347 Planet of the Daleks Episode Four

EPISODE: Planet of the Daleks: Episode Four
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 347
STORY NUMBER: 068
TRANSMITTED: Saturday 28 April 1973
WRITER: Terry Nation
DIRECTOR: David Maloney
SCRIPT EDITOR: Terrance Dicks
PRODUCER: Barry Letts
RATINGS: 8.3 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - Dalek War: Frontier in Space & Planet of the Daleks
EPISODE FORMAT: 625 video

"Whilst the aliens are at liberty, a full state of emergency will be maintained. Normal operations will be suspended. Spiridon slave workers will cooperate with Dalek patrols in saturation level search. The aliens must be located and destroyed!"

The makeshift balloon begins to lift and by the time the Daleks enter the room they find it empty. A Dalek spots them rising up the shaft. A patrol is dispatched to the surface and an anti gravitational disc summoned. Another Dalek patrol locates the explosives and sets all three bombs to detonate on timer control. After they return to the city Jo deactivates two of the bombs but is knocked out by a falling rock. The plastic sheet balloon begins to tear as the Dalek on the anti gravitational disc ascends the shaft. Waking as the bomb nears detonation Jo grabs the two deactivated bombs and flees as the remaining bomb explodes destroying the Daleks passing by on their way to the top of the ventilation shaft. The sheet tears leaving the Doctor clutching the side of the shaft. The Thals, having reached the top, lower a rope for him and when he reaches the top the throw a boulder down the shaft destroying the pursuing Dalek. The Doctor is reunited with Jo but Taron is unhappy Rebec has come Spiridon and would prefer she was safe on Skaro. The Daleks begin to prepare a bacteria to destroy all living tissue: Daleks & Spiridon slaves will be inoculated but all others will be destroyed. The Doctor explains to Jo that the Daleks have their army on Spiridon. Vaber & Latep find the others and the whole group moves to the plain of stones where the boulders absorb the heat during the day and release it overnight allowing them to keep warm. Jo goes with Latep to retrieve the explosives and befriends him. Hiding from a patrol the Doctor notices that the Daleks are slowing down and reasons that the cold might be affecting them. Codal believes destroying the refrigeration plant will destroy the Daleks. Vaber wants to attack immediately but Taron overrules him and they struggle. The Daleks are successfully growing their bacteria which will kill all animal life within an hour of release. The Spiridon slaves have spotted the aliens in the Plain of Stones and Daleks are sent to search it. Waking the Thals find Vaber has absconded with the explosives. Codal & Taron go to stop him leaving the others behind who spot animals approaching. Vaber is captured by Spiridons who take him to the Daleks.

This episode calms things down a bit and finally brings the cast back together, Jo & The Doctor having been separated since episode 1.

DOCTOR: Jo!
JO: Oh, Doctor, I thought, I thought you were dead! I thought, oh, I don't know what I thought. I'm so pleased to see you.
DOCTOR: Jo, you were on that Thal spaceship. I saw it destroyed.
JO: No, I wasn't.
DOCTOR: But you were.
JO: No, I wasn't. Look, Doctor, what's been happening? Where've you been?
DOCTOR: Well, it's a long story and there were a few moments that were a trifle worrying
JO: Look, Doctor, the last I'd heard about you, you'd been captured by the Daleks, right
DOCTOR: Yeah, but
JO: And I was told that they were going to take you
DOCTOR: Yes, I know that
JO: Because they're doing all these experiments
DOCTOR: All right, all right, Jo
JO: And then I thought you were going to be in them and I didn't know what I was going to do
DOCTOR: Jo! Jo! Jo! Please? Look, will you excuse us for a moment? My friend has rather a lot to tell me about.
JO: Doctor, wait till you hear what happened to me. It was terrible, and then I got rescued by this bowl....
DOCTOR: But, Jo, why on earth didn't you stay in the Tardis? We'd have been safe there.
JO: Well, Doctor, you didn't look very safe. Well, I thought you were dying and I went out to try and find some help for you.
DOCTOR: On a planet full of Daleks? Well, surely I warned you?
JO: Well, Doctor, you didn't tell me anything. You just rushed into the Tardis, you rattled off some sort of a message and, well, then you flaked out.
DOCTOR: Did I?
JO: Uh huh.
DOCTOR: Oh, I'm sorry, Jo. I'm afraid I wasn't myself.
JO: Doctor? What did you say to the Time Lords in your message?
DOCTOR: Well, I told them about the Dalek spaceship leaving the Ogron planet and told them to send the Tardis after it.
JO: But what are the Daleks doing on this planet?
DOCTOR: They've got an army based here, Jo, the mightiest army of Daleks there's ever been.
JO: But when we were on the Ogron planet, we put a stop to their plan to sort of cause a war?
DOCTOR: Well, evidently that was only part of their plan, to make their conquest easier perhaps. With an army this size, we now know they intend to invade the galaxy anyway unless we can stop them.
JO: Just us?
DOCTOR: And our Thal friends.

We then begin the process of moving things round for the final few episodes. We get another little reference back to the past with the Daleks' anti gravitational disc, a throwback to their comics appearances in the Sixties, which get a special feature on the DVD.

DALEK: Our patrols report no contact with the aliens. Temperatures falling rapidly.
LEADER: The search will continue.
DALEK: I obey.
LEADER: Supreme Command has decreed that we prepare a bacteriological culture that will destroy all living tissue. Daleks and Spiridon slave workers will be given immunity to the disease.
DALEK: If the aliens are not taken, the bacteria is to be released. Without immunity, no living thing can survive the disease. All will be exterminated!

We also get a little glimpse in Terry Nation's current thinking as he introduces the Daleks bacteriological weapon, a theme he'll return to in Death to the Daleks and then again in Survivors, where it becomes part of the premise for the series.

DALEK: The bacteria are multiplying.
DALEK 2: We have calculated that after the release of the culture into the atmosphere, it will totally contaminate the planet within the space of one Spiridon day.
DALEK: All plant life will wither and die.
DALEK 2: All unimmunised animal life will die within one hour of inhaling the contaminated air.
LEADER: Approved. Continue with preparations.
DALEK: The most virulent form of the bacteria will be ready for release in half a Spiridon day.

I mentioned It's a Knockout! last episode in connection with the ice tunnels. Thinking about it trying to use the balloon to rise up the chimney would work as a game there too.

Finding themselves short of working Dalek props the BBC constructed a number of new stationary props for this story.

Liz walked in as I was watching this episode and remarked, as she does every time we see this story, that the Spiridons remind her of furry Ribena berries!

Playing the Spiridons are a number of familiar names:

David Billa first appeared as a Guard in The Savages then played a German Soldier in The War Games episode one, German / Roman Soldiers / Alien Technician in The War Games episode four and a Time Lord Technician in The War Games episode ten, a Waxworks Visitor/Auton in Spearhead from Space, a Technician in Doctor Who and the Silurians, a UNIT Soldier in Three Doctors and a Prison Guard & Earth Guard in Frontier in Space. He returns as a UNIT Soldier in The Green Death, a Soldier/Thal Soldier in Genesis of the Daleks and a Vogan in Revenge of the Cybermen. In Moonbase 3 he's a Technician in Departure and Arrival and Behemoth while in Doomwatch he was a Man in Flood.

Ronald Gough was an Atlantean Guard in Underwater Menace, a Technician in Doctor Who and the Silurians, a Technician in Inferno and a Skybase Guard in The Mutants. He returns as an Army Soldier in Invasion of the Dinosaurs, a Zygon in Terror of the Zygons and a Marine & The Krynoid in Seeds of Doom.

Kevin Moran was a UNIT troop in Time Meddler and a Draconian in Frontier in Space. He returns as an Army Soldier in Invasion of the Dinosaurs, an Exxilon in Death to the Daleks, an Ice Warrior in The Monster of Peladon part five and a Soldier & Brethren in The Masque of Mandragora. He's also in Doomwatch as a Man in Flood.

Terrance Denville had previously been a double for Captain Blade in The Faceless Ones, worn a Cyberman costume during The Invasion, and then played a Foot Soldier & Alien Technician in The War Games, a Waxwork visitor/replica in Spearhead from Space, a Technician & UNIT Soldier in The Silurians, a UNIT trooper in The Three Doctors, a Cyberman again, briefly, in The Carnival of Monsters and a Guard in Frontier in Space He returns as an an Exxilon in Death to the Daleks and an Ice Warrior in The Monster of Peladon. He plays a Technician in Moonbase 3 Departure and Arrival, Behemoth and Outsider, appears as a Russian Security Council Member in the Pierce Brosnan James Bond film GoldenEye and appears in the Miranda episode Before I Die as an Old Man. Geoffrey Witherick had previously been a Cricketer / Reveller in Dalek Masterplan 8: Volcano, a Guard in The Massacre: Bell of Doom, a Worker in The War Machines episode, an Airport Policeman in Faceless Ones, a Villager & Coven Member in The Dæmons, a Sea Devil in The Sea Devils, a Solos Guard in The Mutants and a Prison Guard/Earth Guard in Frontier in Space. He returns as a UNIT Soldier in Invasion of the Dinosaurs, a Guard in Planet of the Spiders, a SRS Member in Robot, a Time Lord in Deadly Assassin and a Security guard in Image of the Fendahl. --> He was in Doomwatch as a Man in Burial at Sea, one of the missing first season episodes.

Gary Dean was a Technician in The Ice Warriors, a Kanowa Guard in Enemy of the World, a UNIT Soldier in The Invasion, a German Soldier in The War Games, a UNIT Soldier in Doctor Who and the Silurians and an Earth Control Guard in The Mutants and Lunar Guard in Frontier in Space. He returns as a Guard in Pirate Planet, a Medic in Nightmare of Eden, a Passenger in Time Flight and a Pallbearer in Remembrance of the Daleks. In Doomwatch he was a Man in Project Sahara and he's a Hotel Guest in the Fawlty Towers episode Communication Problems.

All the Spiridon Voices are provided by Roy Skelton, who plays Wester and also voices the Daleks.

Two important events happen between the broadcast of this episode and the next plus we pass an important milestone: we'll tell you what they are tomorrow.

346 Planet of the Daleks Episode Three

EPISODE: Planet of the Daleks: Episode Three
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 346
STORY NUMBER: 068
TRANSMITTED: Saturday 21 April 1973
WRITER: Terry Nation
DIRECTOR: David Maloney
SCRIPT EDITOR: Terrance Dicks
PRODUCER: Barry Letts
RATINGS: 10.1 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - Dalek War: Frontier in Space & Planet of the Daleks
EPISODE FORMAT: 16mm b&w film recording recoloured using computer colouring & chroma dot

"You know, for a man who abhors violence, I must say I took great satisfaction in doing that. Right, let's get on. We may be out of the cell but we're a long way from being free!"

Wester takes Jo to the Dalek base and tells her they are experimenting on a bacteria. The Doctor has finished converting the Tardis log into a device to scramble a Dalek. Taron takes the Thals to where Spiridon's Liquid Ice allotrope comes up out of the ground. They will use the shafts created by the ice flow to enter the city. Marat takes change of the map showing where the explosives are hidden. Vaber & Latep go to hide by the main entrance to the city. Jo conceals herself in a basket and is carried in by Spiridon slave workers. Taron, Rebec & Marat crawl through the ice tunnels as they hear the rumblings of an eruption starting. Jo is brought to the Dalek's control room and overhears them sending a Dalek to interrogate the prisoners. The Doctor's device works throwing the Dalek into a state of confusion and deactivating it.

The Daleks detect the ice eruption and prepare to close the cooling ducts as the ice catches up with the Thals. The Doctor & Codal flee, but are pursued. They use the lift but finding Daleks waiting for them are forced down into lowest levels of the base where they rescue Taron, Rebec & Marat who are trapped behind a vent. Marat is killed holding off the pursuing Daleks as the others lock themselves in a room. The Daleks find the map showing where the explosives are concealed and send a patrol to deal with it while summoning cutting equipment to get through the door. The Doctor & The Thals discover they are in a giant refrigeration unit. Jo follows the patrol which has gone to destroy the explosives. Using the escape shaft for the hot air generated in the refrigeration process the Doctor constructs a method of escape by trapping hot air under plastic sheeting. The Doctor discovers that the room is refrigerating a chamber containing thousands of Daleks. The Thals desperately wait to see if their improvised balloon will lift them as the Daleks prepare to open the door....

An all out action episode with the Daleks at their very best: pursuing people and never giving up. Fab. Loved it. Yes it resembles The Daleks 4: The Ambush as the original Tardis crew escape from their cell in the Dalek city with some running about in lifts and even a Dalek with a flame torch arm cutting through a door (we'll see another element from The Daleks 4 in a future episode of this story) but I don't care. It's just done so well.

I did have to stifle a giggle while watching the Thals scrabble around in the liquid ice as I was reminded of It's a Knockout!!

Planet of the Daleks was almost complete when the BBC's Film & Video library was audited in 1978. Episodes 1,2 & 4-6 still existed on their original tapes. Only episode 3 was missing. Indeed season 10 faired rather better than most with just 5 episodes - Planet 3 and Frontier in Space 1-3 & 6 - missing from the archives at the time of the initial audit. Nobody knows why episode 3 wasn't there, the BBC library holdings don't seem to show any logic at all. Keep the Sensorites, dispose of Dalek Masterplan ...... When BBC enterprises was contacted for their Doctor Who holdings it was found that they held black & white film copies of all six episodes, so that copy of episode 3 completed the story.

Of the differing versions of Doctor Who episodes, three are considered fit for broadcast in the UK: original video tape, film copies and converted NTSC video used for transmitting the episodes. But for a number of Pertwee episodes, all of which we've now seen, lower definition off air NTSC colour video recordings exist:

Silurians 1-7 (of 7)
Ambassadors of Death 2-7 (of 7)
Terror of the Autons 1-4 (of 4)
The Daemons 1-3 & 5 (of 5)

Techniques have been developed over the years to marry the colour from these recordings to the higher definition black & white pictures, with variable success: The DVD versions of The Silurians and Terror of the Autons are superb but attempts to restore The Ambassadors of Death have met with trouble due to an intermittent rainbow pattern that appears on the original recording.

However there are eight Third Doctor episodes which exist in black & white for which no colour copy of any description exists:

Mind of Evil 1-6 (of 6) although a small amount of footage from episode 6 does exist
Planet of the Daleks 3 (of 6)
Invasion of the Dinosaurs 1 (of 6)

So how do you restore these to their original glory?

For many years re-colourisation was deemed to be to expensive to use but in 2006 Legend films were contracted to recolour the episode when a combination of their rates and a good Pound Dollar exchange rate made it affordable. The technique worked but with limitations.

Some years ago BBC Engineer James Insell was at home watching an episode of Jon Pertwee Doctor Who that only existed in black & white when it was transmitted on UK Gold. He noticed that occasionally there would be little flashes of colour in the picture. At the time the black & white film prints of the Doctor Who episodes were made engineers had been meant to apply a filter to the process to remove the colour information, stored as a series of coloured dots in your TV picture, from the film recording. In practice this rarely happened. He then set about developing a process to attempt to read the dots from the pictures and decode them. And, incredibly, they managed it. The technique has now been used on episodes of Doctor Who, Dad's Army and Are You Being Served?

Planet of the Daleks 3 was run through the process and the results combined with the existing recolouring to give a copy which looks absolutely fantastic.

For more details see the re-colourisation feature on The Planet of the Daleks disc in Doctor Who - Dalek War, or read about it at The Restoration Team's Dalek War article or on Wikipedia's colour recovery page.

We're joined by three new Thals now:

Showing up briefly at the end of the previous episode episode was Jane How as Rebec. I'm told she's best known for her role as Jan Hammond, the mistress of Den Watts in EastEnders.

Alan Tucker plays Latep: IMDB shows no credit for him after 1979 but equally there's no record of him having died so we assume he left the profession.

Marat, the Thal killed in th Dalek base, is played by Hilary Minster.

He returns as a Thal soldier in Genesis of the Daleks (Director: Planet of the Dalek's David Maloney), making him the only person to play 2 Thals. He's best known as General Von Klinkerhoffen in Allo Allo, and as we'll see isn't the only Allo Allo cast member in Genesis..... He also plays Fritz, a German Sailor, in the Timeslip story The Wrong End of Time and appears in the second episode of the superb BBC version of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy as Boris.

345 Planet of the Daleks Episode Two

EPISODE: Planet of the Daleks: Episode Two
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 345
STORY NUMBER: 068
TRANSMITTED: Saturday 14 April 1973
WRITER: Terry Nation
DIRECTOR: David Maloney
SCRIPT EDITOR: Terrance Dicks
PRODUCER: Barry Letts
RATINGS: 10.7 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - Dalek War: Frontier in Space & Planet of the Daleks
EPISODE FORMAT: 625 video

"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 ten thousand Daleks!"

The Thals tell the Doctor that there are a small force of Daleks on Spiridon experimenting with invisibility. Back at the ship the fungus continues to spread up Jo's arm. Vaber is attacked by a snake like plant and the Doctor saves his life. Delirious, Jo wanders out of the ship and drops the Tardis log before collapsing. Spiridons approach the Thals and Codal separates from the others leading them off. The Daleks locate the Thal ship and arrive before the Doctor & the Thals. When they decide to destroy the ship the Doctor attempts to stop them watching it go up in smoke with, he believes, Jo Grant still aboard. Jo has already been removed by an invisible Spiridon, Wester, who is treating her infection helping her to recover. The Doctor finds himself imprisoned with Codal and the start to plan an escape. Taron & Vaber retrieve their explosives but argue on how they should complete their mission, Vaber pulling a gun on his crewmate. They are interrupted by the crash landing of a second Thal ship under the command of Taron's love Rebec. She tells them that Thal command have intercepted transmissions saying there is an army of Ten Thousand Daleks on Spiridon.

Nice episode that rolls along fine. We move some of the characters round, make the Doctor think Jo's dead and stick him in a cell with Codal.

CODAL: Doctor.
DOCTOR: Codal. So, they captured you too, did they?
CODAL: Where are the others, Taron and Vaber?
DOCTOR: Well, they're all right as far as I know. How are you?
CODAL: I'm fine. Splitting headache, but I'll survive.
DOCTOR: That's good.
CODAL: Why didn't they kill us straight away, Doctor?
DOCTOR: Oh, I expect they're saving us for interrogation. They'll want to know what we're doing on this planet. You know, what you did back there, leading the searchers away from us, was very courageous.
CODAL: I just didn't give myself time to think. If I had, I certainly wouldn't have taken the risk.
DOCTOR: Oh, I don't know. I think you're doing yourself rather an injustice there. If you hadn't acted the way you did, we'd have all been captured. They give medals for that sort of bravery.
CODAL: Bravery? I've been terrified ever since I landed on this planet. It's different for Taron and Vaber, they're professionals. They've seen action before.
DOCTOR: And do you think they're any the less brave because of that?
CODAL: They know how to deal with fear. They're used to living close to death. I'm not. I'm a scientist, not an adventurer.
DOCTOR: Well, forgive me if I'm wrong, but aren't you a volunteer?
CODAL: Yes.
DOCTOR: Then you must have known what you were getting into?
CODAL: No. None of us did. We're not a warlike people, Doctor. We've only just developed space flight. No one had attempted a voyage of this length before, but every man and woman from my division volunteered. Over six hundred of them. You see, I didn't even have the courage to be the odd man out. What are you laughing at?
DOCTOR: Ah, you, my friend. You may be a very brilliant scientist but you have very little understanding of people, particularly yourself. 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.
CODAL: I'm not convinced, but thanks anyway.
DOCTOR: Right, well, after that little tutorial on bravery, let's see if we can find a way of getting out of here.
CODAL: Escape?
DOCTOR: Yes, escape. Well, let's take a look in our pockets and see if we can come up with something that might prove useful.

As we'll see it's one of the more productive cell stays the Doctor has.

More references to the past here: The Doctor's description of the Dalek tactics on Spiridon "mass exterminations followed by absolute suppression of the survivors" and Wester's account of what happened would appear to be a nod to both the Dalek Invasion Of Earth & Day of the Daleks. The tale is backed up by Wester's account of what happened to Jo:

WESTER: All trace of the infection has gone. Your arm will be sore for a few days, but that's all.

JO: Thank you. I'm very grateful to you. Tell me some more about your planet.
WESTER: Before the Daleks invaded, they bombarded the planet with bacteria. Only a handful of my people survived. When the Daleks landed, we could offer no resistance. Those that were left were forced to cooperate with the Daleks.
JO: But you don't?
WESTER: No. There are a few of us, not many, who do what we can to fight back, and that's little enough.
JO: Why did the Daleks invade you? What did they want?
WESTER: To master our techniques of invisibility, and they seem very close to doing it.
JO: Is there no way of stopping them?
WESTER: They're too powerful. I had hoped the aliens from the spacecraft might help us, but there are so few of them. Two more were captured today.
JO: You've seen them?
WESTER: When they were taken to the city. A tall fair haired man, and later, one with silver hair, also tall, wearing strange clothes.
JO: The Doctor! Oh! Where is he?
WESTER: You know him?
JO: Well, yes. And I thought
WESTER: He's imprisoned in the city.
JO: Well then we must find a way of helping him. Get him out!
WESTER: There is no way. The Daleks will interrogate him, and then use him in their experiments. He'd be better off dead.

Then the Doctor being temporarily paralysed by the Daleks is similar to how Ian was in the first Dalek story.

Of course once we're inside the Dalek base we get treated to the control room noise, which always sends a little shiver down my spine. And as a final little nod we're treated to a "reverse the polarity" from the Doctor as he starts to build his device.

Having made one previous appearance as a Dalek Voice (and plenty as other monsters) Roy Skelton returns to the role he's now forever linked with by Doctor Who fans. He was first heard providing Monoid voices in The Ark episode 4: The Bomb before returning in The Tenth Planet as the Cybermen's voices, with a bonus go as the control room countdown voice. At the end of that season he finally starts work on his most famous Doctor Who role, as the Dalek voice, in The Evil of the Daleks episode 1 before playing the Computer voice in The Ice Warriors and reprising the Cyberman voice in the Wheel in Space, both in the next season. His one appearance in Patrick Troughton's final season as The Krotons' voice in The Krotons after which he didn't feature in the series again until Colony in Space where he's first seen on screen as Norton. The Daleks aren't his only role in this story he's also playing Wester the Spiridon. He's called back to Doctor Who quickly as an emergency substitute playing James in The Green Death episode five after another actor fell ill. He's the Daleks' voice in Genesis of the Daleks before making two on-screen appearances under make up as Marshall Chedaki in The Android Invasion and Rokon in The Hand of Fear. He's returns to Dalek voices in Destiny of the Daleks, where he also briefly plays K-9's voice too, before providing Dalek voices in The Five Doctors, Revelation of the Daleks and Remembrance of the Daleks. He's got an Out of the Unknown appearance to his name, providing Robot voices in The Prophet, which is the story who's robot costumes were reused for The Mind Robber and features The Stones of Blood's Beatrix Lehmann as Dr. Susan Calvin. Alas no recording of the episode survives so the only trace of it on the Out of the Unknown DVD Set is a series of off-screen images. Despite this mass of Doctor who work the roles which Skelton is most famous for are the voices of Zippy and George in Rainbow and when interviewed for Doctor who: Cybermen: The Early Years he can't resist signing off as his most famous creations!

He's joining Michael Wisher who made his Dalek Voice debut at the end of the previous story Frontier in Space. We first heard him providing voices in The Seeds of Death, directed by Michael Ferguson who then used in The Ambassadors of Death as John Wakefield. It would have been there that Barry Letts first saw him and he uses him in Terror of the Autons as Rex Farrel and Carnival of Monsters as Kalik . We'll hear his voice again as a Dalek in Death to the Daleks and, uncredited, in Genesis of the Daleks where ascends to Doctor Who superstardom as Davros, the Daleks creator. He's then back in the very next story as Magrik in Revenge of the Cybermen then two stories later in the Planet of Evil as Morelli and the voice of Ranjit. Producer & Director Barry Letts had previously used him on his Z-Cars story The Saint of Concrete Canyon and he later appears in Moonbase 3 as Harry Sanders in Departure and Arrival.

Regular Dalek Operator John Scott Martin has been in every Dalek Story since the Chase and, with one exception, will be till the end of the original Doctor Who series. He 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,Power of the Daleks, Evil of the Daleks, Day of the Daleks and Frontier in Space. He'll return as a Dalek in 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 has also played a Mechanoid in The Chase, the Robot in Colony in Space, Charlie & a Coven Member in the Dæmons, a Mutant in the Mutants, a gell guard in The Three Doctors and a Mutant in Frontier in Space. After this story his non Dalek rolls include Hughes in The Green Death, a Ministry of Defence Guard in Robot, Kriz in Brain of Morbius, the Virus Nucleus in Invisible Enemy. His distinctive hair makes him a familiar figure amongst bit part actors in many television roles: he was in Quatermass and the Pit as a T.V. Technician in The Wild Hunt and A for Andromeda as a Lab Assistant / Man in Pub in The Message. He appears in the missing Out of the Unknown episode The Naked Sun as a robot but misses out when The Daleks turn up in Get Off My Cloud. In Doomwatch he's a Man in The Islanders and e appears in the first episode of The Tripods as the Schoolmaster. Away from science fiction he was in I, Claudius as Julia's Lover in Waiting in the Wings and a Slave in Some Justice and appears on the big screen in Pink Floyd - The Wall as a Dancing Teacher.

Alongside him is his frequent colleague Murphy Grumbar making his penultimate appearance as a Dalek in this story. He was first a Dalek, credited as Peter Murphy, in The Daleks & The Dalek Invasion of Earth, then as Murphy Grumbar he's Dalek in The Space Museum, Mechanoid in The Chase, a Dalek in The Evil of the Daleks, a Dalek in Day of the Daleks, Arcturus in The Curse of Peladon, a Gell Guard in The Three Doctors, a functionary in Carnival of Monsters and a Dalek in Frontier in Space. His final role in the series, miscredited as Murphy Grunbar, is in Death to the Daleks as a Dalek.

Like Michael Wisher the final Dalek Operator Cy Town made his Dalek debut in Frontier in Space and he will be in every Dalek story from now onwards returning in Death to the Daleks, Genesis of the Daleks, Destiny of the Daleks, Resurrection of the Daleks, Revelation of the Daleks and Remembrance of the Daleks. He was also previously an Auton in Spearhead from Space returning as a Technician in Doctor Who and the Silurians, a technician in Inferno, a Prisoner, Audience Member & Medical Orderly in The Mind of Evil and a Gel Guard in Three Doctors. Later he plays a Soldier in Invasion of the Dinosaurs, a Vogan in Revenge of the Cybermen part one, an Android Villager in Android Invasion, a Brother in The Masque of Mandragora, an Bi-Al member in The Invisible Enemy, a Guard in The Sun Makers, a Castrovalvan Warrior in Castrovalva, a Guest Gambler in Enlightenment, a Passerby in Attack of the Cybermen, Execution Victim Harold L/drone in The Happiness Patrol and a Haemovore in The Curse of Fenric. Outside of Doctor Who appears in the Monty Python's Flying Circus episodes Spam as a Surfer and - The Money Programme as a Trumpeter plus the film Monty Python's The Meaning of Life as a Restaurant Diner. In Doomwatch he's a Man in Flood, he's a Technician in all six episodes of Moonbase 3, a Security Guard in The Sweeney Golden Boy, in Quadrophenia he's a hairdresser, in Blake's 7 he's a Rebel Technician / Federation Trooper in Blake, he's a Coach Passenger in Miss Marple: Nemesis and in Jeeves and Wooster he's the Vicar in Wooster with a Wife (or, Jeeves the Matchmaker). And if you want to know what he looks like outside of his Dalek shell then there's some screencaps of him on his Aveleyman page.

Information in this story finally lets us have a stab at dating the events of the Daleks. Planet of the Daleks has to contemporaneous with Frontier in Space which is dated onscreen to 2540. So the events of the Daleks, said by the Thals to be "Thousands" (plural) years ago can be no later than about 500AD. The desire to arbitrarily date them at 1AD is strong..... This makes it the earliest encounter with the Daleks to have occurred so far. Material from the time, ans calculations carried out during the story place Power of the Daleks at 2020. We know Dalek Invasion of Earth is c2164 (due to a calender) and that Day of the Daleks is roughly contemporaneous with that (the Daleks having travelled back in time from the future to reverse that earlier defeat). The Chase's Dalek control segments are hard to date but since they have the same Supreme Dalek and the same time travel technology as seen in The Dalek Masterplan we can date both of these plus Mission to the unknown to c4000. Since the Day Daleks had Time Travel to achieve their aim you can probably guess that the force that conquers Earth comes from around this time too originally. This leaves us with Evil of the Daleks: The Daleks are already using Time Travel here so there's no reason to think that the Skaro segments must be in the same time zone as the Victorian era. Since the battle at the end is relatively final the temptation is to date it AFTER Masterplan when they seem pretty powerful. So in order that makes:

c 0AD The Daleks
2020 Power of the Daleks
2164 Dalek Invasion of Earth
2164 Day of the Daleks
2540 Frontier in Space
2540 Planet of the Daleks
4000 The Chase
4000 Mission To The Unknown
4000 The Dalek Masterplan
4000+ The Evil of the Daleks

Simple. And you'll be surprised how easily the rest of Dalek history slots into this when we get there.

Join us next week for one of the true miracles performed on classic Doctor Who as we watch Planet of the Daleks Episode Three in colour!

344 Planet of the Daleks Episode One

EPISODE: Planet of the Daleks: Episode One
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 344
STORY NUMBER: 068
TRANSMITTED: Saturday 07 April 1973
WRITER: Terry Nation
DIRECTOR: David Maloney
SCRIPT EDITOR: Terrance Dicks
PRODUCER: Barry Letts
RATINGS: 11 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - Dalek War: Frontier in Space & Planet of the Daleks
EPISODE FORMAT: 625 video

"Shortly after entering the Tardis, the Doctor fell into a deep coma. His respiration was very shallow and his skin icy to the touch. I could find no trace of pulse or heartbeat, and his breathing apparently ceased. But I've seen the Doctor in this condition once before and he recovered after a sudden rise in temperature. The Tardis seems to have landed. I suppose the Time Lords are working it by remote control again. I've no idea what the Doctor said to them in his message, or where we are. I just hope that they've brought us somewhere where I can find some help for the Doctor!"

Jo lies the Doctor down on a bed as he falls into a deep coma leaving him ice cold. She records her thoughts on the Tardis log. The Tardis lands in deep jungle and she goes to find help. Something unseen stalks her through the jungle. While exploring a local plant spits some liquid onto her hand which stings. The Doctor wakes to find the Tardis oxygen supply being depleted. Jo finds a crashed spaceship with a body in a spacesuit. She is in turn found by Taron & Vaber two blonde haired men who think Earth is a name from their legends. They tell her that she was lucky that "they" didn't find her before a third man Codal arrives reporting a patrol is nearby. She directs them to where the Doctor is and they leave, but she remains in the ship. She hears heavy breathing as objects start moving seemingly by themselves. The Doctor is still trying to repair the Tardis oxygen supply but is failing and then finds he cannot open the door. The men chip a mould away from the Tardis doors allowing them to be opened and the Doctor rescued. His rescuers tell him they are from Skaro and the Doctor recognises them as Thals. He tells them he was there during the Dalek war. Vaber doubts his story but Taron recalls his presence from their legends. Taron finds the Doctor has been infected by the fungus and treats it. They tell him he is on Spiridons, home of the invisible Spiridons. They are there on a secret mission, but Vaber is despairing of their chances of success having lost 4 of their 7 man party. Jo has collapsed in the spaceship overwhelmed by the fungus. The Thals hear something approaching, which they think has been overwhelmed by lightwave sickness. Using a liquid paint spray they reveal their previously invisible foe: A Dalek !

And off we go again. Just in case you've missed the last week's episode, and haven't read the title on the credits or the Radio Times, both the Doctor & the Thals keep quiet as to who they're fighting till the end of the episode when the Dalek is dramatically revealed using spray paint. But hey, it's Dalek story and tradition states that your Dalek has to be obscured till the end of the first episode. Returning writer Terry Nation, who hasn't contributed since Dalek Masterplan, and director, David Maloney, absent since the War Games at the end of the Troughton era, know what's expected of them and deliver.

Nation in particular tucks into his back catalogue with glee giving us Thals (The Daleks), a jungle that sees "more animal than plant" (Kembel in The Dalek Masterplan, Mechanus in the final few episodes of The Chase and The Keys of Marinus Part 3: The Screaming Jungle), ruins (Screaming Jungle again) and invisible monsters (The Visiains in Dalek Masterplan 5 & 6). Yet there's odd signs here our Tel is starting to look towards the future: There's the guns, connected to the belt of the spacesuits by a power flex (it's little details like this that people have claimed Nation was prone to include at the expense of things like dialogue): hardly unlike the guns on the Liberator in Blake's 7 at all...

We've got a Thal called Taron which isn't a million miles from Tarrant, a name that will be familiar to anyone who's seen any post Planet Terry Nation stories, and I don't mean just Doctor Who either! Bernard Horsfall plays Taron. He's previously been Gulliver in The Mind Robber and a Time Lord in The War Games. He'll return as Chancellor Goth in The Deadly Assassin. All four of his appearances are directed by David Maloney, who didn't use him on The Krotons, Planet of Evil or Talons of Weng Chiang. Before Doctor Who he'd been in Out of This World, playing Dr. Arthur Bailey in Divided We Fall, and featured in the third season of it's successor Out of the Unknown, playing John Stewart in 1+1=1.5. Sadly both episodes are missing. Unseen until recently is his Doomwatch appearance in Sex and Violence, which was unbroadcast! It's available to watch on The Doomwatch DVD. He's in the George Lazenby James Bond film On Her Majesty's Secret Service as Campbell. In later years he has appeared in Agatha Christie's Poirot as Harrington Pace in The Mystery of Hunter's Lodge.

Prentis Hancock, as Vaber, we've previously seen in Spearhead from Space as a reporter. He'll be back in Planet of Evil as Salamar and The Ribos Operation as Shrieve Captain. He's most famous for playing Paul Morrow in Space 1999. He was also in Survivors as McIntosh in A Little Learning and plays Arnold Meyer in Chocky's Children & Chocky's Challenge, both written by later Doctor Who script editor Anthony Read He achieves a rare double by appearing in The Professionals as the Army Major in Lawson's Last Stand in 1982 and then 17 years later in CI5: The New Professionals a Carl Dietrich in Souvenir. You can hear him interviewed in Toby Hadoke's Who's Round #129.

Tim Preece is Codal, and although I didn't think I knew him from anything else IMDB shows a bit part CV a mile long including at least three things I've definitely seen and a stack of Doctors & Vicars! I've just spotted him in the second series of A Very Peculiar Practice, which you can see on DVD.

The Doctor's meeting with the Thals makes reference to his encounter with them in the original Dalek story:

VABER: What are you staring at?
DOCTOR: Oh, I'm sorry, it's just, just that I thought I knew you.
VABER: That's not likely.
DOCTOR: Where are you from?
TARON: A planet, many systems from here.
DOCTOR: Skaro! Yes, of course, you're Thals!
TARON: How did you know that?
DOCTOR: Because I've been to Skaro, that's why.
TARON: When?
DOCTOR: Oh, many years ago. During the Dalek war.
VABER: Dalek war?
DOCTOR: Yes.
VABER: That's impossible. That was generations ago. You couldn't have been there.
DOCTOR: Well, I can assure you that I was.
TARON: How?
DOCTOR: By travelling through the barriers of time. If you must know, I was with the Thal group when they broke into the Dalek city.
TARON: In our legend, there is a being, a figure from another planet who came to Skaro when the Thals were in their greatest peril, in something called a Tardis. He had three companions with him.
DOCTOR: Yes. Barbara, Ian and Susan.
VABER: And their leader was called?
DOCTOR: The Doctor.
TARON: Are you trying to tell us that you are the Doctor?
DOCTOR: That's right.

As I said during Frontier in Space episode 5, both stories use a prior visit by The Doctor as a key point in gaining trust. Here we have the advantage of having seen the prior visit!

Lots of the Thal gear is recycled: the suits are the Spacesuits the Astronauts wear in Ambassadors OF DEATH while the helmet, seen on what I assume is the body of their commander, is another reuse for Beaus helmet. You do wonder why the Thals would keep the body of one of their crewmates in it's seat in the ship, especially as they still seem to be using it. I know the wobble of the ship set is designed to make it look like the ship's sitting unstably but all it makes me think of is a very holiday caravan. Actually the body in the spacesuit reminds me of a scene in the Space 1999 episode Another Time, Another Place (by future Doctor Who writer Johcnny Byrne) where John Koenig & Alan Carter find their own corpses in spacesuits aboard a crashed Eagle.

The body in the spacesuit is played by Alan Casley who'd been in The Quatermass Experiment episode State of Emergency as a member of the Abbey Crowd.

The spacesuit isn't the only thing reused from Ambassadors of Death: panels by the door and by the dead Thal spaceman's head were reused from space capsule built for that story.

There's loads of things in this episode just make me giggle: the bed unit in the Tardis is so obviously 70s MFI! And the Tardis Log is recognisably a cassette case!

We are now forced to consider why the Tardis' Oxygen supply runs out, an old fashioned device to force the crew out of the Tardis similar to the fluid links failing or running out of Mercury.

From a plot point of view it's not necessary: Jo will leave the Tardis looking for help and the Doctor, when he recovers, will go to look for Jo. It just adds a little peril for the Doctor. I can conceive that the Tardis takes on fresh air when it lands and this mechanism gets blocked by the fungus spraying plants. But the Tardis is a huge ship that voyages through space & time, surely it should have a huge onboard air supply? So why do we run out of air so quickly?

Fortunately the show's immediate and recent past provide us with not one but two convenient explanations: First the Doctor could have damaged the Tardis' life support systems while attempting to repair it while it was immobilised by the Time Lords and has only just found out now the air intake has been blocked.

A more likely explanation however is that the Master has deliberately sabotaged his old friend's ship. He had it in his possession for most of Frontier in Space and it wouldn't be out of character for the Master to leave a little trap behind as a parting gift for his friend.