Avenue, the then home of the BBC's Outside Broadcast department, substituting for Gatwick Airport while the brief shots of Kennedy observing the Doctor & Jamie were shot at Grim's Dyke Hotel in Harrow Weald whose interiors we'll see later in the story. Then Warehouse Lane, by the Hammersmith & City line in Shepherd's Bush supplies the location of Hall's Warehouse.

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I commented on the début of the new titles during Macra Terror: this story seems to be the first time we see the full length of them with story title, episode number and writer superimposed over the top. In fact this may be the first time this has happened: generally they've been displayed over the opening action or, like The War Machines and Tenth Planet, over specially designed captions.

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