369 Death to the Daleks Part Four

EPISODE: Death to the Daleks: Part Four
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 369
STORY NUMBER: 072
TRANSMITTED: Saturday 16 March 1974
WRITER: Terry Nation
DIRECTOR: Michael Briant
SCRIPT EDITOR: Terrance Dicks
PRODUCER: Barry Letts
RATINGS: 9.5 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - Death To The Daleks
EPISODE FORMAT: 625 video

"Fight it! It's an illusion! It's an illusion! You have no substance! No truth! You do not exist! You do not exist!"

The Doctor & Bellal penetrate deeper & deeper into the city passing more tests with the Daleks always one step behind them. As the Daleks destroy one of the traps they witness it restoring itself. The Doctor & Bellal's progress is being monitored when Bellal is taken under the hypnotic influence of the city and tried to attack the Doctor who breaks the hold. Galloway & Hamilton are ordered by the Daleks to climb the beacon to position explosives. Sarah & Jill substitute the stored Parrinium for sand. The Doctor believes they are being subjected to intelligence tests. The final test is a psychological assault which they survive permitting them to enter an inner control room where they find the body of an Exxilon sat at a control console. As they watch it crumbles away in the air current from the open door, the first to penetrate the room in centuries. The city creates anti-bodies to attack them. Hamilton & Galloway set their charges but Galloway retains one. A Dalek discovers Jill missing and self destructs. The Doctor attacks the city's electronic brain but is attacked by the anti-bodies who are quickly distracted by the arrival of the Daleks which allow the Doctor & Bellal to escape. Hamilton & Galloway are ordered to load the Parrinium onto the Dalek ship. The Doctor & Bellal are reunited with Jill & Sarah. The bomb explodes restoring the power supply to the Dalek ship. Galloway hides himself on the Dalek ship. The Daleks tell the Doctor they will fire a plague missile at the planet Exxilon once they are in orbit but Galloway uses the bomb to destroy the Dalek ship killing himself in the process. The Exxilon city crumbles away now it's cut off from power.

The Doctor mourns the city's loss realising the universe is down to 799 wonders.

What is that Dalek on guard duty doing?

DALEK: Human female has escaped. I have failed! Female prisoner has escaped! I have failed! I have failed! Self destruct! I have failed! Destruct! I have failed! Destruct! Failed! Failed! Failed! I, I, I, I, I.

Why oh why does it self destruct when it finds that Jill has escaped?. Deary me. Oh. It's our first "brave the series of traps to reach the inner sanctum".

We started the journey into the city in this last episode but The Doctor & Bellal's trials are mostly contained in this episode.

Bar the Doctor's instinctive reaction to the floor trap at the end of the previous episode I don't have a problem with the idea of the brain teasing tests and traps here.

What I have a problem with is it's repetition wholesale in years to come: It's there in the last episode of the Pyramids of Mars, albeit there with some decent reasoning, the last episode of the Hand of Fear, where we even get an ancient observer at a console crumbling away to dust when disturbed, and the Five Doctor which contains a modified version of the electrified floor seen here.

I'm not sure who's idea it was. Terry Nation's, because he wrote the script? Maybe. But Script Editor Terrance Dicks is responsible for the lifting of the floor sequence in Five Doctors and by this point he's being shadowed by his successor Robert Holmes who wrote Pyramids of Mars and script edited it & Hand of Fear.

BELLAL: Doctor!
DOCTOR: What is it?
BELLAL: Doctor, come here!
DOCTOR: What is it?
BELLAL: Look!
DOCTOR: We haven't got much time.
BELLAL: What is it? What's happening?
DOCTOR: The city is creating antibodies. They're trying to neutralise us. Now keep a very close eye on them. Let me know the moment they're complete.

There's two antibodies seen onscreen. One is series stuntman Terry Walsh and you can see all his credits in part one where he briefly played the spaceman Jack.

His companion is regular extra Steve Ismay who had been a BBC3 TV Crewmember in The Dæmons, a Guerilla & Stills Cameraman in Day of the Daleks, Sea Devil in The Sea Devils, Varan's Bodyguard in The Mutants a Presidential Guard in Frontier in Space and a Security Guard in The Green Death. He's in every story this season playing a UNIT Soldier in The Time Warrior and an Army Soldier in Invasion of the Dinosaurs before this story followed by a Guard in The Monster of Peladon & a Metebelis 3 Guard in Planet of the Spiders! He then returns as a Guard in The Deadly Assassin, a Leviathan Guard in Ribos Operation, a Gracht Guard & one of Zadek's Guards in The Androids of Tara, would have been a "Space Monster" in Shada, possibly a Cyberman, then plays a Citizen in Full Circle, a Cyberman in Earthshock and a Security Guard in Time Flight. He had been Man in the Doomwatch episode The Islanders & Flood, and then appears in The Sweeney as a Policeman in Cover Story, a Driver in Golden Boy and a Villain in Stoppo Driver. In Porridge he played a Prison Warden in A Night In and a Gardener in Happy Release while in The Tomorrow People he was in a Vesh Rebel in Worlds Away and an SIS Sergeant in The Dirtiest Business. In Blake's 7 he plays a Scavenger in Deliverance, a Guard in Dawn of the Gods, a Convict in Moloch and a Hommik in Power.

There's a lovely touch as the power comes back on following the destruction of the beacon: as the lights come up in the Dalek ship the familiar Dalek control room noise starts. Fabulous.

We've also got a rather nasty insinuation towards the end of the episode:

DOCTOR: Well, don't prolong the agony. It's obvious you mean to kill us. Why don't you get on with it?
DALEK: It is not necessary. You will perish with the rest of the creatures.
DOCTOR: Well, what had you in mind?
DALEK: We have all the parrinium we need. With it, we can force the space powers to accede to our demands. If they do not, millions of people on the outer planets will perish.
HAMILTON: Don't you think Earth will send another mission? Now that the power barrier has been broken, we could have another ship here in less than a month.
DOCTOR: I imagine the Daleks have already taken that into account, Peter.
DALEK: Correct. When our ship is in space, we will fire a plague missile on to the surface of this planet. The plague will destroy

The Daleks intend to contaminate Exxilon by firing a plague missile at the planet. They have form for similar behaviour in Dalek Invasion of Earth, with a plague preceding the invasion:

CRADDOCK: Well, meteorites came first. The Earth was bombarded with them about ten years ago. A cosmic storm, the scientists called it. The meteorites stopped, everything settled down, and then people began to die of this new kind of plague.
DOCTOR: Yes, that explains your poster, dear boy. Germ bombs, hmm?
CRADDOCK: Yes. The Daleks were up in the sky just waiting for Earth to get weaker. Whole continents of people were wiped out. Asia, Africa, South America. They used to say the Earth had a smell of death about it.

Then there's the very nasty virus they created in Planet of the Daleks.

DALEK: The bacteria are multiplying.
DALEK SCIENTIST: 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 SCIENTIST: 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.

So can we then assume that they're the ones responsible for the plague inflicting the galaxy?

It's not a bad Dalek story truth be told: They're devious and nasty plus they look the best the have done in colour so far. It's almost a shame they revert back to the grey in their next appearance from the silver they use here.

This is also the last time until Remembrance of the Daleks that we see them operating without the command or influence of Davros hanging over them.

Novelised by Terrance Dicks in 1978 Death to the Daleks appeared after the novelisation of the subsequent Dalek story, Genesis of the Daleks. The cover to this book was used as a poster by Target in the mid 1980s. Death to the Daleks was the second Pertwee story issued on video tape in 1987, following Day of the Daleks, and was the first story to be issued at the budget price of £9.99, previous releases having cost in the region of £25. It was the last remaining complete Dalek story to be released on DVD.