349 Planet of the Daleks Episode Six

EPISODE: Planet of the Daleks: Episode Six
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 349
STORY NUMBER: 068
TRANSMITTED: Saturday 12 May 1973
WRITER: Terry Nation
DIRECTOR: David Maloney
SCRIPT EDITOR: Terrance Dicks
PRODUCER: Barry Letts
RATINGS: 8.5 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - Dalek War: Frontier in Space & Planet of the Daleks
EPISODE FORMAT: 625 video

"The Supreme Council has ordered our army to be activated immediately. The invasion of all solar planets is to begin today!"

The disguised Doctor & Thals flee into the base, shedding their disguises just before Rebec's Dalek casing is destroyed. They go to the lowest level of the base barricading themselves in. The Daleks receive word that the Dalek Supreme will shortly arrive and that Dalek command has identified the Doctor. Latep & Jo witness a ship landing containing the Dalek Supreme & his aides. Jo asks Latep if he could fly the ship back to Skaro. The Daleks try to get through the barrier into the refrigeration unit. The Dalek Supreme has the army activated as the Doctor starts to plant the bomb to flood the chamber containing the army with ice. The Dalek leader is exterminated by the Dalek Supreme for his failure to capture the aliens. Jo & Latep begin climbing down the shaft. Codal notices the Dalek army start to come to life. The bomb is knocked into the pit containing the Daleks causing the Doctor to have to climb in to retrieve it. The timing mechanism has been damaged and Codal makes repairs. Taron & Rebec find a way back to the surface. Latep & Jo arrive with the second bomb which they use to destroy the Daleks entering the refrigeration unit. The bomb is set and the Doctor's party flees as more Daleks arrive. The bomb goes off but appears to have failed before the wall collapses flooding the chamber with liquid ice. The ice begins to flood through the base causing the Dalek Supreme to set the base's self destruct and flee. The Thals take control of the Dalek Supreme's ship. The Doctor tells Taron & Rebec not to glamorise their story and to remember their fallen comrades. Latep asks Jo to go with him but she refuses. As the Thals take off the surviving Daleks find the Doctor & Jo who flee through the jungle to the Tardis leaving the Supreme Dalek marooned on Spiridon. The Doctor offers Jo another chance to go to Skaro but she refuses saying she'd like to go home to Earth.

That's what you want from a final episode: some action, some tension, some explosions, a clever solution to the problem, the enemy defeated and our surviving heroes all escaping. Job done, great stuff.

We've got one last tip to the past as Rebec's Dalek disguise is destroyed with us not knowing if she has escaped, just like Ian in the Daleks episode 4: Ambush.

The Daleks are given a shake up his episode by an unexpected arrival:

DALEK 2: Report.
DALEK 3: Message from command spacecraft. The Dalek Supreme will touch down in Spiridon shortly. He will assume total command of all operations on this planet.
DALEK 2: Understood.
DALEK 3: Dalek command has identified the leading alien. The one who is not a Thal.
DALEK 2: Who is he?
DALEK 3: He is the one known as the Doctor, the greatest enemy of the Daleks.
DALEK 2: He has much knowledge that would be of value to us. He must be captured alive for interrogation by the Dalek Supreme.

The Dalek Supreme is fabulous, just rolls in and takes control:

SUPREME: Report.
DALEK 2: Aliens still at liberty.
SUPREME: All Dalek units are to be assigned to their capture immediately. Take charge of all controls. Report on invisibility experiments.
DALEK 2: Daleks can now achieve total invisibility for periods in excess of two work cycles.
SUPREME: Satisfactory. The Supreme Council has ordered our army to be activated immediately. The invasion of all solar planets is to begin today. Switch on arsenal heating. Close down refrigeration unit.

He's not at all happy with the Dalek Leader's performance so far though and the Leader pays the ultimate price:

SUPREME: Order space transporters to assemble and await landing orders.
DALEK 3: I obey.
SUPREME: The action of the aliens has caused considerable disruption of operations on this planet.
DALEK 2: This was a matter beyond my control!
SUPREME: Your orders were to exterminate them!
DALEK 2: It has not been possible! We have been unable to use the bacteria bomb!
SUPREME: The responsibility was yours! You have failed! The Supreme Council does not accept failure!

The Dalek Supreme is an unusual prop: it was long believed to be Dalek Invasion of Earth film Dalek repainted in black with gold dome & skirt balls whose dome bulbs and eye had been further modified to give the prop seen here. Research carried out by the Dalek 63•88 website for their YouTube series Terry Nation's Dalek Army reveals that the Supreme, and three other Daleks that Terry Nation had in his possession were originally built for the 1965 Dalek Stage Play The Curse of the Daleks, which were then purchased by Nation, used in the Dalek Invasion of Earth film after which they were extensively used and modified. For more information, and it is a fascinating story, watch Terry Nation's Army Episode 2: The Mystery of Terry Nation's Special Daleks and Terry Nation's Army Episode 6: How Comics and Crime Created the "Planet" Dalek Supreme. But whatever it's origins the Supreme Dalek is a fantastic looking prop and a bit different.

I do think a trick was missed here in not making this Dalek the same one that leaves the Ogron planet in Frontier in Space either by making this a standard Dalek painted gold, like the one seen in Frontier in Space, that departs at the end of that story.

MASTER: No, not yet.
GOLD: You will obey the Daleks!
MASTER: You know as well as I do that this man does not fear death. I want him to suffer a much worse punishment. Look, my skill and cunning has brought about this war which will make you the masters of the galaxy. Leave the Doctor with me, and let him see the result of that war. Let him see the galaxy in ruins. Let him see the planet Earth, that he loves so much, in ruins, then exterminate him.
GOLD: Very well. He will remain your prisoner until the war is concluded. Then you will bring him to us and we shall exterminate him. We shall now return to our base and prepare the army of the Daleks.

Would have made a nice little bit of continuity between the already linked stories!

However the Supreme's arrival highlights that one Dalek prop, probably the former gold one repainted, is a much darker grey, almost black, compared to the others.

The Dalek Supreme gets a lovely moment at the end of the story to remind the viewers that they'll be back!

SUPREME: Have Supreme Command send rescue craft.
DALEK: I obey.
SUPREME: Preparations will begin at once to free our army from the ice. We have been delayed, not defeated. The Daleks are never defeated!

For most of this episode The Dalek Supreme is operated by Tony Starr. He's making his first appearance as a Dalek Operator here but he may have appeared in Doctor Who as far back as Mission to the Unknown where the Production Guide and IMDB list a Tony Starn as a Varga Plant. Since IMDB lists nothing else for this actor I'm inclined to say it's a typo of Tony Starr's name, especially as Starr does appear relatively soon after as a Fish People in Underwater Menace and a Mine Worker/Citizen in the Macra Terror and a British Soldier in The War Games. He misses out appearing as a Dalek is their next two stories, Death to the Daleks and Genesis of the Daleks, but returns, uncredited again, in Destiny of the Daleks and goes on to play a Dalek Operator in Resurrection of the Daleks, Revelation of the Daleks and Remembrance of the Daleks.

I say "most of this episode" because the scenes at the end with the Daleks & The Tardis were recorded in an earlier Recording Block. In those the Supreme Dalek is played by regular Dalek Operator John Scott Martin.

We briefly glimpsed the Dalek army in episode 3. Here we see a bit more of them, with proper Dalek props used for the closeups and Marx Brothers toy Daleks used en masse for the long shots!

I always think the Daleks' spaceship looks like a Rollo. Apparently it was designed by designer John Hurst's son!

While we're on the subject of ships, we get our best look yet at the outer surface of the Tardis Doors, flat since Colony in Space and now painted blue.

So the story as a whole: yes it is a remake of the Daleks: Doctor enters and escapes from Dalek city, meets some Thals, and leads a raid back into the city to thwart the Dalek's plans. But this is Doctor Who, and indeed the Daleks, tenth anniversary year and at times like that you want a bit of nostalgia for the past and Planet of the Daleks delivers with a decent dose of action thrown in. The Daleks are great throughout especially in episode 3 & 6 where they get to run round the confined corridors of their base. There are differences, indeed quite a major philosophical one: In the Daleks the Doctor rouses the Thals to fight, here he attempts to quell their increasingly war like instincts.

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 glamorise it. Don't make war sound like an exciting and thrilling game.
TARON: I understand.
DOCTOR: Tell them about the members of your mission that will not be returning, like Maro and Vaber and Marat. Tell them about the fear, otherwise your people might relish the idea of war. We don't want that.
REBEC: You can depend on us.

In 1993 from the 5 November to 17 December Planet of the Daleks was repeated on BBC1 as a repeat to celebrate Doctor Who's 30th Anniversary. With each episode was shown a short film

1 Bigger Inside than Out
2 The Antique Doctor Who Show
3 Missing In Action
4 I Was That Monster
5 Crimefile: The Master
6 Unit Recruitment Film (available on the Spearhead from Space DVD)

This last film contains a phone number which when rung would play a recorded message from the Brigadier (played as ever by Nicholas Courtney) announcing the forthcoming Green Death release.

Planet of the Daleks was novelised as a book by Terrance Dicks and features one of my favourite covers of the entire range. In November 1999 Planet of the Daleks was released on VHS with Revelation of the Daleks in a tin that sold out almost instantly. Ten years later Planet of the Daleks was released on DVD with Frontier in Space in the Dalek War boxset.