Friday, August 19, 2016

The Dalek Invasion of Earth by: Terry Nation directed by: Richard Martin: One Day I Shall Come Back...

The Dalek Invasion of Earth stars William Hartnell as the Doctor, William Russell as Ian Chesterton, Jacqueline Hill as Barbara Wright and Carole Ann Ford as Susan Foreman with Peter Fraser as David Campbell, Peter Badger and Martyn Huntley as Robomen, Nick Evans, Robert Jewell, Kevin Manser, Peter Murphy and Gerald Taylor as Dalek Operators and Dalek Voices by Peter Hawkins and David Graham.  It was written by Terry Nation and directed by Richard Martin with David Whitaker as Script Editor, Mervyn Pinfield as Associate Producer and Verity Lambert as Producer.  It was originally broadcast on Saturdays from 21 November to 26 December 1964 on BBC1.

 

Doctor Who was a show that was originally estimated to go on for a couple of seasons with the same cast before dying off and most likely being forgotten about.  After The Daleks the estimate was changed to five seasons before the popularity of the Daleks would most likely die down for the show to end.  Then something happened at the end of 1964 that led to the show being able to continue beyond that initial idea of five seasons.  Carole Ann Ford chose to leave the program as Susan so when her contract ended in The Dalek Invasion of Earth the production team wrote her out of the show, beginning the trend that characters could come and go as they please with the changing time periods of the show.  I will discuss how well the goodbye scene works but as the title of the story suggests we have Daleks to deal with.  The Daleks have invaded Earth and are mining in Bedfordshire to hollow out the Earth and use it as an enormous spaceship which is just a silly plan as to why they would want to conquer the world, but at least it gives a decent excuse as to why there are remnants of humanity allowed to survive.  They’re plan makes no scientific sense, but as they appear here they are much more intimidating than in their inaugural appearance in The Daleks.  Here they aren’t afraid to kill people who disagree with them as there is a much larger cast that can be killed off.

 

Terry Nation returns to write for them in his third story for Doctor Who and while the story is engaging it does start to show that Nation only has a couple of plots up his sleeve.  The story structure feels very much like The Daleks.  “World’s End” is the mysterious episode ending in the reveal of the Daleks, “The Daleks” and “Day of Reckoning” have the heroes captured then escape by tricking the Daleks into letting them go followed by an ambush on the resistance group.  “End of Tomorrow” is the expedition to the Dalek base while “The Waking Ally” and “Flashpoint” are the climax of the story where the Daleks are defeated.  What this structure does better is its pacing as it isn’t seven parts long, instead only six episodes to tell the story which is more ideal as The Dalek Invasion of Earth has more to add to the Dalek mythos than the initial The Daleks.  The script is only as good however as how well it is realized by the director and Richard Martin actually doesn’t do that poor of a job with the material.  He was able to get several days for location filming around London which were shot beautifully showing off the sights and he was able to mix them well into the sets he had built for the story.  Those sets, especially the Dalek saucer and Dalek base and mining sets all come across really well as the team had more production space to work with this time around instead of the small Lime Grove Studio D.  Martin isn’t perfect however as there are several points where he really doesn’t use the space properly.  This is mainly when rubble falls on the TARDIS which is shot in close up and the cliffhanger to “The End of Tomorrow” which has the cameras jolting all around as not to see what the Slyther looks like.

 

William Hartnell as the Doctor has his largest change here to his character as now instead of having stories motivated by a desire to get back to the TARDIS, he now has an active stake in the events wanting to help the people of Earth.  It is the Daleks that brings out the Doctor’s moral side as he has the call to action against them.  Hartnell also generally gives a good performance in this story even if he had to be written out of “The End of Tomorrow” after a back injury.  He really shines with Susan as going in Hartnell and Ford were prepared to say goodbye and it shows in both their performances.  The actual goodbye is the final change for the Doctor as he knows that this is time for Susan to settle down and she will be safe here while he keeps on running.  The final speech from Hartnell is great and it overshadows the rest of the story which wouldn’t be remembered nearly as well as it is without it being written in at the last minute to close out the story.  It also helps that all the actors got a month off after the filming of this story as the production block had ended and would continue with The Rescue once they had cast a replacement.

 

To summarize, The Dalek Invasion of Earth isn’t really a story about the Daleks, but a story about the Doctor and Susan, looking back on how far they have come as characters.  It’s biggest flaws are that the direction and pacing of certain scenes are badly timed in several places for the story to truly be perfect and the plot itself still takes its main structure from The Daleks which had only finished airing ten months earlier.  The acting is on form even if the rest of the cast is lackluster and the location work really is a feast for the eyes.  85/100.

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