Matthew Kressel looks back at the Third Doctor adventure, Day Of The Daleks.
Five years after their
apparent “final end” in the Second Doctor story The Evil Of The
Daleks, and one aborted spin-off attempt later, the Daleks finally
returned to Doctor Who. Broadcast across January 1972, Day Of The
Daleks launched Doctor Who's ninth season with a bang. Yet, in the
decades since it was first broadcast, the story's reputation has
diminished somewhat.
Part of the reason for
that might be because of the Daleks themselves, or rather how they
are presented in the story. The story was originally commissioned
from writer Louis Marks without them in it, with the intention being
that they would feature in another story all together later in the
season that was given the provisional title Daleks In London. Perhaps
sensing that the season's opening story would be aided by their
return, the plans for Daleks In London were dropped and Marks
reworked his story to bring them into it.
That fact is something
that is quite apparent upon viewing Day Of The Daleks. For much of its four
episodes, the story has the Daleks doing little else but sit in a
room issuing orders to their minion the Controller and thru him to
the Ogrons. It would appear that the original storyline had another
alien invader controlling them and that the Daleks were simply
substituted in their place.
When they finally move
in episode four the results are less then spectacular. The battle
between UNIT troops and the Daleks/Ogrons has long been
criticized by everyone from fans to the late Jon Pertwee himself.
Director Paul Bernard seems not to have had a flair for directing
action sequences, and the fact that he opts for a number of long shots
that quite blatantly reveal that there are only three Daleks
and a few Ogrons rather than the larger force that should be there, is
something that rather undermines the story significantly.
Exacerbating the
problems the Daleks have in this story is the unimpressive voice
work. The Dalek voices of Oliver Gilbert and Peter Messaline are by
far the worst of the entire original series run. The voices the pair
do aren't so much 'Dalek' as a very poor imitation of them that
makes them sounds more like the cliched monotone robots of yesteryear
than the threatening, malevolent force we've come to expect from the
Daleks. With all the problems added up, it seems clear that this
story wasn't the Daleks finest hour and it's hurt by that fact
significantly.
Many of these problems
though are cosmetic and the story's DVD release in 2011 saw an
attempt to rectify them in the form of a special edition version released alongside the original broadcast version. This new
version saw a new set of Dalek voices being provided by Nicholas
Briggs who, with more than a decade of providing Dalek
voices between Big Finish and the new series, has turned into one of
the finest voice artists to ever voice the Daleks. The addition of
his voice to this special edition once again shows why this is the
case across all four episodes but especially in the cliffhangers, such
as the added “Exterminate!” in the cliffhanger for episode two
which gives the Daleks a whole new sense of menace missing from the
original version. The overall result being that the Daleks have a
much stronger presence in the story thanks solely to improved voices.
Perhaps
the most obvious improvement in the special edition version though
might come in that oft-ridiculed final battle sequence. With its
combination of new Dalek voices, a couple of newly filmed sequences
and just a small amount of CGI work, the sequence is greatly
improved. The new Dalek voices give them a stronger sense of
authority and menace as they issue orders at the beginning of the
sequence. The new effects create a flurry of activity in the form of
bullet impacts and various ray gun blasts flying about. The newly
filmed footage is expertly lined up in places to match in with the
original shots to add more Daleks and Ogrons to the siege showing the
much larger force hinted at the sequences start. The newly filmed
footage also adds some additional material to the sequence as well
which, thanks to the same grading that matched the footage into the
story previously, is brilliantly intertwined into the sequence. The
overall effect is a much more frantic and believable battle that
gives the sequence what it had lacked in its original version.
What the
special edition's cosmetic fixes helps to do is to draw the viewers
attention to the more positive aspects of the story that have often
been overlooked, especially in its script. Louis Marks deals with the
issues of time travel paradoxes intelligently, years in advance of
other science fiction shoes and blends them well into a story about
the world on the brink of World War III. When the action moves to the
22nd Century is becomes a familiar tale of a handful of people
fighting to free themselves from oppression. While this has some
echoes of The Dalek Invasion Of Earth in it and lacks the depth of
that story, it still makes for some intriguing viewing. The script
does have two problems: the lack of a role for the Daleks (discussed
above) and the fact that the ending leaves a few interesting strands
of the plot loose (though that might be because a scene meant to have
been recorded wasn't, thus leaving the abrupt conclusion we have
today). Those flaws aside Day Of The Daleks has one of the finest
scripts of the Pertwee era.
In the
final analysis then, Day Of The Daleks is perhaps a story that is
ultimately more than the sum of its parts. With the special edition
version available, it is easier to see past the more cosmetic flaws
the story has, to see both more positive aspects of it and flaws that
no special edition version could fix. Despite its flaws though, and
perhaps because of Marks' script dealing with time travel paradox's,
the story remains the best Dalek story of the Pertwee era.
Matthew Kresal lives in North Alabama where he's a nerd, doesn't
have a southern accent and isn't a Republican. He's a host of both the
Big Finish centric Stories From The Vortex podcast and the 20mb Doctor Who Podcast. You can read more of his writing at his blog and at The Terrible Zodin fanzine, amongst other places.
