167 The Evil of the Daleks: Episode Five

EPISODE: The Evil of the Daleks: Episode Five
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 167
STORY NUMBER: 036
TRANSMITTED: Saturday 17 June 1967
WRITER: David Whitaker
DIRECTOR: Derek Martinus and Timothy Combe
SCRIPT EDITOR: Peter Bryant
PRODUCER: Innes Lloyd
RATINGS: 5.1 million viewers
FORMAT: CD: Doctor Who: The Lost TV Episodes Volume Four(1967)
TELESNAPS: The Evil of the Daleks: Episode Five

"No, Mister Terrall, I am not a student of human nature. I am a professor of a far wider academy, of which human nature is merely a part. All forms of life interest me."

Kemel & Jamie throw a rope round the Dalek and propel it off the balcony destroying it. They barricade themselves into Victoria's room. The Doctor takes a break and is found by Terrall sipping a glass of wine. They disagree, the Doctor observing that he's never seen Terrall eat or drink. Terrall threatens the Doctor with a sword that becomes magnetised when Terrall holds it. Jamie asks Victoria what has happened but her memory is hazy, as if she'd been hypnotised. Meanwhile Maxtible demonstrates hypnotic skills to Terrall using Molly. Maxtible orders Terrall to fetch Victoria. The Doctor has isolated elements of The Human Factor - courage, pity, chivalry, friendship and compassion - in a positronic brain to be added to each of the three inert Daleks that have been brought to the house. Victoria is abducted by Terrall using a secret passage, Jamie follows and engages Terrall in a sword fight. Terrall suddenly collapses. The Doctor appears and takes a Dalek control device off him. He orders Ruth and Molly to take him as far away as possible. Kemel finds Victoria in the lab but they are cornered by a Dalek he orders them into the Cabinet the Daleks are coming out of. They vanish, back to the Dalek home world Skaro. The brains are installed in three new Daleks which wake up and play with Doctor playfully pushing him round the room.

Awww, that's a great sequence at the end as the Doctor activates the child like Daleks!

There's lots going on here. Terrall's been under Dalek control all along: he's freed, removing him, Molly & Ruth from the story. Maxtible's hypnotism is revealed to be the means behind Victoria's kidnap and the Doctor activates three child like Daleks. Even Victoria gets a little to do before being taken to Skaro.

I think my biggest problem with Evil of the Daleks concerns these middle 3 episodes of the story, three, four and five. There's four characters in here, Ruth, Molly, Toby and Terrall that don't really seem essential to what's going on. Terrall's only real function is in this episode where he grabs Victoria and takes her to the lab. Surely the same thing could have been easily achieved with Maxtible's hypnotism? I think another pass at Evil could eliminate those four characters and shorten the story by an episode in turn making Jamie's testing by the Daleks a lot shorter: it feels like it's gone on forever!

The testing has effected Jamie and leads to them having a major disagreement:

DOCTOR: Well, Jamie, the experiment's nearly over. I've had no sleep. I've been up all night, but it's been worth it.
JAMIE: Och, don't touch me!
DOCTOR: Oh, now what's the matter?
JAMIE: Anyone would think this was a little game.
DOCTOR: No it is not a game.
JAMIE: Of course it isn't, Doctor. People have died. The Daleks are all over the place, fit to murder the lot of us, and all you can say is you've had a good night's work.
DOCTOR: Jamie.
JAMIE: No, Doctor. Look, I'm telling you this. You and me, we're finished. You're just too callous for me. Anything goes by the board. Anything at all.
DOCTOR: That's just not true, Jamie. I've never held that the end justifies the means.
JAMIE: Och, words. What do I care about words? You don't give that much for a living soul except yourself.
DOCTOR: I care about life. I care about human beings. Do you think I let you go through that Dalek test lightly?
JAMIE: I don't know. Did you? Look, Doctor, just whose side are you on?

The outcome of this is put on hold as the three Daleks are activated.

A third Dalek means a third Dalek Operator so joining Robert Jewell, who's been in the story since the first episode, and Gerald Taylor, who was added to the cast in the third, is John Scott Martin. He'd made his Doctor Who début in The Web Planet as a Zarbi graduating to Dalek Operator in The Chase three stories later a role he'd repeated in Mission to the Unknown, The Dalek Masterplan and Power of the Daleks. He'll return as a Dalek in Day of the Daleks, Frontier in Space, Planet of the Daleks, Death to the Daleks, Genesis of the Daleks, The Five Doctors, Resurrection of the Daleks, Revelation of the Daleks and Remembrance of the Daleks. He also plays the Robot in Colony in Space, Charlie in the Daemons, a Mutant in the Mutants, Hughes in The Green Death, a guard in Robot and Kriz in Brain of Morbius. His distinctive hair makes him a familiar figure amongst bit part actors in many television roles.

Years ago there was a big fan debate about if the Doctor ate meat or drank alcohol. Well he has some wine here, and he's positively knocking it back in Day of the Daleks. Meat is a little harder but he has mutton stew in Planet of the Spiders as we recently saw when the DVD came out. We'll keep an eye out for more evidence for these two arguments.