The Evil of the Daleks Episode 1

The one where the TARDIS is stolen on the back of a lorry...

You know, it's a real shame that Doctor Who stopped having individual episode titles because sometimes the stories would really benefit from being able to hold certain information back. When the series dropped the episode titles with The Savages in May 1966, the story titles gradually became more sensational and attention-grabbing (they had to be). Instead of descriptively vague titles like The Steel Sky or Temple of Secrets, instead we got wham-bam screamers like The War Machines, The Macra Terror and The Power of the Daleks.

If you weren't already aware, if you'd not been exposed to pre-publicity, when you sat down to watch World's End on November 21st, 1964, you'd have no idea the story was to feature the return of the Daleks. The cliffhanger, where a Dalek rises inexplicably from the River Thames, would knock you for six and have a real impact. But that element of surprise and delight is lost when you sit down at 6pm and are told right from the beginning that the Daleks are in it this week because this is The Evil of the Daleks Episode 1.

It's a real shame, because David Whitaker writes this episode with a big reveal at the end, with no clues beforehand that the metal pepperpots are involved. The entire episode consists of the Doctor and Jamie following a mystery (their stolen TARDIS), and as wonderfully as Derek Martinus directs the cliffhanger (which luckily we can witness in the reprise of the extant next episode), the shine is undoubtedly taken off it because you already know it's going to be a Dalek.

The same goes for the earlier scene where Waterfield is talking to an unresponsive "something" which we can't see. It'd be all the more powerful if we didn't know, and our imaginations were allowed to run riot, at least until the proper reveal.

Ah well. It's not as if this is unique in Doctor Who, although it's certainly one of the earliest examples of a title spoiling the plot. In years to come we'd have such spoilerific titles as Terror of the Autons, Revenge of the Cybermen, or anything featuring the Daleks. Thank goodness for the restraint of The Invasion of Time and Earthshock!

Anyway, enough moaning. The TARDIS has been stolen! It's a lovely continuation of the end of The Faceless Ones, with the police box speeding away on the back of a Leatherman's lorry, signed for and taken by a mysterious J. Smith (decades later, such a name would incite mass fan theorising that it was another incarnation of the Doctor pinching his own TARDIS!).

The Doctor is quite Holmesian again in this episode, as he is written by Whitaker very similarly to how he handled him in The Power of the Daleks. Whitaker's Doctor is a super-observant detective, noticing everything from the cut of people's clothes to the paper on their clipboard, even the direction matches are torn from a matchbook. Only this time, Patrick Troughton has his performance perfected so he doesn't come across as uncharacteristically Sherlockian, as he did in the earlier serial. I love seeing the Doctor piece together clues from the evidence presented to him, and it's certainly inspirational to viewing youngsters.

The trail of clues might lead the Doctor and Jamie on rather too easily, but then they are placed somewhat strategically by Hall, Kennedy, Perry and their fusty old boss Edward Waterfield. These four men are all well played by their respective actors - Bob Hall by Alec Ross (the first husband of Sheila Hancock, who sadly died of the same nasty cancer as her second husband, John Thaw), Kennedy by Griffith Davies, the plummy Perry by Geoffrey Colville, and best of all, Waterfield by John Bailey. I'm a great admirer of Bailey's work, in Doctor Who and beyond. We've already seen him turn in a brief but rounded turn as the fractured Earth commander in The Sensorites, and he'd return again to add much-needed pathos to the otherwise bonkers The Horns of Nimon in 1980.

Here, Bailey gives a gentle, understated performance as a man who appears to be at the mercy of his mysterious "employers" (aka the Daleks). He lives on a knife edge, bursting with anxiety and ready to crack at the slightest problem. He treats those around him with due care and courtesy, unless they present a challenge, and it's interesting to have Kennedy lie to the delicate Waterfield about the fate of Bob Hall. Kennedy realises that Waterfield hasn't the stomach for violence, so tells him he saw Hall making his way up north after delivering the TARDIS. In actual fact, Kennedy clobbered him over the head with a block of wood.

For a second consecutive serial we have a hidden room behind a sliding wall/ bookcase, this time revealing a futuristic room housing some sort of matter transmitter. This transmat is ultimately the arrival point of the cliffhanger Dalek, and it's beautifully disconcerting that the Dalek doesn't immediately kill the prying Kennedy with a scream of "EXTERMINATE!", but first of all demands to know his identity. "WHO ARE YOU?" it grates.

There's also a lovely couple of scenes with the Doctor and Jamie in the Tricolour coffee bar, a location just as out of place in Doctor Who at the time as the Inferno nightclub was in The War Machines. It's nice to hear some contemporary "pop" music in Doctor Who, from The Seekers and Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich (although the original transmission had the Beatles' Paperback Writer instead of the latter, but this couldn't be cleared for the BBC's soundtrack CD range). However, I do like the production team's attention to detail - all three songs could have been on jukeboxes in July 1966 (when the story is set). They could so easily have chosen songs from the year of production - 1967 - and got it wrong!

The organic interplay between Troughton and Frazer Hines is evident again, with Jamie encountering tartan mini-skirted teeny-boppers, and the Doctor building with sugar cubes. The moment where the Doctor notices Perry staring at him across the room is wonderful. "Is my hair in disarray?" asks the Doctor, to which Jamie replies no more than usual, but that may be because he's used to how dishevelled he always looks! Great character moments among vital plot-driving adventure. We don't always get such a rich mix in classic Doctor Who, but Whitaker certainly knew how to fuse character and incident perfectly.

First broadcast: May 20th, 1967

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: The cliffhanger is wonderful, with the Dalek slowly materialising then demanding to know who Kennedy is rather than kill him outright. Dudley Simpson's sting and stuttering heartbeat score when the Dalek is present is highly effective, like a doomy version of the Doctor Who theme.
The Bad: It may be over 50 years later, but the fact they give the cliffhanger away with the story title bugs me!
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★★★☆☆

NEXT TIME: Episode 2...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: Episode 2; Episode 3; Episode 4; Episode 5; Episode 6; Episode 7

Find out birth/death dates, career information, and facts and trivia about this story's cast and crew at the Doctor Who Cast & Crew site: http://doctorwhocastandcrew.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/the-evil-of-daleks.html

The Evil of the Daleks is available on BBC soundtrack CD. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Original-Television-Soundtrack/dp/0563525975. Episode 2 is the only surviving episode, and can be found on the Lost in Time DVD box set here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Lost-Time-DVD/dp/B0002XOZW4