The least well known of
the Doctor Who stage plays was The Curse
of the Daleks, a story that didn’t even feature the Doctor or his
companions. Written at the height of
Dalekmania, the story focuses on a possible solution as to how the Daleks were
reactivated in between The Daleks and
The Dalek Invasion of Earth with our
main characters being the crew of a spaceship which has had to land on Skaro
for repairs. It is a product of its time. The characters are standard pulp fiction and
there are strong first-wave feminist motivations. It was by no means progressive or regressive,
but sits in the middle of that political spectrum. The original play was by David Whitaker, from
a summary of Terry Nation’s, and that credit really shows. Once Nation gets the Daleks back to full
power, the plot is a rehash of The Daleks. This is where the main flaw of the story
lies, with all David Whitaker’s efforts in the characters actually creating a
diverse cast, the flaw is still present.
It rears its ugly head and any fan will realize exactly where the story
is going to go next and exactly how it is going to go.
The plot is at the very
least, the most consistent in structure of the stage plays as outside of the
rehash it doesn’t follow the traditional Doctor Who format. It instead follows the format of an adventure
play as we get introduced to the characters, the crisis happens, an unlikely
ally appears, there’s the twist of the traitor revealed and finally the
escape. It’s a formula that works really
well on stage in the two act structure as the climax can be right when the
Daleks have the hero’s captured and all things seem lost which is really how we
end the first act. The characters follow
the clichés of adventures stories. The
main character is John Ladiver played by Michael Praed. Ladiver is the typical hero in quite a few
regards, but his actual gimmick is that he is a convict heading for prison for
hiding millions in treasure. He isn’t a
space pirate as he has the galaxies interests at heart as he had already been
to Skaro to investigate if the Daleks were actually dead. Praed is the actor who steals the show here
just by how smooth his voice is on audio.
Ladiver was originally played by John Line who returns here to play
Professor Vanderlyn. Vanderlyn is the
absent minded professor, too wrapped up in his own work to really care. He serves comic relief for the story which is
funny enough and barely intrusive to the narrative. It’s almost sweet that Big Finiuh tracked him
down and made him a part of the proceedings.
The adaptation as written
by Nicholas Briggs includes a narrator in the style of linking narration for
the Missing Episode Soundtracks. It is
how the adaptation opens as a way to set the scene and just keeps interjecting
at scene changes which would be done on stage.
Now I don’t have a problem with the narration in theory. The opening poem, the ending and description
of the spaceship really works, but whenever else it interjects into the action
takes the listener out of the action really easily. Briggs narrates the audio and has a voice
that really works for the position of narrator, but he is barely needed.
To summarize, The Curse of the Daleks is honestly the
best of the stage plays. The plotting
and pacing is great even though it is basically The Daleks without the entire Doctor Who plot. Nicholas Briggs did his best to adapt the
story into audio, but failed when he decided to add in a narrator when it
really wasn’t needed. The best things in
the story are the acting with Michael Praed and John Line both being the best
parts of the story and the characters who are all archetypes that for once really
work at creating a period piece. 70/100
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